Friday, March 28, 2008

Senior Moment

The first thought I had when I saw the final one-sheet for this summer's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Meth was: hasn't anything happened to me in the last eighteen years? It looks exactly like the other posters in the series, in the sense that it looks like it came off a template of eighties action movie poster design. I will repeat my grousing of last year. Harrison Ford is now older than Sean Connery was when he played his father in the last one. But Connery was supposed to be a senior in that film...I highly doubt Ford's role is to be that of the grumpy old man in this one. Please let there not be a shirtless scene.

This seems to be a bit of a step back for Spielberg. I think it's a bit old-fashioned to continue to knock him for being Mr. Blockbuster, a non-risk-taking director who, to quote from an anti-Spielberg essay written by Crispin Glover (sic), “wafted his putrid stench upon our culture, a culture he helped homogenize and propagandize” (this from the guy who signed up for Like Mike and Charlie's Angels). I myself probably skip as many of his new releases as I see but I cannot take cheap shots at his body of work or his skills as a filmmaker. Minority Report was top-notch and his last film, Munich, even with the WTF sequence towards the end, is a masterpiece that time will be very kind to; maybe someday people will wish it had won Best Picture instead of fucking Crash. I know he pops between these lofty heights and The Terminal, but the career work is worthy of a Cinematheque series as much as that of Lynch or Scorsese... let the comments flamewar begin.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Crackhouse Multiplex

Another great moment from the history of Cannon Films - from the British release of their late eighties thriller Crack House, here is star Richard Roundtree introducing the film with a public service announcement about not doing crack, while settling back in a teensy, empty little multiplex theatre with springy seats.