The latest eye-popping news re: the third Chris Nolan Batman installment begs credulity.

The American Cinema Editors nominations mirror the PGA and DGA noms; I maintain that the five dramas will be named the best picture Oscar nominees on January 22. The Editors will announce winners at their awards show on February 15.

BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (DRAMATIC):
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Angus Wall & Kirk Baxter
The Dark Knight
Lee Smith, A.C.E.
Frost/Nixon
Mike Hill, A.C.E. & Dan Hanley, A.C.E.
Mil
Elliot Graham
Slumdog Millionaire
Chris Dickens
BEST EDITED FEATURE FILM (COMEDY OR MUSICAL):
In Bruges
Jon Gregory, A.C.E.
Mama Mia
Leslie Walker
Tropic Thunder
Greg Hayden
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Alisa Lepselter
WALL-E
Stephen Schaffer
BEST EDITED DOCUMENTARY:
Bush’s War
Steve Audette
Chicago 10
Stuart Levy, A.C.E.
Man on Wire
Jinx Godfrey

There were no surprises Thursday morning at the DGA nominations. The top five movies--the same as the Producers Guild--are likely to be the films announced January 22 for the Oscars: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire.

Yesterday I realized that the movie picking up Oscar steam--besides comic-book movie The Dark Knight--is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It has scale and scope and ambition and emotion and yes, it's a hit.

The impeccably crafted Milk had the earmarks of a winner for a while --it has period, history and political timeliness on its side--but the film's big win may be Sean Penn. Also well-made, Frost/Nixon is a smaller actors' vehicle. Slumdog Millionaire is hugely popular, a crowd pleaser. (I love it.) But I suspect it doesn't look and feel like the kind of best picture the entire Academy goes for. I wonder if it's a tad rough around the edges, violent, and melodramatic for the older set. The Dark Knight will win many Oscars, but I doubt that best picture will be one of them. Which leaves Benjamin Button in the lead right now.

I was so riveted by the conversation KCRW music director Jason Bentley had with The Dark Knight composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard on KCRW Wednesday morning that I sat in my car in the parking lot to hear the section of the score with the evil Joker cello bit. It's unusual for two composers to work so closely together; they started collaborating with director Chris Nolan on Batman Begins.Check out this transcript and full interview.

Zimmer describes how he wanted to use a single cello note to identify the Joker. He wound up with two:

“I kept churning around…how do you describe anarchy, how do you describe a villain and not do it in a way that’s been done before? One of the things I got very much from the character was a fearlessness, and an evenness in a way. The Joker is the only person you can trust in the movie. The Joker is the only one who will never lie to you because he is consistent about his philosophy.

“I really wanted to do the whole thing just with one note. I had this idea that rather than what a note is in the context of the notes surrounding it, what could I do emotionally through a performance within one note? How much can I stretch the meaning of a single note and get it down to such minimalism. I failed slightly. I had to use two notes in the end.”

The Producers Guild vote is revealing. Its top five:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire

The list will be the same for the Oscar on January 22, methinks. I went over the categories for each of the top contenders. These five films have more deep support from the Academy branches than any of their competitors, including Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Gran Torino, The Wrestler and Wall-E.

As if Warners' Oscar campaign for The Dark Knight weren't enough--they're not just buying ads and courting the media but deluging press with soundtracks, printed scripts and other materials---check out this viral fan-driven Oscar campaign for The Dark Knight. Dark Campaign is sending postcards to Variety to drum up support for their cause.

I'm not sure what that will accomplish: in any case, the movie itself has already inspired considerable media support, not just from the likes of me but from awards givers like AFI. Here's an early Variety feature story about why the Academy should consider superhero performances.

While Heath Ledger and a rash of Dark Knight nominations are inevitable, my sense is that Dark Knight, Revolutionary Road, The Reader and Doubt are vying for the fifth best picture slot (assuming that Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon and Milk occupy four). Each of these film has supporters--and many other films do as well. The one to get the most passionate support will gain that fifth spot on the ballot. Does Wall-E have a chance? Too many people--especially actors--assume that it gets an animation nom--and likely win. And I've heard people argue, also, that features and animation should be considered as different kinds of films. I don't believe in the animation ghetto. But it's how things are set up now.

I'm not a big fan of live-blogging, but it does work occasionally, as NY Post critic-blogger Lou Lumenick demonstrates with his play-by-play reporting of the New York Film Critics's divisive voting this morning.

Thus, Rachel Getting Married led the first two ballots and Milk pulled ahead on the third, followed by Happy-Go-Lucky and Slumdog Millionaire; Milk star Sean Penn handily beat The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke; Milk's Josh Brolin beat out The Dark Knight's Heath Ledger; and documentary Oscar front-runner Man on Wire beat out Waltz with Bashir and Trouble the Water. Vicky Cristina Barcelona's Penelope Cruz easily defeated Viola Davis of Doubt; third place was a tie between Rachel Getting Married's Rosemary DeWitt and Debra Winger. Happy-Go-Lucky writer-director Mike Leigh narrowly edged out Slumdog Millionaire's Danny Boyle. Wall-E took best animated feature over Waltz with Bashir.

