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Showing posts with label Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Show all posts
13 March 2010
11 October 2008
Do Parker and Stone Read This Blog?
If Parker and Stone are fans of this blog (please may that be so), they took my post back in May regarding the Indy IV pic, and made its primary metaphor much more literal than I ever intended.
Good going fellas, that was sickeningly funny.
Good going fellas, that was sickeningly funny.
24 May 2008
Succinct Film Reviews, Indy Edition
I'm not going to type out the whole name of this picture, you know which one I'm talking about, here's the succinct review . . .
I'm not quite feeling as fully childhood raped as I feared (there's no full on Jar-Jar moments in this one), but I think it's safe to say that my childhood was fondled in an inappropriate way by Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas.
Other spoilerish quibbles to follow, not that there's any real plot to spoil, and it's not like any of the other Indy pictures were full of stunning plot revelations where if you know what happened in advance you'd enjoy the film less, but to remain unspoiled don't read any further .
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OK, you've been warned appropriately, don't blame me if you read something that you didn't want to read in what follows. First off, Cate Blanchett's fake Russian accent was especially bad, especially when they hired actual Russians for the other roles, since she was just the over the top baddy, seems like they could have hired any comely Russian/Ukrainian lass and she'd have done a better job than Cate. She's a great actress, but this is a silly role, and she doesn't sell silly well. Shia Lebouf isn't horrible, he's actually quite good, but the Brando outfit is just embarrassing, the Tarzan moment swinging from tree to tree was ludicrous, and the big snake gag was silly.
I'm getting sick of blue screen action sequences. There's no sense of danger, it's just people running in place, or slammed around on a gimbal. You know they aren't really leaping from an actual vehicle to an actual vehicle, and it just gets repetitive after awhile.
At the beginning, they introduce a subplot that gets dropped almost immediately, and I'd like to call this the, 'I don't want people to question my big fat Hollywood liberal bona fides by making Soviets the actual unremittingly evil and ambitious bad guys in this film, so I better tack on an anti-McCarthy subplot to show that even though those poor Marxist were misguided in their ideological fervor there were people running around on our side that were easily ten times worse' subplot. It was completely unneeded, doesn't add anything, I guess the thinking is something like this, 'gee, Indy Jones survives a nuclear blast, is picked up alone at a highly secure facility in the middle of nowhere, aids Soviet agents to raid a sensitive American storage facility and they sneak away with alien technology, but the nerve of those eeeevil FBI agents in questioning Prof. Jones, a war-hero, about whether or not he was coerced in cooperating, or whether he was in cahoots with the Reds, just shows what an evil and horrible time the 50s were and how there were witch hunts left and right, even in academia (yeah, cause there certainly weren't/aren't any Marxist in archaeology departments on American campuses)'. There's even a line where they question if he really earned his WWII medals, can't help but think that was meant to recall the 'horrible' 'swift-boating' of that other pure and blameless war-hero Sen. John Kerry. This crap happens so commonly in pictures (especially the most recent Spielberg pics, plus he's credited with helping Lucas come up with that insipid 'Is this how democracy dies . . .' line in the last Star Wars film), that you just have to let it wash over you like a wave of stupidity and knee-jerk liberalism, but it shouldn't go unnoticed.
As far as on the best or worst of Spielberg pictures, it definitely won't crack the top 7, or even the top 15, but it's also solidly out of the bottom 7, so I guess that's something. If you are jonesing for an Indiana Jones fix, this is better than nothing, but not by much.
Like going to see that Doors Like Thing™ Ray Manzarek put together at your local State/County Fair, sort of like the real thing, good for nostalgia's sake, good for making a buck, but not much else.
I'm not quite feeling as fully childhood raped as I feared (there's no full on Jar-Jar moments in this one), but I think it's safe to say that my childhood was fondled in an inappropriate way by Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Lucas.
