it pretty much had to be. opening night tickets sold out nearly a month in advance. biggest opening ever. on its way to knock titanic off its pedestal. and todd seavey, whose movie tastes i usually find quite reliable, gushed in an email that it was the best superhero movie ever.

the dark knight nearly put me to sleep.

at least, the first half did. things picked up once the poorly-written girlfriend was out of the picture, and blue-screen magic made half of aaron eckhart’s head look like the mummy. but overall, i found it dull. pointless (although it was much improved by the joker’s declaration that that pretty much was the point). maybe i’m hopelessly dim, and i needed it explained to me. but just over an hour into it, i could’ve happily left the theater and not had more than a passing thought for what i missed.

so it’s a good thing i didn’t - because it’s a great second half. it’s the reverse of the problem with full metal jacket¹ - as though the writers had a great denouement, but couldn’t figure out how to get there. and it’s uneven: besides dragging whenever heath ledger is off-camera (and i’m not just saying this because i think he was dreamy²), one key chase sequence³ in the movie was so poorly conceived as to be laughable. it stands out all the more glaringly because the rest is pretty tightly written.

i’m thinking this is just a bad superhero season for my tastes. other than iron man (which i’ve seen twice in the theater), i could easily have waited for the dvds (for the incredible hulk, hellboy 2 and the dark knight).

UPDATE:

because i amuse myself, i am editing this to include some of my email comments to todd, who compared my lack of enthusiasm for the dark knight to my similar lack of enthusiasm for the first LOTR movie. warning: minor plot spoiler included.

was i the only one hoping that the joker was lying about how the ferries were wired, so that each was holding its own detonator? and then, when the big con threw the detonator out the window, was i the only one hoping the smarmy suit would blow the ferry full of “innocents” sky high?

as far as billionaire industrialist playboys go, i think i’d take downey’s stark over bale’s wayne. with stark you get the feeling he’s having fun; with wayne it’s just another mask he has to wear. and oh, the weight of it all.

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¹ namely, great first half, terrible second half. a fantastic set up with nowhere to go.
² oh, but he was. have you seen 10 things i hate about you?
³ if you’ve seen the movie, you should know what i’m talking about. if you haven’t, i’m not going to spoil the details for you.

james and i went to see the 25th anniversary showing of wargames last night. unfortunately the print hasn’t been remastered and all the reds are faded to hell (i think the opening credits were redone, as they appeared in a jarring arterial blood) leaving behind a much drearier blue-gray world than i remember.

despite the overall image quality, all was fine until the screen inexplicably went dark (right about the time the kids were fleeing helicopters at falken’s¹ goose island getaway), and the movie was replaced by the windows status bar you see above. (apologies for the image quality; the iphone isn’t the greatest at low-light photography.) apparently the flick was being streamed via satellite from cali, and they experienced a total systems failure.²

joshua never would’ve let that happen. he would’ve called back.
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¹ mildly amusing: someone set up a stephen falken myspace page. slightly more amusing: a 1990 overview of wargames in the journal “teaching sociology.”

² although we were told by the theater manager that the outage was nationwide, apparently those who were watching at tyson’s got to see the whole flick (albeit in subpar conditions), while at least one other theater - in indiana - also lost the feed.

some low-level hilarity ensued in the theater, as everyone took the malfunction with surprising good grace (or perhaps not so surprising: the theater was at maybe quarter capacity, and the audience comprised of thirtysomething technogeeks taking in a vintage flick at 7:30 on a thursday night.) there weren’t even too many groans about the technological errors in the movie, such as when lightman pulled the cord out of his phone and watched the game timer continue to count down on his monitor. and we did get 2 free tickets each as consolation, which was good.

james’ comment: “too bad no one has the movie on their ipod.”

a few months ago, i linked to an article that referenced potential dangers related to cell phone use.

the concerns are still around, it seems, with the head of the university of pittsburgh’s cancer institute strongly encouraging faculty and staff to limit their children’s cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer associated with long-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, [Dr. Ronald B. Herberman] says children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.

