Sean Penn! Come back! We forgive you for everything! But come back! We need you now more than ever!

Sean Penn has literally picked the worst time ever to take a career break. You see, it’s just been announced that at next year’s Oscars, 10 movies will be nominated for best picture instead of five. That means Hollywood needs to make twice as many drearily highbrow movies about either civil rights, the horrors or war or mental illness to fill the nominations quota.

Otherwise, God help us, a film that people actually enjoy might be nominated. Sean Penn, we’re begging you.

Remember all the fuss that was made at last year’s Oscars when The Dark Knight wasn’t nominated for best picture? It was shocking, and it was absolutely the fault of the Oscars. It wasn’t that the film went on for a bit too long, or that people pretended to like it more than they really did because Heath Ledger died, or that nobody could understand what the lead character was saying at any given point in time because he was intent on doing the world’s longest impression of Phil Mitchell straining for a poo – it happened because the Oscars hate films that people like.

But to be fair to the academy, its hands were tied. It couldn’t nominate The Dark Knight for best picture because there were only five nomination spots – and Oscar rules clearly state that preference should be given to films about the Holocaust, gay rights, ethnic minorities, infamous real-life politicians and muddled adaptations of literary works. So between The Reader, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, that didn’t leave any room for The Dark Knight.

But next year? Next year things are going to be different. For seemingly no reason whatsoever, it’s been announced that the number of best picture nominees will double to 10 at next year’s Oscars. The LA Times reports:

The change is a direct result of a two-year, in-house search for ways to broaden the appeal of the show, and with good reason — viewership is sagging. “Last year there were more movies that I thought might have fit in the nominations,” Academy President Sid Ganis said Wednesday, acknowledging that hits such as “Iron Man,” “The Dark Knight” and “Tropic Thunder” resonated far more with moviegoers than with academy voters.

It makes so much sense – from now on the academy will be able to nominate a whole new wave of populist, audience-pleasing movies and still end up giving the best picture Oscar to the same highbrow, barely-watched, uncomfortably bleak biopic of a disabled celebrity that it always does. Everyone’s a winner.

Or maybe we’re being cynical. Maybe next year the Oscars really will start to focus on movies that audiences like. And maybe it can introduce a best haircut Oscar while it’s at it. And an Oscar for the star with the winningest smile. And Twilight can win everything. Oh, what fun it’ll be.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Yeah, it didn’t happen. The Oscar nominations have just been announced and, while The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button has managed to rack up 13 nominations, The Dark Knight has been comprehensively snubbed.

Shut out of the Best Picture and Best Director categories, the only real hope that The Dark Knight has of winning an Oscar in a big category now is with Heath Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor nomination. And even if he does win, his acceptance speech is bound to be crap.

Yesterday there was all kinds of speculation that The Dark Knight would be nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. A nomination, it was claimed, would be a shot in the arm for the ceremony itself – by our calculations it’s been about a decade since anyone won an Oscar for a film that a member of the public even knew existed, and so giving a Best Picture nomination to The Dark Knight would motivate the potential Oscars audience much more than, say, Hugh Jackman flapping around the stage in a flowery blouse ever would.

But that hasn’t happened. The Oscar nominations have been announced and it looks as though The Dark Knight will have to make do with all its People’s Choice awards, even though that’s basically the awards season equivalent of the Waggiest Tail rosette at a dog show for animals with dangerously concussed owners.

And The Dark Knight hasn’t just been ignored in the Best Picture category – Christopher Nolan didn’t get a Best Director nod despite his groundbreaking work with the Imax equipment. Hans Zimmer didn’t get a Best Soundtrack nod even after all the kerfuffle over whether it was eligible or not. And Christian Bale was locked out of both the Silliest Voice By A Main Actor and the Most Hilarious Arrest Over An Alleged Assault Of An Actor’s Clown Mother categories.

It’s disappointing, but we’ll still be rooting for Heath Ledger in the Best Supporting Actor category and whoever it is who did the sound mixing for The Dark Knight. We might even make a banner for the last one.

But if The Dark Knight isn’t going to win all the Oscars now, what is? Well, if the Oscar nominations are any indication The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button might do quite well. It’s picked up 13 nominations, for everything from Best Actor for Brad Pitt to Best Picture to Best Director for David Fincher to Best Adapted Screenplay to Best Supporting Actress for Taraji P. Henson.

And The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button would have probably got even more Oscar nominations, too, if only the academy had listened to our requests to introduce categories for Best Forrest Gump Rip-Off, Best Lead Character Who’s Infuriatingly Unable To Complete Entire Sentences and Picture Most Likely To Give You Full-Blown Deep-Vein Thrombosis.

