The Dark Knight.

• Chinese Layoff: This gives new meaning to layoff.
• I bought and watched the film The Dark Knight yesterday. I had seen that NRO included it in in its top 25 conservative movies of the last 25 years list. Now I have said, to people who cared or didn't, that I generally don't like movies based on comic books. The fact that this movie was rated highly by conservatives doesn't change my opinion - comic book movies are boring. And while I will say that the Dark Knight is perhaps the best comic book movie I have seen, it doesn't strike me at all as a classic movie. People who read comic books are chided for avoiding reality, and for good reasons. Life is not a series of set pieces - it is lived continuously. Movies are about the interesting parts of life and too are connected together by set pieces. But, Comic books put together with films make this set-piece tendency of film too much. Films are rightly called ephemeral because they provide thrills without any sustaining nourishment. Comic Book movies are even more so.
• I also have to say that it is a stretch to say that in the Dark Knight is about a George Bush character fighting evil against the sway of public opinion. When I watched the film last night, I had this characterization in mind and it seemed to be that the film alluding to the Batman being unpopular was a small aspect of the film - not its' major focus. The Joker was the compelling part of the Dark Knight. I would have called the film: The Joker versus Batman.