The Dark Knight is not Horrible enough

In the last week I’ve seen two superhero films. I loved one and hated the other. One of these films was ’The Dark Knight’ and I really didn’t enjoy it.

"What?", I hear you yell, "Heath Ledger’s greatest role ever? You unpatriotic fiend".

Well you know what? I thought Heath was better in ’Two Hands’. Christ, I thought he was better in ’10 things I hate about you’. What is the point of extended a film out to three frigging hours when the only reason for doing so is to squeeze half a dozen storylines in?

Maybe I’ve been spoiled with great stories from Steven Moffat in Doctor Who. Maybe I feel that having one good story spanks the pants off having a bunch of them that don’t really wrap up properly. Maybe there’s a reason that most good main characters are likeable. Because then you empathise with them. You worry for them. You don’t want them to get hurt.

In this film I never had any tension because I just didn’t care.

There were a couple of good bits,.. but that doesn’t make a film, that makes a show-reel.


The other film I watched was ’Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog’. I’m usually quite vocal on my lack of interest in the work of Joss Whedon. Once again it’s story related. He’s great at dialogue and characters but when it comes to ideas and wrapping up a story he’ll more often than not whip out a ’deus ex machina’. Not too big a problem if you didn’t have to invest yourself for a season at a time in order to get the most out of it.

’Dr Horrible’ is only forty minutes long. It doesn’t have time to go off track. It’s got one story and it takes forty minutes to tell it (with songs). The songs are okay, the singing is incredible. The characters are likeable and I was immediately invested in them.

Neil Patrick Harris was superb as Dr Horrible. His performance just shone.

There’s been a lot of talk about Heath Ledger getting an Oscar for his performance in ’The Dark Knight’. After seeing Dr Horrible, I don’t think Ledger even deserves a ’Golden Raspberry’.

Sickness

Blugh! I’m all sick and tired and bored. I’ve spent all morning in bed and I’m about to return there but I need to spend at least a moment doing something useful so here we go.

I’m super close to getting the new site up and running with the new project. It’s these last couple of hours required to get it up and running that is like pulling teeth. I’ve just been run off my feet dealing with the ’Off the Cuff’ Impro Theatre festival.

With design and host duties to do paired up with creating podcasts I’ve barely had a moment to myself. Now I’m struck down with the lurgy. I’ll rest up, make sure my web design business still works and then get cracking on finishing it off.