Tag: Batman

Malkovich Burns. | As does Gotham.

Several stills from the Coens’ next, Burn after Reading, appear online, along with a brief synopsis: “Burn centers on Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), who has hit a bit of rough patch. He was recently fired from the CIA and decides to write his memoirs, naturally documenting government secrets along the way. His wife (Tilda Swinton) decides to steal the material to use in their upcoming divorce proceedings, but the CD mistakenly ends up in the hands of two doltish gym employees, Chad (Brad Pitt) and Linda (Frances McDormand). In response to Linda and Chad conspiring to sell the material to help pay for Linda’s plastic surgery, the CIA dispatches Harry (George Clooney) to sort it all out at whatever the cost.” And, if that doesn’t sound like Coen comedy territory, check out Brad Pitt’s hair.

Also in the image department, enterprising fanboys have rifled through the new Dark Knight trailer and kindly chopped it up into high-rez stills. The money shot of the trailer is this one, of course (unless you’re Patrick Leahy), but I still want to see more of the Clown Prince of Crime…

Eat your heart out, Nicholson. Update: For the more Two-Face-minded, some purported concept art leaks. (Not for the squeamish.)

Who’s More Grizzled?

In the weekend trailer bin, Will Smith is legend, whether we like it or not, in the full trailer for Peter Berg’s Hancock, also with Jason Bateman & Charlize Theron. And last week’s Indy boot goes legit: Behold the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (I dunno…Is it just me, or does Cate Blanchett seem hammier than a drunken Anthony Hopkins?) Also, The Dark Knight trailer follows suit tomorrow.

Update: The Dark Knight trailer is now up. Also, Aaron Eckhart seems to let slip a pretty major plot point in an interview with the LA Times. If you’re staying spoiler-free, don’t read this one (or Moriarty’s telegraphing of the same here.)

It’s all part of the plan.

Along with a slew of new posters (see also the snazzy 9/11ish one at Quiddity), The Dark Knight begins its trailer rollout today with — of course — another worldwide Joker-run scavenger hunt. (I for one am loving the confluence of my interests that is Jokerized dead-presidents.) In any case, once we budding fanboy detectives run the info through the Batcomputer and get to the bottom of it all, I’ll post the new trailer here…

Update: After the scavenger hunt and some anagram work and duck-shooting, it seems the trailer will be here…next Sunday. (Presumably, it premieres before Iron Man on Friday.) Sunday? Now, that wasn’t very nice.

Update 2: “This city deserves a better class of criminal, and I’m going to give it to them.” In pure Joker fashion, it’s been Kramerized and Youtubed regardless. Extremely poor quality, but this’ll do until the trouble gets here. (I could do without the post-title goofiness, to be honest, but Heath’s Joker still seems scarily spot-on.) Update 3: While bootlegs of the clip keep getting shut down (if you haven’t caught it yet, it’s still up here at io9), the “Jokerized” version of the trailer, handed out to raffle winners in the viral game, is nevertheless now on the tubes.

Is he toast…or just half-burnt?

“RUMOR: Dent Will Withdraw From Race Tomorrow… Developing.” With two months to go until election day, is Harvey Dent done? The Gotham cops swift-boating seems to have killed him in the polls (he’s pulling only 9% in the three-way race against Garcetti and Worthington), and now even random clowns are sticking a fork in him. At this point, I’d say Dent’s political future is at best a coin-toss.

Clowning Around (the world).

If you’ll remember, I posted last week that viral promotion for The Dark Knight would bring back the Clown Prince of Crime for April Fool’s Day. Well, whatever happens tomorrow — and word is it might be the final trailer, although, again, it’s April Fool’s, so who knows — it seems the Joker has set up shop here, at the “Clown Travel Agency.” Tune in tomorrow, folks. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Update: Apparently, DA candidate Harvey Dent has been swiftboated by the “Concerned Citizens for a Better Gotham” (a.k.a. some disgruntled cops), and he’ll be holding a press conference tomorrow at 3pm to address the charges made in the ad. This sounds like a prime moment for Joker/trailer-related shenanigans.

Update 2: Never mind tomorrow: The trailer seems to have leaked, and it’s a beaut. (Ok, sorry. I couldn’t help myself…just getting in the April Fool’s mood a day early.) At any rate, more Dark Knight info as it comes.

