Preparing: Music for Monday

These are some of the tracks I have lined up for the show this afternoon - 4 - 6pm 98.3fm Canberra

1150 Closer To The Boxer.mp3 The Kleptones 24 Hours (Disc 1) 4:55
Anarchy In The UK Sex Pistols Rage - The Songs Most Chosen By Rage Guest Programmers 3:32
Bananas And Blow Ween White Pepper 3:35
Theme From Shaft Isaac Hayes The Best Of Blaxploitation (Disc 1) 4:37
Do Your Thing Isaac Hayes Greatest Hit Singles 3:18
Life On Mars David Bowie Best Of David Bowie 69-74 3:52
I believe in a thing called love The Darkness Permission to land 3:36
She bangs the drums The Stone Roses The Very Best Of 3:50
Descent Into The Maelstrom Radio Birdman The Essential Radio Birdman (74-78) 4:24
England 2 Colombia 0 Kirsty MacColl Tropical Brainstorm 3:46
Bohemian Like You The Dandy Warhols Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia 3:32
Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again [The Angels] Rob Craw Used And Recovered By 4:25
Running One Tykwer/Klimek/Heil Run Lola Run 5:32
Loaded Primal Scream Screamadelica 7:03
You Never Had It The Magic Numbers Those The Brokes 2:58
Fashion Death Trends Frausdots Couture, Couture, Couture 2:51
Bird The Knife The Knife 4:34
This Land Is Your Land Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings Naturally 4:31

Blogging: about the blog feedback buttons

It's kind of hackneyed (but so very meta) to blog about your blog (you know that a song-writer is uninspired when you start hearing songs about life in a band on tour) but I thought I'd just mention the new You Say: feedback buttons that will hopefully appear at the bottom of each post now.

If you have a response to a post but can't be bothered putting a full fledged comment together (and face it, we're all busy people here clearly) then you should now just be able to take your pick between funny, interesting or meh but just clicking on the button. (Yes, it is skewed in my favour - that's the power of the media I guess)

So please, let me know what you think (assuming that this has worked) - it's always nice to know you're not just spouting off to the ether. (Or because of it)

LOLWTIMEing: Gymastique Pekin 2008 (Remi Gaillard)

Laughing out loud with tears in my eyes - I came across this video by some French guy (Remi Gaillard) on the Dnosauria blog of a fellow 2XX presenter, Dean.

GYMNASTIQUE PEKIN 2008 (REMI GAILLARD)
by nqtv

Noting: 10 years of the iMac

10 years ago today Apple released the first iMac, the above Bondi Blue model.

An Apple fanboi mate of mine (Yardo) and pretty well the only person I knew that knew about computers at the time, managed to convince me that in my quest for a computer at the time, it was by far the way to go.

Its reasonable-for-the-time specs were - 233MHz processer, 32Mb RAM, 4Gb hard drive and it came with 2 USB slots. I don't remember exactly what I paid for it but it was just after I'd received a whopping tax return and I'm pretty sure it was at least $2700. (This is more than the sum total of the 3 PCs I have bought since then).

As an entry to "new" computing it was a pretty nifty machine - the only other computer I'd had to that point was a third or forth-hand PC that still used those massive 5.25" floppies. It looked nice and was easy to set up and use. Problems were rare - though a blown power supply put it out of commission for a fair while.

Looking back of course, the specs and the cost seem ridiculous and are prime illustrations of how quickly things change in computer hardware. By comparison, the (work) machine that I'm using at the moment has a 2.4GHz processer, 3.25GB of RAM and 930GB of hard drive space. (And 7 USB ports) Not exactly sure what price - it's leased - but easily half at an educated guess.

It amused me (and possibly pained slightly) when I bought a 16GB USB drive online a few months back for $60 to think back to the old iMac and note that on my key-ring I had four times the storage of that expensive old beast.

Hearing: Never gonna give you up

Damn it - now I can't get "Never gonna give you up" out of my head.

Sometimes I really need to think about what I'm posting.

Apologies if you are in a similar situation.

