Marc Bessant

Last night i finally got round to seeing ‘The Dark Knight’. 

I had avoided reviews on TV, write-ups in magazines and articles on the web – i wanted to watch it ‘clean’. I had my apprehensions tho, after being so impressed by ‘Batman Begins’ surely they couldn’t do as fine a job again or, dare i say it, go one better? so, on this dark,wet english summer evening i met with my brother and we strolled over to the local cinema, i’d heard the shows were selling out so we went early to get good seats. unashamedly geeky we went into the theatre as the credits were rolling from the previous showing and faced the ‘tuts’ from the people coming down the stairs as we battled our way up, hellbent on capturing the chair of optimum viewing, which after a quick row x seat count i found, and so with one hour to go and less-than-fragrant cinema staff sweeping up discarded (or preferably fallen from awestruck open mouths) popcorn from around our feet we waited…

first, some history, i have been a reader of Detective/Batman comics since i was old enough to read and before that i was happy to just look at the pictures, i had stayed true despite mother natures attempts to outgrow ‘him’ and  Hollywoods best efforts to lampoon ‘him’ and, when Christopher Nolan stepped in and assembled the best of our collective imaginations, i like many others had been rewarded. Please Mr Nolan, don’t mess this up…

How dare i even think he could.

The opening credits rolled, the first rumbles of Hans Zimmer’s fantastic score sent a tremor from rows A to Z then back again, the hairs on my neck stood to attention and we were off, i had promised myself i wouldn’t cry at this one, i have this tendency to just start crying when faced with wonderful things, i had lasted about 20 minutes on ‘Batman  Begins’ before the first blub surfaced and i was determined to hold it together this time round. 

7 minutes later i broke.

To be honest i was thankful for the extra liquid around the eyes because for the next 2 hours or so i dare not blink. I was gripped by my tear drenched collars, lifted from my seat, slapped by every member of crew and cast and left exhausted and totally exhilarated by this film.

Absolutely brilliant. Go see it. Take a friend then go again. 

we will, in our droves next year if the trailers anything to go by!

With a hefty nod to Dave McKean’s ‘Arkham Asylum’ comes this new poster from BLT for ‘The Dark Knight’, reallly nice i think altho i wish they’d just ask Dave to do it as the marks he makes seem less deliberate than some here but then thats me just being picky..

Friday saw the the arrival of a joint exhibition of Rock Poster art from San Francisco based Firehouse and the locally brewed Jacknife to The Croft on Gloucester Road, Brizzle – i went down with a couple of pals and suffice to say the work on show was excellent and there was plenty of it too. i had a good chat with Ron Donovan and Chuck Sperry from Firehouse which was great, altho i’m concerned i might have bored them to death talking about how english rock posters could be more recognisably english than the current faux-american stuff currently hogging the gallery walls, not sure meself what i mean by that but i’m sure we must have a style of our own right? anyways they were top geezers, i only wish i could have talked further to the Jacknife lot, what with them being local and all it might be nice to collaborate sometime in the future. watch this space…

Last week I was fortunate enough to have lunch and chew the cud with Stefan Sagmeister, who dropped by the studio en route to a lecture he was giving in Cardiff that evening. I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time so i was a little worried at first, there’s always this thing with some designers, they’re just too up themselves for there own good, fortunately Stefan is not like that at all and it was a real pleasure talking to him about cheap cigars, well-worn chairs, ice cream, oh and a little bit about drawing and colouring-in too!

if you’re not familiar with his work, its well worth investigating, great stuff. 

Mark Brabant over at Hovering Object continues to come up with great prints that i can’t help but purchase and this latest effort (above) is no exception, go take a look, always strong colour on good stock, dark humoured yet oddly romantic – or perhaps i’m just too much of a crayon-boy- geek with a UFO fixation?

heres a lovely two-colour print i just bought from Miss Amy Jo for my little girls room - go take a look at her website as there is some wonderful work there and very reasonably priced to boot!

Darren Firth of Wear It With Pride devised a little experiment to see how todays designers would visualise posters for cult movies and the results are well worth a look at here. They’re all hung on freshly painted walls for your viewing pleasure over at the Cosh Gallery, – but be warned they aint cheap, it is the Economic Republic of London after all….