January 2009 Archives

"One thing I'm willing to bet [about a "Revolutionary Road" screenplay written in the 1970s] is that it made the Wheelers a lot more sympathetic than they ought to be. It was a common misconception when the book was first published, even among good critics. Quite simply, Yates meant for the Wheelers to seem a little better than mediocre: not, that is, stoical mavericks out of Hemingway, or glamorous romantics out of Fitzgerald. Rather, the Wheelers are everyday people -- you and me -- who pretend to be something they're not because life is lonely and dull and disappointing."

-- Richard Yates biographer Blake Bailey in Slate (June 26, 2007)

Plot and thematic spoilers ahead.

"How do you break free... without breaking apart"? That's the rhetorical question posed as a tag line in this trailer (above) for Sam Mendes' titanic version of Richard Yates' 1961 novel "Revolutionary Road," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

But is that what "Revolutionary Road" -- the movie or the book -- is about? Does it even scratch the surface? I wonder if this is being sold as a story about two extraordinary people who might have fulfilled their promise... if they hadn't been stifled by the suburban conformist pressures of America in the 1950s. If only they'd broken free and gone to Paris where people really feel things!

One of my favorite movie lines ever, impeccably written and delivered so that it has stayed fresh and funny for me every single day since I first heard it 30 years ago:

"We saw the new Lina Wertmuller film.... I loved it. Phil thought it was flawed."

-- Patti (Lisa Lucas), the 15-year-old daughter of Jill Clayburgh's title character in "An Unmarried Woman" (1978) by Paul Mazursky

BTW, I'm struck that studios hardly ever make mainstream movies like this anymore, naturalistic, humanistic comedy-dramas about adults who look, talk and behave like adults -- or like15-year-olds, depending on the circumstances. "An Unmarried Woman" is flawed, and I love it. (Clayburgh's shrink still drives me up the wall, but I never doubted that she was a dead-accurate caricature. Now I think she's hilarious; I used to just feel outrage that she was so full of shit and granola: "Guilt is a man-made emotion.... Turn off the guilt.")

Even if the movie plays like a '70s period picture in some ways (and it did then, too -- because it was made and set in a recognizable '70s New York movie-milieu), it's as smart and honest and observant as ever. Almost shockingly so, given what's passing for adult drama on big screens right this minute....

It's the "Number One Movie in America!" Again. Who wrote it? The "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" screenplay is credited to its star Kevin James and Nick Bakay, who also wrote and co-starred in some episodes of James' TV series, "King of Queens." Meanwhile, an anonymous tipster ("Nomen Nescio") who claims to have worked on the film has sent me a link to an award-winning, undated (but pre-2004) script named "Mall Cop" by a self-described ghostwriter named Alfred Thomas Catalfo, whose IMDb credits include the shorts "The Norman Rockwell Code" (2006) and "The Stag Hunt" (2008).

So, would you believe that "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is based on an award-winning screenplay by an uncredited writer? What's the story? Or is there one? Surely more than two scripts have been written involving mall cops in "Die Hard" parodies. And maybe it's a coincidence that the movie was shot in New England, where Catalfo is also based....

UPDATE (2/5/09): Catalfo now tells The Boston Herald that he got a rejection letter from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison productions saying they prefer to develop their projects "in house."

Jonathan Lapper of Cinema Styles, who's also a valued contributor in comments here at scanners, takes me to task for my recent analyses (or over-analyses, if you prefer) of clips from "The Dark Knight" ("Is that any way to review a movie?"). I'll answer that question myself: No, and I wasn't claiming to be writing a review of the movie. But here's what Jonathan wrote:

Telling me the school bus escape doesn't make sense doesn't tell me "The Dark Knight" is a bad movie. It tells me that particular scene doesn't make sense. In the meantime, I've learned nothing about the rest of the film. I've learned nothing about the themes of the film. I've learned nothing about the story, the characters or the plot's development. In short, I've learned nothing except that the critic publishing the piece knows how to pick a scene out of a film to suit his or her purpose. That way lies sophistry. And that's no way to review a movie.

