annathepiper: (Keep Your Eyes Shut)

So the news is going around the net today that Indiana Jones 5 has been confirmed for a 2019 release, with both Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg being involved. And as I’m a documented Harrison Ford fangirl, whose favorite movie of all time is after all Raiders of the Lost Ark, you better believe I have opinions on this matter.

Most of these opinions are centered around a lot of jokes I’m seeing from fandom along the lines of “LOL Indy is old”. I’ve seen jokes about “Indiana Jones and the Lost Rocking Chair” or “Indiana Jones and the Search for the Walker” or whatever. All of which I find pretty irritating, to be honest.

Here’s why.

One: it’s ageist. It is part and parcel of the cultural assumption we have that old people can’t be heroic lead characters. We expect the old to be functioning as mentors while the young people get to be the ones who punch Nazis in the face, or who yank scimitars out of assassins’ hands with a trusty bullwhip, or who sneak into ancient ruins to recover idols, or whatever.

And that’s bullshit. Any fan of Doctor Who understands that “old” and “awesome and heroic” are not mutually exclusive concepts. Sure, the Doctor has been played by younger men through most of the New Who era–but I’ll point out that even our current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, is a dude with gray hair who has demonstrated splendidly that he is still perfectly capable of being a heroic central character.

Here’s another example: Gandalf in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. And before you protest “but Gandalf is a wizard and Indiana Jones is just a human archaeologist”, let me remind you that not all of Gandalf’s activity through those two stories was centered around his magic. Gandalf also whipped Glamdring the Foe-hammer around on more than one occasion. And he went at it hammer and tongs with the Balrog.

“Until at last I threw down my enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside,” as he says in the movie edition of The Two Towers.

Gandalf’s battle with the Balrog was physical as well as mental. It broke his body. Gandalf does not survive the battle. The only reason he comes back into the plot at all is because Iluvatar resurrected him and sent him back to Middle-Earth, because his job wasn’t done yet.

And even aside from that, Gandalf spends a great deal of time running around in battle all throughout that story–at Helm’s Deep as well as in Gondor on the Pelennor Fields. We see Gandalf fighting with both sword and staff all over the place. Activity which is physically demanding, and yet, nobody was snickering and going “LOL Ian McKellen is old” or “LOL Gandalf is old”.

As near as I can tell, the only difference here between Gandalf and Indiana Jones is that Gandalf is portrayed on camera as old at all times, both in the movies and in the books. Whereas with Indy, we first meet him when he’s young.

Which brings me to why I mentioned Gandalf in the first place–because we also know, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, that Indy has had his lifespan extended. He drank from the Holy Grail, f’r cryin’ out loud. And this is even hinted at in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles as well. So in the scope of the Indiana Jones universe, with events that have already happened on camera, we have had it established that there is no particular reason to assume that Indy doesn’t remain physically active in his latter years. He’s no longer entirely pure vanilla human normal.

And that brings me to…

Two: If a character is aged yet has a physically demanding role in the story, what’s wrong with that? Yes, the sheer reality of aging does mean that an older character is going to have physical challenges that a younger character won’t. He’ll be more prone to aches and pains. His stamina might not be as good. But that shouldn’t mean that that older character is not ever allowed to swing a sword or a staff, to flick a bullwhip, or punch a Nazi in the face.

Good writing should be able to sell us on the idea that an aged character can still be heroic, while also acknowledging the burden that physical heroism may place upon him. Hell, the earlier Indy movies were excellent at this even while Ford was young.

Marion: You’re not the man I knew ten years ago.
Indy: It’s not the years–it’s the mileage.

Iconic lines, which, I might add, were in a scene that happened after Indy got beaten to hell and back in the truck chase, stealing the Ark from the Germans–including getting shot. Last Crusade did it too, when Indy painfully pulls himself back up from over the cliff while the others think he’s dead, and he keels over from exhaustion while his father is urging him to get up.

