Auto­mo­bile blog, Motortrend, are report­ing that Gen­eral Motor’s elec­tric pow­ered “Chevy Volt” will be mak­ing an appear­ance in the Trans­form­ers sequel, “Revenge of the Fallen”. What role the vehi­cle shall have in the movie is unknown.

Whilst Trans­form­ers 2 has no offi­cial involve­ment in the San Diego Comic Con this year, the IESB reported that Has­bro, with per­mis­sion from Paramount/Dreamworks, would be show­ing a small snip­pet of the Trans­form­ers sequel. How­ever, since that arti­cle was posted and the slew of inter­net movie sites posted the news about the web, Para­mount has issued a brief state­ment that there will in fact be no Trans­form­ers 2 footage shown at Comic Con.

The mid­night screen­ings of The Dark Knight have proved immea­sur­ably pop­u­lar, sell­ing out in over 100 loca­tions — there is so much demand that more late night, early morn­ing screen­ings have been laid on at 3am and 6am respec­tively — I’d get your IMAX tick­ets quickly.

In other news, 4 tick­ets to the NYC pre­mier of The Dark Knight are on Ebay, going for at least $6100! One day left!

Advance Dark Knight tick­ets | IMAX tick­ets | Sold out tick­ets on Ebay | NYC Pre­mière tickets

Here’s the word from Fan­dango:

With more than a week to go before the highly-anticipated release of “The Dark Knight,” Fan­dango, the nation’s lead­ing movie­goer des­ti­na­tion, reports that many of its pre-opening Thurs­day mid­night shows on July 17 are already sold out in cities across the coun­try, from New York to Boise, Idaho. The­aters con­tinue to add 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. pre-opening show­times to meet the tick­et­ing demand.

“‘The Dark Knight’ may be respon­si­ble for a lot of bleary eyes at work next Fri­day morn­ing,” says Rick But­ler, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer for Fan­dango. “We’re see­ing a record num­ber of late-night show­times sell­ing out in advance, while the­aters are adding new per­for­mances every day.”

More than 1,500 late-night show­times of the movie have been sched­uled for the film’s pre-opening on Thurs­day night (Fri­day morn­ing), July 17–18, at Fan​dango​.com/​T​h​e​D​a​r​k​K​n​i​ght. An online sur­vey of more than 3,000 “The Dark Knight” fans on Fan​dango​.com over the hol­i­day week­end offered the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion on the late-night surge:

* 37% of respon­dents plan to see the film at least once dur­ing one of the late night per­for­mances on Thurs­day night.
* 38% say that they intend to take off a few hours or the entire day from work on Fri­day as a result of see­ing the movie the night before.
* 60% of these movie­go­ers are male.
* 71% are under the age of 35.
* 39% plan to see the film in IMAX®.
* 92% expect that the Acad­emy will rec­og­nize Heath Ledger’s per­for­mance as The Joker with a posthu­mous Oscar® nom­i­na­tion next year.

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.