The Cure For Writers Block

The summer can be a difficult time to write a blog. Most of what I enjoy writing about occurs during the fall or the winter, like new television shows, or football games. The last few months have been particularly barren, with the Eagles being too pathetic to write about, and the writers strike taking away much of the spring television schedule. The only truly worthwhile shows from the spring were Lost and Battlestar Galactica, and I couldn't write about those, because at least half of my target audience hasn't even caught up with the most recent episodes of either show on their DVR's. (You know who you are, my two first named friend.) I did buy a house, and there many, MANY hilarious things to write about that, except that this blog entry would probably be admissible in the resulting divorce proceedings.

Why don't I write about the Olympics, you may ask? Call me an unpatriotic, but aside from the fact that I now understand how my grandparents must have felt watching the 1936 Berlin Olympics, I can't really get into it. Also, I'm starting to realize the similarities between Olympic events and the recent wave of "extreme" obstacle course game shows. When it comes down to it, is there really a huge difference between using a pole to propel yourself over a stationary bar and trying to avoid being hit by a punching glove machine while wearing a fat suit? I don't think so. Eight gold medals are nice, but until Michael Phelps proves to all of us that he can ride a unicycle up a flight of steps in under two minutes while weightlifters in unitards throw styrofoam projectiles at him, then count me as unimpressed.

Bonus Olympic fact - the number one Olympic related search on Google is "the black thing on Kerri Walsh's shoulder."

See? It's been a boring few months, and I haven't really done or seen anything worth writing about. Well, wait a second, I did see a couple of movies, like for instance…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

(Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, there's nothing that breaks up an 11 month case of writers block than an overhyped summer movie!)

As we discussed last summer, Hollywood has discovered a new formula for success: Let's take a familiar character or idea that Justin remembers fondly from his childhood. Then, let's take every cliched movie idea from the last 20 years, put them onto a dartboard, randomly throw darts at it, and use the results to make a script. Of course, we have to make sure to make the characters 40% stupider than before, so that they can become cartoonish parodies of themselves and are able to believe this nonsensical plot we've cobbled together. Then, we can throw in some admittedly impressive looking special effects (even if they really have nothing to do with the story, but are merely eye candy to distract the viewer from the total lack of plot). Finally, let's find a Gen-Y star of limited talent who plays the exact same character in every single role, shoehorn him into a story that would be EXACTLY THE SAME without him, and proceed to shove him down the collective throats of a public too distracted by shiny flying saucers to recognize how truly awful he really is.

(We meet again, Shia Lebouf, You truly are the devil's imp.)

Bonus hack director fact: According to imdb.com, "Michael Bay is a close friend of George Lucas, from whom he often seeks advice."

Was it as bad as Transformers? Of course not, nothing that ever happened is that bad. But I also didn't have the same expectations going into Transformers that I did for IJ. Last summer, I knew the risks going in; I was actually paying money to go into a Michael Bay movie. Thou shalt reap what thou hast sown. But Kingdom of the Crystal Skull should have been better; consider the source material: one was adapted from a half hour toy advertisement masquerading as a cartoon, and the other was taken from arguably one of the best movies of the last 30 years, and a classic film by any account. Sure, there were some problems with those sequels. The next film, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom was pretty much the same movie as The Goonies. I sometimes get them mixed up - if I remember correctly, the plot of that movie involved Indiana Jones going to rescue the Goonies after the Fratelli gang had enslaved them in a child labor camp, and Sloth ripped out Chunk's still beating heart. I think.

Bonus Oscar Fact: Jonathan Ke Quan, playing "Data" in the Goonies, and "Short Round" in the Temple of Doom, did not receive a Best Supporting Actor nomination for either role. (Thanks again to the indispensable IMDB!)

The franchise recovered nicely with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. It wasn't as good as the original, but still a fun and enjoyable movie - again, my recollection is shaky, but I do remember Indiana Jones throwing a German general out of a blimp at one point. Also, Sean Connery managed to destroy the entire German Air Force with an umbrella and three pigeons, thus allowing the Allied forces to land safely at Normandy during D-Day. Or something like that.

I wasn't expecting a classic, but fun and enjoyable is something they could have shot for, right?

I'll get the easy parts out of the way first and tell you what I did like. Early in the movie, during a scuffle with the Russians in the Area 57 warehouse, a non descript crate was accidentally smashed open, revealing the Ark of the Covenant, from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was a nice moment, and briefly encouraging to see that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg did actually have some passing familiarity with that first movie. Unfortunately, Indiana Jones himself did not seem to remember that first movie, otherwise, he could have ripped the top off of the Ark, covered his eyes, and waited ten minutes for the Russians to melt into a big pile of goo, thereby ending the movie, giving me two hours back, and saving the world from ever having to discover the execrable Mutt Williams as portrayed by Shia LaBeouf. Ah, what could have been.

Something else I liked: a few minutes later, after surviving a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a refrigerator, the silhouetted Indy observes the resulting mushroom cloud from a safe distance. It was an iconic image, an example of a moment that great filmmakers can create, even if it was only the result of a fortuitous combination of a ridiculous plot point and brilliant special effects. Of course, getting to that point was the result of a series of events that juuuuuust slightly stretched audience credibility. Just read that first sentence again.

He was at the epicenter of a hydrogen bomb explosion.

He hid in a refrigerator.

He survived the explosion.

The refrigerator was hurled into the air, crashing miles away.

He survived the impact.

Then, he walked miles to safety through a nuclear irradiated wasteland without even a runny f---ing nose to show for it!

…

If nothing else, this movie taught me that if there is any type of nuclear crisis in the future, I can just go hide out in the refrigerator, staying pleasantly free of radiation, having only to worry about finishing the milk before it goes bad.

Of course, there were things that I didn't like as much:

Indiana Jones is not only older, but getting soft in his old age. Whenever I hear my pacifist, gun hating wife saying "Just shoot him already," then I know things are not well.

Karen Allen, reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood, was apparently so happy to be in an actual movie that she was unable to convey any sort of emotion besides bemused wonderment. I hope that if I'm ever drowning in quicksand or about to plunge off of a waterfall, I can be that happy too.

Cate Blanchett, playing the standard she-communist dominatrix, was just not very good. This might be the most difficult part of the entire blog entry, because I sincerely believe that Cate Blanchett is perfect. Even questioning her imperfection makes me uncomfortable. Let's move on.

Shia Lebouf swinging from vines through the jungle. It's an utter waste to even try to describe that. It's only redeeming value was that it made the nuclear explosion seem believable by comparison.

And finally, the crystal skulls. That's the best they could think of? Who cares about a stupid crystal skull? Even as a child, I could grasp the importance of an Ark of the Covenant (and it sure made Moses seem a lot more kick-ass.) There are plenty of other quasi-mythical questions that could have made sense as the plot of the movie: whether Atlantis existed, whether Bigfoot is real, or what's really going on with Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. They could have even made it about the secret message hidden in the Mona Lisa that uncovers a vast conspiracy within the Catholic Church that goes back two thousand years.

On second thought, nobody would ever believe that last one.