The Dark Knight

Sarah's having a girl's night out to go see Twilight with millions of other girls around the world. Yeah, I said it - no guy who's a real man will go see it. A real man stays home and watches The Dark Knight like I just did. Talk about a pretty darn good movie!!! Here are my thoughts fresh after finishing the movie:

• Christian Bale does not really make a good Batman, but then again the only one that was "good" was Michael Keaton. He'll do I guess, let's see where this "new" series goes over the next 10 years.
  
• Everyone else was pretty darn good in the movie.
  
• Maggie Gyllenhaal is cute, but she's no Katie Holmes
• I was hoping Maggie would kiss The Joker... that way Heath Ledger could have claimed making out with a brother/sister combination... how many folks can say that on their resume?
• Ok... Heath Ledger was good. In fact he was great. Best performance ever? Not really. I haven't really thought about the other performances from the past year to compare it with for the award season coming up. But I do compare him to Jack Nicholson's Joker from 19 years ago (yeah... "Holy Shit has it been 19 years???"... 1989 indeed). Not sure Ledger's Joker performance would have been so well done without Nicholson showing him how crazy the character should be. Just my 2 cents worth.
  
• I LOVED bringing in the creation of Two-Face. Seriously, I knew I recognized the name, but had forgotten who Harvey Dent was to become.
• Good special effects on Two Face and the ugly eye that follows his other eye perfectly.
• Anthony Michael Hall..... is he seriously still acting and only pulling down B-roles? Go back and do a Breakfast Club 25 years later or something. Wasn't even that good!

All in all - if you haven't seen it, go rent it/download it/etc. As for a 3rd movie, I'd be game for it. Bring back Tim Burton and let him do some fun stuff!

Other Movie thoughts - is there seriously another Terminator movie coming out (with Christian Bale)???

I should be done with The Stand this weekend. 1300 pages, I have less than 200 left. I want to start a new book on my way home next week to the US. Tomorrow morning, Sarah and I FINALLY head to Kenting on the south tip of Taiwan. Weather calls for 80+ degrees and lots of sun. We're staying in the top hotel (The Chateau) and a room that opens up right onto the beach. Private beach at that!!! We come back to Taipei Monday morning. It's a 1.5 hour ride on the High Speed Rail (direct route.... takes 2.5 hours on the non-direct route), then about a 2 hour bus ride from Train Station to our hotel. Don't worry, there will be lots of pictures when we get back!

Then it's only 4 days till we get back to the US of A! We'll be touching down in Snowy Rochester Friday morning so pray for good weather. Our time there will be very short (3 hours), enough to check on a few things then hit the road to Iowa.

Have a good weekend y'all. Christmas is less than 2 weeks away!!!