Pages tagged “christopher nolan”

There's a surprisingly gargantuan Internet faction dedicated to predicting who will be up for film's most coveted prize, the Academy Award. Publications like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times and New York Times all have Oscar blogs that obsessively trail the fluctuations in buzz amongst the year's top films. That's not to mention stand-alone sites like Awards Daily and In Contention, or well-known bloggers like Jeff Wells, Dave Poland and Anne Thompson. Even Roger Ebert has devoted a wealth of recent ink on the subject. But, the truth is, no matter how much someone knows, it's still just a wild guessing game.

This is special. The mayor of a Turkish town called Batman said he will explore legal options to sue Christopher Nolan, director The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, for using the town's name.

The blitz of sequel rumors that followed The Dark Knight’s release this summer have been silenced a number of times, mostly because director Christopher Nolan spent the second half of his summer off the coast of Florida with his family. And in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Nolan, back home, confirmed that he hasn’t decided on any direction for Batman—or if he wants to return to the franchise at all.

Ever since The Dark Knight came out and started garnering positive reviews, earning lots of money and becoming IMDb's favorite movie of all time (it has since fallen to #4), rumors have been flying regarding various aspects of a possible sequel. They've already been put to rest once. Now we're here to confirm they're all being put to rest again.

You've already seen it six times, so what’s one more? Warner Bros. has announced it plans to re-release The Dark Knight in January on IMAX screens to solidify a push for Academy Awards consideration.

It’s been a little over a month since The Dark Knight hit theaters. We’ve gone through record breaking sales, fanboy freakouts, and, of course, the obligatory backlash. So it only makes sense that the Batman sequel speculation has already begun. The Hollywood Reporter leaked recently that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are ready to greenlight a third Batman film, which isn’t too surprising considering that the film has made—and these are exact numbers, people—eleventy billion dollars.

Sundance may be the famous one and Toronto may have the most films, but when it comes to pure independent spirit, the prize has to go to Slamdance. This year it looks like the festival's celebrating by honoring, oddly enough, some independent directors who've headed to Hollywood. On Sept. 5, the 15th anniversary of the festival, Christopher Nolan will be screening his first feature, Following, at the LACMA's Bing Theater while Steven Soderbergh's Schizopolis will be playing at the IFC in New York.

Quick, what’s the best movie of all time? Is it The Godfather? The Shawshank Redemption? Pulp Fiction? Troll 2?

According to Internet Movie Database (IMDb) users, the answer is none other than The Dark Knight, which has claimed the top spot on the site’s list of the top 250 movies of all time after just one weekend in theaters.

Release Date: July 18
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Cinematographer: Wally Pfister
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Studio/Run Time: Warner Bros. Pictures, 142 mins.

Of the recent attempts to reset a moribund Hollywood franchise, Batman Begins (2005) stands as one of two unqualified successes. The series had run out of steam when Christopher Nolan's injection of gritty realism—not to mention complete disregard for any prior film in the series—jerked it back to life. This new Batman was no polished smirker, but rather, a brooding Christian Bale, a loner with a hero complex and too much money. This Gotham City was no expressionistic Oz on a black sound stage, but a clone of Chicago, shown in broad daylight just before it sank into darkness.

Do you like intense action scenes where it's genuinely unknown whether the hero will survive? Of course. How about complex character development where the choices made aren't what would have been made at the beginning of a story? Yes indeedy. Beautiful cinematography that draws you into a world and captures a specific tone? Wonderful.

Except that while all of these are aspects of the greatness that is Batman Begins, they have little to do with its sequel's just-released teaser trailer below:

So no, there's absolutely no new information in there. It does, however, reaffirm that the film stars Christian Bale as Batman and Michael Caine as Alfred, which should really be good enough for fans of the first to start anticipating the movie. If you listen closely enough to the evil laughter, you can also hear that it's Heath Ledger, who will be playing the Joker, but even this is information easily obtainable through IMDB.

It's kind of frustrating that the trailer rubs in your face how it doesn't have to show anything to add to the excitement building for The Dark Knight, but for once that seems fitting. If you want to see a real trailer for the film, just pick up a copy of Batman Begins and watch it again. After re-experiencing the original you'll be far more excited for its sequel than 30 seconds of anti-trailer can make you.

Related links:
Paste's review of Batman Begins
Paste feature on Frank Miller
Dark Knight on IMDB

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