Another fog day, so the kids are off school.  They’re playing with each other right now, so I have a few minutes…  why bother to start cleaning when I know that they’ll be “momming” me any second?  The house is a disaster, and it needs a good few hours of attention at least.  Why bother starting laundry?  The bird will only scream at me and rile up the kids who are otherwise being good.

A fellow tangents blogger recently wrote about the grey days of winter, and I guess I’m feeling that now.  It’s too cold to bundle up the kids and take them anywhere, and we’re really trying to watch our pennies anyway – taking them out costs money, even if just the gas in the car, it’s still more expensive than staying home.  Can’t walk anywhere because it’s too cold.  So, we’re staying home, trying to keep all 5 of us out of the way of my husband, who works at home and is, of course, working all day.

No need to bring you up to speed on the current happenings in my life – just every day stuff, laced with a little bad luck.  Nothing to spread any “cheer” about.

We’ve watched a few movies recently; saw Star Wars for the first time as an adult.  Growing up in the 80’s, I saw clips of the most famous parts as a kid.  My husband and I both had the stomach flu last week, and we couldn’t sleep, so we stayed up and watched Star Wars.  It was entertaining; not my kind of movie, but perhaps eventually I will watch the other movies in the series.  Here’s a question for Star Wars fans:  I know that they re-released the movie with digital enhancements, including the scene with Jabba the Hut.  So did they film that as new footage for the re-release?  Harrison Ford did look like he could be decades older…

And speaking of series, I have begun to read the Harry Potter series.  I’m about 50 pages away from finishing the first book, and I’m really enjoying it.  I was really excited to watch the movie when I was finished with the book,  but then I started thinking that I might want to keep my own vision of Hogwarts.  Might the movie ruin the picture I have in my head?  Using imagination is fun; I don’t want to take that away from myself or lose motivation to finish reading the series.  Then again, I’ve never heard any Potter fans complain that the movies didn’t do the books justice; I hear they are very good.  I’m just wondering if I should wait until I’m done with or at least a little further in the series to watch the movies.

Then again, it’s not like we have a lot of time to watch  movies, anyway.  With my husband back on full time and us still fulfilling our youth group and other obligations, as well as caring for our 4 kids (who don’t sleep a lot!), by the time we put in a movie for “us” time, we are both dozing and can’t get through an entire one anyway.  Sigh.  Well, not to be negative, but the grey days of winter are here.  Can’t wait until spring!!!  GO CUBS!  Maybe THIS year…

I just learned that another Indiana Jones sequel is in the formative stages.  Speculation abounds concerning the macguffin, the casting, direction, writing, etc.  To me, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was fun if a bit far-fetched.  Transporting the intrepid archaeologist to the 1950s and the era of Area 51, nuclear test sites, etc was a good way to age the character.  However, I was not keen on the whole happy family dynamic: even giving the son a canine nickname.  It seemed like a passing of the torch to a new hero and I say NO.  I also do not see it possible to recast Indy.  It may have worked (for better or worse) over the course of the James Bond films but to me no one could capture the essence of Dr. Jones like Harrison Ford.  I think that as long as Ford is willing and (more importantly) able to carry the whip, the franchise should continue but everyone grows old.

As far as the relic, I really don’t think that the religious aspect is all important.  The three original films dealt with religious artifacts but each one had a mystic quality to them.  While reading some comments about a fifth movie, people have mentioned items such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the lost continent of Atlantis (which was actually bandied around the last time), Excalibur, and other relics.

Ok, tangenteers and other interested lurkers… what say you? More Indy?  Recasting? And what famous device should be the catalyst for the show?  However, they better get cracking, the three masterminds behind the franchise are likely to be in wheelchairs within the next 20 years.

After it was decided that the siblings and I would invest in a Blu-ray machine for the parents, I decided to get something to play on it for them.  For some reason, the local Wal-Mart is not well stocked with Blu-ray disks.  I decided on Patriot Games which stars Harrison Ford as former CIA analyst John Patrick Ryan.  I say Ford does not play his typical Indiana Jones type hero this time because this film challenges him by giving him something that Indy never had (well…): a family.  While on vacation in jolly old England, Ryan, his wife, and young daughter inadvertantly stumble upon an assassination attempt on a British royal by a renegade IRA terrorist faction.  Instead of standing on the sidelines, Jack jumps into the fray, saving the Lord, and shooting a few of the terrorists.  One of the dead terrorists was the younger brother of the leader, Sean Miller (Sean Bean), who escaped.  Miller vows revenge on Ryan.

