The NYTimes have posted a very inter­est­ing Dark Knight report which closely fol­lows Chris Nolan’s work as direc­tor. It is a must read, even if the minor plot spoil­ers in the first para­graph would put you off. I’ve included some choice excerpts for you below, along with the new images that fea­ture in the article.

In so many ways this isn’t what you’d expect of a $180 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood comic-book movie sequel with a zil­lion mov­ing parts, a cast of thou­sands and sets from here to Hong Kong. Any­one else would shoot indoors, use dig­i­tal effects or wait for clear skies; Mr. Nolan rolls with the weather’s punches, believ­ing that the messi­ness of real­ity can’t be faked. Another film­maker would leave a shot like this in the hands of a second-unit direc­tor, but Mr. Nolan doesn’t use one; if it’s on the screen, he directed it, and his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­pher, Wally Pfis­ter, worked the cam­era. Stars on any other movie would have fled to their trail­ers to wait in com­fort until needed again. Here, Gary Old­man is watch­ing and shiv­er­ing along with every­body else, crack­ing jokes to keep warm.

[…]

Now the ques­tion is whether Mr. Nolan’s vision of Bat­man can not only main­tain its hold on the imag­i­na­tions of comic fans and crit­ics, but expand its reach to a wider sum­mer moviego­ing audi­ence, even as the death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” has added unan­tic­i­pated mor­bid­ity to the film’s delib­er­ate darkness.

[…]

“As we looked through the comics, there was this fas­ci­nat­ing idea that Batman’s pres­ence in Gotham actu­ally attracts crim­i­nals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re deal­ing with ques­tion­able notions like peo­ple tak­ing the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the char­ac­ter so dark, because he expresses a venge­ful desire.”

[…]

Will Mr. Ledger’s death cast a pall over “The Dark Knight,” whose tragic plot turns already make it much darker than “Bat­man Begins”? “We’ll see,” said Mr. Robi­nov, of Warner Broth­ers. Mr. Nolan, for his part, said he felt a “mas­sive sense of respon­si­bil­ity” to do right by Mr. Ledger’s “ter­ri­fy­ing, amaz­ing” performance.

… and there is no bet­ter way to mark it than with a dented, busted up Lam­borgh­ini. A Mur­cielago (which trans­lates to Bat) to be precise.

Pic­tures thanks to rory_bat; he is now head­ing back to the East Coast, whilst Batman’s film­ing sched­ule takes them to Eng­land. Film­ing is set to con­tinue until November.

Want to know how that car ended up in the mess it did? Read the rest of this entry »

After the big explo­sion, lit­tle else can impress us now, how­ever film­ing con­tin­ued for at least one more day in Chicago, with Bruce Wayne’s Lam­borgh­ini being spot­ted kit­ted up and dri­ving around. Two sets of pic­tures are out there, the first comes via draperyfalls,

Sec­ondly, chgo­jobs had this pull right out in front of him:

He car­ried on to fol­low the action and cap­tured this video:

Also, CNN have a new explo­sive video.

We’ve recently been drawn to this impres­sive post at the Super­Hero­Hype forums by ChicageauxTiger:

This was the gen­eral scene of the shoot:

Con­tinue read­ing for the spoil­ers. Read the rest of this entry »

First up, Lon­nie set in this nice lit­tle spoiler-filled report from August 25th:

Patti later wrote to con­firm this and give a few more inter­est­ing details:

As per usual, run the mouse over the area above to view the spoilers.

Rory_bat, from the Super­Hero­Hype forums has been on loca­tion recently for the lat­est TDK shoot,

He had this to say:

Alright, I am sure you guys already know where they were shoot­ing today: Berghoff’s (I think I spelled that right), some kind of old and classy restaurant/bar type. The crew had vehi­cles all on Adams and the adjoin­ing streets. The first time I walked by early on in the day they were shoot­ing inside. They had some screens up over the exte­rior and I could hear them yell “rolling”. I didn’t know who was inside at this point. Out­side there was a large bus that had “Cor­erc­tions” writ­ten on the side of it. It was a GPD bus, pre­sum­ably for haul­ing off pris­on­ers of a sort. There were also a few GPD extras milling around. I walked fur­ther down toward State St. and saw all kinds of GPD and Gotham cars wait­ing to be used. I fig­ured some exte­rior stuff would be hap­pen­ing later. I wasn’t wrong.

