The Screengrab : indiana jones

The Less Than Triumphant Return of Mad Max

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Last summer, when Indiana Jones and Rambo were taking advantage of their senior citizens’ discount at the box office, I lamented the absence of my favorite ‘80s action hero, Mad Max. Now it looks like Max may finally make his return to the big screen…but I’m having a little trouble getting excited about it.

George Miller talked to MTV about his plans to revive Fury Road, the long-gestating fourth installment in the series. “Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated Happy Feet—not that the newest, ever-violent Max film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.”

Boy, is that nothing I wanted to hear. Furthermore, even though going the animated route would seem to be a viable way to keep Mel Gibson in the role that made him famous, that apparently is not the plan. “‘We’ll probably go a different route,’ Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role.” Miller is also developing a Mad Max videogame, also without Gibson’s participation. Look, I know the guy’s a loon – but that’s a good thing in this context, no?

Ah, well. Maybe I can work up some enthusiasm for this project. “For the anime release, Miller isn’t looking simply to mimic Japanese-style animation but rather to adapt it for Western audiences. ‘The anime is an opportunity for me to shift a little bit about what anime is doing because anime is ripe for an adjustment or sea change,’ he explained. ‘It’s coming in games and I believe it’s the same in anime. There’s going to be a hybrid anime where it shifts more towards Western sensibilities.’”

Nope. Still not feeling it. Read my post, George! Before it’s too late!

DVD Digest for February 24, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, the midwinter doldrums hit the DVD market, with only a handful of notable DVD and Blu-Ray releases hitting shelves today.

The big news this week is the controversial Blu-Ray release of William Friedkin’s classic police procedural, The French Connection. Much ink has been spilled over William Friedkin’s tinkering with the look of his Oscar-winner for the Blu-Ray release, and while I can’t say for sure (not having bought into the Blu-Ray scene as yet) the images I’ve seen from the new release haven’t been encouraging. With their almost oppressive graininess and a color shift that appears to put the blue in “Blu-Ray”, nothing I’ve seen speaks very well to the suitability of the new technology Friedkin ran on the film when preparing the disc. But then, I’ve always been of the mind that DVD and Blu-Ray was meant to be not only a means of watching a film in the comfort of your living room, but also of film preservation, of keeping a record of the films they contain as close as possible to the way they were originally seen. Anyway, that’s enough of my editorializing. The French Connection is one of three Blu-Ray only releases getting released today by Fox, the other two being John Frankenheimer’s The French Connection II and Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point, a prime future candidate for a Reviews By Request column.

Another ideal Reviews By Request topic would be Eagle Pennell’s early proto-indie, The Whole Shootin’ Match (Watchmaker Films). Considered by many a keystone of the independent film movement, Pennell’s film went unseen for years before turning up again in theatres last year. Other classics coming to DVD today include Hector Babenco’s Ironweed, starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, and Dario Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

This week’s selection of recent releases coming to DVD is a pretty meager lot, highlighted by a pair of arthouse offerings: the documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story (Zeitgeist), about the author Christopher Isherwood and his decades-long love affair with much-younger artist Don Bachardy, and the Irish marital drama Eden (Ryko Distribution).

Finally, this week’s TV on DVD releases include: Bender and friends in their newest feature-length adventure Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder (Fox, also Blu-Ray); Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad Season 1 (Sony); nineties “Must See TV” staple Just Shoot Me Season 3 (Sony); and family-friendly Indiana Jones-lite adventure in The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (Sony).

Screengrab 2008 Summer Movie Season Prediction Results!

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Way back on May 1, yours truly and fellow Screengrabbers Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce and Scott Von Doviak made our predictions about the Top 5 Hits and the Top 5 Bombs of Summer 2008. Now, with Labor Day Weekend in our rear-view mirror, I’ve compared our predictions with the box office results and industry perceptions of the past summer season to see how we did (and which one of us has the brightest future as a Hollywood Suit in charge of picking the production slate for Summer ’09)!

But before I get to the results, I should mention that I didn’t calculate based on grosses alone, since industry expectations and the initial (estimated) cost of a film’s production and marketing factor into whether any individual project is generally considered to be a success or a stinker.

That said, our overall batting average was pretty good when it came to picking hits. Four of our consensus picks for the successes of Summer ‘09 turned out to be unqualified hits: The Dark Knight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and Kung Fu Panda. However, our fifth consensus pick, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, is a bit of a sticky wicket. On the one hand, the fantasy flick is the 7th most successful flick of 2008 thus far (according to Wikipedia, anyway), with a theatrical gross of nearly half a billion dollars. On the other hand, it “only” grossed $141-ish million in its domestic run, and generally fell below expectations raised by the Red State driven success of its predecessor, The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe.

So, giving half points to Caspian, Screengrab went 4.5 out of 5 on hit prediction, which ain’t so stanky.

On the other hand, our bomb predictions more or less blew up in our collective face. Oh, sure...most of us could smell The Love Guru and Speed Racer stinkin' up the cineplexes from a mile away, and both films were, in fact, Hindenburgian box office disasters. (Oh, the humanity!)

But our third prediction, The Incredible Hulk, somehow rode the summer superhero wave to a respectable (if not sensational) gross, and our fourth pick, The Happening, while yet another disappointment for M. Night Shyamalan, at least managed to improve on the box office of the writer/director’s previous effort (Lady In The Water) and, thanks to a (relatively) low budget, failed to produce quite as big a crater as expected.

And, like most of Hollywood’s own testosterone-fueled prognosticators, we got caught with our pants down on our fifth pick: Sex and The City, which (like Mama Mia!) flooded America’s theaters with a tidal wave of estrogen, reminding the Suits that if you build good projects for women, they will come.

Thus, we essentially got three out of five of our bomb predictions right, for an overall batting average at LEAST as respectable as any four studio execs making double (triple? quadruple?) our salaries at Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, etc.

As for our individual scores, I’ve included our original predictions below, annotated to indicate whether the films in question turned out to be unqualified hits (H) or bombs (B). Films that had respectable box office without quite qualifying as full-scale hits (for one reason or another) are identified with an (R), while disappointments that didn’t leave full-scale bomb craters are marked with a (D). And Hellboy II: the Golden Army is a push, since it didn’t exactly light up the box office, but still did better than 2004’s Hellboy.

HIT PREDICTIONS:

Leonard Pierce

1. The Dark Knight (H)

2. Kung Fu Panda (H)

3. Speed Racer (B)

4. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (R)

5. What Happens In Vegas (R)

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Dark Knight (H)

2. Iron Man (H)

3. Hancock (R)

4. Prince Caspian (R)

5. Indiana Jones (H)

Paul Clark

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (H)

2. Hancock (R)

3. The Dark Knight (H)

4. Wall*E (H)

5. Iron Man (H)

Andrew Osborne

1. Indiana Jones (H)

2. The Dark Knight (H)

3. Prince Caspian (R)

4. Pineapple Express (R)

5. American Teen (D)

BOMB PREDICTIONS:

Leonard Pierce

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (H)

2. The Incredible Hulk (R)

3. Hancock (R)

4. Get Smart (R)

5. Sex and the City (H)

Scott Von Doviak

1. The Happening (D)

2. Sex and the City (H)

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan (R)

4. The Love Guru (B)

5. The Incredible Hulk (R)

Paul Clark

1. Speed Racer (B)

2. The Incredible Hulk (R)

3. The Love Guru (B)

4. Get Smart (R)

5. Wanted (R)/Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Push)

Andrew Osborne

1. The Love Guru

2. The Incredible Hulk (R)

3. Speed Racer (B)

4. Wall*E (H)

5. Hancock (R)

Thus, after totaling our individual scores (with a secret Price-Waterhousian formula too arcane to explain at length), it seems PAUL CLARK is Screengrab’s reigning Chief Prognosticator, with the most accurate Hit AND Miss predictions for Summer ’08.