Here's Lumenick on how the best actress vote went down, which helps explain the ballot process:

Sally Hawkins of "Happy-Go-Lucky'' won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actress as voting got under way this morning at the Time-Life Building. Hawkins won on the second weighted ballot, receiving 39 points to 32 points for Melissa Leo of "Frozen River,'' with Kate Winslet ("Revolutionary Road'') and Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married'') with 22 apiece. In the NYFCC's convoluted voting system, the critics make one choice apiece n the first round. If nothing captures a majority, there follows one or more weighted ballots, each critic ranks choices with 3, 2, and 1 points; the winner also has to appear on the majority of ballots until the fouth ballot (if there is one) -- in Hawkins' case, 18 ballots.

OSCAR ANALYSIS
Finally, the critics voting solidifies my thinking re: the Oscar race. The Golden Globes may add some fuel tomorrow, but for now I see Milk as the front-runner for best picture, followed by Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight, with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Doubt and Revolutionary Road fighting it out for last two slots. Penn may be the front-runner now, but the man he has to beat is Clint Eastwood, who gives a devastating performance in Gran Torino. The Academy will be moved to tears by him. Mickey Rourke looks solid for a nom. The Visitor's Richard Jenkins could have used more help here.

Thanks to critics, Sally Hawkins and Melissa Leo are moving into best actress contention, while I've Loved You So Long's Kristin Scott Thomas may not. Changeling's Angelina Jolie is fading fast. Milk's Josh Brolin and James Franco could both win supporting slots.

Revolutionary Road will be in the hunt for picture, director, adapted screenplay, actress, actor and supporting actor. But the grim, serious drama needs some love at this point, especially from critics. And may get it.

The Reader, which may have a shot for Kate Winslet in supporting and David Hare for adapted screenplay, has a long way to go. It got slammed by critics today, earning an initial 54 % on Metacritic. That is not good enough. It needs all the help it can get.

Doubt has the support of the dominant actors branch and likely the writers (if not directors); it will be vying for actress, supporting actress, supporting actor and adapted screenplay.

Much as I admire Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, it strikes me as oddly perverse for the NYFCC to throw their foreign vote away on a movie that is only available on DVD at this point, rather than trying to boost the theatrical and Oscar fortunes of a new upcoming release. But it's a free country.

The full list of winners is on the jump:

As Chris Nolan worked the room at Warner Bros.' Oscar-season party at Il Cielo for The Dark Knight, he looked as relaxed as I've ever seen him. That's because for the first time in six years, he's not working on a movie. He's been going over old files, reading, rewriting a seven-year-old original script that he wrote at a time when he hadn't done a big-budget studio movie. Now he has, so he's scaling it back. And he's enjoying the luxury, he says, "of just noodling around."

The LAT's Rachel Abramowitz was at the same party, collecting string for this Heath Ledger piece.

[Joker Oscar courtesy InContention.com]

Batman goes Lego; check out these figures.

This Dark Knight Joker poster is brilliant. UPDATE: It's available on t-shirts. I just bought four for Christmas presents.

Another of my mash-up faves is on the jump:

I've been taking a wait-and-see approach on the Oscar race. You really don't know until you screen all the pictures. But enough other people are seeing them, now, for me to take a stab at where the race is right now. And nobody I know of has seen Australia, Seven Pounds, The Reader or Gran Torino.

The movies are falling into five categories.

Best Picture frontrunners with likely deep support:
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight (but Warners has to delicately calibrate this campaign)
Doubt
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire

Likely acting nods, but the pics need critical support and awards recognition:
Changeling (Angelina Jolie)
Defiance (Liev Schreiber)
Frost/Nixon (Frank Langella)
I've Loved You So Long (Kristin Scott Thomas)
Milk (Sean Penn)
Seven Pounds (Will Smith)
W. (Josh Brolin)
The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke)

Little Indies that Could:
Frozen River (Melissa Leo)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Sally Hawkins)
Rachel Getting Married (Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt)
The Visitor (Richard Jenkins)
Wendy and Lucy (Michelle Williams)

Best Animated Feature:
Kung Fu Panda
Wall-E (could go all the way if it lands enough noms)
Waltz with Bashir

Best Foreign Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Class
Everlasting Moments
Waltz with Bashir

Oscar season is under way. How do I know? Well, Paramount Vantage has published its Academy screening schedule and is pushing hard for The Duchess, Defiance and Revolutionary Road. You'd never know that the label had been slashed within an inch of its life. That's because Paramount marketing co-head Megan Colligan is still on the Vantage case.

Another bellwether: LAT blogger Geoff Boucher's "three-part exclusive" interview with Christopher Nolan. Yes, Warner Bros. wants to sell The Dark Knight DVDs, but no director submits to a long interview in the LAT in advance of a DVD release unless Oscar is at stake.

The Dark Knight (which is sneaking up on Titanic's all-time worldwide boxoffice gross, as James Cameron well knows) should nab some Oscar noms and might even win some awards, for the late Heath Ledger, as well as various tech contributors. But director, screenplay, best picture---that's another kettle of fish for a comic book blockbuster.

