To the Movies! And Pork!

We went to Kevin & April's on Thursday for a little outdoor grilling. I loved getting to eat outside, that's one of my favorite things about grilling out. The mosquitos & bees were well-worth it, and Kevin's custom barbecue sauce was awesome on his pulled pork. Oh wait, does that sound dirty?
A new page of Golden Brown is out as usual, hopefully will be wrapping up soon. The action is picking up again.
I finally got to see the Dark Knight! I was worried the van would die again, the result of some cosmic force fucking with with me and trying to keep me from seeing the movie, but NO! And we had enough on my gift certificate left to get us admission and some nice super-buttered popcorn. I didn't feel very good that night, and it was totally worth it. See below for my review, stupid.
What have I been watching?
Drillbit Taylor- A trio of high school nerds hire a veteran bodyguard to help them with some vicious school bullies. They eventually realize he's just a bum telling stories. There's a returning trend of using actors pretty close to the age of the characters, and geeky ones to boot. I like that. A little tidbit on the bullies: Filkins is played by Alex Frost, who starred in Gus Van Sant's Elephant as a bullied kid who goes on a killing spree at his school. Ronnie is played by Josh Peck, who used to be on a Nickelodeon show called Drake and Josh in which he played a huge nerd. Ironic, huh?
21- MIT student is convinced by his conniving Nonlinear Equations professor to use his superior number skills in Vegas counting cards. Dialogue isn't great, action sequences aren't great except when someone's getting beat up. It looks like a Steve Bochko show.
Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music- Home footage intermingled with concert footage, also his wanderings into his woods. I thought it was neat to see what his concerts were like. I always used to hope he'd make one more trip up north for a concert, even if it was in Minneapolis, but even before his death you could tell he was pretty much done doing the national tour thing. It also made me realize that although Joaquin Pheonix managed to sound like Johnny Cash, he really looks nothing like the Man in Black. Oh well.
Bad Acid: It's Worth the Trip!- An acid freak with his own underground metal radio show drops acid & goes on various misadventures trying to get to and from work. This is made by Bill Zebub, the same guy who made The Worst Horror Film Ever Made. Fortunately, this one was put together a little better, and very fortunately features a cameo by noneother than Pete Steele from Type O. In one part Bill throws a DJ out for playing Metallica while covering his shift, but we're assured in the end credits that no insult was actually meant by it, since Zebub's show was to exclusively promote underground metal (although I don't know how underground Type O Negative is these days). The tripping scenes looked well-acted and natural--I wonder how 'acted' they were?
The Dark Knight- Batman takes on the Gotham mafia, the Joker, and briefly Two-Face. Even despite the hype I was pleasantly blown away by how well this movie turned out. This movie and Batman Begins, in reality are not at all faithful to the comic. Everything has been rewritten. But as far as rewrites go, this one was written better than any comic movie I've seen. The characters have substance to them, and despite the visual attraction of Batman and his gadgets, your can take your eyes off him to focus on the non-hero characters. Speaking of which, the topic of 'hero' pops up, and it is here that Batman officially declares that he is not a hero. He realizes that he has to be regarded as a vigilante and even a villian to get things done. Heath Ledger did an excellent job as the Joker, and deserves any posthumous award he gets. This Joker fits the attitude of the one in the comics the best. He's completely amoral, sadistic, chaotic, and funny. He plans his crimes meticulously, then blows everything up just for the fun of it, even money. He's got plany of stories for how he got his scars, and Nolan (director) wisely opted not to show his real origin. Aaron Eckhardt did an awesome job as Harvey Dent. He looks like the handsome upright type of DA the comics had in mind, and after his disfigurement (the burn is a little closer to the animated series than the comics) he cuts the character of Two-Face perfectly. Whatever CGI was used on the burn side was not overdone or fake-looking, and all the plot development that led up to it was written in well enough that you didn't guess every little step. His struggle with his own volatile duality gives me much respect for Eckhardt, as well as every other cast member. Two things disappoint me. First, all the attention Ledger got was fine and all, but overshadowed how great the rest of the cast was. It's redeemed when you see the movie, but the media really tries to lead people to believe that Ledger is the only important character in the movie, even to the point of forgetting Bale's role. The second thing was killing off Two-Face. Why? Why did they do that? He had so much more pontential as a character. Even Scarecrow got a little part in this one, so Two-Face could easily have have shown up in the third movie (believe me there'll be a third), even if in a supporting character. I am glad the Joker wasn't killed off, though. And I LOVED the pencil trick. A perfect example of that wrong kind of funny you almost feel disturbed for laughing at.