Ouch. I have to say, if that's what I had pretended to be doing I wouldn't have approved of it, either. But I feel my method and intent have been misinterpreted (largely because I think I botched the approach myself), so I'd like to try, at least, to set the record straight here (as I also did in Jonathan's comments):

(Again: This post is entirely self-serving. If you want to go through this with me once more, please click; if not, please don't.)

At MSN Movies, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy continue their tradition of conjuring indelible cinematic moments of the previous year -- made all the more indelible by their luminous descriptions of them. A few samples, from some terrific movies, and some not-so-terrific ones:

• In "The Edge of Heaven," a brown ribbon of road glowing under the last shrinking patch of blue in a lowering, end-of-day sky ...

• "In Bruges": The twinkle and the glower: First views of the "Belgian s---hole" by, respectively, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) ...

• In "Revolutionary Road," April stands in milky light with her back to us, gazing out her picture window as blood pools at her feet. Hats off to Douglas Sirk . ...

• As a hospital explodes in the background, a nurse sporting an obscene mask of white, black and red greasepaint totters in the street, gazing into the camera as though daring us not to get off on the way the Joker plays in "The Dark Knight" ...

• "I was a guard!" -- the courtroom profession that instantly defines the literal and moral limits of Hanna Schmitz's (Kate Winslet) imagination, and perhaps a nation's, in "The Reader" ...

• In "Che," the most romanticized revolutionary ever (Benicio Del Toro) staggers up a steep wooded hillside, wheezing with asthma. ...

• A scene of pastoral skinny-dipping suddenly turns cold and black with the threat of death, and in "Tell No One," nothing afterward is as it seems. ...

• Wendy (the superb Michelle Williams) gazes helplessly from the backseat of a cop car as her tethered golden Lab recedes from view -- the first in a cascade of losses in "Wendy and Lucy."...

• "The Happening": Mark Wahlberg delivering a monologue to a houseplant, just in case ...

• "Let the Right One In": At snowy evening, a man making his way home passes out of a tunnel, and the dark little creature Eli drops on him as if from above the screen itself. ...

• "Burn After Reading": Chad Feldheimer's last grin (Brad Pitt, sublime) ...

Many more here.

Care to contribute some of your favorite movie-moments from the past year?

(Not these. They're just old-school changeover marks.)

Have you seen them? The first time I noticed them I thought they were just flaws in the print due to some glitch at the lab. But there was something too neat and geometrical about them. Their appearance was almost subliminal, but I became conscious of seeing them in almost every movie, like changeover marks. (See shot from "Fight Club," above. The first time I saw Tyler Durden I thought he was a lab mistake, too.)

I thought I figured out what they were, but I wasn't certain. Now David Bordwell brings them out of the shadows in a post that's mostly about something else -- the history of bugs, those company logos in the corner of the picture, which I remember first seeing during the early seasons of "The Simpsons" on the nascent Fox network. He spotlights something that's been bugging me for a while:

I had hoped to include a frame illustrating the anti-piracy stamp used on current 35mm releases, but couldn't find one quickly. This mark consists of a tight pattern of dots resembling a character in Braille. The stamp would presumably be copied if someone shot off the screen or ran the film through a telecine. How effective these bugs are at tracing pirate copies I can't say, but you can detect them, especially in bright scenes; I usually notice one every third reel or so, just left of the center of the frame. I'll keep looking for a frame and try to add one to this entry.

If he finds one, or if I do, I'll let you know.

UPDATE: From OlliS, via Wikipedia, a very simple example of the CAP code:

Except... really, was there a worse-directed movie than "Slumdog Millionaire" this year? ("Jumper"? "Speed Racer"?) I didn't get around to watching it until this week because, as I mentioned in Toronto last fall, Danny Boyle has long been on my "Life is Too Short for..." list. But this one seemed unavoidable.