While Dark Knight scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, and many critics will put it on their ten best lists, it's not going to win year-end critics' group prizes, because they tend to spotlight smaller pics that need help, such as Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York or Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, two films that were summarily dismissed this weekend by at least one of At the Movies' Two Twerps. (Why do I keep watching? The habit is ingrained but painful.)

Iron Man is another example of a deserving film that nabbed better reviews than most films this year (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and may be overlooked in major categories at Oscar time. On the other hand, Jonathan Demme's horrific thriller Silence of the Lambs and Peter Jackson's fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings weren't supposed to be Oscar bait either. Justin Chang examines the superhero Oscar phenom.

Also climbing up a high Oscar wall is the year's best-reviewed movie---as of late October, unlikely to be unseated--Disney/Pixar's Wall-E, from Andrew Stanton. It earned 97% when it first opened June 27. Here's my story about why it's tough going for an animated film to earn a best picture slot. Again, critics groups will likely stick the film in their animated category and focus on rewarding smaller fare.

But bowing to pressure from the community, Disney and Pixar are going for it. I've got insider info: Variety's running a Disney ad on Thursday that not only asks for Academy members' consideration for Wall-E for best animated feature but for best picture as well. (Here's the LAT's look at the new Disney animation under John Lasseter, who cracked the whip on Disney's upcoming Bolt, UPDATE and the NYT on big movies going for Oscar.) Disney's going to put on a concerted marketing effort to push Wall-E with AMPAS, the guilds, critics, producers, the works.

Wall-E deserves a shot at best picture. And it couldn't be more timely, in terms of nailing the zeitgeist. It won't take long, the way things are going, for us all to wind up in Wall-E's world.

Clearly, Warner Bros. is abandoning the idea of sending Superman into a movie with other superheroes, like a Superman/Batman movie or Justice League, because as Warner prexy Jeff Robinov admits in this long interview with The Wall Street Journal about his studio's future strategy, right now Warners doesn't know who Superman is. Wanted: a new model Superman.

Figuring out how the iconic DC comic character will proceed is front and center for the studio, which was not entirely happy with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Neither were many fans, who objected to the love triangle with a married Lois Lane, as well as her child, fathered by Superman. They also want a mightier and more formidable villain than Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. Director Bryan Singer, who is currently attached to what was to be a Superman Returns sequel, had promised fanns at Comic-Con to go "Wrath of Khan" on it. If Singer, who has been preoccupied with his upcoming World War II Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, can't find a "reboot" that meets Warners' expectations, they'll move on.

Clearly, the fans care deeply about this superhero. Comments flood in whenever we touch on the subject. There's life in the venerable comic book character yet, if Warners can crack this challenge.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
In a front page story in this Sunday’s Weekly Variety, Marc Graser explores Warner Bros.’ plans to get its classic DC characters onto the bigscreen. Or rather, its plans to make plans.

Batman is soaring, but the future of Superman on film is uncertain. The Justice League movie has been pushed back and it’s hard to imagine this Batman team being too enthusiastic about seeing their gritty, realistic take on the character alongside Superman and Wonder Woman. Greg Berlanti’s Green Lantern script has been well-received at the studio, but not yet greenlit.

Meanwhile, rival Marvel has launched its own studio, had a smash with Iron Man and a successful reboot of The Incredible Hulk, and announced four more pictures, introducing film versions of at least two more of their star characters, Thor and Captain America.

This begs the question: Why has Marvel been able to move so decisively to put its properties on film while Warner Bros seems to be stuck in a perpetual ponder? The answers are sometimes paradoxical.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Entertainment Weekly is making no secret of their unhappiness with corporate cousin Warner Bros. for letting them put Harry Potter on the Fall Preview cover and then moving the film to July '09.

"EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin’ information," blogs Jeff Giles.

But that works both ways.

Earlier this summer, when I set out to write my preview article on The Dark Knight, Warner publicists put one condition on the interviews: No one would talk about the death of Heath Ledger. Since that angle didn't interest me, I readily agreed. There seemed to be jitters in Burbank that the story would seem ghoulish and scare people away.

Then the EW cover story on The Dark Knight came out all about, you guessed it, Heath Ledger's death. So I call the Warner publicists to complain that they were just trying to feed their corporate cousin an exclusive. But they were as unhappy about that cover story as EW is about Warner moving Harry Potter, and in fact said basically the same thing Giles said: Warner is Warner, EW is EW, EW does what it does like any other media outlet. They insisted that they hadn't signed off on or collaborated with EW on the Heath-Ledger-is-dead TDK cover story, and that EW had assembled the story from snippets of interviews conducted under other pretenses.

The bright side, I guess, is that this proves EW has some editorial independence.

Christian Bale can rest easy and enjoy the success of The Dark Knight. British prosecutors say that Bale will not face charges from an alleged assault filed by his family after strong words broke out in the Dorchester Hotel on July 20, on the eve of the movie's premiere in London.

“Management’s biggest challenge is transitioning into this brave new world without trampling the massive revenue streams that have supported our businesses for so long."

