I love it. I was wrong in the first review, it is great.So what changed my mine? Well I listened to episode 101 of Tell ‘Em Steve Dave, that’s what happened. The basis of the episode was to talk about CBM and the cast’s intention when they were filming it. Basically while filming CBM Bry, Walt and Ming all had TESD fans in mind and were basically making the show as a love letter to the fans of the podcast.

Armed with this new point of view I went back and watched episode 1 again and then took my new found outlook into the rest of series and my god Walt and Bry knock it out of the park. Unlike TESD which is Bry’s baby, CBM is captained by the straight talking, no nonsense Walt. Yes the camera’s do take the edge off of Walt’s personality and at times you can see him holding back while wanting to dress down some of the rude customers and at time’s Ming but luckily he still has Bry to back him up.

Let’s face it, nobody is going to stop Bry from delivering brilliant one liners and even though Walt is always representing both Kevin Smith and The Stash in a professional manner, Bry is happy to take other people to town. Even as a TESD fan the thing that stands out to me is just how strong Walt and Bry’s friendship really is, everytime Walt makes a joke he looks straight to Bry to see if he is laughing.

Rating: 4.5/5

If I had to choose between Impractical Jokers and CBM I would still choose Impractical Jokers everytime. But only just.

Starring: Walt Flanagan, Bryan Johnson, Kevin Smith, Ming Chen, Mike Zapcic

Review: First let me start off by saying that I love the Tell Em Steve Dave podcast, I really do. I also loved the sister podcasts that have spawned from TESD like Puck Nuts and I Sell Comics. However Comic Book Men (CBM) falls a little short of living up to their podcast counterparts.CBM in essence is about the daily life of Jay and Silent Bob’s secret stash and a way for fans of comic books to see their passion on screen. However within 15 minutes of the first episode it becomes abundantly clear that the heart of the show is staged in order to give the show something to show on screen. Dont get me wrong the actual content of the show is fresh, funny and interesting but you just know thats not how the store is actually run. Walt Flanagan is the man who runs the store everyday and it shows as he is the “Captain” of the show and is clearly in his element in the stash. Bryan, Ming and Mike are the support characters, none of whom appear to be at all comfortable on screen. For Mike and Ming this is fine as they are both new to being on camera but Bryan is a veteran in front of the camera and in front of a live audience. Unlike Walt, Bryan doesnt look comfortable in his role and to be honest he is basically there to make jokes and give Ming shit. This works fine on podcasts but not on tv namely because on the tv show its just Bry picking on a small asian dude, there is no mention of the history between the 2 and how they are actually good friends. Another thing that CBM fails to do is build up the characters. Bryan and Walt get an introduction from Kevin Smith but Mike and Ming get sweet fuck all. To the new audience they are just 2 guys who apparently work at the stash.

The show itself is actually very funny. Walt takes the lead right from the start of the show and sets the tone for the show early by shooting down Mings fantasy about a comic book character that is out of his league. Bryan and Mike are good in their supporting roles and actually have very good chemistry which hopefully the show will expand upon as the series goes on. Ming on the otherhand is more like a deer in the headlights. Having listened to Ming on various podcasts he is obviously a very smart and funny man but in CBM and in front of a camera he loses his “it” factor that makes him so loveable on the podcasts. Oh yeah Kevin Smith is also on the show…. Not sure why, he’s just kind of there.

The problem with CBM and the reason that it will ultimately fail sadly is because the humor of Bry, Walt, Ming and Mike is very much on par with their podcast’s Tell Em Steve Dave/Puck Nuts/I Sell Comics which is very much way beyond the fringe of main stream comedy at the best of times and completely off the map the rest of the time. The show could have worked if every viewer had listened to all 100+ episodes of TESD and listened to how the boys have developed their friendship and how they interact with each other. Hang on… Isn’t Kevin Smith the king of developing oddball characters on screen? Now he just throws his friends on screen with no backstory as to who they are or what bonds them together as friends. Ultimately though because they are on tv they are being censored, Walt is in his element when is fired up and angry while Bryan is in his element talking about and making fun of the extreme elements of todays society.

