Posts Tagged ‘Christian Bale’

The Dark Knight Rises

Christian Bale as Batman

As skilled a director as Christopher Nolan, he manages to assemble some of his cast from the 2010 hit Inception including the brilliant Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) and the formidable Tom Hardy and gives them starring roles in The Dark Knight Rises along with Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway (BrokeBack Mountain) as the elusive and sleek Catwoman.

In The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan clearly has an opera in mind, a three act narrative of epic proportions about characters regaining their honour, losing the shackles of structured employment and giving heroism a whole new twist. Whilst the late Heath Ledger stole the show in The Dark Knight as the clearly unhinged and psychopathic Joker, it is Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Elegant Brutality as the urban warrior Bane who rises from the depths of Gotham to terrorize the city once more as a fitting yet all together different advisory. While The Dark Knight made use of Chicago’s urban landscape, Nolan firmly roots The Dark Knight Rises in the island of Manhattan a grimy 21^st century simulacrum of New York known as Gotham.

Tom Hardy as Bane

The Dark Knight Rises visually is outstanding as all the strands of the narrative splinter in act two and then elegantly reconnect in a way in which each character realizes their true potential in the explosive third act, where Nolan weaves themes of heroism, fear, despair and loyalty into a stunning conclusion whilst all the time shaping the appearance of not one but two new superheroes with a sly nuanced touch hinting at a possible fourth film in this hugely successful reboot of the Batman franchise. The screenplay by Nolan and his brother Jonathan is sharp, articulate and beautifully written if the viewer listens for the wise words between the clashing warlords and not too dazzled by the unbelievable action sequences.

Naturally the teaming of such a brilliant cast from Gary Oldman to a brief cameo by Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins) gives hefty weight to Nolan’s epic vision of a city under siege assisted by a superb script giving each of the main characters (and there is a lot of them) enough opportunities to develop around the myth of Batman and his superhero status. Bruce Wayne himself has to truly dispel all his demons, face his fears and rise out of the pit of popular heroism to become a true pillar of a man not measured by wealth, his tortured past or fame, but by how far his experiences have taken him.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman

For action fans, this film will not disappoint and whilst the violence is at times seemingly excessive there are moments of clear cinematic pace as only director Christopher Nolan knows how to achieve. Whilst the second act might seem long-winded, it’s the third act which is truly thrilling and if viewers have not seen Batman Begins or The Dark Knight its best to brush up on the fable of Bruce Wayne and his epic transformation as Batman. As for Catwoman and Robin they are truly supportive of Batman’s statue as one of the most iconic superheroes around. Look out for wonderful performances by Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman and of course Christian Bale, yet it is really Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway who rise superbly in this possible final chapter of Christopher Nolan’s dark sophisticated Gothic superhero trilogy about Batman and the League of Shadows.

Oscar Winners

for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards

Sunday 27th February 2011

Best Film: The King’s Speech

Best Director: Tom Hooper – The King’s Speech

Best Actor: Colin Firth – The King’s Speech

Best Actress: Natalie Portman – Black Swan

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo – The Fighter

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale – The Fighter

Best Original Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – The Social Network

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin – The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: David Siedler – The King’s Speech

Best Art Direction: Alice in Wonderland

Best Cinematography: Wally Pfister –Inception

Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood – Alice in Wonderland

Best Editing: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter – The Social Network

Best Make-up: Rick Baker and Dave Elsey – The Wolfman

Best Foreign Language Film: In a Better World directed by Susanne Bier (Denmark)

Best Sound Editing: Richard King – Inception

Best Visual Effects: Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb – Inception

*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/83rd_Academy_Awards

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan follows up his 2005 film Batman Begins with a darker, more sinister and entirely gripping sequel, The Dark Knight. At the end of Batman Begins the Gotham City police chief James Gordon played with great subtlety by Gary Oldman hands Bruce Wayne a calling card for the a new breed of criminal. Wayne, or his alter ego Batman flips over the card and all we see is The Joker, a suggestion that a sequel is definitely in the pipeline. With Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman reprising their roles, who was to be cast as the ultimate villain? The role of the Joker, first made famous by a more jovial and naughty Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s Batman in the late 1980’s was reinvented with a more anarchistic alacrity by the hugely talented Heath Ledger, fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.

So with the casting of the film pretty much sorted only with the slight change of Maggie Gyllenhaal taking on the role of female lead character Rachel Dawes, played in Batman Begins by the pre-Tom Cruise wedded Katie Holmes, all seemed clear sailing. In January 2008 tragedy struck with the unexpected and premature death of Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight’s main draw card, and an eerie and tragic shadow was cast over the release of the film, for it was to become Heath Ledger’s last completed movie and more significantly his final and most intense cinematic impression ever. So when The Dark Knight was released in July simultaneously in cinemas around the globe, the hype was not only about the best sequel ever, it was largely attributed to Ledger’s brilliant and overtly sinister portrayal of Batman’s arch nemesis, The Joker. Ledger deservedly won the Oscar post-humously for Best Supporting Actor for this film, the second actor in cinema history since Peter Finch won for Network.

