My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

Okay, there are things I didn’t like about The Dark Knight. I thought it ran a little long. I thought Harvey Dent’s CG disfigured face looked ridiculous. Christopher Nolan’s Gotham is very real, there’s not a hint of fantasy, it’s a look and feel that separates his Batman from the rest. It’s a style that is entirely consistent until Harvey Dent wakes up in the hospital. His disfigurement is rendered in CGI that just doesn’t fit within the context of the world Nolan so painstakingly built. Lastly, Christian Bale’s “Bat Rasp,” the voice he uses as Batman, is incredibly stupid. It ruins all of his dialogue, which is particularly unfortunate since he has far more dialogue in The Dark Knight than in Batman Begins.

However, the entire movie is absolutely worth seeing solely because of Heath Ledger. His Joker is entirely worth nine dollars and two and a half hours. The character is brilliantly acted and written. He’s so cold, so dark, but so driven. He truly enjoys mayhem and destruction. His entire purpose in life is to prove that chaos is the only true constant. The only thing that’s reliable is the fact that nothing is reliable. He’ll do anything to prove his point, even die. He’d gladly die for his cause. One scene in particular gave me the chills…

Batman’s moral code won’t allow him to kill, the Joker wants to prove that this code will break like anything. After an extended chase through Gotham, the Joker stands in the middle of the street with Batman quickly bearing down on him atop the Bat-cycle. He stands, not moving, not planning on moving. Being run down in cold blood would serve his purpose. He says, “come on, hit me…” over and over. In that moment, he’s ready to die, he wants to die, if it means completely destroying the part of Batman that is most precious. It’s my favorite scene in the entire movie, it’s why I’ll go again.

So, this is kind of a local to Tampa hate blog. On Saturday the 19th we’ll be host to the first annual Red Bull Flugtag. Basically, the event involves people building homemade flying machines and riding them down a 30 foot ramp in order to soar over Tampa Bay. However, most of them don’t so much soar as crash and sink. Yet, it’s THE BIGGEST EVENT IN TAMPA, it’s on the news every day, people are burning with Flugtag fever. Some cities get art festivals or renowned stage-plays, we get Flugtag. Oh, and to make the event even more classy, their web site has super awesome embedded audio which makes any site extra cool.