I didn’t think a movie could be more hyped — both in my own mind and in the collective conscious of young adult males — than The Dark Knight, but Inception proved me wrong. Now Batman “3″ is going to take marketing and internet nerd frothing to yet another level. Casting rumors will continue to flood the internet until official announcements are made. Pictures will leak off the set. Viral marketing will consume fanboys. There will be teasers for the teaser trailers. I, obviously, will fully take part in the insanity, as evidenced by my blog content leading up to TDK and Inception.

How did Christopher Nolan get to be both a critical and popular hero by the age of 40? I believe it’s time for me to make a Wikipedia appreciation post for Christopher Nolan.

Some critics accuse Nolan’s films as being cold and methodical, and I can understand where they’re coming from; it’s not like I can imagine Nolan making a comedy any time soon. It may not come as a surprise then that it seems like his career has progressed in much the same way. The man has just been a machine driving towards Inception, which — by all accounts — was his epic passion project.

His first full-length film was Following, a cheap and short black and white feature he filmed on weekends with his friends. It’s here that we become acquianted with Nolan’s affinity for secrecy, non-linear storytelling, and intricate plotting. It’s not about the characters here, but about the ideas, and the enveloping mystery.

The talent behind the film was plainly evident, and it was enough to get Nolan greenlit to make Memento. If Following put him on the film industry’s map, Memento introduced him to the general public, if only still a small portion of it. But he parlayed a $9 million budget into almost $40 million at the box office. He had taken yet another dark idea (actually, his younger brother’s); constructed it yet again in a unconventional fashion; threw in a heapload of themes like loss, revenge, and paranoia; and succeeded in creating one of the most compelling films of the past decade. He had taken full advantage of his first big opportunity.

This meant that a major picture studio came calling in the form of Warner Bros., asking him to direct an Al Pacino-led remake of a Norwegian murder mystery. Insomnia was a totally unnecessary remake — one considered inferior to the original by many — but it was embraced by critics and audiences nonetheless. I personally think it Nolan’s weakest effort, and that may be due to him having no part in writing the screenplay — the only film in his career where he didn’t. Nonetheless, it’s a solid film, and like I said, it was a hit.  The Nolan machine climbing to the top of Hollywood would not be stopped.

Inception might have shown that Warner Bros. loved Nolan enough to write him a blank check, but Batman Begins showed that they had trusted him even five years prior. You don’t give the responsibility to reboot a beloved, but all-but-dead franchise to just some flavor-of-the-week director.*

*You know what — disregard this sentence: Warner Bros. gave Watchmen to Zack Snyder.

Considering the previous four Batman movies had sunk progressively further into camp territory, Nolan — with his aforementioned proclivity for secrets and darkness — was the perfect man to bring Batman back to some sort of grounded reality. He (and co-writer David Goyer) got rid of most of the Batman gadgetry, turned the Batmobile into a tank, and even crafted an interesting and plausible backstory of how a coddled billionaire child could morph into man who takes down criminals while dressed as a bat. Yeah sure, there’s obviously still some suspension of disbelief required, but I think he did about as good a job one could do considering the source material.

Of course, the movie was successful on pretty much every level Warner Bros. could have wanted. Its critical reception was very positive; it grossed more than double its $150 million budget; and most importantly, much of the gross was due to massive word-of-mouth, indicating people loved it, and that a sequel would most likely fare even better, but is there a skin trade 2 movie.

But before Nolan tackled the goal of topping one of the best superhero movies ever, he went off to do The Prestige, a film he had originally hoped to do even before Batman Begins. It’s the one Nolan film I don’t feel too comfortable commenting on, as the only time I watched it I was slightly drunk and not paying full attention. I still know what happened, but I have not watched a second time to allow myself to delve further into the film. It seems like a fairly devisive film, but most people I know seem to fall on the side of love, some even holding it up as Nolan’s best. It doesn’t take a second viewing to realize it dwells in many of the same themes as Nolan’s other work — really, doesn’t a magician seem like the perfect subject for him? It’s like I’m convincing myself to go watch it right now. If only it were on Netflix Instant Watch…

The Prestige feels like the one aside in Nolan’s oeuvre so far, though. Up until then, it seemed like every film built on the one before it in terms of building his…prestige (I’m sorry). So while it may be a wonderful film, and a successful one as well, being squeezed in between the brilliant resurrection of a franchise and its billion-dollar sequel — well, it’s hard to compete.

