Corona | Coming Attractions

In honor of this weekend's Dark Knight opening, the LA Times' Patrick Kevin Day has put together a photo gallery detailing the history of the Joker. It’s worth it just to see that chilling photo of Conrad Veidt from 1928’s The Man Who Laughs again.

Then check out the LA Times' "Opinion LA" round-up of various journalists’ views of The Dark Knight's themes (or, in some writers' views, lack thereof).

Master artist Bill Sienkiewicz did some concept work for The Dark Knight, and AICN has some up at their site. Check out madness through a master's pen right here!

Those folks at Slashfilm have been watching IMDb’s Top 250 Movies listing, and tonight report that The Dark Knight has hit the #1 spot (edging out such lesser-known films as The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, and Schindler’s List). Slash notes that TDK will fall as more votes are added, but for right now consider this a sign of the times.

Another day, another Dark Knight record. This time, the Joker’s laughing all the way to the bank with a one-day take of $67.4 million, which includes those midnight shows. It’s a good day to be a Warner, brother.

The Dark Knight has set a new record for highest grossing midnight shows, racking up an estimated $18.5 million for 4,366 screens. Previous record holder was 2005’s Star Wars: Episode III – The Revenge of the Sith with $16.9 million for 3,663 screens.

We all know Kevin Smith is a huge film and comic geek, so what could be more appropriate than to have him review The Dark Knight (especially since the lucky bastard has already seen it)? That’s what Slashfilm thought, too, and they’re having him on their live /Filmcast program to do just that. Click here to tune in, and find out how to download it from iTunes.

And if you have a question for Mr. Smith, this page has information on how you can email it to Slashfilm so they can ask him live on the air! Pretty cool, eh?

Superhero Hype points us toward The Bad and the Ugly’s list of 42 Entertainment’s wonderful and inventive viral marketing campaigns and games for The Dark Knight. SHH also reminds us to check out www.whysoserious.com for some things that didn’t make it onto B&U’s checklist.

Variety journo Brian Lowry writes a nice piece on how Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight owes a debt to artist Neal Adams’ work on the DC Comics bat titles back in the 1970s. Adams, teamed with writer Denny O’Neill, transformed the goofy 1960s Batman into the Dark Knight we love and look forward to seeing on the big screen this weekend.

A couple of guys named Jester and Jolin from Jester Pictures took Batman’s Tumbler a little further – into a different film franchise, actually, turning the Tumbler into an Autobot from Transformers. And it looks pretty damn cool. Click through for a toy that should be on the shelves if only Warner Brothers and Paramount could play nice (and split the cash without the lawyers getting in the way).

With only seven days until before The Dark Knight takes to the screen, Warners has blessed us with eight minutes of B-roll footage to keep us drooling. Each scene is only a few seconds each, but you can check out some explosions: a car exploding (during a chase, maybe?) on an underground highway, a car on the street exploding, exploding cars in a parking garage. But it’s not all pyrotechnics: there’s also Alfred (Michael Caine) doing some detective work for Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) about the address for somebody named Melvin White (apparently the phrase "overlooking the parade" is important), and a nice gag where Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) adds a little "pizzazz" to his step during a walk to the door.

The Joker isn’t letting the Bat hog all the pre-release glory – he’s got a little bomb of his own to drop over at his site, whysoserious.com.

Slashfilm sits down with Christopher Nolan and talks about the somewhat-open ending of The Dark Knight (don’t worry, no spoilers). The director says that he’s happy with the way the film ends -- it’s not a final ending, but the ending achieves what he wanted.

“I knew what I wanted to do with the end of the film before we wrote the story,” he tells Slash. “I wanted the film to feel very complete, which isn’t the same as having a feeling of finality in the ending." He says that Batman deals with a number of characters, and the ending brings the film back to focus on him. “There was a particular emotion from the ending… At the end of the day we just wanted to nail the relevance of hero, our core character.” Slashfilm also notes that the ending was there from the beginning of the building of the story for TDK.

Nolan isn’t even thinking about a sequel. Christian Bale would love to do a sequel, but notes that he can’t imagine doing it without Nolan. “I don’t even want to consider that because he’s created this. This is his.”

Read more from both right here.

We're in serious man-love with whoever Robby Reed is. Robby runs Dialbforblog.com, a site we just came across (thanks to you, Slashfilm) and they’re freakin’ brilliant in their cross-pollination of film, comics and geekology. For the purposes of this Dark Knight page, they’re brilliant because they took the Dark Knight Joker poster and re-imagined it as a one-sheet for 1966’s Batman: The Movie (yes, the Adam West one). Can you imagine Caesar Romero holding up his Joker card? You don’t have to, you just have to follow our finger.

It may be a federal holiday down in the States but up in Canada the press is still working overtime to bring you Dark Knight goodness. Montreal’s JoBlo just put up a new TV spot for TDK, focusing on the Joker. Take a look, and see why even before the film comes out it looks like Heath Ledger is already a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination (at least).

Is Gotham City hunting the Batman? That’s what it looks like from this new Warners viral website, Citizens for Batman, that was announced in a “Citizens for Batman” swag packet. Check out the site, then check out the CFB t-shirt and other swag that JoBlo got right here. We are sooo jealous.