Loving: the Barackroll

The Rickroll is an internet prank meme that has exploded in web pop culture over the last year or so - in essence it involves tricking someone into watching a video clip of Rick Astley's 1987 pop hit "Never gonna give you up" by providing a link that they think is to a completely different video. (It's well worth reading the wikipedia article for a full history of great rickrollings - everything from Scientology protests to major league baseball games to guest presenting punk stars Pennywise on Australia's own Rage.)

The logical progression, given the American election, is of course, the Barackroll.
Someone (quite possible hmatkin) has spent a lot of time scouring the man's speeches and interviews to put a clip together of him "singing" this pop classic.



Here's a side by side comparison

Watching: Republicans and military men on John McCain.

This is a very well put together video about the war-lust of American presidential candidate John McCain and his Republican mates. It doesn't really say anything that we don't already know but, like all advertising, it's important to keep pushing the message.

The stuff from Scott Ritter - chief U.N weapons inspector during the 90s - is particularly chilling.

It makes good use (perhaps slightly overdone) of "Lux Aeterna" by Clint Mansell, the main theme music from Requiem for a Dream, to really heighten the emotion.



In hopier news, Barack Obama will apparently be releasing a third book around September outlining his vision for America, with all proceeds going to charity. It will have the punchy title - Change we can believe in: Barack Obama's plan to renew America's promise.

I read (ok, listened to the audio book) his second book - The Audacity of Hope - and it really shows a keen mind (and not just a keen mind in comparison to Dubya).

Considering: Turkey Shoot vs Shine a light

The funky Arc cinema at the National Film and Sound Archive has a screening this Thursday of Turkey Shoot - a 1982 Australian exploitation classic. It's your standard tale of rich bastards in the future using a private prison isle (Camp Thatcher) as a human hunting range, which of course goes awry. Evidently it's Tarantino's fave Oz film of all time.



I saw it on crappy VHS years ago and remember it as being pretty cool. Considering my love of the sclocky, it would seem no contest right?

The problem is, that this is the same night that the ANU Film Group is screening Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film Shine a light. As someone who has only really picked up on the Stones in the last few years, this is also something I'd really like to check out. I mean seriously - Mick, Keef and Marty - fuggedabudit



The worst part is that these two screenings will be within a couple of hundred metres of each other.

I'll probably go Turkey Shoot at a guess and wait/hope for a bluray release of Shine a light (which on the balance of things is a little more likely)

Farewelling: Isaac Hayes

Soul legend Isaac Hayes was today found unresponsive near a still running treadmill in his house and pronounced dead an hour later in a Memphis, Tennessee hospital.

A sad day for cool.

Preparing: Monday Sunset - 4 to 6pm on 98.3fm Canberra

Water Pistol Man The Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury 5:55
Golden Parachute New Radiant Storm King Winter's Kill 2:38
Loose Lips Kimya Dawson Juno 2:25
The Majesty Of Rock Spinal Tap Rage - More Of The Songs Most Chosen By Rage Guest Programmers (Disc 2) 3:56
One Brother Andrew W. K. Close Calls With Brick Walls 2:26
Boys Wanna Be Her Peaches Impeach My Bush 3:56
Right Of Way TZU Computer Love 4:02
Rendez-Vu Basement Jaxx Big Day Out 00 (Disc 1) 5:47
Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black) Neil Young Rust Never Sleeps (Live) 5:14
You Each Time Ani DiFranco Educated Guess 4:19
Spook Strain Ed Kuepper Starstruck 2:16
Flame Trees Sarah Blasko Standing On The Outside (The Songs Of Cold Chisel) 5:21
Interiors The Sea And Cake One Bedroom 4:20
The Weeping Song Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds The Abattoir Blues Tour 2004 (Disc 1) 4:39
Breathe Prodigy The Fat of the land 5:35
Tonite Spiderbait Greatest Hits 4:23
Sleep Forever theredsunband Peapod 2:16
Love Makes you Feel Lou Reed Legendary Lou Reed (Disc 1) 3:10
Mobile Home Presidents of the USA Pure Frosting 2:54
Liar Randall Blair And The Wedded Bliss Tattoos And Taillights 4:57
Islands Cat Power The Greatest 1:44
Smells Like Teen Spirit Nirvana From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah 4:47
Factory_Girl The Rolling Stones Flashpoint 2:48
When you're in love Reno Thinking about the good times 3:25
Black Ice The Devastations Yes, U 5:37
Heart Of Glass Nouvelle Vague Bande À Part 3:35
Mutha'uckas Flight Of The Conchords Flight Of The Conchords 2:27
Secrets The Zutons Tired of Hangin' Around 3:16

