Last night was the end of the CFB count­down, as two live video feeds were posted to the Cit­i­zens for Bat­man web­site and crowds gath­ered at the two loca­tions in New York and Chicago. Fans that turned up for the event received Gotham Times news­pa­pers and a col­lec­tion of CFB good­ies, includ­ing T-shirts.

Par­tic­i­pants were given Domino’s pizza boxes that con­tained code words and clues to a locked box in a secret loca­tion. At this box more clues were uncov­ered, lead­ing to a 2-way radio, with which direc­tions were given to a spe­cific spot for the per­fect view of The Dark Knight bat sig­nal, pro­jected onto the Wool­worth build­ing and Sears tower.

NYC:

Chicago:

/Film have also posted their report, relay­ing some off the bad feel­ings and hin­drances that sur­rounded the poorly exe­cuted Chicago event.

The Bat­man Begins lim­ited edi­tion DVD set has been mak­ing its way to the first pur­chasers, and with it comes some more viral mar­ket­ing clues for us to drool over.

On the small USB don­gle that comes with the gift set, which con­tains a num­ber of pro­duc­tion images, etc, there is a plaque pay­ing ref­er­ence to the Gotham His­toric Trust. There is also a pay­ing in slip for the Gotham National Bank with user­name and pass­word scrib­bled on.

Gotham National Bank

# User­name: gnb3792
# Pass­word: 99g28ct75k

Head­ing to the GNB admin page, www​.gotham​na​tion​al​bank​.com/​A​d​min, as of July 8th, there is a web­mail login box.

Gotham His­toric Trust

Call­ing the num­ber, 1866 241 1150 as listed on the plaque returns the auto­mated message:

Thank you for call­ing the Gotham His­toric Trust. Nobody can answer your call right now, but you are wel­come to visit our web­site at www gothamhis­toric­trust dot com where you can find our cur­rent hours of oper­a­tion, infor­ma­tion and online exhibits of Gotham City in days gone by. Thank you for calling.

An update to the Gotham National Bank also men­tions the trust:

Gotham National Bank down­town is proud to be on the Gotham reg­is­ter of His­toric Build­ings. The main branch of Gotham National Bank was orig­i­nally the old 1st Gotham Bank. In 1934, it was sold when the bank closed. The build­ing passed through many hands in the inter­ven­ing years and was vacant when it was pur­chased by Gotham National Bank. After sev­eral years of restora­tion under the over­sight of the Gotham His­toric Trust, the bank was restored and proudly re-opened its doors at 9:00 am on March 7, 1985.

This leads us to www​.gothamhis​toric​trust​.com

Thanks Pierre!

The praise just keeps rain­ing down on our lat­est Gotham adven­ture, here are some cred­i­ble sources to add weight to the plethora of Dark Knight accla­ma­tions that keep rolling in. Mr Nolan may be onto some­thing here, don’t you think?

Justin Chang, of Vari­ety, has posted his review of The Dark Knight movie,

“An ambi­tious, full-bodied crime epic of grat­i­fy­ing scope and moral com­plex­ity, this is seri­ously brainy pop enter­tain­ment that sat­is­fies every expec­ta­tion raised by its hit pre­de­ces­sor and then some .… Using five strongly devel­oped char­ac­ters to anchor a drama with life-or-death impli­ca­tions for the entire metrop­o­lis, the Nolans have taken Bob Kane’s comic­book tem­plate and crafted an anguished, elo­quent med­i­ta­tion on ideas of jus­tice and power, cor­rup­tion and anar­chy, and, of course, the need for heroes like Bat­man — a ques­tion never in doubt for the viewer, but one posed rather often by the cit­i­zens of Gotham.”

Kirk Hon­ey­cutt of Hol­ly­wood Reporter also has is say, once again the review just oozes praise, now with com­par­isons to Scorsese:

“The Dark Knight” is pure adren­a­line. Return­ing direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan, hav­ing dis­pensed with his intro­spec­tive, moody ori­gin story, now puts the Caped Cru­sader through a decathlon of explo­sions, vehi­cle flips, hand-to-hand com­bat, midair res­cues and pulse-pounding suspense.

