The Dark Knight, Watchmen, and the perils of reviewing

As some critics discovered recently, most notably the two Davids (Edelstein and Denby) but also Keith Uhlich over at the House Next Door, writing reviews can sometimes be a risky enterprise. It’s a testament to the Dark Knight hype machine that there were insults and even death threats from people who hadn’t even seen the film. Mow that the rabid fanboys have got their hands on the final product, there seen even more vehement, almost as if trying to convince themselves.

The Dark Knight sky-rocketed to the #1 spot on the imdb Top 250 (a list that really should have a time delay built in), it’s currently at 95% on rottentomatoes, and it got an 82 on metacritic.

So now I’m going to say something risky: that 82? That seems about right. The Dark Knight is a solid 4 star film, dense, with interesting thematic currents, but also a bit too solemn and self-important, and with a construction that could be tighter. It’s a good movie, absolutely. The second coming of the Christ, however, it is patently not.

*cowers in the corner*

Sunday Reading

What, really? A new Sunday reading? Can it be?

I am really embarrassed my blogging has been so spotty and sketchy lately. But let’s get on with three weeks of saved up links!

That I love the Onion A.V. Club is no secret. But it’s easy sometimes to miss the gems hidden in the blog. Like this treatise, by the great Nathan Rabin, on Matthew McConaughey and the Perils of Male Beauty.

Dr. Horrible concludes…and how

Leave it to Joss Whedon to lead a story in which the supervillain is the hero to its logical conclusion, regardless of it being a rather silly musical concoction. And leave it to Joss Whedon to make you care for characters in a mere 45 minutes, and to make the ending shot a simple, but really poignant one.

The last episode was also – let’s not forget – really funny, even if there was nothing approaching the brilliance of “these are not the Hammer” (and the line that follows it) in Act II.

I have more to say, but I have to get the work. Besides, the most important thing I want to say? Go see this!

Dr. Horrible

I know: I’ve been a bad, bad blogger. I can’t quite explain why, nor can I promise it will get better soon, so let’s just get on to more urgent business.

Go see the first installment of Dr. Horrible. Now.

I never bought the “Joss Whedon is my Master Now” T-shirt (written in Star Wars font, of course), but now I think I’ll definitely have to. Rewatching Buffy reminded me of how great that show was, I still love Firefly, and now there this: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along blog, and well…

Quick Thoughts: Sullivan’s Travels (& the Lady Eve)

Every once in a while, Dennis Cozzalio of the Sergio Leone Infield Fly Rule makes a quiz. It’s one with no good or bad answers, but while I love reading the answers, those quizzes always make me feel a bit guilty. Or maybe ashamed is a better word for it. There are just so many gaps in my cinematic education. I could list ’em, but that would just make me feel worse. I usually manage to turn it around, see it as having many great things left to discover, but I’d better get on with the discovering if I want to live up to the name ” cinephile”.

I wasn’t very eager to discover Preston Surges. I saw the first half-hour or so of Hail, the conquering Hero once, under admitttedly bad circumstances, and it didn’t do much for me. So while his movies were on my mental “to-watch” list, I wasn’t in a big hurry.

How wrong I was.

I discovered that, first, when I was in Oslo, and bought (and watched) The Lady Eve. I wasn’t surprised by how great Barbara Stanwyck was – I’d read enough exalted descriptions of her performance, and that she managed to live up to all the hyperbolic adjectives thrown at her is impressive enough. But what I loved was how delightfully cynical it was. And sharp: the dialogue in which Jean provides a voice-over as Charles Pike walks into the dining room on the cruise ship is perfectly written, and perfectly delivered, and that’s just one example.

Still, I wasn’t quite convinced. Not enough, in any case, to make me watch Sullivan’s Travels in a hurry. But I finally got around to it tonight, and you can consider me converted.