And Still I Persist

My lastest Baseline column is up, in which I argue that setting up one or more maintenance architects within an enterprise can help reduce maintenance costs while at the same time providing a training path for chief software architects. Let me know what you think.

Sorry things have been a bit quiet here; both Bruce Henderson and I have been on the East Coast at a client site.  ..bruce..

Actually, it’s hard to write much of a review without giving away key plot points, so this first part will be brief (and spoilers listed below).

Truly an outstanding film. Not perfect (see the spoilers section), but every bit as tense, intelligent, and morally complex as the crime dramas that regularly get Oscar nominations. Put another way: if you took Batman out of the film (but left Bruce Wayne), removed the Joker’s makeup, and toned down the injuries to a certain character — it would be considered one of those Oscar-worth crime dramas, “ripped from tomorrow’s headlines”.

Adding to that verisimilitude is that Gotham City for the first time looks just like a normal city. There’s clearly a lot of effects to make it look both bigger than and different from Chicago — but there are none of the gothic city designs that have dominated the previous five Batman films, including Christopher Nolan’s first one, “Batman Begins”.  Ditto for Batman — with Wayne Manor still under reconstruction, there’s no Batcave, just a large, low-ceiling, well-lit expansive workspace buried somewhere in Wayne Enterprises-owned property, while Wayne himself lives in a large, sparse city-center penthouse. If anything, the city and the sets look normal to the point of banality — which serves to intensify the darkness within the people themselves.

That darkness is indeed the theme of this movie, and it’s pretty unrelenting — except for one grace note (or rather two) towards the end. The acting is all solid, with excellent performances by Aaron Eckert (Harvey Dent) and Heath Ledger (the Joker) — and, yes, Ledger’s performance really is Oscar-worthy. (Quick: who so far this year would you rate over him?) The score is likewise outstanding: it doesn’t call attention to itself but it does build the mood of the movie.

Like Harvey Dent’s coin, “The Dark Knight” is the flip side of “Iron Man”. In the few spots where “Iron Man” turns dark, it’s never more than a quip away from lightening up. In the few spots where “The Dark Knight” turns light-hearted, there’s still a weariness in the humor, and it never lasts long.

Highly recommended; spoilers after the jump

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I discovered Wondermark a few months ago, and it’s become one of my favorite strips. The general conceit is that the illustration largely comes from actual Victorian-era artwork (which has the advantage of being in the public domain). Here’s today’s strip, but click on the strip below to go to the original to read the mouse-over text (and to see an unsquashed version):

It’s well worth spending a few hours going through the Wondermark archives, where you’ll find such gems as this one. ..bruce w..

I just had a phone conversation with my son Jon (LCPL Webster, USMC), who is somewhere in Iraq. Frankly, the phone call quality was better than when he used to call me from San Diego on his own cell phone. He’s doing well, though he said that when his cohort landed in Kuwait earlier this month, the temperature was nearly 140 degrees F. He couldn’t talk long and couldn’t tell me much about where he is and what he’s doing — but he’s doing well.  ..bruce..

My latest Baseline column is up, discussing how to make a distributed software development project work.  ..bruce..