Joker gets a face

In theaters Friday: Bug, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,

New on DVD: Apocalypto, The Good German, Letters from Iwo Jima

Celebrity birthday: Alison Eastwood turns 35 today. Happy birthday, Ali! Being Clint’s daughter hasn’t gotten you too far in Hollywood, but it does get you onto The Filter’s celebrity birthday list. How does it feel to know you were conceived during the production of Dirty Harry?

UPDATE: The Web site referenced below was changed Monday night to show only “Page not found” then “Ha ha ha” written about a 1,000 times. But hidden within the laughter are scattered letters that add up to: “See you in December.” I’m guessing that’s when the first trailer for The Dark Knight will appear, and that we won’t be seeing any more of Ledger as The Joker before then. It’s a good thing then that lots of Web geeks right-clicked and saved the image. Check it out right here.

Several fake, fan-made images — mostly mediocre Photoshop jobs — have surfaced in the past few months claiming to be images of Heath Ledger as The Joker in the new Batman series. Well, get a load of this. It is what I believe to be a guerilla-style Web site the studio has put up to promote The Dark Knight. It features a campaign poster for Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent marked with the kind of graffiti The Joker might do. But wait about a minute and the Dent poster evaporates into what looks like the first official image of The Joker from the film, out next summer. The image speaks for itself. It’s dark, gritty and twisted. Director Christopher Nolan continues to take Batman lore away from its comical routes, and in my opinion, is discovering some very interesting ground in the process. And for those who prefer the Tim Burton/Jack Nicholson version of The Joker, I submit that this character design is, in a way, much more “Burton” than the Joker Burton himself put on screen.

Here is an advance review of the screenplay for Wes Anderson’s upcoming The Darjeeling Limited. Screenplays are really tough to judge. Even some of the good ones don’t necessarily leap off the page, but this blogger seems to have been pretty impressed. I’ll hold off till I at least see a trailer, but here are three things I really hope are in the movie:

1. Use the Schwartzman. I don’t really like the guy when he plays it restrained and close to the vest (Marie Antoinette). Jason Schwartzman is so much funnier when he is eye-rollingly absurd (Rushmore, Shopgirl). Let him loose.

2. One from the Quiet One. Anderson puts his soundtracks together pretty meticulously, and he’s obviously a huge fan of The Beatles and British Invasion music in general. With The Darjeeling Limited set in India, it’s time for one of George Harrison’s Indian-influenced Beatles tracks to debut in an Anderson movie. I’d suggest “The Inner Light” or “Love You To.” Although the recent mash-up of “Within You Without You” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” would be really cool, too.

3. Mr. Bill. I know it’s coming, I’ve read the spy reports about Bill Murray’s cameo in the film. I just hope he pulls it off. Murray may be my favorite comedic actor of all time, and it’s just a lot of fun to see a great actor shine in a small role.

For those who don’t remember Daniel Pearl, he was the Wall Street Journal writer who was kidnapped and beheaded by militants in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Pearl’s wife was seven months pregnant when he was killed. His widow, Mariane Pearl, wrote a memoir of the tragedy called, A Mighty Heart, and now a film version of her book opens in theaters June 22. Here is the first trailer from the film, which stars Angelina Jolie. It looks like a pretty remarkable re-telling of one of the saddest post-9/11 tragedies to affect an innocent American.