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I'm a bit behind the curve here, but I finally got to see "The Dark Knight".

 

I heard that Heath Ledger's performance was amazing, but was unsure if he was getting a critical boost from his untimely and unfortunate death. This happens often when someone in the public eye passes. Everything they've done all of a sudden seems better than it would have had they still been alive. The bad and middling is forgotten and the good is enhanced and illuminated.

 

Did this happen with Heath's portrayal of the Joker? Was this just a good actor portraying a homocidal manic? Good actors playing psychologically unbalanced characters always seem to give performances above what is expected of them. Or was this something more? Did he really get so deeply into this role that it destroyed him? If so, how gripping was the performance?

 

In my opinion, Heath Ledger has always been a good actor. His performances in "The Patriot" and "A Knight's Tale" were both well done. His role in "The Patriot" was short, but he did manage to display the passion of his character on the screen. "A Knight's Tale" was, in essence, a romantic comedy with action sequences and a tear-jerking backstory. Heath successfully acting through all facet's of very watchable movie.

 

So how did I think he did in "The Dark Knight"? I went in expecting a great performance. I had been swayed by all the hype, but it wasn't hype. His performance went beyond a great performance and reached a level of transcendence on par with Marlon Brando's portrayal of Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now". It was if the actors never realized that the camera's were there and had truly become these characters. In Heath's case, this would have tragic results.

 

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I've always felt that a great litmus test for actors is not how well they deliver lines of dialogue, but how they act through no dialogue or limited dialogue. There are three instances in the film that have Heath passing this test without difficulty.

 

The first is when the Joker attacks the police convoy carrying Harvey Dent and Batman shows up in the Batmobile. Batman uses the Batmobile to take out the garbage truck. The Joker watches this unfold and vocalizes a very casual, "huh". You have to hear it in context to understand why I think this was a brilliant piece of acting.

 

The secondly is in the hospital, when the Joker sits down next to Harvey's bed. He says one word: "Hi." The delivery of this one word holds so much in it. Heath is able to portray remorse, compassion, uncertainty, confidence and a level of inevitability in the sitaution all from one word. I was blown away by that one word.

 

The third occurrence, Heath does not say anything. He is walking out of the hospital in a nurse's outfit, wearing heels. It's all very comical and then the hospital starts to blow up behind him as he casually strolls away from it. But he stops and looks back when he realizes that not all of the explosives have gone off. He pulls out his remote and repeatedly hits the trigger - to no avail - and then pounds the remote until the rest of the explosives go off. You have to realize he must be doing this in front of a green screen.

 

Yes there are many more examples of his skills in this movie, but these three moments really stood out for me.

 

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There is another scene that really stood out as well. It was said that Heath watched a lot of movies and read a lot of books on homocidal maniacs for his inspiration in playing the Joker. I think I know one movie that he drew directly from.

 

There is a scene where one cop is left in the interrogation room with the Joker. The Joker starts to bait the cop by asking how many of the cop's friends he had killed. He then starts to explain why he uses a knife to kill his victims.

 

If you had seen "Exorcist III", the delivery in this scene would be familiar to you. Brad Dourif, as the Gemini, delivers a lengthy monologue on why he kills his victims the way he does. The similarity in delivery leads me to believe that Heath was very familiar with Brad's portrayal and drew from it for that scene. Watch "Exorcist III" - it's not nearly as bad as "Exorcist II", I promise - and decide for yourself.

 

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WHEN he posthumously receives the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, there will be those that will grumble that it's a sentimental vote. I will not be one of those. Thank you Heath and God bless.

Okay. I've not started anything on my blog yet, but I need to vent. I'll start off by laying the groundwork for this rant.

 

1) I am an American and a proud one at that

2) I am not a deluded American who thinks everything we do is the best

3) My mother's mother's dad was from China and I can be a bit if a sinophile

4) The Chinese are putting on a spectacular show and the opening ceremonies were an absolute wonder (with one exception noted below) and I disagree with those that believe we should not have attended due to the human rights record of China, this national exposure can only help

5) I just got done watching the women's uneven bars competition in the Olympics

 

Okay, that said, I am appalled at how poorly the judging in the gymnastics events at the Beijing Olympics has been. I'm kind of getting tired of seeing Chinese gymnasts seemingly get extra points just because they're the host country.