Which other movies got Oscar nominations this year? We’re not exaggerating when we say all the movies you expected to. But if you really must know, Fox has got a complete list for you.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

We literally can’t control our bowels. Literally. And, if anything, the Oscar nominations are even more exciting than the new president. Because, when they happen tomorrow, we’ll find out if The Dark Knight will get a Best Picture nod or not. Oscar hype over The Dark Knight has been steadily building for months now, and the repercussions of a nomination would be huge.

But we’ll have to explain them in a minute, after we’ve changed our pants. We really did mean literally.

For years now, Oscar audiences have been dwindling. And the Oscar board totally knows why. Is it that watching seven hours of preening millionaires trot up and down a carpet talking to Ryan Seacrest with their cheeks sucked in actually makes people so furious that they end up wanting to shit blood? Well, to be fair, yes it is. But that’s not the Oscar board’s opinion.

They’ve given the matter some thought, and have come up with two completely obvious ideas:

1) People don’t like watching clever people be funny, and

2) People don’t like it when boring films about sad people doing depressing things win awards.

And, to give them credit, the Oscar board have done something about it. First, they’ve decided to switch hosts, with Jon Stewart’s intelligent barbs being replaced by Hugh Jackman wanking around in a pair of shiny spandex trousers. And secondly, there’s a very good chance that The Dark Knight will be given a Best Picture nomination tomorrow.

We all know how well-loved The Dark Knight is. The second-highest grossing movie of all time, The Dark Knight made a posthumous megastar out of Heath Ledger, incorporated groundbreaking cinematic and musical techniques into a complex story that refused to underestimate its audience and is probably the best film ever to have a lead character with a ridiculous growly voice that made him sound like a poorly Ray Winstone straining for a poo while having an asthma attack.

But if The Dark Knight did get an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, it’d change everything. The other movies likely to get a nod tomorrow are all barely-watched movies about either real-life politicians or sort of weird Billy Elliott rip-offs, but a nomination for The Dark Knight might even do the impossible and make people want to watch the Oscars. As the USA Today reports, Steven Spielberg seems like he’s up for it:

“I am really happy to see that The Dark Knight is making a last-minute run at recognition,” he said after the Golden Globes. “I was very happy with the Heath (Golden Globe) win and am looking forward to some more Dark Knight momentum. … That balances things out.”

Personally we’re with Steven Spielberg here. For too long The Oscars have been out of touch with popular tastes, and a nomination for The Dark Knight would give the ceremony a real shot in the arm. And we’re not just saying that because we’re bitter about everyone hating Indiana Jones 4 like Spielberg is, either.

No, we’re saying that because we want to see a world where commercial success and critical acclaim are not mutually exclusive. We want, in short, to see Hotel For Dogs win Best Picture at the Oscars. Oh, what a world that would be.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Last night The Dark Knight swept the People’s Choice Awards – the most white-bread, gonkishly populist, helmet-wearing awards show in the world. In other words, The Dark Knight is the film that fans of Kid Rock, Kate Hudson and Two And A Half Men like best.

In essence, this makes The Dark Knight the new Pirates Of The Caribbean – good news for anyone who wanted Batman 3 to feature three hours of Christian Bale running around pulling self-consciously barmy faces all the time.

Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of The Dark Knight’s Oscar hopes packing their suitcases and leaving town. It’s impossible for The Dark Knight to win any Oscars now. It has to be. Because the law quite clearly states you can either win People’s Choice Awards or Oscars, and The Dark Knight has just won five People’s Choice Awards.

Why can’t you win both? Simple – the Oscars are voted for by people who want to prove how deep they are, which is why they’re always won by serious films about Catholic paedophilia and the Holocaust that people never watch. Meanwhile the People’s Choice Awards are voted for by people, who we all know are universally stupid.

That’s why, at last night’s People’s Choice Awards, Ellen DeGeneres was voted better than David Letterman, Adam Sandler was voted better than Steve Carell and Two And A Half Men won a category that 30 Rock wasn’t even nominated for.

The biggest winner of the night, though, was The Dark Knight – the film that started off as a moody, complex, morally ambiguous thriller and ended up as the film that every moron on Earth quotes to one another at the office because they went to see it 17 times in a row. AP reports:

“The Dark Knight” soared away with every trophy it was nominated for Wednesday at the 35th annual fan-favorite CBS ceremony. The caped crusader flick won five awards, including favorite cast, superhero, action movie and on-screen matchup for Christian Bale’s Batman and the late Heath Ledger’s Joker. “On behalf of all of the cast from the movie, thank you very much to the fans,” said Bale. “Here’s to Heath.”

Of course, just because The Dark Knight won a lot of People’s Choice Awards, that doesn’t make it a bad film – just a film that gained an unexpectedly populist audience. It’s a bit of a worry, actually – how is Christopher Nolan expected to keep his crown as a bravely visionary director when his movies get embraced by the dribbling public so easily? At this rate the only way he’ll be able to hang on to his credibility is to make Batman 3 a 15-hour-long slowed-down single shot of a disturbed old lady cutting away at her clothes with a pair of kitchen scissors.

Or maybe – just maybe – we’re reading too much into this. After all, everybody knows that the People’s Choice Awards lost all their credibility when they dropped the Nice ‘N Easy Fans Favourite Hair prize.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

So when we heard that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had banned the score to The Dark Knight from Oscar eligibility on a technicality, we were furious – it was easily the biggest Oscars outrage since Geri Halliwell’s turn in The Fat Slags didn’t win Best Supporting Actress in 2004.

But the good news is that the Academy has reversed its decision – now The Dark Knight’s score can lose to the Alvin & The Chipmunks OST like nature intended.

In these times of trouble, it’s only right that the big winner at next year’s Oscars should be a dark, sprawling, dense epic where nobody can easily be defined as good or evil. Sadly, however, Ace Ventura Jr wasn’t released theatrically, so maybe it’ll have to be The Dark Knight instead.

For a whole host of reasons – including the scale of ambition, the sophistication of storytelling, the box office totals, the death of Heath Ledger and the fact that most people would rather stick a shotgun under their chin than watch another film about Sean Penn weeping at injustice – The Dark Knight is slowly emerging as something of an Oscars frontrunner.

It seems like there isn’t an Oscars category that The Dark Knight won’t do well in, aside from two. The first is Best Actor – unless there’s a new subcategory this year entitled Best Actor With A Voice That Sounds Like A Brick In A Blender, of course, in which case it stands a pretty good chance – and the second is Best Score.

Or at least it was. A month ago, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided that it was going to ban Hans Zimmer’s score for The Dark Knight because it made the mistake of listing everyone who contributed music to the movie to its cue sheet instead of just the principle composers.

It was a double slap in the face for Zimmer and The Dark Knight, not just because of the innovative, cutting-edge nature of the soundtrack, but because the score’s lead single – Disturbing Machine Buzzing Drone Number Four – has been number one in the hit parade around the world for almost two solid months now.

So let’s all be thankful that the academy has finally decided to reverse its decision and include it on the ballot once and for all, as Reuters reports:

After reviewing the submission, [the academy] concluded that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard were the main composers and deemed the duo’s work for Warner Bros.’ Batman blockbuster as eligible. The academy said that since ballots had not been mailed, the decision would not affect the voting process.

That’s wonderful news. It’s encouraging to see that the academy is able to recognise a piece of groundbreaking work and adjust its rules to include it from time to time. What’s more, this now means that Oscar voters have another category to seriously consider The Dark Knight in before they choosing to vote for Wall-E like they were all going to anyway.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

But most of all, the world wants Christopher Nolan. But since this is Christopher Nolan – a man who once made an entire film about Al Pacino being quite sleepy – he isn’t making the Batman 3 talk easy.

Promoting The Dark Knight’s DVD release, Nolan reiterated that the pressure of following such a huge movie might cause him to foul the sequel up. Well, Christopher, that didn’t stop Sam Raimi from making Spider-Man 3, and that was… um, OK, let’s move on.

Although there’s obviously a lot of talk about Heath Ledger at the moment – most notably how his indelible interpretation of The Joker could easily win an Oscar next year – The Dark Knight really only created one star.

No, not Aaron Eckhart – all he did model his face on Posh Spice and do a rubbish Skeletor voice. And not Morgan Freeman, either – regardless of whether he’s playing a technological wizard or a retired child kidnapper he can still only really play Morgan Freeman. And we refuse to take Christian Bale seriously as Batman until someone gives him a bloody Strepsil.

No, the real star of The Dark Knight was Christopher Nolan – not only did he manage to make a superhero movie into a dark, rich, morally ambiguous thriller with a completely noncommercial ending, but he managed to make it more popular than any movie ever barring Titanic. And that takes some doing.

So, while some people are caught up in the trivialities of whether Johnny Depp will play The Riddler in Batman 3 – or whether Cher will play Catwoman – the real question is whether Christopher Nolan wants to direct it or not.

So far Nolan has been fiercely coy on the matter, noting that he hasn’t been signed up to direct Batman 3 and that he didn’t want to go down the traditional route of third superhero movies and write a script that sees the hero turn evil because either a) Richard Pryor accidentally turned a woman into a robot or b) he got sad because Kirsten Dunst danced and cooked eggs at the same time, depending on whether you’ve just watched Superman III or Spider-Man 3.

But that was a few months ago – surely Christopher Nolan has changed his mind about Batman 3 by now! Surely! Surely, USA Today? You know! Tell us what he said, USA Today:

“I wouldn’t want to do one if it weren’t going to be as good as the first or second. That’s not respectful to the fans… It was obvious when the box office was so big that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise. The worst thing you could do now that you’ve gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing.”

Oh, you big bloody cocktease, Nolan. You know as well as anyone that The Dark Knight was such a huge success that Batman 3 is going to happen regardless of whether you make Batman 3 and follow the series through to the graceful, elegant conclusion you’ve envisioned for it or whether Warner Brothers gets Schumacher back onboard to give everyone giant nylon codpieces and a script that’s 98% pun. Which one would you prefer?

We can see right through Christopher Nolan’s little plan here. The more he appears to wring his hands about Batman 3, the more people like us will clamour for him to make it. And then, when Christoper Nolan ends up making Batman 3 into a gigantic dogturd that climaxes with Christian Bale kissing Cher with tongues inside a helicopter flying away from a burning building, he can look back and say that it was all our fault. Which it will be. Arse.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

So, come Oscar night, you’d expect that The Dark Knight would wipe the floor with the competition – especially since the competition seems to be a million underperforming films about gloomy people from 35 years ago – but you’re wrong.

It’s just been announced that The Dark Knight can’t win the Oscar for Best Score because it was composed by too many people. That’ll be disappointing for the crew of The Dark Knight, but they’ll get over it – not least because the 2009 Oscars will introduce categories for Best Irredeemably Bleak Summer Movie and Silliest And Most Indecipherable Voice Employed By A Lead Actor, which The Dark Knight is already a dead cert for.

Even before it was released, there was a heavy Oscar buzz surrounding The Dark Knight, and it was all down to Heath Ledger. By a) giving possibly the performance of his life as The Joker and b) dying young, Heath Ledger was guaranteed at least a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the get-go.

But then The Dark Knight was released, and it seemed like Best Supporting Actor would be the tip of the iceberg. The script was dark and thematically complex, the cinematography was brave and experimental, the box office numbers were galactic, the costumes were pretty and – most importantly for Oscar voters – the film went on for about an hour longer than it should have done and featured endless scenes of a frowning man gazing into the middle distance.

To the casual observer, it looked as though The Dark Knight would win every single Oscar that it put itself in for, but already that’s not the case. The bleak, creepy score for The Dark Knight has been ruled ineligible for the Oscars, and it’s all thanks to the number of people who worked on it.

Apparently, Academy rules state that only the primary composer of a film’s score should be included on the cue sheet, but for The Dark Knight the names of everyone who added pieces of music to the score were added, and now it’s been disqualified. MTV reports:

Although the five people listed as composers on “The Dark Knight” — including Zimmer, [James Newton] Howard, music editor Alex Gibson, ambient music designer Mel Wesson and composer Lorne Balfe — signed an affidavit stating that Zimmer and Howard were the primary composers, the majority of the Academy sided against the duo’s eligibility.

Now, being disqualified from the Oscars for a minor technicality like that is bound to sting, but it’s not the end of the world for The Dark Knight. Here’s why:

1 - By adding Gibson, Balfe and Wesson to the cue sheet for The Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer has ensured that they’ll all receive royalties from the score’s use, so at least he gets the moral high ground.

2 - The Dark Knight is still pushing hard in the Best Picture category – the only Oscar that people actually care about – and at this point it’s hard to see how it could lose.

3 – Does anyone go and see a movie for the score? No they don’t. A win in this category isn’t exactly going to boost DVD sales, is it?

4 - This is the main reason. If The Dark Knight has been disqualified for entering its score into the Oscars, then it means none of it can be performed in one of those interminable musical interludes that bloat the Oscars ceremony out. And you know what that means? More avant garde performances featuring Latvian women dressed as little Dutch girls singing in a made-up language and hitting bicycles for percussion. Yay for that!

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

You see, even though every single living organism on the face of the Earth has already been to see The Dark Knight about 17 times already, producers are scared that the Academy will forget about it come Oscar nomination time, which is why they’ve pencilled in another theatrical release of The Dark Knight for January.

Of course, by January The Dark Knight’s bloated special effects are going to look foolish up against the more intelligent, issue-led fare of awards season, which is why Christopher Nolan is currently busy re-editing the movie to make Batman look like the widower of mentally-disabled United Nations worker killed in Darfur by a missile built in Iraq but funded by the American government, who are obviously the real baddies in all of this.

