When David Carr makes that crack at around the 1:50 mark in this recent Carpetbagger video, surrounded by Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil and Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells, I literally choked on my pecans with laughter. I then proceeded to laugh further at Wells’s attempt at debunking “The Dark Knight”‘s Oscar hopes because of its “interminable third act.” But even a fan such as yours truly had to give it to Carr’s comeback quip, “How many times did that sucker end?”
Anyway, the video was shot at the recent New York Film Critics Circle awards and features interviews with Sean Penn, Courtney Hunt, Jenny Lumet, Sally Hawkins and Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwartzbaum. Take a look. And someone give this guy a TV show already.
Comments
5 responses to ““How many Oscar bloggers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?””
I scratch my head a little bit when people say TDK had “multiple endings.” The only obvious one that I noticed was the tease that TDK would end with Harvey Dent on the loose, setting up the third film. Where were the other endings everyone speaks of? I mean, the Joker was captured and imprisoned at the 1:30 mark, I believe, and after the China/Lau subplot took 45 minutes to develop/unravel, you knew the film couldn’t end at 1:30 with all of the developed subplots still hanging. So I don’t buy the idea that the film had one of its endings at that point.
The whole idea of the film ending with Harvey Dent on the loose for a third film perhaps says more about us as a filmgoing audience than it does about the filmmakers. We’ve been conditioned to think, “Oh, so this is the villain they’ll use to set-up the third film,” because that is how it is always done, especially in the so-called superhero genre. That’s one of the variables that makes TDK so great and unique- we took it for granted that the story would end that way because that’s how it has always been done. But Nolan had more to say, wanted to complete Dent’s arc without leaving that thread open for a 3rd film, and the overall demise of Harvey Dent played into the film’s larger theme of heroes and our perception of who/what they stand for.
So when I hear the criticism, “the film had too many endings,” for me that says more about that person’s expectation of what this kind of film should be. Kris, as a TDK fan but someone who understood the criticism, maybe you can share your viewpoint on that subject. Even if the criticism is valid, look at it this way: you got 4 endings for a great film! It is neverending!
Ultimately, I think when something is successful/popular, etc. people will look for any little reason to criticize or dig into why that particular thing is not as great as the general public makes it out to be. This would seem to be one of those cases.
“How many times did that sucker end?†Well, certainly fewer than Return of the King.
I thought Wells was a fan of TDK?
SDD: From what I can remember, he liked TDK, especially Ledger, he just doesn’t think it was great.
Truthfully, it seemed Wells had bad-blood towards TDK since way before he saw the movie. WB failed to invite him in a timely manner to an advanced screening, which he frequently made mention of on his site.
Wells’ comments were rather odd, as he indicated a correlation between TDK’s “quality” and its Oscar chances. Even if it had an interminable third act, and if that was a negative aspect of the film, how does that detract from the other 2/3rds of the films from the perspective of the Academy members? We’ve seen them choose bad films before (not that TDK is a bad film) and we’ve seen theme choose imperfect masterpieces before, the latter category being the closest description of The Dark Knight as I can provide. For me, the Dark Knight was an excellent film held back by a few, cringe-worthy scenes SUCH as the forcefully placed dialogue between Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent during Maroni’s trial (not to mention the “I recommend you buy American” line), and the any one of the borderline parody phrases uttered by Batman such as this classic zinger: “This city just showed you it’s full of people ready to believe in good” (my contempt for this line is for two reasons, the first being that it’s slightly misleading as the people have already demonstrated they’re full of people who in fact have and still do believe in good, and secondly because it has an unnatural feel and isn’t the most economical way of expressing Batman’s feelings). But whoa, I’ve gone on such a tangent already, I’ll stop with this: The Dark Knight may not be perfect, but it’s a helluva lot better than many previous BP winners (Crash, anyone?).