So there’s no reason that a well-written Indy movie can’t use the same style of humor to acknowledge the problems Indy might have when he’s 75 vs. when he was 35. It doesn’t even have to be a huge deal. I could easily see a wry little exchange, say, between Indy and his son in which Indy is having to steel himself to go into a fight. His son could be all “uh, Dad, maybe I better handle this”–and Indy has to gruffly step back and let his son get in the fight, while he does something else clever like, oh, say, setting explosives or deactivating a trap. And then his son can bitch at him later after he gets his ass handed to him, and Indy could be all “well you didn’t want ME in on the fight, what are you complaining about?”

Make it the same sort of chemistry Indy had with his own father. It could be awesome. It writes itself.

Three: Harrison Ford demonstrated in The Force Awakens that he is still perfectly capable of acting, and he brought some nuance and depth to Han that I for one was thrilled to see. Sure, that Han is old and isn’t the same character that I swooned over in the earlier movies. That’s okay. I’m older too. The character is still awesome.

Long story short: I’m way less concerned about Harrison Ford–and Indiana Jones–being old than I am about whether the story in Indiana Jones 5 will suck.

I’m not convinced that it won’t. And I say this as someone who really, really wanted to like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, too. I mean, not only did it bring back Marion and follow up on Indy and Marion’s relationship, it also had Cate Blanchett (one of my nominees for Queen of Everything) as the villain. It was setting itself up as Anna Catnip from start to finish. I did in fact enjoy it enough that I saw it twice in the theaters.

And yet, even I acknowledge that that movie was… not so good.

Here’s the thing, though: of the objections I had to that movie, none of them had a thing to do with Indy being old. And whatever else you might say about the movie, it already has given us the setup necessary for a younger character to have adventures right alongside Indy. One does presume that young Henry Jones III will be showing up alongside his father in Indy 5.

So yeah. As long as Ford’s physically up for the role, I say go for it, Harry. But I will be keeping an eye on further news of this movie, and I will be paying very close attention to what kind of a plot it’ll hand us before I’ll decide whether I’m firmly on board.

Because I’m very firmly of the belief that we do need more heroic older characters. Hollywood is very age-phobic, and it’s even worse for women than it is for men–just look at all the shit Carrie Fisher got for being old on camera in The Force Awakens, even worse than Harrison Ford did. This is a thing that needs to change, for men and women alike.

And a well-written Indiana Jones 5 would be a good start.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

annathepiper: (Blue Hawaii Relaxing)

I’m coming off a nice long vacation, thanks to my workplace having given the entire lot of us the week of Christmas off. This was as the cool kids say AWESOME, given that it meant that userinfosolarbird and I were able to have Longest Night without me having to take an extra day off for that. And that was a nice way indeed to fire off a relaxing break.

The weekend of the Solstice was pretty much given over to, aside from a special Solstice Murkjam (more on this in another post), a mighty rewatching of the entire extended edition Lord of the Rings trilogy. There are few movies I can happily watch over and over again, but these? Absolutely. Especially when Dara starts asking me questions about Middle-Earth lore and we get to Tolkiengeek. <3 Plus, this time around I started finally watching a lot of the copious extras in all three sets of discs, which I had never done despite owning these things for years now. I'm sure you all know by now, but yeah, lots of lovely stuff there and I've only barely scratched the surface of it all.

Did a lot of catchup of medical appointments during the week, and the highlight of that was getting to touch bases with both my endocs and say "by the way, I'm working on seriously trying to lose weight, just so you all know". In particular, wanted to check with the thyroid endoc to make sure I coordinate with him about how to reduce my T4 and T3 dosage as I drop pounds. I've already had to start tweaking my intake since I've dropped six pounds or so.

I dropped in on userinfokathrynt to say hi in between some of those aforementioned medical appointments, and was treated to tea and a cookie and her delightful offspring informing us, when asked where her dump truck was, “it could be ANYWHERE!” Lillian continues to impress me with her smarts. This kid is going to be scary when she gets older. Hell, she’s kind of scary now!