Conclusion: If you enjoy TESD/Puck Nuts/I Sell Comics or any of the other smodcast network podcasts then I highly recommend you watch Impractical Jokers on truTV. Brian “Q” Quinn and his comedy troupe The Tenderloins knock it out of the park every single episode while the cast of Comic Book Men ultimately will never be allowed to enter their sweet spot on primetime tv.

Plot: Divorce attorney Holly (Kristen Johnston) introduces her client, Stuart (David Alan Basche) to his new room-mates, who share an apartment that Holly owns. At first Phil (Donald Faison) and Haskell (Wayne Knight) have reservations about Stuart moving in, but Holly is right across the hall to help when things start to go down hill.

Review:
First let me start by saying that Donald Faison is the only reason I decided to give this show a try.

Sometimes there is a TV show that comes along that just blows away everything else on TV, other times shows come and go before they even get a chance to settle into a groove. Sometimes however you just have to watch in disbelief, The Exes is one of those shows. It’s bad. It’s really bad. I cannot put into words just how awful this show really is. 5 minutes into the first episode I was watching with disbelief as I couldn’t believe just how bad it was.

Terrible. Awful. Shockingly bad.

You know those TV sitcoms that do a parody sketch about a cheesy sitcom? Well this is that sketch but in a half hour show format…… And not a parody. If you don’t know what I mean check out this clip from Scrubs while I wait. Done? You think I’m over stating it don’t you? Well I can assure you that I am not. The start of the first episode shows Kristen Johnston dressed to look like a transsexual walking through a hallway with David Alan Basche dressed like an accountant talking about their divorce and throwing out random lines trying to get laughs. Admittedly I did think that this was just opening scene jitters and that the flow of the show and the acting would improve. I was wrong.

I dont know how this show made it to production, It is possible the worst piece of shit I have ever seen. I wanted to write a lengthy in depth review but all I can say is stay away from this show. The writing is predictable, the acting is awkward, the sets are just rip offs of various other sitcoms and the characters are just wrong for every single actor and the story. The only saving grace in this show is Kelly Stables and that is only because is so fucking hot.

My god this show is bad.

Rating 0/5

Location :  Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide.

The actual show didn’t start til 19:00.  I purchased the VIP pack which included a meet & greet  a few hours before the show started. I arrived at about 15:30 and saw some kids standing around. We waited until the guide-type lady came out and told the VIPs to come inside. She went over some rules, then we went into a side room where Phil Campbell was sitting. He signed some posters which we later received. Micky Dee came in a few mins later, then the same with Lemmy a few mins after that. They all signed posters, then each of us got to individually go up and say hi and get other stuff signed.

That lasted about 30 mins, and then we all had to go outside again. It was another 90 minute wait until the doors opened. During that time I was chatting with some other guys, and I recognised someone who was at Soundwave a few weeks earlier.

Finally the doors were opened and I went in, put my poster and signed stuff into the cloakroom, bought some stuff from the merch stand, then went into the main area. I found a nice spot to observe, kind of high up with some seats. The first band were called Regular John and they didn’t come on stage until 20:00. I won’t say this band is shit, because it’s quite a feat to support Motorhead. However they were not my cup of tea, the two bands are on different pages,  and the only people who were cheering and clapping were the kids downstairs.  I guess I would describe them as similar to stuff like Panic at the disco, fallout boy, etc.

They played for about 45 minutes, then we had another boring 15 minute wait. Finally at 21:00 Lemmy came on stage and said Good Evening. The first song they played was Iron Fist, and the rest of the setlist is below. I managed to record some songs on my phone, but eventually I got sick of holding it up, so just sat back and watched.

