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The big news of the day, folks, is that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus has actually found a distributor!  Heath Ledger’s actual last movie (he died midway through this one) is being carried by Sony Pictures Classics.

And that, sadly, is the bad news.

Basically, if Sony Pictures Classics lays hands on this one, there’s a real good chance that The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is going to get dumped into a really, REALLY limited release in a handful of art house theatres.

As far as strategy goes, this is a hugely bad idea.  Considering Heath Ledger just managed to pull off a nigh-impossibility by winning a POSTHUMOUS OSCAR (seriously, this is almost never done, and only fellow Australian Peter Finch had managed to do it before Ledger), Sony’s passing up a serious opportunity to really pull off a win.  Especially if they can stack the deck in their favor by dropping it into a weekend that doesn’t have much going for it, like, say pretty much anything in January.  January is commonly regarded in movie circles as a “dumping ground” month, where box office receipts are most likely to be down, often due to inclement weather.  If a movie fails in January it can be explained away: “Oh, what do you WANT?” the beleaguered exec can say in defense of his own job. “Half of Podunk was frozen solid last weekend!  That’s why it only made a couple thousand bucks!  It has nothing to do with the fact that it was a godawful movie!”

But looking for logic out of the studios is like looking for an aardvark on Neptune.  It just plain old don’t happen.

Heath Ledger developed an idea to direct a video for the song ‘King Rat’.  Heath Ledger’s vision, brave and unapologetic in its nature, brings together his love of bold and original music with his impassioned stance against the illegal commercial whale hunts taking place of the coast of Australia each year.

The video was fully conceived down to the last detail by Heath, but unfinished when Heath passed away in January of 2008. In the interest of fully realizing Heath’s final work as a visual artist, THE MASSES (a film and music company which Heath was a partner) finished the video in his honor and memory.

Make sure you watch the video until the end credits.

The late Heath Ledger is brilliant.

This one’s for you, Heath.  Rest in peace.

For those of you who haven’t heard yet, Heath Ledger did take home the posthumous Oscar for Best Actor for his handling of his last role, The Joker in The Dark Knight.

Thus, I’m going to tackle that movie today, just so you all know how good this one was.

Seriously, if you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t know what’s stopping you. It’s entirely too good to pass up on.  Basically, we’re still in Gotham City, with Harvey Dent on his meteoric rise to power, The Joker out to take his place as Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime, and the Batman out to settle everybody’s hash who even so much as considers returning a library book late.  Indeed, the Joker’s convinced that Gotham deserves a better class of criminal, and he’s out to provide it, starting from the very beginning in an extremely well-orchestrated bank robbery scene.  The rest of the movie is the Joker’s mad attempt to do…well…something (if Alfred is to be believed he’s just one of those guys who wants to watch the world burn) and the Batman’s almost equally mad attempt to stop him.

I have to hand it to The Dark Knight almost immediately.  This movie is unbelievable.  It is, easily, the best Batman installment I’ve ever seen.  Yes, after Batman Returns the whole franchise started a slow collapse into sludgy campdom, but Batman Begins gave it a whole new life.  It elevated the series from bad comic book to true action movie.  And The Dark Knight is the result of that new life.  It’s produced the best Batman (Christian Bale) and a whole lot of other bests, too…including the best Joker.

Say what you will about Jack Nicholson.  I’m not going to fault Jack.  But the plain and simple is, Jack WAS the best Joker.  WAS…until Ledger just destroyed it.  The first time I saw Ledger’s Joker do the Pencil Trick I just LOST IT.  My jaw actually dropped.  I mean literally and actually FELL OPEN.  I’m glad I wasn’t drinking a Coke at the time or it would’ve wound up all down the front of my shirt.  It was crazy.

When you’ve got the best Batman, the best Joker, the best script–a script so tautly plotted and packed with clever twists that it’s ALMOST difficult to follow, but only almost–you’ve got no choice but to call it the best in the series.  It brings together so many quality, powerful, disparate elements that make it sheer lunacy on a whole-wheat bun.  And it’s not just the choice performances turned in by the leads, either.  It’s amazing, the kinds of great acting jobs were brought to this.  The set design, the prop design, the music…it’s amazing.  Watching the Batman hangglide around in the middle of Singapore was just eye-popping.

At this point I must sound like a fanboy raving ceaselessly, but in all honesty, I have no choice but to.  I enjoyed this movie too much to say anything less.  I’m even having difficulty trying to pick out downsides, because I just outright enjoyed this.  Were there problems?  I can’t mention any, really.  If there were they were so small they just coasted on by while I stared goggle-eyed at the impressive proceedings going on in front of me.

