Best film, best book, best theatre experience…

I don’t know about you but I struggle to have a best anything.  It’s not like desert island disks where participants are expected to choose a favourite for all eternity – imagined not real.  I like the fact that I can always find a new film etc that I really enjoy and don’t feel the need to rank them in any way.  I guess that might change in the future. I imagine it’s partly explained by the fact that I often see things after they’ve been around for a while.  I can never be bothered to do the latest thing just because it is the latest thing although occasionally it is fun to know what all the hype is about.

Live shows are different because you hesitate and they’re gone.  I remember missing the all-male swan lake to be confronted by review after review proclaiming its excellence.  Not a good one to miss.  Then again there was a lot of media attention around God of Carnage and I was disappointed by it – more slapstick than expected.  However Prince, Madonna and Kanye all lived up to their hype – brilliant!

In keeping with being just behind the curve I went to see The Dark Knight last night.  I thought it did very well to create Gotham city – not a very nice place.  But what was more interesting for me was to see how the characters responded to their environment, their experiences and the expectations of others. The story is at once complex and simple.  Human greed for power or money or status are all present.  An upstanding citizen behaves like a criminal and criminals demonstrate decency.   I’d love to see the script as there were lost of interesting psuedo philosophical lines in it.  It seems we can all justify anything we choose to do – good or bad.  In the film there was talk of the Gotham getting the hero it deserves (in Batman). [ I recently went to a discussion entitled ‘we get the press we deserve’ – for another time.] As his flaws become apparent he is no longer considered a hero but a guardian angel (?).  There is also an interesting aside between Batman and the joker when the joker deduces that they need and thrive off each other. Hmm. How does that speak to us and what heroes do we deserve in our world now?  Let me know what you think of any aspect of this and tell me about your favourites…