Adults should keep the phone away from the head and use the speakerphone or a wireless headset, he says. He even warns against using cell phones in public places like a bus because it exposes others to the phone’s electromagnetic fields.

The issue that concerns some scientists - though nowhere near a consensus - is electromagnetic radiation, especially its possible effects on children. It is not a major topic in conferences of brain specialists.

it’s an interesting question: do you wait around to discover any deleterious effects of a particular thing (cell phones, dredging, chrysotile asbestos), or do you change your patterns of use based on what might happen? i would expect the answer to differ between individuals and governments.

two news sources cover the same story regarding the release of sealed grand jury testimony in the rosenberg spy case.

nyt: “u.s. judge upholds secrecy of rosenberg testimony”
cnn: “58 years later, records unsealed in rosenberg spy case”

however you parse it, it boils down to this: ethel’s brother, david greenglass, doesn’t want his testimony made public, and the judge won’t order it unsealed as long as he’s alive. (david vladeck, GULC professor and one of the petitioners requesting the documents, argues that greenglass compromised the confidentiality of his testimony by discussing it with 60 minutes and elsewhere in the public record, but that’s neither here nor there as far as the spin goes.) most of the rest of the testimony is now fair game.

this headline caught my eye. a viral factor for alzheimer’s? could be fascinating, if you’re a public health geek like me.

but no, someone just misspelled “plaque”. shucks.

back in october, i groused about the demeaning heineken girl-as-beer-dispenser ads. (and this spring, someone brought one of those very kegs to my house for a party… it still sits, unused, on our small drink fridge - not because no one in the house likes heineken, but because it’s a bit much for two reasonably-responsible working adults to polish off in one sitting.)

so imagine my glee at reading the following snippet from the creative director of a bethesda-based ad agency:

Washington’s ad clients generally don’t have big bucks to blow like their New York brethren, Husak said.

He recalled a recent TV ad by a New York agency, a slickly produced bit in which a robotic woman is revealed to have a keg of beer inside her.

“They get away with that kind of un-conceptual tripe because the execution is so polished,” Husak said. “In D.C., no one has $700,000 to throw at a non-starter idea like that.”

“un-conceptual tripe” has a nice ring to it, i think.

so, dr. horrible’s sing-along blog is a lot like buffy season six - big with the getting what you ask for, and realizing that whoops, maybe you don’t really want it.

yup.

apparently the washington post has problems with berkeley breathed’s brand of humor, and pulled last week’s opus strip. salon has full story, including the post’s reluctance to run an installment featuring lola granola’s conversion from amish nudist to radical islamist. they really shouldn’t be so pc about the amish… i hear they don’t use the interwebs much.

in other news, the nyt magazine apparently thinks $40 for a wifebeater is a good bargain (the link to it from the front page reads “Cheap Find: Cotton Tank Top”); the Great Arlington Coffee War has made it to the usnews website (sans the customer’s side of the story); and lacking for a third interesting thing, i give you this: a texas school district that is trying to force a five-year-old boy to get a haircut. i might as well throw in a mention that my uncle made the front page of the wapo on february 15, 1967, for the same thing - the headline ran, “youth fights order to cut long locks.” *sigh*

according to this wired article, yet another reason the widespread use of antibiotics is harming the human race. or at least americans.

the breakfast club on thursday at 7pm, or
better off dead on friday at 9:30pm (possibly saturday at 9:45) or
a midnight showing of the thing on friday, august 8, or
videodrome at 11:30 on the following friday, or
damnit, i’m going to be at burning man when they show aliens.

*sigh* bless you, AFI. a smorgasboard of positively fantastic options to make this former BFS programmer’s¹ heart sing.

hat tip: james
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¹ damn. gotta tell ya, the bfs loses something with such a nice, neat, online presence. i miss the cut’n'glue-stick film bulletin. i miss todd’s reviews.