The Dark Knight is officially a sensation. It’s the second-highest grossing movie in all of history; critics and fans have lavished it with praise, calling it one of the best movies ever made and it’s actually so good that we can’t even watch films any more because we end up projectile vomiting all over the upholstery because none of them are even a tenth as good as The Dark Knight.

But, despite all this, will The Dark Knight actually win any Oscars? Well, probably not. It might deserve a few, but it won’t win them for the following reasons:

1) Hollywood still has a stigma about rewarding superhero movies in the main Oscar categories.

2) The Dark Knight came out in the summer, and people only seriously consider movies for the Oscars if they’re released between October and February.

3) Sean Penn will probably release an incredibly serious movie right before the Oscars where he’ll play someone either disabled or historically significant and everyone who can vote for the Oscars will roll around on their backs playing with themselves going “Uuuuh, Sean Penn! Uuuuh, Sean Penn! Muh muh moo muh moo!” as soon as they see it and he’ll win everything instead.

Or at least that was the theory. But now the clever producers of The Dark Knight have struck upon a cunning ruse to jolt the movie back into everyone’s memory come Oscar time. No, sadly they’re not going to exhume Heath Ledger’s body and make it dance marionette-style to the hits of Prince up and down the streets of Hollywood right before Oscar night.

Instead they’re just going to release The Dark Knight in cinemas again in January. BBC News reports:

Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight could be re-released in cinemas in January, ay the height of the Oscar voting season. Warner Bros is in talks with Imax over the prospect of restoring the film to some big-screen theatres. It is hoped the push will help the film’s Academy Award chances, trade paper The Hollywood Reporter said.

Oh, OK, maybe we should calm down a little in that case. The Dark Knight is only going to get re-released at Imax cinemas. That means, if it’s anything like the last run, we’ll never get tickets to see it anyway because all the showings will be sold-out, even a month in advance, even at 3am.

So, in that case, we’ll be giving our Oscar vote to Sean Penn this year.

At least you’re guaranteed your own row at his movies.

It’s common knowledge that Christopher Nolan hasn’t signed on to direct Batman 3 yet, but now we’re starting to hear whispers that he’s probably never going to make Batman 3, probably because he wants to make loads more weird little films about David Bowie inventing electricity or something.

This rumour that Batman 3 will be directed by someone other than Christopher Nolan is actually quite worrying – not only because his work on The Dark Knight took intelligent popcorn hits to a dramatic new level, but also because he apparently wanted Cher to play Catwoman, and who wouldn’t want to see a big-haired pensioner wriggling around in a skin-tight latex leotard, right? Right? Hello? Anyone?

Everyone knows The Dark Knight was good. It was so good that it made Christian Bale go mental on his mum. It was so good that it made Morgan Freeman crash his car with an illicit ladyfriend in the passenger seat. It was even so good that we’re prepared to overlook Batman’s silly voice and that nonsense about tracking people’s mobile phones in it.

It was, in short, so good that everyone is desperate for Batman 3. We’d even be able to put up with a Batman 3 that starred Cher and Johnny Depp so long as Christopher Nolan directed it. Make no mistake – Christopher Nolan is vital to Batman 3.

Which is why it’s a pain in the arse that he’s probably not going to direct it. During his big interview about Two-Face being dead recently, Aaron Eckhart also happened to let out this little nugget of information:

“He never said he’s going to make another one. I’m sure they drove the Brinks truck up to his house and dumped money on his lawn. But I think Chris wants to go out and make other movies, too. And he should. He’s an independent filmmaker at heart. He’s got a lot of ideas.”

The News Of The World, which never makes stuff like this up, expanded on the claim yesterday by suggesting that Christopher Nolan won’t make Batman 3 because he can’t do it without Heath Ledger. But that’s rubbish – he swapped Katie Holmes for Maggie Gyllenhaal between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and that formula worked pretty well, so all he needs to do is find a new Joker with a weirder-looking face and he’ll be away.

Of course, with The Dark Knight being the massive runaway success that it is, Batman 3 is an inevitability whether or not Christopher Nolan chooses to direct it. But if he doesn’t, we’d personally like to vouch for Tyler Perry. It sounds like a weird choice, but it’s the only way that our dream of seeing a tall, overweight transvestite Batman dishing out folksy self-help soundbites to criminals will be realised. Who’s with us?

But hold your horses, buster. Aaron Eckhart isn’t going to be in Batman 3. That might sound like common sense, seeing as how his character Two-Face stacked it to death off a building at the end of The Dark Knight, but apparently a handful of internet ninnies have decided that Two-Face didn’t die at all, and that both he and his silly voice will return for Batman 3.

