A new television season is quickly approaching.

ABC has dubbed next week “National Stay at Home Week,” despite the fact the Wednesday and Friday night lineups won’t be debuting. (Trust me, I cannot wait for Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone to return. They are fantastic shows, no matter what your neighbors and friends say).

@mmagnolia22 and I will be in North Carolina on vacation, and probably won’t want to watch our favorite shows while we’re gone. But that doesn’t mean we want to miss them altogether :-). So, I’ve assembled the show lists from the Big 4, plus HBO and Showtime; this way I can coordinate the DVR schedule a little more effectively than in the past.

The shows in red are what we’ll be recording, with a few more additions for @mmagnolia22 I suspect. We’re not recording the 60th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards, because we do plan on watching that while at the Outer Banks. It just might involve flipping over to NBC for a while every now and then.

What are you planning to watch next week?

Here are the program guides I created, without my recording marks. Or you can download the Photoshop file (≈4MB) (right-click and select “Save as” or “Save target as”).

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Courtesy: Warner Brothers

We just returned from the midnight showing of The Dark Knight. While we didn’t see it in its IMAX glory, we definitely got to the heart of the film, if only in a “regular” theater.

Not that much time has passed in Gotham City when we meet the Caped Crusader again (yes, all of the nicknames are in play this time). Look for some cameos from the past and a few nods towards the future. Batman is with it, right off the top.

The favorites are all there (Alfred and Lucius), but look for bigger parts from Commissioner Loeb and key scenes with the Mayor of Gotham.

But the part you really care about is the Joker. Heath Ledger is downright frightening. As Alfred says, “some men just want to watch the world burn.” There is no logic behind the Joker’s actions, he thrives for chaos. Complete and total anarchy. Ledger’s performance is chilling; I’m sure it’s Oscar-worthy, but I don’t know if it’s worthy of snubbing all other films. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll be thinking about the Joker all night, and it was a stellar job. There are moments where you’ll laugh out loud at him, but this is a very dark character. And you should expect the movie to take you to some very dark places. There is a big philosophical discussion happening throughout the movie about the essence of justice (read “balance” and “fair”) and Batman’s never-ending battle against evildoers.

Aaron Eckhart definitely makes a name for Harvey Dent in this movie. You really get behind Gotham’s new D.A. and his war on crime. We all know the inevitable ending for Harvey Dent, though. And you’ll get a lot more than you bargained for in this film.

If you appreciated the humor of Batman Begins, then this will be right up your alley. A few little asides, some puns here and there, but nothing like the over-the-top junk we saw in those Schumacher-travesties. Some of the gadgets are a little out there, but we don’t get anywhere near the Adam West days.

Fans of Chicago will love the locations used in the movie. That semi you see in the trailer flipping end-over-end? They really did that. Right in the middle of LaSalle Street. Breathtaking scene. Also, the building they level? They really leveled it. There’s a nice little slideshow on Fandango.com (of all places), that shows where they shot the key scenes.

But, be prepared. At nearly two and half hours, make sure you take a bathroom break ahead of time.

Oh, and there’s nothing after the credits, so don’t sit around for the extra 7 minutes.

On the Sandwich Scale, I’m personally giving this movie a 10 (I plan on seeing it for a second time in IMAX). There are those I know who won’t like this one, or expect it to be just like the first. So for everyone else, I’m giving it a 9.