A couple of days ago, my dad called and asked if I was going to a midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I told him that I’d taken today off, but that, no, I wasn’t really planning on going to see it until after my wife got off work.

Fast forward to yesterday. We got home from work, and my wife says that, if I really wanted to, we could go to the midnight showing. It won’t be long before she learns not to make offers like that, but, luckily for me, she’s not quite there yet. So, last night, at 12:01am, we were sitting in a packed movie theater watching The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger did a better job that I expected with the Joker. While he’s not the manic Joker that I prefer, it was much, much better than Nicholson’s travesty. Ledger’s anarchist Joker pulls no punches, and there’s always a sense that he’s enjoying himself regardless of what’s going on around him (even if “what’s going on” is that Batman is beating him up). He’s laughing or otherwise obviously having fun, even when he’s doing some very, very nasty things. (My one complaint about the audience we had was that there were a couple of teenagers sitting behind us laughing hysterically at the Joker’s antics. He’s having fun, but I really couldn’t see how one could find him funny without being something of a sociopath themselves.)

Overall, I loved the movie, but be warned that it’s relentlessly dark. There really aren’t many bits of levity to break the mood. I am honestly amazed that it managed to keep its PG-13 rating.

Quick reviews of the movies I’ve seen this summer so far:

• Iron Man: Great Superhero movie, and I’m looking forward to the sequel. 8/10
• Kung Fu Panda: This one was very funny. I enjoyed it a lot, though it my have benefitted from the fact that it was the very first movie I ever saw at a Drive In Theater. 7/10
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Entertaining, but not as good as the previous movies in the series. Well, not as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade, anyway. I think it was better than Temple of Doom. 7/10
• The Incredible Hulk: Much better than the first Hulk movie, and I think I even liked it slightly more than I did Iron Man. 8.5/10
• Get Smart: Steve Carell is no Don Adams, but, then, who is? I really loved this one. To be fair, I found myself laughing at quite a few things not so much because they were funny but because they were references to the old show, which I loved. 9/10

Later this summer, I plan to see Wall-E, Hancock, Hellboy II, The Dark Knight^[a], and The X-Files: I Want To Believe. There are a few others that we may go see, depending on our schedules (and funds — movies are expensive!).

1. Though, unlike Hellboy II, I get less excited with every Dark Knight preview I see. What I’ve seen of Ledger’s Joker hasn’t filled me with a lot of confidence, sadly. [↩]

Spider-Man 3, which has been called the last movie in the trilogy by some (though it remains to be seen if the “Spider-Man trilogy” will be misnamed in the same way the “Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy” was), was released on Friday. Unlike the previous two films, this one doesn’t focus on a single villain. Instead, Spider-Man must contend with Sandman, a new Goblin, and Venom. Overall, I was very pleased by this movie. It wasn’t as good as the previous one, but that’s neither surprising nor particularly disappointing, since the last one was excellent.

There were definitely scenes where this one fell flat or was unintentionally (I think) funny, but the overall story is solid, and while at the end of the movie you do feel like there’s been a lot of stuff going on for the last two hours, it doesn’t feel overly crowded. The Venom and Sandman storylines probably could’ve been split up and fleshed out enough to make this into two movies, but doing so would’ve made the conclusion to Harry’s storyline that’s been threaded through these first three movies much less satisfying.

Spoilers follow. You know the drill. (Not as many thoughts as you usually would’ve gotten, though, since I’ve put off writing this for a week. Sorry)

More …

Evil is taking advantage of people’s weaknesses.

Like this and this. It’s like they KNOW they can force people to buy two new copies of a movie that many of them already own, and they’re milking it for all it’s worth.

Of course, people like me subsidize entertainment for pirates, so I hope you people appreciate it!

New Distribution Scheme Intriguing, But Ultimately Flawed

From E! Online:

Brokeback Mountain isn’t done breaking ground.

On Tuesday, the Oscar-winning gay cowboy drama will help Hollywood embrace the brave new world, becoming the studios’ first major title to debut as a download-to-own movie on the same day it’s out on DVD.

It sounds great, but as always, with the MPAA, there’s a catch. They own the company that’s selling the downloadable movie, and they’re selling it at a premium price. $26.99 for Brokeback Mountain, which is available at Buy.com for $16.97, and at Amazon.com for $16.98. So, for ten dollars more, you can download the movie (you must download it within 24 hours). You’re limited to playing it on three different computers, and you get no special content, as far as I can tell.

When you live in the boonies like I do, you could buy the DVD from Amazon or Buy.com, get more content, get it cheaper, and, very nearly, get it faster.

Movie executives take note: You want me to pay more money to get a movie? I’m a movie-addict. I’ll pay more money. I’m not stupid, though. You have to give me something. Why not release the movie for download the week after it leaves theaters (and give me more than 24 hours to download it — I’m on dialup, and I guarantee the connection will die at least once, and between work and sleep, I’ll almost certainly be outside the download time)? You’re not hurting theaters by doing that.

Heck, give theater owners a code that they can print on tickets, and only let people who have that code download (preferably before the movie leaves theaters, but for the sake of argument, we’ll stick to the one-week-out timeline). Worried about people sharing their codes? Make it a unique code that can only be used once. Charge $25 to download the movie then, and drop the price to $10-15 when the DVD’s released.

I went to see Serenity four times opening weekend. I bought the DVD. I would certainly have paid good money to have it available to watch between the time that it left theaters and its arrival on DVD.

Granted, I’m not the average movie goer, but I don’t have to be. Book publishers have used price discrimination schemes (charging enthusiastic readers $25 for a hard cover book, then making the paperback, often with a preview of another book, much cheaper) to their advantage for a long time. Why not get in on that?

The new distribution scheme doesn’t have to be cheaper, it doesn’t have to have new features, movies don’t have to be available faster, and it doesn’t have to be more convenient (downloading isn’t that much more convenient than visiting a store, and it’s definitely not much more convenient than visiting Amazon), but if it’s not got at least one of those three things going for it, I doubt you’ll have as much success as you hope.