That Movie Wasn't So Bad After All

I saw The Dark Knight with Beth on Saturday. I liked it better than Batman Begins, though like that one it was painfully long to my tastes. And here is one of those conundrums I so enjoy. American culture is notorious for it's short attention span, and if we were able to focus our second grade intellectual level on anything outside ourselves we'd realize what a mockery we are to the thinking world.

We are constantly pounded with MTV style sound bytes, and rather than work or even think for a couple seconds we accept the word of the lowest common denominators like billo. We'll form any opinion people who pay monolithic marketing engines want us to. In america to disagree with the mob is weird. To think for yourself is traitorous. The peer pressure to be an easily pliant tool and afraid of nearly anything is overwhelming. Yet our action movies are getting painfully long. King Kong was so long I sacked out during the last fifteen minutes when it first came out on dvd and have had no desire to watch the rest. I've never been one to fall in with the crowd, and while most trends leave me a little cold this is one I like.

At least in our movies there is a thirst for more focus and time spent on a topic. The antithesis of modern manipulative marketing. Will our population become a little less herd-like for a while? I certainly see the possibility, and it is exciting.

On a sadder note, we saw Heath Ledger just as his range as an artist was blossoming and becoming evident. He's been deified a bit, and given the circumstances it is understandable. The only other movie I saw where he had a major role was 10 Things I Hate About You, (an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew) where he and Julia Stiles made the movie. I've a copy of Brokeback Mountain at home which I haven't watched, but is now a lot farther up on my list of heavy movies. Funny thing. Since I started going to live theatre a lot, I don't see as many heavy movies.