Monthly Archives: July 2012

Sneak peek: ‘Dallas’ gets twisty with ‘Family Business’

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Always a master of understatement, Bobby Ewing at some point during “Family Business,” Wednesday night’s episode of “Dallas,” says, “This family’s in trouble.”

Yes, Bobby. It’s been that way since the 1970s and frankly we wouldn’t have it any other way.

I was a little skeptical when TNT announced its continuation of “Dallas.” Various prequels and sequels to the great nighttime soap have been attempted before, including an “early years” TV movie featuring the younger days of Jock Ewing, Ellie Farnsworth and Cliff Barnes. None had absolutely clicked and none was very successful.

But TNT’s series, set in modern day a couple of decades after we last saw the Ewings, works and works very well.

I don’t usually get to see TV shows in advance, but I got my hands on the last couple of episodes of the season. I’m here to tell you, darlin’, they’re good. They very well might rank up there, purely in terms of soapy storyline and good scenes for characters, with the best of the old show.

If you’ve been watching, you know that cousins John Ross and Christopher (Jesse Metcalf and Josh Henderson), the sons of J.R. and Bobby, have been struggling through various personal dramas, especially their dealings with the women in their lives, maid’s daughter Elena (Jordana Brewster) and good-girl-with-a-secret Rebecca (Julie Gonzalo). This has played out in front of a backdrop of struggle over control of South Fork Ranch and the possibility of drilling for oil on the land.

In Wednesday’s next-to-last episode of the season, the cousins also turn to family doings and business dealings as a Ewing has a health crisis and the cousins consider the unthinkable (at least for their fathers): Working together.

If it sounds like there’s a lot of emphasis on the younger Ewings, that’s true. But the older generation really gets all the best moments.

One gets the aforementioned health crisis, while another meets a career turning point. There’s blackmail and skullduggery aplenty.

“Dallas” always worked best when it got a lot of the Ewings together under one roof, whether it was Southfork Ranch or the Ewing Oil office. Wednesday’s episode does just that and everything really clicks, whether it’s downright touching scenes between J.R. (Larry Hagman, who’s wonderful) and John Ross or J.R. and Bobby (Patrick Duffy).

There’s also good stuff for Bobby’s wife, Ann (Brenda Strong), and J.R.’s ex, Sue Ellen (Linda Gray).

“He called me wife number three,” an irritated Ann says to Sue Ellen after an encounter with J.R. Sue Ellen allows that she knows: She gave J.R. a good slap in return.

The ratings for the show have been good and it’s already been renewed for a second season. The unlikely success of the series must have been on the minds of the writers when they had J.R. – who else – say, “I’m back, honey, and I’m gonna be bigger than ever.”

No big spoilers for this or the season finale, but there are some fun twists and turns in the stories and big changes for the characters.

And somebody ends up on the unlucky end of a gun.

Check out “Dallas” and its next-to-last episode of the season at 9 p.m. Wednesday.

‘Birds of Prey’ a model for an ‘Avengers’ TV show?

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While the geek universe is speculating about just what a TV series set in the “Avengers” movie universe might look like, I realized that we’ve already seen an example in the “Birds of Prey” series.

Airing on the WB network in 2002, the series was a small-screen take on DC’s “Birds of Prey” comic book series. The show featured Barbara Gordon in her Oracle incarnation (in other words, after the Joker’s brutal attack on Batgirl in “The Killing Joke” that left her paralyzed) leading a small group of crimefighters including Huntress (daughter of Batman and Catwoman in this scenario) and Dinah, the daughter of the original Black Canary.

“Birds of Prey,” which lasted only a handful of episodes, was a fairly standard police procedural dressed up with rooftop chase scenes and “Buffy” style fighting. Ten years on, some elements of the series look cheesy (the dialogue is particularly rough). But the series was overseen by Laeta Kalogridis, who went on to write and produce “Avatar” and “Shutter Island” and had a properly comic-booky feel.

Although only a few episodes aired, all 13 are available on disc.

How can the producers of an “Avengers” TV spin-off learn from “Birds of Prey?”

The “stars” of the story were off-screen. Nobody expects Iron Man or Thor to show up on a weekly TV series. Not while there are big-ticket movies to be made. “Birds of Prey” dealt with the absence of Batman and Catwoman by deciding the former had stopped patrolling the alleys of Gotham (sound familiar, “Dark Knight Rises” fans?) after the death of his beloved (in this case, Catwoman). Bruce Wayne was never more than a silent presence on the other end of a telephone line during conversations with Alfred.