Around 2:30 or 3:00 I made my way back and sure enough, there was quite a bit of action. There was a whole crowd of extras dressed in suits, they seemed to be reporters or maybe just onlook­ers. In front of this crowd was a GPD offi­cer holdig a shot­gun (very cool). Some of the extras were pre­tend­ing to shiver..don’t for­gett the fall set­ting. It was amus­ing to watch. A bit fur­ther down in front of Berghoff’s was were the good stuff was hap­pen­ing. Nolan and co. were shoot­ing a scene where GPD and Lt. Gor­don escort Maroni and his goons into the cor­rec­tions bus, bust­ing them. I stood across the street and watched (tak­ing pics and got video of one whole take). Eric Roberts looked great as Maroni, cuffed and all. After each take they would wipe the sweat off of Old­man, Roberts and the extras, attempt­ing to keep the atmos­phere of Fall in place (cer­tainly tough with today’s weather).

Shots from the film­ing:

This has just come in from Brett,

It was around 8:50 am Sun­day 8/19 on the cor­ner of west Mon­roe street and south Canal street. Block away from Union Sta­tion. Looked to be round 30 extras. Never did see any lead char­ac­ters. The secu­rity exclaimed “pic­tures up,” and the extras began to walk around as ran­dom peo­ple on the street. I think they were film­ing inside the build­ing or just on the cor­ner. Not sure what build­ing it is. Any­way, the peo­ple were just walk­ing around then I heard two gun­shots and extras began to run every­where. What’s more is I did hear a loud sin­is­ter laugh, which was with­out a doubt in my mind, the Joker ala Heath Ledger.

And these are the pic­tures:

Rory was also on the scene to cap­ture some GCN images in the pour­ing rain.

Alright, so I went back down to the set in the pour­ing rain and got some pics. Due to the rain they stopped shoot­ing so all of the extras were sit­ting around the lobby of the build­ing… which is now the GCN, which I am guess­ing is “Gotham City News” or “Gotham Cable News” (though I favor the first). I was able to walk right up the build­ing and started tak­ing pho­tos. There were a lot of PA’s and Extras around but they didn’t seem to mind me too much. I got some courage and walked right into the lobby. Inside it was dressed as a TV sta­tion with GCN and tv screens all over the place. I didn’t stay too long and didn’t snap any pics for fear of being caught. It was cool to see though. Also saw the offi­cial set pho­tog­ra­pher who looked a bit bummed…maybe because of the pic leak.

It seems like Nolan and his team have been at it once again in down town Chicago, although this time with a notable addi­tion — Chris­t­ian Bale has at long last been spot­ted on set. These pic­tures and set reports are all from the August 12th shoot. To out­line the events we have, via X-realms, El Eshoo’s report — to start with:

I had a chance to watch/gawk at some film­ing of Bat­man (Sun­day, Aug 12th) at the 330 North Wabash Build­ing. They had sev­eral dif­fer­ent vehi­cles out there (Gotham Police Dept, Gotham News Vans, Mil­i­tary vehi­cles, Bomb Squad truck, etc.) which was cool to see. But I’d say the best of all: I was lucky enough to be 10 feet from Christo­pher Nolan, Aaron Eck­hart and Mr. Bruce Wayne him­self … Chris­t­ian Bale! They were film­ing some “Press Con­fer­ence” stuff in the lobby of 330 ear­lier in the day, broke for lunch around 1:00-ish and then filmed some more “Press Con­fer­ence” stuff.

Then they brought in some Army-type guys along with cam­ou­flaged Hum­mers and Trucks with machine-gunners to shoot some Heli­copter fly-bys. They closed down a SHITLOAD of areas for this (police stop­ping traf­fic from Michi­gan Ave to LaSalle), not allow­ing any­one in the area (no foot traf­fic aloud dur­ing fly-bys down Chicago River towards lake) and were even heav­ier on the NO PICTURES crap. The chop­pers came pretty low as they passed over the court­yard out­side of 330 North Wabash where mil­i­tary and Gotham press peo­ple were all around. Cam­eras on the ground were film­ing the fly-bys.

Mr. Eshoo was able to take a fair few pic­tures in his time amongst Rory’s First Kiss:

For more of these shots check out the X-realms report. Next up, Sterno74 man­aged to cap­ture a fan­tas­tic high res­o­lu­tion shot of the fake National Guard fly overs, click the image for large or check out his flickr pro­file.

Mean­while rolandin has got some very nice high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of the sta­tion­ary Bat­pod. Or some more heli­copters via gtrietsc’s flickr gallery.

And last, but cer­tainly not least, a fel­low by the name of Spanish39 was on loca­tion to snatch a few more images, this time of the infa­mous Chris­t­ian Bale as Bruce Wayne — here he is with Christo­pher Nolan: