Let’s first start with the news that every­one can enjoy — some shots from the Hal­loween Cos­tume Party (HCP) show in Las Vegas reveal the options we shall all have come Octo­ber, thanks to SHH (and thanks to Juno and Pierre for send­ing this in). There are clown masks, bat-suits and pur­ple Joker suits for you to fit into, if you’re that way inclined:

Con­tinue read­ing to find out the spoiler

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The NYTimes have posted a very inter­est­ing Dark Knight report which closely fol­lows Chris Nolan’s work as direc­tor. It is a must read, even if the minor plot spoil­ers in the first para­graph would put you off. I’ve included some choice excerpts for you below, along with the new images that fea­ture in the article.

In so many ways this isn’t what you’d expect of a $180 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood comic-book movie sequel with a zil­lion mov­ing parts, a cast of thou­sands and sets from here to Hong Kong. Any­one else would shoot indoors, use dig­i­tal effects or wait for clear skies; Mr. Nolan rolls with the weather’s punches, believ­ing that the messi­ness of real­ity can’t be faked. Another film­maker would leave a shot like this in the hands of a second-unit direc­tor, but Mr. Nolan doesn’t use one; if it’s on the screen, he directed it, and his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­pher, Wally Pfis­ter, worked the cam­era. Stars on any other movie would have fled to their trail­ers to wait in com­fort until needed again. Here, Gary Old­man is watch­ing and shiv­er­ing along with every­body else, crack­ing jokes to keep warm.

[…]

Now the ques­tion is whether Mr. Nolan’s vision of Bat­man can not only main­tain its hold on the imag­i­na­tions of comic fans and crit­ics, but expand its reach to a wider sum­mer moviego­ing audi­ence, even as the death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” has added unan­tic­i­pated mor­bid­ity to the film’s delib­er­ate darkness.

[…]

“As we looked through the comics, there was this fas­ci­nat­ing idea that Batman’s pres­ence in Gotham actu­ally attracts crim­i­nals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re deal­ing with ques­tion­able notions like peo­ple tak­ing the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the char­ac­ter so dark, because he expresses a venge­ful desire.”

[…]

Will Mr. Ledger’s death cast a pall over “The Dark Knight,” whose tragic plot turns already make it much darker than “Bat­man Begins”? “We’ll see,” said Mr. Robi­nov, of Warner Broth­ers. Mr. Nolan, for his part, said he felt a “mas­sive sense of respon­si­bil­ity” to do right by Mr. Ledger’s “ter­ri­fy­ing, amaz­ing” performance.

Wiz­ard Uni­verse have had a sit down chat with Aaron Eck­hart (Har­vey Dent). This inter­view reveals a lot of juicy bits about Two-Face and Har­vey Dent’s role in The Dark Knight — direct from the Horse’s mouth. As a warn­ing, this inter­view does con­tain spoilers!

WIZARD: Direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan said he saw Two-Face and Har­vey Dent as the back­bone of “Dark Knight.” Did you draw inspi­ra­tion from the comics or the older movies?
ECKHART: Chris [Nolan] comes at this with such a dif­fer­ent take on Bat­man, so I didn’t feel that I had to be true to any other actor play­ing this role. Of course, I read the comic books. His rela­tion­ships with Lt. Gor­don and with Bat­man, with Gotham City, those really helped me the most.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways that you could go with the Two-Face per­for­mance, […]Where will you take it when the film opens July 18?
I believe that it’s stronger if you have a heart. If you can relate to a char­ac­ter who’s a vil­lain, or not, it’s always bet­ter. If I can help you to relate to my char­ac­ter, then I think that I’m more likely to keep your attention.

In terms of the heart of the char­ac­ter, Har­vey has gone through a large arc. Will we be see­ing Harvey’s full arc here or will it play out in, say, another movie?
I think with the other [films], you’re look­ing at the cli­max of a character’s arc. Where does he go after that? I think that right now we’re show­ing who Har­vey was before he was scarred, and it’s an inter­est­ing role that he plays. We’re look­ing at Gotham City try­ing to get out of its dark­ness. That’s why Har­vey is important.

Does Har­vey get scarred in this movie or will we have to wait until the next one to see that?
Har­vey Dent turns into Har­vey Two-Face in this movie. So that answers your ques­tion bet­ter. [Laughs]

Have you filmed a lot of scenes in makeup?
I have done scenes as Har­vey Two-Face. It’s inter­est­ing. I won’t tell you exactly what we’re going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today’s tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate this char­ac­ter. He’s going to be inter­est­ing, and I think that’s what makes this char­ac­ter impor­tant in the movie—you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Har­vey is a very good guy in the comic books. He’s judi­cious. He cares. He’s pas­sion­ate about what he loves and then he turns into this char­ac­ter. So you will see that in this film.

