470 Carry On.
Well, I’m on the lappy again…
Okay, for the sake of clarity, I’ll tell you what each system is named. That way I can stop using generic words. My desktop is named Athena, the laptop is called Nike. Nike pronounced the way it’s supposed to be, not like the shoes. (I do like Nike shoes though, which is neither here nor there.) As long as I’m at it, my iPod is named Bia. Has anyone spotted the theme? I try to avoid naming things like cars, but since a computer asks to be named when you start it I just kind of go with it.
Anyway, whatever magic made the wireless card work last night has worn off. Honestly, I’m not interested in worrying about it at the moment. Let us speak of other things.
I finally saw The Dark Knight. Much like the first of the new series I was not as impressed with it as everyone else. Heath Ledger’s Joker was everything I was told to expect, but not what I would consider THE Joker. It was A Joker. His Joker. A Joker that made me feel uneasy every moment he was on the screen. One thing I noticed was that every time he appears a heartbeat sound begins playing softly, just under the rest of the sound. On headphones it made me have to stop the film and make sure it wasn’t me just imagining it.
Here’s the thing about the new Batman movies: they are like the old ones with little bits of the best writing from the comic stuck in, here and there. I kept hearing echoes of The Long Halloween, but it never got around to being as awesome as that series was. That’s the magic of movies, I guess. You’ve got to pear it down for the LCD. Maybe I’m reacting harshly because I’m already out of sorts, or that Iron Man impressed me so much and the hype lead me to expect that sort of experience. I’m wondering if the tragic loss of Ledger had an impact on how the public reacted to the movie. Making it into something that normally would not have been of note.
As a fan of Shortpacked! I now know that Nightwing has taken on the mantle of the bat. Or at least that’s what I’ve inferred. The last Batman related thing I remember reading was the Batman Superman: Public Enemies, which is being made into a cartoon. If it’s as good as the other DC direct animations it should be pretty awesome. I expect Batman will do at least some breathing in space.
21 Comments
Jeez, never thought that he would make fun of his own height. He’s cooler than I thought.
Which is sort of strange, considering how easy he gets riled by other people doing it.
It’s one of those things like black jokes: if the subject says it, it’s all in good fun, but of someone else says it, it’s a direct insult and triggers an armed automated response. It probably also has to do with association systems.
Thank god, someone who was as impressed by Iron Man, and not as impressed with Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker as I am. Personally, with all the web hype and all the media attention, I thought I was going to get my socks blown off with The Dark Knight. BIG disappointment. I firmly believe because of Ledger’s untimely passing the public gave this movie such a high rating.
Keep up the strip. I always look forward to each new episode!
He did still do a fantastic job though, you have to admit.
Supported by the fact that according to my dad, who went to school to become an actor and knows his stuff, says after he played it the role became somewhat desired among actors, which would require him doing pretty wonderfully.
So, THE joker or not, he was definitely a good joker.
(I’m not trying to flex or brag with the dad thing, just give some support to my opinion so I doesn’t just sound like I’m saying what I think without anything to back it up.)
Hype aside, I still found Heath Ledger carried off the Joker in an excellent, “Killing Joke” way. I thought he was a great actor. I like the way the film seemed to end… and then pulled you back in for another loop!
I hate it when someone says I like a movie because of hype. I totally went into Dark Knight without seeing any previews, or reading any reviews (which I never read, as they are totally useless). Same with Spider-man and all other superhero films.
BTW: You borrowed my naming convention for my compies! jk :) My desktop is named Athene, my portable HD is Helios, my Media PC is Hermes, my lappy is Artemis and my home network is named Olympus.
He was no Cesar Romero.
My computer at work is named Othmar. Miss Othmar was Linus’s teacher in Peanuts before I was born.
I liked Dark Knight until I thought about it afterwards, which is pretty much the same thing that happened with Batman Begins and is the reason why, no matter how many people tell me it’s awesome, I’m not bothering with the new Star Trek movie.
Also my old computer was named Hex after the Discworld computer. :)
Ed and his amazing attributes! I’ll bet Nina’s dying to see them.
Imagine what abilities Ed could apply those attributes to.
Setting aside the comics, discussion of which would probably allow me to extend this into a doctoral thesis…
I felt that The Dark Knight had considerable potential which was not realized. The writing, pacing, internal logic and much of the later combat cinematography were at best mediocre. The acting was solid, the concepts were solid, but the execution didn’t come together… you had a film where the protagonist seemed starved for lines, the antagonist was the best developed by far and the supporting characters were wheeled in and out with inconsistent attention. Not to mention the inclusion, not only of the “Rachel” character, but of a second actress to carry it out – the concept was one of the weakest elements of Begins, and the idiotic continuation of her character drew some of those early flaws up into the already shaky sequel.
I do believe Ledger’s death had a positive impact on public evaluation of the film, but let us be honest – Batman is an essentially unparalleled modern icon. People watched Batman Forever, and after that the bar was so low, you could probably produce a film about Batman without him appearing and still scrape a solid return on your investment.
