Dark Knight

I saw Dark Knight with Lio the weekend before last; now that I've had some time to digest it I think it's the greatest comic book movie ever (mostly because it's not a traditional comic book movie.) The traditional comic book movie has an ass-kicking hero face off against, and ultimately defeat, a flashy villain (with a lot of crazy CGI fight scenes liberally interspersed throughout). The Dark Knight had a largely impotent and accidental hero struggling to keep up with a sociopathic monster while everything around them burned to the ground. We rarely get Hollywood movies (especially franchise sequels) where the protagonist "loses". It was packed with interesting social and political commentary. Lio made a great point about this being essentially a crime drama. It takes the best elements of the epic crime drama formula and uses the comic book elements to ratchet up the characterization and the stakes. I really hope Hollywood takes notes on this movie because I'd love to see more comic book movies given this sort of treatment.

I loved the way they handled Two-Face's appearance. We've all seen enough shitty burn makeup to last a lifetime; seeing the tendons, muscles, and naked eyeball moving really adds a layer of horror to the character. My only real complaint is that the movie didn't draw more from Dark Knight Returns and Long Halloween. I wanted Harvey to slip into serial killing before getting acid in the face (Long Halloween) and I wanted Nolan to explore the copycat Batmans/climate of Gotham angle a little more (DKR).

Stone: If you have any interest at all in westerns you should check out Aces & Eights. It's designed for people that love crunchy rules systems and has an awesome hit location mechanic where you put a translucent "Shot Clock" over the silhouette of the target.

Manny has really shocked me over the past couple weeks. He's always been a wacky guy but I've never seen a player overtly sit out games and talk crazy shit like this before. I think you're right about him being worth $20 million. On top of putting up top tier numbers every year he's the rare hitter that can't really be pitched to. Even the best hitters almost always can be pitched to and neutralized by a great pitcher (Ortiz and Giambi can't handle fastballs on the upper inside corner, A-Rod swings at borderline offspeed stuff on the outside corner, etc.) Manny has no weaknesses; if he decides he wants to play he will hit the ball. That said, for the Red Sox to be this desperate to move him they must really think he's going to keep sitting out games and distracting the other players. They're a better team if they convince him to play and pay him $20 million to play again next year.

Calliander: I like your ideas for adding new features to Insult but you've got to keep the old school layout.