This post brought to you by the slightly clunky WordPress iPhone app.

It looks like I probably won’t be posting anything substantial here for the next wee while. I am beset by IT problems and will be having to take the MacBook in for repair, I think.

Catch y’all when it’s back.

After months of waiting, and of hype that seemed to get whipped up even further after the death of Heath Ledger in January, I toddled along on Thursday night to catch The Dark Knight. Along with, seemingly, half of Belfast. It was hoachin’.

Did I enjoy it? Oh yes. Was it “the best movie, like, ever”? No, not really, but a pretty fine show all the same.

The obvious question: Heath Ledger as the Joker? He was great. Folks have asked me how he compared to Jack Nicholson in the Burton version — actually, I think the whole internet was asking that before the film opened. I felt that Ledger’s unhinged nihilist (ooh, look at me) was much more menacing — and Joker-like — than Nicholson’s self-assured… Jack Nicholson standard character.

I know others will disagree, but I was also completely onboard with the handling of Harvey Dent/Two-Face.

The film belonged to Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman (an actor who we’ve never really seen enough of). It almost seemed to me like Batman was the white space around these three that let them do their thing, and do it in spades.

Criticisms? The Bat-voice, so comical as to be distracting, is one of the beats where the Nolans lost some of their intended realism. That, and some of the daft Bat-gadgetry, just didn’t seem to fit. Casting wise, I wish Maggie Gyllenhaal had had something to do other than [SPOILER]. She was wasted. If only Ms Gyllenhaal had been there last time round, then Katie Holmes could’ve handled the character’s three or four lines for this one.

I approached this one as energetic popcorn entertainment and left most of my analytical brain at home, but Glenn offers a some deeper thoughts. Batman has always been the hero who will never get an easy ride. His lack of any ‘superpower’, his difficult past and his blunter-than-normal vigilante status see to that.

It’s a characterization that lends itself to the darker, grittier kind of movie that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight have been. Batman works because he’s just that little bit closer to what might be possible, but he makes us uncomfortable because he shows us the consequences that neither Superman, Spider-Man nor the X-Men ever did. We can read life onto him much more easily. He’s a bit of white space that allows us to fantasize and moralize and perhaps question what justice might be, here in the real world.

Unfortunately, in this one, Bruce Wayne and Batman were almost (Rachel Dawes) the thinnest characters there, and it was left to Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent to hold the line.

It’s still the best movie I’ve seen this year, I think, and probably due a second viewing sometime soon.

I’ve recently read a book about writing, and I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through a book about reading.

On Writing, by Stephen King, starts with a sparse but very engaging memoir before moving into a series of tips and bits and bobs of advice “on writing”. All the usual pearls are mentioned: practise, practise, practise; expunge all adverbs; write for the love of it; briefer is better (says Stephen King?); don’t expect to make any money, never mind a living (again, says Stephen King?)…

I would say that even if you have no intention of writing for yourself, and even if you have only the slightest curiosity as to what’s behind the curtain, you’ll enjoy a read of this little book.

The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby, is a collection of columns written for The Believer. He’s giving me a growing list of books, classic and modern, to add to my pile, and doing so with a great deal of good humour along the way.

These two books have in common a deep conviction that fiction, literature, books, whatever, should be accessible, that there’s no place for any notion that reading is only for the posh. In the middle of On Writing I realised that somewhere in me I have this prejudice against Stephen King, even though any book of his that I have read has been great fun. These two books have combined to point out to me how ridiculous that prejudice is.

As Nick Hornby complains, reading’s supposed to hurt, isn’t it? Reading Stephen King (or Nick Hornby, for that matter) doesn’t hurt. It’s fun.

Where theatre, and then cinema, have moved from being looked down upon to being respectable, even cultural, books have fallen by the way. That’s a shame.

I’ve always read a lot, ever since I was able. I remember the first book my parents bought me because I asked for it. I think we were in Newtownards shopping. Either way, I recall defying warnings of car-sickness to read it on the way home. That book was The Owl Who Was Afraid Of the Dark, in big-print kid-friendly paperback. I think that was the book that started a lifetime’s habit.

These days reading is still my most common pastime, almost always for the pure pleasure of it, and it doesn’t hurt one bit.

What about you? Read anything good lately?

While in Santorini last month I took the chance to read a few books of varying quality.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, by Michael Chabon, is a whodunit set against an alternative history where the Jewish state was established in Alaska instead of the Middle East. Very enjoyable, even when it turns strange towards the end, mixing tales of pseudo-messianic prophecy with blunt political commentary.

Superpowers, by David J. Schwarz,is a fun tale about a group of college students who wake up one morning each having developed a different superheroic ability. An enjoyable yarn, well-told but ultimately unsatisfying. Again, the politics are a bit blunt.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay, is the first novel of the series on which the TV show is based. I’m afraid it did nothing for me (not, as you might guess, because I’m at all squeamish about the subject matter — more the shoddy execution of an interesting idea).

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick was both fascinating and enjoyable. Less plot, more situation.

Copenhagen, March 2005.

I’m still sorting through old photographs, trying to develop some sort of organisation. This one is from our last foreign holiday before we went to Santorini last month.

I don’t think I’ve posted it here before, but I could be wrong.