Film: Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

1989.

Summer. Maine.

We are in the process of tearing down an ancient red tin shed in the backyard and building a new wooden one in its place. I spend my evenings running barefoot in the cooling grass, sweaty and grungy and entirely happy with my place in the universe. I am ten years old.

There came a late morning - surely a Saturday, since my father was home from work - with the sun streaming through the kitchen window, when the natural order of my cosmos took a sudden turn for the monumental. My father suggested we go see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Not for my birthday, not in return for mowing the lawn (my brother was still burdened with that one), but simply because the man must have suspected I would be in awe. Even at that age, I would pore over the TV Week to see what movies would be playing on Cinemax or TBS, and what time, so that I could pop a tape in the VCR and record whatever segment of whatever movie I couldn't catch in person, for whatever reason. Jaws was a favorite. So was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, of which I had the last twenty minutes on a tape that regularly saw the wheels of the VCR early Saturday mornings - often before sunrise - while I ate a bowl of sugar with Golden Grahams or Shredded Wheat.

This may have been my third or fourth movie seen in a theater in my life, after Return of the Jedi, ET, Flight of the Navigator, and possibly one other. We weren't a theatergoing family; I think the next one I saw was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for my birthday in 1991; the intervening two years were a long boil on the stew of my imagination, in which moments from that summer 1989 event simmered and fermented and solidified into cardinal benchmarks of my moviegoing sensibilities. The rats. The tank chase. Books aflame. Rapid decomposition. That sweet, sweet Alison Doody.

It's fair to say, with respect and deference to the influence of, say, Tarkovsky, Tarr, and Herzog, that outside of the sight of a woman jerked violently back and forth by her legs through the calm evening waters off Amity Island, no other film provided such a lasting basis for me as a filmmaker and a film viewer. Two years ago I saw Last Crusade at the Ziegfeld, and I'll be damned if it isn't one of the most unadulteratedly entertaining films Spielberg's made, full of delightfully kinetic action setpieces, fantastic bickering between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, and intoxicating sights such as the canyons of the American West and Petra. And a veritable cornerstone of my burgeoning sexuality in the form of sweet, sweet Alison Doody.

It is with a sense of deep betrayal and personal affront that I report that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has taken pornographically blunt advantage of my youthful memories, cashing them in for a quick, cheap fuck on a warehouse floor against a green screen, with no thought toward romance or protection. I cringe for all of the many single-digit-year-olds slurping sodas and crinkling candy bags in the theater around me, who, if they remember the movie at all tomorrow, will have no idea that they have been violated already, their moviegoing identities badly skewed before they're self-aware enough to notice, for somewhere down the road they will find themselves critiquing other films against the formative influence of this lazy, wretched half-baked ratatouille of pilfered joy.

Lazy is the key word. Not long ago, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg gave a joint interview in which Lucas warned that audiences would reject the film, and Spielberg denied as much. This speaks volumes, since Lucas is given story credit, and the movie's problems start there. The stuff that made the Indiana Jones films so enthralling in the past is almost entirely absent here: deft dialogue (delivered swiftly), expedient character development amid and between action sequences brimming with wit, muscle, and fluid grace. Lucas mentioned the audience rejection of his recent Star Wars films as evidence of the certain failure of Crystal Skull, but stops short of suggesting what twenty minutes of this movie make abundantly clear: that the problem is Lucas, and his inability to fashion any communicative cinematic element, such as interesting action or insightful interactions among characters. He's also got an astounding way with dialogue in those films, and has evidently schooled screenwriter David Koepp here with truly astounding results.

Ineptitude seems infectious, or perhaps the input of too many executive-level folks in the development stages proved too diverse to coalesce; either way, Crystal Skull holds together about as tightly as a gob of wood chips, and with far less, I don't know, grace. That word keeps coming to me in describing the Indiana Jones films, because at their best, they're remarkably graceful in pace, plotting, and cinematic fluidity, cutting like butter and zipping along with high-end invisible grease. The impetus to tackle not only Indiana Jones as an older man, but also his Brando-son, and Marion, and John Hurt - I'm still not sure what he's all about - and Ray Winstone - just, come now, STOP already - and THEN the plot (I think it's about aliens. At some level) overwhelms any hope for cohesion to the degree Spielberg has attained in the past with at least two of the three previous films. Oh, and let us not discuss Cate Blanchett here. Let us forget we saw her in it. Goddesses shouldn't be crucified like criminals. Forgiveness implies judgment, and that's for other people.

Here, there is one thing worth admiring, in the same way one can admire a turkey sandwich or modern air travel. For the first time since possibly Schindler's List, Spielberg has taken his Aderol and not tried to infuse every frame with so much Steviepants. Actually, the graphic calmness of this movie is so out of character with contemporary Spielberg that I'm filled with enormous doubt that he actually directed the thing. He may want to consider taking me up on my doubt. Not that he should return to the chaotic perfectionism that ruined Munich. I just think maybe he was bored to tears this time around. Like everyone else, it seems.

You know, I didn't need this. Three solid movies worked fine - better than fine, really; dramatically fine, even classically fine. Indiana Jones didn't need to achieve military rank or graduate away from thugees and Nazis. Marcus Brody didn't have to die, and Marion Ravenwood never had to come walking back onto my screen again. It's not because I don't care, guys, it's just that I own you now, and you don't get to change.

Film: Jon Favreau: Iron Man (2008)

I concede, I have never seen Swingers. I've also never seen The Princess Bride, or The Grifters, and I really don't remember Beautiful Girls. Missing a part of Rob Reiner's ouevre - or Stephen Frears', or the late Ted Demme's - doesn't seem to preclude me from catching enough references to pop culture to enjoy my social life, or from fully grasping the cavernous depths of When Harry Met Sally... or...whatever else Frears and Demme did (IMDB, currently decked out in fantastic Sex and the City garb, reminds me that they also did the respectable High Fidelity and the Boogie Nights wannabe Blow, respectively. What an adorable pink trim below the Flatiron Building beside the IMDB logo!).

