It was the best of times in Gotham City, it was the worst of times in Gotham City.  At this weekend’s press day for The Dark Knight Rises, director Christopher Nolan and co-writer Jonathan Nolan explained how the end of their Batman trilogy was influenced by Charles Dickens‘ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities.  The connection makes sense since all the marketing shows us a Gotham crumbling in a way that’s similar to the destruction in the days leading up to the French Revolution in Dickens’ novel.

Hit the jump for how the Nolans explained the intentional similarity between their movie and Dickens’ book.  The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20th.

Sometime my job is weird.  This past September, I was awoken by a phone call from a publicist asking if I wanted to come down to DragonCon-Atlanta’s major geek convention-and interview Terry Gilliam, the director behind such classics as Brazil, Time Bandits, Twelve Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for his upcoming film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  I had to get downtown in less than 90 minutes, which usually wouldn’t be a problem except DragonCon, a huge college football game, multiple concerts, and pretty much every major Labor Day event were happening at the same time.

Thankfully, I made it just as Mr. Gilliam was finishing up his Q&A with his many fans who came to hear him speak about Parnassus and his upcoming projects.  I was lucky enough to ask him about those projects as well along with his legacy, his past, and why he didn’t really care for this year’s Watchmen, a graphic novel he  attempted to adapt twice: once as a movie and then as a miniseries after deciding the story was too dense to be crammed into a motion picture.  It was really a great interview because Gilliam was very open and has no need for politic because he doesn’t care about working with a certain person; he just cares about getting his films made his way and that alone is impressive.