The Screengrab : eric roberts

Schwarzenegger to Make Cameo Appearance in New Stallone Movie; Old Action Rivals to Bury Freakishly Large, Bursting-Veined Hatchet

Phil Nugent — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:30:00 GMT

When Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was running for governor of California in the wake of the disappointed reaction to the third Terminator movie, a lot of people were quick to make the obvious joke that turning to politics might be a good career move for him; running a state the size of California had to be easier for a guy who was then in his mid-fifties than trying to continue holding up his end in the action-icon game. In fact, his last movie appearance before taking office was a cameo at the start of 2003's The Rundown, in which he seemed to be graciously passing the baton to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The news that Schwarzenegger has agreed to do another cameo, as himself, in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, should probably not be taken as a sign how just bad things have gotten for those who are supposed to be holding the reins out West. The Gov contributed a cameo to the 2004 Around the World in 80 Days, directed by Frank Coraci, a movie that was seen by approximately one-hundred thousandth of the number of people who recently saw Coraci and his leading man, Steve Coogan, making cruel sport of Joaquin Phoenix and Christian Bale. And he can also be seen, briefly and as himself, in a forthcoming Indian film, Kambakkht Ishq, which has an inside-Hollywood story and includes a cameo by...Sylvester Stallone.

Personally, we applaud the Governor's efforts to help cover the school budget by taking part time jobs. It's not as if he could sign up for a shift at Mickey D's--there's no way they make those hats big enough that head. And while some might worry that a state leader should not put his dignity in peril, in Schwarzenegger's case, that ship probably sailed somewhere around the time of Hercules in New York. (When you're making your movie debut alongside Arnold Stang, and you're the one whose voice they decide to redub, dignity is not a product that you're ever going to be asked to endorse.) Still, for those of us who remember the '80s, it's a little funny to see him doing Stallone a favor, and even funnier to see Stallone asking him for one. I don't suppose they were ever Spider-man and Doc Ock in the heated-feuds department, but from at least the mid-80s, when Schwarzenegger began to overtake Stallone in the steroid-idol sweepstakes just when Sly had impressed himself mightily by proving, with the success of Rambo, that he had it in him to embody more than one franchise meathead character with a five-letter name beginning with "R", there's always been an undercurrent of competitive tension between them, made all the more savory by Stallone's spectacular job at failing to hold up his end. One critic detected a "fear of Schwarzenegger" theme running through many of Stallone's mid-80s films--not just Rambo but also Rocky IV and Cobra--in which he was roughed up but not bested by huge, muscleheaded figures who often came with scary accents. Stallone even tried to duplicate Schwarzenegger's career-expanding success in turning to comedy, but while it not for us to say that Oscar and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot did not compare to Twins or Kindergarten Cop in the laugh riot department, they didn't do nearly as well at the box office. But the fact remains that last year's Rambo, and its predecessor, Rocky XXXVII, did a lot better than a great many thoughtful observers--feel free to take that as a synonym for "me"--expected them to. That means that Stallone has had two geriatric hits while Arnold has been off running some dumb ol' state. If Schwarzenegger misses his old job, being on the set of The Expendables should make him feel right at home: in addition to Stallone, who's also on board as writer-director, the cast includes Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, and Roberts's new P.R. man, Mickey Rourke, making the set a virtual watering hole for has-beens and comeback kids. It's been reported that Schwarzenegger has been preparing for his cameo by telling people that Stallone is "a a terrific director and writer, and a great actor." If he's really been doing that, without crossing his eyes to keep a straight face, he's both a master politician and a better actor than we remember.

