raiders of the lost ark

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hats, cats, rabbits

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

After two Six Damn Fine Degrees about Billy Wilder’s Fedora, there was really only one way we could go, wasn’t there? And we did do exactly that, with Matt’s memories of the loops he had to jump through before he could finally watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #131: Men with hats, boys with tapes

Matt2 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

It’s been too long now for me to know for sure: was Raiders of the Lost Ark the first Indiana Jones film I ever watched? Or was it Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? What I can say for sure is this: I watched The Last Crusade at the cinema, but Raiders I saw on VHS, because it was the first official video release of a film that I ever owned.

Continue reading →

Swan on Swan

MattLeave a comment

So, tonight’s the night. Stars all gussied up, waiting to hear those coveted words: “And the winner is…” A show that is best enjoyed with vast amounts of alcohol and decadent nibbles. (A couple of years ago, my girlfriend and I pulled out the sofa in front of the TV and made it into a bed, slept until early in the morning and then had toast and salmon while watching the Oscars. Good times. Much better than the one where we tried to do a Vacherin fondue and the cheese both smelled and tasted putrescent.)

I haven’t seen all of the nominees, far from it. Colin Firth hasn’t stuttered his way into my heart yet (aww…), an ageing Dude hasn’t yet shown us what True Grit is, and I have no idea whether The Kids Are All Right or not. In the last two weeks I’ve watched two of the multiple nominees, though: 127 Hours and Black Swan. I enjoyed both films, but I wouldn’t necessarily call both of them ‘good’ films. They both are showcases for their directors, full of stylistic flourishes – but I found 127 Hours exhilarating, thrilling and moving, and I was able to take the film seriously throughout. Black Swan, for all its technical accomplishment, struck me as silly to the point of becoming laughable.

It’s an eminently well made, well acted, well shot, well edited film – but it’s a B movie dressed up to be Oscar bait. It’s a Brian De Palma thriller pretending to be a relevant statement about the artist’s responsibility to destroy herself in order to produce true art. And it’s cheesy as hell – but like a good cheeseburger, it is a yummy treat and should be acknowledged as such.

My main problem is this: if you’re going to make a film about someone going mad, with scenes that signal at every edit, “Is this real or is this only happening in her poor, psychotic imagination?”, you need to have a certain base reality. Natalie Portman’s Nina, though, is a few feathers short of a cygnet from the beginning, and even the scenes that are supposedly real are turned up to 11, producing a hyper-reality that is only halfway removed from the all out insanity that eventually grips Nina’s mind. And the turny-twisty revelation at the end might be believable (I’m not talking about realism but about what is credible in the world established by the film) in opera, but decidedly less so in this movie.

What doesn’t do the film any favours is the spectre of better films that haunts it: All About Eve and obviously Powell’s The Red Shoes. And no hot (though imaginary – oops, did I give it away? The film already does a good job of doing so…) bedroom scene straight out of Lesbian Spank Inferno III: The Birds can banish these ghosts completely. There’s even a hint of Buffy‘s Faith, although that is one ghost that makes Black Swan look good by comparison – Mila Kunis is both hotter and a more convincing actress than poor Eliza Dushku.

So what about that much praised performance by Natalie Portman? She definitely does a very good job, but she’s not always helped by the script, which keeps the character samey for the first half, varying between forte and fortissimo, and then escalates it for too short a time. Portman finally makes for a magnificent black swan, but it’s difficult to say how much the performance is bolstered by make-up, costume and CGI effects.

So, who will win? Hmm… From the films I’ve seen, I can’t really say much about the nominated actors, having seen too few of them in these specific performances. I also don’t think all that much of a “Best Picture” category, since the best films in different genres can hardly be compared. (Is Chinatown a better film than Raiders of the Lost Ark? Does it matter?)

I am rooting for L’Illusioniste, though, because its doomed, beautiful magic has given me one of the most enchanting cinematic experiences, not only this year, but ever. Pixar’s got enough of those little golden men on their mantlepiece, after all.

Whatever happened to Steven Spielberg?

MattLeave a comment

Yes, I’m a pretentious film geek who salivates at the sound of “Criterion Collection”. I like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (a little known Swedish children’s movie about a boy and a seal at the local circus – it’s basically Free Ølåf) and Fellini’s La Strada – but I love the great popcorn movies. For me, there are two almost perfect representatives of that hallowed group of films: Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws.

What happened to the man who made those films, though? Spielberg is still one of the best craftsmen in Hollywood, but the thing that was exhilarating about his early films was their sheer energy. There was a joy to the filmmaking, a childlike sense of fun, that made Spielberg unique. It’s there in the two films mentioned, and it’s also there in E.T. (mixed with a generous dollop of sentimentality) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind – but the biggest failure of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was that it was tired and felt forced. There was little of the exhilaration of the earlier films in the series, especially of the first. Obviously this could be attributed to Indy having aged himself, but that’s a disappointingly humdrum explanation that pretty much begs the question: why have a fourth Indy movie in the first place?

More than that though, rewatching Jaws over the weekend I was made aware of how Spielberg in his early days was much more ruthless. He didn’t have qualms about having a young boy be chomped by a shark, he didn’t think twice about having a number of pretty gruesome deaths in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It wasn’t the childish sadism of Temple of Doom, but it basically meant, “Yes, horrible things can happen. Anyone can get it in the teeth.” And as a result the films were more exciting. If even a kid can be eaten by a shark, well, then nobody’s safe. (Compare Jurassic Park, where the kids and the heroes are never really in jeopardy – it’s pretty much nobodies and evil lawyers that get eaten. It’s amazing that a cheesy, bad film such as Deep Blue Sea gets this better by making it clear from the first that anyone can die – even Samuel L. “Badass” Jackson.)

The much-ridiculed CGI retouching of E.T., replacing guns with walkie-talkies is symptomatic of this fretful, overly squeamish Spielberg. The BMX chase in the original version of E.T. is exciting, and the moment when they get out the guns, we know: Uh oh. Something bad could happen. Compare the same moment in the ‘remastered’ version, where the impression we get is that the worst that could happen is, they might be caught by the grown-ups and given a severe talking-to. Where’s the danger? Where’s the sense of actual risk? If you take that away, characters that we care about become invincible video game characters with the god mode turned on.

I’m in a minority in that I quite liked much of War of the Worlds, but it’s a prime example of a film that suffers from Spielberg’s “playing it safe” doctrine. It’s pretty clear, in every single scene, that he wouldn’t kill off Dakota Fanning – and while her brother puts himself in a situation where he’s almost sure to die, we get an unbelievable, corny deus ex ending that many filmmakers who are much less skilled than Spielberg would have scoffed at.

Obviously Spielberg isn’t the young man he was when he made Jaws or Raiders. He’s older now, so it’s only to be expected… but did he have to become so damn po-faced? Where’s the glee? Reduce Spielberg to his (considerable) skill while taking away his sense of joy and adventure, and you get Zombie Spielberg.

And everyone knows that only Godzilla Lucas can fight Zombie Spielberg.

Late to the game, as usual

MattLeave a comment

So, I hear there’s this new Indiana Jones film on. What’s that? It’s been out for a month or so? Aw shucks…

I’m probably exactly the right age for the Indy movies. I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the cinema when I was 14, and I got Raiders of the Lost Ark on video later that same year. As a teenager I enjoyed the hell out of these films – except for Temple of Doom, which I already didn’t particularly like at the time. It’s got fantastic set pieces but doesn’t hold together very well as a film. (And it’s the one Indiana Jones movie, in my opinion, where the stereotypical natives do become offensive and racist… but that’s not my beef here.)

My favourite one of the films was always Raiders. It had a magic, a rawness and an energy that the others don’t match. Last Crusade is the funnier film, but it comes dangerously close to self-parody – added to which, well, it’s pretty much a rip-off of Raiders. So many of the scenes made me think, “Yeah, cool, but haven’t I seen this one already?” You get the same type of intro sequence, followed by scenes at Barnett College, followed by the story proper. You’ve got rats instead of snakes. You’ve got the wrath of God visited on those undeserving. And all of it tries just a bit too hard to be funny.

Last Crusade fares worst when it comes to the side characters that were introduced in Raiders. Both Sallah and Marcus Brody are turned into jokes – and they aren’t particularly good jokes. If it wasn’t for the interplay between Indy and his father, Last Crusade wouldn’t be much better than, say, The Mummy or any other Indiana Jones rip-offs.

Now, finally, Spielberg, Lucas and Ford got their act together and made a fourth film. Lots of fans hated it. Correction: lots of fans hated it on the internet. There’s something about Web 2.0 that brings out the extremist in fanboys and nerds. Something can’t be pretty good or sort of bad – it’s all either perfect, worthy of geekgasms, or utter shite of the “George Lucas raped my childhood!” ilk.

Crystal Skull is neither. It’s the third best Indiana Jones film. It’s enjoyable but forgettable. And it makes a couple of very unfortunate mistakes:

  • There’s little to no motivation for Indy. He’s only reacting to what’s happening. For a hero, he’s pretty damn passive. Compare that with Raiders, where something is actually at stake for him. Here the baddies have ten times more of a motivation to do what they do. Indy’s just along for the ride, really.
  • What happened to the guy who got shot, who bled, who looked worse for wear after his big scenes? Indy’s always survived things that no real human being would survive – but he was never indestructible. Here, one of the first things we see the man do is survive an atomic blast. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s one hell of a cool image. But if a hero isn’t touched by a nuclear explosion, well, are we supposed to be thrilled when he’s being chased by bumbling Russian soldiers?
  • David Koepp, the script writer, didn’t really know what to do with his characters. Many of them are utterly unnecessary for the plot and take time away from one another. Was Mac necessary? Not really. The Russians could have done what they did without him. Oxley? He was basically a talking version of Last Crusade‘s Grail diary. Even Marion, although she had some nice scenes, was basically wasted, as was Mutt. There was no urgent reason why any of these characters were in the film – and if you’re making what should be a rollercoaster ride of a film, superfluous characters slow you down.
  • I don’t have any problems with aliens instead of religious artefacts – if they’re intriguing. The Ark of the Covenant had mystery, it felt positively alive. (It was also helped by John Williams’ wonderful score, which I’ll talk about in the next bullet.) The Grail was already much less interesting, but Last Crusade didn’t focus on it: it focused on Indy and his father. The crystal skull? It’s a pretty uninteresting gizmo. It doesn’t have much character. And the ending pretty much lacked awe… which the Ark had in spades.
  • I don’t remember a single one of the new tunes Williams penned for Crystal Skull. All three former Indiana Jones movies had memorable tracks, and the Raiders March is one of the most iconic pieces of film music there is. I can’t remember the last time Williams wrote music that didn’t feel like B-sides. The man wrote some of the most memorable film scores – but from what he’s been producing in the last, say, ten years, he should finally retire.
  • The villains… Raiders had its iconic Nazis, and it had Belloq, to date still by far the best adversary Indy ever had – because he wasn’t actually that different from the man. Belloq had a great introduction, his interactions with Indy were well written and acted, and he actually had charisma. Cate Blanchett tries hard, but the script doesn’t know what to do with her. Is she evil? Driven? Obsessed? Is she actually a tragic figure? I don’t mind ambivalent characters, but I mind scripts that seem to have an attention span of five minutes. Koepp didn’t really seem to have much of a concept of any of the characters… which is probably why the film feels mostly like a string of episodes, none of which are really terribly compelling. And what’s Indy without a good adversary?
  • And what’s with the horrible over-exposed wedding at the end? It looked like Heaven in Always! Walk into the light, Indy…

Anyway, the film’s had enough of a critical pummeling. All in all, it was entertaining enough, but not much more so than a competent Indiana Jones knock-off. And somehow mediocrity is almost worse than an out-right bad Indy movie. I just hope that Lucas and Spielberg won’t try to keep flogging this almost-dead horse. At some point it becomes terribly, terribly undignified.

And talking of undignified: have fun with this! 

His name is Snot Boogie?!

MattLeave a comment

This film nerd here is a complex beast. On the one hand, I get as much childlike joy out of well-executed genre films that follow the formula to a T. I enjoy the climactic showdown between Hero and Villain. On the other hand, I cackle gleefully when a film (or a book, for that matter) frustrates my expectations. No Country for Old Men is a good case in point, where the supposed hero dies off-stage and isn’t even killed by the bad guy of the piece. Even Raiders of the Lost Ark, a genre movie if there ever was one, doesn’t end with the hero triumphing: it ends with the hero tied to a stake as the ultima deus ex machina comes and melts the faces off a bunch of undeserving unbelievers.

I just finished re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. I’d last read it in the summer of 2001, just after graduating. I have fond memories of sitting in a French café in Edinburgh during festival time, drinking good coffee, eating croissants and not looking up from my book until I’d finished half of it in one sitting. What I remembered much less was the plot, at least beyond the broad strokes. What I definitely didn’t remember was how differently it told its story from how Hollywood would (and, from what I’ve heard, did) do it. Here too, we don’t get a showdown with the villainess – instead, we get a melancholy coda and a bittersweet ending that made me realise how rarely Hollywood does “bittersweet”. I know that most Gaiman fans prefer American Gods, but I must say that even without Charles Vess’ pictures (I have the non-pic edition), this is a beautiful, wonderfully light, exquisitely crafted fairytale. In comparison, I feel that American Gods collapses under its own ambition, because its dozens of ideas never really come together in a fully satisfactory way.

Narnia it ain\'t...

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the title of this entry? Well, we’ve just started watching The Wire season 1. Very different fare from Buffy, if you would believe it… But intriguing, with carefully drawn characters and lots of shades of grey. Definitely looking forward to seeing more of it – and telling you all about it, in epic detail. Shudder and despair.