LOLing: the child-eating dragon sand sculpture

So impressive and so temporary.

LOLing: Paris Hilton for President

John McCain put out a slam-ad (or should I say yet another slam-ad) recently trying to paint Barack Obama as too much of a celebrity to be a credible president.



It uses a few shots of people like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton to imply that, like them, Obama is all fluff and no substance. A stance which didn't go down particularly well with the uber-rich Hilton family, who had just made sizable donations to the McCain campaign before the ad was released.

Somewhat impressively, Paris has responded with her own campaign commercial.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Now a fame-whore does what a fame-whore does and this could well be an attempt to capture the spotlight once more but it was nice to see that she isn't afraid to take the piss out of herself in the process.

I'm not buying "her" energy policy particularly but am happy to give her points for showcasing how ridiculous and desperate the McCain camp seems to be getting.

Finishing up: GTA IV - shooting pigeons

My time playing GTA IV is slowly coming to an end - this time around at least.

I've finished the story, hunted down all the police Most Wanted, done the stunt jumps and stolen all of the necessary cars. All that remains (I think) is that most onerous of Grand Theft Auto tasks, the collection mission.

In this instance, it's to scour the 3 or 4 islands and shoot the 200 cunningly tucked away pigeons. While they do explode in a rather gratifying puff of feathers, this is perhaps the most grindy part of any GTA game. There may well be a plethora on online resources telling you exactly where the "flying rats" are but it's still a drag moving around the map from one to the next - unsure when you get to the next location whether you might have already popped one of the pigeons during the course of the game. (Unlikely for the most part - the stat showed that I'd only shot 18 or so by the end of story mode)

So why bother? Well, being an Xbox 360 game there is an achievement reward at the end of it, which ups the tally on my Gamer Score (essentially an online e-peen competition which shows just how 1337 you are) and it's one more step towards absolutely completing the game 100%.

Why is 100% important? I think ultimately it's about dominating the game - a strange relationship is developed between a player and a game during the course of play - it seduces, entertains, moves, teases and taunts you at various points and sitting on the stats screen is this tiny reminder that you haven't yet done everything possible to beat it (and perhaps also the hundreds of people who worked on the game). Only on reaching that 100% mark, it seems, have you truly won.

So a pigeon hunting I must go.

Fortunately, in the course of searching for an image to illustrate this post, I stumbled across a richer online guide to this task than the one I've been using.

Thanks to the awesome mattdean76 for the hours of effort put into your guide - which can be found at http://faqs.ign.com/articles/872/872599p1.html

Dreading: Death Race

You maniacs - you screwed it up. (Or to put it another way - I'm almost positive you are screwing it up)

Back in the day (1975), schlockmeister extraordinaire Roger Corman brought out an astoundingly awesome piece of exploitation cinema called Death Race 2000. It told the tale of an America run by a vaguely fascistic single party government who keep the population entertained and in line with a violent gladiatorial tv spectacle, the Transcontinental Road Race.

The race features an assortment of heavily weaponised cars and is won based on finishing time (from the East to the West coast of America) as well as number of pedestrians run over. Beyond this, there are pretty well no rules and the racers - macho drivers teamed with hotty navigators - are free to do what they wish to eliminate competitors from the race.



As you often find in more marginalised sci-fi exploitation type films, there are buckets of pointed social commentary, sweetened with a tasty coating of blood and guts and explosions.