Screengrab's Ultimate Exploitation Films!!!!!!! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 23:00:00 GMT

SPUN (2002)

If not for the evidence of the YouTube clip above, I’d be willing to believe I simply hallucinated this sleazy little movie during a hot, sleepless night in the San Fernando Valley. For example, all during the recent Awards Season, I kept hearing about Mickey Rourke’s years in the wilderness when he couldn’t find work as an actor...and yet, there he is in 2002, playing crystal meth guru The Cook alongside slumming Young Hollywood types like Jason Schwartzman and Mena Suvari (as well as Debbie Harry and Eric Roberts, who apparently did something really terrible fifteen years ago). Not that this icky, hyper-pixilated film (which, according to my pal Wikipedia, holds the Guiness Record for most edits in a full-length motion picture) would have served as much of a heartwarming comeback vehicle for anyone involved. Every character is vile, from Schwartzman’s strung-out tweaker who keeps a naked stripper (played by a very brave or very masochistic actress named Chloe Hunter, who also played the naked stomach on the American Beauty poster...thanks again, Wikipedia!) chained spread-eagle on his bed for most of the movie...to Suvari, who method acts explosive diarrhea...to Patrick Fugit, sporting really, really gross acne...to an even more spastic than usual John Leguizamo, who seems to be jerking off vigorously into a sock in the aforementioned YouTube clip (though, thankfully, I don’t really have any vivid memories of that particular plot development). Which is not to say Spun is a bad movie, exactly...at least not in the sense of being poorly made. It's just bad.

SHOWGIRLS (1995)

It’s a testament to the eternal power of this truly bewildering big-budget sexploitation potboiler that even today, a lot of critics simply can’t figure out what to make of it. Oh, it’s not good – in fact, it’s insanely, jaw-droppingly bad. But how much of that badness is by design? After all, the director, Paul Verhoeven, is a talented filmmaker who has certainly suckered us in the past, delivering sly satire on American culture disguised as blockbuster entertainment in movies like Robocop and Starship Troopers. Then again, the writer is Joe Eszterhas, who has penned a lot of shitty movies like this with no apparent irony. The story of a cheap tramp who comes to Las Vegas in a quest to determine exactly how cheap and trampy she is willing to become, Showgirls features scenes that are so horrible that they can’t possibly be serious, but which are played so seriously that there’s no way they’re a joke. What to make of the scene where Nomi (played by Elizabeth Berkley, who goes the entire movie without ever exhibiting a single recognizably human behavior) angrily eats French fries and vomits in a parking lot out of sheer rage? What to make of the scene where she has sex with a floppy-haired, floppy-souled MacLachlan as if she’s trying to banish him to another dimension? What to make of the scene where she and Gina Gershon, who has clearly sized the whole movie up as a no-win situation, debate the merits of brown rice and vegetables? If Showgirls was made by a bunch of nobodies on a shoestring budget, it would at least be comprehensible, but the fact that it was made by Hollywood heavy hitters for a king’s ransom can only leave you wondering if it’s some kind of insanely good parody of a terrible movie, or something so mind-peelingly bad that it goes, like Nietzsche, beyond good and evil.

SHAOLIN MASTER KILLER (1978)

Also known as Shao Lin San Shi Liu Fang, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, The Master Killer, and about a half-dozen other titles, this is the movie that made a huge star out of Hong Kong kung fu actor Gordon Liu, and led indirectly to the founding of the Wu-Tang Clan. (If you can, pick up the DVD version released by the Weinstein’s Dragon Dynasty company, with astonishingly geeky audio commentary by the RZA!) Before anyone started taking wushu movies seriously, they were generally meant to be exploitative grindhouse fare for urban audiences, as evidenced by their former moniker, “chop-socky flicks”. But Shaolin Master Killer was one of the first wave of post-Bruce Lee wushu epics that started to tip off critics that maybe there was something genuinely worthwhile happening in these punch-‘em-ups. The plot couldn’t be simpler: during the oppressive Manchu dynasty, a young man enters the Shaolin temple to learn kung fu, and, after passing the grueling training exercises required of a monk, uses his martial arts expertise to pursue the secular goal of freeing his people from tyranny. But even with the thin plot, there’s some great acting going on (Shaolin Master Killer features appearances by some of the greatest Hong Kong character actors of the day), and, of course, lots of the most exciting fight scenes ever put on film. You can tell what you’re in for before the movie even starts: its opening credits feature one of the most thrilling sequences in the history of wushu cinema, with the charismatic and emotional Liu performing exciting moves as the soundtrack blares, of all things, a bit of incidental music from the score to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

GOD TOLD ME TO (1976)

For some four decades, the writer-producer-director Larry Cohen has been a never-ending Roman candle of feverish activity, spitting out one punchy, high-concept idea for horror, sci-fi, and action movies and TV series after another and dressing them up with political conceits and crackpot notions that might have been filched from pamphlets found in a Greyhound men's room. His efforts are consistently undermined by low budgets, sloppy execution, and his own sledgehammer touch, but at least he's given us a filmography that can make you wonder what it might look like if its maker had been blessed with resources and talent. This bizarre take on the end-of-the-world religious-horror theme that the big studios were mining with big-budget junk like The Omen is perhaps his most tantalizing project, which means that it's the one that is most plaintively calling out to be remade by somebody who could really do justice to its sick, sick heart. People without past histories of violent criminal behavior are suddenly flipping out all over New York City, committing murders and signing off with the explanation, "God told me to." (One of the killers is a cop played by Andy Kaufman, in his film debut.) The paranoid set-up is juicy and disturbing enough to give you the willies even without Cohen's climactic twist, which basically suggests that Jesus was the product of rape by an extraterrestrial.

IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971)

In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there was a subterranean wave of so-called “Christploitation” movies coming out of the American south – cheaply made, often gory and tawdry tales of sensationalist sin, usually with more than a bit of Apocalyptic flavor. A number of these made their way to the Southern Baptist church of my youth, and by far the most demented of these was If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Directed by Christploitation superstar Ron Ormond and based on a sermon by the wonderfully named Rev. Estus W. Pirkle, a Tim Kazurinsky lookalike who appears in the film reading in his hysterical hillbilly squeak, the movie posits itself as a dire warning. If America does not undergo a massive church revival in the next few years, Pirkle bleats, it will surely signal the beginning of an invasion by Communist forces that will spell the end of Christianity as we know it. That’s only the beginning: as a fallen churchwoman overacts madly in the pews, Pirkle and Ormond paint a woozy picture of the nightmarish future America under Soviet rule. People are forced to stomp all over a glossy portrait of Jesus! Those who do not renounce their faith are beheaded, machinegunned, or forced to have bamboo rods jammed into their ears until they vomit! Schoolchildren will be compelled to pray to Fidel Castro for free candy! Featuring a no-star cast of locals from Pirkle’s church portraying badly dressed commisars, and a Communist invasion force so ill-equipped that they drive their victims around in a beat-up old pickup truck, If Footmen Tire You is really something to behold. To 11-year-old me, it was terrifying; to anyone grown up enough to see it for what it is, it’s utterly laughable.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four & Six...and don't say we didn't warn you!!!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Spirit Awards Unveiled; Mickey Rourke Crazy Train Rolls On

Andrew Osborne — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:11:00 GMT

SEVEN THINGS I DISCOVERED WHILE WATCHING THE SPIRIT AWARDS ON IFC YESTERDAY:

1. Steve Coogan is a better host than Rainn Wilson. But then again, so am I.

2. Melissa Leo takes the whole "indie spirit" thing way, way too seriously (and the "fashion" thing way, way too not seriously).

3. Teri Hatcher can neither sing nor dance, nor is she funny, making her a curious choice to perform a comical musical tribute to Wendy & Lucy.

4. On the day of her big make-out scene with Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen had a panic attack about a mysterious freckle he'd just discovered and rushed to a doctor to get it checked out. (But apparently it was nothing).

5. Rosie Perez thinks Penelope Cruz is a fly bitch.

6. According to Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts did something terrible fifteen years ago. But Hollywood should forgive him.

7. We're all going to be really, really sick of Mickey Rourke by next year's Spirit Awards (if not much, much sooner).

As for the rest of what I learned watching the live broadcast from a big tent in Santa Monica, here's a list of the 2009 Spirit Award Winners:

Best Feature
The Wrestler

Best Director
Tom McCarthy, The Visitor

Best Screenplay
Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best First Feature
Synecdoche, New York (Director: Charlie Kaufman)

Best First Screenplay
Dustin Lance Black, Milk

John Cassavetes Award (For the Best Feature made for under $500,000)
In Search of a Midnight Kiss (Writer/Director: Alex Holdridge)

Best Supporting Female
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Best Supporting Male
James Franco, Milk

Best Female Lead
Melissa Leo, Frozen River

Best Male Lead
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler

Best Cinematography
Maryse Alberti, The Wrestler

Best Foreign Film
The Class (Director: Laurent Cantet)

Best Documentary
Man on Wire (Director: James Marsh)

Unwatchable #57: “Phat Girlz”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Happy New Year, Unwatchablers! Oh, what a mountain of crap we have ahead of us as we continue our assault on the upper reaches of the IMDb Bottom 100 list. We begin the new year with the continuation of a potentially disturbing trend, as Phat Girlz joins such other African-American comedies of recent vintage as The Honeymooners, First Sunday, College Road Trip, Meet the Browns and The Perfect Holiday on the list. Now, I’m not defending any of these movies in and of themselves – as you can see from my posts, I think even the best of them is barely mediocre – but the clustering of said flicks at the sad end of the IMDb spectrum does give me pause. I’m not necessarily suggesting that there’s a preponderance of racist IMDb users skewing the numbers, but it may merit further investigation.

I’d do it myself, but I have another, more pressing task, which is watching Phat Girlz. With the above disclaimer out of the way, I feel comfortable in reporting that Phat Girlz is indeed a bad movie, fully deserving of its spot amongst the Unwatchable. I think it would also be a very bad movie if it happened to be about fat white women, but that happens not to be the case.

Plus-size comedian Mo’Nique is Jazmin Biltmore, a sales clerk in the ladies’ clothing department of a high-end retail outfit. Along with fellow full-figured clerk Stacey (Kendra C. Johnson), Jazmin bemoans the lack of fashionable wear for the large ‘n lovely. Jazmin is an aspiring designer who makes her own (hideous, although we’re supposed to think otherwise) clothes, but her snippy manager refuses to schedule her some face time with the store’s buyer (Eric Roberts, no doubt paying off some gambling debts).

Along with Jazmin’s more, uh, conventionally hot cousin Mia (Joyful Drake), the phat girlz take a vacation trip to a resort where they meet up with a group of Nigerian doctors, including dreamy Tunde (Jimmy Jean-Louis), who falls for Jazmin. It seems that Nigerian men prefer what they call “thick madames” – the bigger the woman, the better. I confess, I don’t know if this was a pre-existing stereotype or if it was invented for this film. (All my Nigerian friends are too busy emailing me with offers to stash their millions in my bank account to worry about the ladies.) In fact, not only do these gentlemen prefer the girth, they shun the fit and trim Mia, dismissing her as a “toothpick.” Personally, I’ve never seen a toothpick with a great rack and a smokin’ ass, but perhaps your finer strip clubs make them available to their best customers.

Pardon my sexism! And pardon the sexism of Phat Girlz, in which all the good men are ripped and rich. I guess the movie wouldn’t be teaching us a valuable lesson if it was, say, Cedric the Entertainer falling for Jazmin. The lesson is, of course, that Jazmin is beautiful inside and out. Except I saw little evidence of her inside beauty on display here; she’s mostly loud, obnoxious and shallow, although she goes through bouts of self-pity just to spice things up.

Other than that, writer/director Nnegest Likke’s movie is dull and predictable, but at least it looks like ass. And I don’t mean Mia’s fine, fine ass.