If you have even a vague enjoyment for action movies, if you love a dramatic touch, if you like an occasional comic book, then you must–MUST–see this movie.  It’s just too much fun to pass up.

With the 81st Academy Award Ceremony on tonight, it’s time to put our movie knowledge to the test, and guess who will win what this year.

But the one prediction that everyone agrees on is not who will win, but that the ceremony will lose. Despite the organisers attempting to liven up the ceremony by getting Hugh Jackman, a song-and-dance man, to host, the choice of films up for Best Picture only highlight the growing chasm between the choices of the Academy and the choices of the public. Out of the Best Picture nominees, only The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has broken 100mil domestic. Slumdog Millionaire is on its way there, but lagging behind are the remaining three nominees, none of which even made it beyond 30 mil in the US.

And if that isn’t reason enough, there’s the even curiouser case of the absence of The Dark Knight. It’s rare to see a film that is so popular (it just broke a billion dollars worldwide) and so critically acclaimed that isn’t acknowledged by an award ceremony (besides technical awards and Heath Ledger’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor, which can be argued is only there due to the actor’s tragic death). Even Titanic swept the Oscars and won Best Picture. While many dismiss comic book films as fluff, The Dark Knight displayed the capability of a blockbuster dealing with serious issues (indeed, it shares many themes with No Country for Old Men). And this lack of understanding of the masses will result in only further public disillusionment towards the ceremony.

On to the awards themselves… Read the rest of this entry »

Buzz has been circulating ever since The Dark Knight hit theaters that Heath Ledger had a pretty damn good chance at winning an Oscar for best supporting actor. But due to his tragic death last year due to an accidental prescription drug overdose, who would recieve the award?

Well, his family will be on hand to actually recieve the award, if he wins it, but the Oscar would then be passed on to 3-year old Matilda Ledger, Heath’s daughter. 

I don’t know about you guys but I think Heath Ledger definitly deserves this Oscar, his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight was absolutely amazing and I think it’s a damn shame such a good actor had to die a premature death.

Read (Yahoo!)

Even though a lot of hype is coming from the media on SAG’s ensemble award to Slumdog Millionaire on Sunday night, we mustn’t let it go unnoticed that they also handed out awards to Sean Penn for playing activist Harvey Milk in Milk and Meryl Streep for her performance as a fiercely certain nun in Doubt.

The late and multi-talented actor Heath Ledger won supporting role as the joker in The Dark Knight and the ever so vibrant, talented Kate Winslet for her appearance as a German woman harboring secrets in The Reader.

As for television it appears to be cookie cutter wins from the Golden Globe with NBC’s “30 Rock” and HBO’s “John Adams” in the comedy series and longform categories, and a top drama series honor for AMC’s “Mad Men.”

For a complete list of SAG winners, click here.

The Dark Knight brought the highest number of dollars to any midnight showing, $18.5 million.  The Batman movie even beat out Revenge of the Sith, which brought in $16.9 million on its midnight showing.

The cape crusader is in for a huge money making weekend. Christian Bale is fantastic as Batman, and I always enjoy Michael Caine. However, watching Heath Ledger in his posthumous performance as The Joker will be hard for me.  Such a talented actor who is sorely missed.

Glare in envy, fanboys, I have managed to charm Warner Brothers into letting me into a preview screening of The Dark Knight. Sure, I had to stagger out of the cinema at noon and burst my daze as I returned to work, but it was worth it. It’s no secret that The Dark Knight is the most anticipated film of the year, after Spielberg and Lucas destroyed a great franchise earlier this summer. The promos for the second revived Batman movie have been astounding, as have the rumours that the recently deceased Heath Ledger has delivered an award-winning performance. But, is the story of Batman’s battle with Joker and Two-Face going to live up to its expectations?

Before I continue with The Dark Knight, I should explain that I found Batman Begins to be a disappointing film. While I appreciated Nolan’s attempt to reinvent Batman according to Miller’s grim style, Batman Begins felt too serious, too much in love with its sense of unjustified gravitas to acknowledge that the plot was rather silly, despite Nolan’s best efforts to portray the villain as a moral force.

Fortunately, the sequel manages to avoid this, by generating a dizzying world of chaos and violence, represented by one figure: The Joker. This is not the prancing prat from the CRACK POW Batman series, nor is it the self-destructive maniac that is Jack Nicholson after a few pints of booze. No, this Joker has a one-track mind on a mission to revel in endless destruction. Read the rest of this entry »