forepac

Second time through, and I still love The Dark Knight. Last night I saw it in digital/DLP projection:

• Knowing where the story was going helped me pay less attention to the steadily compounding dread and more attention to the plot. The first time I saw TDK, I was completely exhausted after watching the rollercoaster-ride action scene where Batman & Gordon capture the Joker — it felt like a good place for the movie to end, and I was surprised that the film kept building steam afterward. During this showing, I appreciated the later action more and paid much more attention to the resolution of Harvey Dent’s story.
• Knowing where the story was going also helped me flinch less when the Joker was on-screen (the violence in my imagination was much worse than was was actually shown) and appreciate his black, black humor more. Great stuff, tho it did feel a little weird being the only person in a near-sold-out Thursday night showing laughing at certain times.
• The digital projection setting, with its crisp, fancy surround-sound, woke me up to the film’s amazing sound design (if you see it digitally, really listen to the opening bank job scene.). The picture didn’t strike me as any upgrade over the pristine film print we saw on opening day, tho, but if I’d seen a film print after 4 weeks of showings, my opinion might be a bit different.
• My one disappointment with the digital sound was that the center channel, where most of the dialogue was placed, was far too low in the mix. I had the same complaint about the digital showing of Batman Begins that we caught on opening day — dialogue shouldn’t be secondary to sound effects and music, folks.

2 down and 1 to go: we’re hitting an IMAX showing in a couple of weeks. Is three times too much? Not when the movie’s this dense and this good. And it’s still not my personal record for in-theater Batman screenings, either: that belongs to Tim Burton’s 1989 original, which I saw 5 times in the theater.

Caught a free preview screening of the new Seth Rogen-written, Judd Apatow-produced stoner comedy last night, and as the ridiculousness got more and more over-the-top and surreal, I kept waiting for a Newhart-esque final reveal where the camera to quickly cut back to Rogen & Franco back on a couch, sharing a joint, one of them saying, “and that’s how my movie would end, dude.”

Don’t get me wrong, I laughed a lot, but the film devolves from silly and almost plausible into something from a comedy bizarro universe over the course of the near 2-hour running time. Coulda been much tighter, and I don’t know if I would have felt satisfied had I paid full price. The exploding Daewoo, however, was awesome.