Word: ledgers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When it comes to the hugely hyped opening of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, the question is who's crazier: the mad, murderous Joker portrayed by the late Heath Ledger, or the mad, manic fanboys who insist on lining up for hours just to see the film at 2, 3 or 6 a.m. on its opening morning...
...just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.) It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases - including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels - and lots of stuff blowing up. Even the tie-in action figures with Reese's Pieces suggest this is a fast-food movie...
...really. This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history...
...actor, who died in January at 28 of an accidental prescription-drug overdose, is magnificent. Echoing the sly psychopathy and scary singsong voice of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Ledger!), Ledger carries in him the deranged threat of a punk star like Sid Vicious, whom he supposedly took as one of the models for his character. The Joker observes no rules, pursues no grand scheme; he's the terrorist as improv artist. Evil is his tenor sax, Armageddon his melody. Why, he might blow up a hospital or turn ordinary people into mass murderers to save...
...comic-book buyer is 23, but Smith's point--that there are fans aplenty to support R-rated comics franchises--has been digested. Even PG-13 comic-book movies are maturing. Batman keeps getting darker scripts, like Nolan's The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger (in his haunting last performance, as the Joker). Marvel Studios' first two movies, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, star Robert Downey Jr. and Ed Norton, Oscar-nominated actors with indie credibility. And Hellboy, who is back this summer for a sequel, is hardly your standard man in tights. He smokes cigars...