Speaking of less well executed films with considerable potential, take Punisher. Not War Zone, but the one starring Thomas Jane. The casting was really quite good and the characters, while minimally developed, were interesting. The writing was on the upper end of average (Not that the average is anywhere near decent, but in film I no longer expect much), but the work rather collapsed in on itself around the poor editing, weak soundtrack and awkward pacing. And, of course, The Punisher is not a very popular character to begin with – he is dark but often poorly written, neither a paragon of realism nor any particular ideal – difficult to worship and at the same time, to identify with.
Iron Man, well, I went in with no expectations. It was paced shockingly well, considering. The writing and effects were no better than Dark Knight or Punisher but the pacing was better, there were no significant editing errors, unless you consider the incredibly unrealistic computing systems and technology the result of error, and the protagonist was both the focal element and easy to identify with.
I used to call my desktop Core and my laptop Arm. Now I have a netbook and so I refer to them respectively as Melchior, Balthasar & Caspar.
I saw it in the theatre on a nice and big screen. On a big screen I would imagine it works better since it allows one to be more awed and dominated by that ominous psychopath routine.
This Joker was a force of barely-containable violence held back by a cracked mind compelled to make vile, mutilating and murderous jokes about human nature–particularly human depravity, cowardice and savagery–out of everything. I agree that once you get past the visceral impact of a guy who makes an act–comedy even–out of stabbing pencils in people’s hands there’s not a lot that’s especially creative or impressive about it. It’s a shock and awe theatricality kinda thing.
Regarding the computer, checking again; does the hardware work when you slide a Knoppix CD (or DVD) in? It should all autodetect and autoconfigure if the hardware is still capable of working. If it doesn’t then you can be 95 percent or higher certain it is hardware, but it’s a great way to check for driver problems and operating system problems you can’t figure out–I’ve personally solved a case of a scanner not working because someone’s video drivers were too old (riddle me how that makes sense).
Those are cars? I thought they were goddesses?… I’ve never heard of Bia…
Oh, and Ich bin fergessen: my old Pentium 1 I have for retrogaming is called Chronus.
Speaking again about Superhero flims (yes, I said flims :) ): Why the heck was Tony Stark listening to Suicidal Tendancies?! Doesn’t seem like the target audience, but what does I know?
As soon as Ed started talking about Attributes and Abilities, I started thinking about D&D stats.
My computer is named Cthulhu. I had another on the network named Nyarlathotep, and another named Hastur at one point. I think you can guess the similar theme here, too.
Hm…having a carry-on Ed might be rather handy, especially since he’s so strong. I imagine someone could make a KILLING selling those!
I, too, finally saw the Dark Knight (although that was a few months ago), and I wasn’t all that impressed. I didn’t think it was BAD per se, but to me, the new Batman flicks lack the appeal of the older ones. The older ones were kinda, I dunno…quirky or something. Crazy villains (in a goofy/funny way), cheesy lines, and so on and so forth. The last two Batman movies felt like they tried to go “Darker & Edgier” with them. They just didn’t feel the same.
And this one was so frickin’ LONG. I kept thinking it was going to end, but, no, it kept going. And Heath’s Joker frankly made me wanna kill him. He was a truly despicable guy, and not the sort who needed to be rehabilitated. Every time Batman passed up the opportunity to kill him, I thought, “You punk! Wuss! Kill him and be done with it!”
In the older movies, the villains had FLARE, like in the jewel-encrusted/covered-in-sequins sense. Joker had flare here, but more like, “See my suit? It’s made from the skin of everyone one I’ve ever killed, then dyed in the juices squeezed from their pancreases.” That’s a pretty big gap, if you ask me. It probably wouldn’t have been as much of a disappointment if Batman/Bruce Wayne had been replaced with Ima Tuffgui, and the Joker had been replaced with the Killer Klown.
Oh, yeah, and Ironman was SWEET.
Heh, My naming convention is based on my old rpg systems, My computer is World of Darkness, my Zune is Gurps, and My ds lite is shadowrun.
No by wireless card do you refer to the card in the laptop or a device that you plug into the computer. If the latter then I can give a little help because I work for Sprint tech support and have a decent understanding of them
1 I haven’t been to your comic in two weeks. So sorry.
2 It was a good two weeks, very funny.
3. I’m incredibly vain all of my devices are simply named C-Ham
4. aside from batmans voice the only thing I didn’t really like about the dark knight is all of the impossible things that happened.
For instance Batman and the jumps out the window to save the girl and they drop twenty something stories, land on a car, and get up and walk away. No way, no freaking way! I don’t care what kind of suite you have on you would be street pizza.
i just noticed when i started reading this comic the comments were about the comic… now they’re more about the discussion afterwards…not that i’m complaining… makes fer intresting topics…
As good as ANY of the Jokers (Movies or Television) have been,
(for the record my favorite was Nicholson,
but I have yet to see Dark Knight so Ledger may topple him)
I still don’t think any were as good as Cesar Romero.