First I'll start with what I liked.

The acting was fantastic. Performances were, for the characters in both movies so far, spot on. They knew their characters and their roles, so they didn't have issues with appearing to be off in any way. (With the exception of Rachel Dawes, but of course... was played by a different actress.) The new characters in The Dark Knight were excellent. Heath Ledger really did turn in one of the most phenomenal performances we'll see in a long time... completely unexpected and worth watching the movie for.

What I could forgive...

Was that the visuals between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were too different. It wasn't as wet and dark as it seemed before. The city didn't even look the same, it didn't resemble the first movie at all. Given the size of the budget, you'd think they'd at least try for something beyond the minimal CGIing of Chicago that they went for. That's a minor point compared to what led me to absolutely hate the rest of the movie.

What I hated is that every scene, every moment in the movie hung by one really thin thread: Perfect timing.

I could even forgive all of the glaring lapses of logic, jumps in the story and major, major, major plotholes... That comes to be something you get used to with dumb hollywood popcorn blockbuster flicks.

I can even accept that one event is an extremely unlikely coincidence, a chance of fate that sets everything else in motion. A person in the right, or wrong, place at the right... or wrong... time.

But The Dark Knight depends on perfect timing for its entire length.

Every scene. Every event that leads to another is absolutely, to exact seconds, perfect timing in execution. This went beyond suspension of belief to "Oh, come on, you've got to be fucking kidding me!" territory.

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So...

Last night I was at a bar that was doing a promotion with Absolut. "Global Cooling."

They had some hand pedal cranks hooked up to batteries that you could recharge. Doing so got you a neat little trinket and a free drink. They also had a stationary bike hooked up to a motor that was then hooked up to a battery system to power a $20,000 display... essentially a plexiglass tower with shelves of plexiglass... designed to illuminate the bottles on shelves within.

Or at least that's my best guess. It didn't work. So the stationary bike and hand pedals were there for nothing. Even if you sat on the bike and pedaled for a while, achieving nothing... they gave you a drink coupon anyway.

The trinket? A hand-crank flashlight.




I thought it was neat enough. Because the tower display didn't work, they turned a few of these on and stuck them around the tower. For hand cranked flashlights they sure lasted for a while. "Batteries?" I asked... "Nope!" they said. Suuuree. Well. Maybe it had something like a capacitor inside. Or a mini rechargeable battery. Either way, I got a second one with the express intent to tear it apart.

The hand crank was spring loaded, so I had some trouble getting it back together again. I didn't notice anything unusual. Just a big bulky, but lightweight, bulb area. Crank. Magnet. Motor. Wires...

Of which I ended up breaking, by accident... I swear. But the damage was done, so I decided to tear apart the bulb area.

And guess what I found...

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It's been about two years, to this month.

Still doesn't get any easier.



More here: http://ergh.org/photos/index.php?TopicID=VinniePics

#10's in the works, but no promises yet. Things are likely to change.

Updated April 21th: It's done.

Download it here: http://ergh.org/ah/ah8.php

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Previous updates:

The tracklisting for Anti House 8 can now safely be considered final.



Polishing, tweaking, fiddling, mastering and uploading to be completed next. Hopefully everything with be finished by March 14th May?

Tracklisting is below...

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