The Golden Globes are sometimes a precursor of what will happen at the Oscars. Warner Bros. is watching now them very, very closely. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association today announced Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker earned a nomination for best supporting actor.

It was the only nomination for the year’s biggest film. Other nominees are Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder, Ralph Fiennes for The Duchess and Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Doubt.

Heath Ledger’s father Kim released a statement saying the nomination is “deeply appreciated” and “not lost on those of us who continue to love and miss him.”

Image: The Dark Knight, Warner Bros., 2008

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As one of the biggest movies of the year, Warner Bros. expected big DVD returns with The Dark Knight and hasn’t been disappointed.The New York Times reports that 3 million DVD and Blu-Rays of the hit Batman sequel were sold on Tuesday.

Warner hopes the strong sales fuel the Oscar buzz the studio is trying to stoke for the movie. Not only is Heath Ledger a potential posthumous nominee for Best Supporting Actor, there’s also some talk of a Best Picture nomination. That would be uncharted territory for a film with mainstream comic book source material.

I can’t wait to see the nominations. Knight works on multiple levels and to call it simply a “comic book” movie would do it a huge disservice. The bar has been raised and I don’t envy anyone else adapting comic book material. I’m not even sure the next Batman movie can top this, even if all the key players like Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan return.

Image: The Dark Knight, Warner Bros., 2008

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This is the biggest role of Han’s career and he’s ecstatic to have worked with an incredible cast including the likes of Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman and Heath Ledger.

“I was thrilled to find out I was going to be a part of this movie,” Han said. “I could never have expected something like this, it exceeds anything I could have imagined.”

Han is an integral part of Gotham’s mob dynamic in this one and he enjoyed playing in this group. There’s no honor among these thieves.

“It was a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s really become a free-for-all in Gotham between all these mobsters. It’s become an even more dangerous place to live in. The Joker adds an additional element of chaos to the mob battle. He also brings chaos to law enforcement as he causes problems for District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman and Commissioner Gordon. He’s just a wild card that neither the mobsters or the good guys really understand how to deal with.”

Like everyone else connected with this movie, Han was in awe at the character Ledger brought to the screen.

“He’s amazing,” Han said. “He gives an incredible performance. It’s like mercury, always changing. It was so hard to predict what he was going to do physically and mentally. Heath’s performance will undoubtedly go down as one of the great screen villains of all time.”

Han believes the critical praise being lauded on this one is well warranted and years from now, we’ll still be looking back at Dark Knight as a benchmark for other movies.

“I think it’s going to stand the test of time,” he said. “It’s so much more than a comic book movie. It’s a crime drama. It’s an exploration of human morality. It’s so well constructed on so many levels. I’ve heard it mentioned in the same breath as The Empire Strikes Back or The Godfather Part II. I think those are accurate references.”

Han moves right from one “event picture” to another as next he starts shooting 2012. That year brings the end of the world according to the Mayan character, so it’s a happy film. Not really.

Since it hasn’t even started shooting yet, there’s not a lot Han can say. The press materials say his character Lin Pang helps save citizens from the numerous natural disasters occurring in the movie. Han said audiences will be in for a “great thrill ride” with 2012. John Cusack and Danny Glover will be helping beat back the end of the world in this one too.

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The recent events surrounding Dark Knight star Christian Bale are tinged with quite a bit of irony. After all, many folks in Gotham want the police to bring Batman in for his vigilante acts. Then, the actor gets arrested in a family dispute. Between Bale’s arrest and Heath Ledger’s death, the word curse is going to start being thrown around in connection with this movie.

I’m not about to pass judgment here, I’ve got a few family members I’m surprised I haven’t hit yet. I’m not thinking this will do anything to the movie’s second weekend take. I am a little worried about Warner Bros. overreacting because as we know, they’ll recast Batman at the drop of a cowl. At the rate the franchise was deteriorating I think Vin Diesel was in line to play Batman.

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Bat-mania reached an all-time high due to the untimely passing of Heath Ledger and his critically-acclaimed performance as The Joker. His dark, twisted villain is drawing some of the best reviews of any bad guy in cinema history.

With this being the last big film of the summer, it’s expected to have a good long run at or near the top. It’s of course the type of movie that lends itself to repeat viewings, so these numbers are only going to grow.

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Photo by Stephen Vaughan

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Spoilers after the jump.

The movie revolves around the amazing performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker, and here he creates one of the great villains in screen history. There are no acid squirting flowers or joy buzzers here. This psychotic clown’s choice of weapon is a knife because of the sheer brutality he wishes to inflict.

