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Post by maggiethecat on May 19, 2008 17:31:40 GMT -5
Oh, I am so-o-o-o-o-o-o ready. Although I always said that Spielberg ended the series in the perfect way, when Indy and Dad and Marcus (Ah, Marcus, who got lost in his own museum) literally rode off into the sunset at the end of The Last Crusade -- I am more than up for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. Although I'll be the first to admit that a bunch of glittery glass heads do not possess anything approaching the historical or emotional resonance of the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, I am more than willing to suspend disbelief and go along for the ride once again. It's been twenty years. I'm ready. And Harrison Ford is lookin' good these days, dammit. Plus we've got Karen Allen, a.k.a Marion Ravenwood, on hand again. Works for me.  Hey, it's been a long winter. I could use a little well-made escapism. Even if the movie sucks -- which I'll bet it won't -- worse things happen at sea then to sit in theater and hear that glorious John Williams score comin' at ya in Dolby Surround. Anyone else a fan? And then there's Narnia: Prince Caspian . . . and Sex and the City, in which Sarah Jessica Parker goes through a reported 81 costume changes . . . and another version of The Incredible Hulk, which is always dopey but this time stars Edward Norton. I may actually be going to the movies this summer! Starting with Indiana. Although I will miss Henry Jones, Sr. " Thish is archeologeh?" Heh.  |
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Post by doobrah on May 20, 2008 12:17:04 GMT -5
Yes, the summer movies seem to be promising for those of us who are not male teenagers! My guilty pleasure coming attraction is "Hancock." It makes me LOL each time I see it. The worry is that all the movie's funny bits are in the trailer. No one else will ever take the place of Bill Bixby as David "Incredible Hulk" Banner. But I am an Ed Norton fan (wasn't he wonderful in "Painted Veil"!), and will be jones-ing to see it on DVD. There is an interesting movie coming out in September called "Blindness." It was screened at Cannes last week. Stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo & a lot of Canadians. More info here: www.imdb.com/title/tt0861689/Looking forward to reading the summer movie reviews (hint, hint)! |
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Post by inuvik on May 20, 2008 15:16:19 GMT -5
I have 5 movies on my list for this summer that I MUST SEE. (I'm sure I'll see more, but these are the LISTED ones ) In release date order: 1) Indy! 2) The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan's latest. I. LOVE. HIS. STUFF. Prepare to be scared! (June 13) 3) Get Smart. Prepare the cone of silliness! (June 20) 4) The X-Files movie (July 25). The movie is out there...5) Bangkok Dangerous--Nicholas Cage, and either he or someone else, I don't know, but a main character is deaf apparently (August 22) Am still mightily cheesed that Clive Owen's latest, The International, has been postponed from August until Feb 2009. These other 5 DO NOT make up for it!  |
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Post by Eyphur on May 20, 2008 21:54:37 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.
I loved the first movie and the books.
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Post by hoosier on May 21, 2008 18:29:07 GMT -5
I am looking forward to--
Indiana Jones--yeah!!!
The Happening
Iron Man
Prince Caspian
Blindness
The Dark Knight--the new Batman with Christian Bales and Heath
Ledger
The Mummy-Tomb of the Dragon Emperor--The Mummy movies
remind me of Indiana Jones
And I have seen commercials for a remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, this
one with Brandon Fraser of the Mummy
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Post by Kasman on May 23, 2008 17:50:14 GMT -5
I am looking forward to-- And I have seen commercials for a remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, this one with Brandon Fraser of the Mummy Do you mean Brendan Fraser? |
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Post by hoosier on May 24, 2008 16:08:59 GMT -5
I am looking forward to-- And I have seen commercials for a remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, this one with Brandon Fraser of the Mummy Do you mean Brendan Fraser? Yes, I do. My bad. |
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Post by Kasman on May 24, 2008 18:35:14 GMT -5
Do you mean Brendan Fraser? Yes, I do. My bad. In that case, count me in. ;D If my daughter gets her brain in order (teenagers *very big eye roll*), will be seeing Indy later today. |
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Post by inuvik on May 26, 2008 12:32:17 GMT -5
Saw Indy last night and...well....I didn't really think it was that good. It had a lot of annoying "Disney-cutesy" touches, like CGI groundhogs and things. Were the other three like that, and I was younger and just didn't notice?
As for the plot, I won't spoil it, but---lame and unbelievable, IMHO.
I was really disappointed, I loved the other three! I think the National Treasure series is better, which is the closest thing I can compare it to (although that also conforms to its studio of origin, Disney).
Best thing is the music!