But don't take my word for it, check out the trailer. (And yes, that is David - Kung Fu - Carradine and Sylvester Stallone)



Ok, so what's the problem - so far so awesome right?

Well, now I read that there is a remake - well more of a re-imagining - coming out around December this year. At first glance you'd think, ok, Jason (The Transporter) Stratham - brings the action and Ian (Deadwood) McShane - brings the grittiness. And ooh, who's that directing - Paul Anderson - the guy behind Magnolia, Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood - kick arse.

Oh wait - that's Paul Thomas Anderson - the director of Death Race is actually Paul W.S Anderson, director of Mortal Kombat, Alien Vs Predator and Resident Evil. (Actually I didn't hate any of these but alarm bells are already starting to ring.)

Let's let the trailer pick up the Death Race story.



Where to start?

The Death Race is now a private enterprise (so it's not the Government or powers-that-be that are the bad guys behind this) and it's just within the confines of a prison (so "the innocent" are no longer at risk). There's a man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit (so he has to race, it's not because he wants to) and I'm not really sure that I can go on - it's just too disappointing.

I can accept that you don't want to make a shot for shot remake of an old film - there's nothing wrong with tweaking it for a modern audience and to make better use of modern technology - but for the love of all that is holy - why completely throw out an edgy story for a bunch of recycled cliches. Prisoners being used in cruel and unusual gladiatorial tv spectacle - check. Evil prison warden - check. Uber-talented innocent hero framed for the murder of his wife to draft him into the sport du jour - check.

Don't even get me started on the use of Guns'n'Roses' Welcome to the jungle as a large part of the trailer soundtrack. Seriously. Do not go there.

Gaaaahhhh.

Oh and one more thing - from the looks of this, the cars are all racing around a track inside the prison - what exactly is the need for navigators?

Who could be behind this? Who hates cult cinema that much?

And then the penny drops - Tom Cruise, of all people, is one of the main producers of this film.

I've been prepared to forgive Tom a lot over the years - all the $cientology guff (ok, most of it), causing Our Nicole to dump him and essentially playing the same character in film after film after film. He has still managed to pull out some impressive work (particularly in the previously mentioned Magnolia) and so I'll let the other stuff slide.

But no more.

Damn you Cruise, damn you to wherever $cientology hell is.

Bastid.

Awwing: The turtle and the strawberry

Gwenturnerjuarez put this pic up on Flickr a few weeks back - what's not to love?

Getting: schooled about Batman

I had a couple of comments come through over-night about a mistake I made in my "10 things I hate about The Dark Knight" post the other day where I confused something that happened in Batman: Gotham Knight and Batman Begins. (The whole Batman gets a whizz-bang bullet proof force field thing)

Evidently this means that:

Such an obvious lack of research and KNOWLEDGE let's me know that you don't really know what you're talking about when it comes to Batman and thus you don't deserve to criticize it in a way that merits such a cocky, self-righteous diatribe.

Just sayin.

I have a (slightly paraphrased) announcement.

I apologise for the errors in this and any previous posts that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Batfans.

I apologise especially for confusing one recent movie about a fictional brooding superhero vigilante with another.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Batfans, their descendants and for their families left behind, I say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, I say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, I say sorry.

(I might just throw in an extra sorry there if anyone thinks that my remix of "The Apology" is disrespectful - it's a compare and contrast thing - something monumentally important and something utterly trivial)

Groovin': Dmitri the stud remix

I knew there was something missing from the Dmitri phone message videos - smooth tunes. This was put together by someone calling themselves bnutz5000

Let the romance begin (unless you're on any kind of medication for anxiety or depression)

Comparing: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3

(Image from counteragent.com)

Once again I'm a little late to the nerd party but yesterday I got my hands on a Playstation 3, so I thought I'd do a little compare and contrast about the various merits and otherwise of it and the Xbox 360.

I should mention that I haven't played games on the PS3 yet or watched a Bluray movie, this is much more of a first impressions kind of deal.

For the record, I'm comparing the PS3 with the 40GB hard drive, which retails for around $700 (Australian) to the XBOX 360 Pro, which comes with a 20GB hard drive and retails for around $500 (Aus). The PS3 came as a bonus with the new tv and given the pricing, I probably wouldn't have bought one otherwise.

Setup: The PS3 was marginally simpler to physically connect - just the three cables - power, controller (not always required) and HDMI connection to the tv. (Not included but better than the perfectly adequate A/V cables. The PS3 manages to do without the brick sized power supply of the 360. The 360 has a similar set up configuration but the HDMI slot is in the same space as the A/V cables (including the optical audio slot) which is a little problematic if you don't have a digital tv.

Initial onscreen setup was similar for the two - though the PS3 seems to have more options.

PS3 narrow win for the lack of the brick power supply.

Look and feel: Sure, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and until I had actually seen the PS3, I was perfectly happy with the friendly yet robust appearance of the 360. I like its big easy buttons and the circle theme it has going on, with the 4 way divided circle around the power button telling you which controllers are being used. The PS3 however has a sexy black finish like a concert piano and smooth curves. The power and eject buttons - well controls really - are simply touch areas on the pretty pretty surface. Very slick.



PS3 wins.

Controllers: The PS3 controller is pretty much the same as the ones used in the last two playstations - except now it is wireless. It connects via a standard USB to miniUSB cable to the PS3 and uses this to recharge. (It doesn't have removable/replaceable batteries). I haven't put this through its paces yet with a lengthy gaming session but the supplied cable is just a tiny bit too short to play with comfortably. Overall it feels a little too light. It does however seem more responsive than the 360 controller in terms of the way it talks to the console.

The 360 controller has a nice solid heft to it and the triggers seem a more natural shape for the fingers to rest on. Again, I haven't played games on the PS3 so it's not a fair comparison necessarily but I've played enough on the PS2 to be able to make some assumptions. The battery chewing ways of the 360 controller can be kind of maddening however.

360 for the win on design and feel.

Media playback: Again, I haven't had a lot of time with the PS3 though I did watch a few episodes of Heroes on DVD and didn't notice any real difference between this and the 360. It also found my media server pretty quickly and painlessly. The interface on the 360 for media is a little simpler and more user friendly. I haven't tried bluray yet but I'm assuming it will be better.

The PS3 is also whisper quiet, compared to the whirry whirry 360.

PS3 by a nose.

Games: There aren't a lot of games that you can't play on either system (or at least ones that I'm interested in) so for me this is neither here nor there. Not having played any games on the PS3 yet, it's not something I can comment on either, though from reports the graphics are meant to be slightly better. Backwards compatability however is an issue that I've already bumped into - the PS3 that I have doesn't played PS2 games (of which I have maybe a dozen) whereas the 360 does play Xbox games. (Strangely enough, the PS3 will play PS1 games - go figure.)

Given that the more expensive 60GB PS3 can play PS2 games, this is kind of annoying.

XBOX 360 wins.

Online: Online gameplay costs you money on the 360 but is free on the PS3. I haven't spent much time in the PS3 online store but the 360 online store has a great range of demos, game addons and videos/movies in an easy to use space. The PS3 has an Internet browser though. (Seriously Microsoft - what's so hard about that?). In terms of connectivity - the PS3 allegedly has wireless (it could see the wireless router but wouldn't talk to it - a widely documented bug apparently) so technically it's better though not functionally.

PS3 wins.

Other stuff: The main other functionality that the PS3 offers is that it can connect to the PSP and you can do pretty well anything you like on the PSP that you can do on the PS3. (Except watch dvds). I was able to play one of my PS1 games and watch a video from the media server. Oh and watch YouTube videos - something that the PSP itself still doesn't support. Don't ask me why exactly you would bother doing this if you have the big screen right there in front of you but it is kind of nifty.

PS3 by a knockout.

So by my count, it's the PS3 up by 5 to 2 at this point. (Acknowledging that this is a very preliminary overview)

Watching: Heroes

Sometimes I come a little late to the cool new tv shows - Heroes, a series about modern comic-book style superheroes, is about to enter its third season but I've just started watching the first series.