The show was made on a TV budget, not a movie budget. It helped, probably, that no one flew in “Birds of Prey,” although Huntress did a lot of diving off rooftops. Dark Gotham City streets, a couple of oddball metahuman characters and some futuristic weaponry helped achieve a comic-book feel on a budget.

The show didn’t make major changes in its universe. A TV series set in the “Avengers” movie universe isn’t going to make major changes to storylines or characters, that’s for sure. We won’t see Loki killed off or Iron Man retire. “Birds of Prey” had the same restrictions, of course, beyond the initial killing of Catwoman. With Batman out of town, the most dramatic event the series could give viewers was a climactic battle, in the final episode, between Huntress and Harley Quinn, the Joker’s looney moll. But it made for a nice little payoff for the series. What about how they killed off the original Black Canary in the “Birds of Prey?” Well, did you see a body?

The show didn’t betray familiar characters. It’s safe to say that SHIELD isn’t suddenly going to become a terrorist organization, nor will we hear that Black Widow or Hawkeye have gone back to their previous careers. “Birds of Prey” had to dance around major changes to the core Gotham City characters. One episode featured the return of a Batman protege and apparently the character was originally going to have been Robin/Nightwing. But because the guy goes astray, so a change of secret identities was called for.

Although it didn’t make much of an impression on TV audiences or the DC comics universe in general, “Birds of Prey” did show it was possible to mount a weekly TV series in a thickly populated comics universe without interfering with a big-screen movie franchise.

 

An ‘Avengers’ TV series? It could work

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News rolled out this weekend that Marvel and parent company Disney are exploring the possibility of a TV series set in the Marvel movie universe that “The Avengers,” “Iron Man” and all the rest live in.

This is something of a change considering that Disney and Marvel have mulled a couple of TV series since their big-screen ventures began in 2008.

Apparently a “Hulk” series is still being developed, but it seems like maybe the people in charge aren’t quite sure of what to do with it. They’ve said it would not take place in the Marvel movie universe, thus eliminating the possibility of a Tony Stark cameo.

Marvel was considering a series featuring second-tier heroes like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage (Hero for Hire, Power Man, of course). But they back-burnered it, maybe so they could concentrate on this series.

So where should Marvel go on the TV screen?

Consider an animated series. Seriously. Everybody wants to see live-action, of course, and there’s already an “Avengers” animated series being developed for Disney XD. But you know what? “Jonny Quest” was a primetime series. Who wouldn’t watch a weekly primetime version of “The Incredibles?” If you decide to do the ultimate (no pun intended) “Avengers” TV series and it just happens to be animated, emulate “Justice League Unlimited” and the fans will watch.

Forget the stars. Really. Fans won’t tune in every week hoping to seem Samuel Jackson as Nick Fury. They’ll turn in to see concepts from their favorite comics explored on the small screen. Don’t worry about getting Jackson or Chris Evans or Mark Ruffalo. Work around the established characters or even re-cast them. Think about it: In the past 50 years, a lot of different artists have drawn Spider-Man, Captain America and the rest. They’ve looked pretty familiar but not exactly the same. Fans can accept variations.

Figure out how to budget it. The average episode of a TV series costs a couple million bucks. That’s about a tenth of what a big-screen movie can cost. If the producers try to be realistic in how they budget and make the show, fans will understand. Doing a cheap version that feels like a cheap version won’t satisfy anybody.

Some possible series:

“SHIELD” is a natural. It’s a spy organization. TV can do spies. Feature the Maria Hill character with a couple of cameos from Sam Jackson. Maybe Iron Man would fly over in the season finale.

“Damage Control” is little known among the public at large but often suggested by fans. Created in 1989, the Damage Control comic is about a New York-based company that comes in in the aftermath of a knock-down-drag-out between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom, for example. Damage Control would clean up the mess, stabilize buildings and deal with any otherworldly toxic waste. The show would be a natural to have heroes show up occasionally, make a mess and leave. Humor would be an important element here.

With its DVD short films featuring SHIELD agents and the upcoming “Item 47” – a 12-minute movie on the Avengers DVDs this September featuring a story about two grifters, including Lizzy Caplan, who find one of the Chitauri blasters and decide to put it to bad use – Marvel is showing an inclination to try comic book stories on a smaller scale. It’s no surprise they would eventually focus that effort on a TV series.

