Okay, I was a little miffed at the idea of a Scream 4, but I cannot even describe how monumentally screwed up this news is.  

That’s right. MTV is remaking Rocky Horror Picture Show.  

This has to stop. NOW.  There are certain things that are untouchable.  There are certain films that stay as they are forever.  Rocky Horror Picture Show one of them.  Hell, it isn’t even out of theaters.  It’s still playing across the country.  Here in the Cleve, Rocky Horror night is the first Saturday of ever month at the Cedar Lee. 

Not only is the idea of a remake just outrageous, it doesn’t even make sense.  This soulless, corporatized tripe from the network that broadcast Legally Blonde: The Musical (which I like, but…) will be Hot Topic of movie musicals.  Lonely, branded, posing pop trash.  Forget the call backs.  Forget the communal spirit of a RHPS crowd.  Forget the lingerie. Forget it all.  

Part of me wants not to be upset.  Like most basic cable programming, this telefilm will likely be lost down the line while RHPS is still playing in theaters. It’s a film I love to think the kids are willing to discover and embrace the way I did.

So, you know what you have to do creatures of the night.  Here’s an address to get you started. 

MTV Networks
c/o MTV Studios
1515 Broadway
New York, New York 10036

(Ironically, I got that address from a parents’ TV watchdog group.)

If you don’t want to see Janet played by Miley Cyrus, make some goddamn noise.  The article suggests a Halloween 2009 TV debut.  Not much time, but I’ll be damned if I live to see this bastardization of Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

And now for something not related to The Dark Knight. 

This will probably have a prominent spot at Comic-Con this weekend, but the Internets are giving non-conference goers a preview of the Battlestar Galctica prequel telefilm/backdoor pilot, Caprica. The promo has a nice 1950s-1960s feel to it. Could it be as atmospheric as Mad Men?

Here’s another question: Is it good enough to be a normal pilot? AICN reported on Sunday that this Dynasty-esque sci-fi family saga may go straight to series once the Sci-Fi Channel execs view it. Whatever happens, I’ll be watching come December.

The Dark Knight will pick up the record for fastest movie to reach $200M in domestic receipts, beating the previous record holders by three days.

That’s (at least) 13 box office records for the Batman sequel, including widest release (4,366 theaters), biggest midnight screening gross ($18.4M), biggest opening weekend ($158.4M), biggest July opening ($158.4M), biggest PG-13 rated opening ($158.4M), biggest single day ($67.2M), biggest opening day ($67.2M), biggest Friday ($67.2M), biggest Sunday ($43.6M), biggest four-day gross ($182.9M), biggest five-day gross ($203.7M), fastest to $100M (two days) and fastest to $200M (five days).

The Monday ($24.5M) and Tuesday ($20.8) grosses are also notable, though technically not record breaking. Transformers holds the Tuesday record with $27.8M, which was its opening day.  The Dark Knight is No. 2, ahead of Pirates 2 by $5M.  As for Monday, The Dark Knight has the fourth highest of all-time. But it’s behind films like Spider-Man 2, whose Monday fell on a vacation day for most people (July 5), and two other films with Memorial Day Mondays.  Not bad for a release with no national holidays to boost its box office. 

Now, The Dark Knight will officially crush Pirates 2’s single week record of $196M on Thursday.  After that’s it has its sights on Shrek 2’s biggest second weekend record, which currently stands at $72.4M.  The Dark Knight can drop about 54 percent weekend-to-weekend and still beat Shrek 2’s record.  If The Dark Knight holds pace with other popular $400M grossers, a drop of anything more than 50 percent will be surprising.  It’s repeat business should keep the change coming in.  

A Fandango poll has a whopping 64 percent of ticket buyers saying they’ll see The Dark Knight a second time, Nikke Finke reports. I doubt the poll was scientific, but it certainly goes to show that The Dark Knight is bigger than the seasoned pundits expected. Imagine what happens to that $158 million opening weekend when you start to add on the repeats along with first timers.

I’ve already seen the movie twice and can’t wait to see it again.  With all the other available media and the short window between theatrical release and DVD date (I imagine The Dark Knight will be under many a Christmas tree), it takes quite a film to get audiences to give up another two and a half hours of their lives.

Yes, The Dark Knight is that good.  

Today at work, I actually felt bad for the coworkers who didn’t see the movie.  People had to talk about it. (Though I tend to get people to talk at length about film.) Most people who didn’t see the movie, didn’t want to hear a thing. But don’t worry, no matter what people are saying, it can’t come close to the experience of watching Heath Ledger play the Joker in The Dark Knight. I still feel this one. It is in me. Even though my review was lukewarm compared to most, Ledger is perfect.

The Dark Knight (2008)–***

Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker is both The Dark Knight’s blessing and curse. Ledger’s tour-de-force performance as the sociopathic clown takes Batman cinema into uncharted territory, but the cult leader like spell he casts over the audience has a devastating effect. We don’t really want the other characters in the film to keep up with him. And no other actor could do it if they tried.

The Joker is the bringer of chaos. With no back story or profit-producing schemes, he is only there to turn everything in Gotham upside down and inside out. He robs mob banks to prove he’s crazy enough to do it and to take away the one silly thing—cash—that the petty crime families are after. With a vigilante in a bat suit taking down the ordinary criminals, it’s the Joker’s role to act as the counterweight.

But Gotham has a new hero in waiting, a white knight. The tough, fearless district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is prepared to take on those simple-minded mob bosses, with Batman (Christian Bale) playing no small part in the Gotham citizens’ belief that the streets will be clean someday. The crowd is quick to turn on Batman when the Joker starts a killing spree the likes of which Gotham has never seen. Every day that Batman doesn’t turn himself in, “people will die”, the Joker tells them. Judges, police officers, mayors, ordinary citizens. No one is safe from the Joker’s madness.

Of course, the Joker doesn’t want Batman to be unmasked. The Joker revels in being the yin to Batman’s yang. It’s the essence of his character. Every action this agent of chaos performs, his sincere commitment to unimaginable devastation, is so beyond the pale, we as an audience can’t help but develop a sort of Stockholm syndrome. We don’t necessarily want the destruction, but we begin to care about the villain much more than we do any of the heroes.

The Dark Knight could have been completely forgettable, or at least consumable, with a lesser Joker. We would then have been more inclined to appreciate the Bale Batman’s existential crisis and Dent’s psychological transformation into the supervillain Two-Face. If The Dark Knight has a flaw, it is this: the Joker is no counterweight. He’s a sandbag falling from a theater’s rafters, while the other characters are stage hands whose palms are burned as they try to grasp the rope.

I don’t recall a film with a single performance the stature of Ledger’s that didn’t have someone else to carry the film. Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates had Janet Lee and Vera Miles as the Crane sisters. Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter had Jodie Foster’s Clarice. There’s no one in The Dark Knight up to the challenge, maybe because so many of the characters still only connect as lighter comic book transplants.

The cinema of the 1970s offers the easiest comparisons to someone like the Joker with its Popeye Doyles and Travis Bickles. The films with these characters, however, have no intention of offering up any sort of hope with less reckless counterparts. They unsettle you intentionally and don’t allow you to feel anything else. When Gene Siskel said of The French Connection that he left the theater “looking for someone to throw up against the wall,” I knew the film made him mean it. The Dark Knight doesn’t ever reach that level.

It may not seem fair to compare The Dark Knight to some of the great films above. But unlike Batman Begins or Iron Man, The Dark Knight strives for cinematic greatness. Christopher Nolan’s inspired direction, the character-driven film music from Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, and of course, Ledger’s Joker all require that The Dark Knight be respected and appreciated for its movie-making, flaws and all, and not as just another comic book blockbuster. We’ll probably never encounter another superhero film like it. That more than anything else makes The Dark Knight worth seeing again and again.

The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Heath Ledger, directed by Christopher Nolan, is in theaters now.