the dark knight

...was pretty much the most amazing movie i've seen in a while. it completely lived up to and in some ways surpassed my expectations, including heath ledger's performance of the joker. i finally got to see it last night because even though it came out about a month ago in the states, it just came out in germany. fortunately we found a theatre that played the original sans dubbing and subtitles.

anyways, i liked the fact that i didn't notice that much product placement in the movie, other than the standard luxury cars (lamborghini, bentley) and of course the mysterious cell phone that morgan freeman had in hong kong. i decided to investigate and found a whole website called brand cameo that tracks product placement in all the new movies coming out. their archives date back to 2001 and they are a sub-site of brandchannel.com.

here's a list of the brands that you may or may not notice throughout the movie: Armani, Bang & Olufsen, Belstaff, Bentley, Dodge, Ford, Harris Bank, Lamborghini, Magnum Products, Mercedes, MV Agusta, Nokia, Powerball, Scottrade, Volkswagen Beetle.

Apparently the cell phone is the new touchscreen model by nokia, which isn't even in stores yet. It's the Nokia 5800 Tube, clearly hoping to compete with the iphone. i guess it's a cooler way to introduce a new product rather than just the standard print/tvc/internet campaign.

i also really liked the creative newspaper/movie poster give-aways. they are placed at the theatres like a normal newspaper you would find on the streets of gotham city and on the inside it folds out to become a movie poster. simple, yet genius. (the one i got last night is extra-special because it's in german).