right before the dawn.
Moving away from all things gender and sexuality based for a moment, I just want to post a big HELL YEAH!!! post regarding The Dark Knight.
It is THE BEST DAMN MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN. Srsly, it really is. I don’t want to do spoilers or lament a lack of decent female characters (Rachael Dawes annoys me, I thought it was Katie Holmes but no even St Maggie playing her and she’s still fricking annoying) or lament the rather tragic death of Heath (who incidentally really does deserve that Oscar), I just want to have a moment of comic book geek relief that for once a movie based on a comic character didn’t get completely and utterly fucked up, and that the movie was every bit as dark and twisted and I hoped it would be and then some more. It really should NOT have a 12A rating. There might not be any sex, no visible particular violence and so on but my god the implied violence and sheer fear in places are something no child should be watching IMO.
If you don’t mind spoilers then a very good review of the movie, which includes an excellent analysis of The Joker’s character and how he is the dark twin of Batman can be found here .
You can probably imagine my shock therefore when I came home to discover that over at the Wall Street Journal no less, someone wrote an article comparing Bush to Batman. Because obviously a traumatised man who becomes a vigilante/total anti hero saving his beloved city is just EXACTLY the same as a misogynistic cretin who took his country into an illegal war and who is spearheading legislation proclaiming hormonal contraception as abortion, that allows members of the far right to gain jobs, refuse to do them and consequently endanger the lives of those people who are most vulnerable in society. Totally heroic behaviour going on there!!
Anyway, that’s my movie recommendation of the year. Go see Dark Knight. And go and witness Heath Ledger in what was tragically his best role ever.