I regretted my decision from the opening sequence, which intercuts an interrogation on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" with the eye-candy torture (beating, high-voltage toe-shocking) of a kid who's tied up and suspended from the ceiling -- all with thudding music (just like the TV game show!) and Dutch angles galore. (The television show is black and blue; the torture chamber is orange and red -- all glossy as can be.) This is Danny Boyle, slumming. Like its title, "Slumdog Millionaire" is so picturesquely "gritty" it's oleaginous. Even the cruelty is pristine. Casting is skin-deep: The good characters are pretty, the mean ones are distinguished by cosmetic irregularities, the slimy ones are... slimy-looking. At times it's like watching the reincarnation of Alan Parker.

Not since "Crash" -- or possibly "Mississippi Burning" -- has a movie packaged brutality in slicker, shinier, tighter shrink-wrap. It's asphyxiating. You will never have to worry about what you are supposed to feel and when you are supposed to feel it because the movie will always feed you the answers, then smack you when it's your cue to emote. You can "surrender" completely to the experience (it demands nothing less), and you needn't worry that you will be given an idle moment in which you will be left to feel, or breathe, on your own. This is the kind of mechanical spectacle people like to call an "audience picture," but that's simply because it doesn't allow any space for non-autonomic responses. Don't even get me started on the schematic, dramatically flat structure (game show question followed by flashback to how how the contestant learned the answer)...

Oh, I forgot I wasn't going to comment. Sorry. But, wow, I was unprepared for how much I detested "Slumdog Millionaire."

(Above: It's a movie, it's a game show, it's a t-shirt.)

Stories on reactions to "Slumdog" in India, where it opened Jan. 24:

Critics rave over 'Slumdog Millionaire,' Indian public mixed (AFP)

Indians don't feel good about 'Slumdog Millionaire' (Los Angeles Times)

"Why Slumdog fails to move me" (BBC)

I have no issues with Boyle's cheery depiction of the resilience of slum children and the sunny side of slum life: it is part of the unchanging popular oriental stereotype of poverty equals slums equals dirty, smiling children. Been there, seen that. [...]

My quibble with Slumdog Millionaire lies elsewhere. [...]

I suspect what Boyle tries to do is a Bollywood film -- the dirt-poor lost brothers, unrequited love -- with dollops of gritty realism. But at the end of it all, it is a pretty callow copy of a genre which only the Indians can make with the élan it deserves. The realism skims the surface, and in spite of some decent performances, style dominates over substance.

(tip: Daily Dish)

or: Ways to Fall (in one or more pieces)

The first part of this little movie provides an overview of different approaches filmmakers from Buster Keaton to Alfred Hitchcock to Christopher Nolan have taken to shooting falls and/or jumps from high places. (It wouldn't do anyone much good to fall or jump from a low place.) The second part examines, in vital but nit-picky detail, a twelve-shot sequence from "The Dark Knight" and makes suggestions for improving it, based solely on what's already there.

TWO WARNINGS: Part I includes possible spoilers for "In Bruges" (two reminders of what makes it one of the best-directed films of the year), "The Fall," "The Tenant" and "Infernal Affairs" -- as well as not-so-spoily clips from "Vertigo," "Superman," "This Gun for Hire," "Our Hospitality" and "The Dark Knight." Some parts are a little gruesome, too. Part II delves into a brief segment of "The Dark Knight" repeatedly, shot by shot. If that places unreasonable demands on your time or patience, you're at the wrong place on the Interwebs, so don't subject yourself to it. There's a little button at the lower left of the movie player that will stop it. You have been warned (and will be again).

Some notes about falling down:

"I don't think we need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know? We get it. It was grim. Move on. No, I'm doing it because I've noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar.... 'Schindler's Bloody List,' 'Pianist' -- Oscars comin' outta their ass."