Ain't it the truth. Warner Bros. chairman Barry Meyer states the obvious in a fascinating NYT piece that uses Jeffrey Bewkes' rebooting of the Time Warner empire as a window (no pun intended) into the challenges facing the entertainment business at large. Will Bewkes be able to gain a network by acquiring NBC Universal? Will increased profit margins on VOD save the corporation from declining DVD fortunes? And while The Dark Knight reigns supreme this summer, will putting more focus on the Warners studio yield consistent profits?

[Photo courtesy NYTimes]

[Posted by David S. Cohen]

With all the carping over Batman’s voice in “The Dark Knight” (my colleague Peter Debruge calls it the “butch voice”) I would like to point out for the record: As any self-respecting Batman nerd (I plead guilty) knows from devouring the hardcover about-Batman’s-toys book that came out with “Batman Begins,” there is an explanation for the voice. They just haven’t put it in the movies yet.

So in the spirit of public service, I have written the missing scene fragment.

(Posted by David S. Cohen)

Another random thought sparked by Andrew Klavan’s op-ed piece in the WSJ arguing that the “Dark Knight” filmmakers are secret conservatives who must mask their true opinions by putting them into a comicbook movie.

If we extrapolate from the movie to real life, since Batman gives control of his let's-spy-on-everyone-in-Gotham's-cellphones technology to Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who doesn’t approve of it and believes it’s too much power for one man to have, the Nolans et al must believe that the one person who ought to have control of the government’s real-life warrantless wiretapping system is…. senator Russ Feingold?

I tried to think of someone in show business whom I'd trust with that power. My wife suggested… Morgan Freeman. But I’m not so sure. True, he’s Hollywood's go-to guy for kindly authority figures: God, the President, the head of the Fraternity of Assassins. (Okay, not always so kindly.) But I’ve interviewed him on a couple of junkets and I think there’s just a touch of the rogue about Mr. Freeman. It’s part of his charm. But I can’t help but wonder if, given that power, he just might have a little bit too much fun...

Meanwhile, outside Comic-Con, a Wall Street Journal editorial claims that The Dark Knight is actually a clever way of praising the presidency of George W. Bush. One Variety editor says the writer may not know how right he is.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]

Is George W. Bush the Dark Knight?

That’s what mystery writer Andrew Klavan argues in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He opines that The Dark Knight filmmakers are secret conservatives who must mask their real opinions by putting them in a comicbook movie.

But let’s unpack this a bit. One of the surreal aspects of the post-9/11 world is how much Osama bin Laden resembles a comicbook villain, complete with exotic costume and a fondness for monologues. In a Batman comic, he might have been The Sheik — and in the self-righteous pose he strikes as he plots the destruction of the United States, he is a cousin to R’as al Ghul, the villain Liam Neeson portrays in Batman Begins.

Al Ghul isn’t just a villain, though. He’s also Bruce Wayne’s mentor, the man who teaches him the courage and skills he uses to become the Batman. In fact, al Ghul calls him “my greatest student” and serves as a dark father figure for Bruce Wayne, who seems to be working out all kinds of father-son issues throughout the film.

In Batman Begins, Gotham is plagued with crime and corruption; Batman attacks the mob and saves the city from the Scarecrow and al Ghul’s WMD attack. Yet once Batman shows up, the Joker’s nihilistic terrorism is unleashed. The film ends with Lt. Jim Gordon warning Batman about escalation — that he’s inspiring not only the good people of Gotham, but also the criminals. This suggests Batman called the Joker into existence.

If Batman is George W., should we then conclude that the Batman Begins filmmakers think Bush’s methods inspired the Al-Qaeda and bin Laden? That’s more in line with anti-Bush arguments, including many made by Democrats over the years.

I don’t know anything about the politics of Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan or David Goyer. But I think Klavan misses the point when he writes:

“The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films… The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

“The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of The Dark Knight itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.”

This brings to mind one of the most unsettling scenes in The Dark Knight, in which Batman beats up the Joker in the police interview room as the police look on, hoping to force him to reveal what he’s done with good guys Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes.

My first reaction to the scene, which has been endlessly reproduced in publicity photos, was that it was a huge visual blunder. Batman looks cool and sinister at night, in the shadows; in the harsh light of the interview room, he looks ridiculous.

But then I thought more about the scene. As Batman confronts the Joker, the film cuts away to the police, the normal people, watching them from the other side of the one-way mirror — just as we, the audience, are watching Batman and the Joker through the movie screen.

This is also the scene in which the Joker taunts Batman: “What would I do without you? You complete me,” and warns, “To them, you’re just a freak. Like me.” Those words may come from the mouth of the villain, but the filmmaking suggests the Joker has, like a Shakespearean fool on PCP, hit on a harsh truth: Batman has more in common with his killer-clown foe than with the normal people he means to protect.

So should we conclude The Dark Knight argues that Bush and bin Laden are two sides of the same coin? If so, the Nolans actually come down somewhere to the left of Michael Moore.

In fairness to Goyer and the Nolans, I also think that The Dark Knight is the Act II of a three-act play. It’s a helluva second act, but I sure hope that in Act III they’re going to take a clearer point of view, rather than just asking provocative questions.

