Another great one bites the dust

Naughty, buxom, supersexy post-WWII pinup girl & stag film star Bettie Page has died. She definitely left a legacy behind her. The woman is a legend. Man, imagine all the monkeys that have been spanked to her iconic images over the last 60 years... She definitely did her part to usher in the sexual revolution.

R.I.P. Bettie Page. Your body has passed, but the fantasy of your flesh lives on, forever young.

A couple of things are on my mind this morning

Okay, first off: did you know Dec 7-13 is National Handwashing Awareness Week? Please observe and teach your children proper handwashing techniques. What? Soap and water? Hell no, it's not that simple! Listen, you've got to count to twenty, scrub under your nails... It's a very complicated affair. Aw, fer cryin' out loud, just let Henry the Hand explain it!

Now, on to a movie review; something new for me. I rented and watched The Dark Knight last night... What's the big deal about this movie? Maybe I was expecting too much, but I thought it was too long, choppy in places with plot holes, and just overall a fairly good movie, but nowhere near as good as Batman Begins or even the original Batman.

For instance, how the hell did the Joker get out of police custody? He was in the interrogation cell with that cop, who was about to beat the crap out of him, then suddenly he was out of the cell with a knife to the guy's throat. What happened in between seems pretty important to me.

And way before that, there was the first scene when Joker was telling his scar story. He's got a knife to someone's mouth and just as he's about to cut, he drops the body instead. And the guy's already dead. Seems like there was a scene cut there or something, perhaps to attain a PG13? I thought the DVD had skipped, except I didn't get my usual "SKIPPING OVER DAMAGED AREA" notice on the MacBook screen.

Now, my first example I can explain away as having to do with Ledger's death. Perhaps they just hadn't gotten around to finishing that scene. I suppose a little choppiness is to be expected, and thus is forgiveable. To a point.

However, the second scene could have been done as a closeup gross-out scene. That would undoubtedly have pushed it to an R rating, but I think the film suffered for its exclusion. There's all this tension built up in that scene, and then it just falls flat, literally, without that explosive release. What a letdown.

And Joker escapes time and again from the clutches of the Bat and police. How did he get out of Wayne's fundraiser? We don't know. The list goes on.

Let's not forget the death of Harvey Dent. I just don't understand the idea of introducing a kickass character like that and offing him in the same movie. For me, this was like the premature demise of the most kickass Sith Lord ever, Darth Maul. I wanted to see that sumbitch wipe the floor with Jedis for another two movies. It's such an anticlimax to see a seriously evil dude get killed so soon. I'd hoped they were setting up Two-Face to be a key player in the next film.

How the hell does Batman fly... sorry, "glide" like that? Was it in the other movie & I just don't remember it? Was the movie too dark to see it?

And apparently, placing some kind of a super-strong bat-cable across the road in front of an oncoming semi trailer is enough to transfer its forward momentum into enough upward momentum to flip it end-over end! WTF?!?! Those damn movie physics...

Rant, rant, rant. Sorry. I know, I know. I expect too much. But, just like I enjoy a kung fu movie as long as there's no wire work, I like a good action shoot 'em up, as long as there is some grounding in basic reality, like the laws of physics (gravity, momentum, space-time continuum). Even for a comic book movie. When you do more than bend one of these laws for effect, you're now making a science fiction movie, and the suspension of that law should be the latest plot point. Batman should have stood there and said, "Holy shit. That semi just flipped over. That was weird. I just hoped to slow it down, but that just plain shouldn't have happened. At all. Not on this planet, anyway." Then he'd realize he was levitating three feet off the ground.

But I digress. My review: Maybe rent it if you haven't seen it. But don't buy it. If you have seen it, watch Batman Begins again instead. Or American Psycho for an even better Christian Bale movie. And one more thing. To the Academy: Please don't give Ledger a silly posthumous Oscar. His performance was good, but not Oscar-worthy.

But these are just my opinions. Have a great Christmas everyone.