Because it’s all about The Dark Knight isn’t it? It’s about that perfect storm of sequel hype, cast member death, and actual quality that created the monster that made Nolan quite possibly the biggest director out there. Naturally, James Cameron had to come out a year and a half later and release a film that made TDK’s box office haul look minuscule, but he did it with a film that was totally uninspiring. Nolan had filmed the performance for which everyone will remember Heath Ledger; Cameron had made a really good-looking, action-packed furry cartoon.

The Dark Knight was one of those rare superior sequels. Batman Begins was the somewhat intimate origin story, establishing Batman as the protector of Gotham; The Dark Knight was a crime epic that established Batman’s limits. Both films have their issues — mostly with their final acts — but they are pretty much as good as superhero movies get.

So how does Nolan top that? By coming up with a “original sci-fi film set in the architecture of the mind” — at least that’s all we knew for months. But I remember that alone sending me into a frenzy. Oh, and Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. These bits of knowledge were plenty enough to make Inception my most anticipated film for a full year, if not longer.

I spent a year building up the movie in the mind, and the trailers only succeeded in driving my anticipation through the roof. Somehow, Nolan managed to exceed my expectations. It’s not often that someone (or something) continually impresses me, but Nolan is now in my top-tier realm basically only inhabited by gaming companies Blizzard and Valve. But this isn’t about my slightly-above-philistine tastes in entertainment, it’s about how Christopher Nolan has managed to combine intelligent films and crowd-pleasing blockbusters much like Steven Spielberg before him. He gets the Kubrick comparison a lot due to his calculating nature, but he’s just not at that masterful level. Nolan now makes his films for as wide an audience as possible, and I think that stops him from reaching his full potential.

Nolan has to go back and finish his Batman trilogy, and that seems like just another massive hurdle to climb. Can he manage to finish out a full trilogy without misstepping? How can he top The Dark Knight? Which villains are going to show up? Is Nolan going to scale back after the massiveness of TDK? At this point, I can’t bring myself to doubt him. Whichever direction he goes, I’m sure it will be immensely entertaining, and it will be just another notch in his belt. There aren’t many completely satisfying trilogies out there, and even less all directed by one man.

But after, I would like Nolan to explore another original idea, but this time to go all the way. I don’t want him to hold the audiences hand. I don’t want to even see him try to insert too much action, because it’s his weak point. I want an R rating if that’s what it takes to fully explore the material. If this means not getting another $160 million budget, so be it. I just want him to push the boundaries again, but I’m not sure he can do this within the limitations of blockbuster expectations.

But he’s surprised me before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGdQURlmsjc

I guess it’s time for me to speak a bit more about Inception, since this is the week. There are some people even seeing advance screenings tonight. Perhaps surprisingly, I think my hype is at its low ebb right now. There are tons of gushing reviews and posts on Twitter and endless TV spots, but I’m just nonplussed. Perhaps that would be the wrong word — let’s just say they haven’t augmented my hype. I knew months ago that I would want to see the movie, and I knew that the movie would be awesome. Only a flood of scathing reviews could have affected my anticipation.

So right now I’m kinda exhausted from looking forward to this movie for half a year. There has been nothing else for me to latch on to for any excitement. I thought about checking out Predators, but it’s still hard for me to imagine ADRIEN BRODY filling Arnold’s shoes, no matter how good of an actor he might be (although, I guess that’s part of the problem). But he did get pretty ripped for it, and from all reports, they went in a different direction since they knew no one could fill in the shoes of guys like Arnold, Jesse Ventura, and Carl Weathers. Nonetheless, I can’t be bothered to gather any friends for a trip to the theater to see it.