Holy batshit! Shades of Russell Crowe are haunting Dark Knight star Christian Bale, who got into something in advance of the record opening of the second Christopher Nolan Batman installment that caused his mother and sister to file assault allegations. Wow. We don't yet know what went on here.

How bad can it be to star in what could be the biggest movie of the year? Bad timing indeed.

It's a strange high-low time, as industry folks batten down the hatches in the face of tighter credit and an unresolved de facto SAG strike. There's unemployment, fewer movies being made, agency attrition, layoffs across many companies, and yet the summer b.o. is going strong, and breaking records.

Despite its grim take on the world and two and a half hour running time, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's follow-up to Batman Begins, broke b.o. records: its estimated $155 million gross was the best three-day opening ever, beating Spider-Man 3's $151 million in 2007. (It scored 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, narrowly beating Iron Man's 93%.) Another funny thing happened at the summer boxoffice: movies that nabbed good reviews lasted longer in theaters than the ones that got creamed. There is hope for us yet.

The Top Ten boxoffice cumes to date this summer, with Rotten Tomatoes scores, are:

1. Iron Man $314.4M 93%

2 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull $312.5M 76%

3. Kung Fu Panda $206.5M 88%

4. Hancock $191.5M 38%

5. Wall-E $182.5M 96%

6. Dark Knight $155.3M 94%

7. Sex and the City: The Movie $149.8M 51%

8. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $139.3M 66%

9. Incredible Hulk $131.7M 67%

10. Wanted $123.3M 73%

Clearly, Hancock, starring fluke zone star Will Smith, is the 2008 exception that proves the rule.

Meanwhile women and Abba fans gave the musical Mamma Mia! a respectable $27.6 million opening estimate. Thanks to strong holdover business from Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wall-E and others, the weekend broke the record for a non-holiday gross with a total $250 million. Hellboy took a hit from direct fanboy competitor Dark Knight, declining 71%.

Here are weekend b.o. reports from Variety and Fantasy Moguls, which argues the case for a best picture Oscar for The Dark Knight:

Everyone seems to lament the ever-eroding ratings for Hollywood's biggest night. They blame the host and the length of acceptance speeches, but the real reason, in my opinion, is the obscurity of some of the selections. One role of the Oscars is certainly to champion smaller films, but the awards should also recognize the year's best popular entertainment. The Dark Knight and Wall-E are both Oscar caliber movies in my mind. Last year, there should have been a Best Picture slot for The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal). If the industry wants a return to its rating glory, voters should not narrow their list of nominees exclusively to small, well-reviewed art films.

I suspect The Dark Knight will wind up with many Oscar nominations, mainly in the technical categories, as well as Heath Ledger's supporting actor slot. Best picture? I don't know about that. As for Pixar's lauded Wall-E, here's why the animated film will find tough sledding en route to a best picture Oscar.

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview. Stay tuned to Variety's ongoing Comic-Con coverage.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

When Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight opens Friday, it will be huge. $130 million huge? That's a high figure for a two-and-a-half hour movie.

And many of those ticket sales are being made in advance. MovieTickets.com, for example, reports that over 700 performances of Dark Knight are already sold out in North America, including over 270 performances in Los Angeles and New York City. The Dark Knight is outselling three of the online ticket seller's top-performing films of all-time at the same point in the sales cycle, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Spider-Man 3 and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Over at online rival Fandango.com, over 500 showtimes of The Dark Knight are already sold out.

MovieTickets.com’s Top-10 Performing Films of All-Time
1. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

4. The Passion of The Christ

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

6. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

8. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

9. Matrix Reloaded

10. Spider-Man 3

Fandango's weekend ticket sales (as of 7/15/08 2:00 p.m. PT) :

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

The Dark Knight “Go” 90%

Mamma Mia! “Go” 3%

Hellboy II: The Golden Army “Go” 2%

Journey to the Center of the Earth “Go” 2%

Wall-E “Go” 1%

A key story of summer 2008 is the rise of Marvel Entertainment. Now in charge of its own destiny with Iron Man and Incredible Hulk, the company is actively developing its own characters for movies down the line. And execs are willing to defend Marvel's long-term interests, whether that means negotiating tough with Jon Favreau on directing the Iron Man sequel or telling Edward Norton that some of his favorite scenes in Incredible Hulk will have to wait for the DVD.

At the Hellboy II premiere, Favreau told me he that while he was planning to do Iron Man 2 and wanted to do The Avengers as well, Marvel was unlikely to wait for him to do both. The "official" announcement will likely wait for Comic-Con.

Now execs at DC Comics are taking note. Long more passive in their relationship to their films, there are signs of change, reports David Cohen. Still up in the air are such DC projects as the next Batman and Superman movies (how about those Louis Leterrier rumors?) and Justice League, not to mention the long-in-the-works Wonder Woman.

Time's Richard Corliss loves the latest Chris Nolan Batman.

In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.

A screenplay has leaked on the Internet, of a recently unearthed Dark Knight script by writer-director Michael Bay. (It's a send-up.) Warners clearly opted to go another way.

