More viral marketing for The Dark Knight has been found at Clowntravelagency.com to further elevate your anticipation. Having entered the site, you’re just a few clicks away from filling out your name and phone number. Once you submit this information, be on guard for a phone call. If you dare answer it, say the given password “needle”.

On the other end, you will hear Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon interrogate you as a found member of the Joker’s gang.

“Let’s get a smile on that face!”

The Dark Knight comes to theatres July 18th.

Yesterday, Ratatouille (2007) composer Michael Giacchino’s Roar, an eight-minute musical ode to 50s era Godzilla movies, has been made available on iTunes (only the US version). I couldn’t be happier. This was the only piece of an instrumental music to play over the entirity of J.J. Abrams’ produced Cloverfield, which was reserved for the end credits sequence.

There were only two elements of Cloverfield I enjoyed, in spite of how the filmmakers used their “hand held” camera like they were shaking a martini for 75 minutes. This brings new meaning to enjoying the end credits more than what preceded it. The music was like an award for enduring this tarnished hyped-up spectacle.

What I also enjoyed was really a who, Lizzy Caplan as Marlena. She was the only compelling character who had enough snark to go around the crowd of young, irritating drips surrounding her. To add insult to bug infection, she exited far too soon. With over a half-an-hour left, I was stuck the other survivors, too bored to cheer their deaths. At least, Marlena’s was kinda cool.

Followed by a strong cult following, the demand was as strong as the wait. Negotiations between iTunes over the release the Giacchino’s original cut of the score, which has been extended by five minutes, were met. Giacchino has said, “…there (were) a bunch of legal knots that need(ed) to be tied.”

Listening to the score again, I was reminded of Danny Elfman’s turbulently operatic score for Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks (1996). This main title sequence is so good that I could watch it forty-two times in the amount of time it would take to watch the actual movie.

The 2:06 mark is a killer.

There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Zodiac (dir. David Fincher)
Once (dir. John Carney)
Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (dir. Tim Burton)
Ratatouille (dir. Brad Bird)
Brand Upon the Brain! (dir. Guy Maddin)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
Black Book (dir. Paul Verhoeven)
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (dir. Sidney Lumet)
Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy)
Zoo (dir. Robinson Devor)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (dir. Julian Schnabel)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik)
Eastern Promises (dir. David Cronenberg)
Grindhouse (dir. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino)
with a nod to Thanksgiving (dir. Eli Roth)
Starting Out in the Evening (dir. Andrew Wagner)
No Country for Old Men (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Lookout (dir. Scott Frank)
Away from Her (dir. Sarah Polley)
Sicko (dir. Michael Moore)
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (dir. Scott Hicks)
Persepolis (dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud)
Lake of Fire (dir. Tony Kaye)
You, The Living (dir. Roy Andersson)
Waitress (dir. Adrienne Shelly)
The Savages (dir. Tamara Jenkins)
Charlie Wilson’s War (dir. Mike Nichols)
Paris, Je T’aime (dir. 22 Filmmakers)
Snow Angels (dir. David Gordon Green)
Frownland (dir. Ronald Bronstein)
The Mist (dir Frank Darabont)
In the Valley of Elah (dir. Paul Haggis)
Margo at the Wedding (dir. Noah Baumbach)
Juno (dir. Jason Reitman)
Bridges to Terabithia (dir. Gabor Csupo)
Gone Baby Gone (dir. Ben Affleck)
La Vie en Rose (dir. Olivier Dahan)
No End in Sight (dir. Charles Ferguson)
Terror’s Advocate (dir. Barbet Schroeder)
Into the Wild (dir. Sean Penn)
Hairspray (dir. Adam Shankman)
Romance & Cigarettes (dir. John Turturro)
Atonement (dir. Joe Wright)
The Darjeeling Limited (dir. Wes Anderson)
The Great Debaters (dir. Denzel Washington)
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (dir. Seth Gordon)
Year of the Dog (dir. Mike White)
The Brave One (dir. Neil Jordon)

Little Children (dir. Todd Field)
Pan’s Labyrinth (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuarón)
United 93 (dir. Paul Greengrass)
Paprika (dir. Satoshi Kon)
Tristram Shanty: A Cock and Bull Story (dir. Michael Winterbottom)
Man Push Cart (dir. Ramin Bahrani)
The King (dir. James Marsh)
The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall)
The Proposition (dir. John Hillcoat)
The Illusionist (dir. Neil Burger)
The Lives of Others (dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
Babel (dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)
The Departed (dir. Martin Scorsese)
The Queen (dir. Stephen Frears)
Stranger Than Fiction (dir. Marc Forster)
Little Miss Sunshine (dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
(dir. Larry Charles)
Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch)
Flags of Our Fathers | Letters from Iwo Jima (dir. Clint Eastwood)
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (dir. Cristi Puiu)
Notes on a Scandal (dir. Richard Eyre)
Joshua (dir. George Ratliff)
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (dir. Adam McKay)
Red Road (dir. Andrea Arnold)
Bubble (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
The Last King of Scotland (dir. Kevin Macdonald)
The Notorious Bettie Page (dir. Mary Harron)
Deliver Us from Evil (dir. Amy Berg)
Bug (dir. William Friedkin)
The Bridge (dir. Eric Steel)
Slither (dir. James Gunn)
Joyeux Noel (dir. Christian Carion)
Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell)
Blood Diamond (dir. Edward Zwick)
Edmond (dir. Stuart Gordon)
Marie Antoinette (dir. Sofia Coppola)
A Prairie Home Companion (dir. Robert Altman)
Half Nelson (dir. Ryan Fleck)
This Is England (dir. Shane Meadows)
Lassie (dir. Charles Sturridge)
Come Early Morning (dir. Joey Lauren Adams)
Old Joy (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
12 and Holding (dir. Michael Cuesta)
Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan)
The Namesake (dir. Mira Nair)
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (dir. Ken Loach)
A Scanner Darkly (dir. Richard Linklater)
Brick (dir. Rian Johnson)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (dir. Tom Tykwer)
Hollywoodland (dir. Allen Coulter)
Sherrybaby (dir. Laurie Collyer)
Strangers with Candy (dir. Paul Dinello)
Idiocracy (dir. Mike Judge)
Manderlay (dir. Lars von Trier)
Water (dir. Deepa Mehta)
This Film Is Not Yet Rated (dir. Kirby Dick)

Capote (dir. Bennett Miller)
A History of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg)
The Best of Youth (dir. Marco Tullio Giordana)
Schultze Gets The Blues (dir. Michael Schorr)
Sin City (dir. Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (dir. Miranda July)
Duane Hopwood (dir. Matt Mulhern)
Mysterious Skin (dir. Gregg Araki)
Nine Lives (dir. Rodrigo Garcí­a)
Junebug (dir. Phil Morrison)
The Squid and the Whale (dir. Noah Baumbach)
Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee)
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (dir. Tommy Lee Jones)
Oldboy (dir. Chan-wook Park)
Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg)
Firecracker (dir. Steve Balderson)
Match Point (dir. Woody Allen)
Tokyo Godfathers (dir. Satoshi Kon)
Batman Begins (dir. Christopher Nolan)
The Weather Man (dir. Gore Verbinski)
Downfall (dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel)
Millions (dir. Danny Boyle)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (dir. Judd Apatow)
Volver (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (dir. Alex Gibney)
Crash (dir. Paul Haggis)
Eve and the Fire Horse (dir. Julia Kwan)
Yes (dir. Sally Potter)
The New World (dir. Terrance Malick)
Good Night, and Good Luck (dir. George Clooney)
Cache (dir. Michael Haneke)
Lord of War (dir. Andrew Niccol)
Thumbsucker (dir. Mike Mills)
Saraband (dir. Ingmar Bergman)
Syriana (dir. Stephen Gaghan)
Three… Extremes (dir. Fruit Chan “Dumplings”, Chan-wook Park “Cut”, Takashi Miike “Box”)
Hard Candy (dir. David Slade)
L’enfant (dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (dir. Nick Park)
The Matador (dir. Richard Shepard)
Grizzly Man (dir. Werner Herzog)
North Country (dr. Niki Caro)
The Upside of Anger (dir. Mike Binder)
Hustle & Flow (dir. Craig Brewer)
King Kong (dir. Peter Jackson)
Three Times (dir. Hsiao-hsien Hou)
Lassie (dir. Charles Sturridge)
Thieves of Innocence (dir. Paul Arcand)
Murderball (dir. Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro)
Walk the Line (dir. James Mangold)
Pride & Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright)
Jarhead (dir. Sam Mendes)
Prime (dir. Ben Younger)
Where the Truth Lies (dir. Atom Egoyan)
March of the Penguins (dir. Luc Jacquet)
In Her Shoes (dir. Curtis Hanson)

Honourable Selection: The “Up” Documentaries

49 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 2005)
42 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 1998)
35 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 1991)
28 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 1984)
21 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 1977)
7 Plus Seven (dir. Michael Apted, 1970)
Seven Up! (dir. Paul Almond, 1964)