This just in: Magicians are actually much, much freakier than clowns.

I still haven’t seen the Borat movie. Not from lack of trying. For some reason OBG and I thought it’d be totally fine if we walked into Van Ness multiplex ten minutes before the late night Friday show couple weeks back. Surprisingly enough about 400 drunk freshman had beat us to every seat. Go figure.

Itching to see something (and not too keen on waiting for the posse of 18 bonged up high schoolers in the refund line who had also gotten dis’d on tix) we ended up sitting down to the opening credits of The Prestige not expecting much.

We were wrong.

Turned out to be a damn dark abracadabra parable about getting what you wish and paying dearly for it…again and again. Stars badass cockney Christian “I’m Batman” Bale, and the Aussie actress who’s feminine charms are rivaled by few. That’s right: Hugh Jackman. Oh yea, and Scarlett was in it too.

One of the far and few between smart enough to realize celebrity plastic surgery shouldn’t attempt to make you look any more than 10 years younger than you actually are, Sir David Bowie, makes a more than small appearance playing no less than Nikola Tesla, the man responsible for inventing x-rays, wireless communications and robotics, and who could’ve made free wireless electricity and anti-gravity a reality for the masses had he been taken seriously by his era’s money-hoarding morons of industry. I’m guessing Ziggy settled for playing the scientist because his traditional roles of God, messiah alien and leotard clad baby eating demon Labyrinth master got 86′d out of the final script.

Directed by Chris Nolan, man who helmed Batman Begins, Memento and the only U.S. remake of a Norwegian masterpiece to effectively channel their cultural gestalt of predominantly solitude and pain, yet satisfy the typical American movie goer’s need for their tragic heroes to be driven to evil by external pressures and lack of options…rather than the closer-to-reality choices of moral ambiguity and self-preservation over all else…the movie’s visually amazing and narratively solid, despite a few undistractingly predictable turns. Especially since the ending isn’t a happy Hollywood one despite the obivous Hollywood budget. No one’s a hero, and everybody dies. More than once. Which makes the events leading up to the creepy final scenes even nastier, and the movie an ultimately great if not 4-star example of American gothic cinema.

UPDATE: In response to the comment from Anonymous, I’m thinking that referring to a culture borne of axe wielding Viking conquerors who’ve lost half their population to the Black Death, been occupied by the Nazis and whose backyard’s been filled with icebergs for the last 12 millenium as one of “solitude and pain” ain’t too far from the mark, and far from a broad brush stroke.