Stay Clean 
Get Back In Line 
Metropolis 
Over the Top 
One Night Stand 
Rock Out 
Guitar Solo 
Bad Woman
I Got Mine 
I Know How To Die 
The Chase Is Better Than the Catch 
In the Name of Tragedy (with drum solo) 
Just 'Cos You Got the Power 
Going To Brazil  
Killed by Death
Ace Of Spades

Needless to say all of these songs were awesome, can’t really describe them in any more detail.

After Ace of Spades they all walked off stage for about 2 mins, then came back and played Overkill for an encore. All lights went out during this song, but a few white lights flashed on/off about every 300ms. I don’t know about anyone else but this caused me to see shitloads of purple UFOs after a while.

That was it for sure, by now the time was about 22:15. I walked down and retrieved my stuff from the cloakroom, got a taxi to near home, pissed behind some tree, went to the BP  and finished the night with some chips and iced coffees.

Rating : 1000000000/10

Operating System

          Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

CPU Type

         Intel Core 2 Duo T9550(2.66GHz)

CPU FSB

         1066MHz

CPU L2 Cache

         6MB

Screen

         17.3″ @ 1600 x 900

GPU/VPU

         NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M

Video Memory

         Dedicated 1GB

Hard Drive

         640GB @ 7200 RPM

         4GB DDR2 Ram

Dimensions

         18.4″ x 12.4″ x 1.8″

Weight

         9.3 lbs.

LAN

         10/100/1000Mbps

         802.11 bgn

Bluetooth

1 x Express Card

USB 4, 1 VGA, 1  HDMI

Altec Lansing Speakers

8-in-1 Card Reader.

1.3MP Webcam

8-cell lithium ion

That was a lot of specs, but hey I didn’t want to leave anything out when discussing the awesomeness of this laptop. Ok first things first, when I received it I fell in love with the thing. It was manufactured refurbished and sealed from ASUS that I bought off eBay for only 500 bucks. What can I say, I know how to shop. This is my first true laptop and my first new computer I have had in 10 years.

17.3 inches running at 1600×900 res makes a pretty screen. Going from a Pentium IV 2.0 GHz, 1.2GB of Ram, and an Nvidia 6600GT AGP 4x to a Core 2 Duo 2.53Ghz, 4 GB Ram, Nvidia GT130M was just mind blowing. The speed of this machine is breath taking to a person like me that went from the old to the new. It reminded me of when I lived out in the country and all I could get was 26.4 dialup. Not even 28.8, much less 56k. A lot of people don’t remember those days but I do. I went from that to a cable modem at 8mb/s and it was simply amazing. Well using this laptop reminds me of that moment.

On my old rig it would take upwards of 8 hours for Nero to ‘Make My Own DVD’ but on my laptop I’m looking at around 1 hour and 10 minutes.  For Windows DVD maker to make a dvd, it takes about half that time. To convert an 800 MB video file to a WMV file to watch on my Zune used to take around 5 hours, now it takes 25-30 minutes. This is a serious boost in speed and power. I am currently running Windows 7 Ultimate on it and it has a Windows rating of

Graphics wise, going from the 6600GT to a low to mid level Class 2 GPU is great for me. The only games I play right now are Battlefield 2 and Age of Empires 3. On the 6600GT BF2 would be played with everything off and all settings at low. Now I play with everything on and all settings at high and it runs it perfectly.

As of right now the cooling isn’t an issue, the CPU never goes over 43 C. The only time I saw it go over 43 was when I was doing a movie conversion and it spiked up at 49 C. Even while gaming the CPU never went over 43.

The battery charge lasts around 2 hours with the screen dimmed all the way down. I hardly have it off the charger so battery life isn’t a big issue to me right now. It has 4 USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI connection that automatically adjusts to the TV resolution which I thought was pretty neat.

Now the cons to the laptop. The battery life could be an issue with some people, but this is a big laptop and put on paper as a desktop replacement so mobility isn’t something that concerns me. The touch pad was highly annoying but thankfully a free mouse came with the package as well as a nice carrying bad. The touchpad just seems too sensitive even with the settings adjusted.  Another thing that gets me is the keyboard. I’m naturally a hard typer and when I type my hands go all over the place. When I press on the ‘K’ letter I can see the keyboard actually dipping down. While I was typing I hadn’t noticed it and probably wouldn’t have noticed it until my brother said something. It isn’t causing a problem but it makes me look at it all the time to make sure I’m not breaking it. Adjusting my typing style is something that won’t happen though, I’ve been typing like this forever. The 1.3 megapixel camera that is included just down right sucks worse than any other built-in 1.3 megapixel camera. I might have the settings wrong on it as I have only used it to test it but my image was upside down. If that is the case I am pissed at it. Again I don’t use it but still it’s the principle.

As far as the other things such as the Wireless N and Bluetooth they work fine. All in all I am jumping my scale of 0-5 to a 0-10 because it isn’t perfect but a 4 seems too high and a 3 too low. The laptop is great for what I need it for and is exactly what I wanted at the exact price I was wanting to spend. I feel in a way that the seller didn’t know enough about computers because this should have gone for more than $500 dollars.

Rating: 8/10.

This is a complete waste of money. Where to start…..

It installs some DRM and other crap on your system and requires that you log in to play. I HATE THIS!  I know most games require an account to play multiplayer and it’s fucking annoying.  So I tried the option that said “anonymous” thinking I could play as a guest type thing. But it crapped out and sent me back to the main menu saying “failed to connect to server” or some crap.

The controls are twitchy as hell.  When I first flew, I pulled back on my stick, thinking I would go up, but what happened? Yep, I went straight fucking down. I was so stunned I smashed into the ground. So I went into options and tried to fix it. I thought I solved the problem when I saw “Invert Y Axis” yep, that normally would fix it on most games. But on this game? No way sunshine. I pulled back, went down and almost recovered, but my wing still scraped the ground and I was dead.

This is no flight sim, it can’t even get the basics right.  I hope you didn’t buy it in the 2010 Steam Holiday sale like I did.

Rating: -1000000/10

Frets on Fire V1.2.512

Format: PC – Windows, Linux & Mac OS X

Homepage – http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/

Hawq’s opinion: A clone of Guitar Hero for those that don’t have a PS2, PS3, Wii or 360 to play it on “but wait” you say “what of the PC version?” well there is that option I guess but if you don’t want to spend any money there’s always Frets on Fire.

As you’d expect if you’ve ever played GH or even seen it you’ll quickly be familiar with this  the only difference is that your wallet will be happier (depending on your controller choice, more of that later) what you get is 3 songs with it to get you started & its played using the keyboard held like a guitar with F1 to F5 being the frets in the regular mode, you can redefine them if you want however so if you’re keyboard doesn’t let you press certain combinations you can get round it.  On top of this framework there’s a lot of mod packs you can get to make it look more like GH and you can convert the songs from the GH games for use with it, you can even download some of them to save you the trouble of converting (you do own them right?) & there’s a large number of other songs converted for use with it as well, the mods range from simple theme changes to some that fix bugs in the game so its worth looking at them.

Now the controller choice I spoke of, yes you can use the keyboard but if you have a GH guitar then life becomes much better in the game.  I bought a 360 X-Plorer guitar for using with it & its great, you can use this guitar or the ones from the PS2, PS3, Wii & the official 360 Gibson as long as you have the right adaptor to plug them in & the right drivers, for the X-Plorer just head over to the M$ site to get the 360 controller drivers and away you go.

