The Dark Knight

I have watched The Dark Knight for the third time (I have young kids and don't get to watch grown up movies much), with a fair amount of time between each viewing, and I am ready to publish a few thoughts.
First..OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD....*deep breathing* Gaaaawwwwwwdddddd!!!

So let me first say this, I don't much care for Christian Bale. He is a fine actor, and by no means does a bad job. But I just have a hard time with him as Batman, he just doesn't pass it off. He is just Christian Bale playing Batman, with a silly voice. Kind like everyone else that has ever played Batman. I almost want to say you need two actors to really pass it off. Now I will say he is the first to actually make a serious effort to play two characters. But I just want to give him a glass of water most of the time he is Batman. Just one of those things, I sigh, and then sink back into the movie and try to not think about it. (I still chuckle when I can see he obviously cant move his upper lip because of the costume...hehehe)

What I really want to talk about, is Heath Ledger. I have watched him his entire career. I love that you can see his grow as an actor. I love seeing how he started to dig into each part and person. As he progressed he was becoming a cameleon, Heath Ledger would vanish before your eyes, and an entirely different person with a very familar face was in front of you. What amazes me, is how fast he progressed. He made, what 19 or 20 movies, over the last 10 - 15 years. Needless to say, he is an amazing talent, one of the highest quality, and genius. But Everyone can see this now, and it's almost like salt an an open wound to point it out.
I really should get to my point of what he did in this movie. He gave life to a fictional charecter. A charecter that many believed could never really be brought to life with any kind of demension. His Joker was a complete person, complete and unnerving, even frightening. There is a story from the set of this movie that says when Michael Cain was first confronted with this charecter, he was so startled that he forgot his lines. Now i'm not even sure why I feel the need to write about this, anyone can watch his movies and see all this for themselves.


I just want to say one more thing. Before the movie came out, there was a lot of comparison to The Crow and Brandon Lee. What happend here, is so far beyond The Crow that any comparison just doesn't work. It would be like comparing Star Fruit to a Carrot or some other fruit, or a leg of lamb or something. The Crow was great, but, it's a B level film noir comic book movie (this is why I love it). And in some respects so was The Dark Knight (except it was no where near a B-level movie) I'd put it more on the same level as Paul Newman's Road to Perdition, except just a little less boreing.