And that’s why Aaron Eckhart has come forward to declare once and for all that Two-Face is definitely 100% dead. But don’t worry, disappointed Aaron Eckhart fans – he might not be returning for Batman 3, but copies of his 2007 Catherine Zeta Jones cookery-based romantic comedy No Reservations are still available to buy or rent on DVD. Yes, we thought that’d please you.

This whole Batman 3 malarkey is getting a bit out of hand, isn’t it. Because The Dark Knight has taken over half a billion dollars since it was released, everyone’s got so desperate for news about the sequel that they’ll believe any old crap that’s hurled at them.

But in reality, not much is known about Batman 3 at all. The only concrete Batman 3 facts are as follows:

1) Catwoman and The Penguin definitely won’t be appearing in Batman 3.

2) Despite this, Catwoman will definitely be played by Angelina Jolie.

3) In addition, Cher will also definitely be Batman 3’s Catwoman.

4) Johnny Depp. Definitely.

And they’re literally all the stone-cold facts we can tell you about Batman 3. All of them are unequivocally true. As is the news that Two-Face died in The Dark Knight and definitely won’t be returning for a sequel. No, really.

Seriously, Aaron Eckhart can’t make that clear enough. You know that bit at the end of The Dark Knight where Two-Face and Batman fall out of a window and everyone’s all like “Oh, Two-Face is dead” and Batman has to run off because there’s a dog chasing him or something? Yeah, despite what the corner of the internet that smells most like Clearasil and stale jism says, he is actually dead. Even Aaron Eckhart says so. Eckhart told Comingsoon:

“He is dead as a door nail. He ain’t coming back baby! I asked Chris [Nolan] that question and he goes, “You’re dead” before I could even get the question out of my mouth. “Hey Chris, am I?” “You’re dead!” Alright, cool.”

So that’s that – Two-Face is definitely dead, definitely not coming back and that definitely means that in Batman 3 Christian Bale will have to find someone new to growl incoherently at.

To take stock, then – Aaron Eckhart won’t return for Batman 3 because his character’s dead and Heath Ledger won’t return because he’s actually dead. Cuh, some people will do anything to make sure they don’t get a crappy, pointless, totally unexplained Cillian Murphy-style cameo at the start of the next film, won’t they.

First he stopped jumping around like a particularly stupid chimp, he stopped going on about Scientology in public – though he did see some of his private video collection released, much to the delight/terror (delete as appropriate) of the general public – and he’s seeing some rave reviews flying about for his small role in Tropic Thunder. So what next?

Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? Star in a superhero film, and get someone like Sam Raimi on board to produce. Which is, apparently, what’s being pushed for by Tom Cruise and Warner Bros, who own the rights to Sleeper – a short running comic book series from a few years back. Well, Raimi’s already on board, but you get the point.

And you can’t fault the man’s logic.

The rumoured decision happily fits in with our theory that Hollywood is physically incapable of having an original thought, ever, ever, ever. It also fits in with the current logic that if you make a film of a comic book it will make a lot of geeks wet with anticipation, thus creating millions upon millions of dollars to line the executive’s pockets with. And we all know how much they love money over there in movieland.

Valuing cash over creativity, honesty or integrity? Say it ain’t so! Ahem.

It appears, if reports are to be believed, that the latest in the line of films the studios hope will emulate the success of Spider-Man 3 and The Dark Knight is an adaptation of Sleeper – a limited series that ran from 2003-05 from the Wildstorm Universe and written by Ed Brubaker, whose writing credits include some work on X-Men and Captain America comics, amongst many others.

It does strike us that such a smalltime comic wouldn’t be the best of the potential earners out there for the studios and actors, but hey ho – it’s their money to waste and, who knows, they might get it right.

They won’t. But, you know – we are the bastions of truth, glory and optimism in the world of the internet. Wait, what? We’re not? Ah crap, Stu isn’t going to be happy…

The connection of Tom Cruise with the project has come about through the usual web of lies/rumours that prop up countless websites across the world, though it did originate at somewhere half-decent in the shape of The Hollywood Reporter, meaning we can leave it to them to explain the finer points:

Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, “Sleeper,” which ran from 2003-05, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact. He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.

Which sounds absolutely ideal for some big names to get attached to, a plethora of nerds to claim they read the book when it first came out (even though they picked it up off eBay on hearing the news a film was in the making) and a film to come out and get critically panned, while earning a small amount of cash.

You heard it here first.

We should also point out: superpowers afforded by the film adaptation still won’t allow Tom Cruise to keep pizzas warm using magic. Just thought we should point that out yet again.

