Indy 4: Eating Crow
May 31By the time I sat down in the theater to actually see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I wasn’t really expecting the worst, as I have for months. In fact, I hoped it would be pretty good, as some of the reviews had suggested.
See, try as I might, I can only hate George Lucas to a point…I still WANT to like his movies, and wish for the best every time I watch his movies, even ones I’ve seen a thousand times. And Spielberg…well, I just passionately love the guy. Even his mistakes are fascinating to me.
So maybe it was those softened feelings, and just plain wanting to love another Indy movie. Or maybe it was being in a movie theater at 9:15 in the morning on a Monday, when I’d usually be slaving away in the cube farm, plowing the fields of bullshit for nuggets of gold.
Whatever it was, I enjoyed the living HELL out of Indiana Jones 4, and I don’t care who knows it.
Am I tasting a bit of crow as I type this? Sure. I deserve it. I’ve complained for months about a new Indy flick, in the classical hyperannoying fanboy style. I’m sure the halls of Lucasfilm, and the halls of Blogdom, have echoed with the howling of my hysterical rants.
I was wrong. No, scratch that–I was right; making a fourth Indiana Jones movie was a spectacularly awful idea. Fortunately, they managed to make a good movie out of that bad idea.
The Cranes Take No Responsibility for Jar Jar, However
May 30For those seeking to clothe themselves in the ultimate insider-y Star Wars reference, here is an awesome t-shirt.
I happened upon this baby on my recent trip to the Bay Area. It was being modeled by a cardboard cut-out Stephen Colbert in Pendragon and I had to have it immediately. I used to see these cranes every day on my commute. They sort of announce your return to the East Bay, all cool and crazy and beast-like. Anyway, I always loved them because they reminded me of the AT-AT Imperial Walkers. Then someone told me (upon seeing my shirt) that the cranes were actually one of the big AT-AT inspirations, as Bay Arean Lucas used to drive past them all the dang time. I don’t know if this is true or urban geek legend, but it certainly is plausible.
So anyway, here we have a tee that shows off my Oakland allegiance whilst also possibly making a sly geekian reference. Not too shabby.
Everyone Say Awwwww
May 29Clicking around, getting caught up on all my blogs after a busy-ass week, I found the cutest thing on Feminist SF — The Blog!
It’s awesome author Tamora Pierce posing with a young fan at WisCon. So adorable and sweet in a way that I can’t even quite articulate. He just looks so thrilled. Click through for the Flickr caption, it’s worth it.
I have a similar photo of me with Ursula K. Le Guin. Only I was in high school and I look like Sally O’ Scaryfan instead of the Cutest Fan Ever and I’m wearing a flouncy white shirt instead of an ingenious costume and Ursula looks kind of like, “Oh, um, hello CRAZY.”
But other than that, it’s exactly the same.
Indiana Jones and the Management of Fanboys
May 26My fanboy sense is tingling – and not in that special, Wilma Dearing sort of way. OK, now they’re tingling in that Wilma Dearing sort of way, but only because I mentioned her, and I got to thinking… I shall reign myself in.
Is it just me, or did we get manhandled a little over the new Indy movie? The film’s opening weekend is officially over and the worldwide bean counting says that a $200M investment turned into $300M, and there’s a whole Summer to go, then the DVD for Christmas. Which is great for the filmmakers. We’ve been griping for years that we wanted more Indy, and they did it… and it looks like they took steps to ensure that we, the unwashed nerds, who helped keep the dream alive (meaning, more than a decade of free word of mouth), wouldn’t shoot them in the foot. Because, let’s be fair – we can push for a dream movie, and then kick it in the nuts if it doesn’t leave us twitching like Joe Dorsey in Brainstorm. But we, as fanboys, can’t pay for a Summer blockbuster – the straights have to go see it as well.
Two things about the opening weekend have piqued my interest, and suggested we’re being handled – and firstly, let’s be fair, the studio had more than enough heads up that geeks everywhere were starting to grumble that they weren’t experiencing multiple oh-faces over Indy 4 – something any studio suit worth his front-door parking spot wouldn’t want leaking out into the general populace. The general populace may not stand up and be counted a geek, but they like the same things about genre movies we do, and they often listen to what the well versed nerd has to say. So – holiday weekend coming, the geeks are poised to critique… what to do?
1) Friday became a holiday – while Canada had their long weekend the week before, and America wasn’t having it’s holiday until Monday, Indy 4 started showing everywhere at Thursday, midnight. Before the weekend had officially started, the movie buzz had it raking in $25M. And buzz like that sounds like quality to the average, ordinary bears.
2) So, offhand, what’s Indy 4’s Tomatometer rating? Go ahead, I’ll even let you go check out the front page of Rotten Tomatoes… what’s that? It’s not there? Surely not – after all, it made double the coin that Prince Caspian did. But there you have it – if you search for the title, you can find it – a respectable, but by no means Earthshattering 79%. Why? Why isn’t the biggest movie of the holiday weekend listed on the front page? It has features on the front page coming out the USB ports, but there isn’t an encapsulated rating anywhere. It couldn’t be an oversight, so one can only assume it was deliberate – someone wanted to make sure that there wasn’t even a whiff of “meh” or (shrug) for the opening 4 days.
And I don’t know how I feel about that.
"Someone who loves you."
May 24In all the Indy 4 hooplah, one commemoration has been forgotten: the silver anniversary of Return of the Jedi.
Yep-25 years.
I plan to spin up my bootleg copy of the original laserdisc. Thus will I celebrate my birth as a geek.