Finally, I would have preferred to see The Dark Knight in 35 mm, not IMAX. (I will go see it again when it opens July 18.) While the sequences that were shot with giant cameras were stunning at the IMAX venue--especially the deep detailed helicopter shots over Gotham and the amazing car/truck chase filmed in Chicago's freeway tunnels--I found the movie overwhelming. My brain starts to shut down when it gets over-pixillated, and this film goes on for two and a half hours. (Here's Justin Chang's review.)

My instincts told me when I first saw The Dark Knight trailer: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins follow-up would fall into the trap of the summer tentpole sequel. It's not entirely his fault. The studio gives him his marching orders: top the last one. Make it bigger, better, bolder, more FX, more action, more scale and scope and characters (read toys). What else should a poor boy to do with $180 million?

Nolan delivered on the first Batman reboot and he does it again here. The Dark Knight will work at the boxoffice and keep the franchise alive.

In many ways, this movie functions as a western, with an honorable sheriff (Gary Oldman's lovable police detective Gordon), a nasty outlaw (Heath Ledger's extraordinary, anarchistic Joker), a lone gunman hero operating outside the law (Christian Bale's Batman) with loyal veteran sidekick (Michael Caine as Alfred), and the lovely lass that the outsider cannot have (Rachel Dawes, the delightful and wily Maggie Gyllenhaal).

And then--here's where the movie starts to go off the tracks--we have Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, the too-virtuous-to-be-true D.A. who is in love with Gyllenhaal, thus forming a love triangle, as well as another Batman accomplice, inventor Lucius Fox (read James Bond's Q), played by the over-exposed Morgan Freeman. Then add a bunch of mafia guys led by deliciously wicked Eric Roberts.

Somehow, David S. Goyer (who wrote the story), and screenwriter Nolan brothers Chris and Jonathan manage to play out all these plot strands. But they wind up with a half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie, which is really about Batman vs. Joker, who wind up in an iconic face-off on a main street in Gotham. (Ledger dominates Dark Knight news coverage, natch. The LAT addresses the movie from that angle, while EW goes way overboard. Clearly, Warners is making an Oscar push for the film. Ledger's acting nomination is inevitable; while James Dean and others have been nominated after their deaths, only Network's Peter Finch has won a posthumous Oscar.)

Oddly, because The Dark Knight is busy servicing all these other characters, the movie doesn't spend enough time with its leading man, Bruce Wayne/Batman (BTW, Batman's basso-growly voice is silly).

After twists and turns aplenty, some more satisfying than others, the movie comes to a gratifying conclusion (setting up the next sequel). But while Eckhart is winning as Dent, his character detour as Two-Face does not pay off.

I suspect that the filmmakers should have figured out the shorter version of this movie before they shot it, not after, because by then they couldn't cut it, according to Nolan (the full Q & A from one of my Guild spies is on the jump). Nolan shot The Prestige before he came back to work on the final drafts of the script. And by then he was locked into studio-mandated start and delivery and release dates.

My fantasy of the ideal version of this movie doesn't matter a whit, because it will play. The complexities of the plot are more fun to talk about than anything since Wall-E or Iron Man, and that makes Dark Knight one of the best movies of the summer. Maybe some dark over-nourishment is better than a simpler, structurally perfect masterpiece, after all.

The folks at Wired have posted a nice juicy Dark Knight production story/Chris Nolan interview. I'm working on seeing the movie--there's an L.A. junket this weekend--where they will be screening the pic in IMAX for folks who are doing interviews at the junket. I tend to stay away from junkets, roundtables etc. But I want in!

UPDATE: They're overbooked for the screening, actually turning people who thought they were coming away. The IMAX rooms are smaller than usual, it seems. :-(

They'll let us into their trade screening next week, they say. And meanwhile Rolling Stone has what Richard Roeper would call an "early review." It's a rave.

Here are some of the high points of the Che press conference Thursday:

"The process of editing was intense," said director Steven Soderbergh. "The further you get into it, you need context. That's why you need two movies."

Soderbergh visited Cuba five times but never met Che Guevara cohort Fidel Castro: "I was told, 'Pedro may call you.' He has a reputation for calling at 2 am and saying 'Come over. Let's talk.' I also heard that he likes to stop the film and talk about it when it moves him to. This film he may not survive."

Soderbergh admired Water Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the young Ernesto Guevara: "Walter's movie is really an Act One. With these, now it's a trilogy."

He defended his film's friendly approach to the iconic and polarizing revolutionary: "I've read the anti-Che literature out there. I get the arguments. I feel there's no amount of barbarity I could put on the screen that would satisfy them."

The shoot was rough and tumble:

"On the set I told the actors that I'm not going to be able to take care of you. I'm just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it.

It sounds like he wants to use Smello-vision: "I wish we could transit the smell to the screen. There was a smell on the set."

[Photo of press conference by Jeffrey Wells]

Two playboy superheroes with sidekicks and gadgets and comics fans are duking it out at the summer b.o.: DC's Batman and Marvel's Iron Man. Watch the two action heroes take each other on:

Here's the new HD The Dark Knight trailer. Michael Caine seems to be getting most of the jokes. These quotes popped out:

"It's simple: kill the Batman." -- Heath Ledger as The Joker

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." --Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent

Fandango pollsters report that their filmgoers most want to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Dark Knight during the summer of 2008.

