Actually, Chris Nolan partially grew up in Chicago and his brother who wrote the screenplay for the Dark Knight still lives here. I had a sense that they both knew exactly what they wanted from the city to film. I love love love the use of LaSalle Street for the showdown.

You're looking at this from the perspective of how well someone knows hidden gems or less obvious areas of the city, like a suburban twenty-something that has been living in Wicker Park for a few years and wants to brag to all of his visiting friends about how hip he is for knowing about the Rainbow Club. This is a MOVIE, not your social life. As a photographer, I also look for unusual and new things around town, but I was very much impressed with Nolan's use of classic Chicago locations, and how well the city plays as it's own character in the film. Lighting and wide angles were fantastic, and exactly what I wanted from a blockbuster summer film. Maybe if this were an indie character drama I might agree with more with your review, but it's not, and I don't.

GEORGE--sorry, "classic chicago locations" is BO-R-R-R-RING, though unfortunately it's what you get in just about every commercial movie shot in town * some honorable exceptions: mcnaughton's MAD DOG AND GLORY (noniconic, but the near-north character, such as it is, comes through) and NORMAL LIFE (mostly nondescript suburbia: gotta know the area to shoot in these forlorn stretches), penn's FOUR FRIENDS (out in hegewisch somewhere ... social life, anyone?), andy davis's THE FUGITIVE (ditto pullman), and, still best of the bunch, de palma's THE UNTOUCHABLES, which actually went into a couple neighborhoods that nobody'd ever bothered with before (albeit the guy's an out-of-towner--but costa-gavras's MUSIC BOX owes a lot to his example) ... not to mention the putative de palma "homage" in WANTED (or was it just inadvertent?), at the intersection of roscoe and clark, where the red and brown lines separate * at least they didn't blow up the corner restaurant again ...

though i suppose our wicker park-bucktown period--FLATLINERS, BLINK, HIGH FIDELITY, et al--is definitively over: no more julia roberts running from damen and milwaukee to the museum of science and industry ten miles away ... and she doesn't even break a sweat!

Pat -- I almost always enjoy reading your posts (even and sometimes especially when I disagree -- more food for thought that way), but I'm sorry to say I've always found something aggressively off-putting about Michael Atkinson's writing. To my eyes, the tone is peremptory and hostile and he tends to pile categorical assertion upon assertion without ever managing to sustain an argument or teach me anything. Of course others are free to enjoy his prose and even quote him in their blog posts (as you do). That's just how I read the guy.

Actually two films that I thought did Chicago proud were CALL NORTHSIDE 777 and MICKEY ONE.

I too am growing weary of bromide statements from Reader critics (what the hell does pacify the tourists mean? You want to end tourists? Is tourist the new word for yuppie?).

To put down THE DARK KNIGHT without answering why so many have connected to the film is just sloppy. Frankly the Reader lost its hipness factor long ago. replacing it with leftist rubbish does not make it hip.

Let me put it this way- look at the ads. Who buys more ads? The bars. Who has been there for the paper in its up and down periods?
The bars. So why in gods name are there pages of theatre reviews for shows that 80% of whom draw less than 10 people? Now, look at the ads they buy. Less than zero.

There was a token writer added to cover the bar scene but they tried to be hip and failed. When the Reader announced cutbacks, did they cut back on theatre reviews. Nope. They punished the bars who kept them going by refusing to list film screenings at bars in the paper.

DJ Tiesto comes to town, sells out the House of Blues with no ads, no interviews, no articles, zero coverage. And I'm reading about a band playing in front of 80 people at a dive bar?

Stop trying to be hip. Get a capitalist on the staff and start thinking.

JSL--kinda blindsided me there: whoa, is this the same writer i've been enjoying/admiring for years? * not that atkinson needs any defending, and i hope his (often) passionate attachments aren't what's turning you off: it's hard playing the "objective" card when you think films actually do matter (or ought to), as forms of associative looking, as entry points to the culture, etc * though if he ever did become one of those tiresome informational/instructional purveyors, of which we have more than our share, it'd be reason enough prima facie not to read him again!

