Have to strongly disagree, Stephanie. I felt like the editing techniques and visual style were deliberate choices and superbly effective. Far from haphazard or "incoherent," they created a schematic concept that closely mirrors the techniques of graphic novels.

One of the first things in the film that started to screw with my expectations was how the scenes were edited in such tight compression they seemed to fold up like a retractable telescope. Once I got a handle on that, I loved it.

We’ve all seen that editing trend in indie films where a character is followed around in an activity, with a tracking shot seemingly filmed in one long take. But then sections of that long take are sliced out, and the chopped up pieces put together in abbreviated chronology to create the sensation of jumping in jerky movement through time.

Christopher Nolan and editor Lee Smith are up to the same tricks, only on a much grander scale. They jump ahead seconds or even minutes in the continuity, disrupting the normal flow, crumpling time and space, and stacking chunks of the scene up against one another in oddly matched juxtapositions.

For me, this seems to mirror precisely what panels of a comic book do. The key moments of an action event are selected, and then reassembled for a speed-reading of the scene. Rather than the jumbled mess Stephanie Zacharek sees, for me that’s a brilliantly innovative technique and quite thrilling when you get the hang of it -- zipping along with those syncopated editing rhythms, lit with a narrative strobe light.

I'm happy to have this video clip motivate me to put all this into words. During the film I had a vague notion of what Nolan was attempting to do with this structure, and now Stephanie has sparked my intuitions (as she often does) and helped me clarify the concept for myself. It's just a theory. But whether you buy into it or not, isn’t this a little more interesting than simply dismissing it as “incoherent” as the video tries to assert?

The only time this compression technique really felt jarring was at the formal fund-raiser event when Joker crashes the party. After the Batman’s daring high-rise rescue, there was no obligatory reaction shot cutting back to the party — and we never see Joker leave. The sequence is over, and we move on. But the second time I saw the movie on Saturday, I accepted that abrupt ending much more readily.

It’s the same technique with the same aim I was talking about above. In a comic book, when a scene is over, it’s chopped off at the bottom of the page. And when we turn the page we’ll be instantly thrust into the next round of action.

Screw the typical movie transition shots. To Stephanie this might seem incoherent, but to me it feels daring and bold — a sensational new film grammar. Just like The Bourne Ultimatum invented a cinematic riff on gestural action painting, using shadows and light and fractured cubist editing to scatter its jagged narrative across the screens last summer. And won an Oscar for the effort.

We all know Christopher Nolan's propensity for messing with our perceptions of time and space continuities. Did we really expect him to set aside his artistic inclinations just because he's playing with $200 mil of Warner Bros' money?

Click on my name and find a site where the Batman threads will be weaving in and out for weeks before they unravel. This past week we've pretty much wallpapered the main page with Gotham City news. You'll also find topics still active about WALL-E, Mamma Mia!, the Emmy nominations and lots of other movie and entertainment topics. Clicking your name I see you're a prolific letter writer and the editors are apparently fond of you too. Drop by with some those brilliant insights and you'll find plenty of readers who'll appreciate them.

There's plenty of bright insightful discussion about The Dark Knight if you venture outside the bookend dismissive "incoherent" appraisals by Salon.com's two film critics. Click on my name to find a terrific cinemaphile café where a spirited politically-themed volley about TDK was sparked just yesterday by one of webmaster Craig Kennedy's consistently fine reviews.

The regulars at Living in Cinema are a friendly ensemble of sharp writers and passionate filmgoers (many with movie blogs of their own), and the ambiance is casual, laced with good humor. Nobody takes it too seriously and the tone is conducive to a lively dialogue, whether the comments are light or go deep.

Andrew O'Hehir seems to suggest this type of site is a rarity, but you don't have to look hard to find pages where intelligent discussion takes place every day.

The best sites generate a tight community spirit and form clusters with like-minded sites. Living in Cinema shares a free-flowing exchange of readers with Sasha Stone's AwardsDaily.com (where I'm an associate contributor). AwardsDaily is a venerable site with a comparable keen attitude that's been around for a nearly a decade.

It's very cool of Andrew to bring sites like these to the attention of Salon readers -- and only right, since we link to his reviews all the time. There's no reason to draw battle lines between mainstream critics and alternative voices. Individuals will naturally have personal preferences (that's sort of the definition of "individual"), but nobody has a monopoly on taste.