While we all thought we would have to live in a world where no other films would ever get anywhere near The Dark Knight – a world where daily recitals of The Joker’s best speeches were made to be recited every morning in our schools, where every car is replaced with a Batmobile and where Morgan Freeman is elected King of Everything (with Christian Bale as his alleged muscle, obviously) – we have been proven wrong.

We worried for a while, but fortunately the ‘Greatest Film of All Time(tm)’ has been dethroned by Ben Stiller, Jack Black and a blacked-up Robert Downey Jr. And it’s sure to make the latter quite happy about it.

It would appear that controversy and notoriety really does help the fortunes of a cinema release these days – there were the obvious little numbers coming about before and after the release of The Dark Knight. It can’t be denied that the often-mentioned death, car crashes and alleged assaults had a positive effect on the fortunes of Nolan’s Batmasterpiece, and Tropic Thunder seems to have used the same technique to dethrone the four-week king.

Yes, there has been a lot of hoo-ha in recent weeks about the usage of the word ‘retard’ in Stiller and the gang’s Vietnam-movie comedy movie. Movie. Some people don’t like the word, and it’s apparently used quite liberally through the film.

But, of course, instead of looking into it and forming some kind of reasoned argument or debate about the issue, people just went and picketed screenings of the film, thus bringing it far more press coverage than it would have got without protests. And it would have got a lot of coverage without them anyway.

Throw on top of the pile the fact that one actor plays a blacked-up white man and you have another pile of outrage for the public to jump on. Shockingly though, this fell by the wayside with only a handful of comments being raised about the questionable portrayal. Possibly because they realised there was some satire at work there.

Either that or the blacked-up protesters couldn’t be heard over the legions of retard protesters. That’s as in protesting the use of the word, of course – we’re not calling them retarded for protesting the use of a word in a movie that is meant as a light-hearted comedy and a satire of the world of movies we are surrounded by today. Oh no. Not us.

Anyway – regardless of the retarded, blacked-up reasons that can be thrown around the fact remains – Tropic Thunder has dethroned The Dark Knight at the box office, raking in $37 million to the Baler and company’s $16.7 million.

If Tropic manages to gross more overall than Batman and chums then… well, frankly we’ll eat four gallons of testicle juice. Because that isn’t going to happen, even with all the controversy in the world.

The sequel to the Best Film Ever(tm) that has made more money than the GDP of many African nations combined, The Dark Knight, will get a sequel at some point. On one hand, who would blame the studio? It’s a licence to print money. On the same hand but slightly tilted, the vast majority of people who have seen the first two films actually want a sequel, seeing as both Batman Begins and the more recent helping were utterly brilliant.

Oh, plus Christian Bale isn’t going to be put in the slammer for three hundred years, or thereabouts.

But David S. Goyer, writer of the screenplay for both films, has other things to do for quite a while, so you plebians are going to have to wait a while for your next hit of Gotham’s favourite vigilante.

No, it would seem that in the great scheme of things, Goyer has what we sometimes like to call ‘a life outside Batman’. Hard to believe, but true nonetheless. His writing credits stretch far and wide, so as much as you out there in people land want a quick follow up to The Dark Knight, it ain’t gonna happen for a while.

Speaking to MTV, Goyer moved his lips and made some vibrations, which produced sounds of a certain type, conducted in a certain order. On paper, they look like this:

“I’m writing a new version of ‘The Invisible Man’ for Universal. I’m in the process of doing ['Invisible Man'] right now, and I’m working with some conceptual artists in tandem with writing the script. I’m actually working with one of the artists from ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight.’”

David continued this strange and mystical feat of producing language through his oral cavity, informing MTV of how he saw his version of The Invisible Man taking shape:

“My take is kind of an extrapolation. It actually deals with a nephew of the first character…It involves Scotland Yard getting their hands on the current Invisible Man and basically saying, ‘Wow, you’d be a really good secret agent to send into Imperial Russia right now’. It starts off from there… I don’t want to give too much away, but I took what being invisible could mean to the next logical extreme. We do a lot of crazy things in it that are sort of far beyond what anyone’s done with it yet.”

But it doesn’t stop there – well, his words did, but his career didn’t – with Goyer also in line to write and direct the second installment of X-Men Origins, this one being about everybody’s favourite metal-bending oldie Magneto.

So it would seem that one of the main creative forces behind The Dark Knight won’t be returning to the franchise for a while. That’s okay, we can accept that. In fact, it gives us all the chance to see what happens in the meantime – in the space of a few years we can see how the ‘curse’ of the movie affects the cast and crew. More death? More car crashes? More probably-not-actually-pushing-your-mum?

