Dark Knight

 
Through an inexplicable play of circumstance, I ended up watching the latest

Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises enirely on my own. Let's just say a large

cake with moult Marta Stewart Buttercream icing was also involved. What a

night, as the song goes. I might also add, for those unacquainted with this icing : whipped

saltless butter with a sack of fluffy sugar and a dash of vanilla, that at first bite, makes one think

it probably impossible to eat more than a tiny forktip of. Nay, there is a solution: one

transfers to a bowl, immerses the cake in cruhsed pinneapple with added orange juice and

red grapes. Eat with a spoon, lie down.

For the film: Dark Knight isn't a film, its an experience; like opera isn't theater, or a rock

concert isn't a club. I ended up playing with the sound control, taking the action sequences

down quite a few notches, to my chagrin. The score was wonderful, percussive, playful.

They're building new kinds of cinemas for films like this: so they should.

As for the storyline, I ended up stopping the whole thing in the middle, and going to

Wikipedia the bone up on the plot and various characters. Not really Wagnerian, but I hadn't

seen the previous films, and my grasp of the Marvel Comic universe was spotty. Thus the

film, under certain lights, brilliant: "Call me", ventures Cat Woman's latest, as she leaves him

for dead. Or CW herself, fighting off an urge to cry, as she turns aound to inflict serious

damage, in heeled booties to die for.

I watched the film in three instalments, working on my programming tutorials in between,

over the whole afternoon. Later in the evening, having taken the film back to the video store,

I had a pang of conscience. Wasn't that business about Bruce Wayne investing in Fusion

power, whose only possible downside is misdirection toward conventional weapons an

irresponsible plot line. Heck, one would need to detonate a bomb just to start one of those

reactors. (They're meant to operate in million(s) degree Celsius as compared to a fusion

reactor in the 300 C range). But I won't live to see that as the forces of history take the

unthinkable to the next level. Pity...