The Screengrab : indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull

On This Day in Screengrab History: May 12, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:30:00 GMT

As the Final Days draw nigh, nostalgia for the salad days of the Screengrab thickens like gravy left out on the kitchen counter overnight. I’m sorry to mention both salad and gravy in that previous sentence, but I didn’t have any lunch. The point is this: I’ve been leafing through the archives like a beloved old photo album, wistfully looking back at the days when your favorite Screengrabbers were skinny and had all their hair. No, I’m joking, of course – our archives don’t go back to 1983. But they do go back to May 12, 2008, a pivotal moment in cinematic history. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

It was a more innocent time, when none of us had yet seen Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It hadn’t even leaked on the Internet – although a few reviews had, much to the consternation of Lucas & Co., as we learned from Phil Nugent in his pithy post Indiana Jones and the Internet Critics' Pre-emptive Strike: Ain't It Cool News Sandbags Spielberg and Co. “The initial ‘quick reaction’ was posted to Ain't It Cool News last Thursday evening by ‘ShogunMaster.’ The spoiler-heavy review reports that Harrison Ford ‘has a few lines that work and a million that don't’, trashes the other performers, laments the lack of tension or suspense…and sums up the proceedings with the judgement that this is ‘the Indiana Movie that you were dreading.’” ShogunMaster: a prophet before his time.

Our summer predictions were still looking good, as Andrew Osborne informed us in Speed Racer Bombs! Screengrab Two For Two! “Sad news for the Wachowski Brothers, Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci and Chim Chim the monkey, perhaps...but it does mean we here at the Screengrab currently have a perfect batting average with regard to our predictions for the Top 5 Hits and Misses of the 2008 Summer Movie Season.” Little did we know that Sex and the City lurked just ahead, waiting to sucker punch us with its Manolo Blahniks.

Andrew also lit up the blogosphere with his controversial rant CGI Must Die: 5 Reasons Why. So influential was this piece that CGI has almost completely vanished from the multiplex, aside from Star Trek, Watchmen, Wolverine, and all the other movies that have made any money this year. For my part, I endured the All-Night Mockbuster Marathon. Hard to believe it’s been a whole year since I last enjoyed this:

Finally, there was this cautionary post: Sequel to "Donnie Darko" Is on the Way, Much to the Dismay of the Creator of "Donnie Darko". Well, that sequel is no longer on the way. Exactly one year later – on this very day, May 12, 2009 – S. Darko is released on DVD. What does it all mean? I believe it means the Screengrab is a powerful force that should not be tampered with. But that’s just my opinion.

Razzies Honor “The Love Guru,” Paris Hilton

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Lest we forget, another set of awards were handed out in Hollywood this weekend. Actually “handed out” is probably a poor choice of words, as it implies that someone actually showed up to receive their Golden Raspberry at the 29th Annual Razzie Awards. That has happened before, but as far as we know, not this year. The Love Guru was dishonored as the Worst Picture of 2008, and its star Mike Myers named Worst Actor. Myers shared Worst Screenplay with Love Guru co-writer Graham Gordy.

Other big losers include:

Worst Actress: Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie

Worst Director: Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats, In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and Postal

Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton, Repo: The Genetic Opera

Worst Supporting Actor: Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!

Worst Prequel, Remake, Ripoff or Sequel: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Taverns on the Screen: The Top Ten Barroom Scenes of Cinema (Part Deux)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a fine example of the way lazy, excessive reliance on ridiculous CGI (and CGI monkeys) can ruin an otherwise passable movie. And there’s no finer argument for the good ol’ fashioned non-CGI pleasures of real world filmmaking than the Nepalese bar sequence in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. To recap: winsome badass Karen Allen (oh, Hollywood, HOW did you ever let her get away?) drinks a yak-herder under the table, then her flaky ex-boyfriend shows up while she’s all full o’ rotgut and she slaps him in the face and sends him on his way. And THEN, creepy Nazi torturer Toht (a.k.a. Mr. Melty-Face) shows up with a bunch of evil minions and things really get interesting. What follows is a master class in cinematic action, pacing, camera placement, stuntwork, pyrotechnics, performance and editing...all without a bluescreen (or hangover) in sight.

