The Dark Knight

[SiliasRuby]

hehe, stefen you wild man. Thats the second time I've seen it and I'm even more impressed.

[abuck1220]

that promo almost made me forget how much this movie sucked.

[Stefen]

that promo almost made me forget how much sucked.

If by this movie you mean the last half-hour, then I agree.

[Pozer]

that promo almost made me forget how much this movie sucked.

guess what? turns out YOU suck.

[Reel]

I found this interesting:

Jim Emerson's shot by shot analysis of a major chase scene in 'The Dark Knight'

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/in_the_cut_part_i_shots_in_the.html

[matt35mm]

While I wasn't really bothered by the same things as Jim Emerson was, I do not like the editing in the past couple of Nolan films (the one's edited by Lee Smith). I find them too cutty, and often disorienting. I can understand the decision to tighten things as much as possible, but it seems like every cut is getting rid of a couple of frames of action, such that you might have somebody walking toward another person, and in the next shot, they've already reached the other person. To a large degree, audiences can accept this and can fill in a lot of those gaps, but it's just too much, particularly in The Dark Knight. That, coupled with the omnipresent Hans Zimmer score, makes the whole thing feel constantly rushed. I know that they have a lot of stuff packed into that movie, and it's already long enough as it is, but to me it just felt like they made an ideal cut, and then took two or three frames from the beginning and end of every shot.

The scene in the example here didn't bother me that much because it was fine enough to just get the sense of kinetic connections being made. I wasn't confused when watching it, but I also can't say that I had good spacial awareness either. I just didn't care about where everything was. I just thought: "Bazooka make car go boom now."

It was in the scenes where people are just talking to each other where I was really bothered, because it'd just feel so goddamned rushed and cutty.

[72teeth]

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/in_the_cut_part_i_shots_in_the.html

this video is too smartassy/not robag88y enough, lose the 'tude dude, i want the info, not the jibberjabber.
...but good breakdown, i agree, editing is definitely The Dark Knight's biggest weakness.

[O.]

http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2011/09/in_the_cut_part_i_shots_in_the.html

this video is too smartassy/not robag88y enough, lose the 'tude dude, i want the info, not the jibberjabber.
...but good breakdown, i agree, editing is definitely The Dark Knight's biggest weakness.

Indeed. It's still a great movie, but in hindsight I do remember those underpass scenes being inexplicably disorienting, but I guess I didn't want to rationalize it at the time.

[pete]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apw4m0DRQuk&feature=channel_video_title

referencing my favorite movie nerd/ action hero once again.
these kids put it much more succinctly.

[polkablues]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apw4m0DRQuk&feature=channel_video_title

referencing my favorite movie nerd/ action hero once again.
these kids put it much more succinctly.

I agree with some of their points, but their "lamer, less clear" recut of that Mission Impossible 2 scene is actually about 10,000 times better than the original version.

[RegularKarate]

Ugh, fucking Jim Emerson.  I watched his first "I hate action movies that aren't the action movies I grew up on" videos and the more and more he talks, the less and less I want to live.  That grating voice doesn't help the fact that all he is doing is nitpicking and not accepting that breaking formula is what advances film.  Who gives a shit where Gordon is sitting in the back of the truck?  How is it important to the scene?  I made it four minutes into that video before I let myself turn it off due to blood boiling.

That's not to say I'm not disappointed in most action scenes now days, but boy, he is not helping anyone's case with his approach.

[polkablues]

Well, I beat RK and made it through ten minutes, but I'm not happy about it.  I can't say he made a single point in those ten minutes that I could grant him, even in my most charitable of moods.  He elevates the minor continuity issues that occur in every movie ever made to game-breaking mistakes in visual grammar, he ignores contextual cues to make the case that individual shots don't give the viewer enough information, and most obnoxiously of all, he confuses "that's not the way I would have done it" with actually doing it wrong.  Ugh.  What a wanker.

[polkablues]

So this video of a Tom Waits interview from 1979 has been swirling around the intertubs recently, because people are speculating that Heath Ledger based his performance as The Joker on it, and holy fucking shit Heath Ledger clearly based his performance as The Joker on this (skip to around 1:45).

It should be noted that squints called this four years ago and nobody listened.  He was Nicolas Cage in Knowing and we were all Rose Byrne in Knowing.

I've just realized something. Heath Ledger's Joker is channeling Tom Waits through his voice. Listen to the joker in the latest trailer and then listen to Tom Waits telling a story in his normal speaking voice. Wow.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Wow, that is pretty much exact. Is there perhaps a side-by-side comparison video?

[squints]

I'm stoned, too.

no one believed me.