This Joker isn’t just a criminal, he’s a violent, destructive force of nature. His mind games push Gotham’s heroes to the brink of insanity in some cases and completely over the edge in one. Batman, Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent are charged with figuring out how to use society’s rules to catch a man that doesn’t play by them. As Michael Caine’s Alfred explains to Bruce Wayne, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Ledger has earned the posthumous Oscar nomination that is being talked about. He creates a character unlike any that has ever appeared on screen. He inspires laughter, tears and disgust all within moments of each other. In playing Gotham’s criminal element against those who would enforce the law, he exposes the fears and weaknesses of both groups.

Soon even the mafia that offered him free reign of Gotham City realizes The Joker can’t be trusted, controlled or contained. He makes a perfect foil for Batman because deep down neither man is stable.

Christian Bale again nails the tortured soul of the crimefighter while playing Bruce Wayne as the dim bulb oblivious to the world around him. This Batman’s true disguise isn’t the mask, it’s that Bruce Wayne is such an arrogant, selfish boob no one would possibly suspect him of being noble. In this film we learn just how much Batman has to sacrifice to save Gotham.

And sacrifice he does. This movie shows us that Batman can’t save everyone and that not everyone in Gotham thinks the Caped Crusdader should be the city’s savior.

Equally compelling is Aaron Eckhart’s descent into madness, also spurred on by The Joker. Gone are the two-sided suits, dual girlfriends and scene-chewing of Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face. The first time this villain’s face is shown sends shockwaves through the theater. The heroes are left to ponder what hope Gotham has if a man like Joker can do this to the best of them.

Morgan Freeman and Caine show these elder statesmen can hold their own with this generation’s best actors. They portray some of the few men that can tell Batman when he’s making a mistake and rightfully expect him to listen.

Gary Oldman, best known for some of his villainous roles, gives a powerful humanity to Commissioner Gordon. We feel his uncertainty about who to trust, which rules must be kept sacred and which have to be broken.

Some Batfans didn’t feel Nolan’s Batman Begins had enough action. Those fans will find little to complain about here. Though this pair doesn’t have superpowers, Batman and Joker’s battles tear the city apart even better than Hulk and Abomination did a few weeks ago. Nolan’s use of IMAX cameras for the action scenes is a smashing success and one of the many reasons this film will stand up throughout the years.

The bar for comic book adaptations has been raised almost impossibly high by Nolan and this cast. The Dark Knight is one of the best films ever, succeeding on multiple levels. It will make you think, make you gasp and make you expect more from those who take on action films.

TM & © DC Comics.
Photo by Stephen Vaughan

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Image details: Arrivals at the 64th Annual Venice Film Festival – Day 7 served by picapp.com

Fueled by the untimely death of and reported brilliant performance by Heath Ledger, Bat-mania is at fever pitch. The New York Times said tickets for July 18 screenings of The Dark Knight are such a hot commodity theatres are scheduling 6 am screenings for those who didn’t get into midnight and 3 am screenings.

Collectors are also scrambling to snap up action figures representing Ledger’s final role, the demented supervillain Joker. New York toy stores saw their entire stock of Ledger action figures vanish in minutes. It wasn’t hard to figure out why as the $9.99 figures soon turned up on eBay going for more than $50.

In the midst of all this, reviews coming in for this latest Batman installment have been universally positive. Ledger is drawing such rave accolades that there is talk of nominating him for a posthumous Oscar. Christian Bale is still getting good notices for his turn as the tortured hero Batman. Reports coming in so far also say Knight is a more action-oriented turn than Batman Begins, much of which focused on the journey Bruce Wayne had to undertake to become The Bat.

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A growing swell of supporters including co-stars Christian Bale and Gary Oldman are talking posthumous Oscar for Ledger. If that happens, Ledger would be the first person so honored since Peter Finch in 1976 for Network.

Obviously Ledger’s take is a more sinister and disturbed creature than Jack Nicholson in 1989’s Batman. And I say that as someone who loved that film and Nicholson’s performance. Some are blaming the “dark places” Ledger had to go to for this character as reasons for his premature death. I don’t know about that but I’m excited to hear the good words about the film and about Ledger’s performance.

Coming on the heels of spot-on adaptations of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, another top-notch Batman movie is icing on the cake. We still have Hellboy II:The Golden Army coming up as well. I couldn’t be more psyched to be a comic book fan right now.

TM & © DC Comics.
Photo by Stephen Vaughan

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