1. The lecture was given under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences.这次报告会是由科学院主办的。《新英汉大辞典》2. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.这项研究的成果会在国家科学学会汇刊上发表。article.yeeyan.org3. Later I return to the monument with Inga, an architecture student at Riga’s Academy of Arts who bristles with pride and knowledge about the city.后来我又和英嘉一起来到了纪念碑，她是在里加艺术学院学建筑的学生，她对这座城市深有了解并为此而自豪。select.yeeyan.org4. In 2007, the team published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that showed they could replace some of a mouse’s liver cells with human hepatocytes.在2007年，有一个团队在美国国家科学院学报上发表了一项研究，该研究显示他们可以用人类肝细胞来代替部分小鼠的肝细胞。article.yeeyan.org5. When he is not training, Kyle enjoys playing with his school friends at Grace Academy where his favourite subjects are History and PE.在不训练时，凯尔喜欢和格雷斯学院的同学们一起玩耍，他在学校里最喜欢的课程是历史和体育。www.voa365.com6. But the contest can sometimes get out of hand, as appears to have happened with Zhang Huijun, dean of the Beijing Film Academy.但是这样的竞赛有时会失去控制，就像曾经发生在北京电影学院院长张会军身上的事情那样。article.yeeyan.org7. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, analysed 217 streams in Indiana.这项发表在美国《国家科学院》期刊上的研究，分析了印第安纳州的217条溪流。article.yeeyan.org8. We were in a seminar room at the Chinese Executive Leadership Academy in Shanghai.我们是在上海的中国行政领导学院的一间会议室里谈话的。article.yeeyan.org9. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that most adults get about seven to eight hours of sleep each night.美国睡眠医学学会推荐大多数成年人应该拥有每晚大约七到八小时的睡眠。article.yeeyan.org10. You have to experiment with programs like Digital Bridge Academy that are tailored to individual learning styles.你必须专门为个人设置的学习方式，就像数码桥学院里面的程序一样。article.yeeyan.org11. She is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and a Rhodes scholar.她毕业于美国空军学院并是一名罗兹奖学金获得者。article.yeeyan.org12. And the academy withered away shortly after sprouting.这个学会在萌芽后不久就枯萎了。article.yeeyan.org13. Or there is Gérard Jones, who founded a highly successful football coaching academy two years ago when he was 19 and still studying for his degree.又比如杰拉德琼斯，他在两年前创建了一个非常成功的足球教练学院，当时他只有19岁，正在攻读学士学位。article.yeeyan.org14. He added: "All the stutterers throughout the world, we have a voice, we have been been heard, thanks to you the academy.他补充道：“全世界所有口吃的人，我们有声音，我们的声音已经被听到了，感谢学院。”article.yeeyan.org15. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.这个发现出现在国家科学学院的公报中。article.yeeyan.org16. Is it any coincidence ? that graduates from this university and a handful of others not unlike it ? find themselves in high positions of government, of business, of law, and the academy?从这所大学毕业的学生,难道都是偶然,而他们有些还在政府，企业,法律相关及学院中执牛耳岗位，将这个阶级形容成？v.163.com17. In 1850 he exhibited 4 of these late paintings in the Academy, in the year before he died.1850年，也就在他去世的前一年，他在学院的展览上展出了4幅这样的晚期作品。www.chinadaily.com.cn18. He and his colleagues, who studied the families and reported their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.他和他的同事们，研究了这些家庭并在2008年国家科学院期刊上报道了他们的研究成果。article.yeeyan.org19. And we find that they practice it, especially during their time at the academy.我们发现特别是在学院时期就练习十分有效。article.yeeyan.org20. And we find that they practice it, especially during their time at the academy.我们发现特别是在学院时期就练习十分有效。article.yeeyan.orgAttentiondeficitdisorderly by Sean T. Collins
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SPOILER WARNING
I have a confession to make. Why not, right? Confessions are in the air tonight.
My confession is this: “The Affair” just aired the most conceptually ambitious, emotionally painful episode of its entire run, and at the moment of truth it went someplace I could not bring myself to follow.