ON_LINE (2002)

Okay, so maybe I’m biased, given that I co-wrote this one (with director Jed Weintrob), but I’ve always had a soft spot for the scene in this under-the-radar internet sex comedy where neurotic shut-in John (Josh Hamilton) goes to an odious, overpriced Manhattan nightclub on a disastrous double-date with Jordan (Vanessa Ferlito), the wild cybersex enthusiast he picked up on the internet, his oversexed roommate, Moe (Harold Perrineau, Jr.) and Moe’s pill-popping, manic-depressive girlfriend (Isabel Gillies). But don’t take my word for it: in a Salon review that (almost but not quite) made up for any number of really quite nasty reviews of the film, the extremely cultured and discerning Andrew O'Hehir summed up the appeal of the scene thusly: “John's nightclub internal monologue, as he watches Jordan dance and reflects on how hot she is, how shallow he is for thinking that and how little chance he has of actually getting in her pants in the off-line world, is probably the movie's high point.” Thanks, Mr. O’Hehir...I couldn’ t have said it better myself!

BLAZING SADDLES (1974)

Before that dastardly Hedley Lamar (played with nefarious gusto by the late Harvey Korman) decided to run the railroad through it, the hamlet of Rock Ridge in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles had everything an Old West town needed: a church, a hoosegow for when Mongo came to town, and proximity to the Hollywood Hills. And, of course, it had its own saloon. But unlike most of the filthy, rowdy joints in the history of westerns, this particular saloon was always kept nice and clean, thanks to the stewardship of the unfortunately named Anal Johnson. All that came to an end, however, with the arrival of the Teutonic songbird Lili von Shtupp, played with Dietrichian élan by the Oscar-nominated Madeline Kahn. Lili’s world-weary act, sweet set of curves, and foul-mouthed stage patter (“Why don’t you get your friggin’ feet off the stage?”) brings every rough rider in the county, but it’s her love of that delicious schnitzengruben that leads Lamar to hire her to seduce and abandon Bart, the new sheriff in town. In one of the most memorable scenes ever set in an Old West saloon, Lili sighs out “I’m Tired” before being carried off, James Brown-style, by her backup dancers and deposited in the arms of Sheriff Bart – who, it turns out, has more schnitzengruben than she can handle.

THE NINTH CONFIGURATION (1980)

It’s a scene we’ve watch play out a million times in a million action movies: a nameless bar in the middle of nowhere is taken over by a generic group of bikers, who wreak havoc in the place until they push the wrong guy just a little bit too far. But William Peter Blatty’s disturbing cult hit The Ninth Configuration is no typical action movie, and the bar fight won’t play out in a typical way. The set-up to the scene is more complex than it seems: mentally disturbed former astronaut Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), disillusioned that sensitive psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach) has turned out to be a blood-soaked Marine Corps commando, escapes from an asylum and seeks refuge in liquor at the nameless biker bar. A combination of booze, despair and a smart mouth enrages the boss bikers (the unstable brute Stanley and the cunning, sadistic Richard, played by the gaunt, devil-faced Richard Lynch), who abuse Cutshaw until Kane arrives to rescue him. Kane, who has forsaken violence and taken up the mantle of the caring, well-meaning shrink in order to bury his own murderous past, attempts to come to a peaceful resolution, but finally he can take no more. The scene that follows is one of the most stunning bar fights every captured on film – although to call it a fight ignores what truly happens: Kane utterly annihilates the biker gang in a matter of seconds, killing a number of them. It’s an astonishing scene, and even more astonishing is the fact that it’s not even the climax of The Ninth Configuration.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

In an audio commentary track recorded for the French Connection DVD, Gene Hackman described Eddie Egan, the real-life model for Hackman's obsessed narc "Popeye" Doyle, as having been "flippant" to a degree that he'd never encountered before in a human being. It's easy to imagine the conversation among the patrons of the Harlem bar that Popeye raids after he's stormed in and out like a hurricane: "That fellow was certainly flippant, wasn't he? I'm a fervent supporter of our boys in blue, but speaking as an amateur observer of the law enforcement process, I can't help feeling that some of that flippancy was unwarranted! Here, help me tie off this tourniquet?" The raid, which is actually a cover for a meeting in the men's room between Popeye and an informant, establishes Popeye's adversarial relationship to the city's civilian population, his casual racism, and the gleefully sadistic tinge to his brutality. (Obliged to rough up his informant so that no one will suspect the guy is a rat, Popeye asks him, "Where do you want it?" The man thinks about it for a second and points to his right cheek, and Popeye slugs him on his left. The blow looks hard enough to crack the guy's jaw, but this is Popeye when he's just playing.) In a recent interview in Reason, Ed Burns, the twenty-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department turned TV writer whose HBO series The Wire dismantled the logic behind the nation's "war on drugs", called the scene "iconic" and blamed it for instilling the wrong mindset in a generation of cops by "put[ting] out the idea of this guy who cracks heads," Popeye set police work back by reinforcing the idea that cops should act like swaggering badasses instead of establishing a functional relationship with their communities. So if you're a fan of The Wire -- a not uncommon condition among Screengrab writers -- then give it up for Popeye Doyle; without him, The Wire might not have been necessary.