 

‘Gone Girl’ a twisted tale of marriage

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I almost stopped reading “Gone Girl” less than halfway through the book.

It’s not that Gillian Flynn’s thriller, about a married woman who disappears and the growing shadow of suspicion that falls on her husband, isn’t well-written or absorbing.

It’s that Flynn, a former Entertainment Weekly writer, painted dual portraits of the husband and wife that were so sharp, so true-to-life, that they were pretty damn uncomfortable.

We’ve all seen this story played out too many times on tabloid TV: Pretty young woman goes missing. Husband seems oddly unmoved. As the police narrow their focus on him as a “person of interest,” he gets a high-profile lawyer. A loud-mouthed TV show host begins what amounts to a public crusade to convict the husband in the court of public opinion.

I almost didn’t have the heart to finish “Gone Girl.” But I kept going and was rewarded with a neat thriller that pulled me in and held me captive until the twisted ending.

Flynn tells the story of Nick and Amy Dunne, young marrieds who lost their jobs in the New York City media (thanks, Internet!) and moved back to his hometown in Missouri.

Nick seems to be a typical boy-man. He’s charming and good-looking but has never grown up. In NYC he ignores his wife and hangs out with buddies, drinking and flirting with women in bars. Back home in Missouri he takes care of his dementia-addled father and runs a bar with his twin sister, Margo (Go for short).

At the beginning of the book, Amy goes missing. At first it looks like she’s been kidnapped, maybe by one of the desperate men put out of work at the town’s only big industry.

But then the police turn their attention and their investigation toward Nick, who begins behaving oddly and outright lying to police.

Interspersed with chapters in the wake of Amy’s disappearance are her diary entries, over a period of several years, that seem to paint a picture of a troubled young woman. Among her troubles: The growing distance between her and her husband and Nick’s increasingly hostile behavior.

I was getting a little tired of Nick’s duplicity and Amy’s insipid second-guessing, but a little less than halfway through the book, Flynn throws readers a nice curve that very nearly turns the second half of the book into a completely new story. No spoilers here. Suffice it to say that, despite – or because of – a conclusion that is quite troubling, Flynn has written a terrific thriller.

Actress Reese Witherspoon is, according to news reports, going to produce a movie version with a screenplay written by Flynn. No word on whether Witherspoon will play Amy but I guess she’d be right for the part.

I’ve already cast Lizzy Caplan as Go. In my head at least.

“Gone Girl” hits so many notes perfectly. The tension between Nick and Amy’s parents after she disappears. The tactics of police investigators (“We want to help you, Nick”) and flashy, high-profile defense attorneys. Best of all is Flynn’s portrait of the Nancy Grace-style TV host, although after creating the character Flynn doesn’t do that much with it.

Flynn has scored a publishing sensation with “Gone Girl” and, if handled the right way, the movie could be a thriller to appeal to grownups.

One caveat: If you’re about to get married or are already married, “Gone Girl” will have you wondering about not only the little quirks of your relationship but the intent of the person on the other side of the bed from you. Flynn’s book is that good and that unsettling.

A third ‘Hobbit’ movie? The curse of the threequel

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Blame it on George Lucas.

In 1983, Hollywood and the moviegoing public came to accept the trilogy – a set of three movies – as the standard, the perfect number of movies in a series.

It was the year of “Return of the Jedi,” not a bad movie in its own right and an appropriate finale to the original films. Of course, it pales in comparison to “The Empire Strikes Back.”

And yes, some movie series (notably “Star Trek”) continued past their third entry.

But thanks to Lucas’ original trilogy and prequel trilogy (sigh), three movies became the norm.

Which meant we’ve seem a lot of good third films (“Return of the King,” “Toy Story 3”) and a lot of bad third films.

Now rumors are sweeping the Internet that director Peter Jackson is considering – perhaps being encouraged – to turn his adaptation of “The Hobbit” from two movies to three movies.

Tolkien’s story is one dear to generations of readers and serves as a great introduction to “The Lord of the Rings.” But it’s hard to imagine how the rather simple story could sustain three movies.

So hear’s hoping Jackson resists the temptation.