To be fair (uh - to myself) - there was a degree of method to the madness. There are very few programmes that I can be bothered watching live on commercial tv any more - Neighbours and the football for the most part. The ability to pick up the box set of dvds of a whole series and just dive in to to higher picture quality with no ads is just too good. (Neighbours works for me now as it's on digital tv and instead of ads, they just have the pretty HD demo pictures during the ad breaks - all so soothing).

Anyway, I digress.

The other reason I don't often jump on a new show bandwagon is that I'd rather know whether it sucks or not before committing to it.

Now that Heroes has hit the pricing sweet spot for me - $35 for series one, though I'll probably pay more for series 2 if I find it now that I'm hooked - I took the plunge on the weekend and dove in.

And it's great.

I'm not talking HBO great like Sopranos or Curb Your Enthusiasm but Heroes manages to bring all the elements of a great comic book story about relatively realistic (ok, tv realistic but still) people discovering they have various super powers.

I'll go into more detail soon - I'm 2 discs away from finishing season 1 and discovering whether they can stop New York City from being blown away in a nuclear explosion predicted by the future painting junkie and witnessed by the time-travelling Japanese uber-nerd. (Given the existence of seasons 2 and 3 I'll go out on a limb and predict that the heroes are able to save the day - it's the how of it all that is the interesting part anyway really).

10 things I hate about The Dark Knight (Spoilers galore)

Ok, so hate is definitely a little strong but I do think that while this is a pretty reasonable super-hero action film, it is highly overrated and has a number of gaping holes.

If you haven't seen the movie, I'd stop reading now because I'm going to talk about a bunch of stuff that happens that you may not want to know about yet.

1. Maggie Gyllenhaal/Rachel Dawes - Ok, marriage to whacky Tom notwithstanding, I've liked Katie Holmes since she first popped up in Go, back in the day, and I quite liked her turn as feisty lawyer and moral conscience Rachel Dawes in the original Batman Begins.

This time around it's Maggie Gyllenhaal's turn and all I could see in her this time was half a plot device. I get that she was supposed to be torn between her feelings for the brooding but unavailable hero and the two-dimensional also-hero Dent but the way she flitted between the two of them had me wondering if her heart was really in it either way. Her entire point here seemed to be to act as bait and to give Harvey Dent a reason to turn bad at the end of it all - and maybe also to add a hint of estrogen to what would otherwise have been a massive blokey sausage fest.

2. Christian Bale / Batman - I liked him in Batman Begins, seeing the evolution of a tortured hero but I thought he alternated between slightly bored and a little smarmy in this one. He was cool enough as Bruce Wayne and played the role of someone playing the role of idle playboy well enough but his grrrrrr I'm Batman voice didn't quite cut it - someone trying to be tough but lacking the necessary testosterone to pull it off. I actually found this voice kind of silly pretty quickly. (Kevin Conroy he ain't).

3. The fight scenes - Maybe I'm just old (36 for the record) but I like a well choreographed fight scene that shows how awesome the hero can be. Take pretty well any Jackie Chan movie for example and you will see a hero, in plain view, kicking the arses of a dozen or more opponents and strutting his stuff. It doesn't have to be done all in one take, editing lets you change perspective, introduce new information and create pace but when a fight scene is all edits all the time, I just don't buy that the hero has the skills to pay the bills.

The fight scenes in The Dark Knight are for the most part a blur of swooshing cameras and strobing cuts that leap from one place to another in the space of seconds - it might be stimulating but it's not so much about seeing the action as getting the vibe that Batman is a bad ass fighting machine. Yes it's called the Dark Knight and his thing is all about being dark and broody and mainly coming out at night (and he's got this whole stealthy ninja thing going on) but I wouldn't mind actually seeing him do something for more than a second.

