Killjoy Aaron Eckhart Settles at Least One Scurrilous 'Batman 3' Casting Rumor

Aaron Eckhart's 'Dark Knight' Oscar Campaign Jump-started By Loud-Mouthed Sports Columnist

While most of the punditocracy is demanding that Sid Ganis engrave Heath Ledger's name on the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor before the month of July comes to a close, the notoriously contrarian ESPN talking head Skip Bayless isn't quite convinced. During today's episode of their afternoon gabfest 1st And 10, Bayless got into a heated argument with the equally opinionated (read: full of shit) mouthpiece Stephen A. Smith about whether or not The Dark Knight was better than Tim Burton's Batman. As these conversations generally go, the topic of conversation quickly switched to Heath Ledger's universally lauded performance as The Joker. That is to say, universally lauded by everyone but Skip Bayless.

"I thought Jack Nicholson played a better Joker than Heath Ledger. I thought Aaron Eckhart deserves the Academy Award nomination because he delivered a better performance."

The hilariously bombastic clip, which also includes Screamin' A. Smith's pick for who should've replaced Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes (according to his exacting standards, she wasn't "fine" enough), after the jump.

Defamer Reviews 'The Dark Knight': Same Batman, Bleaker Bat Channel

After surviving months of Dark Knight hype, viral outreach and tastefully overblown praise for late co-star Heath Ledger, Defamer finally got its chance at a screening Tuesday to see what all the Bat-fuss was about. And as editor Seth Abramovitch and senior editor S.T. VanAirsdale discovered in their second installment of Defamer Instant Reviews, not everybody is ready to validate its Second Coming status quite yet. Is it good? Absolutely. Is it the best film of the summer? That's where things get complicated — on AIM, of course, because this watershed cultural moment deserves no less.

Follow the jump for their respective two cents — mostly spoiler-free for even the most casual followers of the film, and naturally among the finest criticism available anywhere online.

'Dark Knight' Spoiler Campaign Continues as Early Viewers Break Out the Cameraphones

We're seeing The Dark Knight next week like everybody else, but since David Letterman has already wrecked everything for us, the hell with it: SPOILER ALERT. Like, seriously. The screenshots that some douchebag smuggled out of a press screening and pollenated our inbox with this morning aren't going to shatter the Earth, but they'll warrant crossing at least two items off your list of "Twists I Can't Wait to Totally Ruin By Seeing Them Before the Movie."

That's about all we can say, really, without leaving it up to the spoilerphiles among you to decide for yourselves: Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart, after the jump.

'The Dark Knight' Closing In on Distinction of Bleakest Film We've Never Seen

The Jennifer Aniston Dating Game: Fun Like 'Go Fish' Or Depressing And Endless Like 'Monopoly'?

Another Day, Another On-Set Romance For Jennifer Aniston

Have things really gotten so rough for Jennifer Aniston that she's gone from dating cokehead models to taking movie roles just so she can date the leading man? That's what this article on Jen's new relationship with Traveling co-star Aaron Eckhart seems to be implying. According to the Daily Mail, Eckhart "personally requested Aniston for the part...and Jen's entire reason for doing this movie was Aaron." Before we got carried away imagining the potential for very cute little blonde Ecklets with rhinoplastic trust funds, we tried to figure out if this "rumor" had any substance.

Two-Face Ready For His 'Dark Knight' Close-Up; Prefers You Shoot Him From The Right

Many, including us, have been wondering out loud how Warner Bros. plans on addressing the unique (and thankfully so) marketing problem currently facing The Dark Knight: Namely, what to do about a campaign that took fiendish pleasure in showcasing Heath Ledger's singularly bleak and twisted take on iconic Batman villain the Joker. Slate now reports that the studio's plan, in place since the beginning but perhaps being ushered in more hastily since the actor's death, is to shift the focus over to the film's other featured villain:

Alan Ball Drama Gets Early Support For Feel-Awful Film Of 2007

Faster than you can say "Dakota Fanning Rape Project," the Toronto Film Festival screenings of Alan Ball's Nothing is Private should produce a level of buzz-building, pre-acquisition outrage unseen since the first reports that universally beloved/feared child star Fanning's cinematic virtue would be stolen at the 2006 edition of Sundance. Outraged Fox 411 gossip columnist Roger Friedman previews his early candidate for Feel-Awful Movie of 2007, in which Aaron Eckhart, perhaps overcompensating for the guilt of cashing his No Reservations paycheck, returns to the darker In the Company of Men/Your Friends & Neighbors material of his early career:

The movie — so odious that many people have simply walked out during the screenings — shows actor Aaron Eckhart having sex with a 13-year-old girl played by a now 19-year-old actress, Summer Bishil. The actress only turned 19 recently, however, which means that she was just on the cusp of 18 when she made the movie last year. [...]