Christmas itself was pleasantly low-key and featured first going out with userinfomamishka to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. Picoreview: big silly fun if you can buy that this was totally a fluffy, alternate-universe version of Holmes and Watson that didn’t bear too much resemblance to the canon versions. I did like many get a kick out of the chemistry between Holmes and Watson, and felt that poor Mary was sadly underused as a character, and that the actress playing Irene wasn’t quite up to the task of her own character’s awesomeness. But really, the thing I liked the most about the movie? The music. Especially the jigs during the action scenes and the take of “Rocky Road to Dublin”. I may have to buy the soundtrack on the strength of that alone.

Christmas evening, userinfomamishka, userinfodarthhellokitty, and userinfoking_chiron all had dinner with us at the Murk and then we all watched the new Doctor Who, “The End of Time, Part 1″. Most definitely more on this in another post. There are rumblings of another group watch of Part 2 to come.

I closed out this past weekend with going, finally, with Dara to see 2012 before it finally vanishes out of the local theaters. We wound up having to catch it at the Alderwood Mall cinema, which was really kinda crazytalk since the place was swarming with after-Christmas shoppers and getting from our parking spot to the theater was a nerve-wracking exercise in dodging oncoming traffic. But we did manage to get there on time, and once we were actually settled in, despite being too close to the screen for comfort, we had a delightful time. I’m sure many of you already know this by now too, but yeah, this movie was awesomely bad. We’re talking epic levels of MSTable disaster pr0n, which is pretty much exactly what we were there for. Mutating neutrinos, baby!

Didn’t get a damn bit of writing or reading done, but on the whole, I didn’t really mind. I’ve been catching up on fixing broken stuff on this web site instead, and that sits well with me, since the long-undone tasks there were annoying me, and I found fixing those relaxing. I assure you all though that more writing and reading will be coming with the New Year.

And oh yes: with userinfospazzkat coming home from Virginia on Sunday, we had our little house gift exchange. My nifty l00t: one box of Ninth Doctor DVDs (man, I do love Nine and Rose, I must say), one lovely tin of bath bombs from LUSH, one $50 Barnes and Noble gift card which I promptly spent on five new ebooks, and last but not least, this, which is pretty much the Best Possible Christmas Ornament to Give to Anna, Ever:

Indy Ornament

Carefully, Indy

There’s a button on it that plays the Raiders March when you press it. userinfospazzkat knows me very, very well. <3

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

annathepiper: (Default)
This is made of 100% WIN for anybody who loves Star Wars and most other famous movies with music by John Williams. <3



ETA 11/7/08 11:10pm: I am corrected by [livejournal.com profile] spazzkat! The dude in this video is only lip synching, the music's by a group called Moosebutter. That said, this does not in any way diminish the unmitigated AWESOME that is this entire creation. <3
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
Somewhat belated, but then, I've had a pretty complicated and distracting weekend... but hey, there's little that a good dose of Indy can't help. ;)

This is the blow by blow spoiler post for Indy IV, people. If you haven't seen this movie yet, for the love of God, don't look behind the cut!

Spoilers still damn well hanging onto the Hat.... )

Still musing about how I feel this movie holds up against Temple of Doom and Last Crusade. I am pretty sure I'm going to have to go see it again to formulate a real and proper opinion!
annathepiper: (Indy and Marion)
First and foremost, folks: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull DOES NOT SUCK.

It's not in the league of Raiders of the Lost Ark--but then, expecting it to be is just crazytalk. ;) However, it does hold up pretty well against Temple of Doom and Last Crusade; how well, I'm still debating. It is pretty much Big Silly Fun, which is about what I was expecting.

There are a couple of "oh for fuck's sake, no" moments that are too silly. But there are also some genuinely LOL-worthy moments, the chase sequences are good, Shia LeBeouf is decent, Cate Blanchett is quite cool (although not quite as cool as she should have been), there are some nice nods to not only the events of the previous movies but also the years between, and most of all... it was ZOMG so cool to see Indy and Marion in the same movie again. Karen Allen in particular seems to share the glee, as she spends a good chunk of the movie with this giddy grin on her face, as if she's thinking, "YAY I GET TO BE MARION AGAIN!"

