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by Edward Champion

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The fourth Indiana Jones movie is a piece of shit. Gone is the sense of wonder. Gone is the great love of Republic serials. This is a movie made by two men who have misplaced their ability to have fun. Lucas and Spielberg’s collective contempt for their audience is evident from the opening shot, where the Paramount mountain dissolves not into a bona-fide peak, but a gopher hill. That’s right, a gopher hill with a bunch of bad CG gophers running around. (And if you think that’s bad, there are also bad CG monkeys in this movie too.) What the fuck is this? Caddyshack 3?

Typically, the opening Indiana Jones scene features an exciting set piece that sets up Jones as an ass-kicking protagonist and establishes a breakneck pace that the film must live up to. But not Indy 4. Instead, we get a bullshit cruising race between some Russians and some smarmy teens. Where the fuck is Indy? And then these Russians go to Area Fucking 51, shoot the men at the gate (with one of the big baddies leaning down to tie his shoe, a ridiculous visual) and are somehow able to walk through the entire base and into a warehouse containing some of the biggest secrets collected by the government without a single security guard around. (They can’t all be positioned at the gate.)

But where the fuck is Indy? Oh yeah. He’s in the trunk. He gets out, mutters “I like Ike” to prove that he’s American and all, condemns the Reds (in case we missed the “New Mexico 1957” title) and then there’s a ho-hum shooting scene before we venture into an hour of relentless chatter about geoglyphs and the like (although you’ll see the plot coming a mile away) and Shia LaBeouf as sidekick Mutt Williams, a character so bland that I actually longed for Kate Capshaw’s screams, which is something I’d never thought I’d do.

Should I tell you about how they turned Marion from a spunky, self-sufficient sidekick into a more or less helpless chick who drives the truck? Appalling. I’m sure the idea to put the hussy in her place (domesticated no less!) came from Lucas, and I want to punch him for it.

Should I convey to you the constant mimesis as marketing? At one point, Indy tells Mutt about an adventure with Pancho Villa he had “when I was your age.” And it’s nothing less than a plot summary for a Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode. Something that has nothing to do with the plot. Someone knocks over a crate in the warehouse and oh ho ho, it’s the Ark of the Covenant! Harrison Ford pushes his hat down while traveling in the plane. The same way he did in Raiders! And it is this constant repetition of moments from previous films in which we are expected to be charmed. Harrison Ford even says, “I have a bad feeling about this,” the dreaded line from Star Wars. The constant recycling suggests to us that nobody really wants to create anything original, that Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford are all the same. So why care really?

Harrison Ford looks good, but seems considerably irritated to be in this picture.

Cate Blanchett gives the worst performance of her life, unable to sustain a convincing Ukranian accent. (Her Australian seeps through in every sentence. Didn’t they have a dialogue coach on this?) She juts her chin forward, wears a preposterous black wig in a bob, and spends most of her time pacing with her hands folded behind her back. This is what is considered a convincing villain. I longed for Honey Ryder.

The plot is preposterously pedestrian. Lucas wasted nearly twenty years and several screenwriters on this. And what is the end result? An embarrassing Chariots of the Gods premise that will surely earn David Koepp’s screenplay a spot on the Razzie longlist.

It’s not all bad. There’s one very fun jungle chase scene in which Mutt and Cate Blanchett get into a sword fight, each of them on a separate vehicle. I liked some over-the-top red ants that munched upon victims. This is largely due to Spielberg’s half-hearted attempts to make something of this crappy material. But none of this comes close to the tank scene in The Last Crusade, the wondrous mine chase in The Temple of Doom, or any moment of Raiders.

This was the first Indiana Jones picture in which I didn’t have much fun. Not content to simply ruin the Star Wars franchise with the last execrable trilogy, George Lucas has made a mockery of the Indiana Jones universe, and will be rewarded with millions of dollars for insulting his audience and cheapening his creations. He doesn’t care. He is Hollywood’s answer to Kenneth Lay, defrauding his audience of the pleasures he is now incapable of generating.

by Edward Champion

Liberation!