But just in case, let’s recall some really awful third movies:

“Superman III,” in which Richard Pryor becomes the Man of Steel’s archnemesis. Interesting how much Christopher Reeve’s costume in that movie foreshadows the muted blue and red colors used in “Superman Returns” and next year’s “Man of Steel.” “Superman III” was topped in its badness only by “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.”

“Spider-Man 3,” the reason why Sam Raimi is no longer making “Spider-Man” movies starring Tobey McGuire. Does anyone ever want to see Peter Parker dance again?

“X-Men: The Last Stand.” Here’s a great example of how to kill a series. You’d think Sam Raimi and Tobey McGuire were special guests on the set.

“Terminator III.” After the highpoint of “Terminator 2,” a letdown of epic proportions.

And possibly least, “Alien 3.” James Cameron made “Aliens” a thrilling bug hunt. “Alien 3” made us wish Sigourney Weaver had just said no.

 

‘Dark Knight Rises’ review and spoilers

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I didn’t expect to like “The Dark Knight Rises” as much as I did.

The conclusion to director Christopher Nolan’s Batman saga – and make no mistake, this is a conclusion, as well as a new beginning – has sounded a little frustrating from the word go. Nolan’s well-known aversion to the more comic-bookish aspects of the Batman legend has irritated me a bit. Sometimes his decision to play it realistic worked quite well (Heath Ledger’s Joker). Sometimes it just seemed like a case of an embarrassed auteur ashamed to be playing around with comic books.

“Batman Begins” worked in Nolan’s realistic world, particularly as it established the mechanics of how a driven billionaire would become a street-fighting vigilante. “The Dark Knight” elaborated on that premise and at times seemed more like a gritty heist and robbery cop movie than a superhero movie. But it worked.

“The Dark Knight Rises,” as everyone knows by now, opens eight years after Batman has been framed for the murder of District Attorney Harvey Dent. As we saw at the end of “The Dark Knight,” Batman and Commissioner Jim Gordon agreed that to martyr Dent, who had slipped into madness and become Two Face, and make Batman a criminal was the best way to bring peace to Gotham City.

In the new movie, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a recluse with bad knees, coming out of the rebuilt Wayne Manor only when Bane (Tom Hardy) attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange and Selina Kyle, a cat burglar with a great shtick, gets mixed up in the action.

At about two hours and 45 minutes, “The Dark Knight Rises” is long but doesn’t feel like it. The movie has some pretty nifty action scenes and some that are uncomfortably similar to the real-life tragedy that took place in Aurora, Colorado, a couple of nights ago. Scenes of Bane’s bad guys walking into crowded rooms and opening fire might make you squirm.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is intense and brutal and definitely not for kids.

So what worked and what didn’t work about the movie?

Spoilers ahead. Seriously.

What worked:

The character relationships. Alfred and Bruce. Batman and Jim Gordon. Even Batman/Bruce’s banter with Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle – and her roguish, you’re-never-quite-sure-of her-allegiance stance, which could have been corny but wasn’t – felt just right. So did her badass, “I can do this” attitude.

Batman’s words of wisdom: During the movie, Nolan foreshadows the change that’s coming by showcasing Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s earnest police officer John Blake. I mean, he’s an orphan, for goodness sake. And at one point he discards a gun after killing a man. (He does arm himself later, however.) But of all the telling instances pointing to John Blake’s ultimate destiny, the most interesting is a scene in which Batman tells Blake that he wears a mask not to protect himself but to protect those that he cares about.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Oh man, how Nolan kept all of us guessing for months about the role that Gordon-Levitt was playing. Would be be a bad guy? Would he be Robin? Nightwing? Azrael? By the end of the movie, it was obvious Nolan intended for Blake to carry on in Bruce Wayne’s boots. The clincher? Blake’s real name was Robin. And how about the ending in which Blake, working from directions given him by Batman, finds the Batcave and steps on a platform which rises under him? Future Dark Knight Rising, anyone?

Returning characters: Jonathan Crane, AKA Scarecrow, and most importantly Liam Neeson as Ra’s al Ghul, made this feel like a circle-completing movie. I totally understand why Nolan didn’t want to bring the late Heath Ledger back as the Joker even though I’m sure there were many ways he could have done so. Still, seeing Crane and Ra’s al Ghul made me want something … just a little something … to acknowledge the Joker.