Update 3: And they’re off: Looks like Step 1 is a worldwide scavenger hunt…apparently to acquire Joker bowling balls and cellphones. The bowling balls have phone numbers and code words attached — presumably that’s Phase 2. Update 4: With all the balls doled out around the globe, the next stop is this Acme Security Systems site…where everyone’s getting “server is too busy” screens of death. April Fool’s! Update 5: For those who did manage to get through, they got a call from Commissioner Gordon, but no obvious link to a trailer or anything. (You can hear it here.) No more updates here unless something big happens (but, if you wanted to play along, this wiki overview of the growing Dark Knight ARG is a good place to start, and most of the spinoff sites have been found via The Gotham Times or the Jokerfied version.)

Update 6: Some spoilerish stills of the Joker appear at a French site. Check ’em out before they disappear.

McKellen the White. | Dent-Worthington Heats Up.

“Encouragingly, Peter and Fran Walsh have told me they couldn’t imagine The Hobbit without their original Gandalf. Their confidence hasn’t yet been confirmed by the director Guillermo del Toro but I am keeping my diary free for 2009!” Grey Havens be damned, Ian McKellen reports he’s likely returning as Gandalf for The Hobbit (well, if he and producer Peter Jackson have anything to say about it, and they probably will.) Update: More good news: Composer Howard Shore is back as well.

Also in movie news, the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight is picking up again. As you may remember, a slew of new Gotham-related sites appeared last December. Now, more have arrived, of a distinctly Harvey Dent bent: A new edition of The Gotham Times, Dana Worthington for DA (a.k.a. Harvey Dent’s opposition), Maiden Avenue Report (Gotham’s Drudge, it seems), Citizens for Batman, St. Swithuns Church, and Gotham Cable News are all now online, along with the Dent campaign site linked to the other day. Also, apparently the original marketing plan was always to shift from the Joker to Harvey Dent, so this rollout hasn’t necessarily been affected by the loss of Ledger. (That being said, viral text messages seem to indicate the Clown Prince of Crime will pop up yet again before April Fool’s Day.)

Run, Harvey, Run!

“Gotham City is collapsing from a runaway crime wave and Harvey Dent can save it. But he has to run for District Attorney first, and the only way he’ll run is if he sees an outpouring of public support. So, let’s all get out there and show Harvey Dent he’s got support to take back Gotham!” I know I’ve been doing a lousy job of following down-ticket races thus far this cycle. Still, in case anyone’s interested and by way of Quiddity, Harvey Dent’s campaign for Gotham DA has hit the road. (Alas, it seems I’ve already missed his NYC stops.) Also, no doubt aware of Sen. Obama’s prodigious coattails, he seems to be plugging for an endorsement: “Be creative. Harvey Dent wants to see that we want change — and that we are ready to work for change. Harvey wants to see that people are ready to throw out the old, to break out of habits, to really do something new and different! Because that’s what taking back Gotham will take.“

I’ll say this for him, he has a honest face. By the way, it should be noted: Harvey Dent also somewhat disproves the Gerry Ferraro thesis, as he’s managed to get elected the District Attorney of Gotham City as both a white and black man.

Failing my Clinton Rorschach Test.

“I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to pretend it looked like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn’t. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that is avoiding the real horror. The horror is this: In the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness. We are alone. There is nothing else.” Ok, I’m not that ’round the bend. But I have to admit, when I saw this picture of Sen. Clinton on Drudge today, this immediately came to mind:




Oddly enough, the same exact thing happened a few weeks ago when this oft-used pic instantly reminded me of this.




Or is it just me?

As a disclaimer, unlike Republicans and denizens of Halloweenland — I’ll stand by that one — I’m not comparing Sen. Clinton to Linda Blair’s secret admirer or a psychotic, snazzily-dressed mass-murderer here. In fact, I think Drudge’s tendency to post unflattering pics of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton is often cruel, juvenile, and bordering on sexist (if not plunging right past that border.) So, this is not meant as a comment on Clinton per se, only on the implicit associations made by my impressionable fanboy subconscious, which would seem to trump slightly the findings of my Implicit Association Test. (And, in my defense, at least I wasn’t so irredeemably geeky as to come up with Tasha Yar.)

Shadows over Gotham.

“In a political context this would politely be called an ‘unintended consequence.’ (Gotham as Baghdad, anyone?) Mr. Nolan doesn’t deny the overtones. ‘As we looked through the comics, there was this fascinating idea that Batman’s presence in Gotham actually attracts criminals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,’ he said. ‘When you’re dealing with questionable notions like people taking the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the character so dark, because he expresses a vengeful desire.‘” The NYT checks in with Chris Nolan on The Dark Knight.

You play with matches…

Some comic-book cautionary tales for the day: Rorschach sets fire to a would-be pursuer in a new still from Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, which has wrapped shooting. And Dark Horizons offers a first glimpse at how Aaron Eckhart will look as Harvey Dent…after the incident.