Last night was the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, usually seen as a very good indication of who the Oscar winners shall be. Heath Ledger’s The Joker pulled through fending off competition from the likes of Downey Jr. and Josh Brolin:

Outstanding Actor In A Supporting Role

Heath Ledger — The Dark Knight
Phillip Seymour Hoffman — Doubt
Dev Patel — Slumdog Millionaire
Robert Downey Jr. — Tropic Thunder
Josh Brolin — Milk
WINNER: Heath Ledger — The Dark Knight

The signs are looking good, and given TDK’s Best Picture and Best Director snubs, all our chips and Heath Ledger’s are in on this one.

TDK also brought home a second award from the SAGs for “Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture”.

Chris has pointed out that this was not in the movie — maybe there are some more Joker scenes waiting for us on the DVD release, or a director’s cut? We can only hope. Where do you thing this would have fit into the movie?

My prediction is prior to the Harvey Dent fundraiser at the Penthouse scene.

I have listened to your warning and want to see this anyway

EDIT: Image removed — looks like WB are doing the rounds and taking down the images as and when they find them — must be legitimate then!

You can still find it here: AICN | The Blemish | Amber Street | Kensington Victoria

Analysis: The detail on this is astounding — enough to suggest that it is not a fake. It also looks like some sort of noise photoshop filter has been applied over the top — much like the leaked joker pictures we saw last month.

The picture originated from Comic Book Resource.

In other news, the Dark Knight’s first review has surfaced online, chock filled with spoilers and all in Portugese, which was found online. Batman On Film have posted a very loose translation of this — do not read it if you want to enjoy the movie to its fullest. They claim elements match information that is currently held secret, they are giving it their backing and believe it to be genuine, I shall remain sceptical however.

Thanks Keith for both stories!

The Joker scene in question:

The scene involves Ledger’s Joker character pretending to be dead and being pictured in a body bag. Apparently the aftershock of Ledger’s unfortunate death are such that many in the screening reacted rather badly to this moment and now execs are considering excising the scene altogether.

As these were leaked we shall not be posting them here. Certain sites do still have them though. However I recommend staying away from these, if you can — these are things you’d want to see in the movie and not beforehand.

Thanks Keith.

Continue reading to find out the spoiler

This next bit is the part where you may want to look away. As a little disclaimer beforehand, this appeared in the same news article as the costumes, and came from the HCP show. When asking about Two-Face at this show, he got the response:

They said he’s only in the movie for a couple minutes so no Two-Face. It seems like Two-Face will only be in the movie towards the end only to set up part 3.

Note the part “They said”. I personally have little faith in the accuracy of this spoiler — I don’t feel I can trust a representative at a costume show reiterating some hearsay. That and I think I would prefer to believe otherwise. I’ve posted it here because it’s circulating the net like wildfire claiming to be true. We’ll have to wait and see.

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.