Posts Tagged ‘heath ledger’

Before the star’s untimely death in 2007, Heath Ledger was well on his way to two Oscar nominations. One for his quietly haunting turn in Brokeback Mountain and the other for his yet unseen portrayal of The Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. His star was burning bright and like so many before him, his time came too early. Now we look back at Ledger’s ten best performances according to Flickchart viewers.  Read the rest of this entry »

Dragons. Are there any cooler creatures in all of mythology? Unfortunately, in the world of celluloid, these great creatures of imagination have not really gotten their due. (At least, not in live-action cinema; why I have not yet seen How to Train Your Dragon is still beyond me.)

Is there any live-action film in which dragons have truly come off as cool as they deserve? Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire wasn’t too bad, but the dragons aren’t the stars. As I impatiently await the day when Peter Jackson brings his vision of the ultimate dragon, Smaug, to life in The Hobbit, I think about other dragon-themed movies that I have enjoyed in the past. None of them are deserving enough to be called “great”, but I’m very forgiving of movies I want to like. In one of these cases, I was the perfect age to see a dragon with real presence brought to life on the big screen – even if the movie he inhabited was far from perfect. Without further adieu, I present, in ascending order on my Flickchart, my picks for Guilty Pleasures starring dragons.

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Following the success of Batman Begins, anticipation was running high – to say the least – for the sequel. Begins and Memento had made me a big Christopher Nolan fan, but even I was among the skeptical when it was announced that Heath Ledger would be playing the Joker in The Dark Knight.

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As the Oscar telecast creeps up on us again, it begs the question: How many times has the Academy really gotten this “Best Picture” thing right, anyway?

Think about it. How many controversial decisions are there in the Academy’s history? How many times is a movie other than Best Picture long remembered as the best of the year?

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It doesn’t get more dominating than having directed the highest-ranked film on Flickchart’s list of The Best Movies of All Time. But the man behind The Dark Knight is not only responsible for the highest-grossing movie of 2008 (and a member of that elite billion-dollar club). Every one of the seven feature films he has directed has been a hit with critics, and several have been big hits at the box office. They’re also hits on Flickchart. In this entry of Directors Who Dominate, we shine the spotlight on the dark figure of Christopher Nolan.

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