Here are the results of Fandango.com's online nationwide survey, conducted from March 13 to March 30:

Most Anticipated Summer 2008 Movie:

1. INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (82%)

2. THE DARK KNIGHT (42%)

3. IRON MAN (38%)

4. THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN (37%)

5. THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR (30%)

6. GET SMART (29%)

7. THE INCREDIBLE HULK (22%)

8. THE UNTITLED X-FILES SEQUEL (20%)

9. SPEED RACER (19%)

10. SEX AND THE CITY (19%)

Here's a new photo from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due in theaters November 21.

Here's more on the final two Harry Potter movie installments and Hollywood's love affair with the sequel from CBS News:

John Hurt gives some scoop on Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

At ShoWest, Christian Bale talks about The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger:

And the NYP looks into George Lucas's move into TV with Star Wars and Clone Wars, which is also going to be an animated movie.

I have long enjoyed reading Mark Cuban's insights on new media, technology and the internet, mostly, on his blog. But he makes a strange argument about blogs here. He seems to be saying that blogs are tarred and tainted by all the regular folks (like him?) who blog, while any self-respecting big media outlet with journalistic cred would be foolish to sign onto the blog trend--unless they call their "blogs" something else.

Is he embarrassed to be a member of the club he belongs to?

Is he saying good blogging and good journalism cannot coexist?

It appears that he is twisting himself into a pretzel over his decision to ban bloggers from the Dallas Mavericks locker room. Hmmm.

Blogging is a technology, a fast and simple self-publishing platform. As you can see from the fascinating range of responses to Cuban's post, there are plenty of examples of decent journalistically-sound big media bloggers, at the NYT and elsewhere. If anything, they are helping to give blogging a good name. Anyone can use the platform, at home, or at work, as an amateur or a professional. And we all get to pick the blogs we want to read regularly. Some of the ones I read are by at-home bloggers who do better work than the media professionals. And there are also pros--with unusual access to the beats they cover-- who post stuff that non-pros can't.

For old media, blogs are an online marketing tool, a road to the future. They spread media content to a wider not-necessarily local readership. And they are interactive community-builders.

Cinematical's Kim Voynar weighs in.

Here's an email informant on the latest Dark Knight viral marketing efforts, this time focused on Gotham district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart):

By the way, I forgot to tell you guys that yesterday I saw these guys pull up on a corner, in a van right in the middle of downtown with big signs and bullhorns shouting to people to vote for Harvey Dent as D.A. The van was covered with Harvey Dent posters with Aaron Eckhart's picture. Of course people had NO idea what they were talking about. They probably thought it was a real campaign. Below is a picture of a similar van I found on-line. The PR hype for The Dark Knight has BEGUN!

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

Summer 2008 is jam-packed with movies vying for screens every weekend from the start of May through Labor Day. Pamela McClintock lays out the stakes.

One summer tentpole has some issues to get past, due to the untimely death of its Joker, Heath Ledger. Batman Begins director Chris Nolan talks about The Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's The Joker to the NYT, which has the French trailer for Le Chevalier Noir on its site. The movie opens July 18. UPDATE: As Nolan will be accepting the director of the year prize from exhibitors at the ShoWest convention on Thursday, Variety's Anthony Kaufman examines his indie sensibility. And The Envelope raises the possibility of a posthumous Oscar nom for Ledger.

What will Warners do to market Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight in the wake of Heath Ledger's death? After all, the studio was already rolling out the first phase of the campaign, focused on Ledger's The Joker. The studio will now have to shift focus to phase two: Aaron Eckhart as district attorney Harvey Dent/Two Face.

This tricky wicket would be daunting for any studio to confront, but it will prove especially challenging for the new WB marketing team under Jeffrey Robinov's leadership. Yes, moviegoers will want to check out Ledger's performance. But Warners has to tread very carefully in how they sell, promote and try not to exploit Ledger's role. Any misstep over the line could be very harmful. Here's Kim Master's story in Slate on this issue.

Chris Nolan tributes his Dark Knight star Heath Ledger in Newsweek.

One night, as I'm standing on LaSalle Street in Chicago, trying to line up a shot for "The Dark Knight," a production assistant skateboards into my line of sight. Silently, I curse the moment that Heath first skated onto our set in full character makeup. I'd fretted about the reaction of Batman fans to a skateboarding Joker, but the actual result was a proliferation of skateboards among the younger crew members. If you'd asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn't know. That's real charisma—as invisible and natural as gravity. That's what Heath had.

Heath was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture. He once told me that he liked to wait between jobs until he was creatively hungry. Until he needed it again. He brought that attitude to our set every day. There aren't many actors who can make you feel ashamed of how often you complain about doing the best job in the world. Heath was one of them.

The LAT's Reed Johnson did a nice job on Ledger as well, placing him in the context of vulnerable male actors. He's right: Ledger will inevitably be compared to James Dean. UPDATE: Here's a photo gallery in VF.