Oh, I could have checked out Toy Story 3, but there was no way I was doing that without female company. That actually almost happened, but when it fell apart, I wasn’t about to push it. It’s not like I was anxiously anticipating it, anyhow. At nine years old, I already felt too old for the original Toy Story when it was released. I was all about Mortal Kombat. So I am left with Inception. Left to make a half-dozen posts about it. Left to post retarded shit on Twitter about it. Left to ask my friends if they want to go a midnight showing.

Somehow I feel like I’ll keep my record of ZERO midnight showings intact. I guess that’s why I’m only somewhat nerdy. Oh wait, no, I’m only somewhat manly. Full nerd. Damn it.

The Dark Knight on Blu-ray will be the best-selling piece of software for the PS3 this year.

The next person who tries to say the poker scene in Casino Royale was good gets an angry internet telegram complete with a kick to the balls. The last hand was more improbable than Pierce Brosnan windsurfing up a cliff, or whatever the fuck happened in that scene in Die Another Day.

Every year, I try to convince myself that I’ll get really into the football season, but the passion never materializes. If Brett Favre can’t do it, who can?

The same thing goes for the basketball season. But in my defense, no one wants to be a Knicks fan. Just look what they drove Isiah Thomas to. Oh wait, it’s mostly his fault that they’re a disaster.

More proof that Borders blows ass: I ordered Absolute Watchmen off their website in JULY since it was the only place I could find selling it and also because I had a 30% off coupon. But then once I ordered, it said “backorder”. Next thing I know, it’s October, I haven’t heard a peep from Borders, and I see Absolute Watchmen for sale on Amazon for even cheaper than what I paid at Borders.com (coupon included). Naturally, I order it on Amazon. I just got notice that it shipped from Amazon yesterday. I still haven’t heard anything from Borders. They have to be worse than AIDS. I can’t wait to cancel my order once Watchmen hits my doorstep.

Leave it to the guys behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to make Sinbad and Rob Thomas hilarious. I think the last time Sinbad was funny was in the modern holiday classic Jingle All The Way.

What little gaming I’ve done in the past two months has been limited to cheap downloadable games and demos, and nothing has impressed me more than the demo for Mirror’s Edge. I never thought first-person platforming could be pulled off so ingeniously. When the hell did EA become so creative?

This entire post was just an excuse to post the hottest Little Red Riding Hood ever:

Kate Beckinsale wins Halloween. Flawless victory.

I’m a lazy, procrastinating guy — working full-time has only excerbated that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me for taking so long to get around to my viewing of The Dark Knight in IMAX three nights ago. I know you were waiting to see the movie until you read my thoughts. You weren’t one of the 25 million people to see it this weekend. Definitely not.

But I’m not going to review the movie in-depth at all. You’ve either seen the movie, or heard about it from all your friends. What would be the point of another person saying how unbelievably awesome Heath Ledger was? Although, I would like to say that IMAX was just a bit too much. Maybe it was our seats, maybe it was the specific theater — I just know it was a somewhat painful experience. One that I waited in line for over an hour for. I probably deserved it, since I’m apparently an uncaring asshole, but that doesn’t make it suck any less. By the end of the movie, I was totally exhausted, sweating, and had a backache. I was seeing a movie, not banging a girl up against a wall.

The night basically went downhill after my friends and I witnessed a total bitch refusing to give up her seat right in front of us. A seat which her and her boyfriend had all but stolen from some teenage girls. The most pathetic part of the story is that the boyfriend picked up the girls’ sweaters and moved them off the seats, but when legions of IMAX employees came to argue, it was only the girlfriend that spoke up and took down nemesis after nemesis. As my friend Chris said, if real-life were an RPG, she would’ve been a level 30 by the end of the debacle — which is probably why the Arrow Security dudes wanted no piece of her. They walked in one entrance, talked for a second to some IMAX people, looked up and realized she was an unstoppable foe, and then walked right out again. And then the defeated IMAX legion announced the movie would start, 10 minutes after schedule showtime. Not only had she delayed the start of the movie — leading to two trailers getting skipped — but she won.