Pat,

Do you really believe that Atkinson's claim that "Superheroes are, essentially by definition, idiotic confections intended for children" is defensible? Snobbish attitudes like this have kept film studies ghettoized in cultural discourses for the last 100 years, which makes Atkinson's dismissive attitude towards comic books and filmic adaptations of them all the more galling. What makes movies a privileged "entry point to the culture," any more so than video games, novels, fan fiction, painting, television, or any other form of media?

It's hard to take Atkinson's opinion seriously when, as an above poster mentioned, he shows such categorical disdain for contemporary Hollywood cinema. All the backlash against "The Dark Knight" (which telling took about 3 weeks to make it's way to the web) seems directed more at the institution of Hollywood for daring to scratch at the glass ceiling placed on it by self-styled cultural gatekeepers like Atkinson. I suppose Atkinson thinks audiences should have spent $300 million going to see "Inland Empire."

And it is not surprising that someone whose primary output consists of banging out 150-word blog entries 3 times a week would find informational/instructional purveyors "tiresome." God forbid anyone spend more than 15 minutes ruminating on a film, or even (gasp!) dare to back up their analysis with research. There are people like Atkinson and David Thomson who write 'reference books' about cinema, and then there are people who write real books about cinema.

Ooh, you had to bring up Thomson. The fact that he is taken as an authority on film studies shows you how easily the title of "film historian/commentator" can be bestowed.

I made it through Rosebud and hated most of it and when I read the line "Joan Crawford must have had to swallow her fair share of cum to get her break" in the Whole Equation I had to put it down - what an asshole.

LAS--couple of points ...

1) if considering superheroes childish confections were reason enough to dismiss a critic's opinions about films, we'd be dismissing so many mighty scribblers, not to mention a certain longtime incumbent at the READER much beloved by all, there'd hardly be any, umm, "serious" critical opinion left to read and rail against * obviously i don't have to agree with atkinson to find his writings valuable ... but for the record, no, "superheroes" (a loathsome starting point, incidentally: what makes them either "super" or heroic?) aren't a priori "childish," or anything else for that matter--though if i'm feeling lazy or churlish and want to be dismissive without doing the critical heavy lifting, i might actually stoop to using pejoratives like that ... but only once in a while!

and if you're still confused about where i'm coming from personally, take a look at my recent post on HELLBOY II, with the ref and links to jeff koons, et al: challenging the very kind of knee-jerk dismissiveness you're talking about, for reasons of genre, etc, is pretty much the whole point there ...

2) no, films aren't "privileged" entry points, and i never said they were--in fact ANYTHING might reasonably serve that function, and obviously i'd object to a priori dismissals that avoid coming to grips with the objects of their loathing * but sometimes you have to cut through the shit, not go through the process of inventing the wheel again ...

just noticed atkinson's sour take on HELLBOY II ... unfortunately he's content with a minor-register dismissal despite the exceptional mise-en-scene energies he could more profitably have tuned in on * which doesn't negate his general point about the superhero glut in american commercial filmmaking--something we can more or less agree on, yes?--only that in this specific case the general might better have succumbed to the deliriously, deliciously particular * too bad he had to miss that ... that ANYONE would, actually

Pat--
"not that atkinson needs any defending, and i hope his (often) passionate attachments aren't what's turning you off"

Passionate is one thing, if it's backed up with some degree of reasoned argument. Atkinson just puts a sledgehammer to his keyboard and pummels away.

In the passage you quoted, there isn't a single word as to HOW or WHY the chases/fights are "haphazardly shot and cut" -- i.e. which shots does he have in mind, what is it about the editing that throws him off? I know that he perhaps can't be expected to indulge in the painstaking shot-per-shot analysis that academics such as David Bordwell specializes in, but I still feel his writing needs more meat on the bone to convince: simply saying that the film looks haphazard and moving on to the next point (which he does in his review) isn't enough.