Related Stories:

Tavern On The Screens - The Top Ten Barroom Scenes of Cinema (Part One)

CGI Must Die: Five Reasons Why

Harvey Korman, 1927--2008

Screengrab Pub Crawl - The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part One)

Screengrab Pub Crawl - The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part Two)

Screengrab Pub Crawl - The Top 15 Bars of Cinema (Part Three)

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Indiana Jones and the Running Dog Lackey of the Capitalist Propaganda Machine

Phil Nugent — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:00:00 GMT

When Indiana Jones fought Nazis back in his movies made in the 1980s, any old German war criminals hiding out in Brazil and keeping up their subscription to Variety were probably just grateful to be remembered. They sure didn't call any press conferences. But now that Indy is fighting a hot KGB agent (played by Cate Blanchett in She-Wolf of Siberia drag) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, some old Russian Communist party members are peeved. These guys have been stubbornly holding onto the faith since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than fifteen years ago, and now, as if they didn't have it tough enough, they have to put up with Harrison Ford prancing across the screen to rub it in their faces? "What galls," says one party member, Viktor Perov, "is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame." Sure, sure, but what have done for us lately? And don't think we've forgotten about The Blue Bird, Comrade.

The new Indiana Jones movie opened last week on more than 800 screens in Russia. The party members are concerned that ill-informed youngsters will come away from it with their heads stuffed with lies about Russian activities in the previous century, which they equate with "ideological sabotage." Example: "In 1957," insists St. Petersburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich, "the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S." Oh, I don't know, everybody thinks they know their history so much better than the kids these days. As Criswell used to say, can you really prove that it didn't happen? In any case, there's a late-blooming, presumably doomed campaign to ban the film. There's also a call to deny Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett, described by one aggrieved party member as "running dogs of the CIA"-- just like Omar Sharif,-- entrance to the country. This last move they maybe could have thought out a little better. If you've seen Ford's face while he's been doing his publicity chores, having his chest waxed to raise awareness of the plight of the rain forests and staring in disbelief at someone who asked him whether Indiana Jones would beat Han Solo in a fight (Indiana Jones and Han Solo would never get in a fight, because Han Solo lets his Wookie kick people's asses for him), you might suspect that he'd consider being called a running dog a small price to pay not to have to meet the Moscow equivalent of Regis and Kathie Lee.

Screengrab Rant: Indiana Jones in 2008

Peter Smith — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

I think we can all agree that Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the greatest adventure films ever made. Its two sequels, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade both have some serious flaws. Temple of Doom is shrill, silly, arguably racist and saddled with an atrocious love interest; Last Crusade is a hammy rehash of Raiders where the jokes are all broader and the characters are all stupider. But they have their moments. As I sit here trying to review Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I just can't muster the enthusiasm. Crystal Skull, sadly, makes Temple of Doom and Last Crusade look like, well, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In fairness, it's hard to imagine a fourth Indy movie being particularly good at this point, for reasons that become all-too-clear in the first fifteen minutes of Crystal Skull. With Harrison Ford twenty years older than he was in Last Crusade, the film couldn't be credibly set in the '30s. Thus, Crystal Skull takes place in 1957. Divorced from his pre-war milieu — an era when lost cities and ancient artifacts could plausibly still be hiding off the map — Indy looks sad and out-of-place. He's a great, iconic character, but a lot of the power of that iconography comes from its pre-World-War-II context. There's something jarring about watching a fedora-clad Ford in an Eisenhower-era suburb.

And speaking of that suburb, into which Indy stumbles at the beginning of Crystal Skull — well, it's a test site, and our man is about to get nuked. Sure, the Indiana Jones movies have always been frantically action-packed, but Steven Spielberg used to know how to build to a climax. That the hero survives a nuclear test in the first fifteen minutes says something about the filmmakers' lack of restraint. That lack of restraint (and I know, "restraint" and "Spielberg" don't always go together, but look again at the pitch-perfect balance of Raiders ) is also apparent in Skull's comedy, which is as precious as Last Crusade's and clumsily executed to boot. Watch for a sequence wherein Shia LaBeouf, as Indy's son (by no means the worst part of the film, contrary to fan expectations) rescues his father from a pit of quicksand. . . by using a snake as a rope. Indiana Jones hates snakes, remember? (I'm guessing this was George Lucas's idea.) Ford mugs through this scene like no one fetched him his Metamucil; in fact, for the whole movie, despite being remarkably fit for a sixty-five-year-old, he's given little to do. At the big finale, he pretty much gets out of the way. As for the father-son relationship, given that it's one of Spielberg's favorite tropes, it's remarkable how little resonance he gets out of it.

But again, resonance may have been a lost cause, given the constraints of setting. I can think of only one way Crystal Skull might've worked. Don't ignore the problems — embrace them. Instead of making Indy's age and the time period a relative non-issue after the obligatory gags about crankiness, make the movie about his age. Make it about the loss of the pre-war world. Where the other Indiana Jones movies end with supernatural cataclysms, scrap the ludicrous ending of Crystal Skull (the titular skull is an alien's, and I'll say no more) and end with the film's one memorable image — the old adventurer, silhouetted against a mushroom cloud. A man out of time, faced with a technology orders of magnitude more destructive than any cursed artifact he could ever dig up. That might be a bit of a downer, but it'd mean something. And I'm sorry to say it, but unlike its motley bunch of predecessors, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't mean much of anything.

Yesterday's Hits: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984, Steven Spielberg)

Paul Clark — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Written for the Indiana Jones Blogathon at Cerebral Mastication.

When it comes to enduring popularity, most of the films I’ve written about so far for Yesterday’s Hits have fallen by the wayside. They had their moments of glory, but now they’ve been cast aside in favor of films that have either aged better or simply had the good luck not to wear out their welcome too soon. By contrast, this week’s entry is a movie I’m guessing almost everyone here has seen, and which I’d venture to guess most of you own on DVD. Yet Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom often seems to be treated as the odd man out in the Indiana Jones franchise. In conjunction with this week’s release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I’ve tried to figure out why exactly this is the case.

What made Temple of Doom a hit?: Talk about a silly question. Raiders of the Lost Ark was the biggest hit of 1981, a hugely popular adventure that turned a whip-cracking archeologist into one of the truly iconic Hollywood characters. Raiders was a rarity, a movie with almost universal appeal, with plenty of action, a hint of romance, evil Nazi villains, far-flung locations, and a hero audiences would follow to the ends of the Earth. So it was inevitable that director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas, and star Harrison Ford would bring the character back to the big screen, and nearly as inevitable that the film would scare up a lot of business. And that it did, becoming the #2 hit of 1984, trailing only Ghostbusters.

What happened?: One of the cardinal rules of sequels is that it’s difficult to live up to the original, doubly so when the original film is as great and beloved as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sure, it happens on occasion, but how often? So despite Temple’s box office, it was almost a foregone conclusion that it couldn’t match the popularity of its predecessor. Audiences still loved Dr. Jones all right, with two more sequels still to come, but most viewers today see Temple merely as a fun, well-crafted thrill ride, rather than the classic Raiders is.

Does Temple of Doom still work?: All in all, the critical rep for the film isn’t far off. Spielberg’s skill at generating excitement is as keen here as ever, but overall the film lacks the charm of Raiders. Part of the blame rests on the shoulders of Ford, who doesn’t appear to expend much effort in his performance. Especially in his early scenes, Ford seems to be acting while hung over, so bland and flat does he appear onscreen. Eventually he comes alive, around the time the action starts, but Temple was the first sign of the sluggishness that would begin to creep into his performances more and more over the next two decades.

Perhaps the most frequent criticism of the film is Kate Capshaw’s performance as Willie, and I’ve got to say I’m in full agreement with the naysayers. Granted, Capshaw isn’t entirely to blame- Willie is an extremely thin character, her distinguishing characteristics being that she’s (a) Indy’s designated love interest, and (b) not Marion. But Capshaw herself doesn’t help matters. Most of her performance consists of shrieking, whining, and bitching at Indy, but Capshaw is too prosaic onscreen to make any of it work. She’s got no style, and not much charisma. And when an actress can’t even manage to deliver the line “are you crazy?” and make it sound convincing, there’s something wrong.

But while many people are prone to criticizing Indy’s pal Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), I have to admit I’ve always liked the little guy. Whereas Willie’s presence seems to be dictated by the film’s need to have some kind of female lead, the real love story in the film is the mentor/sidekick relationship between Indy and Shorty. Look at the way Spielberg frames these two together- time and again we see Short Round patterning his behavior after his idol, and it’s he, not Willie, who ends up having to save Dr. Jones when all seems lost. True, he’s given a little too much cutesy dialogue (“hold on to your potatoes!”), but the love he has for Indy is genuinely moving in spots, and he actually gets some fighting of his own to do, while Willie stands on the sidelines and punches at the air.

When I was younger, I always found it odd that Indiana Jones would take time to hunt for a bunch of stones after he’d already discover the Ark of the Covenant. But while the MacGuffin of Temple of Doom lacks the built in mystique of Raiders’ object of desire, the relatively small-scaled quest ultimately suits the film’s storyline. The Ark is an archeological milestone, so naturally the man who found it would want to go down in history. By contrast, Temple finds its hero setting out for “fortune and glory” only to discover a more important cause to fight for in the end. Faced with personal gain, he instead decides to do the right thing to save others. It’s an old story, but done right it still works, and Spielberg and company make it work.

And of course, it’s still exciting as hell. For all the awkwardness present in the 80 minutes of the story, the last 40 minutes more than compensate. But what really puts these scenes over is how brutal they are at times. Temple of Doom is often remembered as the film that helped bring about the PG-13 rating, and even today it’s surprising how hard-hitting and violent the film is in spots. I don’t think this is an accident. Spielberg, coming off blockbusters like Raiders and E.T., was becoming ill at ease with being Hollywood’s resident family entertainer, and his darker impulses come through loud and clear in Temple of Doom. For every funny animal trick we see, there’s a genuinely scary or disturbing bit that makes its mark (Mola Ram scared me way more than Toht when I was little). And while this mishmash of tones doesn’t always work, it’s nonetheless fascinating to see. As a stepping stone in Spielberg’s attempts to grow from the blockbuster king into the cinematic Elder Statesman we know him as today, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an key work, something one couldn’t have known way back in 1984.

Indiana Jones and the Internet Critics' Pre-emptive Strike: Ain't It Cool News Sandbags Spielberg and Co.

Phil Nugent — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its official debut with a press screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, four days before it opens wide theatrically. The picture has been immersed in a protective bath of secrecy; Steven Spielberg likes his intended surprise to, you know, surprise. But, perturbingly enough, the first reviews have started trickling in, thanks to that bastion of cutthroats and jacka;s known as the Internets. The initial "quick reaction" was posted to Ain't It Cool News last Thursday evening by "ShogunMaster." The spoiler-heavy review reports that Harrison Ford "has a few lines that work and a million that don't", trashes the other performers, laments the last of tension or suspense "During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero ... was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it.. He just never shows signs of worry or distress."), and sums up the proceedings with the judgement that this is "the Indiana Movie that you were dreading."

Not having seen the movie ourselves, we have no way of verifying these claims, but the truest thing in the review (which has since been joined on the site by what Michael Cieply describes as "two other less critical, but less than sparkling, reviews") is probably its author's admission that "it doesn't matter what I say, you will see this movie regardless." Still, you have to wonder who the fellow is and how he managed to be one of the first people on Earth to see the movie. Now Cieply reports that "ShogunMaster", "reached via the Web site, said he is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors’ screening this week." Cieply notes that "Such screenings are required in about two dozen states that have laws against blind-bidding, a practice in which theater owners were once asked to bid on films they had not seen. As a practical matter, there is little or no actual bidding in the contemporary theater business, which relies instead on negotiations between distributors and theater owners. But distributors continue to hold screenings for theater company executives in the weeks before a film’s release, whether as a courtesy or as a way to avoid conflict with a patchwork of state laws. Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie’s prospects after such a screening, to get better terms." If that's what ShogunMaster is all about--trying to dampen the perception of public enthusiasm for a sure-fire hit as a negotiating ploy--then Ain't It Cool News' participation for the sake of a scoop might threaten the good name of on-line film criticism, if it had a good name. As everybody keeps reminding me, it kind of doesn't, but still!

That Guy!: John Rhys-Davies

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Genre films are something of a trap for actors and actresses. One memorable role in a movie franchise beloved by one flavor of geek or another, and they're pretty much set for life -- as long as sequels keep getting made, they'll keep getting steady work, and the sun will set on their acting careers about five weeks after they die. On the other hand, as long as they're best known for genre parts, those are the parts they're likely to keep getting ad infinitum; there's a reason it's called the genre ghetto. Unfortunately, actors who take up residence there are awfully reluctant to leave because the paychecks are good, but they soon find out it's not easy even when they decide to move to a ritzier neighborhood. More than a few actors of some talent and range have found themselves, after cashing in off of a big genre-character role, being judged for the rest of their careers not on how well they can act, but how well they can still fit into their old costumes. Such an actor is the big, hearty Welshman John Rhys Davies: a man of impressive range and flawless credentials playing the classics on stage, his portrayal of a handful of unforgettable characters in sci-fi and fantasy films has somewhat derailed his career while at the same time ensuring that he'll always have work. He's gone from being the poor man's Brian Blessed to being one of the innumerable people who pays for his house by spending half the year in New Zealand filming syndicated sci-fi television shows.

It wasn't always this way for John Rhys-Davies. He started out in theater (as did his childhood friend and sometime co-star, Patrick Stewart -- an actor who is in a similarly precarious predicament, career-wise) and has an extensive background in Shakesperian productions of great acclaim. But aside from the movie roles listed below that launched him to wide, if not deep, fame, he likewise co-starred in the 1990s cult sci-fi show Sliders, forever assuring him a seat of honor at a science fiction convention near you, and likewise cutting him off from getting the kind of parts that would demonstrate the kind of range he had early in his career. Even when Rhys-Davies plays, as he has, Gamel Nasser, a Spanish conquistador, or the King of Troy, he's forever going to be thought of by his most devoted fans as Prof. Max Arturo or one of his other genre roles. Then again, it's hard to have a lot of sympathy for the guy, given that in 2004, he pissed all over his reputation by publicly endorsing the crackpot demographic beliefs of Mark Steyn and other right-wing demagogues, worrying himself over the allegedly insufficient breeding habits of white people and sweating over the nonsensical and pointless belief that Muslims will be 50% of the population by 2015. It's ironic that a man who has many times played the part of Arabs or Muslims -- including in one of his most famous roles -- shows such knee-jerk horror of the real thing; but for all that, he's still a gifted actor who deserves a few more chances to stretch his feet outside the genre ghetto.

Where to see John Rhys-Davies at his best:

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

For over twenty years, John Rhys-Davies' most recognizable role to geeks and squares alike was Sallah, the Egyptian archaeologist who served as advisor, assistant, friend, and grand vizier to Indiana Jones. He had some of the most memorable scenes in the first two movies, including one where he warns our hero that there are worse consequences to bad dates than just blowing fifty bucks on dinner and a movie. For reasons it would be ungentlemanly to discuss, the character will likely not be appearing in the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but it's still one of his warmest, most charismatic roles he's ever played.

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987)

Timothy Dalton's first role as 007 was a tricky one: in the era of perestroika, it didn't seem quite right to portray the Russians as the unrepentant monsters they had been in previous James Bond films. But it was so darn hard to let go of such juicy villains! Thus it fell to our Welsh wonder to portray Leonid Pushkin, the mysterious Russian general who may or my not have been as bad as he seems. It's that rare thing, a character in a James Bond film with a charcterization with more than one dimension, and Rhys-Davies obviously has a lot of fun with it, and even gets a meaty Bond-movie kill line.

LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001)

Oh, yeah, that thing. Yes, John Rhys-Davies got the role of his career when, after auditioning for much more minor roles in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" epic, he snagged the part of Gimli the Dwarf. It was one of the more underwritten parts in the film, in fact, consisting mostly of short jokes after an intial burst of hotheadedness, but Rhys-Davies makes the most of it, and his charisma with Orlando Bloom is undeniable. (It's a bit amusing that Rhys-Davies, who is a solid six-footer who's taller than most of the members of the cast, was selected to play a four-foot-tall character, but at least he had a sense of humor about it.)

Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Hollywood Accountants

Phil Nugent — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Moviemaking is "still a very challenging business," says media analyst Richard Greenfield. "The average movie still loses money." The question is, will Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull turn out to be an average movie? In a piece calculated to make you break out the crying towels, Claudia Eller of the Los Angeles Times reports on "the new economic realities of the movie business" and how they're reflected in the deal that Paramount Pictures cut with director Steven Spielberg, star Harrison Ford, and fount of contemporary mythology George Lucas in order the get the fourth Indiana Jones picture up and running. The franchise is different from most of the more recently forged brand-name pictures (such as your Spider-Mans and your Pirates of the Caribbeans) in that the producer, Lucas, rather than the studio, owns the property, which puts Paramount more in the position of a distributor than a proud parent who can expect the movie's long-term revenue potential to take care of it in its old age. After it became clear that the picture was going to cost much more than originally projected--not an unheard-of occurrence in Hollywood--the major participants agreed to sweeten things for them by forgoing their upfront salaries. Eller reports that the studio "spent about $185 million to make the movie and will pay at least $150 million to market it worldwide. The studio will earn a distribution fee of 12.5% of the revenue it receives from the film's release in all media, including theaters, DVD and television." Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford will stand to make 87.5 cents off every dollar the movie makes after the studio has been fully reimbursed for the cost of the movie and been paid their distribution fee, but that means that they won't start to clear anything until after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has made $400 million.

The thing is, if the movie makes less than $400 million, Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford will have spent a year of their lives killing themselves--well, Ford, anyway--just for the exercise. Is there a chance in hell they'll go home empty-handed? Eller: "Although the "Indiana Jones" franchise is considered one of Hollywood's surest bets -- the first three pictures amassed $1.2 billion in worldwide ticket sales -- there is no guarantee that younger moviegoers will turn out in droves to see a now 65-year-old action hero in a fedora dust off his trademark leather jacket and crack his bullwhip. Today's under-25 action junkies are wowed by computer-generated effects spectacles, such as Spider-Man, Harry Potter, 300 and Fantastic Four." Stress the age of the leading man (and the franchise) and the fact that the movie is built around old-school physical stunts instead of CGI, and it starts to sound more and more like Live Free or Die Hard, a movie that did better than respectably at the box office (and not half bad with the critics) but that has yet to clear the $400 million hurdle. Hollywood: where success has a thousand fathers, and failure sometimes clears $3,999,999 in profits.

George Lucas Promotes "Indy 4", Urges Fans to Get a Grip

Phil Nugent — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

USA Today has been covering George Lucas's attempts to help the Earth's population contain itself in the face of the imminent release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. "When you do a movie like this," says George, " a sequel that's very, very anticipated, people anticipate ultimately that it's going to be the Second Coming. And it's not. It's just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up." The paper's Scott Bowles suggests that "The remarks appear to be part of a larger strategy to build interest yet temper expectations for the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. Only one trailer is playing, and when director Steven Spielberg shows up for talk shows, he doesn't bring footage." Longtime George watchers may find it hard to resist speculation that Lucas is actually trying to help himself prepare to deal with the backlash — the bad reviews and moos of disappointment — that might conceivably be waiting to greet him at the end of Indy's latest dig. As if to confirm this, he went on to compare the new movie to The Phantom Menace, a movie that he regards as having suffered unfairly from too-high expectations among the groundlings, even as some of us think of it as proof that if you're packing enough hype, you can get away with anything. Lucas, who famously said of the first Raiders of the Lost Ark that he went to the trouble of putting it into production because "I just want to see this movie," adds that he and his associates made the new picture for the "fun" of it and that he has next to no interest in its commercial prospects: "It's not going to make much money for us in the end. We all have some money." (One of these statements is true, and both of them reflect what it does to your overall perspective when you can buy and sell Scrooge McDuck.) It's too bad that he doesn't get any charge at all out of the money, since the one thing that we know about Indy 4 going in is that it's going to make a mint. Questions of its quality will have to wait until it starts hitting movie screens — though it's almost certainly a safe bet that there will be plenty of people who'd insist that it was great even if Harrison Ford succumbed to senile dementia halfway through the shoot and started referring to his on-screen son, Shia LaBeouf, as "Harpo."

A few things may be in play here. Lucas may genuinely feel stung over the general consensus that, after all that business about remaking gods and myths for the modern age, the three Star Wars prequels he directed between 1999 and 2003 were, indeed, just movies, and maybe the movies of someone whose fun machine needed oiling. He could also be asserting his right to declare that if the members of the Skywalker family are just some characters in a movie franchise that, like so many others, had to deal with the law of diminishing returns, that goes double for the Jones boys, who only became flesh with the help of George's directorial hired hand and BFF Steven Spielberg. After all, the last time George really made news with regard to the Star Wars series may have been when he informed a stunned crowd at a Publicists' Guild luncheon that "The Empire Strikes Back is always written about as the best of the films, when it actually was the worst one.” That movie, too, had the distinction of not having been directed by George himself.

