Tuesday, March 12, 2013

...Did I just watch the crystal skull again?

As the night transitioned to late, I found myself unable to rest these eyes. So, at the behest of the Big Bad Baseball Gypsy (who, after he saw the NY premiere of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, left a message telling me to be very disappointed with it) I put the DVD into my computer ready to give it another shot. I hadn't seen it since it opened (I can't believe it's been 5 years), and the ridiculousness of it had come around to the Voodoo Guy, allowing him to have a blast with it recently. So I figured, "What the feck?" (Clearly, though, I should stop watching baseball games with the guy; something I failed to mention about Friday night.)

...I'm not exactly sure where to begin with this one. I guess we should all start with the control for bad movies: The Star Wars Prequels. So, where does The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull rank in terms of Star Wars Prequality? Not....really close to there, but by no means ranking near the Originals, or a good movies in general. But when you throw all concern of not having a good time out the window, you don't feel like you've wasted your time, and you could even come close to enjoying yourself (rather than sleeping.)

Let us then start with the good, and preface it by saying that I watched it through the credits (if only to give John Williams his due.) 

Automatically, Steven Spielberg at this stage of his career is far and superior to George Lucas in terms of execution. This immediately is evident and is thankfully there throughout. The acting holds up (to an extent, with the script given [though it's not TERRIBLE]). My man Ray Winstone is always awesome, and of course there's Harrison Ford, who has an absolute blast being back in the Indy role. And Shia Labeuf is actually a pretty good actor, and unlike other young actors in other shitty movies, because Spielberg has honed his craft over the years (unlike Lucas) he actually knows how to take care of business in that regard. AND he is mostly (relatively) using real sets or locations, and you can feel the actors interacting with things that are actually there. The Indy portion of it is good as well (to an extent.) Ya know, all the archeology stuff and what not. Though it wasn't necessarily at it's best, you mostly got a feel you were in the Indy universe, and it wasn't totally disgusting (though South Park may think otherwise, and I generally agree with them, especially 'cause it's hysterical. I'd link it...but it MIGHT be a little to early in the morning for what I would link...) 

And there's plenty of over-the-top stereotypes that...let's face it...we American moviegoers have eaten up over the years (or have been spoon fed...)

There were other good things...liiiiike.....illustrator Rudolfo Dimaggio...

But it was mostly over lit. In that modern oversaturation of white light that can be found in CBS dramas quite a lot. And yeah, the Russians were the natural place to go in the story of Indiana Jones, and since they've established long ago it was a supernatural universe, aliens were actually a "natural" place to go too since the 50's were big-time into space and sci-fi and all that shit. And hey, I like aliens. I even believe pretty firmly there is no way there ISN'T life out there. But the way it was delivered, especially the climax, didn't really punch me across the face the way a good climax punches you across the face and you're all like, "Whoa! Thanks, wow. I wasn't expecting that but I'm very glad you punched me. Wow. That was GREAT," and was more like, "Wow. You punched me. What the hell?- Asshole." 

...And they kept clearly dying (in real life.) You know what I mean? I know I've already established that I've excepted the Indy universe as being supernatural. But there were TOO MANY close calls after all these years of us being ok with every hero escaping all those bad guys' bad shots and falling off waterfalls THREE times and shit like that. When it happened in this installment, everything just felt TOO unbelievable, and I just....it just didn't work.

At least NBC gave them the rights to Howdy Doody...

Anyway, I've made it this far. I might as well watch Japan and the Netherland Kingdom at 6...

Enjoy waking up everyone.
Here's some Random Thieves in the Night.

SLEEP. WILL. COME. SOON.
LET'S. GO. METS.

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