So naturally, like any avid cineaste, I couldn’t wait to see the final movie. Having followed Christopher Nolan’s previous works from the bizarre Memento to the excellent 2006 film The Prestige

Magic is an illusion and ambition a killer

I knew that The Dark Knight would be in exceptionally talented hands. The Dark Knight, like the trailer suggests, will literally blow any audience viewer away or transfix them to their seat with visuals and cutting edge sound so spectacular it’s hard to realize that two and a half hours have passed. A high-octane and visually spectacular movie with one great action sequence followed by another, punctuated by superb performances not only by Ledger as the Joker, but by Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart who takes on the wonderfully ambiguous part of District Attorney Harvey Dent. Gotham is a simulacrum of any large American metropolis, a sinister and shadowy mix of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where corporate greed fits like a glove with psychotic criminals, ruthless mobsters and a city whose citizens have clearly lost their souls.

For this Joker, a spine-chillingly brilliant and maniacal performance by Heath Ledger, does not have a goal just as long as he is content with wreaking mass destruction, he is purely doing it so anarchy can reign supreme. Prisoners are not an option and nothing is spared as violent and malignant retribution for all the evil that was inflicted on him as a character. The Joker simply is a delusional psychopath with no particular empathy for any moral order or social consequence, let alone a superior and well-meaning hero like Batman, the once brave and fabulously wealthy Bruce Wayne. The Dark Knight is undeniably the best film in ages, for everything is of vastly superior quality from the superb action sequences, senseless and conniving villains, to the exhilarating aerial shots of Gotham and Hong Kong, combined with the elegance of the ultra wealthy urbanized set contrasted by the violent and devious criminals which seek to undermine all that was once sacred. The technical aspects of the film are brilliant from the sound editing, to the slick pace, insures that at  two and a half hours, one is never bored, one is shocked into a state of frenzied captivation, entranced by a film so expansive and devouring, refined and slick, scary and ultimately very intense. Don’t miss this spectacular sequel on the big screen, it is entirely beyond anything one can even comprehend. As for the late Heath Ledger, one really wonders who is having the last laugh.

The Joker?

Ledgers Iconic final performance

Return of the Hairy Man: Wolverine, Terminator Salvation and Zack and Miri make a Porno…

So in these time of global economic gloom, a clean-shaven, metrosexual is not your saviour. Besides all these good-looking, well-dressed beautifully groomed corporate types were the ones lending money out to those hapless citizens who were fiscally irresponsible. Investing in outlandish off-shores accounts, allowing an international unregulated banking system to flourish in a world where credit was supreme, and sensibilities had gone out the window. In the times of a crisis, strong hairy men are here to save the world!

That’s if the batch of summer blockbuster action and comedy films is anything to go from the archetypal X-Men Origins: Wolverine directed by South African Gavin Hood to the hilariously off the coffee counter, Zack and Miri make a Porno. Whether the world has come to a sticky and apocalyptic end in the monochromatic world of Terminator Salvation, with an unshaven Christian Bale as John Connor, all grown up and ready to take on Skynet or audiences discover the real origins of the gorgeously sexy hairy beast of a man, well, mutant, Wolverine who along with a band of fellow unshaven mutants is out to wreck havoc on an suspecting America, the truth be told that clearly the Hairy Man has returned!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a fantastic action film appealing to the younger testosterone filled male generation, which tells of how Wolverine and his brother Sabretooth, an equally hairy and deadly character played with sinister panache by Liev Schreiber fight each other, the world and all those in between, including every major world war from the Napoleonic era to Vietnam. Even the normally clean-shaven Canadian actor, Ryan Reynolds is quite revealing in his role as Wade Wilson but then let’s not discount that Reynolds did appear in the Blade Trilogy.

Terminator Salvation paints a grim and grimy picture of a post-nuclear blasted world where the Skynet controlled Robots have wrecked havoc on America with the cities resembling industrial junkyards from hell. Christian Bale returns in another blockbuster but here again, as in the far superior The Dark Knight, it is his co-star that steals the shows. The Dark Knight, such a brilliant film of anarchy reigning supreme featured the flawlessly demented performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker and now in Terminator Salvation it is the more subtle less frenetic performance of Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright who is propelled into a future abyss only to discover redemption is beyond his electronic grip…

On a lighter note, and much more grounded in the present day recession-laden America is Kevin Smith’s fantastically funny and very raunchy film Zack and Miri make a Porno, about a couple of loser flat mates in Pittsburgh that realize that the financial crisis calls for more drastic measures. Seth Rogen saves the film as the unsexy but very hairy, Zack next to the gorgeous demurely (I kid you not) Miri, played by Elizabeth Banks. Rogen plays every type of hairy anti-hero with such effortless wit and perfect comic timing, who manages to save his reputation, make some underground cash and with the help of an extra-terrestrial cast make a Porno! Watch out for superb cameos by Brandon Routh (from Superman fame) and the delightful Justin Long at Zack and Miri’s reunion…

Although all three films are vastly different, it denotes a new fashion of fury heroes ready to save us from the grim realities of the strange 21^st century recession obsessed reality most Western nations find themselves in.