 

How do you land on your knees in a vault and still score above 15 and walk away with a bronze!? It's mind-boggling! Yes, her first vault was amazing, but that shouldn't carry over the judges' opinion into the next vault.

 

And now, we see a 13-year-old-looking Chinese gymnast beat Nastia Liukin on the uneven bars due to a whacked-out tie-breaking scheme. Their start values for difficulty were the same and their mistakes were of nearly identical import in the air. Nastia stuck her landing, and He (not a pronoun, but the Chinese gymnast's name) took a sideways step.

 

Bela says the problem is that, to remove bais, they do not allow judges from countries that have competitors in the competition. That means you have judges that don't know the sport too well. Which was apparent from the disparity with the Australian judge's scoring.

 

And can you possibly remove bais? I don't mean to rankle my Australian friends out there, but who's to say that the Australian judge had seen just enough of American swimmers beating out the incredible team that Australia fielded and held a negative bais due to that? These people are human and you can never remove bais. Free will is what makes us humans.

 

Also, money can always enter into it as it did in the last Winter Olympics with the French judge in ice skating. Where money can change hands, you cannot rule out wrong-doing.

 

Put competent judges back into those seats and make sure that the highest and the lowest two scores get tossed out, to help eliminate direct bais and "bought" officials.

 

Now that I've voiced that opinion on two serious injustices, I will say that the Chinese women did deserve the team gold...if they were all of age. The Chinese men definitely deserved the team gold. They were amazing!

 

Now, to address items I've seen on posts elsewhere that have been bothering me.

 

- One person claims that the age should not matter and they should be allowed to compete whatever the age, as they do in other sports. Fine. No arguments here, but the rules are what they are at this time. In the US we strip Little League teams of titles if we find out that someone reported the wrong age. Either get the rules changed or abide by them. It was proven that the American who finished first in the Tour de France two years ago was doping. Does he have a sneaker deal? Is he a national hero? No. Most Americans can't even remember Floyd Landis' name (I had to look it up).

- I saw one person claim that the ages were accurate because that's what their competition passports (or is it visas?) said. Who do you think issued those documents? The Chinese Communist Government. The same people who thought it best to not allow the girl who sang the Olympic Anthem to perform it live in front of the world because she wasn't cute enough and replaced her with a lip-synching, pig-tailed angel. NOTE: I fully understand why they digitized the footprints fireworks for broadcast. Don't dump on them for that.

- One person said that it was pathetic that the Americans count ALL medals just so that they could be on top of the medal count and should only count gold (which would still seat us second). If we did that, then countries like Hungary, Armenia, Egypt, Sweden, Austria, Greece and Turkey wouldn't even show up on the list. We're a melting pot of all nationalities and people still identify with the homelands of their forefathers. We want to see what medals these other countries have earned, so we list them all. To do so, we must count all medals.

 

Now, before anyone gets on my case about Paul Hamm's behavior when it was realized that he had NOT really won gold in Athens, I'd like to say that I was embarassed by his refusal to concede the gold medal to the Korean gymnast who had been a victim of a mistake by the judges. It may sound overly harsh, but I was happy that he could not compete this year and was exceptionally proud that the American men still were able to take bronze. I would have rather have seen bronze medals from the team we did field, than gold from a team with Paul Hamm on it.

 

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Wow! I just got done watching the men's trampoline finals. Yes, I'm off of work today and bored. But the Canadian just got robbed! The last man to go was the Chinese. He stopped outside the center box which is an automatic deduction. At the end of the routine, all of the other gymnasts went over to the Canadian to congratulate him, but the gold went to the Chinese gymnast. What is going on? Are the judges this incompetent or has the Chinese government paid some of them to insure a successful Olympic medal count or do we viewers at home understand so little of the scoring system that our impressions are wrong (this would mean that the athletes themselves don't get it either)?

I'm new to "blogging", so bear with me. This will more than likely be a random collection of whatever comes to mind. I will try to not be whiny, but I can't promise not to get preachy at times. I also doubt that I'll be prolific. Stay tuned until I actually have something to say.