I was so riveted that when I look over my notes for this episode — a showcase for Ruth Wilson and Ramon Rodriguez, the only two people on camera for the entire hour — they read less like jotted-down thoughts and more like a fully annotated transcript. But when the truth is revealed and the worst case scenario happens, you won’t find that in my notes at all. Ben’s attack on Alison, her collision with the wall, the blood pouring from her head, the light going out in her eyes — it’s just a blank space in the document. Words and words and words, and in the middle, a rupture.
It knocked me flat.
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Castle Rock is burning. Not just because of the wildfires raging across the hills that surround the town, either, although their hazy orange glow, reflected in the skies above, gives this new episode — “Harvest” — an appropriately infernal vibe. Consider the opening flashback, in which Henry Deaver seeks treatment for the unexplained ringing in his ears that’s plagued him on and off since he was a teenager. “I guess everyone thinks they grew up in the worst place in the world, huh?” the doc asks with a smile. In the lawyer’s case, of course, the answer is a resounding yes. But the implication, via a smart script from Lila Byock, the dreamy direction of Andrew Bernstein and the inclusion of real-life, ripped-from-the-headlines horror that’s become part of this show’s dramatic schematic, is clear: Everyone did grow up in the worst place in the world. The world is not a nice place to grow up in at all.
There’s a lot I think is admirable about this show—it handles the Everyday All-American Evil that’s King’s specialty in a way that feels current and urgent rather than nostalgic and corny, and the cast of fine actors is taking the material seriously. But in the end, it comes down to what kind of villain the Skarsg?rd character is, doesn’t it? And we don’t know that yet.
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Naturally, Kendall’s ability to keep needs other than his own in mind leads his siblings — even the relatively disengaged literal brother from another mother, Connor, who spends most of his time either spouting New Agey bullshit or making out with a girlfriend young enough to be his daughter — to label him weak. To them, and to his father as well, looking out for anything or anyone but Number One is weakness. As my partner put it to me, no wonder Kendall’s the one with the drug problem. He’s the only member of the family who seems to feel any emotional toll from their insane wealth and responsibility.
He also gets a boner when his ex-wife gives him a hug to comfort him. Pobody’s nerfect!
, focusing on the so-far surprising humanity of theoretical chosen son Kendall.
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Cinnamon rolls, stacked one spiraling wad of dough on top of another, shot in black and white like something out of modern-art museum’s permanent collection. An overhead shot of an ailing man getting wheeled through a mall on a gurney, dissolving into bright white as they pass through the doors to the outside world. The uncomfortable tedium of lying in a hospital bed as unfamiliar people poke and prod your body in an unpleasantly intimate way. The feeling that you’re just one fake ID or bogus social security number or nosy cab driver away from finally taking the fall you’ve deserved to take for years. Then a transition into the present day that begins with burning cinders, floating across the screen like snowflakes from hell.
Right from the jump, ‘s fourth season demonstrates why this ain’t your average crime show or anti-hero prestige drama — not even the highly acclaimed one to which it serves as a prequel. Yes, it tells the origin story of Jimmy McGill () — aka Saul Goodman, the lowlife lawyer doomed to play a pivotal role in the rise and fall of Breaking Bad’s leading monster, Walter White. And yes, it pivots off many of the artful cinematic techniques that elevated Bad to greatness: nearly abstract closeups, wild shifts in angles and colors and techniques, an unrivaled use of montage and music, to name a few.
But there’s one big difference. We know where Saul is headed: to a Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska, via complicity in dozens of murders orchestrated by his client, the dreaded Heisenberg, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The brilliance of episodes like the Season 4 premiere “Smoke,” written by series co-creator , is how much time BCS is willing to take to get us there.
I’ll be writing about it there all season long!
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There’s no way to prepare for an episode like this week’s installment of “The Affair.” That’s as true for the audience as it is for the characters involved. Perhaps that’s why so much of this devastating hour of television is spent being not particularly devastating at all.
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Just how bad will Jimmy McGill break this season? That’s the big question for viewers as “Better Call Saul” returns to AMC for Season 4 on Monday, Aug. 6. Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould as a prequel to “Breaking Bad,” “Saul” stars Bob Odenkirk as its title character … sort of.
“Saul” tells the story of Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer and part-time con man who devolves into the criminal attorney we first met on “Breaking Bad,” Saul Goodman. Figures from both his past and his “Breaking Bad” future push and pull him toward that grim destination, their own stories playing out in parallel.