Okay, ladies and gents, after nearly six months of experimentation (well, five actually, but who’s really counting?), I have decided to break the single post a day rule. For one thing, the amount of energy it takes to bang out a 900 word post every goddam day along with podcasts, freelancing assignments, fiction writing, kinky activity, lacrosse, eating tasty sandwiches, and numerous other tasks I perform each day felt as if I was attempting to power up a small city. For another thing, there have been too many instances in which I’ve wanted to write something in short format but have felt obligated in some sense to bang out some epic post. So I’ve decided to do away with the moratorium on roundups, paragraph-length posts, and other assorted bite-sized candy. Unfettered by these constraints, I shall have more opportunities to offend the smug and humorless, tap dance upon stiff toes, perhaps appraise newspaper sections with the reward or denial of delivered pastries, and otherwise be a giddy bastard.

For what it’s worth, I’ve written a good deal of material over the past few months that has been rejected by the editors here. The common answer? “Sorry, that’s a Reluctant post.” Clearly, this suggests that some of the Reluctant energy did not go away. I was just as shocked as anyone to learn that I had not matured. I would like to think that what we’ll be seeing here is some bastard stepchild of Reluctant and Filthy, which we’ll call Filthy Habits for now. Longass thoughtful posts. Short-form randomness. And the middle child, always the most neglected in a dutifully dysfunctional family, which we’ll call Henry. Most Henries I’ve met tend to be middle children, which is not to suggest that they are inferior in any sense. But they are after all named Henry.

And for the record, guest posts are still welcome. We still have editors here. At least I think we do.

by Edward Champion

Chicken Wrap

A chicken wrap now sits in a plastic container in the fridge, and I made this chicken wrap appear because I had skipped lunch, and was very confused. I did not pay for it. It was an unanticipated duplicate to replace the original chicken wrap. The wrap, kindly and originally ordered for me by someone else, had not arrived. Forgotten by the delivery man. Or so we thought. The “missing” chicken wrap was located after I barked into the phone, rationale on the wane. And I felt embarrassed. I ate the original chicken wrap while we waited for Delivery #2. We were then forced to hide the remains of the original chicken wrap. A serendipitous larceny with me as the main perp. Something I imagine an Enron accountant might have done had he dealt with chicken wraps instead of beans. I drifted into mock Method, feigning hunger just as the delivery man arrived again and after I had eaten the original chicken wrap. I felt guilty for this, even though the delivery man did not see me and did not particularly care. I pondered returning the spare chicken wrap and almost did. It would be something new indeed to return a chicken wrap to a restaurant and to offer a complicated explanation. But it was no good. The chicken wrap could not be sold again. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It had cooled. And how to explain anyway? I should have tipped the guy when he came a second time, but somebody else did. Perhaps I was frozen because others understood my dilemma better than I did, or were better and kinder people than me, or understood that my reaction arose because I was very hungry, because they had their sandwiches and I didn’t. After everyone had eaten, the second chicken wrap was offered to me, and I took it after some initial resistance, my own idea being that I could give this to a homeless man and atone. But I could find nobody homeless on the way home, and the plastic container was deposited in the fridge, where it is now situated like a metaphorical millstone. I do not know if I will ever eat it or if I can find someone else to eat it.

I feel very bad about all of this. Mix-ups like this do happen from time to time. I’m sure I’m not the first person in human history to believe for a moment that a chicken wrap ordered through takeout had not arrived, only to discover that it had arrived. And in my defense, another sandwich we had ordered had not arrived. So there was a two sandwich shortfall we had conveyed, with the chicken wrap being located post-phone call. So it’s not as if there hadn’t been some kind of mistake. There was. But does this excuse the minor deceit? The ethical dilemma of permitting my twelve hour hunger to overtake my mind, turning me into some slightly crazed animal, causing me to snap at the guy on the phone, still stings at me. The group did not, as a whole, see the chicken wrap that had been rightly delivered. Perhaps they did not want to see the chicken wrap. Perhaps none of us were meant to see the chicken wrap. Things get lost all the time. Human cognitive skills work only so well. Sometimes, we lose things and we find them right in front of us. And sometimes a chicken wrap contretemps reveals our gravest limitations.