(Please send any and all cushy studio job offers to Mr. Clark, care of Screengrab@Nerve.com.)

George Lucas and the License to Print Money

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In anticipation of the upcoming animated Star Wars feature The Clone Wars, George Lucas has emerged from seclusion at Skywalker Ranch to sit for a few interviews and prime the pump. Not that he’d agree with that characterization. ““Honestly, everyone feels you have to talk about yourself all the time,” Lucas tells The Times of London. “They say I’m introverted because I don’t give many interviews. But I don’t give many interviews because I don’t make many films.”

Lucas goes on to demonstrate that there may be another reason he doesn’t give many interviews: because he has a tendency to say some funny things. For instance, his rather grandiose self-described patriarchy of the Star Wars universe. Lucas is the father – the Creator, you might say – and “the licensing group, which does the games, toys and books, and all that other stuff. I call that the son - and the son does pretty much what he wants.” He laughs. “Once in a while, they ask a question like ‘Can we kill off Yoda?’, things like that, but it’s very loose.” And the holy ghost? Why, I guess I’m part of that right now, since “the third group, the holy ghost, which is the bloggers and fans. They have created their own world. I worry about the father’s world. The son and holy ghost can go their own way.”

As part of his fatherly duties, Lucas is shepherding both an animated series (following on The Clone Wars) and a live action Star Wars series (“everybody’s dead, basically, or hiding somewhere...there are a million stories in the big city — you’ve only seen one of them”). But what about that other franchise, Indiana Jones, still hanging around in a few of the theaters not showing The Dark Knight? “If I can come up with another idea that they like, we’ll do another. Really, with the last one, Steven [Spielberg] wasn’t that enthusiastic. I was trying to persuade him. But now Steve is more amenable to doing another one. Yet we still have the issues about the direction we’d like to take. I’m in the future; Steven’s in the past. He’s trying to drag it back to the way they were, I’m trying to push it to a whole different place. So, still we have a sort of tension.” Here’s a guess that Lucas’s whole different place has a whole lot of green-screen in it.

Related:
To Protect His Stormtroopers, George Lucas Brings on the Scary Lawyers
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008

2008: Second Quarter Wrap-Up

Andrew Osborne — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

So, by the end of First Quarter 2008, I'd seen a lot of mediocrity and just one truly memorable movie (Full Battle Rattle), but I'm happy to report there's been a sharp uptick in the bottom line of my filmgoing enjoyment in the Second Quarter of the year, with an additional five flicks now vying for year-end Top Ten consideration.

Leading the pack by several furlongs is Young@Heart, an emotional loop-de-loop coaster about a chorus of feisty oldsters from Northampton, Massachusetts who tour the world delighting audiences with age-inappropriate selections like the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" and Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia." Old people singing rock songs is a funny concept (and the choristers are a delight), but as the movie goes along and mortality slowly eats away at the group, you come to appreciate the simple heroism of the people on screen, singing in the face of death as they squeeze every last drop of life from their remaining time on Earth. In general, I try not to judge people too harshly based on their personal tastes when it comes to movies, figuring everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but if you don’t get choked up at least once during Young@Heart (the tough young prisoners moved to tears by one jailhouse concert? the gut-wrenching performance of Coldplay’s “Fix You” punctuated by the rasp and click of the soloist’s respirator?) then I’m afraid it’s very possible you simply have no soul.

Less moving but a helluva lot more fun was Iron Man, that rarest of Hollywood beasts: a tent-pole summer blockbuster where the director (Jon Favreau) actually seemed to care about the script and performances more than the promotional tie-ins and CGI. Robert Downey, Jr. was always an actor more famous for his wasted potential than his screen performances, but now in his clean and sober middle age, he’s finally developed into the edgy, funny leading man he’d always threatened to be (plus Jeff Bridges + shaved head = awesome).

Other would-be and actual blockbusters I’ve seen thus far in Spring/Summer ‘08 were fair to middling (Prince Caspian, Sex & The City, Indiana Jones and the Embarrassingly Fake-Looking Monkeys), so the rest of my current Top Ten contenders have been either festival fare (The Wackness and Turn the River, reviewed in earlier posts) or lingered around the local art house long enough for me to finally catch up with them, as was the case with the great, greatly underrated gangster flick In Bruges, starring an incredibly likeable, charismatic actor I’ve never seen before named Colin Farrell (who has the misfortune of sharing a name and face with that obnoxious, sulky “bad boy” from S.W.A.T. and Miami Vice).

As for Third Quarter prospects, I have seven words for you: Journey to the Center of the Earth.

Related stories: 2008: First Quarter Wrap-Up, SXSW Review: Full Battle Rattle, Boston Independent Film Festival Review: Turn the River, Provincetown Film Festival Review: The Wackness

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: June 14-20, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

It’s time to hit the ol’ fishin’ hole (wink-wink), but before we go, let’s bask in the glory that was the week in Screengrab.

We’ve outdone ourselves with this week’s Top Ten list. To be specific, we’ve outdone ourselves by ten with the Gay Pride Top Twenty.

We may go back to Summer School, but First Sunday will be our last.

Don’t mess with the Norton. He’ll Hulk you! He’ll Hulk the shit out of you!

So was that Shyamalan guy ever any good? A look back at The Sixth Sense.

Stan Winston and Cyd Charisse are still dead.

We’re about ready to let Roman Polanski back in the country, how about you?

If you’re offended by the South Park soundtrack, we suggest you blame Canada.

Hey, Mike Myers! People sure don’t like your new movie much – aside from Deepak Chopra, of course. Perhaps you should have read Take Five: Gotta Get a Guru first.

We didn’t read the alleged Frank Darabont draft of Indiana Jones, but we posted about it anyway.

And finally, those two words that strike fear into the hearts of all right-thinking Americans: It’s Pat.

Raiders of the Leaked Frank Darabont Screenplay

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Somewhere in the crush of publicity for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you might have heard that an early version of Indy 4 was scripted by that master of the Stephen King prison movie, Frank Darabont. Among the people who spoke highly of the Darabont script was…Frank Darabont, who made it clear while doing publicity for The Mist over a year ago that he wouldn’t be sending George Lucas any congratulatory bouquets. “I spent a year of very determined effort on something I was very excited about, working very closely with Steven Spielberg and coming up with a result that I and he felt was terrific. He wanted to direct it as his next movie, and then suddenly the whole thing goes down in flames because George Lucas doesn't like the script,” Darabont told MTV. “I told him he was crazy. I said, ‘You have a fantastic script. I think you're insane, George.’ You can say things like that to George, and he doesn't even blink. He's one of the most stubborn men I know.” When asked if he’d like to share his version of Indy with the world, Darabont replied, “I would love it, but it's not my material to disseminate.”

Apparently, someone disseminated it, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof. Last week a PDF document purporting to be Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods by Frank Darabont surfaced online. Lawyers torpedoed it before we could get our hands on it, and although it’s probably still easy enough to track down, we’re slow readers anyway. So we thought we’d take a spin around the Indysphere and see if there’s any consensus about this alleged artifact.

The first thing that’s apparent: No LaBeouf. That’s right, the character of “Mutt” is entirely absent from City of the Gods. Again, per MTV: “No Mutt Williams; no Mac; a tougher, more Raiders-esque Marion; and a climax that not only gives Indy something to do (how in the world did David Koepp think to give Indy nothing?) but forces him to make a decision that rivals the end of Crusade (the cup or a father's love?), crystallizing the character and his history into one momentous singularity.” And here we thought One Momentous Singularity was the new James Bond movie.

According to the Feed, “the script is largely the same, storywise, focusing on the discovery of the crystal skull, as well as the lost city in Peru where the Gods were thought to live, only to discover that these "gods" were aliens with a culture advanced thousands of years beyond our own. Also, Marion Ravenwood is in the script…and, to my surprise, the ‘nuking the fridge’ sequence and the giant ants are there, as well. However, also in this script are Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. and Sallah, making awesome cameo appearances that really help cement the whole history of Indiana Jones, and tie the whole saga together.”

Of course, Darabont was not the only big name scribe to take a whack at Indy. Again we turn to MTV, where M. Night Shyamalan was queried about his involvement in shaping the story of the fourth installment. “I was just gathering information at that point from all the deities,” Shyamalan said, referring to Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford, [Frank] Marshall, and George Lucas. “I haven’t seen the new one yet. I can’t wait… I understand there are a few things we all talked about that are there.” I’m going to be generous and assume Night came up with the quicksand.

Related:
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008
Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Hollywood Accountants

Attack of the Spoilers!

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The big battle of the summer movie season is not Batman vs. Joker (spoiler: Batman wins) or Indiana Jones vs. whatever they are (spoiler: they’re aliens from another dimension. I think.), it’s the spoilerazzi vs. the spoiler Nazis. Entertainment Weekly comes at this most pressing issue of our time from a couple of different angles.

“Welcome to Spoiler Nation,” writes Jeff Jensen, “an irritating minority whose noisy, nosy engagement with Hollywood has deeply aggravated many of its most powerful players — and inspired many others to change the way they do business. How these leaks happen is no mystery. Spoilers have come from every corner of Hollywood, even from agents and studio execs themselves, motivated by the desire to promote an agenda or glean potential audience response.” Some spoiler sites self-flatteringly view themselves as industry watchdogs, making sure that studios aren’t taking undue liberties with their favorite franchise, serial arc or comic book character. Then there are filmmakers like J.J. Abrams who would prefer the hardcore spoiler geeks go get themselves lives, at least until his version of Star Trek comes out in 2009. "Learning raw detail and experiencing that detail as it was intended are two totally different things," he says. "I would argue that not knowing those details in advance is a more refreshing way to live when it comes to entertainment."

I agree that spoilers can be an unwelcome intrusion on the creative process as well as our enjoyment of said creation, but on the other side of the coin we find the spoiler Nazis – the miserable few who get all bent out of shape at your offhand mention that the planet of the apes was Earth all along. “Thanks a lot for ruining that 40-year-old movie I haven’t seen yet, dickweed!” Personally I can live without these people, although Ken Tucker goes a little too far in his “I spoil if I must!” manifesto: “When it comes to spoilers in reviews, I'm pretty hard-core: I don't care about 'em. Whether I'm writing a review or reading one, I don't want any held-back information to prevent that review from being the most interesting, thought-provoking one possible.” Leaving aside the question of when was the last time Tucker wrote the most interesting, thought-provoking review possible, I’ve got to take some issue with this. I’ve been writing movie reviews for nearly a decade now, and there are definitely some tricks of the trade – ways of writing about a movie’s secrets without coming right out and saying “Indiana Jones gets whacked by Tony Soprano!”

Oh, sorry. Did I ruin it?

Related:
Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008
In Search of Spock's Insurance Form

Screengrab Underestimates Ladies, Overestimates Christians

Andrew Osborne — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:30:00 GMT

Uh-oh...a New England Patriots-style cloud of doubt has formed over Screengrab’s ‘til now perfect record of summer box office predictions. While our prognostications were right on the money for Iron Man, Speed Racer and Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hit, miss, hit, respectively), the $100 million-budgeted Prince Caspian (which seemed like a surefire box office lion thanks to its successful predecessor, kid-friendly CGI and built-in Christian fanbase) will probably wind up in the “disappointment” column by the end of the season, earning less to date than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe did in a similar period, and unlikely to gain momentum as multiplexes grow ever more crowded with fresh titles in the coming weeks. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney CEO Robert Iger blames the goofy fantasy flick’s underperforming box office mojo on competition from other, more successful movies. Well, duh.

Meanwhile, our testosterone-addled prediction that nobody still cares about Sex and the City may have been a little...uh...premature. (But it’s not a “problem,” we swear!) Thanks in part to the kind of massive, all-consuming marketing campaign usually reserved for returning messiahs, Reuters is reporting brisk sales of tix for the chix flick across America, with opening weekend box office estimated between 25 and 40 million dollars. Considering the production’s relatively low budget (somewhere in the vicinity of $65 million dollar’s worth of Manolos), the film could turn out to be hugely profitable for the fashionista posse.

My own observations last night at AMC’s Boston Common theater (where I was seeing the awesome, uber-dudely Iron Man) would seem to confirm the hype. In a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock’s The Birds, I found myself in the midst of a frankly unnerving swarm of cell-phone toting ladies, many costumed in Sex-y fashions like an XX-chromosome version of the standard Wookies-and-Jawas Star Wars crowd. It was the most women I’ve ever seen in a movie theater (or anywhere, really, outside of Filene’s Basement), and surely bodes well for the future of women-centric films starring actresses over forty.

Or maybe I’ve just had one too many Cosmos.

Eddie Murphy Exhumes “Beverly Hill Cop”

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

There must be some sort of misunderstanding. See, the other day I wrote about reviving another '80s action hero in the wake of successful return visits from Rambo and Indiana Jones. But I was talking about Mad Max. Some signals must have gotten crossed because I definitely didn’t mean Beverly Hills Cop.

Yet here it is in Variety: “On the heels of the successful revival of the Indiana Jones franchise, Paramount has set in motion a fourth installment of Beverly Hills Cop. Eddie Murphy is attached to reprise his role as Detroit detective Axel Foley, and Brett Ratner is negotiating to direct.”

Whose bright idea was this? Unsurprisingly, it was the star of Norbit and Meet Dave himself. “Murphy approached the studio about reviving the franchise that cemented his status as a B.O. mega-star.” With such announced upcoming projects as The Incredible Shrinking Man and Untitled Eddie Murphy/Romeo and Juliet Project, you’d think his plate would be full, but hey, lucky us. Now we can only wait and wonder if Judge Reinhold is available.

Thursday Morning Poll for May 29, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

In what was the biggest landslide of any Thursday Morning Poll to date, Raiders of the Lost Ark was the runaway favorite among the Indiana Jones movies, as chosen by our faithful Screengrab readers. I could have predicted that, but what I could not have predicted was that 78% of you would go for it. Nor could I have predicted that there would be more non-Indy fans than defenders of Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull, to say nothing of Last Crusade, which garnered no votes whatsoever in the favorites poll. Meanwhile, in a somewhat closer race, Temple proved to be the least favorite installment of our readership, whose ears were no doubt still ringing from all that Kate Capshaw screeching. I don't necessarily agree, but I certainly can understand.

This week, we move from one aging action hero to another, to commemorate the release of Rambo on DVD, as well as the recent theatrical bow of the Sly-free Son of Rambow. So which Rambo adventure is your favorite?

As always, your remarks are welcome in the comments section.

Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008

Peter Smith — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I think we can all agree that Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest adventure films ever made. Its two sequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade both have some serious flaws. Temple of Doom is shrill, silly, arguably racist and saddled with an atrocious love interest; Last Crusade is a hammy rehash of Raiders where the jokes are all broader and the characters are all stupider. But they have their moments. As I sit here trying to review Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I just can't muster the enthusiasm. Crystal Skull, sadly, makes Temple of Doom and Last Crusade look like, well, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In fairness, it's hard to imagine a fourth Indy movie being particularly good at this point, for reasons that become all-too-clear in the first fifteen minutes of Crystal Skull. With Harrison Ford twenty years older than he was in Last Crusade, the film couldn't be credibly set in the '30s. Thus, Crystal Skull takes place in 1957. Divorced from his pre-war milieu — an era when lost cities and ancient artifacts could plausibly still be hiding off the map — Indy looks sad and out-of-place. He's a great, iconic character, but a lot of the power of that iconography comes from its pre-World-War-II context. There's something jarring about watching a fedora-clad Ford in an Eisenhower-era suburb.

And speaking of that suburb, into which Indy stumbles at the beginning of Crystal Skull — well, it's a test site, and our man is about to get nuked. Sure, the Indiana Jones movies have always been frantically action-packed, but Steven Spielberg used to know how to build to a climax. That the hero survives a nuclear test in the first fifteen minutes says something about the filmmakers' lack of restraint. That lack of restraint (and I know, "restraint" and "Spielberg" don't always go together, but look again at the pitch-perfect balance of Raiders ) is also apparent in Skull's comedy, which is as precious as Last Crusade's and clumsily executed to boot. Watch for a sequence wherein Shia LaBeouf, as Indy's son (by no means the worst part of the film, contrary to fan expectations) rescues his father from a pit of quicksand. . . by using a snake as a rope. Indiana Jones hates snakes, remember? (I'm guessing this was George Lucas's idea.) Ford mugs through this scene like no one fetched him his Metamucil; in fact, for the whole movie, despite being remarkably fit for a sixty-five-year-old, he's given little to do. At the big finale, he pretty much gets out of the way. As for the father-son relationship, given that it's one of Spielberg's favorite tropes, it's remarkable how little resonance he gets out of it.

But again, resonance may have been a lost cause, given the constraints of setting. I can think of only one way Crystal Skull might've worked. Don't ignore the problems — embrace them. Instead of making Indy's age and the time period a relative non-issue after the obligatory gags about crankiness, make the movie about his age. Make it about the loss of the pre-war world. Where the other Indiana Jones movies end with supernatural cataclysms, scrap the ludicrous ending of Crystal Skull (the titular skull is an alien's, and I'll say no more) and end with the film's one memorable image — the old adventurer, silhouetted against a mushroom cloud. A man out of time, faced with a technology orders of magnitude more destructive than any cursed artifact he could ever dig up. That might be a bit of a downer, but it'd mean something. And I'm sorry to say it, but unlike its motley bunch of predecessors, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't mean much of anything.

In(dy) Other Blogs

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Because the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been so criminally overlooked by the mainstream media, it’s been up to the blogosphere to pick up the slack. As Paul Clark tipped you in his revisitation of the Temple of Doom, Cerebral Mastication is the hub of Indy blogdom, so a tip of the well-worn fedora to Ali Arikan for the centralized linkage.

The House Next Door offers a three-fer, looking back at all three previous Indiana Jones movies. Matt Zoller Seitz emerges from semi-retirement to offer his own thoughts on Temple of Doom, which he says “has the series' simplest plot, most annoying love interest, most casually racist and imperialist attitudes and most grotesque imagery (Doom and its summer-of-'84 blockbuster cousin, the Spielberg-produced Gremlins, sparked the creation of a new MPAA rating, PG-13). At the same time, though, it's the most viscerally intense entry in the series and the most wide-ranging in its moods, spotlighting the imaginations of Spielberg and his co-producer, George Lucas, at their most freewheeling. It's a blast from the id—like Close Encounters, 1941, E.T. and A.I, a rare instance of the director appearing to construct images and situations for his own private reasons, rather than keeping his eyes and ears attuned for signs of viewer discontent.”

At Edward Copeland on Film, David Gaffen has narrowed his focus to a single scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark – the one “where Indiana Jones, realizing that the Ark of the Covenant is to be placed on a plane and flown out of Egypt, sets out to sabotage the plane.” Gaffen proceeds shot-by-shot to dissect the workings of a signature action sequence. “The escalation here is deliberate – slowly ratchet up the tension within a scene that is already filled with active movement, derivative of Hitchcock in its cleverness even if Spielberg still names the 1950s serials as his original inspiration. The elements added in are small, careful ones – a shot of the wing grazing a nearby fuel truck, which spills gasoline. Just as the large German was introduced as a potential opponent this is presented as a problem, the proverbial gun in Act I that has to be fired in Act II.”

At Cinema Styles, Jonathan Lapper is trying to get excited about this whole thing. “A lot can change in 27 years. That's how long it's been since the original Raiders of the Lost Ark and it's been nearly two decades since the last one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Look at it this way: Two of the biggest adventure hits of 1954 were 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Naked Jungle. Now imagine Kirk Douglas and Charlton Heston making sequels to those movies in 1981, 27 years later. By 1981 the movie landscape was decidedly different than it was in 1954 and 2008 is decidedly different than 1981. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't sense the excitement about a new Indiana Jones film like I did in the eighties. When the other two sequels were released they, like the Star Wars sequels The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were the summer movies to see. Now Indiana Jones is practically lost in the shuffle.”

Cinematical has a week’s worth of Indy stuff on offer. They’ve got us covered for List-o-Mania this week with Seven Indiana Jones Knock-Offs. Number one is Tomb Raider: “It's like all the initial three Indiana Jones films wrapped up in one, with added sex appeal in casting Angelina Jolie in the Harrison Ford role. Yet Jolie as Croft is too serious to be the female counterpart to Ford's Indy. Also, while the Indiana Jones films deal with some level of magically religious fantasy, they're at least grounded by ‘real’ or familiar artifacts such as the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. And they tend to remain just realistic enough to avoid things like giant six-armed statues that come to life.”

Remember those kids who made the shot-for-shot remake of Raiders back in the 80s? Well, they’ve hit the big time – sort of. According to Underwire, “On May 14, eight days before the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, now-grown filmmakers Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb will showcase their movie at the landmark Mann's Chinese Theater. But the guys who made it won't see a dime. ‘Due to copyright issues, revenue from the screenings of our film must go to a nonprofit organization,’ said Strompolos…While Adaptation can't be screened for profit, the DIY back story has turned into a moneymaker for Strompolos, Zala and Lamb. Big-shot movie producer Scott Rudin (There Will Be Blood) purchased rights to their real-life filmmaking adventures and hired Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) to write the script for Paramount Pictures.”

Thursday Morning Poll for May 22, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

As I suspected last week, there really aren’t too many good movies with Prince in the title. However, there were enough good ones to make last week’s poll fairly close. In a tight race, John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness eked past Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City by a single vote, with Lubtisch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg trailing close behind in third. Along with also-rans Prince of Egypt and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, there was also some love shown to Hammer’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness, though none for the Mario Lanza version of Student Prince. And yeah, I totally forgot about The Prince of Tides. My bad.

Seeing as how this is Indiana Jones week, I thought the topic of this morning’s poll would be fairly obvious. After all, most of us love Indy, but nobody loves all of his movies the same. Which one is your favorite?

And since the first poll could very well be a landslide, go ahead and weigh in on your least favorite as well:

Naturally, I hope you folks will wait to see Crystal Skull before voting, but that’s up to you. And as always, feel free to chime in down there in the comments section.

Steven Spielberg: Teacher’s Pet?

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

The fourth Indiana Jones movie has finally been unveiled at Cannes, and it didn’t take long for the initial critical reaction to hit the intertubes. (In fact, indiewire critic Eric Kohn actually texted his review line by line from the theater as the movie was screening. No word yet on whether this caused Armond White’s brain to explode.) The consensus so far hasn’t exactly been one of childlike glee (with the exception of Roger Ebert, who says “If you liked the other movies, you will like this one, and if you did not, there is no talking to you.”). Manohla Dargis of the New York Times sums it up thusly: “I was bored out of my mind while watching the movie, which makes me think that Spielberg was terribly bored while directing it.”

Peter Rainer of the L.A. Times takes that last idea and runs with it, asking the musical question, “Will Spielberg take a walk on the wild side?” Seems like it might be a little late in the game for that, but Rainer does offer an interesting analysis of Spielberg’s career trajectory. “Steven Spielberg, who at 22 was hired by Universal to a long-term contract, started out his career as the teacher's pet of the Movie Brat generation,” Rainer writes. “While many of his '70s confederates, who also were to include such directors as Terrence Malick, Jonathan Demme and Philip Kaufman, were attempting to work outside the industry, or subvert it from within through sheer force of artistry, Spielberg was directing episodes of Night Gallery and Marcus Welby, M.D. and then moving on to sharks and flying saucers.”

After doing his part to birth the modern-day blockbuster, however, Spielberg followed a traditional Hollywood road to respectability, moving on to important, “Oscar-worthy” work like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, movies which Rainer argues are “afflicted with a kind of transcendent Stanley Kramerism. We are made to understand that moral lessons are being imparted and that, in the end, tomorrow will somehow be a better day.” Spielberg only truly began to challenge himself, Rainer argues, with the darker fantasy pictures that followed: AI, Minority Report and War of the Worlds. While conceding that these are flawed films, “more fascinating as psychodrama than as drama,” he also makes the case that they “in many ways upend his beloved early work.”

Some are saying the same about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But they don’t necessarily mean it as a compliment.

DVD Digest for May 13, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

This week: two new Criterion DVDs, the comeback effort of a master filmmaker, and the Chairman of the Board all compete for your DVD dollar. Who will win? Why, DVD buyers, of course!

DVD of the Week: For sheer comprehensiveness, nothing can touch Warner’s 22-film, 5-box-set tribute to the one and only Frank Sinatra. For all of Sinatra’s success as a recording artist, he was also a talented actor, given the right role, and this week sees the release of a number of his finest films. Among these are his Oscar-nominated performance in Otto Preminger’s The Man With the Golden Arm and Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running, both of which are included in the Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years box set. But if you prefer Sinatra the fresh-faced young crooner, check out Frank Sinatra: The Early Years, which includes such early-career titles as Step Lively, It Happened in Brooklyn, and The Kissing Bandit. Or see Sinatra match his pipes with Gene Kelly’s nimble feet in The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection, comprised of the classic musicals On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and Anchors Aweigh. And if special features are your thing, there’s always The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which finds the Chairman at his least inspired vehicles but leaves plenty of room for gawking at swingin’ celebrities of yore. Heck, Warner is even releasing 1993’s miniseries Sinatra on DVD this week, in case you want your Sinatra without all that Sinatra. All that’s missing is Sinatra’s two most acclaimed films, The Manchurian Candidate and From Here to Eternity. But I’m guessing you already own those, right?

As previously mentioned, this week also brings the release of two brand-spankin' new Criterions, Louis Malle’s The Lovers and The Fire Within. Also of note in classics on DVD: The Big Trail: Fox Grandeur Special Edition; the Godard double-feature of La Chinoise (Kino) and Le Gai Savoir; a new edition of Anthony Mann’s Man of the West (Fox); Saturday Night Live: The Complete Third Season (Universal); and the Fox Western Classics Collection, which includes the new-to-DVD titles Garden of Evil, Rawhide, and The Gunfighter. And in shameless cash-in news, this week brings new DVDs of all three Indiana Jones films, with a few added extra features so that buyers won’t feel completely ripped off.

In more recent films, today brings the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (Sony, also Blu-Ray), his first official directorial effort in a decade. The film was generally regarded as a critical and popular disaster, but I found it fascinating- flawed to be sure, but intriguingly so- and I believe it’ll finally be appreciated for what it is on DVD. Also this week: Diane Lane in Untraceable (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Diane Keaton, Katie Holmes and Queen Latifah in Mad Money (Anchor Bay); and the French horror film Frontier(s) (Lionsgate). The other major new release this week is the DVD debut of The Animation Show 3 (Paramount), last year’s touring program of animated shorts presented by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. The DVD includes Hertzfeldt’s latest masterpiece Everything will be OK, as well as sixteen other shorts, some of which have been added especially for the DVD release.

This week’s Blu-Ray only releases are: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Fox); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Fox); Mrs. Doubtfire (Fox); and just in time for this weekend’s new blockbuster, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which brings me to this week’s Huddleston corner, in which we sigh over the lonely release of Warner’s One Missed Call on HD-DVD. I mean really, guys- you’re just kidding around now, right?

All-Night Mockbuster Marathon

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

It’s time for another all-night marathon, so put on a pot of coffee, find the sweet spot on the couch and join me for a nocturnal journey into the shadowy world of the mockbuster. (If you’re not sure what a mockbuster is, here’s a handy primer.)

12 midnight. We begin with the latest mockbuster from the good people at the Asylum, Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Lost Skulls. I’ll bet you can guess which blockbuster-in-waiting occasioned the release of this one. Although the character of Allan Quatermain actually predates the creation of Indiana Jones by nearly a century, his reappearance now is a case of history repeating itself. Temple of Skulls is based on H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines, as was the 1985 film starring Richard Chamberlain, a mockbuster before they had a word for it. (Back then, we charitably called it a Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff.) This doesn’t stop the producers from claiming that Allan Quatermain inspired Indiana Jones, which is partially true but certainly misleading in this context. In any case, there is no temple of skulls in the movie, so you can bet it was retitled once Lucasfilm announced the name of the latest Indiana Jones flick. Anyway, as Temple of Skulls begins, two rugged prospector types in South Africa find the map to King Solomon’s mines. Not trusting each other, they split it in half to ensure they’ll stick together. Shortly thereafter they are attacked by Zulus and the map pieces blow away. Some time later, rugged great white hunter Quatermain (Sean Michael) gets his hands on one half.

12:20 am. I’m trying to figure out when this movie is set. We’ve got coal-burning trains, ladies in frilly frocks, black dudes in hip-hop hats and Nazi references. So I guess…some time in the last 70 years or so? Anyway, Quatermain has teamed up with Sir Henry and Lady Anna, a wealthy couple with the other half of the map. They are being pursued by Quatermain’s arch-nemesis, a scenery chewer straight out of an old Hammer horror movie.

12:30 am. Here we have a five-mile-an-hour chase between a truck and a locomotive engine. It’s like someone stuck a Monty Python sketch in the middle of the movie.

12:45 am. Our heroes dodge CGI bugs, then encounter a (real) rhino. This scene is edited Survivor-style; we have no idea if the rhino is even in the same hemisphere as Quatermain and the gang.

1:00 am. In fine National Geographic tradition, Quatermain and company are captured by bare-breasted natives. There is a bizarre CGI Zulu head-removal ritual.

1:15 am. I was expecting pretty much constant action and zero plot from Temple of Skulls, but that’s not actually the case. For all I know, it’s a reasonably faithful adaptation. I must give the Asylum credit for scenery at least; the movie is purty to look at.

1:40 am. Let us move on to King of the Lost World, another literary adaptation posing as a recent blockbuster. It’s loosely based on A. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, with the addition of “King” to the title and a picture of a big scary ape on the cover to fool drunk people at Blockbuster into renting it. The box also trumpets an appearance by Bruce Boxleitner – star of Scarecrow and Mrs. King! Well, that’ll bring the kids into the tent. Anyway, King opens with a plane crashing onto an island, announcing its intentions to rip off not only King Kong and Jurassic Park but also Lost. This is confirmed when we see a stewardess trapped up in a tree. Three minutes into the movie, a giant gorilla snatches her. We won’t be seeing him again for a while.

2:00 am. Giant bug attack!

2:10 am. There’s a glitch in the DVD and I have to jump ahead five minutes, at which point maggots are being used to heal a woman’s wound. So glad I didn’t miss that.

2:25 am. Our heroes find a fighter jet with an active nuke. The mysterious Bruce Boxleitner knows how to hot-wire it.

2:40 am. Things are happening now! One dude gets impaled by a giant scorpion. The others are taken hostage by skull-face painted natives. There are boobies! And lesbian natives!

2:50 am. A flurry of terrible CGI: we’ve got pterodactyls, plus the giant ape finally returns, though he looks blurry and pixilated. (Another reason CGI must die: think about how much progress in giant robot ape technology could have been made by now.) Boxleitner reveals he was sent to disarm the nuke, which really makes no sense, especially once he explains that the bomb has a limited range of 300 yards. Anyway, they blow up the ape real good. Okay, I’m lying. It’s not real good.

3:00 am. It’s time for The Da Vinci Treasure. Here’s how you know these folks at the Asylum aren’t completely shameless: the film concerns a forensic archeologist and his search for the Da Vinci codex. See – they could have called this The Da Vinci Codex! Maybe they didn’t quite have the grapes for that (though they did make The Transmorphers, unreviewed here – I’ve got my limits too, junior.)

3:15 am. Anyway, the main players here are a haggard C. Thomas Howell as our hero Michael Archer, an earring-sporting Lance Henriksen as the villainous Dr. John Coven, and Nicole Sherwin as your typically hot linguist/theologian. Throughout the movie, director Peter Mervis (Snakes on a Train) employs an annoying effect that kept making me think there was something wrong with my DVD player. It’s a sort of freeze-frame/flash/jumpcut deal – like someone mentions Jesus, and suddenly there’s a flash of light, a whoosh, quick shots of a crucifix and the Last Supper, and then back to the scene. I guess this pumps up the excitement level, as if looking for hidden clues on the Shroud of Turin weren’t exciting enough!

3:20 am. We have our first mention of the Knights Templar! Also, the Shroud of Turin is apparently kept in the basement of the Alamo.

3:30 am. And Da Vinci invented 3-D glasses, in case you were wondering.

3:45 am. In what must be the most expensive scene in any of these Asylum movies, there is a smash-em-up car chase through the streets of London (or San Diego, whatever) involving a tour bus. Fortunately they didn’t have to pay the guy playing the Casio on the soundtrack too much.

4:15 am. Apparently I nodded off during the big revelation scene in The Da Vinci Treasure. I’m sure it changed the face of Christianity forever, but there’s no time to go back! Let’s wrap this up with an old school mockbuster to cleanse the palate, shall we? Of course I’m talking about 1988’s timeless E.T. ripoff, Mac and Me. We begin on another planet, where a family of aliens is accidentally sucked into the vacuum hose of a rover from Earth. The aliens, I guess, are meant to be cute, but to me they look like giant sea monkeys or very confused burn victims.

4:30 am. After the alien family is brought to Earth, the smallest alien, or Mysterious Alien Creature, or MAC (you see?), hitches a ride with a single mother and her two sons moving to California. They don’t notice him, but he keeps getting into mischief, and the youngest, wheelchair-bound brother Eric keeps getting blamed for it.

4:45 am. Eric plummets off a cliff in his wheelchair and is rescued by Mac. When he tells the doctor what happened, the doc diagnoses him with “schizofreakia” and decides to dope him up. Ah, the 80s.

5:00 am. Breakdancing! At McDonald’s! With Ronald McDonald and football players and – don’t take my word for it, see for yourself:

5:15 am. By now everyone believes Mac exists, and they help reunite him with his family members, who are trapped in a mineshaft out by those windmills from Rain Man. The kids nurse the aliens back to life with nourishing sips of Coca-Cola. I tell ya, this movie is Morgan Spurlock’s worst nightmare.

5:30 am. Of course, government agents are in hot pursuit of Mac, and in their attempts to capture him they manage to blow up an entire mall and kill Eric in the process. Fortunately, Mac and his family are able to suck the death right out of him. Apparently the aliens don’t hold their ill treatment by the agents against their government, as the movie concludes with the whole family becoming U.S. citizens. A final ominous title card claims “We’ll Be Back.” We’re still waiting. And by “we,” I mean “not me.” Good night.