What follows is a nail-biting, action-driven thriller.  Cathy (Anne Archer) and Sally Ryan are placed in mortal danger.  Jack goes to his former associates at the CIA to help him track down the villains.  The thing I enjoyed most about the Jack Ryan character is his vulnerability.  In a scene demanded by Ford himself, Ryan is brutally attacked by a young member of the terrorist group.  There is also a red-headed villainess who causes problems.  Like any good Harrison Ford thriller, there is action aplenty to hold you in suspense.  Although it seems cliche with Air Force One coming a few years later, Patriot Games is worth a look.  The closing scene also left the door wide open for the sequel: Clear and Present Danger.

Irony of ironies, Sean Bean has a scar over his left eye which was given to him by Harrison Ford during filming.  And before anyone asks, the parents were quite pleased with the choice since they both watched with me.  [poll id=”4″]

Every so often I write something to try to get some of the lurkers, who read my blog, to stop and say hi. This is another of those posts.

I am a numbers person, so I am fascinated by the statistics that are generated for this blog. Some topics seem to bring more people. Books, Haunted houses, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Moon Landings are all big draws. Big of course is a relative term. This blog has been averaging about 15 readers per day. My maximum in 1 day (that I know of) was just over 80. The average this week was around 25. I realize that some of the ‘readers’ I am seeing are just robots or data mining sites, but when they find something that, in the programming, is found interesting, they leave blog replies. Some of the people who come to read just won’t do it.

I know a couple of the ‘shy’ people, and I don’t really expect replies from them (they know who they are). There are others that I think would be very interesting to hear from.

Things I would like to know about you. How did you find this blog? What do you want to read here? What country/state are you from? Do you come back often? Am I boring you? Just pop in to say hello. Again, until you are ‘vetted’ (good political term, no?) your replies will only be seen by me, or maybe the owner of the place, he once ‘hacked’ in for a April Fools joke… But he is a good friend of mine, almost like a long lost brother. So if you don’t want them to be seen, let me know in the response, and I’ll get rid of it. Me, I’m just curious…

Other things I want to know. Why is a site in Russia interested in my blogs on Superman Movies? Why isn’t the same site interested in Batman? Just wondering..

This is just stuff I was thinking about this Saturday morning…

Loaded with tags, just for fun? Just having a bit of fun, that’s what blogging is all about.

The first Indiana Jones movie was released 19 years ago. My wife and I didn’t go to movies often. At that time we had 3 daughters at home the youngest was 1 1/2 years old. Somehow we got to a movie theater to see this one. When we did go to movies, they were usually action movies. My wife was hard of hearing, and she felt she got more out of the action movies, because she didn’t need the dialog. On this movie, she said she was wrong. We waited for the movie to come to the cheaper theaters just to see it again, so she could watch the lips an pick up more dialog. Then when they came to video, we actually bought them to get the closed captioning. Except for the 2nd movie, we watched these shows over and over again. Our children grew to like them too (something about brainwashing could go in here, they were just repeatedly shown 2 of the Indiana Jones Movies).

Then came today. Since 1989 a lot has changed. My children grew up, the baby at that time is now 20. My youngest is 16. Two other daughters are married. I have grandkids. I am a widower… This was the first Indiana Jones Movie I did not see with my wife. There is a piece missing to the show. That after show conversation, trying to fill my wife into some of the dialog. Her squeezing my hand when something in the show startled her. Her say how good looking either Harrison Ford or eventually Sean Connery was. Complaining about all the new characters, the story, or just whatever. Who we liked, who we didn’t. And after the first two movies and the Alan Quartermain spoofs, watching the third, saying when will we see the new Alan Quartermain??? There never was a 3rd Alan Quartermain. By the time the last Indiana Jones rolled out, the lead in Alan Quartermain was looking like Indiana did in this last movie. No, there won’t be a spoof following this one, unless its by the same people who brought us Scary Movie and the Superhero Movie. That might be fun.

So today was a fun day, since I got to see the newest Indy, but at the same time there was a bit of a shadow over the whole thing.

I wore my Indy outfit (Brown slacks, beige shirt, boots and Fedora — too warm for the leather jacket) to the theater today, I’m not sure how many noticed. Funny thing, while I got an “Indiana Jones” Fedora a couple of Christmases ago, it was just one of the brown fedoras I’ve had. I started wearing one shortly after the first movie. My lovely wife said it looked good on me, and I needed something to keep the sun off my face during our summer vacations (usually hiking somewhere). I lost my first hat, but I still have the second (not as nice since we couldn’t afford a good one at the time). Now I have the hat my daughters bought me for Christmas. I can never thank them enough for that gift. As they can tell you, I wear that hat often. Most of the winter, and summer. I don’t tend to wear it in the spring or on windy days. In the spring, I’m looking for as much sun as possible, so all hats are off my head.