Given the fiery, tragic finale of Season 3, can Jimmy pick up the pieces and set a straight course? We already know the answer, but the journey is fascinating to watch. And if you need a quick road map ahead of the season premiere, this character-by-character guide should get you caught up.
Can’t wait for the show to return.
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is a very funny television program. That’s a relief, since it was created by
and The Thick of It‘s Jesse Armstrong and directed by Anchorman‘s Adam McKay (working in his Big Short vein); it weren’t funny, that would be kind of troubling. But I’d like to start this Succession Episode 1 review of its premiere by discussing a scene that isn’t funny at all.
I know, I know, we’re getting a late start. But so are a lot of viewers, it seems. Climb aboard!
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The sex scene between Helen and Sierra isn’t particularly explicit. But what Sierra says leading up to their liaison certainly makes a lasting impression. She enjoys sleeping with women, she tells Helen, because their shared struggles make the connection more intimate. She feels “primal admiration” for seeing a fellow woman in bed, “naked and confident and hungry for orgasm.” And she feels a greater degree of control — “control is really hot,” she concludes, before they finally kiss. By the time she’s finished talking, the temperature in that yurt has surely risen several degrees.
While we’re on the subject of Janelle, it has to be said that the chemistry between Sanaa Lathan and Dominic West is considerable. Granted, that’s par for the course on this show, which has yet to serve up a lukewarm sex scene (except on purpose) in three and a half seasons. But when Noah and Janelle finally get into bed together, there’s an easy, joyous intimacy to it — my favorite bit is when she jokingly moans “Does it turn you on that I’m your boss?” and then immediately starts laughing — that’s so convincing I almost felt bad watching. Almost.
In that regard, it’s a lot like the intense buildup to Helen and Sierra’s hookup earlier in the episode, which made their encounter, for all its problems, seem like the proverbial “.” Seems to me that if sex were less fun, people wouldn’t risk all these complications to their lives in order to have it with each other. This is yet another aspect of adult life that “The Affair” shows it understands, week in and week out.
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25 The Crow
Actor Brandon Lee, a.k.a. Bruce’s son, seemed born to play writer-artist James O’Barr’s undead vigilante, who returns from the grave to murder his way through the gang responsible for his girlfriend’s death. But despite the on-set tragedy that claimed the actor’s life, Lee helped create a no-holds-barred hero with an unforgettable look and vibe. The Crow doesn’t need the bulky armor and high-tech gadgets of his peers: His body is his weapon, and his spectral presence alone is enough to strike terror into criminals’ hearts. Batman beware. STC
24 Judge Dredd (Karl Urban)
Sorry, Mr. Stallone, but there’s only room for one “I am the law”-man on this list – and that’s the version from the punishing 2012 film Dredd. Played with unsmiling fury by Karl Urban, that judge is an instrument of capital punishment so pure and implacable that you never see his full face – an unknowable and untouchable avenger behind his helmet. This deliberate dehumanization does the original ultraviolent comics by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra proud, and when this Dredd shows up at the ground floor of a skyscraper apartment complex, one look at him is all it takes to know he’ll kill his way through every floor to get to the gang boss at the top. Which he does, with honors. STC
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SPOILER WARNING
This leads directly to the show’s most disturbing sequence to date. Trapped in his hellish prison job for the foreseeable future, helpless as his fellow guards beat and dehumanize the prisoners — and quite possibly tainted by the touch of the Kid — Dennis Zalewski snaps. Grabbing his gun, he methodically marches through Shawshank, murdering every officer and official he finds. When he finally reaches the warden’s office, he finds Deaver there. “I wanna testify,” he says … before a flashbang grenade drops them both to the ground and a shotgun-wielding bull blows him away.
It’s a gorgeously fucked-up sequence, in large part because it’s just so very -ish — and not in a way we’ve really seen before on screen. This kind of killing spree is a staple of the Master’s work: Seemingly ordinary men just lose it one day. They pick up a rifle or an ax, slaughtering their way through as many people as possible, offering one final deadpan non sequitur before someone puts them down like a rabid dog. (The town history of Derry, where It takes place, is full of rampages like this.)
And there’s nothing about Zalewski’s affect here to suggest that if he’d gotten away clean, he wouldn’t have just gone down to the bar for a drink, complaining about a rough day at work. It’s not quite the banality of evil, but there’s a workmanlike quality to it that gets right under your skin. Murder is so routine it barely registers.
Isn’t that what Zalewski himself tells Deaver? “Bad things happen here because bad people know they’re safe here,” the guard warned the lawyer when he tried to downplay the potential to open a prison-wide investigation. “How many times can one fuckin’ town look the other way?” In his desperation to expose Shawshank’s horrors, the man turned himself into one of those horrors. He had to become the prison in order to destroy it.
The ending was impressive.
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During another flashback, we see Molly invite young Henry up to her room to hang out. Her neighbor leads a sheltered life, most likely an abusive one. So he’s baffled by her meticulously curated posters for period-appropriate college-rock bands. (“What are ‘Violent Femmes’?”)
He’s even more flustered when Molly drops this bomb on him: “I know what you do in your room. Touching your thing. It feels like fireworks.” The moment is cut short when Daddy Dearest starts hollering for Henry to come home, but this sudden and relatively explicit swerve into adolescent sexuality is a welcome sign that Castle Rock will take that element of ’s work seriously. (The recent It adaptation excised the book’s infamous orgy scene entirely, but replaced it with a weird scene of a bunch of guys leering at a girl in her underwear instead … as if that’s somehow an improvement.) Carnal knowledge is a huge driver of the author’s character development and horror craftsmanship alike. Kudos to the show for having the courage to even try to tackle what can be a danger zone onscreen.
This was the weirdest and best.
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The bigger question facing Castle Rock is how much it wants to tap dance between the Master’s raindrops. Strong performances by the cast in general, and by the remarkable, dead-serious Andre Holland in particular, make the show watchable if you don’t know your Randall Flagg from your Kurt Barlow. But if you’re a fan, hearing Lacey talk about “the dog” and “the strangler” most likely gave you a bigger thrill than anything else narrative-wise. And when you think back through the King mythos, it’s not hard to come up with another character who had the ability to inflict disease and cause death with a just glance of his own dark, intense eyes. Is the show content to be a superhero-comic-style nostalgia act, where the main dramatic drive is figuring out when your favorite villains are about to return? Or does its portrayal of an economically devastated small town where the biggest source of jobs is a privatized prison provide fertile enough ground to grow evils all its own?
It’s still a show finding its sea legs.
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We’re making up for lost time with our second subscriber-exclusive BLAM mini-podcast in 24 hours! This installment’s question comes from $5/month subscriber Matthew Miller, who wants to know what role Sean & Stefan think Ser Garlan Tyrell will play in the remaining two volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire. Though we’ve barely seen him at all, his reputation precedes him — including IRL, where GRRM himself has said Ser Garlan will play a major part in the story’s endgame. What part do we think that will be, exactly?
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A Patreon snafu kept us from posting our latest BLAM, but we’re back with a new subscriber-exclusive mini-podcast, based on questions from readers like you! (No, not you, the other one — yeah, you.) This episode, $5/month subscriber Andrew Dill asks Your Illustrious Cohosts which parts of the world of Ice and Fire that aren’t covered thoroughly by the main narrative we’d like to see explored more in-depth. It’s an interesting question, and our answers range all over the world.
(There’s no way to legally download this episode’s theme music, but it’s “Horror Head” by Curve if you were wondering.)
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What was life like before A Game of Thrones? No, not for your illustrious cohosts (we was there life before A Game of Thrones?) — for your favorite POV characters! On this installment of BLAH, Sean & Stefan discuss the attitudes and events they feel must have shaped the day-to-day lives of George R.R. Martin’s main characters prior to the start of A Song of Ice and Fire. How did Ned Stark balance his professional obligations against the ghosts of the past? What did Jaime Lannister have in common with a pro wrestling heel? What was the impact of domesticity on Catelyn Stark, and of domestic violence on Cersei Lannister? Why was Tyrion Lannister less interesting before the books began — and why was Davos Seaworth more interesting? It’s a deep dive into character and theme (and of course pure speculation), and we hope you enjoy it!
