'The Dark Knight Rises' teaser poster

As per usual, Christopher Nolan begins the promotions for his films a full year ahead of time.  His follow-up to The Dark Knight, aptly titled The Dark Knight Rises is set for a July 2012 release, and rumor has it that the teaser trailer is set to premier in front of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 this weekend.  I like the poster; it's not the blurry "Why So Serious?" genius of The Dark Knight's teaser, but it's visually stunning and has the sense of a whole city collapsing.

What do you think?

The Muppets Official Trailer hits

After a fake trailer hit a few weeks ago, I'm glad now we finally get a sense of what the movie is going the be like.  Well, sort of.  We're getting the gang back together and hilarity, tenderness, sentimental speeches, and song and dance ensue.  Can Thanksgiving come any sooner?

I love the pun of The Dark Knight in the first few frames.  As the trailer unfolds, we see more and more reasons to look forward to this movie.  Adams looks in top form, and so does Segal actually (not to mention early Oscar Buzz for Kermit's performance...kidding).


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Bane from The Dark Knight Rises

Above is the creepy new picture of Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises, which just started principle filming the other day.  More excitingly, the very first image from Christopher Nolan's much anticipated follow-up for his Oscar-winning 2008 The Dark Knight.  Much ado was made regarding the first cryptic image of Heath Ledger's The Joker a few years ago, and Bane's appearance isn't disappointing me right now.  Typical Nolan twist on hardcore comic characters.  Let's hope the rest of the film holds up, shall we?

An improvement over the horrendous imagining of Bane in Batman and Robin, pictured below.

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Belated Birthday of Heath Ledger

April 4^th was Heath Ledger’s birthday.  He would have been 32.  This anniversary serves as a reminder of just how sad his passing was three years ago, and how many more great performances he had in store.  After he stared in the critically-acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, he was hailed as the next Marlon Brando.  Unfortunately, his story took a James Dean-esque twist instead.

I knew and understood the Brando comparison back in 2005, when I was still in high school.  It you watch any Brando film—On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Fugitive Kind, etc.—you see how much he disappeared into a role, how much of his body he committed to the part.  In lieu of making dialog work for him, he made the space in between the lines marks of brilliance.  Brando never hid behind lines; rather he internalized them, making it appear his character would burst if the line wasn’t spoken.  Think of “Stelllllaaaaa!” think of the scene where he opens the bottle of champagne in Streetcar, think of him trying on Eva Marie Saint’s glove in Waterfront.  Brando discovered the small things within a role, and used them to define the part.  Ledger did this too.

Look no further than his two most honored performances, that of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain and The Joker in The Dark Knight.  Rarely do you see a multiple Oscar nominee represented with two such vastly different roles.  But Ledger managed it.  Say what you want about his posthumous success with The Joker, but we all know he deserved the praise and would have won had he been alive.  Look at him in Brokeback.  Minimalism at its finest.  He mumbles through his lines like a man trying to find himself, simply lost.  He’s hiding from himself, so he hides what he says.  Each of his lines in that film is delivered with such a painful hint of self-loathing, and of fear, not of society, but of himself—of the truth.  The final scene where he cradles Jake Gyllenhaal’s bloody shirt is something of pure wonder; an actor so clearly understanding what the character is going though, and delivering on the demanding cathartic moment.  So much in the body, so much character study, so much devotion.

The same can be said for his instant-classic turn as The Joker.  Actors reinvent characters all the time, but never before had it been done to this magnitude.  Sparing some of the ad nauseum details about the role, it was perfect.  Like Brando, he took small things and made them powerful.  For instance, when another actor would have sat quietly in the jail cell, Ledger began applauding—something that wasn’t in the script—and suddenly that’s a memorable scene from the movie.  His slithery devouring of lines is nothing short of genius, even changing throwaway lines into unintended punchlines (“Very poor choice of words” anyone?)

