Hans Zim­mer and James New­ton Howard were recently fea­tured on KCRW’s “Morn­ing Becomes Eclec­tic”; on their web­site you can lis­ten to the inter­view and excerpts of the sound­track or read the transcript.

Zim­mer explains that each of the char­ac­ters were so dis­tinct, clearly defined and pow­er­ful that each could have musi­cal iden­ti­ties that were very sep­a­rate. In fact, the col­lab­o­ra­tors often split the work — New­ton tack­led the music for Har­vey Dent, played by Aaron Eck­hart, while Zim­mer cre­ated the Joker’s theme.

“I kept churn­ing around…how do you describe anar­chy, how do you describe a vil­lian and not do it in a way that’s been done before? One of the things I got very much from the char­ac­ter was a fear­less­ness, and an even­ness in a way. The Joker is the only per­son you can trust in the movie. The Joker is the only one who will never lie to you because he is con­sis­tent about his phi­los­o­phy,” said Zimmer.

“I really wanted to do the whole thing just with one note. I had this idea that rather than what a note is in the con­text of the notes sur­round­ing it, what could I do emo­tion­ally through a per­for­mance within one note? How much can I stretch the mean­ing of a sin­gle note and get it down to such min­i­mal­ism. I failed slightly. I had to use two notes in the end.”

Thanks Rachel!

The Writ­ers Guild, Pro­duc­ers Guild and Direc­tors Guild have all nom­i­nated The Dark Knight in their respec­tive awards:

Director’s Guild — Best Picture:

David Fincher, “The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton”
Christo­pher Nolan, “The Dark Knight”
Ron Howard, “Frost/Nixon”
Gus Van Sant, “Milk”
Danny Boyle, “Slum­dog Millionaire”

Writ­ers Guild — Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton, Screen­play by Eric Roth; Screen Story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord; Based on the Short Story by F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Para­mount Pic­tures and Warner Bros. Pictures

The Dark Knight, Screen­play by Jonathan Nolan and Christo­pher Nolan; Story by Christo­pher Nolan & David S. Goyer; Based on Char­ac­ters Appear­ing in Comic Books Pub­lished by DC Comics; Bat­man Cre­ated by Bob Kane, Warner Bros. Pictures

Doubt, Screen­play by John Patrick Shan­ley, Based on his Stage Play, Mira­max Films

Frost/Nixon, Screen­play by Peter Mor­gan, Based on his Stage Play, Uni­ver­sal Pictures

Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire, Screen­play by Simon Beau­foy, Based on the Novel Q and A by Vikas Swarup, Fox Search­light Pictures

Producer’s Guild — Dar­ryl F. Zanuck Pro­ducer of the Year Award:

Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire
The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
Milk
Frost/Nixon
The Dark Knight

In other news, MTV recently spoke to Dark Knight pro­ducer Chuck Roven about Chris Nolan’s Bat­man 3, but there’s noth­ing new to be heard on that for now — Nolan and writer Goyer are talk­ing, that’s the full extent of the article.

Visual Effects shortlist:

Aus­tralia
The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Hell­boy II: The Golden Army
Iron Man
Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

These will be nar­rowed down on the 15th of Jan­u­ary after mem­bers of the Academy’s visual effects branch have viewed 15 minute clips of these movies, pre­sum­ably show­cas­ing their effects. The mem­bers shall then vote, and then there will be three.

Makeup shorltist:

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Hell­boy II: The Golden Army
The Reader
Synec­doche, New York
Tropic Thun­der
The Wrestler

There is only a ten minute clip for these movies, they will be voted on on 17th Jan­u­ary, to pro­duce the final list of 3.

The 81st Acad­emy Awards are on EDIT: Feb­ru­ary 22nd.

Via SHH:

The Pro­duc­ers Guild of Amer­ica has just nom­i­nated the movie for its annual Pro­duc­ers Guild Awards tak­ing place Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 24 at the Hol­ly­wood Pal­la­dium. The Dark Knight is going up against The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire for Best Picture.

Things are look­ing on course for an Oscar nom­i­na­tion come Jan­u­ary 22nd!

The nom­i­na­tions for the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild have been announced, with Heath Ledger in the run­ning for best male actor in a sup­port­ing role. The cer­e­mony will take place on Sun­day, Jan 25th, with a simul­cast Live on TNT and TBS at 8 PM ET/PT.

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Male Actor in a Sup­port­ing Role
JOSH BROLIN / Dan White — “MILK” (Focus Fea­tures)
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. / Kirk Lazarus — “TROPIC THUNDER” (Para­mount Pic­tures)
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN / Father Bren­dan Flynn — “DOUBT” (Mira­max Films)
HEATH LEDGER / Joker — “THE DARK KNIGHT” (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
DEV PATEL / Older Jamal — “SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” (Fox Search­light Pictures)

Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance by a Stunt Ensem­ble in a Motion Pic­ture
THE DARK KNIGHT (Warner Bros. Pic­tures)
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Para­mount Pic­tures)
IRON MAN (Para­mount Pic­tures)
WANTED (Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures)

Seems like the tabloids are at it again, this time with rumors that Rachel Weisz will be play­ing Cat Woman, Shia LaBoeuf to play Robin and Eddie Mur­phy as The Rid­dler — where do they get this crap? Suf­fice to say, it’s all made up drivel.

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, pres­i­dent of Warner Bros. has recently spo­ken with Col­lider:

We’ve been talk­ing to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the tim­ing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is every­thing and we are very respect­ful of Chris. We have a won­der­ful rela­tion­ship with him and we are going to be respect­ful of his tim­ing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a ter­rific movie – we have to give them another great movie.”

The Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute has listed its top movies of 2008, and The Dark Knight is listed in it along with some pres­ti­gious company:

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River
Gran Torino
Iron Man
Milk
WALL-E
Wendy and Lucy
The Wrestler

Can’t say we didn’t see this one com­ing. Nikki Finke has the scoop on the sales numbers,

I just heard that Warner Bros’ Bat­man Blu-ray discs alone sold 600,000 copies on Tues­day, the first day of release. By con­trast, Marvel/Paramount’s Iron Man sold 250,000 Blu-ray discs when it pre­miered on Sep­tem­ber 30th and ended up sell­ing 400,000 Blu-ray units in its first week. But wait til you see what The Dark Knight sold in both for­mats, stan­dard def and hi-def: 3 mil­lion copies bought by cus­tomers in the U.S., Canada and the UK on its first day in stores. That’s 3x the norm.

Reuters have the lat­est update on the DVD and Blu-ray sales, stat­ing that more than 10 mil­lion units have been shifted:

Sales of the DVD, star­ring Chris­t­ian Bale as Bat­man and the late Heath Ledger as the vil­lain­ous Joker, totaled more than 10 mil­lion units world­wide since its Decem­ber 9 release and are expected to remain strong through­out the hol­i­day sea­son, Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros movie stu­dio said. Ten mil­lion units trans­late into an esti­mated $175 mil­lion in rev­enues, accord­ing to Home Media Mag­a­zine Mar­ket Research.

The best sell­ing DVD of all time is “Find­ing Nemo” with over 60m units sold.