There are many ways to anticipate The Dark Knight. You can assemble a fake plot out of the numerous clips circulating the web, you can stitch together adorable bat-toys, or just rewatch Christopher Nolan's first entry in the Batman franchise. However, there's a lot more to this sprawling, nearly three hour rush of furious confrontations and haunting corruption. The greatest Batman stories emphasize the character's shadowy nature, and Nolan pulls from many of them to create the intensely moody aura of the latest film. You don't need to know anything about the character to enjoy the movie, but it certainly expands the experience to do some research -- and allows for a greater appreciation of the filmmaker's efforts to honor the nature of the character.

Here's a look at some antecedents to the current interpretation from the last two decades.

I have a soft spot for nearly everything Danny DeVito's directed. Death to Smoochy was a waste of a cast and a concept, but most everything else -- The War of the Roses, Matilda, and yes, even the underrated Duplex (I haven't seen Throw Momma from the Train in forever, but toss that one in too) -- has a dark, unforgiving sensibility that I really appreciate. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that DeVito is the only filmmaker to truly get what Roald Dahl was all about.

DeVito's next directing project, and his first for the big screen since Duplex flopped in 2003, will be an adaptation of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, a young adult book by a dude named Avi (yes, just Avi). It's about a 13 year-old girl who's crossing the Atlantic on her own in 1832 and gets caught in the middle of a mutiny. Saoirse Ronan, Morgan Freeman and Pierce Brosnan are attached to star.

The funny thing is, I read The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle at some point while traversing the middle school netherworld back in the mid-to-late 90's, but I'll be damned if I remember a single thing about it. (The plot does sound vaguely familiar. I think there might be a parrot involved, but I'm not sure.) To Kill a Mockingbird it ain't. But if DeVito (who also wrote the screenplay) can give it some character, I'm down.

Make-up, animatronics and effects legend Stan Winston passed away on Sunday at the too-young age of 62. In memoriam, Cinematical humbly presents this list of the man's most enduring achievements.

Some of my most treasured movie memories -- childhood and otherwise -- are courtesy of Stan Winston. What impressed me about this list as I was making it was that Winston specialized in realizing the imaginations of our greatest filmmakers -- directors like Burton, Spielberg, Cameron. Winston was a genius himself, of course, but he also facilitated genius, and that's just as important. Those guys owe him so much.

He had many accomplishments beyond the ones I've listed. That's what the comment thread is for.


1. Jurassic Park's Dinosaurs.

It's hard to describe the impression Jurassic Park made back in 1993. I was 9 years old, which was just old enough to be properly amazed. This was the new generation of popular cinema: perfect, lifelike wonders on the screen as if it were the most natural thing on the planet. Earlier technicians did a lot with simple puppetry, stop-motion and miniatures, but now all bets were off, and all barriers seemed lifted. Once you accepted the scientific goofiness of the film's premise, no further suspension of disbelief was necessary. Winston opened the gates to a whole new cinematic playground.

I haven't seen this weekend's The Incredible Hulk yet, and will do so a little begrudgingly because it's an implicit (or explicit, depending on whom you ask) diss of Ang Lee's Hulk, a film I admire. But to the extent my interest in the Louis Leterrier version is piqued, it's mostly because of the casting of Edward Norton as the title character's alter ego. It's such an interesting choice -- partly because Norton usually stays away from projects like this, partly because he's so uniquely gifted, and partly because my mind just reels at hearing "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" coming out of his mouth. I'll watch The Incredible Hulk less because I want to see another movie about Bruce Banner than because I'm curious to see Norton's interpretation of him.

All of which got me thinking about superhero/comic book casting in general. It's a subject that attracts a lot of breathless speculation every time a new movie is in the works, and there's rarely consensus on anything. In this edition of Cinematical Seven, I take a look back at what I think have been the most inspired, interesting, or appropriate superhero (and villain, because why not?) casting choices in recent history -- not so much the resulting performances (though it can be hard to distinguish in hindsight) but the initial casting decisions.

As I like to do with these lists, I tried to mix the obvious with the out-of-the-blue, so feel free to weigh in with what I unjustly left out. In no particular order:

Indiana Jones -- he's got to be Harrison Ford, doesn't he? Okay, we had young Indiana Jones characters -- River Phoenix in the opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Sean Patrick Flanery in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles -- but I never really thought of Indy as a character who could be cast in any other way. You know, you figure the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark was practically written for Ford, who'd been in a couple of George Lucas films before that anyway (Star Wars and American Graffiti).

However, that assumption couldn't be more wrong. I've been digging around on that great source of reliable information, the Internet, and reading all kinds of stories about the casting of Indiana Jones. The general gist is that Steven Spielberg was interested in Ford, but Lucas didn't want to be one of those directors who cast the same guy in all his movies. So they tested a bunch of other actors, and were seriously interested in one who had to back out ... and then ended up with Harrison Ford after all. We are all profoundly grateful. But let's take a look at some of those actors allegedly under consideration, and a few more that I threw into the mix just for fun. (I picked only actors who were alive and the right age at the time, which is why you don't see Steve McQueen on the list.)

We already know that Kristen Bell is going to have some unconventional suitors in the new romcom When in Rome -- Jon Heder signed onto the cast back in March to play a smitten street magician. But in all the names that I could imagine being added next, there's one that definitely didn't cross my mind. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that the next eligible bachelor to get his shot at nabbing the young, sleuthing, electric, heart-breaking Bell: Danny DeVito.