Nolan is one of our smarter direc­tors. He builds movies around ideas and char­ac­ters, and “Dark Knight” is no excep­tion. The ideas here are not new to the movie world of cops and crim­i­nal, but in the con­text of a comic book movie, they ring out with star­tling clar­ity. In other words, you expect moral­is­tic under­pin­nings in a Mar­tin Scors­ese movie; in a Bat­man movie, they hit home with renewed vigor.

Rope of Sil­i­con Review:

Heath Ledger presents him­self as The Joker in a role that defines a career. It is unimag­in­able it would come to the point that a film based on a comic book char­ac­ter could actu­ally have such an impact on one per­son. On a gen­er­a­tion. Ledger’s decent into what is, and has become, The Joker makes Jack Nicholson’s inter­pre­ta­tion look like noth­ing more than a sim­ple clown. “Wait until they get a load of me,” says Jack… Wait until you get a load of Heath says I.

Mori­arty of AICN:

You’re talk­ing about an $85 mil­lion film for HELLBOY 2, and about $100 mil­lion more than that for THE DARK KNIGHT. These are gigan­tic invest­ments for the releas­ing com­pa­nies, and it would not sur­prise me in the least to see them diluted or dumbed-down. That’s just the nature of this indus­try, and we’ve come to expect it. So when you see films that truly seem to rep­re­sent someone’s per­sonal take on such gigan­tic arche­types, it’s brac­ing. It’s not just enter­tain­ment for a few hours in a the­ater… it’s an affir­ma­tion that there is room for great­ness in this busi­ness, and some­times, it’s allowed to hap­pen, or even encour­aged to flourish.

Not sure where you can catch The Dark Knight on the biggest screens? Do not fret — after the break you can find a com­plete list of all loca­tions show­ing the Bat­man movie in IMAX for­mat in the US and Canada, cour­tesy of Film School Rejects. This is a movie you have to see at the IMAX, do not miss out.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 5th episode of Gotham Tonight has been added to the Gotham Cable Network:

World-famous jour­nal­ist Mike Engel goes to the heart of Har­vey Dent’s case against mob king­pin Sal Maroni — Maroni him­self. The noto­ri­ous fig­ure, now stand­ing trial in a Gotham court­room, faces tough ques­tions on alle­ga­tions that he is at the top of an orga­nized crime fam­ily dev­as­tat­ing Gotham City.

Maroni uses his trade­mark charm and good humor to stymie Engel’s ques­tion­ing, but his hon­esty is attacked by GPD Com­mi­sioner Loeb. And Mike Engel quizzes Loeb on the two mob bag­men found dead last week — and the leaked GPD sur­veil­lance tape that recorded the abduction.

At GCN you can also catch the ear­lier four episodes.

I wish I hadn’t seen these. The French site, Lyri​cis​.fr have posted screen caps from The Dark Knight show­ing Two Face and The Joker in scenes that are VERY spoi­lerific. I warn you — look­ing at these images may be too much, they are also very graphic.

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

After com­plet­ing the lat­est Bam­boo­zle puz­zle, the next WSS page was revealed,

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​b​a​m​b​o​o​z​l​e​/​2​l​4​3​k​j​s​a​8​9​2​n​n​2​.​htm

With an Exit sign, we see our way out of The Joker’s cir­cus tent, click­ing the image causes a set of tick­ets to appear, each with a logo and the text “Redeem at exit”. Click­ing the four tick­ets that were returned as prizes to the indi­vid­ual flash games we’ve seen in the last few weeks leads us to the Over­ture, where some dyna­mite awaits us with a timer:

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​v​e​r​t​ure

A new Joker text has spawned the hunt for the next WSS viral web­site, Bruce was sent this ver­sion of the message:

OK clown, I see one last test of skill in your future. Post this where every­one can see it: BABEL

Oth­ers received these words — LAM, BOB, BLAM, ZEAL, BABEL, ZOOM, ME, MAZE, LAB, AMBLE

Which leads us to the “Bam­boo­zle” page: www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​b​a​m​b​o​o​zle

Here we see a for­tune telling machine, (much like that creepy one in the Tom Hanks movie “Big”).