Additional links:
(also accessible via
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Make aristocrats short again: GUILLOTINE t-shirt by Julia Gfr?rer ()
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If the premiere is any indication, it’s not the diverse strands of the Stephen King Extended Universe that’s holding this thing together: It’s Moonlight veteran André Holland. His character Henry Deaver is a just a black American from a lily-white small town, raised with a heaping helping of old-time religion and unexamined trauma. He’s not dreading an encounter with a demonic clown – the lawyer just wants to make sure that his client gets the legal representation the Constitution guarantees. He’s a careworn man trying his best, not a hero undertaking a quest. This is Mr. Holland’s opus: He acts like doesn’t know he’s in a highly anticipated television event from the creators of Lost and The Shining. He makes Castle Rock feel like a drama, not the haunted-house ride at the county fair.
And while Holland gets the meatiest material this time around, he’s surrounded by actors capable of moral and emotional seriousness. His mom is played by Carrie herself, Sissy Spacek. Pangborn is played by , who’s brought grizzled gravitas to everything from
to . Molly Strand, the suburbanite pill-popper who briefly shows up? That’s Melanie Lynskey, who hasn’t met a role she couldn’t crush since Heavenly Creatures. Frances Conroy, a solid player in both prestige dramas (Six Feet Under) and guilty genre pleasures (American Horror Story), cameos as Warden Lacy’s blind wife. And the Kid? It’s Bill Skarsgard, dialing his performance as Pennywise from It down several notches but still weird and wall-eyed as ever.
Finally, there’s the not-so-good Warden Lacy, played by Terry O’Quinn. All the emphasis on Lost‘s unanswered questions makes it easy to forget all these years later, but the actor was an absolute godsend for that show — an MVP who could play a wily survivalist, a Wolverinesque badass, a failed hero, a bitter old man and an embodiment of pure evil with equal nuance and skill. Yes, the Warden commits suicide by driving off a cliff with a noose around his neck (“guillotining himself with a Lincoln,” as Henry puts it). But we’re in King Country now, and even if you discount supernatural shenanigans, the flashback toward the episode’s end indicates we haven’t seen the last of him.
It’s not sit-up-and-take-notice stuff like The Terror was, but it’s promising.
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Comments Off on “Castle Rock” thoughts, Season One, Episode One: “Severance”
And now, a brief aside about an outer-space action movie that I provides a useful interpretive framework.
Alison’s father’s latest wife is played by Dina Meyer, one of the stars of Paul Verhoeven’s ultraviolent sci-fi satire “Starship Troopers.” That film, which chronicles a militaristic future Earth’s intergalactic battle against a sentient species of giant insect, has long disgusted some critics and delighted others in equal measure. On the surface, its story of young, beautiful soldier-citizens waging a war of extermination against literal vermin reads as gleefully fascist.
But Verhoeven and his collaborators’ conceit was to make the kind of war movie such a society would make about itself, celebrating the virtues espoused by the fictional society it depicts. The film is positioned as the product of the mind-set of the characters within the film — not a bad way to understand how what we see on “The Affair” is filtered through the perspectives of its main characters.
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The Dream Machine: ‘Superman: The Movie’ (1978)
Where to watch: Rent it on ,
The machinery of the modern-day blockbuster — kick-started by Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” and thrown into high gear by George Lucas’s “Star Wars” — never operated in a more chaotic, or mercenary, fashion than it did in this big-budget work of art-by-committee. There was its small army of screenwriters, credited and uncredited (including the author of “Godfather,” Mario Puzo); the decision to shoot the film and its sequel simultaneously in order to increase the
the fortune thrown at Marlon Brando for just a few minutes of screen time as Superman’s K the conflicts between director Richard Donner and his producers that led to his ouster before the sequel was completed (Richard Lester stepped in): All in all, the process was as industrial as building a car.
But all that fades away the moment the movie begins. The visual effects, most notably the Zoptic front-projection system that made Superman’s flight convincing, won an Oscar. The star-studded supporting cast, with Margot Kidder as a vivacious Lois Lane, Brando as Jor-El and Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, gave the thing gravitas. Finally, there’s Superman himself: Christopher Reeve, in a performance so effortlessly charming yet rooted in thoughtful physicality, it forever associated him with the role. His instantaneous change in posture and expression when he switches between Superman and Clark Kent remains a wonder to behold.
