Joker Vs Joker

I had a chance to watch ”The Dark Knight” before the world could watch it. We had a special screening for our team the day before it released. I’m sure everyone was amazed at Heath Ledger’s performance. Bale was almost over-shadowed in the movie. When I returned home I started reading articles and reviews about the movie. Almost everyone agreed that it was a masterpiece and Ledger had given a performance so that the world will remember him for a long time. People started comparing his performance with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman. I came across this wonderful video on youtube that compares the two Jokers. When people said that Heath Ledger’s performance was better than Jack Nicholson’s, I could not believe it. No one can perform any role better than Nicholson. I got Batman’s (1989) DVD from Netflix and watched it. It was a truly magnificent performance from Jack Nicholson as usual. I also understood why people felt that Ledger was better than Nicholson.

One of the major reasons for Ledger’s performance was the characterization of the Joker. The credit goes to Christopher Nolan. He is a master director and he completely changed the way Joker was portrayed on screen. In all the previous versions (Nicholson and the animations) Joker was portrayed as a crazy, animated  person with exaggerated reactions. He was portrayed a sociopath who sings, dances and then mercilessly shoots people. Nolan portrayed Joker in a manner that would have impressed even the creators of Joker (The credit for the original creation of this character is still being disputed) and Heath Ledger gave life to Nolan’s Joker. The dialogs were powerful and it was a battle of minds. Ledger does not even use guns  in the movie (One of my favorite quotes from the movie: “Do you wanna know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the... little... emotions. In... you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?”).

If you were impressed by Ledger try to watch the older version. You‘ll know that Nicholson has done justice to his role. It is unfair to compare Ledger and Nicholson. It just shows that Christopher Nolan is better than Tim Burton. It is not Ledger’s Joker Vs Nicholson’s Joker. It is Nolan’s Joker Vs Burton’s Joker and the former wins hands-down.

My Fall Schedule ;-)

September 22nd marks the beginning of the fall TV season this year (Friends premiered on September 22, 1994 and Lost premiered on September 22, 2004). ABC calls it the "National Stay at home" week. Wish I could stay at home!!

This year, Heroes returns on September 22nd with a two hour season premiere. The second season of Heroes was not as good as the first. One of the major reasons for this was the writer's strike which reduced the number of episodes to 14. They had to cut down on more than 10 episodes. Volume 2 ended with Sylar returning getting back his powers. Tim Kring mentioned in an interview that Volume 3: Villains will have a lot of new characters with new powers. I can only hope that this season is as good as the first. It would be great to watch Hayden Pannetiere in action again!! Catch "Heroes" on NBC - Mondays at 9PM.

Family Guy (Season 7) and American Dad! (Season 4) return September 28th on Fox. This brings Seth MacFarlane 's foul mouthed, crazy, racist characters back after a short break. You can also check out Seth's short videos here. Family Guy and American Dad! will be telecast on Sundays 9 - 10 PM on Fox.

A new series premiered on Fox 2 weeks ago. It's called Fringe and it is Fox's attempt to challenge NBC's Heroes. It is based on Fringe science and Fox has spent lots and lots of money (atleast for the first two episodes). The first two episodes were not very interesting and I would stop watching it if it does not improve in the next two episodes - Tuesdays 9PM on Fox.

The Big Bang Theory returns for its second season September 22nd on CBS. Scrubs and Lost will not return this fall. They will premiere in January on ABC (Scrubs moves from NBC to ABC).

My Saturdays are reserved for College Football. Gators are in good form this year. They should be able to win the SEC this year if Tim Tebow continues his Heisman winning form.

I have started following NFL this year and I watch at least 2 games every Sunday. I was disappointed with Seattle Seahawks' game last Sunday and I hope they would get back their form at least this week.

So, that is my TV schedule this fall. Check out IMDB's Fall Preview if you are interested. Have fun!!!

War of the Browsers

I think a new law has been passed in the blogosphere. If you are a blogger, you must blog about Chrome. So, here I go.
I don't want to write a review about Chrome or a review about reviews. I've written most of the things that I want to say in the comments section of this blog.I wrote these comments on the day after Chrome's release. I'm happy that one of my predictions has come true (at least until now). The statistics from the past 2 days (If you don't like statistics please make sure that you visit this useless blog by a useless person). Chrome has been able to capture approx 1% of the market share. The major chunk of this share comes from Firefox (as expected) and a small portion of it from Safari. IE's share has increased after Chrome's release. I agree that this might not indicate any trend. It's just that people are trying out the new browsers. Still, I feel that if Chrome is successful the loss would be greater for Firefox than for IE. I can write pages and pages about this (I posted 7 or 8 comments in Gopi's blog) but I don't want to do that again. Let's just use the browser that we are satisfied with.

P.S: IE refers to IE8 and not any of its predecessors :)