4. Harvey Dent / Aaron Eckhart - Conceptually, not a bad character as a way of talking about virtuous people and doing the right thing but I kind of just didn't care that much. He never did anything the seemed to be beyond what anyone else in his job should be doing - perhaps doing this in the corrupt cess-pool of Gotham has a bit of a halo effect and so when he eventually loses the plot and turns evil, (all too easily and quickly) it didn't seem like as big a jump as everyone onscreen was making out. Having another character mention how heroic and virtuous Harvey is every five minutes don't necessarily make it so.

He was likable enough but didn't really seem to have much to work with - the big richlist fundraiser scene - where Rachel had to emphasise twice (in case you didn't get it the first time) that he was more afraid of the snobs than the mobs - was sadly cliched.

If you want to dig down into the Batman canon - and I respect Christopher Nolan's right as a film maker to tinker with this - Two Face is an ongoing character whose good side is constantly at war with his bad, letting the flip of the coin make his decisions - this Two Face had none of that ambiguity and just played the bad guy, using the coin toss like a tacked on gimmick with none of the evilness that Javier Bardem brought to it in No Country for Old Men.

5. The Ending - Did I mention the spoilers?
Ok so there's the big showdown with The Joker where he uses the whole never-seen-that-before-in-half-a-dozen-other-recent-action-films gimmick of dressing the hostages as bad guys and vice versa. This does end with a nice game-theory based exercise demonstrating that the people of Gotham can act morally (even though the civilians vote overwhelmingly to blow up the prisoner ferry) but when Batman shoots the Joker in the face with his little gauntlet arm razor things, not one of them actually leaves a mark. (Nitpicking perhaps but it would have looked much cooler)

Skip to the also not-at-all-cliched showdown with hostage holding Harvey Dent and the aftermath of his death. Ok, fine, they need to preserve his sainted image for the sake of the city - I'm ok with that - and so the story has to be that it wasn't Harvey that killed 5 cops in his rampage (which evidently no-one saw in the whole city, including me - 5 cops? really?).

If memory serves, our Harvey did kill a few cops with a gun - which Batman has never ever used before - and so now the decision is made to pin the murders on Batman. Um - why is that again?. Why not pin them on the proven cop-killing psycho The Joker? Why does Batman suddenly need to become public enemy number 1? Why? Granted it gives the film an Empire Strikes Back down-note ending which is good for cult cred and creates the cool image of smashing the bat-signal. I really don't follow.

6. Recycling plot points - Remember in Batman Begins Gotham Knight where Batman gets the ubercool bullet deflecting force field but has to reject it in the end because there are some ethical issues - proving that Batman is ultimately a good guy. Let's try that one again but with a surveillance system using mobile phones.

7. The Wayne Corp guy who discovers Batman's secret identity. - Ok, so you discover who Batman is and you don't tell a soul - not friends, family, girlfriend/wife - no-one at all the coolest bit of gossip you have ever held. Sure. Not even to reassure yourself that you're not batshit crazy.

8. Batman falls off his motorcycle - Yes this whole sequence is pretty awesome - from the Joker truck and the rocket launchers and the explosions and the whole shebang - but it all just ends so limply with Batman getting knocked out falling off his bike on a snaggy 180 degree turn.

9. Alfred / Michael Caine - I like Michael Caine but I just can't buy the billionaire Waynes with a cut-price cockney butler. All English accents are not the same.

10. The Police Commisioners funeral - Ok, so a proven dangerous psychopath super villain has openly announced that he is targetting the mayor for assassination - maybe you want to make a point about not bowing to terrorists but seriously - walking in the open down endless city blocks might be good for dramatic tension but I just didn't buy it as a realistic response to a credible threat.

Things I really liked about The Dark Knight:

Yes, Heath Ledger does put in a best villain yet performance as the Joker (though I wouldn't have complained if he had been a little more demented and a bit less passive-aggressive manipulative)

Spectacular action.

Cool gadgets

The opening bank robbery scene is awesome and Ledger owns pretty well every scene he appears in after this.


All in all, The Dark Knight is worth seeing but don't buy the best movie ever hype that seems to be all over the shop, it's not true. A solid 75%. Check out Batman Gotham Knight - the Animatrix style animation compilation set between the two films for a better take on the tale.