-- Kate Winslet (in character) on "Extras" (2005)

There are two main reasons I don't do Oscar predictions: 1) I'm bad at it; and 2) the Oscars take place in a corner of the cinematic universe that's only tangentially related to the movies I love. The Oscar ceremonies have been called the Gay Super Bowl and that's as good a characterization as any -- or at least it was, until "Crash" won.

But some peculiarities at the Golden Globules got me to wondering about the Academy rules. Although I remembered that Peter Finch had won a posthumous Oscar for "Network" in 1976, I didn't know for certain if the rules permitted a posthumous nomination -- like, say, for Heath Ledger, who won a Globule for best supporting actor as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." Turns out, nothing in the Academy's Rule Six: Special Rules for the Acting Awards prohibits it.

Perhaps a more pertinent question would be: Is it really a supporting role? Kate Winslet got her hands on two Globules this year -- one for lead performance in "Revolutionary Road" and another for supporting performance in "The Reader." Some have suggested that the latter is a little like considering Faye Dunaway's role in "Chinatown" a supporting one, but I figured the Hollywood Foreign Press Association just wanted to award Winslet a pair of Globulettes for reasons known best to themselves, so they went out of their way to nominate her in separate categories.

UPDATE: Indeed, Oscar voters have nominated Winslet's "Reader" performance in the lead category. She did not receive a nomination for "Revolutionary Road" -- even though she may well have received enough votes to qualify for both. At least, I think that's what this rule says:

5. In the event that two achievements by an actor or actress receive sufficient votes to be nominated in the same category, only one shall be nominated using the preferential tabulation process and such other allied procedures as may be necessary to achieve that result.

[Oscar rules below.]

Tom Brokaw, NBC News: "It's unfortunate for Vice President Cheney to have had this accident obviously, because there will be those who don't like him, who will be writing tomorrow that he had a Dr. Strangelove appearance as he appeared today in his wheelchair."

Brokaw brought it up. Judge for yourself. Did it occur to Brokaw that that this could have been a wily piece of black-hearted/suited satirical stagecraft on Cheney's part? Wonder what was in those boxes that he was reportedly moving -- himself -- when he injured his back. Shreddable secret documents, perhaps? Or could the former CEO of Halliburton not afford to hire movers?

(AP Photo)

UPDATE: Reports that the ex-VP was doing a little recreational waterboarding down by the Potomac when he slipped on the ice have not been confirmed.

I was going to ignore it, I really was. But several people have e-mailed me about the appearance of Armond White's "Better-Than List 2008," and requested an opportunity to discuss it here. Well, OK.

White insists once again that what "it all comes down to" is a contest between "movies you must experience versus movies that threaten to diminish you":

Most of these high-profile films insult one's intelligence, while the year's best movies vanish from the marketplace for lack of critical support. This tragedy is exemplified by the scary acclaim for the year's worst: The atrocious "Slumdog Millionaire" and Pixar's hideous "Wall-E," the buzz-kill movie of all time. Trust no critic who endorses them.

So, it's not really Batman vs. the Joker. It's "Transporter 3" BETTER THAN "The Dark Knight": "Olivier Megaton, Jason Statham and Luc Besson reinvent the action movie as kinetic art, but impressionable teenagers mistook Chris Nolan's nihilistic graphic novel for kool fun."

I can't tell from that sentence (which constitutes the entirety of White's blurb-ument in this case) what the first part has to do with the second part, but it illustrates once again the meaninglessness of plugging movies into equations and pretending it's criticism.

A man who has received a large sum of money hires people to re-enact scenes from his own life, staged on the actual locations and on sets he has constructed for the purpose.