At least we got to make fun of her the entire time, with her no doubt hearing us laughing and joking. Much of the theater at one point was cheering to “kick her out.” Unfortunately, her “dad is a cop.” What a fucking bitch. Even Batman would’ve had no shot. Her dad would’ve been the guy to arrest him today, after he beat up his mom and sister. (He really didn’t though, Christian Bale > all)

Getting back to the actual movie, when that first frame of the movie projected on the dome, the theater shit its collective pants. I know I wasn’t ready for it to take up MORE THAN my entire field of view, stretching to almost directly above me. It was insane, and I had to slouch in my seat as a result. By the end of the bank heist scene, I knew it was way too much. The tipping point was when my brain couldn’t even process the Joker’s face as an actual human face because it was so goddamn huge.

Let me just sum up the movie and my IMAX experience in a few examples of good, bad, and ugly.

Good: The city shots looking absolutely INCREDIBLE in IMAX.
Bad: Almost every action scene being indecipherable.
Ugly: The 35 mm parts of the film compared to the scenes shot in IMAX.

Good: The lines for Joker and Harvey Dent.
Bad: Alfred’s jokes
Ugly: Anything that comes out of one of the generic cops’ mouths.

Good: Heath Ledger’s Joker performance
Bad: Christian Bale’s Batman voice
Ugly: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s face

Good: The massive chase scene.
Bad: The sort-of-nightvision scene giving me seizures.
Ugly: I’ve got nothing else to put here.

So yeah, I’m out of bad things to say. I could get more specific, but I think that would be more suitable to a spoiler-laden review/discussion. I had an extra example to put in there, but since one of the my friends didn’t realize a certain plot point until it actually happened, I’d feel bad alluding to it here. I mean, if those are the only big complaints I can come up with — half of them having to do with IMAX — I obviously think it’s a great movie.

GO SEE THE DARK KNIGHT

So since I haven’t even bothered editing the last post, leaving shitty YouTube bootlegs alone, it’s only natural that this post is the trailer in its full glory.

http://www.whysoserious.com/happytrails/trailer.htm

Owning a Full-HD-capable laptop is so awesome. I couldn’t believe how incredible that trailer looked. Absolutely incredible. This movie is going to own my soul. Nothing else coming out this summer compares. There’s a podcast called “Filmspotting” and right on their website, there is a poll: MOST anticipated summer movie (excluding The Dark Knight). That’s right. Christopher Nolan is going to rock this shit out of the park.

New The Dark Knight Trailer in HD

This movie continues to build hype, managing to seem more badass every time. (I do have to say that the suit really looks a bit too busy.) But who cares, best superhero movie ever incoming July 18th. Also, rumors are that the movie will be close to 3 hours long. All the more reason it NEEDS to be the best superhero movie ever.

Awesome wallpaper version: http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1839/dkwallpaperhw0.jpg

You should probably reload the page to see that from the very beginning. It’s long. Very long. And very awesome.

Probably better than the trailer for The Dark Knight. Despite what the reactions of internet fanboys might have been, it wasn’t anything amazing. Heath Ledger seems to have pulled off the Joker well, but there’s nothing in it that made me giddy. Explosions, the Joker looking/acting/sounding insane, and Bruce Wayne asking, “What would you have me do?” again. Some people complain about how Nicholson as the Joker overshadowed Batman in the 1989 film, and it appears that the same thing is happening again. (But it’s probably just trying to show off the new villain — we already know how awesome Christian Bale is.)

To judge for yourself — if you somehow haven’t watched it already — here’s the page.

On the other hand, the prologue (which is the first 6 minutes of the film) is totally awesome. Unless you want to go into the movie as fresh as possible, you need to watch it.

Shitty quality IMAX bootleg that still manages to be amazing.

Heat: Joker Edition. Apparently it looks absolutely incredible in IMAX, due to Christopher Nolan utilizing IMAX cameras in filming that scene (in addition to a few others in the movie). I really hope I don’t have to trek into the city to watch The Dark Knight in IMAX, because I think it’s pretty much necessary after knowing that.

I really cannot wait. After finally getting around to watching Memento, I now have even more faith in Christopher Nolan. And that movie was based on a short story by his brother Jonathan, who helped to write the screenplay for The Dark Knight. All signs point to awesome.