Previously on Unwatchable:
58. Ed
59. Don’t Go in the Woods…Alone!
60. Carry On Columbus
61. Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie

Morning Deal Report: Johnny Depp, Household Pet

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Don’t tell the newly pious Joe Eszterhas, but his old partner in crime Paul Verhoeven is in talks to direct another erotic thriller. Variety says the untitled script by Wendy Miller “centers on a college intern who finds himself trapped in a dangerous affair with the boss’s wife. Project is described as Risky Business meets Fatal Attraction.” So…Fatal Business? Risky Attraction?

What is the terrifying secret of The Steam Experiment? I certainly can’t wait to find out, as Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts team up for the indie suspense thriller. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the plot concerns “six people trapped and terrorized in an urban Turkish bathhouse.” Just imagine being trapped in a bathhouse with Val Kilmer, Armand Assante and Eric Roberts and you can already smell the suspense.

Johnny Depp reunites with Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) for the animated feature Rango. Per Variety, “Depp will voice the lead character, a household pet that goes on an adventure to discover its true self.” Really, that’s what it says – a household pet. As if revealing whether he’s a dog or cat or gerbil would be giving too much away.

Related:
Saint Joe: "Showgirls" Writer Finds Jesus
Depp vs. Murray: Dueling Gonzos

Tony Stark (i.e., Robert Downey, Jr.) to Bruce Wayne: "I Got Your Dark Knight Right Here, Pal!"

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Robert Downey, Jr., America's scamp, has tasted what the other guys are selling and found it lacking. Downey, whose star vehicle Iron Man got the summer movie season of 2008 off to a bang back when it opened several hundred years ago, has given an interview to moviehole.com in which he found it impossible to discourse on what made his movie so special, and what will make its sequel (which reunites him with director Jon Favreau and Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux, who's working on the script) so special, without talking about what makes it different from The Dark Knight. Whereas Iron Man is "a very simple movie", Downey says of the Batman blockbuster, "It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved [Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's] The Prestige but didn't understand The Dark Knight. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

The first thing to be said about this is that if anyone finds that their college education helps them to better understand why Jim Gordon didn't dispatch a SWAT team to surround that boat that the Joker was aboard after Eric Roberts tipped him off, then that lucky viewer must have gone to a hell of a school. (Personally, my college education wasn't even enough to keep me from pissing away eleven dollars on a ticket to Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) Of course, Downey's harsh words for DC Comics will set off little tremors in the minds of comics geeks who remember bitter wars of words on the playground between self-styled DC fanboys and Marvel zombies. However much he means it, it's fun when these companies' star employees pretend to be infected with the virus, as anyone who ever saw Alan Moore take custody of the microphone at a comics convention in the 1980s, before he adopted a "plague on both their houses" attitude. It's kind of like professional wrestling without the folding chairs. Downey himself seems to get a giggle out of his bad-boy act. "You know, you're never too old to burn your bridges because I believe I have offended everyone," he said. "I think I've got a couple more.

On the subject of his other summer hit, Tropic Thunder, Downey has one thing he wants to make very clear: he is not Kirk Lazarus, the looney, Oscar-festooned Method actor he plays, who vows to remain in character until he's recorded the picture's DVD commentary. Speaking of the character, Downey says that "I think his fatal flaw is pretty much any and everyone's who's in entertainment, which is, on a certain level: 'Oh if they believe they're a fraud and that's creating this neurotic state,' when the truth is, you are a fraud because you've gone too far into buying into your own hype and now you're, literally crazy. I think Kirk Lazarus is nuts." Discussing his decision to make Kirk Australian, Downey adds, "I just think that the Australian phenomenon reminds me more of American as with the British invasion from the '60s. But when I was thinking about Kirk Lazarus I was thinking about Colin Farrell, about Daniel Day Lewis and about Russell Crowe and whoever was the most effective tool for whatever my thing was, I would use." When it was pointed out to him that a lot of viewers sure do see a lot of Crowe in there, Downey permitted himself a smile. "Now do you think he would see it as the highest form of flattery or do you think that he would be less than pleased?"