[…]

There are cir­cum­stances that cre­ate the darker side of his per­son­al­ity…
It’s inter­est­ing to show that there are rea­sons for his behav­ior. It depends on which [of Harvey’s per­son­al­i­ties] you think is more attrac­tive and excit­ing. Obvi­ously a guy who goes out and mur­ders peo­ple, that’s vig­i­lante jus­tice. It’s prob­a­bly more cin­e­mat­i­cally excit­ing, but I think that know­ing why he got there and that he was a cool dude before is impor­tant, as well.

Are you say­ing you see Two-Face as more of a vig­i­lante in this as opposed to his clas­sic por­trayal as a bank-robbing, blow­ing sh– up kind of thug?
Well, I mean, in terms of vil­lains and movies, in anyone’s moti­va­tion in a movie you’re always try­ing to improve your lot in life and to exact your own code in life and I think that Har­vey Two-Face has a code, and his code is killing peo­ple for rea­sons that…will remain secret.

First stop — peo­ple tak­ing pic­tures should know how to focus the sub­ject. Rant over, mov­ing on, Dark Hori­zons has got the scoop on the Mat­tel Two Face toy for The Dark Knight, this con­sti­tutes our very first look at the Two Face char­ac­ter, aka Har­vey Dent por­trayed by Aaron Eck­hart — even if it is in the form of a toy.

Below are some pho­tos snuck out from a restricted press event at the recent Toy Fair in New York show­ing off the Two-Face tie-in action fig­ure from “The Dark Knight”. The photo dis­plays the look of the Two-Face form of Har­vey Dent (Eckhart)

Spoiler pic­tures after the break! Thanks to Juno and Ghell for send­ing this in.

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A pos­si­ble plot out­line for The Dark Knight has seem­ingly been leaked online, our email tells us this is from a reli­able source, but adds a dis­claimer that fake plots may be spread amongst the TDK team to put us off the scent.

There may be spoil­ers ahead, but that should go with­out say­ing. Head over to Bad­taste to read the pur­ported Dark Knight plot out­line, if you want to ruin the ending.

The Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune report that the major­ity of The Dark Knight’s Hong Kong film­ing has now been com­pleted. Scenes included “dozens of police offi­cers” storm­ing a sky­scraper in the finan­cial dis­trict, filmed late on Sun­day and early on Mon­day morn­ing; whilst ear­lier in the week Lucius Fox (Mor­gan Free­man) and Bruce Wayne were filmed hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on a bridge near Lyn­d­hurst Ter­race. Bale also stated in a press con­fer­ence that he was sched­uled to jump from the “90 floor Inter­na­tional Finance Cen­ter”. And that he did — scroll down to see the ver­tigo induc­ing pic­tures of Bat­man stand­ing on the edge of the tall build­ing, and video of the encir­cling Helicopter.

The Press Con­fer­ence via BlipTV:

In this con­fer­ence Chris Nolan also debunked those pre­vi­ous rumors that a scene was aban­doned because of pol­lu­tion, cit­ing script changes as the real reason.You can find another enter­tain­ment round-up in this ITN video hosted on YouTube:

Hong Kong Videos:

A Round up of the HK Action and Bat­man Jump (pic­tures mon­tage and footage towards the end):

Police Storm­ing the Scene

Mor­gan Free­man being filmed:

Hong Kong News Reports:

Hong Kong Pictures:

Batman’s Big Jump:

High Res­o­lu­tion shots of the HK film­ing, from Chris­t­ian Bale Fan. Check out the link for lots more gal­leries and high res­o­lu­tion pic­tures of Bale and Free­man.

At the Air­port (via AICN):

Seems like there’s a heated Joker debate going on in this post. Well, to put some fuel on the fire MTV had a sit down chat with for­mer Joker, Jack Nicholson:

MTV: What do you think of another actor, Heath Ledger, play­ing the Joker in next summer’s “The Dark Knight”?

Nichol­son: Let me be the way I’m not in inter­views. I’m furi­ous. I’m furi­ous. [He laughs.] They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me.

MTV: It was never brought up?

Nichol­son: No. It’s like, in any area, you can’t believe the rea­sons things do or don’t hap­pen. Not ask­ing me how to do the sequel is that kind of thing. Maybe it’s not a mis­take. Maybe it was the right thing, but to be can­did, I’m furious.

MTV: I’m sur­prised to hear you sound­ing com­pet­i­tive about a role like that.

Nichol­son: Well, the Joker comes from my child­hood. That’s how I got involved with it in the first place. It’s a part I always thought I should play.

Joker Spoil­ers:

For some more Joker related tales, head on over to Latino Review for some major plot spoil­ers con­cern­ing The Joker’s movie entrance.

It is also rumored that we might see a Dark Knight poster before the end of this month.

Batz over on the SHH forums has lov­ingly scanned in an excerpt from an inter­view with Eric Roberts (the actor that plays Sal Maroni) in FHM. This inter­view does con­tain spoil­ers con­cern­ing the Joker’s role, so I warn you to take heed before read­ing this article.

Click the image for a larger version.