That's a selective synopsis of the premise of "Remainder," a 2005 novel by Tom McCarthy. As I was sitting through "Synecdoche, New York," I couldn't help feeling that I'd somehow seen this done before (yeah, I know -- the movie is in part about that feeling)... and then I remembered "Remainder." The first-person narrator, who has suffered brain damage in an accident, becomes obsessed with meticulously reconstructing the events surrounding it. Having turned his apartment building, and the blocks around it, into a living set -- available round the clock for command performances, he stages a run-through of one sequence in a warehouse at Heathrow:

I'd had a raised viewing platform built, a little like an opera box, because I'd enjoyed watching the action in my building from above and wanted a similar option here. I'd established that I might roam around the re-enactment area itself, and that the re-enactors shouldn't be put off by this. I chose to begin watching the re-enactment from the platform, though.

Later, he describes his living role as actor, director and audience, revising and perfecting the re-enactment, which becomes a more-or-less permanent project:

Two Three observations:

"I couldn't tell if it was a fable or if it was badly written."

-- couple leaving theater in Bruce Eric Kaplan New Yorker cartoon (1/19/09)

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"I think a record is something to be consumed and to be experienced by tons of people in different ways and in different lights. Context is everything for some people. Context isn't everything for other people."

-- Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, on his album "For Emma, Forever Ago," which he recorded during a winter spent living alone in a remote cabin in the Wisconsin woods

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"Framing is everything. I remember [someone] asked Erland Josephson, who worked with Bergman, 'How did he direct you? What did you do?' And he said, 'He didn't really direct us that much. It was just really where he put the camera.' I think that's true. It's really how, suddenly, the image takes a kind of energy. I'm fascinated by the visual language."

-- Sophie Fiennes, director of "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema"

If there's any doubt in your mind (and I can't imagine why there would be) that "Pineapple Express" is a head trip movie about stoners imagining themselves the heroes of a movie they'd like to see, the final morning-after breakfast-and-bonding scene (not to mention the Robert Palmer "Woke up laughing" snippet followed by the Huey Lewis song over the end credits) drives it home like Bubby. The "Extended Version" now on DVD and Blu-ray goes even further. The guys re-live their movie, summing up what they've shared, and what they've learned.

Check out the clip above (WARNING -- spoilers and R-rated language), and then continue below for the Huey Lewis plot-synopsis lyrics. Director David Gordon Green reportedly asked just three things: 1) that it sound like his '80s stuff; 2) that it contain repeated mentions of the movie title; and 3) that it contain something like a plot synopsis. I smell Oscar! (In a good way...)

P.S. Hey, man, have you ever played "Dark Side of the Moon" at the same time as "The Wizard of Oz"... ?

Above, this may be the best view of all: You can see exactly how the camera is mounted for the shot. The set-up is indeed designed to camouflage that there is no actual hole in the "bank wall." I didn't know exactly why it was done this way when I originally saw the movie, but I had a hunch. Again: It's not a debacle, it's not a Crime Against Cinema, it's a directorial (or budget) choice. Take it for what it is. Then again, it's also a failure of imagination. They can do wonders with opticals and CGI these days (see the astonishing, virtually invisible Digital Domain work on "Zodiac"). Watch the "Zodiac" footage. Or build a bigger/deeper add-on set. Why settle for less?

Here you see one full take, and some of the vehicles returning to positions afterward.

After the jump: Better glimpses of the flats used to extend the building and provide the "hole" in the exterior wall of the Gotham bank...

Actor director writer producer Patrick McGoohan has died at the age of 80. (News story here.) In fond remembrance, I resurrect this essay -- the only one I've done with voiceover -- about the opening of his most ambitious project, the 1960s television series "The Prisoner." The show is currently being remade for AMC, with James Caviezel in McGoohan's role as Number Six and Ian McKellen as Number Two.

I've been trying to imagine a conversation about a movie that would include the argument: "Well, you only point that out because you liked the movie." Or, "You wouldn't have noticed that if you didn't already like the movie." In response to all the stuff I wrote last year about the many moments of brilliance in "No Country for Old Men," I don't recall anybody saying, "Well, you wouldn't have liked that if you didn't like the movie."