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

This week's top ten comes to us from guest writer Gabriel Mckee, friend of Nerve and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Read his fantastic blog here.

Recent years may well be remembered for bringing back the over-the-top action hero. New sequels to Rocky, Die Hard, and Rambo have revived long-dead franchises, and the trend is continuing. Indiana Jones 4 has started filming, and a fourth Mad Max film would have wrapped by now had scheduling conflicts not led director George Miller to make Happy Feet instead. Though it's an easy trend to mock, it opens the door for other action heroes to be resurrected — here are some top candidates.

10. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), The Delta Force

Before he was a meme, before he was Walker, Texas Ranger, even before he was a Karate Kommando, Chuck Norris was Maj. Scott McCoy of the Delta Force. This elite antiterrorist strike force, led by Lee Marvin, consists of some thirty soldiers who are highly trained in standing around in the back of a cargo plane while Chuck Norris rides around on a motorcycle killing terrorists. Delta Force came out in the pre-Die Hard world, before we expected our action heroes to have pathos, depth or family troubles. There's not much character to this character, but when it comes to straightforward ass-kicking, Norris is the undisputed master. Norris is ripe for a Stallone-style comeback, and in the and in the age of the War on Terror, a new entry in the Delta Force saga is the perfect vehicle for his revival.

9. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), Beverly Hills Cop

Remember when Eddie Murphy made movies that people enjoyed? Barring Dreamgirls, his film career has been on a losing streak for over a decade, putting him just below Robin Williams on the list of actors who need to be rescued from their own careers. A return to the role of Axel Foley, the detective/con man of Beverly Hills Cop, might be the best way to ensure that Norbit never happens again.

8. Jack Carter (Michael Caine), Get Carter

Michael Caine has made a major comeback in recent years, but in most of his recent roles — in Batman Begins, Children of Men,and The Prestige, for instance — he's played the Kindly Old British Guy. It's easy to forget that he made his name playing jerks — first a heartless cad in Alfie, then a brutal-but-suave thug in Get Carter. This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle (Britain's equivalent of South Jersey) to investigate his brother's murder isn't as flashy as more recent tales of the U.K. underworld. But Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham nevertheless owe everything to Get Carter's blueprint and Caine's cynical performance. A return to the character of Carter would give Caine a chance to recapture both the grim violence and the effortless sexiness of one of his greatest roles.

7. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman), The French Connection

The most successful action film of the '70s didn't star Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee or any other established veteran of the genre. The French Connection owes much of its success to Gene Hackman's performance as hot-headed bad cop Popeye Doyle (which earned him his first Academy Award). More than just a tough guy, Doyle is a contemptible bully, and instead of an invincible supercop, his temper makes him a bit of a screw-up. Hackman is still more than capable of this kind of complexity (as proven by The Royal Tenenbaums), and it would be thrilling to see what he could do with this character after thirty-five years.

6. Foxy Brown (Pam Grier)

The 1973 film Coffy established Pam Grier as the undisputed queen of '70s blaxploitation. Foxy Brown (originally intended as a sequel entitled Burn, Coffy, Burn!) justified her ascension — whether infiltrating a high-end call-girl ring, shooting her drug-dealing brother in the ear, or hijacking a drug runner's crop duster, Foxy is "a whole lotta woman." At turns smiling and sneering, she violently opposes an oppressive society symbolized by a white-operated heroin syndicate. Grier has had a slightly higher profile since Quentin Tarantino reintroduced audiences to her charms, but it's been far too long since she's kicked ass like she did in Foxy Brown.

Read PART 2.

Morning Deal Report: This Is Not Like The Penis On The "Little Mermaid" Poster

Peter Smith — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Look closely at that Indy IV poster. . . there's an alien face! Or maybe just a completely irrelevant abstract shape. In fact, even if Indy IV *is* about aliens (cringe) I'm going to go with the latter possibility.

Good news, everybody: more Jackass. Jackass 2.5 will compile the unused material from Jackass 2 -- you see, there was such a bounty, the cup overflowethed. The interesting thing is, the title will be released exclusively on the internet. Of course, we'll just have to wait and see if online content like this will turn a profit, right?

Pedro Almodovar's next film, Los abrazos rotos (now, forgive my high-school Spanish, but is that. . . Broken Hugs?) will be "shot in the style of '50s American film noir at its most hard-boiled."

— Peter Smith