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Post by hoosier on May 27, 2008 18:09:40 GMT -5
Saw Indy last night and...well....I didn't really think it was that good. It had a lot of annoying "Disney-cutesy" touches, like CGI groundhogs and things. Were the other three like that, and I was younger and just didn't notice? As for the plot, I won't spoil it, but---lame and unbelievable, IMHO. I was really disappointed, I loved the other three! I think the National Treasure series is better, which is the closest thing I can compare it to (although that also conforms to its studio of origin, Disney). Best thing is the music! I haven't seen it yet but I did just read an article where they had considered making it like the originals--the handpainted backgrounds, on location shootings etc--but felt they could do better using computer graphics. Hmmm. Sounds like sometimes doing it the old-fashioned way is better. |
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Post by shmeep on Jun 2, 2008 8:45:38 GMT -5
I saw Indy over the weekend and...I really enjoyed it. It seemed to be right up there with the first three, in my opinion, although I haven't seen any of those in years so my memory is a big foggy on that score. The CGI groundhogs (or were they supposed to be gophers? There aren't groundhogs in the Nevada desert so that was puzzling) WERE a bit too precious for my taste, but they weren't a huge part of the movie so they didn't ruin it for me.
My biggest concern going in was that they were going to do the thing where they don't acknowledge that the leading man is OLD and go ahead and give him adventures and women befitting a man half his age. I was also concerned that Harrison Ford may have lost the ability to move his face and to emote (based on interviews in recent years, this didn't seem to be so far fetched). All of the above did not happen. They turned his age into a gag several times, but still made him kick ass. And there was no cutesy younger woman unrealistically falling for him (in fact...well, what did happen was really great in that department). I didn't go in with very high hopes, so I found it to be a pleasant surprise. Good escapist fun, overall.
Also, I've seen Narnia twice. I really enjoyed it, for the most part, but this time they muddled with the characterizations a little too much for my taste. Caspian's people, the Telmarines, are supposed to be fair haired--presumably descended from the Vikings of our world. In the books, they don't specify a nationality, but just call them "pirates." The blondness is what always made me think they had Scandinavian beginnings. The movie made them descendent's of Barbary Pirates and they are all swarthy and speak with Spanish-like accents. This isn't the end of the world, since Caspian himself was very well played (and very pretty). What I didn't like was what they did to Peter's character. In the book, he is noble and brave and Susan is a doubter and rather unbearable for much of the story. Here, Peter is aggressive and a bit angry, and then he and Caspian have some rivalry that doesn't make sense to me. Susan was a bit too good and brave in this movie, unlike how she was written. Edmond and Lucy were great and I LOVED Peter Dinklige as Trumpkin the Dwarf. His one-liners made the movie for me.
I realize the books themselves are on the spare side and leave a lot up to the imagination. The first movie filled in a lot of details which may or may not have happened, but which made the movie feel more fleshed out. In this movie, I think they were trying to do the same thing, but it wasn't nearly as successful (in my opinion). I still came away loving the movie and thought much of it was exactly right, but...parts really bothered me.
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Post by inuvik on Jun 2, 2008 10:07:30 GMT -5
My biggest concern going in was that they were going to do the thing where they don't acknowledge that the leading man is OLD and go ahead and give him adventures and women befitting a man half his age. I was also concerned that Harrison Ford may have lost the ability to move his face and to emote (based on interviews in recent years, this didn't seem to be so far fetched). All of the above did not happen. They turned his age into a gag several times, but still made him kick ass. I also liked the age jokes, thought they were well done. As for this: And there was no cutesy younger woman unrealistically falling for him (in fact...well, what did happen was really great in that department). Would that really be unrealistic, a younger woman falling for him? It's his real life, with Calista!  I liked the way the movie handled it--again, very much like what National Treasure 2 did. |
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Post by maggiethecat on Jun 2, 2008 21:18:02 GMT -5
Also, I've seen Narnia twice. I'm jealous! I really enjoyed it, for the most part, but this time they muddled with the characterizations a little too much for my taste. Caspian's people, the Telmarines, are supposed to be fair haired--presumably descended from the Vikings of our world. In the books, they don't specify a nationality, but just call them "pirates." The blondness is what always made me think they had Scandinavian beginnings. The movie made them descendent's of Barbary Pirates and they are all swarthy and speak with Spanish-like accents. In conjunction with my rampant insomnia these days, I am rereading the Narnia Chronicles (so soothing) and I just polished off Prince Caspian a few nights ago. I grew up on the original editions with the Pauline Baynes illustrations, and so, in my mind, that's what the characters looked like . . . and the Telemarines were never blond (see page 183 of the original edition, when the first brave Telematine walks through Aslan's door. ). Caspian clearly has dark hair, as does his cheesy uncle Miraz the Usurper. The Telemarines always seemd to me to be stolen directly from the Charles Nordhoff and James Hall tales of the Bounty mutineers, since Aslan talks of an island founded by a "race pf pirates" who had died out, and descibes the island as having fruitful soil and timber for building and lagoons. What I didn't like was what they did to Peter's character. In the book, he is noble and brave and Susan is a doubter and rather unbearable for much of the story. Here, Peter is aggressive and a bit angry, and then he and Caspian have some rivalry that doesn't make sense to me. Susan was a bit too good and brave in this movie, unlike how she was written. Susan is a pill and I never liked her. I LOVED Peter Dinklige as Trumpkin the Dwarf. His one-liners made the movie for me. Knowing Peter Dinklage (see the all the posts in the Nip/Tuck thread from last season) is in the movie is MORE than enough to get me there. He is an amazing actor and I'm thrilled to know he's working in a major movie. I'm sure I will have so-o-o-o-o much more to say when I've seen it! Thanks, Shmeep, for a great post.  |
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Post by shmeep on Jun 3, 2008 15:24:58 GMT -5
In conjunction with my rampant insomnia these days, I am rereading the Narnia Chronicles (so soothing) and I just polished off Prince Caspian a few nights ago. I grew up on the original editions with the Pauline Baynes illustrations, and so, in my mind, that's what the characters looked like . . . and the Telemarines were never blond (see page 183 of the original edition, when the first brave Telmarine walks through Aslan's door. ). Caspian clearly has dark hair, as does his cheesy uncle Miraz the Usurper. The Telemarines always seemd to me to be stolen directly from the Charles Nordhoff and James Hall tales of the Bounty mutineers, since Aslan talks of an island founded by a "race pf pirates" who had died out, and descibes the island as having fruitful soil and timber for building and lagoons. I always pictured Miraz as having dark hair as well, for some reason. But Caspian...whatever your illustration shows, he was described as "fair haired" in three different books so that's where I got the idea the Telmarines weren't all that swarthy as a whole. If he was fair, his father was too, since he so closely resembled his father (as mentioned by Lord Bern in Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and his son, Rilian was quite blond--although being the grandson of a star might do that to a person. Dunno. Now I want to look through and find out where I got the impression they were Vikings. Maybe they weren't supposed to be any known race, since they had long-since died out in our world. Modified to add:I just did a quick search and there doesn't seem to be any reference to hair color in Prince Caspian at all, but in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy takes note of "the golden-headed boy some years older than herself" when she is first aboard and in The Silver Chair, when Caspian is in the stream and he ages backwards, his beard turns from grey to yellow and then disappears altogether so we know he's supposed to be quite a blond character. This is why the movie threw me. Oh well. Maybe I'm being to nitpicky. Can't seem to help it, though. I think another reason I have Scandinavian looks in mind is that, later in the series, it becomes a big deal that Narnians and Archenlanders are fair in sharp contrast to the Calormen people, who are dark. I know the Telmarines invaded after the time of The Horse and His Boy and could also have been dark, but the way Caspian is described always fit right in with the human Narnians who had been there before and he never told us anything different so I went with that. |
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Post by maggiethecat on Jun 3, 2008 16:09:10 GMT -5
Brava to anyone who takes Narnia as seriously as I do. I think we can lay my impressions solely at the feet of Pauline Baynes, the illustrator, as I spent as much time staring at her beautifully effective pen & ink illustrations as I did reading and rereading the books. And from the an illustrator's POV, drawing people with dark hair gives them a definition on the page that blond hair (very few lines) does not. So this may have been an artist's choice that stuck in my head. Which [ahem] is why, although I adore Tilda Swinton, she was never, never, never, never my (or C. S. Lewis's) idea of Jadis the White Witch. Francesca Annis got it dead right in the old BBC TV version: icy white skin, ink-black hair, and white furs -- a cruel beauty, and wonderfully seductive in a way that Tilda Swinton was not. (Eat your Turkish Taffy, lady? Hell, no - you're very creepy and why do you have no eyelashes?) Half the time Tilda Swinton looked like she'd escaped from one of Wagner's more lurid operas. I understand she makes something of a cameo appearance in "Prince Caspian" -- is this where Dr. Cornelius is telling Caspian the history of Narnia? Please tell me they kept Dr. Cornelius! And yeah, the Calormen peoples are really thinly disguised bad Arabs; C. S. Lewis was definitely a product of his generation, with all the predjudices and ingrained stereotypes that implies. And you also have to ignore the whole sexism/girls can't fight aspect, or the fact that once you hit puberty your trips to Narnia end. PS. If I started a Narnia thread, would it just be the two of us? |
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