Night of Knight

On Wednesday date night I escorted two beautiful women, my wife and her friend, to see the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises.  It was, in a word, fabulous.  I’m probably one of the few that didn’t think The Dark Knight, the second movie in the trilogy, was a transcendent movie.  I did enjoy it but never elevated it to the pantheon of movie excellence most fans seemed to have placed it.  Heath Ledger was riveting as the Joker but the movie didn’t connect with me.  I actually liked The Dark Knight Rises much more because it allows Bale to complete the arc of his Bruce Wayne/Batman character instead of making illogical but well meaning decisions as he did in the second film.  The supporting cast in this newest movie was incredibly strong, a hallmark of this series.  There were a couple of issues with the middle third of the movie, ad hoc spinal surgery in a 3^rd world prison to mention one and a bizarre battle plan for the climatic confrontation as another.  The movie also wastes Tom Hardy who is unrecognizable and completely masked as the villain Bane.  Hardy is a really good actor but his part could have been played by a stuntman because of the mechanical voice and face covering breathing mask – complete waste of talent there.  Hathaway on the other hand, who reminds me so much of my daughter, is pitch perfect as Catwoman.  I absolutely loved this movie and could not believe how fast the 2+ hours sped by.  A fitting conclusion to this iconic trilogy, well done.  I also finished another short novel by Terry Brooks in the Shanarra world yesterday (that Amazon recommendation function for the kindle is spectacularly effective).  This novella, Indomitable, picked up the story from the original trilogy and allowed some of the lesser used characters their moment of glory.  It was a fast read and a bit nostalgic revisiting characters and plots that were almost thirty years removed for my reading memory.  There was another series of thunderstorms last night so Buddy was revving up to full panic mode.  I read some articles online about helping dogs deal with the fear of thunder because Buddy seemed to be getting worse with every storm.  The most consistent advice was not to react to the dog’s panic, not to reinforce or validate the behavior, which of course we were doing by trying to comfort him whenever he entered the panic state.  I blew off my nightly swim workout to spend the time with Buddy as the storms arrived.  It actually seemed to work.  When he realized his frenzied anxiety was being ignored he calmed down.  Of course this was after trying to burrow into the couch directly below where I was sitting but overall it turned out to be good advice.  I’ll offer some good advice of my own – go see the Dark Knight Rises.