Screengrab Review: “The Dark Knight”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Christopher Nolan’s 2005 franchise re-launch Batman Begins ended with a tantalizing tease (lifted from Frank Miller’s comic book reboot Year One) that all but guaranteed a sequel: Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) revealing the calling card of the new freak in town – a Joker, of course – and implying that by his presence, Batman has raised the stakes for theatricality and large-scale actions among the criminal element in Gotham City. To mostly satisfying results, the highly anticipated and insanely hyped follow-up, The Dark Knight, takes that idea and runs with it. The only problem is, it runs a marathon when a 10K would have sufficed.

As The Dark Knight opens, a new day has dawned on Gotham, with fresh-faced District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) leading the charge. Along with his assistant and girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes, an upgrade in every conceivable way), he has put mob boss Sal Maroni (Eric Roberts) on trial and is closing in on the underworld’s money laundering operation. But he requires a little clandestine help from the city’s resident masked vigilante, who he doesn’t realize is, of course, Rachel’s “psycho ex-boyfriend” Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale).

Crashing the party is a much more dangerous psycho, his scarred face smeared with greasy clown makeup. He cuts a deal with the mob to rid them of the Batman in exchange for half their assets, and the wiseguys are forced to take this Joker seriously once he starts eliminating high-profile targets, including the current police commissioner. It soon becomes clear that the Joker isn’t in it for the money; he’s an unpredictable agent of pure anarchy, looking to reshape Gotham City in his own twisted image.

The Joker, you may have read, is played by the late Heath Ledger in his final full performance. Last week I wrote this cranky post about the somewhat unseemly hype surrounding Ledger’s Oscar chances. I’m still not crazy about all that, but there’s no denying that Ledger delivers the goods. He’s a mesmeric force burning through The Dark Knight like a shooting star – you literally can’t take your eyes off him, and when he’s not onscreen the movie misses him terribly. His Joker isn’t Nicholson’s baggy-pants comedian or Cesar Romero’s hooting harlequin; he has no name, no past, no future, no rules and no reductive “mommy never loved me” back story (or rather, he has a bunch of them, and they all contradict each other). He’s pure, unfettered chaos, and in Ledger’s portrayal, the comic book icon finally becomes one of the great screen villains.

Through its first ninety minutes or so, The Dark Knight is a worthy showcase for him. Nolan manages to keep a lot of plates spinning at once, using the insistent, earworming score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard to make action in disparate locations seem like it’s all part of the same epic sweep. But he has the same problem here as he did in Batman Begins; he’s really good at getting all the parts of the engine tuned up and revving at full force, but he has a much harder time shutting it all down. In its protracted final act, The Dark Knight blunders down some blind alleys and runs through a series of false climaxes en route to the finish line. There’s the matter of introducing another supervillain late in the game, a temptation the Batman series has rarely been able to resist. Here it’s the coin-flipping Two-Face, who has been given short shrift twice now, although admittedly he fares better here than when Joel Schumacher turned him into Jim Carrey’s cackling sidekick in Batman Forever. He does have an arc, but honestly, we don’t care about it as much as we should – which leads to the other big flaw Knight shares with its predecessor.

Nolan and his co-screenwriter (and brother) Jonathan Nolan want to make sure we’re aware that what we’re watching is a cut above the usual summer superhero fare – that it has layers of psychological depth that set it apart from your Hulks and Iron Men. To that end, they have a bad habit of explicating their themes in the dialogue, so that every character becomes an armchair psychologist or amateur sociologist at one time or another. This results in some ponderous musings on morality, madness, fate and the nature of heroism, all of which weigh down the movie in the home stretch. The filmmakers would like to think The Dark Knight is about the battle for Harvey Dent’s soul, and by extension, that of Gotham City, but we know better. It’s all about the Joker, and every minute he’s not on the screen is a minute we’ve been robbed. Heath Ledger left us wanting more, but the same can’t quite be said of The Dark Knight.

Related:
Batman: The Lost Years
The Joker's Viral Marketing: Threat or Menace?