Minus points? well yes it does have some such as the timing for strumming sometimes feels a little odd, this is either down to me not being very good or a bug of some kind (considering I got 99.6% on one tune when it happened possibly a bug)  occasionally there’s a little lag when the computers doing lots of stuff and last night after some tunes it jumped up to 90-odd% CPU use but these rarely get in the way of having a good time with it.  Also some of the songs you can download don’t work on certain difficulty settings but that’s down to the people that converted them really rather than the game, one word of warning don’t try Frantic by Metallica unless you want your hand to drop off!

Additional bit, by now most of the songs from Guitar Hero & Rock Band have been converted for use with this to go along with the huge amount of songs supported that are not in those games so that just adds to the feel & fun of this one.

My Rating:

****1/2

Anyone expecting a remake of Romero’s classic (OK so Dawn was far superior, Day was still good) Day of the Dead can forget about watching this one right now, the only thing it has in common is the name & ‘zombies’ why did I put ‘zombies’ like that? you’ll soon find out.

Lets break with tradition & start with the good news, you get Mena Suvari to look at as the film goes on (this is one of the high points) & the often good Ving Rhames plus lots of ‘zombies’ get dispatched in varied ways.

The bad? well where to begin, lets start with Ving Rhames not being in that much of the film, since he is the biggest name attached to it that’s not a great start really.  Also bad is the modern trend for fast zombies (hence the ‘zombies’ above) I regard fast zombies to be an aberration in zombie films, they just shouldn’t happen, ever and before anyone says ‘what about 28 days later?’ those weren’t zombies, though this film shares more with that one than just fast zombie like creatures.
The awakening of the ‘zombies’ leaves much to be desired as well, we see an infection (no prizes for guessing where it came from eh folks?) turning people but they don’t seem to die, they just pause (very amusing when an entire waiting room at the hospital does it at the same time) before their skin peels a bit and they start looking like a 2 week dead zombie.  Many of the ‘zombies’ can fire guns, strange as this is only learnt by the time of Land of the Dead going off all previous evidence, maybe it was a fluke & several ‘zombies’ just hit the triggers at the same time by coincidence & so much of the personality is kept when they turn that apparently a vegetarian won’t try to eat people as a ‘zombie’, a little more on him later.  Possibly the worst ‘zombie’ bit though is the Spiderman ‘zombie’ which looks crap, breaks every zombie rule there is (it Spidey’s along the damn ceiling for gods sake!) & just made me wish for a Marvel Zombies film.
Oh what the hell.. I can barely be bothered to write about this cinematic turd any longer so here are all the remaining good &/or amusing bits:
Bub is there, for fans of the original this is great news, and retains his standards even after ‘zombification’ (he is the veggie one mentioned above) and remains in love.
‘Zombies’ heads burst after a few seconds of being on fire, very amusing to see & one of the few reasons to bother watching.
A smart ‘zombie’ (don’t get me started) gets a Sub Zero moment.
And the film does end (possibly the best part of it all).

**1/2 I think for this one, Mena looks good & it is amusing in parts.

But before I even dwell on what is wrong, let’s instead focus on the one big element that works perfect, and that is the running. Just that sense of running is perfectly captured, and adds a control scheme that not only works nearly perfect when running, but breaks all modern FPS movement. The best way to describe it is a first person Prince of Persia. You can run across walls, slide under pipes, swing on bars and complete 180 spins in the air without ever breaking your rhythm. And the levels perfectly compliment your abilities, encouraging you to find the best line to run and see how fast you can get from point A to B. Your devotion to exploring the perfect run coupled with your own ability to control Faith (the protagonist) makes for quite an exciting experience. And indeed, it’s when you are running those lines that the game shines brightest. But even beyond that, many of the levels involve intricate puzzle-solving. Some will leave you figuring out how you are going to get where you need to go through a maze of ducts and pipes. Others will have you leaping across rooftops trying to figure out how to get to the roof of a building in the distance. Each level has some degree of problem-solving, but also is designed so you never have to stop your pace. It’s a perfect blend of action and adventuring that makes for an excellent package.