I was already a huge fan of Ledger when he passed, and like most of America, probably more so after seeing The Dark Knight.  Seeing his performance acknowledged with an Academy Award win was my proudest moment as an Oscar fan.  It showed that sometimes, just sometimes, they do award the best performance of the year, regardless of genre.  

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Batman Reboot: When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object

For those of you in the dark, Warner Bros. is now planning a Batman reboot in conjunction with a planned answer to The Avengers Justice League movie.  It won't be helmed by current franchise director Christopher Nolan either, but Nolan will remain on as producer.  The oddest part of this amalgam of superheros poised to save the day in Justice League is that none of the notable characters--Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman--will be a continuation off current projects featuring said characters.  No Wonder Woman from her yet-to-premier NBC show.  No Superman from Zack Snyder's upcoming film.  And most importantly, no Christian Bale as Batman.  That's right, the actor and hero that saved a genre is being rebooted at the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises.

It's the unstoppable force of the studio meeting the immovable object of creative integrity.  It's clear: the studio wants more and Nolan is walking away after film #3.  Can't really blame him, lest he forever be known as the director of Batman.  He's young, can do anything he wants right now in his career, and he have proven he can make his films both bankable at the box office and the Oscars.  Plus, a director returning for the fourth film in a franchise can only be as ill-fated as Indiana Jones 4, right?  Thankfully, WB is keeping Nolan on (or, possibly, Nolan is choosing to stay on) as producer of Justice League and the Batman reboot, which makes us assume he'll still have creative control.  But does he really want creative control outside of the world you created?  Nolan has the chance to close out a trilogy the right way, and not Warner Bros. wants to say "thank you, but no," to the reputation and respect he has injected not only into Batman, but superhero films in general. 

When an unstoppable force
meets an immovable object

Now, I have a slight problem with that.  For starters, The Dark Knight Rises isn't even out yet.  Not only is it not even out, but they haven't even begun principle photography!  Why is Warner Bros. giving up on Nolan's vision of the caped crusader already?  Could Batman be that potential of a cash cow that they think people will pour in to see the character no matter what creative team or actor is on board?  One can attribute the financial success of 2008's The Dark Knight to many things: the high quality of the film, the high-grossing superhero genre, and the recent passing (and brilliant performance) of Heath Ledger.  One of those elements returns, with a second one hopeful for The Dark Knight Rises.

I think what is most notable with the prematurely announced reboot (that is, a reboot before the franchise is even done booting) is that Warner Bros. is doing it less out of greed and more out of necessity.  Why reboot a blockbuster franchise staring an Oscar-winner unless you absolutely have to?  Perhaps the immovable object of creative integrity isn't as immovable as we'd hoped: it's being trampled, in fact.  I'm thinking, momentarily at least (and probably reading too much into this announcement), that Nolan is killing off our watchful protector.  A dead hero means you'll have to reboot.  Maybe I'm just being a little too...serious.

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Setting Sail

For a while now I've wanted to start a film blog. For an even longer while, I made excuses as to why I wasn't starting one: not enough time, too many blogs, "no one is going to read it," and now a momentary pause as I figure out just what to write for my first post on Sam Watches Movies.

And so here is the introduction! Again, if you missed the banner beneath the blog title, my name is Sam. I'm what is widely considered a film buff, I watch movies as much as possible with a focus on trying to see new movies. New to me, that is, not necessarily the newest movies of the year. Because to me, a classic movie isn't a classic if you haven't seen it before.

My taste in film is part populist (The Dark Knight, Love Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, Ghost, Back to the Future, Anchorman, Toy Story 3) and part respected drama or comedy (Casablanca, The Silence of the Lambs, Michael Clayton, Up in the Air, American Beauty). Separating the two entities is impossible. To me, your favorite movies are the best movies; the movies you love are the ones you'll remember forever, not just because they're well-written, well-acted, or considered important but because you connect to them.

Also, I'll be writing in-depth Awards Season coverage when the time comes and retrospective commentary of Oscars past, in addition to film reviews (new and old), and general articles focusing on performances, directors, actors, and craftsmen.

Buckle your seatbelts, this is gonna be a bumpy ride.