The ending. It was obvious that Nolan intended to take his Christian Bale Bruce Wayne/Batman off the chess board before Warner Bros. could sully the character with any Justice League or Batman vs. Superman movies. I didn’t seriously think Nolan would kill Bruce Wayne off, but he did something just as dramatic: He retired him. And, for the most part, it felt right. And it made me glad that they did it in a way that ushered in a new Batman.

What didn’t work:

Batman’s eight-year absence. So after lifelong friend Rachel dies at the hands of the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” Bruce – motivated not only by grief but the idea that the law-abiding people of Gotham no longer need him – decides to become a recluse and STOP FIGHTING CRIME? No. No way in the world. The implausibility might have been lessened, to some extent, if we had seen a montage of scenes of Batman up on a fire escape, ready to swoop in if a mugger approached a family in one of Gotham’s most notorious alleys, only to realize he was no longer needed.

And doesn’t Batman’s hiatus contradict one of the premises of this movie? For eight years Gotham has been a peaceful place. So Bane traps most of Gotham PD underground (and don’t even get me started on how stupid it was to send all the cops – all of them – into the sewers) and the peaceful people of Gotham City decide to riot?

Bane. It’s a sign of how strong the rest of “The Dark Knight Rises” is that the movie works despite the fact that Bane is the weakest villain of the three movies. Even the Scarecrow was a better character. Sure, Bane is a tough guy and a good fighter. But Ledger’s Joker gleefully killed guys like that in “The Dark Knight.” And having Liam Neeson return as Ra’s al Ghul, even in a dream sequence and in the person of a good younger double, just emphasized how much more interesting his character was compared to Bane.

Tom Hardy. Sorry, Tom. How many ways did you detract from this movie? Maybe it was the truly bizarre mask. Or the fact that you’re just not big enough to be Bane. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the bizarre accent that too often sounded like, as some Internet wit pointed out, Darrell Hammond’s hilarious impersonation of Sean Connery on those old “Saturday Night Live” takeoffs on “Jeopardy.”

“The Dark Knight Rises” was a good finale to Nolan’s Batman tale. He did a good job and made the character memorable. Now I’m ready for some Marvel Comics-style universe building for the DC comics movie universe.

iPhoneography: Drizzly D.C.

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It was raining, or threatening to rain, most of the time I was in Washington, D.C., a couple of days ago. I was there for an awards ceremony, with work and home obligations bookending the trip, and there wasn’t a lot of time to waste.

I managed to see a few sights and take a few pictures with my iPhone. There’s nothing you haven’t seen before by thousands of other, better photographers. There’s something interesting about the city’s many monuments and buildings when it’s raining, however.

I never got near the U.S. Capitol, unfortunately. I checked out the White House from all sides but it was the least interesting building I saw.

I’m guessing that, in this post-9-11 world, Pennsylvania Avenue will never be reopened. It’s a shame, in a way, that you can’t buzz past the White House on your way somewhere (unless you’re on foot or on a bike). But the closed street makes for some nice photo opportunities.

One of the most mind-boggling, purely in terms of size, buildings I saw was the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, named after the former president but originally the headquarters of the nation’s military commanders when it was built in the late 1800s. My picture can’t do justice to its size. It is truly mammoth.

The Lincoln Memorial is majestic, of course.

The juxtaposition of the memorial to the Washington Monument and the reflecting pool makes it the most memorable place in D.C. The pool was drained for repairs while I was there, unfortunately.

Perhaps the most moving memorial in D.C. is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, including the Wall, designed by Maya Lin and featuring the names of more than 58,000 soldiers killed in Vietnam.

The rain only seemed to make the day more appropriate for viewing the wall.

Another element of the Vietnam War memorial is the statue of three soldiers.

The statue is realistic and hauntingly beautiful.

New ‘Man of Steel’ trailer: Huh?

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My first reaction when I saw this weekend’s “Man of Steel” trailer for Zack Snyder’s revisiting of the Superman franchise was that it didn’t look like a trailer for a “Superman” film.

What is this, Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan’s big-screen version of “The Deadliest Catch?”

If you haven’t seen the trailer, the preview is filled with shots of foggy landscapes, a kid running around in the yard outside his house and a bearded guy hitchhiking and working on a fishing boat. (The bearded guy, of course, is Henry Cavill, the star.)

Only at the end, after the “Man of Steel” title, do we get a “Chronicle”-like glimpse of Superman streaking through the sky, breaking the sound barrier.

