#1,266: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I was right! Woo! About what? Only GREATNESS!

I made a mad dash across LA (close up the office, descend 9 stories, hike 3 blocks, drive 8 miles, find parking!) and got into the Cinerama Dome for some super close screen-wraps-around me seats, and I was not the least bit disappointed!

Now I know it'll be everyone's favorite game to explain why they hate it, and I know it's not Raiders, and I know Harrison Ford aged in the past 20 years, and there are even things I didn't like about the movie, and none of it matters. I sat in darkness, surrounded by cheering Americans, with a grin and a sense of wonder and excitement, eager to see what might happen next.

Like Indy himself, the movie makes mistakes, but it always dives in with abandon and somehow makes it out on the other side. But, and this is important, it ISN'T The Phantom Menace. I was -such- a Star Wars fan in that time, and I had tickets for multiple screenings, and I couldn't wait, and I came out of the first showing trying to rationalize and justify and the simple fact was that I didn't dig it. And again, this isn't that.

For technical stuff, I liked that the lighting was non-realistic, which I imagine conforms to the style of the previous flicks (time for some re-viewing!). I heard people bitching in the lobby, but at least in my super-close seats, nothing looked egregiously CG to me. There are things that I know must have been, but I was sufficiently swept up in things, I guess.

Mike H. at the Nexpress? Didn't like Last Crusade, won't like this. People who need to show their taste and class and hipness by disliking popular stuff? Who say 'it was good for what it was' or 'well, it was entertaining, but...'? It's okay to like things. Really!

More Indy!

Just thinking more about it, there were things I didn't enjoy - maybe he was a little too die hard 4 invincible, maybe the villain did less and less as the movie progressed (Actually, that's not really a complaint - more exploration and sharing cool stuff instead of conflict for its own sake wins with me), maybe the map just wasn't as cool as the grail diary, but it still doesn't matter, as explained above. (Or in blogland, below?) But unless you agree with me that No Country for Old Men was an adventure, I don't remember the last good adventure movie to hit before this one. Certainly none of that awful national treasure / tomb raidery stuff.

Good things: Mutt was not nearly as awful as I thought he might be. The chase sequence was incredibly elaborate. There were subtle references (you know the ark is gonna show up) but it's not full of self-quotes and in-jokes.

Also, and the more I consider this, I think it's really neat - previous flicks are a 30s adventure with 80s tech. This movie, clearly chock full of modern whatchamacallits, doesn't dip back to the 30s, it's goes back 50 years, like the previous set. I think that's going to put a lot of people off, who were expecting the former. A number of the ideas, big and small, are concerns of 50s B-Movies.

So is it shaping up to be a lousy year for movies (I've seen 6 releases of 2008) or a great one (I really enjoyed 3 of 'em)?

And finally - eyes open! There's a Vertigo poster in there somewhere, though I didn't spot it.

#1,255: Lars and the Real Girl

Kinda didn't want to see this one. Notes: Players supported and "Yes, And"'d beautifully. The initiation was a little flat, so by the time the game appeared, we were already a little too far into crazytown. Blue on blue and all that. Good heightening while still keeping it real, and the edit was a good spot, since it couldn't go any further up than death. Remember not to kill your scene partner! In particular for Gus, try to work on the denials, and to Lars, we didn't mind too much when you ignored Gus' denying, but finding a way to justify might lead to even stronger choices.

Season 7

It seems to me, I might say, that season 7 is not a good season for a TV show. Maybe it's self-evident - that much time and a show can run out of steam, the original creators got bored and left or were forced out, but if a show even got that far, it must've had something going for it. One might argue, successfully, that season 7 was among the best ever produced on The Simpsons, but most shows, judged exclusively on #7? Not renewed for the coming year. Some shows even improve in quality after getting the miserable seventh out of the way...

The list so far - confirmed as having poor seventh seasons: Homicide: Life on the Street, The X-Files, Mystery Science Theater 3000, CSI, The Sopranos (6 part 2, 7, whathaveyou), Smallville, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cops, Law and Order: SVU, Saturday Night Live and Friends.

Rumored to have had successful seventh seasons: Stargate: SG-1, South Park, Simpsons, Seinfeld.... we've almost got an S-exception to the rule.

As of yet neither confirmed nor denied (mostly sitcoms or WB fare): M*A*S*H, Cheers, Mad About You, Full House, Charmed, Dr. Who, Gilmore Girls (remember, we're saying relative to each show's other seasons, not against all shows ever), The Cosby Show, Gunsmoke, Home Improvement, Walker (Texas Ranger) or Dr. Quinn (Medicine Woman), ER, 90210, Macgyver, Dallas, LA Law, Bonanza, Knots Landing, Are you afraid of the Dark?, Tales from the Crypt, various Star Trek shows, and probably a bunch of reality shows - Survivor, Real World, Road Rules, American Idol...

Shows on the rain-slick precipice of DOOM: 24, Curb your Enthusiasm, Mythbusters, The Shield, and Ice-T's Rap School.

Anyone got any to add or to confirm or deny?

Oh, brain...

So I had a dream that tonight's the big night, the official competition that a team I'm on / class group I'm in has been training for weeks to compete in has been practicing for. As far as I can tell, it's been a recurring dream, in which I've actually been progressing in time - it's not the SAME dream each time, but each time it comes around we do practice this event (which is similar to evacuating someone on a stretcher), and other things have been developing as we go...as the 'season' or series progresses. But what if it's not? What if the idea that it's the conclusion to a series of dreams is all a notion from this lone dream? I don't have any particular memory of pondering the other practices... I guess if we're going to get into that, I'd prefer the notion that this right now is the recurring dream other people are having....oh, brain!

So maybe I kinda do 'get' Blade Runner...maybe it just turns out that I'm not a sci-fi fan...