Wednesday 18 July 2012

TV

Parents
1x02 Episode Two
I have a suspicion this is going to get increasingly dire rather than any better.

Superstar
1x06 Episode Six
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Films

The Dark Knight (2008)
[3rd watch]

I was, oddly, a little nervous sitting down to watch TDK for the first time in four years. I'd had such an incredible experience viewing it in the cinema (twice) and, by not watching it since, it had built up some kind of aura in my mind. But I dismissed such silliness and damn well got on with it.

It's interesting watching this directly after Begins. While Nolan's first film isn't even close to being as all-out fantasy as the earlier entries, it errs more in that direction than this one, in my opinion. Begins has a kind of fantastical warmth to it, alongside the more urban-realism aspects. I say "warmth" probably because of the sepia/brown hues of the sequences set in the Narrows and so on. The Dark Knight, by comparison, is set in the cold grey-blue steel world of skyscrapers and the modern metropolis, inspired by towering architecture in its visual style and by epic crime-thrillers in its plotting.

Begins is, at heart, still a superhero action-adventure; Dark Knight is a crime thriller that happens to take place in a world with superheroes. Does that make it inherently better? No. But it does make it more unusual for the genre. And as Nolan & co pull off the crime thriller style and feel so damn well, it flat out makes it a great film.