Strange what watching a movie will make you think…

Before last night, I had never seen an Indiana Jones movie.  So when the opportunity presented itself to view Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on its opening day rather inexpensively via email coupons from Fandango.com, I couldn’t resist the temptation to see what all the fuss was about.
I walked away entertained, but still a little bewildered about why the character is SO popular.  The people I saw the movie with (both have seen all of the movies in the series) said this was not the best of the Indiana Jones movies.  Not that it was a bad movie, but I would have chopped off about an hour of it.  A few of the chase scenes ran a little long, and there was a little too much hokeyness in my opinion.  Before I went, I was hearing critics talk about the Indiana Jones movies and how they are a throwback to the adventure movies of the 1930’s and 40’s.  I thought this might be a good explanation for some of the cheesy action; for example, characters swinging through the air and falling exactly where they need to in order to avoid certain death or to land the perfect punch, etc.  I can deal with hokey action sequences.  What was a little hard to swallow however, was the origin of the movie’s namesake, the crystal skull.  Since I’m at risk of spilling some major spoilers here – and don’t read any further if you’re worried about learning anything about the movie you don’t want to –  it will suffice to say that I did not appreciate the supernatural element they gave the fourth Indiana Jones movie.

The acting wasn’t anything Oscar worthy, but that is to be expected in this type of movie.  I didn’t see Shia LeBeouf as the kid from Disturbia, so he must have some diversity in his acting.  Cate Blanchett was really good as the villianess, and I found it funny when I read that when people heard she was in the movie, they just assumed she was Harrison Ford‘s love interest.  People were so critical that an older man’s love interest was going to be a much younger woman, then they had to eat their words when it was leaked that she was playing the part of the evil enemy.  Indiana Jones’ actual love interest in the movie was a character played by Karen Allen that had been in some of the previous movies, which I liked.  What I didn’t like is that there were 2 characters in the movie who were supposed to be former friends of Indiana Jones, however, my Indy experts tell me that neither of them were in the previous movies.

I was entertained throughout the entire movie, and there were funny jokes and interesting characters.  Also a few plot twists anyone with half a brain could see coming from a mile away.  During most of the action sequences, I couldn’t help but feel like I was watching a video game.  I was really appreciating the components of the quest to obtain the crystal skull, at least until the supernatural element came into play.  Parts of the movie also made me envision a Universal Studios ride – it would probably be really cool, maybe a splashdown ending…  I didn’t fall asleep during this movie, but as you just read, my mind did wander a bit, probably because of the lengthy action sequences.    Overall, I’d say the movie was exactly what I was expecting, perhaps even a wee bit better.  And hearing from 2 experienced Indiana Jones viewers that this was not the best movie makes me willing to give the others a try – providing they are not over 2 hours each, of course – that’s just too long to sit through an action movie in my opinion!

I was giddy as a school boy (inside) all day after I received two phone calls at work from a great friend informing me that he and his wife wanted to go and see THE MOVIE with me this afternoon. I was soooo excited… work just dragged by until 3.30 when I was allowed to leave a half hour early to make the 5pm showing. I cannot believe that it has been 19 years since Indiana Jones last graced the big screen and it really did look as if it were going to be the last time as Indy and his companions rode off into the sunset in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. From what I gathered on screen, I believe that Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, and company wanted to tie up some loose ends.

Without giving away too much, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was an entertaining movie but at times it was a bit too hokey… even for someone who still watches the three movies at least once a year (and when and why did Raiders of the Lost Ark become Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark?). The year is 1957, 20+ years after World War II and Nazis. This time, the enemies are the Russians and seeds of McCarthyism are seen in the beginning of the movie. We learn a little about what Dr. Jones has been up to since that time.

All of the elements of the previous films are here: the quest to find the MacGuffin, keeping it away from the villains, the creepy crawly creatures…. yes there is at least one snake involved, the big action pieces, and above all Harrison Ford’s unflappable portrayal with all the dry wit one comes to expect from the action star. The most pleasant surprise is Karen Allen’s return to the fold as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The chemistry and magic between the two leads was unmistakable from the moment they resumed their bickering which was a highlight of the first film.

After the movie, we discussed one scene that would make a fantastic water ride at an amusement park. I have often though that the mine car chase/battle in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would be the basis for a great rollercoaster.

