“See to it that Senator Leahy’s…comfortable….”

If I’m going to up my web stats, I’m really going to have to develop some stronger, really contrarian, opinions. For example, I actually thought The Dark Knight was pretty terrific, probably one of the two or three best superhero comic book adaptations made yet…though my favorite, and this is as contrarian as I’ll get tonight, is the first and not the second Spiderman movie.

However, let’s face it: superhero flicks are a pretty small genre in terms of numbers and pretty prone to out-and-out turkeys as well, so the competition here is less than fierce. For that reason among many others, I have absolutely no interest in picketing the Academy for failing to nominate The Dark Knight in every category, including a special Oscar just for being so frakking sweet.  I’m a reliably avid viewer of what someone recently called “the gay superbowl” — because there’s obviously nothing wrong with that. I love the Oscars, but that doesn’t mean I take them seriously. I’m not a complete idiot.

Still, by actually liking this latest Batflick quite a bit, at least after one initial viewing, I lose a shot at that little boost of energy in the response enjoyed by such very good guys as FtY blog-friend Keith “311 Comments!” Uhlich and Chicago’s own Jim Emerson (who didn’t hate it or anything and who has nevertheless got an interesting side controversy going with gool ol’ Jonathan Lapper).

Nope, once again I suffer for the crime of having a commonplace opinion. I really need to get my Kael on at some point and just get freaky weird in my likes and dislikes

Nevertheless, the night I actually saw The Dark Knight with several friends, who all enjoyed the movie (though I’m not sure if the earth actually moved for any of us, beyond the power of those IMAX speakers) the closest thing to controversy was this: What gives with those Maybelline eyelashes on the mayor? 

Well, The Dark Knight battle will no doubt outlast Roman Polanski’s exile, but at least my Bullz-Eye colleague and sometime editor Will Harris has, by the radical route of actually speaking to the man, gotten to the bottom of the matter of Lost actor Nestor Carbonell’s controversial peepers.

Rest easy, citizens.