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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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December 17, 2007

Whatever Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stranger

By Dan Carlson

joker.png

I don't often get excited about trailers, and I certainly don't greet them with the fervor I did when I was younger. But the latest trailer for The Dark Knight is just unrelentingly awesome. I saw I Am Legend (great premise, terrible third act) over the weekend, and I attended an Imax screening just so I could watch a terrific sequence involving the Joker's henchmen committing a bank robbery. Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins was one of the best superhero films ever made, and The Dark Knight looks to follow in its footsteps. It's not even opening until July 18 of next year, but what can I say: I'm already looking forward to it.

Comments: 4

Kevin Longrie

Is it just me, or does it look like Ledger nailed it......like....amazing.

Dec 17, 2007 8:38 PM

Chris

Daniel,

I was excited to see not only the link to the Dark Knight trailer - which is indeed breathtaking, as hoped - but also the inclusion of Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend in your rotation. 100% Fun was, I believe, the second CD I ever purchased. Have you listened to the Thorns at all? It's him with Shawn Mullins and Pete Dro(d)ge. I have a good friend from Atlanta who's intensely into them. He's also a cop, though. So who knows.

Dec 18, 2007 9:36 PM

Melanie Larson

That picture is scaring me.

Dec 21, 2007 12:08 PM

JMW

I'm almost always disappointed in comic book movies, but yes, this preview is amazing. It's raised my expectations pretty high.

Dec 21, 2007 12:14 PM

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"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
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"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

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We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
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