The Reaganomicon: ‘RoboCop’ (1987)
Where to watch: S rent it from ,
Despite the success of “Superman” and its even better sequel, “Superman II,” the standard superhero seemed a little superfluous in the 1980s. With President Ronald Reagan telling tales of good versus evil straight out of a comic book, and action stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis sculpting their physiques to cartoon-worthy levels, who needed spandex?
Enter “RoboCop,” the sci-fi satirist Paul Verhoeven’s biting black comedy in ultraviolent action-hero drag. In a dystopian future where hospitals are driven by profit and police departments use military-grade weaponry — imagine all that! — a badly-wounded rookie cop (played by the unlikely action star Peter Weller) is fitted by a creepy corporation with cybernetic enhancements that increase his lethality but wipe out his memory. The story of a super-cop literally fighting against his own programming in order to reclaim his humanity — in a city being stripped for parts by the superrich — is as poignant now as it was in Reagan’s America.
Blockbuster Begins: ‘Batman’ (1989)
Where to watch: Rent it on ,
Almost as soon as the TV show “Batman” went off the air, darker material began to ferment in the comic-book depictions of the Caped Crusader and his peers. “Batman” was the blockbuster that brought this grimmer vision roaring into multiplexes and the mainstream consciousness. Directed with confident neo-noir style by Tim Burton, the movie pivoted off works like the cartoonist Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and employed an array of talent — the composer Danny E the production designer Anton F and Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as Batman and his psychopathic nemesis, the Joker — working at or near their career peaks.
While “Batman” remains one of the genre’s best films (the best, if you want my opinion), its industry innovations sometimes overshadow its aesthetic excellence. The movie’s PG-13 rating became standard for tent-pole movies, while its record-breaking box office enshrined opening-weekend revenue as a key measurement of a film’s success. “Batman” was an inescapable last gasp of Big ’80 that summer, the bat symbol was nearly as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola.
I’m very proud of how this piece turned out, especially of the effort we made to give proper credit to the characters’ original creators. And there’s links to where you can watch every single movie and show on the list online!
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Batman isn’t the star of . That’s plain old conventional wisdom at this point. But Christian Bale’s foil, , isn’t the star either. Not really. Nor is it Harvey Dent, Gotham’s white knight, or Jim Gordon, the archetypal honest cop, or Rachel Dawes, the doomed idealist, or Lucius Fox, the steady hand, or Alfred, the faithful servant.
The real star of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s cinematic superhero landmark, is the concept of ethical behavior — and the performance stinks.
Written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, who’s currently taking an equally high-minded and heavy-handed approach to ethical issues in Westworld, The Dark Knight is fixated on the opposition between right and wrong, , and hope and despair, all to a degree no other superhero movie as come close to touching. While most costumed-and-caped adventures are content to let such issues stay subtextual, with the superpowered slugfests between heroes and villains serving as a metaphor for these underlying conflicts, The Dark Knight spins them into the whole plot.
Who’s a better example for
to follow out of its long-standing hell of crime and corruption: Dent, an elected official who obeys the will of the people and observes the rule of law, or Batman, a self-appointed vigilante who follows no rules but his own? Who’s right about the nature of humanity, Batman, who wants to serve as a symbol to inspire the stifled good he believes exists within everyone, or the Joker, who wants to prove that all systems — from organized crime to democracy — are just pancake makeup applied to a scarred mass of nihilism and brutality? To stave off chaos, is it permissible to inflict order on the whims of one man?
The answers the film wants us to take away are obvious. Dent, not Batman, is the hero G Batman, not the Joker, sees the hearts of his fel even in the face of overwhelming danger, the power to stop it must be checked before it becomes just as dangerous.
These aren’t the answers that the film actually provides. By emerging just before the dawn of Barack Obama’s presidency, when the general consensus in America seemed sick and tired of the unending and overreaching War on Terror as it was of the terrorists said war was ostensibly designed to fight, The Dark Knight tapped into a national mood — the film repeatedly describes the Joker’s actions as “terrorism” — and sent the audience home with a positive message. But the film itself is a hopeless political muddle, constantly trying to have its liberty vs. security, order vs. anarchy, vigilantism vs. legitimacy cake and eat it, too.
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