Just as pretty flowers spring can spring forth from beds of manure, the tedious Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is turning out to be quite the fertilizer for interesting critical writing.
Earlier posts here have alluded to the underground re-make of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Two Mississippi teenagers spent most of the 1980’s making a home-made shot-by-shot recreation of Raiders. An article from Lee Sandlin in the Chicago Reader provides a must-read take on the project.
Sandlin does an excellent job of excoriating the original Raiders
Raiders is a global adventure with no romance, a historical epic with no feeling for the past, a thriller with no trace of real danger. It means nothing, feels like nothing, and carries the implicit message that absolutely nothing matters.
His take on the world of film before Raiders and after it is worthy reading on it’s own. What’s more thrilling to read is his rave review of Raiders Of The Lost Ark – The Adaptation.
The video catches you up in a daze of metafictional suspense: you’re rooting not for Indiana Jones but for the kids themselves, to somehow keep this thing in the air, to make it all the way through to the opening of the ark and the Nazis getting fried by the supernatural microwave (a particularly good scene, as it turns out, and a worthy climax to the whole venture; the audience’s approval was deafening).
In other words, the making of the video was itself a kind of Indiana Jones adventure. That’s why Raiders was a particularly good choice—it probably would have been a lot tougher to sit through their version of Raging Bull. There are even times when the making-of excitement spills over into the action on-screen, and you find yourself thinking this Raiders is better than the original.
Read it here. Despite the retirement of Johnathan Rosenbaum, the Reader shows why it’s still a high water mark for film criticism. The piece punctures a popular myth, and at the same time, elevates a better one to take its place. (Plus, for the internet literate, there are some clues as to how you might be able to see the legally un-screenable Adaptation for yourself. Not that you heard it here.)
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Apparently, “Nuke The Fridge” is the new “Jump The Shark”. The horrible opening scene where Indy survives the atomic bomb test by hiding in a lead-lined fridge is rapidly becoming the new internet meme for “once cool things that now suck irretrievably”.
There’s a webiste: Nuke The Fridge, which has more movie news and gossip, but the concept of replacing “jump the shark” with “nuke the fridge” really is its own standalone idea.
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