The possibilities are endless. Well, not literally endless, but there are a lot of possibilities. And hopefully David S Goyer will see sense and dumb down Batman 3, for Robert Downey Jr’s sake.

The Welshman, who no one seems to realise is Welsh, has been recommended to receive a caution by the Crown Prosecution Service for his alleged actions, should he plead guilty to charges next month. If, however, he pleads not guilty then he could be looking at more severe penalties, all according to the bastion of truth, honour and glory that is The Sun newspaper.

Though, let’s be honest here – he probably wouldn’t be looking at any really severe charges. A fine, a slap on the wrist and a bruised ego, leaving the Baler ready to take on Terminator 4 and Batman 3. Unless the authorities were to decide on making an example of him and imprisoned him for life – alledgely pushing your mum and sister about is no laughing matter, after all.

Especially when they apparently want money from you.

Last month saw Christian Bale arrested on suspicion of assault, and while everyone went mental thinking the guy had beaten some evil-doers to death with their own shoes, we soon discovered it was allegedly for getting mad and pushing his family about a bit. Not that we condone that kind of behaviour, but it was a bit of a let-down.

He didn’t even do it in his Batman costume, allegedly.

After being released on bail, Bale bailed from the UK to get back to work. That sentence was pretty unnecessary, but hecklerspray enjoys using the same word three times in a row, so hush down.

Anyway, rumours were flung around about the reasons for the alleged assault, until it was generally accepted that the row came about over money. Being rich and all, Bale was apparently expected to give over a fair wodge of cash for his sister’s kids, simply for sharing blood ties with these people. And he allegedly wasn’t happy, so he apparently made his feelings clear with some shouting and a push.

He didn’t, as some had hoped, beat up his clown sister. In his Batman costume. While on fire. Upside down. Such a let-down, honestly.

And now, bringing this whole debacle to an end, hopefully, we are greeted with the news that the only thing that will befall Christian Bale – should he plead guilty to the alleged assault – is a caution. All this news, all this coverage, all the speculation over the ‘curse’ of The Dark Knight and he’s getting told ‘don’t do it again’.

Maybe Robert Downey Jr can provoke a better reaction from the Baler after his non-too flattering comments about Batman, and we can get some genuine controversy going. A fistfight. In public. With both actors in full costume.

It’s not like Iron Man or The Dark Knight need any more publicity, it’s just that we need something exciting to happen that isn’t death, attempted murder, countries getting invaded or some crap sporting event in a country where people don’t exactly enjoy what you would call ‘freedom’. You know – just to keep us going.

Please?

And now that the people of the world once again recognise Robert Downey Jr in the street – and now that he’s likely off the smack and charlie – people are more likely to listen to him. So it comes as a nice big pile of fun when the man gets all ranty, decides he disagrees with just about everyone in the world and that he hates The Dark Knight, because it makes him feel ‘dumb’.

For once we don’t have to add much to that – it’s simply what he said in an interview with Movie Hole.

Speaking about the plans for Iron Man 2, the Marvel-contracted actor decided that he shouldn’t just talk up some vague plot points, speculate on what may happen in the sequel and start the ball rolling on some early hype for the upcoming blockbuster.

No – he would also stick the knife in in a pretty spectacular fashion, especially when you consider this is mainstream Hollywood cinema, people are likely to see what he’s said and it will get widely reported.

Just for that, we have to give Robert Downey Jr a special hecklerspray ‘Well Done You Have Some Balls’ award that we’ve just invented.

Congratulations, Bobby – how does it feel to be the first ever recipient?

Granted, he may not have threatened his mum, died or had a serious car accident, but directly slagging off a competitor’s film is good enough for us. Talking to Movie Hole, Downey Jr let loose this barrage:

“My whole thing is that that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart…and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I…still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f–king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F–k DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.”

Clearly not a man worried about burning any bridges… oh, wait, he went on about that too, the little git:

“You know, you’re never too old to burn your bridges because I believe I have offended everyone. I think I’ve got a couple more. ‘I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it’ is my favourite phrase I’ve ever coined.”

Well, we’re not going to argue with that.

Maybe years of drug abuse, carrying weapons around and getting arrested every three-point-four minutes is the recipe to make the perfect movie star – one who can actually act pretty well and one who has both an actual set of balls and a lack of inner monologue, leaving them free to say what they actually mean.

Set the plan in motion, Hollywood berks – prescription smack and a shotgun for Lindsay Lohan, followed by four arrests in a week. Maybe that’ll make her fun again.

Read The Rest Of It Here:

Movie Hole