There were more times in this film that the action was slowed down and you kept wanting something to happen. It was very slow to get going but once it did, it kept us entertained. As we discussed, it may be that we might just be revisiting something from our youth and not being as captivated by it as adults. I admit that seeing the newest Star Wars trilogy kind of had me feeling that way, but there was just something missing in this Indy adventure.

The supporting cast of new friends for the archaeologist were unfamiliar. Gone were Marcus Brody and Sallah. In their place were a teenage James Dean type school drop out, a kidnapped colleague of Indy’s, and a greedy man who apparently had adventures with Indy following The Last Crusade.

So, while not as memorable as the three previous chapters, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is an entertaining film that any fan of the original blockbusters should see. By the way, be sure to look for one of the treasures Dr. Jones uncovered in the previous movies in the warehouse segment at the beginning of the movie… blink and you may miss it. And anyone who can tell me where the shooting star seen in all Spielberg movies is, will be rewarded handsomely.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 5.

Indiana Jones tickets on sale now!

It’s no secret who one of my favorite popcorn munching, thrill seeking, Saturday afternoon movie actors is. However, like most actors worth their salt, Harrison Ford does have a repetoire that extends far beyond two of the most successful film franchises in movie history and as I have been mentioning in probably half of my posts, he will be returning to the silver screen as a certain globe-trotting, snake fearing, bullwhip cracking, Nazi despising archaeologist. Below is a List of some of my other Ford favorites.

Witness: His first and (so far) only Academy Award nomination and it features a very cool song from days gone by.

The Fugitive: The best motion picture based on a television series.  Tommy Lee Jones’ Best Supporting Oscar winning film.  Excellent cat-and-mouse chase of the on the lam doctor and the obsessed federal marshal tracking him down. Also believed to be based on the actual case of  Cleveland, OH physician Sam Sheppard.

What Lies Beneath: Hitchcockian in its suspense without the blood and gore.

The Jack Ryan duology (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger). Alec Baldwin started the franchise in The Hunt for Red October and Ben Affleck concluded it in The Sum of All Fears.  I know it is another series but Harrison’s two films are the best.

Air Force One: Flawed, cliched, but seriously, would it be so bad if he were our president?  Another good popcorn film.

I know I am forgetting a lot so please feel free to comment on some of your favorite Harrison Ford movies.  Any will do.

It seems that everyone is getting in the Indiana Jones spirit.  While chatting with a friend I was directed to the Chicago Cubs’ website and the schedule thereof.  On the May 22nd space, there appears a picture of Harrison Ford as the reknowned archaeologist ready to embark on his latest adventure.  We speculated that all of baseball may have decided to take the day off to celebrate Dr. Jones’ return to the big screen.  Somehow, I had my doubts.  Sure enough on the New York Yankees‘ site, there appeared the same picture but a game was listed.  So, I thought all of baseball was celebrating but just not taking the entire day off.  I checked out the Detroit Tigers’ schedule: there it was again, but yet again the team has a scheduled game.  Only makes me more anxious for the next 21 days to go quickly.

Check your favorite team’s website to see if they are celebrating the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.   At least a Yankee fan had something to divert his attention to tonight 🙁

…is the title of an AP article I read the other day about the price of celebrity divorces, inspired by, of course, the McCartney-Mills divorce that’s been dominating the headlines lately.  I took note of this article because I was surprised that the McCartney-Mills settlement was not in the top 5 most expensive divorce settlements.  In fact, the top 5 were surprising to me; just people I would not have guessed that would have had that much money or who would have not been able to protect themselves and their assets any better.  Actually, the McCartney-Mills divorce settlement at $48.6 million equaled a little over half of # 5 on the list.  Here it is:

1.  Michael and Juanita Jordan – possibly more than $150 million settlement pending, 2006.

2.  Neil Diamond and Marcia Murphey – $150 million, 1994.

3.  Steven Spielberg and Amy Irving – $100 million, 1989.

4.  Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison – $85 million, 2004.

5.  Kevin Costner and Cindy Silva – $80 million, 1994.

I wonder what some of these amounts would be if adjusted for inflation also.  This article would have been a little more interesting if they had included the wedding date or how long the couple was together before the divorce.  I am often amused when I look in the local newspaper and see divorces between couples who were only married a few years, some only a few months!  My dear friends are wedding photographers, and they’ve shared at least one story of a couple who was no longer together by the time their wedding photos were ready to be picked up!  It’s amusing, yet sad at the same time, especially of course any time there are children involved.  I wish people would think a little bit harder about the commitment and sacrifice involved in marriage, and I wish that more people would treat marriage like the institution it was meant to be.