Hey, just doing my part to help out Lucasfilm and Paramount’s marketing divisions:
***VIDEO MISSING***
(Remember, if you want to see it large enough to tell what you’re looking at, you can go to the official Indiana Jones website, or here.)
As promised, the trailer for Crystal Skull is now online. You can see it at the official website, or I imagine it’ll be all over the Interwebs by afternoon (if it’s not already).
I’ve watched it three times already and, as trailers go, it’s a good one. Not surprisingly, it plays very heavily on audience nostalgia, easing us into the proper mindset with scenes from Raiders, Temple of Doom, and Last Crusade before a classic “intro” shot involving the hat, the music, and a familiar silhouette. What follows is non-stop action with a few humorous one-liners and very little clue for the non-obsessed as to what’s going on. The trailer does confirm that there is a big set-piece inside The Warehouse, the “TOP SECRET DO NOT OPEN!” crate does not contain the Ark (if you freeze-frame at the right moment, you can see that it’s filled with files), and there is, as much as I hate to say it, a Roswell connection.
That said, there is no sign (in this trailer at least) of Greys or flying saucers, and there is plenty of whip-cracking, truck-smashing, bone-crunching punches, ancient jungle temples, and naked tribesmen. It feels, in short, very much like one of the classic Indiana Jones flicks. And there are even a couple of gags relating to Indy’s advancing age, so they’re not trying to pretend the years haven’t taken their toll on him. (It’s not an age joke, but I really like the exchange right at the end of the trailer between Indy and Indy, Jr.: “You a teacher?” “Part-time…” There are echoes there of exchanges between Indy and his dad…)
Maybe it’s just a Pavlovian reaction, but when I saw the fedora lying in the dirt and heard the “Raiders March” begin, I broke into a big grin. I’m still a bit wary — I keep thinking of how awesome a trailer for a certain other revisit to my childhood was compared to the finished product — but I’m definitely excited for Memorial Day weekend now…
This image has been floating around the ‘webs for a couple of weeks now, so it’s not a scoop for Simple Tricks or anything like that. I just happen to like the picture. It amuses me. The look on Indy Jr.’s face (I remain convinced Shia’s character is going to turn out to be Indy and Marion’s love child, until I see otherwise in the finished movie!) is so alarmed, so clearly saying, “Holy crap, what’re you going to do with that?!”, whereas Marion’s expression is more, “Oh, God, I know exactly what he’s going to do with that, and isn’t it just like him?” I suspect this whole scene — whatever may be actually going on, plot-wise — is designed as a nod back to one of the most memorable moments of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Sallah asks Indy what’re they going to do next, and Indy replies, “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.” It’s the possibility of that sort of thing — fun little gifts to the fans who’ve been quoting lines and scenes from Raiders and the others for 27 years(!), and a warm reunion with characters we grew up loving — that’s been driving much of my interest in this film.
However, other recent insights into The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have revived my reservations about the project, and whether it’s ultimately going to be an embarrassingly lame epilogue for one of my favorite movie series
I’m pretty unrelenting in my affection and respect for pop-cultural relics that the rest of society long ago dismissed as hopelessly cheez-ball (e.g., the 1978 version of Battlestar Galactica, pretty much the entire career of William Shatner), but even I would be daunted by the current blog-project of a guy named Larry Aydlette. In honor of the impending 72nd birthday of Burt Reynolds, the man whose mustache epitomized the late 1970s, Larry has decided to “honor [Burt’s] work ethic and use his birth month for 29 straight days of Burt Reynolds coverage.” Or, as his blog’s tagline puts it, he’s going “All Burt. All month.”
Larry continues:
This isn’t a love-a-thon. In rewatching a lot of his movies, I’ve come to the conclusion that he didn’t necessarily deserve to win the Oscar for the films that he and many critics thought he should have won them for. And he was never nominated for what seems to me to be his one indisputable masterpiece (although I doubt many critics will agree with me). But there are quite a few of his films that are very, very good, and deserve reconsideration.
I do think the breadth of his career is certainly worthy of an honorary Oscar. Let’s not forget that he ruled America’s box office from the late ’70s to the early ’80s. He is the self-proclaimed “Picasso of car pictures.” He was a big, big star.
No argument from me on any of that. At one time, I probably would’ve classed Burt among my heroes. Hell, he was The Bandit, man. I still envy that character’s way with the ladies, and of course that kick-ass black Trans Am.
Anyway, Larry is doing some genuinely interesting film criticism and cultural history over there. I found his re-appraisal of Semi-Tough and Boogie Nights especially interesting. Go have a look…
The Netflix queue I share with The Girlfriend (but which, I must be honest, consists mostly of stuff I’m interested in) just broke 400 titles. Four hundred. Specifically, I now have 404 movies and/or TV-on-DVD discs waiting for my attentions. How many hours of my life do you suppose that number represents?
If you care — or even if you don’t — here is the batch of titles I just entered, the ones that pushed me over the top of normality into the realm of the obsessively nutty:
At my current rate of viewing, I’d guess I’ll probably be getting to these around 2015 or so…
Something to look forward to, I suppose.
So, something just occurred to me: shouldn’t the Three Amigos more properly have called themselves Tres Amigos?
