Good call, Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan is a very talented director. His short resume includes three movies I love: Batman Begins, Memento, and The Prestige. He'll also be directing The Dark Knight, sequel to Batman Begins that comes out this summer.

I was flipping channels tonight and came across Batman, which is probably the first of the modern-day comic book superhero movies. It struck me how silly Batman can be. At his most basic level, the character is a guy in a cape who knows all sorts of fighting moves and drives a weird-looking car.

It was a genius decision by Nolan to focus on the "why"'s of the hero. Batman in Batman Begins is far more understandable and less mockable than he is in Batman because you know where he's coming from and what his motivations are.

The main villain in The Dark Knight is the Joker, same as in Batman. It will be interesting to compare Nicholson's interpretation of the bad guy with Heath Ledger's. The Joker is scary because he's almost entirely irrational. He's all about violence and mayhem, but there's no goal in any of it, so it's impossible to bargain with him, and it's almost impossible to understand him.

He's a good foil to Batman, who is all about rational thinking and action. He tries to outsmart his opponents as well as be able to outmuscle them when he needs to.

Needless to say, I'm excited for Dark Knight. They got rid of the lightweight of Batman Begins, Katie Holmes and replaced her with a more solid actress in Maggie Gyllenhaall. Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman are all back, so it will be difficult for this movie to be too bad.