Previously: All-Night Bigfoot Movie Marathon

Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two!

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

So, according to Perez Hilton, the $100 million jalopy Speed Racer is the "first bomb of the 'summer' box office season," with a dismal $20 million take over the weekend...and some insiders are voicing doubts that it grossed even that much.

Woo-hoo! Sad news for the Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Chim Chim the monkey, perhaps...but it does mean we here at the Screengrab currently have a perfect batting average with regard to our predictions for the Top 5 Hits and Misses of the 2008 Summer Movie Season.

Speed Racer was #4 on our "Miss" list, and the gazillion-dollar grossing Iron Man was #4 on our "Hit" List. The only dark cloud on our prediction horizon is the recent bad buzz about our #3 "Hit" pick.

Considering the disappointments of Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade, my own expectations of Crystal Skull are already, shall we say, pretty well managed...but it remains to be seen whether or not the bad buzz translates to disappointing box office when Indiana Jones premieres on May 22.

Burt Reynolds Builds a Bandit

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:30:00 GMT

First Rocky did it, then Rambo. Indiana Jones is about to do it, and even Dirty Harry is rumored to be thinking about it. So if all of these movie geezers can come out of retirement for one more adventure, why can’t the Bandit? Of course I refer to Bo “Bandit” Darville, the iconic Burt Reynolds rogue who drove circles around Sheriff Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movies. While a big-screen re-launch of the franchise may currently exist only in the sickest corner of my diseased brain, Burt Reynolds has recently reunited with the black TransAm he made famous. Sort of.

In Celebrity Rides: Burt Builds a Bandit, a 5-part series that aired on something called the DIY Network but is now available on DVD, Reynolds teams with car restoration company YearOne to design and build a new custom version of the car using the original 1977-78 model. Actually, saying Reynolds “teams” with the restoration group is a bit generous; he shows up at the shop a couple of times to reminisce and grunt a few suggestions, footage of which is scattered throughout the episodes to make him seem like a consistent presence. In fact, there’s probably less than an hour of actual content in the whole two-and-a-half hour series; the footage is all chopped and shuffled and re-used over and over, following the time-honored TV dictum: tell people what they’re going to see, let them see it, and then tell them what they just saw.

Still, if you’re a know-nothing gearhead like me, it’s fun to see an old-school TransAm pulled out of a field, completely stripped down and rebuilt to modern specifications, even if replacing the CB radio with an Alpine navigation system does seem like sacrilege. Clips from the original Smokey are scattered throughout, and they mostly serve to highlight how shockingly frail Reynolds looks these days. He’s making another big screen comeback attempt with Deal, in theaters tomorrow, but it’s a safe bet that his years of going eastbound and down are long behind him, good buddy.

Indiana Jones 4: LaBeouf Apparently Doesn’t Mind Being Called Junior

John Constantine — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 20:53:00 GMT

Alright, I admit, that’s cheating. Indiana Jones doesn’t call Shia LaBeouf "Junior" anywhere in this new featurette on the official Kingdom of the Crystal Skull website. You, however, will delight in this reference to a fondly remembered film starring related characters! Ill-suited allusions aside, I found LaBeouf pretty endearing here and it’s helped get me more excited to see just what the movie’s going to be like. Given, I’m already pretty endeared towards people who get arrested at Walgreens. Nothing brings people together like shared experience.

What’s up with this picture though? Why are the Jones boys on Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Hidden Temple?

You can check out the featurette here. Thanks to Cinematical for the spot!

In Other Blogs: Good Friday Edition

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:00:00 GMT

You may or may not have the day off, but rest assured, In Other Blogs never rests.

Cinematical commemorates the release of Drillbit Taylor with the Big-Screen Bullies You Love to Hate. Our personal favorite, O’Bannion from Dazed and Confused, comes in third, with top honors going to Marty McFly’s nemesis from the Back to the Future series. “The ultimate jerk, Biff Tannen is everything you'd ever want in an on-screen bully all wrapped up into one tall, dumb-looking knucklehead.”

Beyond the Multiplex offers up some Cannes gossip. The official selections won’t be announced for a couple of weeks, but Andrew O’Hehir isn’t buying rumors that the Coens’ Burn After Reading or the latest Indiana Jones movie will be opening the festival. “I wish I felt the same skepticism about the rumor recently floated by Hollywood Reporter blogger Steven Zeitchik to the effect that Michael Patrick King's likely-to-be-misbegotten Sex and the City: The Movie may wind up as opening-night fare at the Palais des Festivals. Unfortunately, it all fits: modest star power, wide international appeal and a certain vapid pretense at sophistication and cultural significance.”

Scanners takes a look at Las Vegas, as seen in the movies. “Like Disney World, it's hard to imagine anybody actually living there. For most, it represents a transitory state, impossible to sustain. Few care to wonder what happens to all that money, all that lust, any more than they wonder how much of that water from pools and fountains simply evaporates into the desert air. Win or lose, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

A couple of weeks back we gave praise to the mysteriously eloquent blog title Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. With baseball season just a few days away, proprietor Dennis Cozzalio offers a sort of explanation disguised as a fantasia of attending a ballgame with the Fistful of Dollars director. “He looks at me like I’m crazy. The old man has come to see, in this accelerated afternoon, a microcosm of the world on the field, in its orderly procedures and open-ended framework, a game that takes as long as it takes to play out to the end, sometimes nine innings, sometimes more. Does not the infield fly rule negate some of the possibility of unpredictability in a game that otherwise thrives on it, a game where any number of things can happen in any given moment, despite its apparently rigorous structure? If Tuco can shoot intruders with a gun half-submerged in a filthy bathtub, then why cannot a shortstop pretend to bobble a ball and lure a runner into a trap?”

Finally, Slashfilm presents a gallery of film geek graffiti.

Trailer Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

John Constantine — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:22:00 GMT

I remember going to see The Waterboy early in November of 1998. I was there for one reason and one reason only: to see the trailer for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Even then, I could see the seeds of tragedy waiting for me in the coming spring. But sixteen year-old John Constantine was filled with nerd zealotry and managed to convince himself that the few minutes of lightsabers and wooden dialogue he saw on screen promised a great film worthy of its legacy. Twenty-five year old John Constantine knows better. This trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens with an explicit attempt to get the nostalgia juices flowing but gets awkward fast. We get a few scenes of dominatrix-fantasy Cate Blanchett chasing Henry Jones Jr. through some very, very familiar locales, a vintage theme song that seems oddly out of place, and some one-liners that feel a little too fan fiction for comfort. Don’t take this as typical pop-culture addict cynicism. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.

The Rambow Connection

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Rambo may not have defeated Hannah Montana at the box office, but in racking up a respectable $30 million so far, there’s already talk that this may not be the mush-mouthed muscleman’s final go-round. While Sylvester Stallone claims he’s hanging up the headband, Harvey Weinstein is enthusiastic enough to start formulating story ideas, and a newly inked two-film deal may have the Italian Stallion scrambling for a new HGH prescription soon enough.

