Sorry, I meant to say “The Dark Knight was one of the best action movies ever”, but all that wouldn’t fit in the title space.  Raking in $198 million in it’s first weekend, plus that added bonus of $18 million just on the midnight showing, I think the film did pretty well for its self.  The 2hr 30min (+/-) was undeniably Ledger’s best work, and Aaron Eckhart’s role was beyond what I thought he could handle.  Oh, that Christial Bale fellow is still a badass.

Deadline Hollywood:I’ve just been told by unofficial sources that Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight is playing to packed Sunday performances for over $40M and maybe as high as $43M. That would mean a 9th record for the latest Batman installment since Spider-Man 3’s Sunday take in 2007 was a record-setting $39.9M. It’s also now abundantly clear that the Warner Bros caped crusader will crush the old 3-day weekend non-holiday record set by Spider-Man 3 last year. Also, Dark Knight should break its 9th record by beating the all-time weekly tally. Meanwhile, in its first six days, DK will have grossed more than the entire run of director Chris Nolan’s first installment Batman Begins.

Apparently I’ve taken the official role on this site as The Dark Knight updater.  Our homies (i.e. people we steal teh internetz from) over at WWTDD have posted the first 6 minutes of The Dark Knight.  There was a video camera recording (see below) floating around the web, but that version was pretty damn shaky.

The actual clip?  Pretty fucking awesome.  I’m actually think that this performance might be better than Jack Nicholson’s in the original movie.  Click here to go to WWTDD to watch it on their stupid media player that doesn’t allow people to rip off of it, or, watch the bad ass video camera version below.

Going into the first (new) Batman movie, I wasn’t too excited.  I figured that they were going to murder a classic film like so many others had done before (see Superman).  From the moment it started, it had me on the edge of my seat, and to this day remains one of my favorite action movies.

With the surrounding buzz around The Dark Knight, it’s hard not to try to pass judgement… I mean they have to live up to a great first film, the classic series and the fact it was Heath Ledger’s last role.  Well, somehow Dominoes Pizza has an exclusive trailer thats circulating around the web, and with it comes new footage.  I’ll let you be the judge of it, but for what it’s worth I’m dragging my girlfriend to it on opening day.

The early reviews of The Dark Knight are trickling in, and word is that Heath Ledger’s final performance is one to remember him by. Los Angeles-area critics got an early press screening Thursday night (luckies), and the best-supporting-actor campaign has already begun.

David Germain of The Associated Press writes: “With his final full film role, Ledger delivers what may be remembered as the finest performance of his career. … At times sounding like a cross between tough guy James Cagney in a gangster flick and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s fastidious Truman Capote, Ledger elevates Batman’s No. 1 nemesis to a place even Jack Nicholson did not take him in 1989’s Batman.” The Dark Knight comes out July 18.

So what if Mary Kate Olsen and Heath Ledger were hooking up? I don’t really care and neither should you. The point is that Heath’s masseuse found him “cold to touch” and called Mary Kate 2 times before the police, knowing that she was at least a trusted friend who had the ability to send help. She knew the situation was delicate. She was probably thinking about the massive amount of cameras, the morbid public eye, and the apathy of police work when she dialed Mary Kate to frantically ask what to do. Yeah, it looks a little shady, but when you read his last interview in the New York Times, you’ll see there’s no foul play. Just a tragic accident with sleeping pills; a male Marilyn Monroe. May he rest in peace and his life be celebrated.

As often happens when he throws himself into a part, the actor is not sleeping much.

“Last week, I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”

One night, he said, he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.

Even as he spoke, Ledger was hard-pressed to keep still. He got up and poured more coffee. He stepped outside into the courtyard and smoked a cigarette. He shook his hair out from under its hood, put a rubber band around it, took out the rubber band, put on a hat, took off the hat, put the hood back up. He went outside for another cigarette.

Polite and charming, he nonetheless gave off the sense that the last thing he wanted to do was delve deep into himself for public consumption.

Last week, when I Am Legend opened, some dude filmed the full trailer for the upcoming Batman sequel The Dark Knight on his cellphone camera. I didn’t bother checking it out, because it was a movie trailer captured on a cellphone camera. But I saw I Am Legend on Monday, and that shit was good. Almost as good as the trailer for The Dark Knight. If you’re one of the four people who haven’t seen I Am Legend yet, a much better (though not great) quality version of the The Dark Knight trailer is embedded above. The film will open Summer 2008 and stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker (looking pretty damn creepy I might add). 2008 = year of the fanboy.

This was supposed to be shown before The Simpsons Movie, but if that’s the case, the idiots at the local movie theater didn’t get the fucking memo. Not that this teaser shows anything. You can just hear Michael Caine and Christian Bale muttering very seriously about shit and Heath Ledger getting a little Joker-y. That’s it. Still, this teaser gave me the fanboy sweats. The Dark Knight is due out next summer.