They went a little overboard trying to prove to the audience that Indy is still perfectly physically capable despite his age--he has a couple of things happen to him that should have damn well killed a younger man, much less a 65-year-old. ;) However, they also do acknowledge his age nicely in other ways. And I gotta admit... from a few camera angles, in certain scenes... yeah. Harrison's still hot. Even for an old dude. ;)

[livejournal.com profile] mamishka, [livejournal.com profile] casirafics, and I had a bitchin' good time last night having dinner and then linecamping for the midnight showing of the movie. We had excellent Mexican food (for those of you who are local, we went to the Mexican place on the top floor of Pacific Place, downtown) and tasty drinkies (during which I learned that yeah, two margaritas do make me rather loopy, but it wears off fairly quickly), and after that was done joined the already lengthy line at the Cinerama.

There were already about 75 people in the line ahead of us--some of them had TENTS. And lawn chairs. And blankets. They had clearly been there for a while! But once we spotted the group in costume, we knew we were among our Tribe.

We had a delightful conversation with the people in line just behind us, as we all hung out amusing ourselves watching the DVD of bonus materials out of the original DVD box set of the first three movies. It was very noisy there on the street, so Mimi, clever panda that she is, turned on the English subtitles in her DVD program and we watched stuff that way.

It is worth noting that much amusement was expressed over the juxtaposition of the Indy IV poster against the one for the forthcoming animated Clone Wars flick. Double deja vu, that. Sadly, I cannot muster up nearly the same enthusiasm for the Clone Wars flick as I did for this one... but it was still pretty neat to see the posters side by side.

They let us in fairly early, which was nice of them, and while we were waiting the costumed group's fully costumed Indy guy kept coming down in front and showing off his whip skills. Which were, I must note, pretty impressive! Dude even had a whip made by the guy who makes the official Indy whips--who turns out to be local! Very, very cool.

Lots of high spirits in the crowd, which is of course why one goes to these things. And happily, they didn't inflict any commercials on us while we were waiting--or during the previews. We got a Dark Knight trailer, which triggered a big wave of cheers. And I was simultaneously disappointed and relieved that we did NOT get an X-Files trailer.

This post will remain spoiler-free; I'm going to do another one with a full blow-by-blow breakdown. So feel free to comment right now on this one if you haven't seen the movie yet--and when you do, look for my next post!
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
This came in over my RSS subscription to indianajones.com last night: Trailer #2 for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull!

Spoilers! )

Oh yeah. This is starting to feel like a proper Jones film. Even with this old Indy running around in it. ;) I am eying the 22nd now with great enthusiasm--and thoughts of attending a midnight showing! 'Cause who am I kidding, I know I'm going to be there!
annathepiper: (Indy and Marion)
"What have you done with my Nazi, George?!"

[livejournal.com profile] solarbird and [livejournal.com profile] spazzkat informed me this morning, you see, that the little figure of a German soldier that comes with the LEGO Indy set [livejournal.com profile] mamishka gave me has vanished. So has one of the little LEGO crates that came with the set. Indy and Professor Jones Sr. are accounted for, as are both motorcycles, the flag, and the little gatehouse thingie.

But of poor Heinrich, alas, there is no sign! All I found upon searching the media room were his tiny LEGO goggles.

I expect that from this can be derived the moral that if one is a LEGO German soldier trying to mess with the LEGO Jones boys, one can expect to be apprehended by a giant cat.
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
I got a very late birthday gift package from the fabulous [livejournal.com profile] mamishka, which proved to contain two old Elvis LPs (King Creole and the 2-LP Elvis Christmas Album, both of which I already own, but hey!), a nifty Elvis calendar which is now hanging up in my workstation area at work, and, most importantly, a LEGO Indiana Jones set! The one from Last Crusade, which comes with a teeny LEGO Indy and a teeny LEGO Professor Jones Sr. and a teeny LEGO German guy and teeny LEGO motorbikes!