But that's more or less what some are saying to me about "The Dark Knight": "You didn't like that because you didn't like the movie." I can understand where some of it is coming from: People feel defensive when they've enjoyed something and somebody else criticizes it; maybe they don't want to examine that experience closely -- although that has always been the purpose of this blog. The closer the better. I didn't expect to win friends and influence people by attempting to get specific about why I found "The Dark Knight" a lightweight entertainment, but also a letdown. It may seem like I'm just trying to justify my dislike; you might otherwise think I'm trying to discover the source(s) of my dissatisfaction. I don't think that's dishonest, or a waste of time, but if you do, please feel free to skip to a post in another category!

I also put people on the defensive by "going negative" prematurely, which added injury to insult. Maybe I let that silly "Love TDK -- or else!" threat get lodged in the back of my brain and it's been subconsciously gnawing away at me for the last month, I don't know.

Filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee, of Shooting Down Pictures has been posting video essays and shorts on YouTube for three years. Until yesterday, when the site pulled all his work -- more than 40 pieces totaling over 300 minutes -- on grounds of "copyright infringement" because he included clips from the films he was discussing. This is a travesty of the principles of intellectual freedom that the Fair Use doctrine is designed to protect and encourage under US Copyright Law.

Matt Zoller Seitz also had a run-in with YouTube recently. (See his splendid Busby Berkeley reverie here.) I can't improve on the eloquent case he makes at The House Next Door, where Lee has been a regular contributor:

Can a critic argue without clips? Sure. Film criticism has largely done without external accompaniments for a century and can continue to do without them. But it's important to note that clips and still frames have been a central part of cinema studies since its inception. Anyone who's attended a film history or theory course knows how valuable they are. Clips often determine the difference between learning something and truly understanding it. They're quotes from the source text deployed to make a case. Take them away, and you're left with the critic saying, "Well, I can't show you exactly what I mean, so I'll describe it as best I can and hope you believe me."

This, in a nutshell, is the defining difference between criticism pre- and post-millennium. For the first time ever, when someone says to a critic, "Show me the evidence," the critic doesn't need to unlock a film archive vault or even haul out a DVD player to produce it. He can call it up online anytime, anywhere, for anybody.

Cameron Smith writes:

I was working on a detailed response to the entire "What's wrong with this picture" line of inquiry when I realized a very easy answer... it's cropped! I reviewed my Blu-Ray version of the film and was amazed to see that it is very clear that the bus leaves the doorway of a bank, thus explaining the wood and dust. The bank robbery (like many scenes from the film) were shot in the IMAX format and aspect ratio (1.44:1). The 35mm print of the film (and DVD release) cropped those scenes to match the 35mm footage from the rest of the film (2.35:1 aspect ratio). The Blu-Ray release presents the IMAX footage in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio which reveals more of the original IMAX footage. While this may not invalidate your argument, I would argue that the cropped 35mm presentation of the film would lend itself to being more confusing. Having viewed the Blu-Ray version a couple times, I did noticed that the scenes filmed in 35mm (2.35:1) felt better composed than the IMAX shots, as Nolan had to frame them for multiple aspect ratios.

JE: I just checked the Blu-ray version and you're absolutely right. There's more wrong with that picture than I had suspected. I hadn't seen the IMAX or Blu-ray versions -- and my computer doesn't have a Blu-ray drive, but I'd actually bought a Blu-ray disc and just took a look at it. Thank you (and I mean this sincerely) for actually looking at, and paying attention to, the MOVIE itself. This does temper my objections to the shot (since the framing isn't as tight in all versions of the film), but I still think it was a poor idea to start in so close on the bus in the first place. Clearly this is another reason why. Too bad regular DVD viewers are going to be cheated further. To think, some people don't think it matters where the edge of the frame is. It does!

