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cschack
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Norway
124 Posts |
 Posted - 05/13/2006 : 1:11:12 PM
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I found this the other day; George Lucas apparently wants to take the volume down for the fourth Indy instalment and focus on...conversation? From the article (link to the whole thing below)
"if Lucas gets his way (hint: he usually does), the Jones sequel will prize dialogue over decibels."
That's what I've been clamoring for...more of that lush, lyrical Lucas dialogue. The mind not so much boggles as weeps quietly. Argh!
http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1531527/05102006/story.jhtml
"Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
- Tom Stoppard |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 1:30:23 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by cschack
"if Lucas gets his way (hint: he usually does), the Jones sequel will prize dialogue over decibels."
Given the fact that Harrison Ford is around 97 years old now, I don't see how we can expect much more than dialogue. They can't even let him make a grab for his bullwhip for fear he'll fall down and break a hip. |
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cschack
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Norway
124 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 2:10:38 PM
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Good point. Forgive me for trotting out a cliché, but I can picture the tagline in my head: "Indiana Jones has fallen...and he can't get up!" Raiders of the Metamucil indeed!
"Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
- Tom Stoppard |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 3:34:57 PM
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Maybe he's tougher (and in better shape) than we think. Here follows an excerp from an article on Paul Bettany, who played the villain in Ford's latest vehicle, Firewall:
"I was just trying not to get bruised. I wouldn't want to tumble with Harrison Ford in real life. He's a tough son of a bitch.
"I threw that man through a window seven times and he landed on his head, got up, rebuilt the window with the crew and then got thrown through it again.
"I hit that man in the stomach and he said, 'Could you just land it a bit harder so I could feel it?' So I landed it a bit harder and he wanted a bit more so he could react to it.
"Finally, I just wound one up and let loose on him and he said, 'That's it!'
"It was the most humiliating day of my life."
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/mndwebpages/ford%20beats%20bettany_30_01_2006 |
Edited by - Neville on 05/13/2006 3:46:43 PM |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 5:40:50 PM
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I don't want to come across as a spoiler-sport here, because I truly want to know if any of the other minions share my feelings on Indiana Jones. Simply put, even if we set aside the fact that Harrison Ford is actually twice as old as the fictional Indiana Jones would be in real life, I've never really wanted to see another Indiana Jones movie. I think the sequels that they actually made do not hold up very well at all and actually diminish the original a bit.
I say this as someone who was obsessed by the original. I am about 1/7th the age of Harrison Ford, so I myself am soon due to retire. But I remember when the original came out while I was in high school and I must have seen it at least 20 times in the theater. I dragged all of my family - mom, dad, brother, aunts, uncles and grandparents - and all my friends to see it at one time or another and they all enjoyed it. Not, I think, just to humor me but because it was really a movie that appealed to all ages - action packed enough for the guys, funny enough for the younger kids that could take the scarier parts and not only inoffensive enough for the older folks but a throwback to what they remembered watching as kids in the theater.
The sequels had their moments, but they completely threw away the cliffhanger innocence of the original. The Temple of Doom is actually a pretty nasty piece of work. In the first 5 minutes, Jones is threatening to gut some total stranger with a carving fork if he doesn't get his money! One of the movie's action highlights is a knife fight between two nine year old boys! Again I don't deny that there are a lot of exciting parts to the movie, but the tone is completely and unpleasantly different from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The Last Crusade is a much better movie in a lot of ways, but trades the nastiness for shallow cynicism. Frankly, it even seems a little bit cheap. The "ship board" sets they used to film "The Love Boat" were a hundred times more convincing than the set they used to film the prologue. And what's with the "It belongs in a museum" stuff? That poor crippled guy that Indy is so happy to burn to death and/or drown actually seems to have acquired that cross legally at the beginning of the movie. And nothing recalls the innocence of Saturday morning cliffhanger matinees of the 40's like tossing the whole star-crossed lovers angle of the original and making the female lead an amoral tramp who would sleep with the dessicated corpse of Ramses III (played by Sean Connery) if it would further her scheming.
Now that we've had nearly 25 years for cynicism about this and that to accumulate and we've seen a lot of grandparents who saw echoes of their movie-going years in the original pass away, I just don't see how any new movie can even come close to doing justice to the original. |
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jackspencerjr
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
262 Posts |
Posted - 05/13/2006 : 5:51:17 PM
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| At least they're remaking Last Crusade under the name "The Da Vinci Code" |
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MikeC
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
749 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2006 : 06:58:52 AM
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RAIDERS was wonderful film making (even if it was
possibly directly 'Inspired' by an old serial called
THE SECRET SERVICE IN DARKEST AFRICA).
LAST CRUSADE was only a notch or two below RAIDERS.
Georege Lucas aught to run TEMPLE OF DOOM through
a digital reprocessing that makes the entire movie
(except for the opening musical number and fight
in the Shanghai bar) totally black. |
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Neville
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Spain
1590 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2006 : 07:54:05 AM
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I enjoyed Temple of Doom, although nobody needs to convince me that it is the darkest entry of the whole series. It's every good as the other two, and even superior to The last crusade. As I see it, The last crusade has plenty of good things in its favour, like casting Sean Connery as Indy's father, but the action and slapstick bits seem overdone to me.
And say what you want, but the "bridge over crocodiles" climax of Temple of Doom is really hard to surpass. |
Edited by - Neville on 05/15/2006 07:56:22 AM |
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Bobby-G
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
904 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2006 : 12:50:46 PM
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Liked RAIDERS a lot. Didn't like TEMPLE (saw it once, at the theater when it came out). Didn't bother with LAST CRUSADE. I think RAIDERS was a perfect beginning and end to the Indiana Jones movie series.
Rob |
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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2006 : 1:35:23 PM
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The series was good (even excellent) entertainment in it's day. But it really needs to be left to slumber in peace.
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://henrybrennan.blogspot.com/ |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2006 : 2:35:36 PM
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Yes, sometimes it's better to just let things go. Ford is only interested, one can safely assume, because his career is in the tank.
And frankly, I honestly can't imagine Spielberg directing anything close to a proper Indiana Jones movies at this point in his career. I think he believes fun, senseless violence is now beneath him.
As for Lucas, he probably envisions something closer to the Indy of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I remember seeing the end of one where the young Indiana seemed to become a pacifist after seeing the awful, pointless carnage of WWI, and wondering at the time, "How the hell does this kid become the blithely violent Indiana Jones of the first movie?"
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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