And here's Daniel Day Lewis from the SAG Awards, which made me cry:

Last weekend, I ran into youthful Dark Knight director Chris Nolan at a Christmas party in the Hollywood Hills. He was enthused about shooting entire sections of the movie in IMAX--entirely his idea. It's now possible to show the movie on some 150 IMAX screens that aren't just at science museums or in Las Vegas. He shot using IMAX cameras, which are four to five times heavier than 35 mm cameras--the first Hollywood film to do so. The opening first six minutes are being shown in front of I Am Legend in special IMAX locations. (Here's one ecstatic fan review.)

While the trailer makes the movie look pixel-big, the pic is character-driven PG, Nolan said. That way The Joker has to be really scary without resorting to real violence. The trailer is focused on creepy Heath Ledger as The Joker (played in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman by Jack Nicholson in a broadly comedic interpretation), not on district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who is also a key player in the movie. There are plenty of intimate scenes of people talking, as well as a few big-scale set pieces.

(This week while cruising the channels we happened upon Joel Schumacher's ridiculously over-wrought penultimate 1995 Batman Forever, starring Val Kilmer, Chris O'Donnell sporting an earring as Robin, Nicole Kidman as a sexy therapist, a hyped-up Jim Carrey as The Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones in piles of makeup as Two-Face. Give us Christian Bale and Nolan, please!)

Speaking of DC Comics pics, it is highly unlikely that Bryan Singer will return to shoot the next Superman movie. (The director is finishing up Tom Cruise's Nazi film Valkyrie, and prepping The Mayor of Castro Street). The next Superman we will see on the big screen will not be Brandon Routh, but a younger Superman among a cast of youthful superheroes in The Justice League. That movie will likely not be shot, however, until after the WGA strike is resolved. Warners is so happy with Dark Knight that their fondest hope is that Nolan will return to do another Batman.

The trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is finally online. Hi-res is much better than herky-jerky cameracams on YouTube. Heath Ledger as The Joker looks sinister and creepy here. But the trailer hints at the inflated-pixel grandiosity that these movies often head into. I hope not.

UPDATE: MTV does a shot-by- shot analysis.

Kris Tapley has the new Dark Knight posters. Splendid.

Here's an early report on the upcoming Dark Knight trailer from one of my loyal readers:

So I saw it tonight and here's the deal. Almost all of it is a condensed scene of the Joker and his gang robbing a bank in downtown Chicago with the bank manager (William Fichtner) shooting at them with a shotgun trying to stop them. I suspect the final scene will be longer because what i saw looked somewhat condensed to me. But it's very tightly edited and extremely well shot. Clearly this is going to be a realistic, hard edged, tough Batman film. I could see it easily getting an R rating just by pushing it a little and making the killings a little more graphic with blood squibs if they wanted to, but of course that'll never happen. The rest are very brief shots from the movie including Batman on his Batbike riding through the streets at night and Gary Oldman smashing the Batsignal with an ax. The final shot is Batman at dusk standing on the ledge of a building watching as usual.

MTV talks to Chris Nolan about The Dark Knight.

Chris Nolan has shot several sequences of The Dark Knight--due next summer--in IMAX. Here's the promo featurette:

As expected, Warner Bros. is chasing down the DC Comics property Justice League as a pre-strike movie, even though it may not star Christian Bale or Brandon Routh. The studio likes the script and wants George Miller (Happy Feet) to direct.

The Dark Night director director Chris Nolan is not a Comic-Con regular, nor was Christian Bale able to attend this year. But Warner Bros. wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to grab attention for its latest Batman sequel with the fans.

[Posted by Peter Debruge] Over the years, Comic-Con has trained fans that "Hall H" (the venue's largest room, with 6000+ seats) is the place to get sneak peeks of all their favorite genre movies, but not so for Batman. This year, the WB panel ignored "Dark Knight" altogether, while the real tease unfolded outdoors.

It all started at whysoserious.com, the movie's viral marketing site, with a scavenger-hunt challenge that would require fans on the ground to partner up with friends online to unlock an exclusive Joker photo (seen here) and teaser trailer (watch it).

The trick with Comic-Con, as Warner learned the hard way with "Batman Begins," is that the rabid audience thinks they're entitled to see exclusive footage first, and they get nasty when the filmmakers don't deliver. Come armed with something to show, or don't show up at all — and since Nolan didn't have a clip for the crowd, he dreamed up this scheme instead.

The first clue: a sky-written phone number (800-395-9646) outside the San Diego Convention Center, which sent participants hustling from location to location. As recruits to the Joker's cause, they had their faces painted bone white with hollowed-out eyes and a bright red gash across the mouth.

The details are still hazy, but the bottom line was a chance to see the new teaser released in front of "The Simpsons Movie," as well as a shot of Heath Ledger (as the Joker) holding a knife up to Maggie Gyllenhaal. Worth the trouble? I don't know, but it was a smart way to avoid being attacked for using Hall H to show the same teaser audiences all over the country are seeing today. And if word of mouth is what Comic-Con marketing is all about, this trick certainly delivered.

Here's more on the viral Dark Knight campaign at The Con.

And here's The Dark Knight teaser trailer:

Details are starting to emerge about some of the cool gadgets in Chris Nolan's new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, set to debut in July 2008.