Fresh Loaf

This is no joy in Gotham City this morning following the Academy Award nominations. Heath Ledger earned the expected, posthumous Best Supporting Actor nod for The Dark Knight, but that’s the only major award garnered by the downbeat Batman film, which happens to be the second-highest grossing film ever made. The Producers, Directors and Writers Guilds all nominated The Dark Knight, but the Academy, never one to eagerly embrace genre films, shut it out of the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay categories while giving it eight nominations overall.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire all earned major nominations, including Best Picture, as expected. Button got the most total nods, at 13, with Slumdog the runner-up, with 10.

So what took the Dark Knight’s “slot?” Apparently The Reader, the post-Holocaust drama starring Kate Winslet (pictured). Not only did Oscar give it nominations for Best Picture, Best Director for Stephen Daldry and Best Adapted Screenplay, Kate Winslet triumphed over herself in Revolutionary Road. The studios had campaigned for Winslet as Supporting Actress in The Reader and lead in Revolutionary Road, but Academy instead gave her lead nomination and snubbed Revolutionary Road in the rest of the major categories, except Michael Shannon as supporting actor.

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Released today on DVD, The Incredible Hulk was meant to be a dramatic do-over of the 2003 Hulk feature film. Marvel hoped the first Hulk would match the record-breaking success of its previous year’s Spider-man, but Ang Lee’s cerebral, angsty take on the raging green giant was an underperformer. Despite its $137 million budget, Hulk earned $132 million theatrically in the United States (and $245 million worldwide).

As a “reboot” sequel, Incredible brought in French action director Louis Leterrier, pumped up the premise as a combination of monster movie and manhunt flick and enlisted a new cast, with Edward Norton replacing Eric Bana as the Hulk’s anguished alter ego, Bruce Banner. Incredibly, the financial results were practically identical: Leterrier’s film had a $150 million budget and made $134 million in the U.S. ($261 worldwide) — and that’s not factoring inflation into the equation. Here are five theories as to why Incredible failed to pump up the box office.

1. Memories of the first film scared people off. Ang Lee’s Hulk contains some thrilling, fascinating set pieces. The scenes of the Hulk bounding across the Southwestern desert, battling tanks and helicopters, feature a weird lyricism matched by few movies of any kind, let alone comic book films. Unfortunately the film, which lasts well over two hours, is surrounded by sluggishly-paced scenes, weird Oedipal plotting that seldom makes dramatic sense and superfluous, “24”-style split screens and effects that replicate comic book panels for no good reason. Making a follow-up to a movie nobody liked was bound to be a risk, although Incredible opts to ignore Lee’s continuity and pay affectionate homage to the old “Incredible Hulk” TV series.

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The Fox Theatre has announced the final three films for its 2008 Coca-Cola Summer Film Festival. True to form, the Fox is rounding out its August slate with three more hits from this summer, but the surprise is that the record-breaking Dark Knight is not one of them. Instead, the films are:

Hancock, playing Sunday, Aug. 10 at 7 p.m.
Mamma Mia, playing Thursday, Aug. 28 at 7:30 p.m.; and
WALL-E, playing Saturday Aug. 30 at 2 p.m.

The complete schedule can be found here.

Meanwhile, remember the reports that The Dark Knight broke records with an estimated $155 million opening weekend, with the caveat that the final figures weren’t in? Well, that initial number was indeed incorrect — but apparently too low, and The Dark Knight actually earned $158 million over the weekend.

(Image courtesy of Disney/Pixar)

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Some early notices for the epic-length Batman drama The Dark Knight suggest that the late Heath Ledger gives the “definitive” performance as The Joker, the Caped Crusader’s sociopathic arch-nemesis. It’s true that Ledger does tremendous, terrifying work in the film — if he’d lived, he could have launched a second career playing psychos. I’m not sure, however, that anyone can give the definitive performance of such a pop culture mainstay. In high-brow terms, it’s like expecting a definitive Macbeth or Blanche DuBois. Like any enduring fictional character, the Joker has a long history that reflects changes in his target audience and creative staff — we get different Jokers for different times. Following are five of the traits that make The Clown Prince of Crime possibly the most memorable and timeless villain of them all.

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