Yeah, I know, I’m about 20 years too late with that observation. It’s one of those days…
Back in my days of working at the multiplex, Lucasfilm’s THX sound-system standard was still something of a novelty, at least in these parts, and to a bunch of teenaged and early-20s ushers, it was a Very Big Deal indeed. We were proud of the fact that our theater — Cinemark’s Sandy Movies 7, later called Movies 9 — was the first in the state to earn that coveted certification. I remember many debates about which of THX’s iconic trailers was coolest — I’ve always preferred the basic “Broadway” one, although the recent “Moo-Can” trailer amuses me — but I think this one probably has them all beat:
It’s kind of a creepy little animal, actually… what the hell is it? Anyone?
Hard to believe now, but there was a time, a very long time ago, when I couldn’t stand Johnny Depp. I thought he was a no-talent pretty boy with greasy, stupid-looking hair and lousy taste in clothes. Of course, a lot of this enmity probably stemmed from the way my girlfriend at the time got all dewy every time she saw a commercial for 21 Jump Street. You see, I was painfully aware of how very, very un-Depp-like I was — I was much more along the lines of his Jump Street co-star Peter DeLuise in build, style, and attitude — and, well, teenage males of the species have a tendency to turn jealousy into hostility, often with a layer of homophobia for good effect. That’s why I denounced all the members of Duran Duran as “fags” (even though I wasn’t exactly clear on what a fag was, or why it was so bad to be one), and that’s why I really hated Johnny Depp. (Don’t even get me started on Richard Greico and his shaved eyebrows!)
I was perfectly content with my Johnny-Depp-sucks paradigm. No, really, it was working for me. But then he had to go and star in Edward Scissorhands, which was directed by the guy who made Batman so you know I just had to see it, and wouldn’t you know it, Depp was actually pretty good in it, damn him. And then he just kept making movies I liked, or at least movies in which I liked him. He wasn’t afraid to choose roles that made him look weird or unsavory or unsympathetic or wussy, and I could respect that. And he could actually act, too, and he proved it by trying not to do the same type of role twice, which, again, I really respected. And gradually, movie by movie, performance by performance, he wore me down. (To tell the truth, it really didn’t take that long; breaking up with that girl who made me feel second-best to a TV character accelerated the process considerably, and by the time Ed Wood opened in ’94, I was, if not an actual Depp fan, at least comfortable saying I wanted to see his new movie.)
These days, post-Pirates, I’m fully recovered from my adolescent insecurity and Johnny Depp now holds a high position on my short-list of favorite actors. And you know what? The more I learn about what he’s like off-screen, the more I think he probably ought to be on my short-list of favorite people, too, because he strikes me as one damn cool cat. For instance, did you hear the story of how he donated a million pounds to the hospital where his daughter was treated a year ago for a potentially fatal case of E. coli? And this was after inviting five of the doctors and nurses from the hospital — I presume they were the ones who actually treated his little girl — to the London premiere of Sweeney Todd (which he’d been working on when she got sick). And then — and here’s the part that really impressed me — he quietly spent four hours at the hospital in character and full costume as Captain Jack Sparrow, reading stories to sick kids. There were no news cameras or paparazzi around, and the event doesn’t seem to have been widely reported; it wasn’t about getting some good PR in advance of the next big film opening. It was just a kindly thing to do in an attempt to show some gratitude.
These days when so many of the people in the public eye seem hell-bent on behaving as outrageously as possible, it’s so refreshing to hear about a wealthy celebrity performing a simple little act of human decency.
Via.
The Salt Lake Tribune‘s film critic Sean Means is reporting that the Trolley Square Cinemas will go dark by the end of the month, a casualty of the extensive renovation project that is converting Trolley Square from an interesting, funky, uniquely Salt Lake shopping mall into a less-interesting, brighter-lighted, and no doubt utterly homogenized shopping mall. There is no word on whether a new movie theater will be incorporated into the redesigned Trolley, but my hunch is that there won’t be. And that seems like real shame to me.
Interesting… I just learned from Michael May’s Adventure Blog that there’s another Hulk movie in the works, something of a surprise considering that Ang Lee’s dismal and ridiculous take on the character didn’t exactly set the world on fire. I guess you can’t keep a good (potential) movie franchise down.
This new film, titled The Incredible Hulk, is apparently intended to be something of a reboot, even though it’s not explicitly billed as such. The entire cast has been changed out, with Edward Norton now playing the modern-day Jeckyll-and-Hyde character Bruce Banner, and, while the Hulk’s origin story isn’t going to be retold, I gather that the events of the first film will not be mentioned. The tone of the movie is said to echo the old ’70s-vintage TV series, and Norton reportedly won the role of Banner in part because he reminded the filmmakers of the late Bill Bixby, who starred in the TV version.
The echoes of the old Incredible Hulk are pretty obvious in this photo from the new film:
Compare that to this screen-grab from the opening credits of Bixby’s Hulk:
Look familiar? I’m sure it’s no coincidence, and I hope this obvious homage is a sign that the filmmakers know what they’re doing. The Hulk isn’t one of my favorite superheroes, but I enjoyed the TV series when I was a kid, and I’d like to see a good feature film version. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will be it.
There are a few more photos here, if you’re interested. Oh, and as a technical note, that screen-grab from vintage Hulk is my very first one. Cool, eh? Well, I thought so…