Other spoilerish quibbles to follow, not that there's any real plot to spoil, and it's not like any of the other Indy pictures were full of stunning plot revelations where if you know what happened in advance you'd enjoy the film less, but to remain unspoiled don't read any further .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
OK, you've been warned appropriately, don't blame me if you read something that you didn't want to read in what follows. First off, Cate Blanchett's fake Russian accent was especially bad, especially when they hired actual Russians for the other roles, since she was just the over the top baddy, seems like they could have hired any comely Russian/Ukrainian lass and she'd have done a better job than Cate. She's a great actress, but this is a silly role, and she doesn't sell silly well. Shia Lebouf isn't horrible, he's actually quite good, but the Brando outfit is just embarrassing, the Tarzan moment swinging from tree to tree was ludicrous, and the big snake gag was silly.
I'm getting sick of blue screen action sequences. There's no sense of danger, it's just people running in place, or slammed around on a gimbal. You know they aren't really leaping from an actual vehicle to an actual vehicle, and it just gets repetitive after awhile.
At the beginning, they introduce a subplot that gets dropped almost immediately, and I'd like to call this the, 'I don't want people to question my big fat Hollywood liberal bona fides by making Soviets the actual unremittingly evil and ambitious bad guys in this film, so I better tack on an anti-McCarthy subplot to show that even though those poor Marxist were misguided in their ideological fervor there were people running around on our side that were easily ten times worse' subplot. It was completely unneeded, doesn't add anything, I guess the thinking is something like this, 'gee, Indy Jones survives a nuclear blast, is picked up alone at a highly secure facility in the middle of nowhere, aids Soviet agents to raid a sensitive American storage facility and they sneak away with alien technology, but the nerve of those eeeevil FBI agents in questioning Prof. Jones, a war-hero, about whether or not he was coerced in cooperating, or whether he was in cahoots with the Reds, just shows what an evil and horrible time the 50s were and how there were witch hunts left and right, even in academia (yeah, cause there certainly weren't/aren't any Marxist in archaeology departments on American campuses)'. There's even a line where they question if he really earned his WWII medals, can't help but think that was meant to recall the 'horrible' 'swift-boating' of that other pure and blameless war-hero Sen. John Kerry. This crap happens so commonly in pictures (especially the most recent Spielberg pics, plus he's credited with helping Lucas come up with that insipid 'Is this how democracy dies . . .' line in the last Star Wars film), that you just have to let it wash over you like a wave of stupidity and knee-jerk liberalism, but it shouldn't go unnoticed.
As far as on the best or worst of Spielberg pictures, it definitely won't crack the top 7, or even the top 15, but it's also solidly out of the bottom 7, so I guess that's something. If you are jonesing for an Indiana Jones fix, this is better than nothing, but not by much.
16 May 2008
I'm Not at All Excited About the Indy IV, But You Know I'm Going to See It Next Weekend Anyway . . .
Lucas/Spielberg are ganging up once again to rape fond memories from my childhood, oh well, it's a disease with those two.
But you never know, maybe the current Indy picture isn't nearly as asstastic as it looks from the trailers (though the inability to cut together an exciting trailer from an action picture is troubling).
But, I have another reason for posting this other than repeating the common lament of somewhat geeky guys in there mid to late 30s regarding what Lucas and Spielberg have done with their stewardship of some of the most fondly remembered intellectual properties of the 70s and 80s.
I really just want to point to this post by Maynard over at Tammy Bruce's blog, here's the line that caught my eye:
But you never know, maybe the current Indy picture isn't nearly as asstastic as it looks from the trailers (though the inability to cut together an exciting trailer from an action picture is troubling).
But, I have another reason for posting this other than repeating the common lament of somewhat geeky guys in there mid to late 30s regarding what Lucas and Spielberg have done with their stewardship of some of the most fondly remembered intellectual properties of the 70s and 80s.
I really just want to point to this post by Maynard over at Tammy Bruce's blog, here's the line that caught my eye:
And, if so, is that where we got crystal balls?
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