opcorn:
Golly,
This has been coming, but I did not expect it to be such huge international news.
Heath has been lauded internationally for his Joker role, and I have yet to see the movie, but the criticism and applause are flowing wildly.
I’m interested to hear others opinions on the movie and if he deserves the acclaim, or whether it's just because he died tragically.
Such a loss for his family, and Australia.
kennas
..the Joker.. a demonic creation and three-ring circus of one wholly inhabited by Heath Ledger. Mr. Ledger died in January at age 28 from an accidental overdose, after principal photography ended, and his death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive.
But his Joker is a creature of such ghastly life, and the performance is so visceral, creepy and insistently present that the characterization pulls you in almost at once. When the Joker enters one fray with a murderous flourish and that sawed-off smile, his morbid grin a mirror of the Black Dahlia’s ear-to-ear grimace, your nervous laughter will die in your throat.
A self-described agent of chaos, the Joker arrives in Gotham abruptly, as if he’d been hiding up someone’s sleeve. He quickly seizes control of the city’s crime syndicate and Batman’s attention with no rhyme and less reason. Mr. Ledger, his body tightly wound but limbs jangling, all but disappears under the character’s white mask and red leer. Licking and chewing his sloppy, smeared lips, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a jittery animal, he turns the Joker into a tease who taunts criminals (Eric Roberts’s bad guy, among them) and the police (Gary Oldman’s good cop), giggling while he-he-he (ha-ha-ha) tries to burn the world down. He isn’t fighting for anything or anyone. He isn’t a terrorist, just terrifying.
Mr. Nolan is playing with fire here, but partly because he’s a showman. Even before the Joker goes wild, the director lets loose with some comic horror that owes something to Michael Mann’s “Heat,” something to Cirque de Soleil, and quickly sets a tense, coiled mood that he sustains for two fast-moving hours of freakish mischief, vigilante justice, philosophical asides and the usual trinkets and toys, before a final half-hour pileup of gunfire and explosions. This big-bang finish — which includes a topsy-turvy image that poignantly suggests the world has been turned on its axis for good — is sloppy, at times visually incoherent, yet touching. Mr. Nolan, you learn, likes to linger in the dark, but he doesn’t want to live there.
Well I assume we all agree that the man was a genius, and a totally admirable person.
The movie is getting some good acclaim...
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/movies/18knig.html?ref=arts
Ledger was an avid chess player, winning Western Australia's junior chess championship at the age of 10.[21][22] As an adult, he often played with other chess enthusiasts at Washington Square Park.[23][24]
Allan Scott's film adaptation of the chess-related 1983 novel The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis, which at the time of his death he was planning both to perform in and to direct, would have been Ledger's first feature film as a director
Why do you assume we all agree he was a genius? I don't. And I certainly don't put him in the category of "totally admirable person".
My favourite movies of his were the minor ones. I think Candy was absolutely brilliant, and he was sensational.Why do you assume we all agree he was a genius? I don't. And I certainly don't put him in the category of "totally admirable person".
Sorry, you are asking, who is going to collect the statue?Going to be quiet acceptance speech..
Going to be quiet acceptance speech..
my assumption was wrong
Hey if you're more admireable than he was, jersey.. in your eyes ... then so be it I guess
Wednesday, January 23, 2008 07:38 AM
When you are a celebrity, everyone knows you. Of course, they don't actually know you, but something you do creates a connection with your fans. Whether you are an actor, musician, or even a politician, your fans feel a deep relationship.
Heath connected with a lot of people over his short career. He never made an ass of himself on public. He lived in a regular neighborhood. He made some really good films. These are the things that made him even more accessable to his fans. These are the things that make his passing that much harder to deal with.
It's true that he was just an actor and there are a lot of more important things in this world. Think of this. Heath was one of those people that could make all those other things disappear for a short while in his films. For that, he will be missed.
His portrayal of Ennis del Mar is one of the greatest in film history. He made me (a straight woman) feel the pain not just of the gay men who must keep their emotions hidden but that of ALL men, who are so constrained by the rigid rules of masculinity.
He absolutely broke my heart in that movie--helped me to understand my husband, my sons, my brother, my dad just a little bit better. All the "gay cowboy" jokes are pathetic--and by all accounts Heath Ledger hated them too as well he should have. He played one of the greatest tragic film roles of all time and I hope that he is remembered, by those of us who didn't know him at least, for that.
I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson's broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what's comic is hardly a relief. No plastic mask for Ledger; his face is caked with moldy makeup that highlights the red scar of a grin, the grungy hair and the yellowing teeth of a hound fresh out of hell. To the clown prince of crime, a knife is preferable to a gun, the better to "savor the moment."
The deft script, by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, taking note of Bob Kane's original Batman and Frank Miller's bleak rethink, refuses to explain the Joker with pop psychology. Forget Freudian hints about a dad who carved a smile into his son's face with a razor. As the Joker says, "What doesn't kill you makes you stranger."
The Joker represents the last completed role for Ledger, who died in January at 28 before finishing work on Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. It's typical of Ledger's total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked.
If there's a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976's Network, sign me up. Ledger's Joker has no gray areas ”” he's all rampaging id. Watch him crash a party and circle Rachel, a woman torn between Bale's Bruce (she knows he's Batman) and Eckhart's DA, another lover she has to share with his civic duty.
"Hello, beautiful," says the Joker, sniffing Rachel like a feral beast. He's right when he compares himself to a dog chasing a car: The chase is all. The Joker's sadism is limitless, and the masochistic delight he takes in being punched and bloodied to a pulp would shame the Marquis de Sade. "I choose chaos," says the Joker, and those words sum up what's at stake in The Dark Knight.
Not fair giving away the mysteries of The Dark Knight. It's enough to marvel at the way Nolan ”” a world-class filmmaker, be it Memento, Insomnia or The Prestige ”” brings pop escapism whisper-close to enduring art. It's enough to watch Bale chillingly render Batman as a lost warrior, evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather II in his delusion and desolation.
It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages.
Go ahead, bitch about the movie being too long, at two and a half hours, for short attention spans (it is), too somber for the Hulk crowd (it is), too smart for its own good (it isn't). The haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination. It's full of surprises you don't see coming. And just try to get it out of your dreams.
It's more reminiscent of a "Heat" - Michael Mann's extremely popular cops-and-robbers flick starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino - than a "Superman" or and "Incredible Hulk". While those films are good, this is very good - it goes the extra mile...
For a superhero film to give you the biggest lump in the throat ever ... you know it's in a league of its own.
In short. the Dark Knight is the best Batman film ever made, the best superhero movie ever made, and the best movie of the year to date. It's a five-star masterpiece that'll leave you spinning.
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