I Believe in Harvey Dent

Now that it's Wednesday, I guess it's time to write about the extended weekend we had.

Thursday night we finished cleaning up the house as Josh "Harvey" Guerrero was coming that night. Around 8:30 or so we left the house to pick him up at the airport in Indianapolis, which is maybe an hour and a half away. We got there and did a few laps around the airport and on our third lap, Harvey appeared. Jessica had met him before in Texas, but I had only played Xbox 360 with him online. It was weird to hear his voice and not have it come out of a headset while looking at a video game screen.

Since the whole excuse of Harvey coming to visit us was to see The Dark Knight and we were already in Indianapolis, we had ordered tickets to see it in the IMAX theater up there. The problem was that the midnight showing was sold out by the time I realized that we could do that, so we had tickets to the 3:15 am showing. This gave us probably 4 hours to waste in Indy before the show began. Our first stop was Denny's, where we got a midnight snack of eggs and bacon, with Jessica getting chocolate cake for dessert. We had planned on staying there the whole time, but it was really hot and creepy, so we left to see what else we could find. We decided to show him downtown Indy since we weren't that far from it. There was still a fair amount of activity downtown for it being 1 am on a Friday morning. We circled around and came back to check out the theater situation. The parking lot was completely full, like I don't understand how they handle every day traffic when there's more than just a handful of screens open. We passed the theater and went on a quest to find a Wal*Mart or something open so we could waste more time before we had to stand in line to get into the theater. We eventually found a Super K-mart and messed around in the toy section. We ended up buying a few Nerf guns so we could have random battles around the house that didn't sting as much as a pellet gun battle would. We left there to stand in line at the theater.

When I had ordered the tickets, the 3:15 showing still had plenty of tickets left. Apparently it had sold out in the last few days because I felt that we were pretty far back in the line, but we were probably in the first 1/3 of the line, if not closer. There were normal fans like us, and then there were those dressed up. Not so many Batmans, but tons of Jokers. Some of them just had neon green wigs and face paint, but one kid left the midnight showing and walked past us in a purple suit with scars on his cheeks and had badly dyed his hair a dark green. It was pretty convincing. Around 3 or so they let us in the theaters and we got ready to experience The Dark Knight in its IMAX glory. I already posted my first review of the movie (and I hope to supplement it with a spoiler-tastic second review if I see it again this weekend).

We stumbled out of the theater after the movie and made our way home as the sun was coming up. We got home and I was ready to pass out, but Jessica and Harvey still had energy for some reason. I told them that I was going to get some sleep, and eventually they agreed. We only slept for a few hours (Berkeley was confused as to why we needed to sleep more; he'd been sleeping all night!). We hung out at home for a bit, and I watched Harvey watch Metal Gear Solid 4 on his PS3 (I know it's a game, but it might as well be a movie). We then went up to Bloomington to go to the mall and eat. We had planned on going to Laser Tag, but then decided we didn't want to, so we went home and watched the animated Batman: Gotham Knight (which was OK, but just as disappointing as the Animatrix).

Saturday we played Rock Band pretty much all day. Nick and Morgan came over and we all played together and it was amazing. They left and we continued rocking on into the night.

Sunday morning we got up and set out to get into the Hall of Fame on Rock Band, so we played all day and eventually got in. We still have several songs to unlock and then the Endless Setlist consisting of every song in the game, so the game is far from over, but we got that first step to superstardom. I also need to play the guitar on a level higher than "Medium", but that's a whole different story. We eventually had to say our goodbyes and take Harvey back to the airport. The way home was sad.

It's like this whenever people come to visit. It's always so great when they're here, but as soon as they leave Jessica and I both get depressed for a few days. The house feels so empty. We don't have many friends up here, and those we do have don't come to visit very often. We hope to change that, and in fact we're hanging out with Nick and Morgan tonight.

I'll keep you posted.

REVIEW: The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (2008)

As usual, no spoilers.

Summary: The Dark Knight is the direct sequel to Batman Begins, the dark restart of the Batman story without the campiness that usually happens after people are tired of trying to make such dark subjects entertaining to the masses. This time out, Gotham has a new "white knight" in the form of Harvey Dent, a new district attorney not afraid to stand up to the organized crime that is destroying the city. But the organized crime syndicate have a new ace up their sleeve, a villain so unpredictable, so evil that no one can control him. A man without a name or history. A man they call "The Joker."

Thoughts: The Dark Knight embraces it's darkness, giving us a story that few would dare before this point. So many themes are handled throughout the two and a half hours that it's impressive they fit it all into one coherent movie. Basically it all comes down to what it means to be a hero and how sometimes it takes a hero of a different kind to make a real difference.

The movie is impeccably directed and cast, with the acting going above and beyond the call of the script (except for Maggie Gyllenhaal, who reaches the very low bar set by Katie Holmes in the first one, but maybe that was the point). Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, are all incredible actors who make you believe their roles.

Heath Ledger, however, takes believability to a whole new level with his Joker. There's nothing funny about his performance. When you look into The Joker's eyes, The Joker is all you can see. Completely unpredictable, without remorse, a true (to bring in some Dungeons and Dragons lingo) Chaotic Evil character. I spent the whole movie on the edge of my seat because you literally have no idea what he's going to do next. Heath Ledger's Joker makes every other villain I've ever seen pale in comparison. I'm not sure where the "Oscar buzz" will go, but Heath Ledger's performance is something more, a total immersion that I believe drove him to the depression and sleep anxiety that killed him. He gave everything he had to this role, in every sense.

Everything about this movie is top notch. It had more scares than any horror movie, more action than any action movie, more suspense than any suspense movie, and was probably the first "comic book movie" that truly deserves to have that mentioned second, if at all. It's hard to imagine clumping it together with X-Men or, heaven forbid, Fantastic Four. I still love Iron Man and think it was tons of fun, but this was such a good movie no matter how you look at it.

Overall: A great movie that happens to be based on a comic book.
4.5/5


The IMAX Experience Review: Since this was my first IMAX experience and The Dark Knight has a special version for IMAX theaters, I figured I'd give it a mini-review.

IMAX is big. Really big. Like I've heard about the bigness, but it was ridiculous. And LOUD. Every punch, every explosion, every bass note in the soundtrack shook the whole room. My extremities were literally numb towards the end of the movie.

The Dark Knight had some scenes filmed in IMAX, so there were sections when the frame expanded beyond the widescreen format to fill up the whole IMAX screen. A few of the major action pieces and all of the helicopter shots of Gotham were expanded. The regular theater versions just have the IMAX screen cropped down to fill theirs, so you're not missing added content really, just added immersion.

There was a mini-trailer before the movie began for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at IMAX. The last few movies have been at IMAX, but just enbiggened not enhanced in any way. HBP is going to have "selected scenes in IMAX 3D." So, who wants to go with us to Indianapolis November 20th to see the midnight showing?