As we already know, Bell will play a "love-starved New York Curator" who takes a trip to Rome and steals coins from a fountain of love to try and get her chance at romance. When she gets home, she discovers that it actually worked -- a number of men try to woo her. But another bit of the puzzle has now been added by THR, that explains the whole thing -- the coins she steals were tossed there by the men who end up pursuing her.

The question that remains: will these men just try to catch her gaze when she walks on by, or will we see a nice, romantic sit-down dinner with Danny and Kristen? And an end-of-the-night kiss? It could be interesting, to say the least. The film, which also boasts the likes of Will Arnett, Josh Duhamel, Anjelica Huston, and Dax Shepard, begins filming this month in New York City.

Hello everybody. You've probably been wondering where I have been the past few weeks. Wringing your hands, gnashing your teeth, drinking heavily. Constantly hitting "refresh," waiting for an update. Even if you haven't, just play along for me. I'm a needy man. Thank you.

When I started this column -- your #1 source for writing tips, advice, interviews, strike coverage, and life lessons -- I hoped the nice little hook would be that I am a writer trying to make it big myself. Well friends, after a year and a half of short-term gigs, false starts, near-misses, and one big ol' crushing strike -- my writing partner and I have finally crossed over. We just got staffed as writers on the FX comedy "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." It's a genuinely hilarious show, and one of my favorites on television. I couldn't be more excited.

And so "The Write Stuff" takes an interesting turn. I'm not going to have as much free time now, so it won't be a weekly thing anymore. But I would love to keep the column afloat with semi-regular interviews and Q&A. Please keep on leaving your questions in the comments or at my personal site. I'll get to each one eventually.

Every once in a while, news about a potential sequel makes some people ooh and ahh, rather than hawk up a phlegm globber. Is that the case with a potential Throw Momma From the Train 2? I wouldn't think so, but both Josh Horowitz at MTV and our beloved EIC, Erik Davis, seem into the idea. The former spoke with Danny DeVito recently about the possibility of a Momma return, and it seems the dude doesn't think his train days are done.

DeVito said: "I actually haunt Billy [Crystal] all the time. I always call him and say we should do a sequel. I called Billy at 7 AM one morning. I must have woken him up and I was like: 'I have this idea.' He was like: 'Are you done?' He went back to sleep." So really, this is only in the vague musing stage if he's serious, although I'm sure it would gear up soon if movie companies caught wind of some audience interest. But do the rest of you really want it?

I enjoyed Throw Momma from the Train and Horowitz is right -- it has some great lines. However, as he also notes -- Anne Ramsey is no longer with us. I would have trouble seeing The Goonies return without Ma Fratelli just as much as I couldn't see a new Throw Momma without the actual, wonderfully-mean mom. Heck, she got an Oscar nomination for the role! If she was still around, I'd be all for it, but I don't know if I could watch a sequel without her. Could you?

Observe the shining, digitally foreshortened head of fifth-billed star Danny DeVito, who has seven minutes in this 1977 movie. The film's fame waned as DeVito's rose. No matter how tasty imitation cheese is in Superbad, doing its best to recapture the horn-dogginess of movies about wacky guys driving around aimlessly trying to score a chick, it's never quite as rank as the real thing. Sometimes, you have to get in time machine and set the controls for the heart of those more innocent times (more innocent to those who weren't alive during them, let me add).

I've been saving The Van for a long long time. The weather's good and I'm particularly craving some drive-in cinema, but in my neighborhood sitting in around in a car means either you're planning a drive-by shooting, or you're about to be drive-by shot. So I slapped this in, trying to pretend the sofa was the fake-fur covered padded seat of a van, front wheels raised on an asphalt berm, tilted at a 15 degree angle. As we can see from the Big Sky in the Wisconsin Dells, Shankweiler's (America's oldest!) in Pennsylvania or the noble old Skyview in Santa Cruz, Ca. the drive-in refuses to die. Likewise, this chunk of fragrant vintage idiocy somehow never ended up in the landfill. And it preserves so much DNA of the Stinky Seventies: chest-hair, porn 'staches, bell-bottoms, French-Cut t-shirts, man-perms, dirt beer, CB radios: it's all right here waiting for you.

I can envision Danny DeVito as a lot of things. In his real life, he's rocked as an actor, producer, director and all-round performer. On film, he's been a crazy Martini in a Cuckoo's Nest, romanced a stone, was a ruthless person, spent time as Schwarzenegger's twin, threw his mom from a train and even kicked some butt as Oswald Cobblepot, a penguin-sort of fellow. However, what I wouldn't imagine, under any circumstance, is that he'd play a firefighter. According to Variety, the actor is going to star in an indie comedy called No Place Like Home.

The movie follows a fireman who has recently retired and hopes to live a quiet life -- but he can't because his his kids, who are twenty-something and unemployed, haven't moved out. His wife won't kick them out, so what does he do? He kidnaps her so that his kids have to take care of themselves. I can follow most of this. DeVito will be a natural in this sort of scenario -- but the firefighting thing is throwing me for a loop. I love the man, yet I can't help but giggle at the thought of him trying to hoist me onto his shoulder and carry me out of a burning building. But maybe I've just seen one-too-many beefcake firefighter calendars and movies with muscle-laden fire-folk. The movie was written by, and will also be helmed by, Sam Harper, whose previous writing credits include Just Married (eh) and Cheaper by the Dozen... and it's sequel (good God, no!). The film will go into production on August 1, so let's hope it's nothing like Cheaper.