The trailer raises a lot of questions, most of them about the choices Warner Bros., Nolan and Snyder have made about the movie and how they’re going to market it.

Why, why, why another retelling of the story from the beginning? Are filmmakers unable to resist the mythology of the death of Krypton and Clark’s Smallville years? Haven’t we seen this already, more than enough times?

Are they playing the “Amazing Spider-Man” game? The makers of that recent movie tried hard to convince us there was an untold story to Peter Parker’s parents and his origin. There really wasn’t one. Is the point of this movie (and trailer) to create the impression that the few early scenes in which Clark struggles with the decision about what to do with his powers are as important as what he does later? Isn’t that a dangerous game considering we all KNOW what he does later? Wouldn’t that be like devoting half of a movie to Sherlock Holmes’ dithering about whether to become a detective or a blacksmith?

Who is Clark imitating? When Clark is running around his yard using a red towel for a cape, who is he imitating? Really? In Nolan’s one-superhero world, why would young Clark possibly be wearing a cape before he becomes Superman? And are we supposed to believe that the down-home Kansas Kents would have red bath towels?

Wait, Superman can fly? Really, the build-up in the trailer is to a shot of Superman flying? Is that considered the most impact-full image of Superman they can present? Or a feeble attempt to reassure us that, yes, all that pretty but meandering footage we’ve already shown you is from a Superman movie.

I’ll go see this next May, despite this seriously bungled early marketing attempt and my misgivings, previously noted, about the “edgy” tack they’re apparently taking.

But so far I don’t have a good feeling about “Man of Steel.”

iPhoneography: County fair carnival rides

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What would summer be without a county fair? The fair gives us food that’s good and bad for us, carny games and carnival rides – and an opportunity for iPhone photos.

Here’s a look at this week’s Delaware County Fair, held in Muncie, Indiana.

The last couple of hours of daylight and the onset of twilight is my favorite time to take carnival pictures. You’ve got enough light to get some details but a strong source of light to make for dramatic backlighting. Then, within a few minutes, the sky darkens enough to create beautiful artificial lighting photos.

Here’s another shot of the Yo-Yo.

 

The Ferris wheel is always a favorite.

 

The Freak Out looks very different by day …

… and night.

Gotta love the games, including the ever-popular balloon-busting ones.

And the prizes. When I took this, a young woman operating the game said, “Are you taking a picture of my crabs?”

Night falls on the midway.

 

‘Dark Knight Rises’ spoilers? We’ll know soon

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I haven’t yet seen “The Dark Knight Rises” and I won’t even see it when it opens Friday because of a prior commitment. So almost everyone reading this will know before I do if there’s any truth to the spoilers circulating in the last couple of days.

In other words, keep in mind I have no idea if these spoilers are true. But based on what I’m reading, at least some of them are pretty accurate.

Oh yeah – SPOILERS!

The movie’s ending indicates more adventures of the Dark Knight are going to happen. We already know Warner Bros. wants to reboot the character after Christopher Nolan finishes his trilogy. The studio would love to build to a billion-dollar Justice League movie.

So after months of speculation that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would inherit the Batmantle in this movie … early indications sure make it sound like that happens, at least in some respects. Some reviews have outright said the ending sets up an “offshoot” movie, which certainly makes it sound like a continuation that isn’t another movie about Bruce Wayne.

A villain returns … but not the one you might think. Although the Joker survived “The Dark Knight,” Heath Ledger’s untimely death made it impossible for him to make even a small appearance in the movie. Rumors persisted that Nolan would include Ledger nonetheless, perhaps through unused footage or CGI.

Nolan is saying this week that Ledger is not in the new movie in any form. But early indications are that Cillian Murphy returns as the Scarecrow for at least one scene.

Batman bites the dust? Considering that in the comics Bane breaks Batman’s back and puts him out of commission for a while, everybody expected something dire to happen in this movie.

But I’m thinking David Letterman was kidding when, in a recent interview with Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle in the movie), he says that Batman gets killed. Anyone who watches Letterman – who, during his days as a weatherman in Indianapolis forecast “hail the size of canned hams” – knows that’s typical of his humor.

I do believe that “The Dark Knight Rises” brings Bruce Wayne’s story to an end. I just don’t think the movie kills him off.

We’ll see this Friday. Well, at least some of us will.