Click­ing each of the but­tons reveals tick­ets with some for­tune and an extra taped on mes­sage from The Joker.

Top left
You will get your heart’s desire. Too bad you’re an addict.
You will come to the atten­tion of peo­ple in high places. Like crazed hill­top snipers.
You will live in inter­est­ing times. Inter­est­ing to his­to­ri­ans. Like the Black Plague.
You will meet some­one tall, dark and hand­some who you will share your life with. They’ll route your bank funds into an untrace­able Car­ribbean account.
You will come into great wealth. After an indus­trial acci­dent. You’ll be blind. Deaf. Com­pletely par­a­lyzed. But rich.
Now would be a good time to leave your job. Twenty years flip­ping burg­ers is long enough.

Bot­tom left

Chil­dren will influ­ence a major deci­sion. Who knows. You might have mar­ried her any­way.
You will have a break­through in your career. Your boss will take credit.
You will have an oppor­tu­nity for a good invest­ment. House of Pies stock is shoot­ing up.
Don’t assume you know what is going on at work. But yes, there are pho­tos. And yes, they will stand up in court.
You will make money, if not for you, then for an orga­ni­za­tion. Like the IRS.
You will unex­pect­edly need help today, and the response of friends will sur­prise you. They’ll take video. Send it to your boss. Your wife. It’ll go viral.

Top right

Money is head­ing your way. But you’re a mov­ing tar­get. Too bad.
Expect a pro­mo­tion. Expect it to be humil­i­at­ing.
You will soon receive a gift If your lawyer calls and says don’t answer the door, there’s a rea­son.
You can expect an inher­i­tance. One of those genetic things that pre­dict a short and mis­er­able life. It will also explain why your ears look like that.
Some­one who cur­rently doubt is telling the truth Say­ing you are the prophet of a new reli­gion won’t help. The voices were wrong. They weren’t free sam­ples.
Beware of false infor­ma­tion regard­ing a loved one. But that thing about the affair? That’s true. Sorry.

Bot­tom right

Beware of unex­pected wind­falls. Veg­ans are espe­cially flat­uent.
A new per­son will enter your life. Your cell­mate. The voices will tell him you’re a demon.
An acquan­taince will approach you with a busi­ness offer. Any­one stu­pid enough to use a fortune-telling machine will think it’s a great offer. You prob­a­bly date a pagan.
A small kind­ness will lead to unex­pected ben­e­fits. After sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars, things will mostly be okay. Just give up and throw out your mat­tress.
Can­cel the trip you planned this week Take the trip-dysentery. Stay home-salmonella. Either way you lose weight.
Your star is climb­ing. You’ll be a celebrity. The Dar­win awards are a kind of fame.

14 of these clues have cutouts:

The name of the for­tune teller is “Epyt­tnelis” which is “Silent­Type” back­wards — the name of a SHH forum mem­ber that com­piled an over­all Gotham City map given the snip­pets seen across the viral sites. Using this map and a co-ordinate sys­tem cor­re­spond­ing to the num­bers in the cor­ners of the tick­ets, the tick­ets cover two squares with the cut outs in each of the 14 giv­ing num­bers of a street. Apply­ing these in the order that the tick­ets can be retrieved we get a sequence of num­bers — hit­ting the but­tons in this order (22 1 5 3 4 17 14) reveals the win­ning ticket and a link to the tent’s exit and onto the Over­ture.

3 = 8G = 22nd
5 = 3P = 1st
9 = 6M = 5th
14 = 3L = 3rd
17 = 2F = 4th
21 = 5H = 17th
23 = 6E = 14th