I suspect the same holds true of Jon Favreau and his magnificent attention to Robert Downey, Jr's outfit in Iron Man, which isn't afraid to combine graphic contemporary war violence with the multilayered comic iconography of its star. Oh, and there's Gywneth Paltrow too. No, really. She's in this, but you might miss her behind the glare coming off Jeff Bridges' bald pate. If you care. You might. Some do. I'm told. There's nothing really wrong with this film, in the sense of causing offense, or failing to satisfy the thematic demands it establishes, or in not providing the necessary scene coverage so that you think the characters have suddenly, inexplicably moved from shot to reverse shot, causing a catastrophic rupture in your suspension of disbelief (unless you couldn't care less, or if it's raining on your wedding day), although it might come as a surprise how quickly Downey's character goes through his Crisis, and how early on in the film. Or not.

No, Iron Man does exactly what it says it will, giving Downey a bright shiny red flying suit of impenetrable non-iron alloy packed with concealed weapons with which to kill bad weapons-smuggling Afghanis (weapons supplied by Tony Stark - Iron Man's businessman alter ego - the implications of which frontload the movie with a curiously unsustained moral dilemma. Why not pursue that? In this dangerously hi-tek day and age of militant WMD-wielding cavemen, there's no foreseeable end to the mileage Iron Man might have gotten from extended rape-like exploitation). There's an energetic sex scene, plus the unbearable sexual tension between Paltrow and Downey, which, who knows, they could consummate onscreen. Suit optional. Thrusters recommended. Oh, and Peter Billingsley's in this, and Terrence Howard. I don't really remember either, but in fairness to the movie, I'd been working all day on a prison shoot in Georgia and entered into the movie exhausted and profoundly distracted by the nearby crunching of popcorn. Or the sipping of soda. Whichever.

A friend of a friend - not exactly a friend of mine, more like a second friend - observed that using RoDo, J in a film like Zodiac is cheap, essentially capitalizing on his iconic stature to lend prepackaged dynamic weight to his part. That you're getting Robert Downey, Jr, as opposed to a performance in a role. I argued against this stance vigorously at the time, certainly over drinks in a bar-type atmosphere somewhere in Manhattan with other people I probably knew vicariously through friends, but now I think I missed her point. She denied it, but she CLEARLY HATES RODO, J. She hates his quirky mannerisms, his way of investing subpar lines of dialogue with legitimacy and fantastic lines with angel dust, and his near androgynous appeal as a screen presence. She HATES all this. Or she hates the star system. Honest to good sweet Jesus, if I find out she went to Sex and the City, or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Secret Realm of the Hidden Power of the Platinum Cock Ring, or Lord help me, shopped for designer footwear, I will track her down and defend RoDo's honor with a swift beat. I swear. That kind of lazy pretension has no place in mass culture, and only serves to underscore the hateful, exclusive nature of High Art. In a movie like Iron Man, he binds us in a warm woolen comforter of familiarity, pacifying our deep-seated personal fears and anxieties, and lulling our sore strained minds into a preternatural calm, like Ambien, like weed, like a warm spring breeze in the park on a Saturday.

I can't say how loyal Favreau is to the comic book source material, but I only recently got into the comics world. I just finished Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics", a vastly entertaining and insightful analysis of the ways narrative operates in the frame-based visual media. I would bet my next income tax return that Favreau's read it, loved it, digested its every observation, and distilled them into his filmmaking craft. I might not know for sure until I saw Swingers. Somebody lend me the DVD. Or VHS. I know you've got it.

Iron Man on IMDB

Music: Hot Hot Heat: "Happiness Ltd." (2007)

I am a fan of any band who can sell out without completely losing what brought them to the brink of selling out in the first place. The whole notion of selling out, frankly, is completely underrated. Unfortunately, Hot Hot Heat hasn’t the first fucking clue why they gained a following with their first (the fantastic “Make Up The Breakdown”) and, to a somewhat lesser extent, second releases (the less inspired but often wonderful “Elevator”) and, having apparently lost complete track of what makes them a sometimes great band, their sellout attempt with their third album, “Happiness Ltd.,” is a near total failure. This album sucks. I’m stopping short of giving it one star because it’s not completely devoid of redeeming qualities, but I’m tempted to just because I’m so fucking pissed at them for doing this to me.

This is a band that spent their first two albums attempting to perfect a sound that I have literally not heard anywhere else in the indie rock universe. A nearly perfect combination of “totally fucking weird” and “totally fucking fun.” With their third release, they have dropped both “fucking weird” and “fucking fun” and replaced it with “fucking dull.”

Listen to “So So Cold.” “Waiting for Nothing.” What the fuck is this shit? This is the same band that came up with “Bandages” and “This Town” and, like, every track on their last two albums? What the fuck happened? Can they hear their singer? His vocals? Yeah, those don't work on this crappy emo nonsense. He sounds like a fucking lunatic. You guys used to write songs that were perfectly appropriate for a singer who sounds like a fucking lunatic. They were awesome. And you even used to pull off powerful, emotional material (which you're clearly striving for on the new release), like your masterful “Jingle Jangle,” without sounding like goddamn Fall Out Boy. Can...can you, like, go back to writing weird quirky shit and stop trying to remake yourself as some kind of hack homage to the Killers? Because the Killers are better at this shit than you are, even if their second album sucked.

Thank you.


"Happiness Ltd." on the iTunes Store: