We'll keep this short and spoiler-free:
Kate and I went to see The Dark Knight yesterday afternoon. The verdict: It was an excellent entry in the "gritty comic-book adaptation" genre, and a very solid follow-up to Batman Begins.
Heath Ledger as the Joker was excellent. I see here in my blogger guidelines that I'm supposed to say something about Jack Nicholson, but really, the two movies are too different for that to make any sense.
It ran a bit long, but I'm inclined to forgive the length because it let them take one of the major plot lines in a different direction than I was expecting, wrapping up something that I thought was in there as an obvious sequel hook.
I'm not sure what they will do as a sequel, but I'm sure they can think of something if this movie does well. And it deserves to do well.
If anyone wants a long and spoilery version, my comments are over on LiveJournal.
I am just at the moment listening to the complete soundtrack, which is a marvelous piece of composition by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard. I highly recommend it, and please do the music some justice... play it on a good sound system (your skin needs to feel it too!) ;-)
Can't wait to watch the movie!