UPDATE: Now, here's another example of what I'm talking about, a video taken on location during the filming of the shot in question. Director Christopher Nolan made a directorial choice -- not, I have argued, a particularly exciting choice, but he chose his shot for the movie. I assumed he started so tightly on the bus because he was trying to fudge an incomplete practical effect (the bus emerging from the bank). The guy who took this footage, from a window on the other side of the street down the block, shows what the scene looked like. If that doesn't matter to you, if it's just "nitpicky" in your view, then fine. Move along. You have an eye for the camera's optimal movement and location or you don't, and that's true of viewers as well as directors. Perhaps something at the scene prevented the camera from moving further to the left? Every time I've seen it (and I've often fallen in love with movies I didn't connect with the first time) I've felt "The Dark Knight" was riddled with off-putting, perplexing choices like this one. It just so happens that two forms of independent evidence (location video and cropping) have popped up to give us a better view of this particular example. But remember: I chose it as one specific example. I am not saying that this shot, and this shot alone, "ruined" the movie, fer cryin' out loud. Together with a hundred more examples, however, I think it shows why the filmmaking is less compelling than it might have been.

MORE ANGLES from the location shoot here.

NOTE: Reader Cameron Smith has noticed that this shot has been cropped for the DVD version of the film. See his explanation here.

"Dark Knight Quiz #1: What's wrong with this picture?") asked you to consider all the elements a single shot -- the culmination of the film's bank-robbery opening sequence -- and explained what you saw in it, what information it was conveying (and how), and what it implied about the Joker's planning of the bank robbery itself.

This last point is essential because the sequence itself continually asks us to figure out the plan. That's the fun of watching the robbery unfold: This isn't the kind of classic heist movie like "Rififi" or "Le Cercle rouge" where we're in on the meticulous preparation with the robbers and where the suspense and satisfaction comes from knowing what's supposed to happen when, and how they improvise when it doesn't.

As "The Dark Knight" begins, we sense there's a crime being committed, but we don't even know what it is at first. The fun (and I know there will be those who say you can't examine how fun is created, but we'll hope those people aren't wasting their time reading a film criticism blog) comes in putting the pieces together as the crooks go through their paces. The Joker (we suspect, but only learn in retrospect) is introduced from behind, standing on a streetcorner where he is picked up by two other chatty masked henchmen.

There's the question of the silent alarm that, mysteriously, "goes to a private number" instead of 911; the 5,000-volt-protected vault; the armed bank manager who laments the lack of honor and respect in the modern criminal element; the systematically diminishing number of masked participants (and beneficiaries) in the robbery itself; the use of the grenades used to control the staff and customers; the arrival and departure of a bus...

UPDATE: In the Blu-ray extras, director Nolan speaks of this entire sequence, all shot in IMAX, as "The Prologue," and said he considered it vitally important to setting up the scale of the whole movie -- hence the importance of the opening helicopter shot, the swooping down onto the roof of the bank, the crash of the schoolbus through glass double doors (built inside the building itself)... and, of course, this shot that crowns the segment.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself (I can tell from the initial comments, I'm probably already in way over my head), let me directly address (as I have in some comments all ready) one of my primary concerns with "The Dark Knight" and movies in general. And that, simply, is that, as I always like to say, if it's in the movie, then let's talk about it. If it's not -- that is, if you're coming up with some scenario or motivation or explanation that a particular image or sound in the movie does not address -- then you can't pretend it's part of the movie. Because, manifestly, it isn't. That's the difference between Ain't-it-cool fanboy speculation and actual movie criticism, based on what's on the screen, not what's in a previous draft of an unpublished comic somewhere....

So, when I asked ("Dark Knight Quiz #1: What's wrong with this picture") for you to consider one of the key shots in "The Dark Knight" (the "punchline,", if you will, to of the opening sequence), one of the things I wanted to get at is the movie's conception (or, at least, the audience's conception) of the Joker as a supernatural being. I've found that discussing "The Dark Knight" can be like discussing Intelligent Design -- in all the worst ways.

Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are swell as David Frost and Richard Nixon in the adapted-from-the-stage-adaptation movie, but I feel -- and I believe the above clips demonstrate -- that these five minutes provide more compelling drama and suspense (and adrenaline) than the entire feature film. Frost presents himself as a much stronger, more flamboyant "prosecutor" than he is in the movie. And watch the incredible range and focus of Nixon's performance: the deliberate rhetorical emphases and repetitions; the flashes of steely anger and startling shifts into unctuousness/condescension when he seems like he could burst into inappropriate laugher or tears or flames; the (strategic?) digressions and circumlocutions; the hand-gestures, head-shakes, eye-blinks; the splintered syntax and mispronunciations-under-pressure when he gets flustered... At least you can tell (unlike certain modern politicians one could name) that he's actually thinking as he talks, sifting through evidence and debate tactics and talking points in his head, not just going blank and letting his lips flap. THIS is an endlessly fascinating character in peak performance mode...

* * * *

"Frost/Nixon" and "Milk" are glossy products of the Hollywood awards season, prestige pictures in the grand red-carpet tradition of fashioning uplifting, larger-than-life entertainments out of semi-fictionalized semi-recent historical events. The thing is, both have been treated far more thrillingly on documentaries that are available on DVD. Think "Frost/Nioxon" provided compelling drama, suspense and astoundingly rich performances? It can't approach the actual interviews , which have just been released as "Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews." Think "Milk" was a moving look at a charismatic public figure and a key period in American civil rights? You have not begun to be moved until you see Rob Epstein's Oscar-winning "The Times of Harvey Milk" (clips after the jump), which is also a more complex, less hagiographic portrait of the man and his heady times.

NOTE: Reader Cameron Smith has noticed that this shot has been cropped for the DVD version of the film. See his explanation here.

Although I enjoyed certain aspects of "The Dark Knight" (especially the gorgeously real Chicago cityscapes, which I thought stole the movie out from under even Heath Ledger), I have confessed I couldn't tell what was supposed to be going on from one moment -- often one shot, or one line -- to the next, and, for that very reason, soon stopped caring. Now that I've been able to go through it several more times since its release on DVD and Blu-ray last month, and have cross-checked the movie itself with the screenplay for clarification (it's available as a .pdf here, For Your Consideration), I'm able to better understand exactly why. And it's not just me. Now, at last, we have the means to really look past the phenomenon directly at the picture, and to understand how it works. Or doesn't.

Let me start by asking you to examine one simple, minor early example that has to do with narrative logic and, perhaps, setting up the audience's willingness to suspend disbelief in a comic book universe rendered with hyper-realistic visuals (even, occasionally, in IMAX): Please watch the shot above, the final piece in the opening sequence, showing the Joker's escape from the "mob bank" robbery and giving us our first "overview," if you will, of the scene. The Joker has backed a school bus into the lobby of a bank, filled it with mob cash, and then makes his exit.

After the jump is the script's description of the shot. But before you read it, please leave a comment with your account of the shot AND your assessment of how the Joker planned this getaway. Pay special attention to the timing (dust/debris, busses, traffic signal, arriving cop cars). Ready? Begin.

This just in:

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
*1. Hanna Schygulla (The Edge of Heaven) - 29 (Strand Releasing)
2. Viola Davis (Doubt) - 29 (on fewer ballots)
3. Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) - 24

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
*1. Eddie Marsan (Happy-Go-Lucky) 41 (Miramax)
2. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) - 35
3. Josh Brolin (Milk) - 29

The best of 2008 in just under 8 minutes. Watch the movie, identify the images (all titles listed at the end). Some last only a few seconds, some for a minute or so. Coming soon: Shot-by-shot commentary (or, why I chose these particular shots for my tribute to the year's best favoritest.). And, of course, the second annual Exploding Head Awards!

Text list after jump...