Case in point:

"We hardly see Bruce Wayne, the Joker (yes, Heath Ledger was fascinating) has no backstory or motivation, plot holes loomed like event horizons (sure, you evacuated that hospital), dialogue scenes never lasted more than a few seconds"

Atkinson never considers that the film leaves Bruce Wayne in the background on purpose (I eagerly await his coverage of an upcoming Samuel Beckett retrospective: "The plays were all terrible. And Godot didn't even show up!!"). Ditto with Joker's lack of back-story: our shrewd critic must have missed Nolan's repeated comments in interviews as to why this was done (and again: should we on that basis dismiss Iago, Mabuse, or the serial killer in Dirty Harry? Is exposition the be-all and end-all of storytelling or characterization). But I would submit here that Atkinson just wants to pile one assertion after another at such a dizzying speed that the reader doesn't have time to catch his/her breath and wonder if any of this even holds water (speaking of haphazard writing and editing...). Like I said, hostile assertions; not arguments**.

For the rest of the quote, I'll grant Atkinson that The Dark Knight's plot has a few lapses, but did he really bring his stopwatch to the theater and time the alleged two-second dialogue scenes? Of course not: it's hyperbole, and inaccurate, and without such inflated misstatements, I doubt his last point would even stick.

I will say that I'm more than happy to cut Atkinson some slack if you vouch for his merits (and in no way am I asking you to defend him -- I simply wanted to throw a little feedback your way because I enjoy your posts). Plus, I may very well check out his BFI monograph on Blue Velvet (don't much like the film, but in my experience BFI brings out the best in writers I otherwise have trouble with). And if you consider blindsiding a bad thing, a minor apology for that too: I guess I too have my share of "passionate attachments."

**Some writers like Manny Farber are quite good at piling up assertions without making much of an argument, but that's another barrel of fish and the subject for a longer discussion...

JSL--here's something to consider: sometimes (maybe all the time) you simply write to the film you've seen or think you have--not trying to CONVINCE anyone so much as summon a nest of serendipitous associations (e.g., those cultural entry points) that make it interesting to you and, this is the hard part, may to your readers as well: "does this resemble the movie you've seen?"--always a measure deriving from what the reader brings to the table * so it's more like dowsing than literal argument, a kind of oracularity (which doesn't make it good or bad), which can leave you hanging on a ledge without a net since sometimes your "intuitions" will fail you * as you indicate, manny farber managed this largely free-associative method, whereas others of us might not do it as well * but better these glancing/dancing, hit-and-run apercus than the literal-minded battering-ram approach: e.g., bordwell can do it without putting you to sleep or assuming the general readership need a remedial primer, but not many others can ...

Pat,

No doubt Atkinson made some good points in his blog enrtry; really, why are we seeing so many comic book adaptations? However, that is not a justification for shitting on a whole genre of films just to indulge your readership (judging by the comments on his blog, that's exactly what was happening). I guess if Atkinson is really willing to dismiss the discourse on terrorism that has largely been taking place in Hollywood action films, he's more than welcome to do so; however, the enmity of sensitive viewers is to be expected.

I've just been dying for Bordwell to post some metrics on "The Dark Knight," just so we can get an idea of where it stands in the present tradition of power-cut action films. My guess is, the newest Batman entry is par for the course, with sharp execution making up for run-of-the-mill structure.

Boy, did you miss the point of these films:

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7386/The+Dark...

One of things I admire about Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone" is his use of Boston. Not simply in regards to his expert use of location, but also in the casting of extras and bit players. Affleck understands the subtlety of the city and this helps to immerse the viewer in the Bostonian experience.

You're right, Nolan doesn't do this with Chicago in "The Dark Knight". But then again, he doesn't need to. Chicago, after-all, isn't Gotham City. But perhaps there is something more to it than that. Bruce Wayne is a privileged billionaire. No matter how much he tries to connect with the underbelly of Gotham, he can never truly be a part of it. He's a tourist in his own city.

ANDRIY--nice work in boston, yes, but credit clint eastwood rather than affleck, who's basically just impersonating the MYSTIC RIVER model, all those aerial swoops and pans ...