July 17, 2008 6:20AM
Dark Knight a Shining Light
By Alexis Glick
BRILLIANT! BRAVISSIMO! BRAVO! ONE OF THE BEST COMIC-BOOK MOVIES EVER!
It’s been 7 hours since I walked out of the “Dark Knight” IMAX premiere in Manhattan and I am still speechless. The kick in adrenaline has not left my body. I LOVED “Iron Man” and this is just as good, if not better. Yesterday on Your World (Neil’s show on Fox News that I have been anchoring while he’s on vacation), we did a segment on whether Hollywood is exploiting the loss of Heath Ledger in all of the advertising and promotion of the movie. Yesterday, I might have wondered. Today, I know why. HE STEALS THE SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never have I seen a performance that I was so drawn to. He is OUTSTANDING. He sucks you in with his bizarre looks and witty one-liners. I have not read one review of this film although I know the hype is huge. This lives up to it.
Christian Bale is fantastic, as always, along with Michael Caine, whom I met this week at lunch with Steve Tisch, and Morgan Freeman is quintessentially calm and suave and brilliant. Aaron Eckhart gives a masterful performance of good guy turned bad guy as Harvey Dent the Attorney General. Even Eric Roberts, Julia Roberts’s brother, gives a great performance as a mobster. And let me not forget Gary Oldman, as Lieutenant James Gordon (or should I say Commissioner Gordon…J), who is everything you want in a Lieutenant to make you feel safe. He pulls off another unbelievable performance. I adored Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, Batman’s childhood friend and long-time love.
Last night in the taxi ride hom,e my husband, whom I should note for the record, owns thousands of comic books and knows every single detail of this comic book series and what happens next (I wouldn’t let him tell me too much), and I thought about the best performances by a villain and Heath Ledger is now one of them. If he does not win the Oscar I will be SHOCKED. We rattled off our top five favorite performances. What are yours? Couldn’t think of all of them. Look at what company we thought he falls in.
Anthony Hopkins, “Silence of the Lambs”
Jack Nicholson, “The Shining”
Robert DeNiro, “Cape Fear”
Al Pacino, “Scarface”
Heath Ledger “Dark Knight”
The key to this entire movie was Christopher Nolan, the director, and IMAX. Last night’s premiere was hosted by the co-CEO’s of IMAX, one of which is my friend Rich Gelfond. Before the movie, he told me about Nolan’s masterful work shooting six scenes in IMAX. How did he do it? A first for a movie of this magnitude! By using a camera the size of a Volkswagen. And guess what? You can see the difference. If you see this movie, see it on an IMAX screen. It is EXTRAORDINARY because half is shot in IMAX and half in 35 mm, and the IMAX experience makes it come to life. It is the cleanest, crispest and best way to see this film.
Rich told us a brief story before the film. He attended the worldwide opening on Monday night in the same theater that I sat in. Michael Caine, at the end of the movie, told him that usually by the opening he has seen the film two to three times and he’s kind of over it. This time he said he was totally mesmerized. The first 10 minutes is shot in IMAX and it is hard not to tell the difference. I should also note that IMAX, a publicly traded company, is seeing record box-office numbers. He told me that they had sold $4.2 million in advance ticket sales as of yesterday. That didn’t even account for most of yesterday, today or tomorrow. It will be their biggest box-office draw in the history of their company. The IMAX theaters around the country are running movies all night long. In Chicago they’re running them for 72 hours straight to meet all of this demand. UNBELIEVABLE!
GO SEE IT.
Comment by chuck
Jul 17th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Oh don’t worry I don’t plan to miss this one. Next weekend the X Files I want to Believe to open. X-Files and the Dark Knight are must see for the summer. I’ve seen the trailers to the dark knight already. And Heath Ledger’s Joker could rival Jack Nicholson in meance.
U know places like Vicksburg don’t have IMAX cinemas at all. Not even metro Jackson doesn’t have an IMAX cinema. Now I’v been to one in Galveston,Texas and the 3d pic was fabulous.
I can tell you online people have brought up questions how come Vicksburg doesn’t have a cinema. U would figute the city with a population size of 25,000 with a bigger population in the county of 49,000 but I can tell you the county has lost population. WIth a lack of leadership in both the city and county there really hasn’t been an effort to bring a cinema back into Vicksburg and Warren County. One my associates told me that Vicksburg has a ‘thug culture’ which has lead to real bad service Becouse the locals who work in the hospility business have gotten negative feedback on service alone. The silence about the cinema has made locals upset,thier leaders have let them down. Honestly there are more hotels coming up here than there is entertainment venues for the families and kids.
U know I don’t blame the high end cinema chains turning Vicksburg/Warren County. Becouse of stunt population growth their execs figured a weak return on thier ROI. I figured when Regel Entertainment Group sold the Pemberton 4 Cineam to Village Entertainment in reality they were getting rid of a cinema that wasn’t producing. I don’t blame themn for that all;honestly they did the right thing at the time.
Now if the leaders here do get in a new cinema operator/investor in this market,they have a real challenge before them. Becouse now most of the adult and teen market has shifted to the metro Jackson market and thier better classier cinemas. But the cinema closures aren’t limited to Vicksburg. I did a recent Google search and I discovered all across the country that mall cinemas are closing and that leaves film buffs in a lurch. I believe that’s why the box office has decreased from a billion to a million. Look at the math.
Now one business deception that I discovered that Regel Group and Village Entertainment did do was this: they would run movie trailers of movies like the Mothman Prophecies,World Trade Center etc and guess what the movies didn’t open at the local cinema like they should have. A poster friend of mind on the Cinema Treasures site explained that this was real bad business. Also in the film marketing both cinema operators narrowed the market too African Americans and the teens. And marketing like this is enough to turn off any customer to go a better and larger cinema.
It’s been two years now since CBL Associates and Village Entertainment hurt this community. They hurt it deep. One with a lousy management descion and the other a bad tenant who ran his mouth but didn’t do nothing to improve the cinema at all. The community here is still angery and but us film buffs we are still angry.
As for me I’m looking forward to seeing both X FIles and the Dark Knight at the Clinton 14 or the Malco 17. U know the Madison Malco has digital cinema capibilites?
Comment by Guy Bravo
Jul 17th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Wow, you are so luck to have seen the movie already! I still have a day of work to go through before I get to see it! I wish they would run the theatres for 72hrs in Canada but unfortunately they aren’t. Most likely due to labour shortages. Try getting a bunch of teenagers to work night shift! Thanks for the great report and review. I can’t wait to see it!!
All the best.
Comment by Matt
Jul 17th, 2008 at 10:58 am
I absolutely agree. I saw a showing a couple of days ago and think it may be the best comic movie ever. I don’t think people will be able to admit to themselves that Ledger was better than Jack as the joker, but the characters were totally different and this role is much more intense. Fantastic movie. Take a few notes for the next Superman.
Comment by chuck
Jul 17th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I’ve always been a huge Batman fan. I liked Nolan’s Batman Begins from the start and on the graphic comic side Ra As Ghoul has returned. DC released it hardback by the way. But I’ve always like Batman.