The Dark Knight and Bloggy Updates

And now for the least essential film review ever written: The Dark Knight was great. Heath Ledger was great, Aaron Eckhart was great, Christian Bale was great, Maggie Gyllenhaal was great, Gary Oldman was great, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine were great, Christopher Nolan's direction is great, Chicago-as-Gotham looks great (there's a bunch of stuff that was shot on Franklin just south of my office, which is great). I got a leeetle fatigued with all the high-stakes ultimatums and apocalypses toward the end (srsly, how many times can you ratchet up that tension before it starts feeling like crying wolf?), and I wasn't having seventeen orgasms by the time the credits rolled like I thought I might, but those are relatively minor complaints in the grand scheme of its overall greatness. The hugeness of Ledger's Joker could have gone so wrong in so many ways, but he was really swinging for the fences and somehow made it all work, spectacularly. The scene where he escapes from prison in the cop car and leans his head out the window into the night air has got to be one of the most strikingly beautiful moments I've seen in a movie in a long time. It's also amazing to me, as I said to moviegoing companions M&M afterward, how much acting Bale manages to do through that mask and suit; I'm thinking here particularly of the scene in the interrogation room, with all that coiled rage and intensity apparently being projected purely through his nose holes.

And hey, how 'bout that Quantum of Solace preview? Hot diggity damn. I laughed out loud at that series of shots with Daniel Craig walking up over the horizon line. So completely badass.

Inspired by a recent Rocket Report posting, I've made quite a few long-overdue additions to my blogroll at left that, as the sidebar header suggests, would be well worth your time. I draw your attention to

* 807nica, a journal from former work pal Erin, newly minted as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua

* the genius that is current work pal Pam's LJ creamsnake (her post from February about kittens in vases, drunk dials from first-ever boyfriends, and the fashion of Larry Sanders is still one of my favorite things on the internet ever)

* Shawn's forty-third, by my (exaggerated) count, blog, eat! drink! snack!, which I love unreservedly for the way this seemingly silly rubric of reporting on his snack food consumption allows him to muse pithily on all manner of tangentially related topics

* my girl Megs at Jonesalicious in Boston (and soon Germany)

* Bushman's Tumblr, Not from Texas, to tide you over until he gets back to posting at his redesigned main site

* the estimable photographer, rock enthusiast, and Chicago-based world traveler Sid at Too Much Rock (though not explicitly linked, be sure to also check out his Flickr page, too).