Meanwhile, Rambo’s reemergence into the pop culture may give a boost to a "quirky little British movie" that might have otherwise been sunk by its association with the character. Son of Rambow is set for release in May, after clearing some legal hurdles caused by its inclusion of footage from the original Rambo vehicle. Directed by Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), Rambow is a coming-of-age tale about a sheltered young British boy whose life is changed when he views a bootleg tape of First Blood. Thus inspired, he and a friend set about making their own homemade sequel to the movie, which we’re guessing turns out better than Rambo III, at least.

First Blood was released by the long-defunct Carolco, and its rights are now held by StudioCanal, which purchased the Carolco library after the company was deep-sixed by the failure of its final high-profile releases, Showgirls and Cutthroat Island. Paramount Vantage acquired Son of Rambow after its debut at Sundance a year ago, but has been unable to release it until now. According to Variety, a deal was struck with StudioCanal, which will release the movie in the U.K. in April.

If the plot of Rambow sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, the video remake of the original Indiana Jones adventure. Produced over seven years in the 1980s, this labor of love received Steven Spielberg’s seal of approval, and — surprise! — a movie about the boys who made it is now in the works. Ah, the ’80s: the decade that just keeps on giving.

Take Five: We Love The '80s

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

American moviegoers can't get enough of the 1980s, apparently. Those of us who had to live through it the first time remember it primarily as a time of bad metal, worse sitcoms, and waiting around to see what dumb-ass thing Ronald Reagan would say next, but to the generations that followed, it is a time for richly veined cultural nostalgia. From what we can recollect through the haze of drugs and alcohol that coat our memories of the decade, the hallmark of 1980s cinema was very loud explosions punctuated by the occasional car chase or wise-cracking black transvestite. It's not something we thought anyone would be eager to repeat, and yet there have been, in recent memory, new installments of the Die Hard and Rocky franchises; a new TV series based on The Terminator; an upcoming Indiana Jones picture; and, opening all across the country this Friday, a new Rambo movie. Even the Screengrab is getting into the act, with Gabriel Mckee posting his top ten action heroes who deserve a comeback, many of whom hail from the Decade That Time Refuses To Forget. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em: so says Take Five as we present a fistful of '80s action movies that we. . . well, we don't love, exactly, but we at least look back on with something less than severe brain trauma.

ROCKY III (1982)

Sure, the first movie had heart and soul. And the second movie had a ruthless determination to capitalize on the first movie's heart and soul. But do you know what they didn't have? Do you know what they lacked, which made the third installment unquestionably the best of all the Rocky movies? That's right: MR. T. They didn't have Mr. T, and as such, they suffered, as do all artistic projects not involving Mr. T. Here's a little secret they don't teach you at film school: sure, Citizen Kane might have been the greatest movie of all time — but it would have been even better if it had been able to feature Mr. T yelling at people. And Rocky III, whatever its other faults — and it had hundreds, from its hamhanded TV-movie direction (by Sly himself) to its predictable storyline — at least gave us Mr. T yelling at people in abundance. When his Clubber Lang (a savage, media-loathing brute allegedly inspired by young George Foreman) wasn't yelling at people, he was beating people up, and Rocky III brings us the double pleasure of seeing Sylvester Stallone clobbered by Clubber and Hulk Hogan as "Thunderlips". Just turn it off halfway through.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986)

If it wasn't the most exciting or accomplished action movie of the 1980s, it was at least probably the most enjoyable: Big Trouble in Little China was brought to us by an uncharacteristically light-hearted John Carpenter, and worked both as a straight-up pseudo-mystical punch-'em-out and as a loopy parody of same. Carried largely on the back of Kurt Russell's endearing performance as antihero "ol' Jack Burton", a trucker who's chock full of bogus wisdom delivered in a ridiculously over-the-top John Wayne accent. Part of the reason it plays so well as both sincere action and goofy action send-up is because the script was written by W.D. Richter, who originally conceived it as a sequel to his own The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension from two years earlier. Legal and financial issues kept the sequel from being made, but Big Trouble features some of its characteristic touches and clever bits of dialogue. It also features swell performances from a young Kim Cattrall and James Hong, everyone's favorite inscrutable Asian. Besides, how can you not love a movie featuring a wizard named Egg Shen?

ACTION JACKSON (1988)
Where is the love for Sgt. Jericho Jackson, we ask you? Where? This compelling saga of America's forgotten black action hero was released in the same month as Bloodsport, making 1988 — which also brought us Die Hard, Above the Law, Red Heat and They Live — a banner year from cheesy guilty-pleasure action movies. This one had it all: a post-Rocky, pre-Arrested Development Carl Weathers playing a tough Detroit cop who was also an all-American track star and a Harvard-educated attorney; former Prince plaything Vanity making hay while the sun shone as a sex kitten; Sharon Stone, doing the thing that she was best known for doing before everyone all of the sudden decided to take her seriously; and villains Craig T. Nelson and Robert Davi overacting like there was no tomorrow. (Which, for Robert Davi at least, there probably wasn't.) Action Jackson had everything you could have wanted out of a 1980s action flick: a wisecracking tough guy hero, naked dead chicks, tons of explosions, people dying in extremely creative ways, egregious use of narcotics, and a protagonist whose name rhymed! Come back, Carl Weathers, all is forgiven.

BLOODSPORT (1988)

Before Jean-Claude Van Damme was a full-time crazy person, he was America's next big martial arts star. Bloodsport was the movie that put the rubber-groined Belgian on the map, portraying real-life martial arts semi-star Frank Dux. The plot of Bloodsport — well, it's giving it a lot more credit than it deserves to even call it a plot, involving (as does every other martial arts movie ever made) a bunch of well-toned Asians out to kick each other in the face. It's not much for memorable acting, either; Van Damme had already, in his first starring role, perfected the self-satisfied smirk that would carry him through the rest of his career, and while the movie does feature a young Forest Whitaker as a federal agent tasked to stand around looking exasperated, it also features Leah Ayres failing to become America's sweetheart, Donald Gibb trying to make the transition from hooligan to lummox, and Bolo Yeung (the former Bruce Lee nemesis known as Yang Tse) putting in the kind of performance only a trunk full of steroids can deliver. But it does feature some stunning martial arts battles, which is really all you can hope for in a movie like this.

ROAD HOUSE (1989)

In all the calls for a revival of action movie heroes like Rocky, Rambo, Ryan, and Indy, where are the legions of fans clamoring for a return of James Dalton? Patrick Swayze desperately needs something to do, people. Believe it or not, there was once a time when women would line up around the block to get a load of this chunk-headed 'King of the Sleepers' with his shirt off, and nowhere was he more chunk-headed or shirtless than in this deleriously zany action flick about a Zen-influenced tough guy ("Pain don't hurt") who is hired, despite his small stature and philosophy degree from NYU, to act as the bouncer at an out-of-control bar. Directed by a former electrician named Rowdy and co-starring Kelly Lynch at the height of her blondeness, Road House transcends its shortcomings by being so completely indifferent to its own craziness that it chugs along on its own energy with nary a look back. Ben Gazzara is the bad guy in this thing, clearly bombed out of his coconut, and it features the immortal line "I used to fuck guys like you in prison".