Talkin’ ’bout “The Dark Knight”, “I’m Not There”

Somehow, yesterday (I don’t remember how it got started), I found myself searching for all things related to The Dark Knight, the next installation of filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s take on the Batman series, due out next summer. For those of you who don’t think Nolan’s first effort, 2005’s Batman Begins, is by far the greatest Batman film yet, well, you’re just wrong. In fact, as a guy who doesn’t usually go nuts over superhero movies (but who is a Batman fan), I can honestly say that it’s one of my favorite movies period.

Anyway, I’m particularly interested in what will be the outcome of actor Heath Ledger’s portrayal of über-villain the Joker in Knight. Clearly, the guy doesn’t like to be typecast, seeing as how he’s portrayed everything from a heartthrob, to a skate bum mentor, to a drug addict. And there was that western he did, and his turn as Casanova immediately following in a thinly veiled attempt to let people know that he still likes girls. But forgetting all that, if you’ve seen the still frame of him as the Joker, or read some of the comments he’s made about the role, you’d agree that we have reason to expect good things.

I’m also eager to see his performance in the new Bob Dylan pseudo-biopic I’m Not There, in which he portrays an avatar of Dylan’s late-1960s, early ’70s period, during which Dylan was in extreme demand, yet became somewhat isolated from both the rest of the world and his earlier role as a voice of the ’60s. In the film, Ledger plays one of at least six different versions of the Dylan mystique. [Batman himself, or at least the actor Christian Bale who portrays him in both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, also plays one of the Dylans in I'm Not There. Crazy.]

To sum up, here’s a good New York Times article on Ledger as an actor.

New Dylan film looks trippy, but I still can’t wait to see it

I’ve already mentioned two of the films opening this fall that I’m eager to see: The Darjeeling Limited and No Country for Old Men. The third is the Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There. From what I’ve read (particularly this article from the most recent New York Times Magazine), this is no ordinary musical biopic, like the recent films on Ray Charles or Johnny Cash. It’s kind of a trippy montage of tales about characters meant to represent Dylan in various periods of his life — six characters in all, including a young African-American boy and a woman. Should be very interesting, though I don’t know if I’ll be able to drag Marsha to see it. (I’ll be lucky enough to get her to go see those other two movies with me, and they have clear-cut story lines.)

I’m also intrigued by the lineup of artists who’ll be covering Dylan songs on the film’s soon-to-be-released soundtrack. The list includes the Black Keys, of whom I’m a big fan, as well as Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco), Eddie Vedder (of Pearl Jam), Tom Verlaine (of Television), members of Sonic Youth, and Willie Nelson, among quite a few others. The soundtrack also includes a number of Dylan songs by Dylan himself, in case you were wondering. This blog has quite a few good posts on the topic, including these three.