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Last week Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan apartment. At
28, he had created a career based on risky roles and shunned the
heartthrob characters he could have played. In his last film, The Dark
Knight, a sequel to Batman Begins, Ledger plays the deranged villain,
The Joker. It is due out in July of this year. Below are the best films
available on DVD of his short, but notable career.
Candy
Ledger
and Abby Cornish are stellar in this bleak tale about two artistic
souls tumbling down the road of self-destruction from heroin use.
Tragic and sad, these characters are the poster children for staying
far away from recreational drug use.
Brokeback Mountain
There's
no discussing Ledger without mentioning Brokeback Mountain. By far his
most challenging role was his heartbreaking performance of Ennis Del
Mar, the sexually conflicted cowboy never able to allow himself the
freedom to be happy. Accolades were mounded on Ledger as well as the
rest of the cast and the film as a whole. This is where Ledger met
Michelle Williams, who later became his romantic partner and the mother
of his child. Ledger had recently separated from Williams.
 

In September of 2007, Ang Lee (director of Brokeback Mountain,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and many more) was saddled with the
NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America's censors on
his movie, Lust, Caution. The rating is the kiss of death at the
box-office. No matter what reviewers say, the large ticket-buying
population of under-17-year-old viewers have already been axed out of
seeing the film, much less those that equate the NC-17 rating with
porn. Most of the time, there is usually one scene that censors just
can't stomach, so to save their films from bombing at the box office,
directors will go back and cut the scene enough to appease the
thumb-screwing censorship committee, which later gets reinserted and
released on DVD as the "director's cut." Below are some "directors cut"
versions of some originally NC-17 or X-rated films.

While coming out of a recent film I commented to my viewing partner how much I had enjoyed the film's score. She had a classic comment, "I never notice background music." Although we may not register a movie score as something we want on CD, it can make or break the atmosphere of a film as much as cinematography or acting. Below is a little ode to the unsung heroes of movie scores with their best works as recommended views.