The Dark Knight is awesome, and so is Richard Alpert

On Tuesday night I was able to see an advance IMAX screening of The Dark Knight, and it was spectacular. No way around it. Obviously, there's a certain digestion period with great movies such as this one -- after a week, or a month, you calm down and start rationally deciding how good it really was -- but at this point, I'm ready to declare it the best superhero movie ever.

Well, okay, I still have a massive soft spot for X2. But that's beside the point: The Dark Knight is an epic crime saga. It's The Departed of superhero movies. It doesn't even feel like a superhero movie; you'll understand once you see it. (Or you could read this full early review from a guy I know.)

Anyway, this relates to Lost because, as you may have guessed (from the picture plus me constantly mentioning it), our favorite ageless Other Richard Alpert -- Nestor Carbonell in the "real" world -- plays the mayor of Gotham City.

He shows up very briefly in the trailer, so I wasn't sure how big a role he had at first; now, having seen it, I'm happy to report he gets a pretty good amount of screen time. He has a couple scenes with Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman (playing Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon, respectively) and is the focal point of a pivotal outdoor scene in which he's the target of an assassination attempt.

Not bad for a guy who used to dress up like this...