If running was the majority of the game, I would be in love. However, combat also plays a key role in the game, and this is unfortunately where Mirror’s Edge falls on it’s face. Combat hits the game like a brick wall in a Sonic game. Early enemies are easy enough to disarm, run past, or otherwise manipulate around, but about 3 chapters in, the enemies kill the action by turning the free running into a stop-and-go experience. In order to proceed in some instances, you must successfully disarm or subdue each enemy. This involves singling out each enemy, stealing their weapon via a perfectly timed button press, then moving onto the next enemy. It’s slow, tedious, and only highlights how bad of a fighting game Mirror’s Edge is. The timing on the button press to disarm enemies on later levels is literally less than a second. Miss the timing twice, and you are dead. Get hit by two stray bullets during the disarm, and you are dead. And despite obtaining the enemy’s weapon when you subdue them, the gun only has about 5-10 bullets of ammo in it. With enemies that can take up to 3-5 shots just to drop, there’s simply no effective way to get past these parts. I understand a little combat in the game, but when half the game is centered around it, it makes for a jarring experience to an otherwise perfect gameplay formula.

Luckily, the experience is beautiful to watch. The city itself just look amazing. Running across rooftops in this eerily sterile city sometimes will trick your eye into thinking it is real. A lot of work went into making the environments look real, and they were successful. The lighting is top-notch, the textures are incredible and the sense of scale is spot-on. But even beyond the environments, just the special effects add to the realism. The sides of the screen will blur when you are running top speed, the distance blurring whenever an object is in your face…just a ton of little graphical tricks that bring the whole thing to life. Even being able to see your feet as you move through the environments absorbs you into the experience. It is obvious Dice knows their way around these next-gen systems, which is why it’s baffling that they opted away from rendered cutscenes and instead chose to present the story in a series of terrible animations. I’ve seen Flash cartoons that were more impressive than these terrible videos. Some might consider it artistic, but I’m not buying it. They simply looked rushed, and though that might not be far from the truth, it really brings down the whole graphical package.

While we are on the subject, let’s talk about the story. You play as Faith, working for a group of runners that transport information in a city that is under complete governmental control. Everything is under governmental scrutiny and control, so runners are the only way of getting non-regulated information from one person to another. It sounds like the perfect backdrop to build this game on. Take yellow bags with this unregulated information from one place to another while avoiding any police resistance. It could easily be built to be interesting. But Dice ditches all of that by the end of Chapter 1. They instead decide to focus the whole game on saving your sister, who was framed for murder. By doing this, Dice actually destroys the whole plot they spent so much time creating during development. So many opportunities to actually get a feel for the environment and the cast of characters are missed because the story is wrapped up in a murder mystery. Interesting characters fly by with only minutes of screen time, while boring uninspired character take up most of it. What even makes the whole situation worse is that, upon unlocking concept art as you progress through the game, Dice goes on to list a number of interesting background details and concept pictures that had to be scrapped to focus on the murder story. It’s almost frustrating to know all those good ideas went out the window. It also doesn’t help that the ending leaves a number of loose ends open, not to mention that you burn through the whole experience so fast (it took me about 7 hours to get through), you don’t have time to develop any emotional attachment to anyone beyond the lead character.

Some other things about the game worth mentioning is the game’s soundtrack is excellent, along with the solid voice acting and sound effects. If there’s one portion that they nailed, it’s the sound. The sound immerses you and brings you into the environment. The songs hit at the right moment and have the right pace for the situation. And the voice actors are mostly perfect, with the exception of one or two out-of-place comments, which doesn’t really deter from the whole package.

Outside of the game itself, you also have access to time trials, which are small sections of stages that you can run through to nail a perfect run and blazing fast time. There are also leaderboards for bragging rights, and a ghost mode so you can compete against yourself. If you are into time trails, this is a great game for them. Beyond that, there’s also a lot of unlockable concept art, concept videos, and the entire game soundtrack. There are also 3 yellow bags buried in each level that you can go back and collect, though they are only good for Achievements/Trophies. The only thing the game is really lacking is any type of multiplayer options. It’s single player only, though the time trials can be good for at least some competition. You better be good, though, because some of those top times in the earlier levels are already insane.

All-in-all, Mirror’s Edge seems to be a good start to a potentially great series. The game’s story is too focused, and the whole experience could have easily been twice as long. Combat is almost to the point of frustration, and occurs way too often. But when you are running, you can tell that there is a shell of an amazing game wanting to come out. It’s just a shame there were so many faults along the way. Rent it for a weekend, enjoy your brief time with it, and then hope for a sequel that can turn this good start into a great series.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Stars: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writer: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, Bob Kane

Plot: Batman and James Gordon join forces with Gotham’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, to take on a psychotic bank robber known as The Joker, whilst other forces plot against them, and Joker’s crimes grow more and more deadly.

Ocelot’s Opinion: It’s pretty obvious that after almost two years of hype, everyone’d have what would amount to unrealistic expectations for this movie. Shit, I know I did. And let’s be honest, there’s no way a film could live up to the hype.

Except that this movie completely lived up to every bit of hype surrounding it. Hell, it surpassed the hype and I am not lying one bit, nor am I exaggerating, when I say that after reflecting back on this movie after seeing it twelve hours ago, that I can’t find a single god damn fault with any part of it.

What the hell else can I say without rambling here? This movie is so good that it goes beyond being a superhero movie and becomes a goddamn epic crime movie on the same line as Heat, the Godfather, etc. You’ll grin in places, you’ll laugh in spots, you’ll cringe, and there’s a few spots where you’ll choke up.

Quite possibly the best movie I have ever seen, even surpassing Jaws. That’s it.

Do I even need to give a star rating here? (Yes! – Pedantic Dr. Zoidberg)

Ocelot’s Rating: *****

Ocelot’s Extra Opinion: I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day. He had just seen the Dark Knight. I asked him what he thought. Allow me to paraphrase a snippet of our conversation:

“What’d you think of it?”
“I hated it.”
“Why?”
“Heath Ledger’s Joker sucked.”
“You’re the first person I’ve talked to who’s said that. Why?”
“Because he was just some dude wearing makeup. And he didn’t have his Joker island hideout like in the comics. And where was Harley Quinn?”

I changed the topic after that, because I didn’t want to get into an argument. But what he said stuck in my head.

I think the fact that these three things, along with the Joker’s use of face-changing venom and other Joker-esque gimmicks, is exactly what made this movie work and Ledger’s performance stand out. A realistic take on a supervillain is such a refreshing change from the over-the-top schlock that you’ll get in most superhero movies and TV shows. Let’s look at the Joker compared to Venom in Spider-Man 3. We got Venom right out of the comics – the look, the performance, even the basic storyline was spot-on from the comics. And it tanked.

Why? Because many things in comic books do not translate well to the big screen, and vice versa. Comic books and movies are two entirely different visual mediums. You have to make things over-the-top from a visual standpoint in order to make them entertaining, because comics are denied motion and sound. They have to make up for it hten by being larger than life. When they do this in television and movies, it just doesn’t work. In fact, it comes off as fucking goofy.

At the same time, I have no idea what the hell else one could ask for from The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger.

Make no mistake – it’s a more realistic version of the Joker, but does that matter really? Fuck no. What we got on screen was *the Joker*, from the look to the personality to the performance, and frankly I thought the explainations given for why he looekd the way he did (warpaint combined with scarring when he was younger) made the character stand out that much more as the real deal. Same with Two-Face. Does it really matter a damn that he didn’t get acid thrown in his face in a court of law? Hell no. Aaron Eckhart

Then again, if folks are so anal as to let stupid piddly shit keep them from enjoying something truly great and a cut above the norm, fuck ‘em.

TBO