I am utterly, utterly charmed. Between stumbling home from work last night and knocking myself out with Nyquil to try to continue to recover from the Martian Death Plague that has afflicted me for a week and a half, I had to put the set together. Because teeny LEGO Indy! I mean, damn, he's got a TEENY FEDORA! <3

[livejournal.com profile] spazzkat came in when I was putting them together last night, picked up the LEGO Connery, and squeaked, waving it around, "You call this archaeology?!" *beam* I love my house. And the Meems, who understands the soul of my fangirlishness.

Thank you, Mimi! <3 <3
annathepiper: (Indy and Marion)
The trailer is out! Go! Watch! And join me in hoping this won't suck!

Trailer reactions back here, to hide the spoilers... )
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
Winnowill has been flinging me a lot of my Indy screencaps as backgrounds in my random desktop rotation lately. I think this machine is trying to tell me something: possibly that it is expecting me to jump up to indianajones.com tomorrow and check out the shiny new trailer that is about to be released. I'm finally starting to believe this movie is about to happen--but I think I won't quite completely buy it until I lay eyes on this trailer. ;)

Please, gods of cinema, don't let this suck.
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
I yoinked this link from [livejournal.com profile] casirafics, and feel that it must be passed on swiftly--because word is in that Karen Allen has been confirmed as joining the cast of Indy 4.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, they are bringing back Marion.

The chances of this not sucking just improved significantly. :D

Also, I see that they've updated indianajones.com significantly, gearing up for the movie and stuff; the Karen Allen news is there, too. Looks like I'll have to be keeping a sharp eye out on that site now!
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
Back from another globetrotting adventure, Indiana Jones checks his mail and discovers that his application for tenure has been denied. This is, in a word, hysterical. Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] kaseido for the link! ^_^
annathepiper: (Hard Day)
Had to take Polly in to the vet today for a followup, since she's had issues lately with her thyroid levels and just being an old lady kitty in general. That went only marginally well, since they were only able to get the blood sample they wanted and couldn't weigh her at all or get a sample for urinalysis--since Polly still isn't too old a kitty to pitch a fit at the vet's. The more interesting vet stuff today actually had to do with a billing problem--it turned out that on that last big appointment she had back in June, I wound up getting somebody else's bill and paid about thirty dollars more than I should have. They didn't figure it out until NOW, when they were going through the computer to send out bills and found that my charge hadn't been paid. So I called them up to ask them WTF, and once I actually got down there with the invoice for what I'd paid and the invoice on the bill they'd sent me (since I was going down there anyway for Polly's appointment, I figured I'd bring the invoices with me), we realized that my paid invoice had somebody else's name on it.

Oops.

So they credited the difference to my account and now will have to contact the other client and explain that that charge hadn't actually gotten paid.

It's been a week for screwups of this nature, too. I realized that the rent check I thought I was missing from one tenant for last month's rent actually was missing from a different tenant entirely, which necessitated me going through the rent books with a fine-toothed comb. We sent apologetic email to the guy who'd actually paid his rent, and asked the other one if he'd please check his records and see if he sent us a check. Here's hoping we can get that straightened out.

Meanwhile, although lameness is keeping me from going to enjoy late-night Big Screen Raiders of the Lost Ark tonight, [livejournal.com profile] mamishka and I have mutually pledged to make up for it in two weeks when that theater runs Last Crusade. Which will be the last weekend before [livejournal.com profile] solarbird, [livejournal.com profile] spazzkat, and I take off for Worldcon and Disneyland, so that'll be a good time to go!

Wednesday miles: 3.2
Thursday miles: 3.6
Friday miles: 3.5
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1278.5
Miles out of Rivendell: 820.5
Miles out of Lothlórien: 358.5
Miles to Rauros Falls: 30.5
annathepiper: (Indy and Marion)
A helpful comment on my last post has informed me that the entire Indiana Jones trilogy is playing midnight showings at a theater in Ballard, starting this weekend with Raiders of the Lost Ark!

Now as I posted, I just watched this flick last night--so I've taken the edge off a bit. But the prospect of Big Screen Indy is extremely tempting, and if I could get others to join me, I just may have to do this.

Anybody interested? Let me know! :)
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
Because it occurred to me tonight that I am all by my lonesome in the living room with a big ol' TV and a DVD player and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

"Listen, Herr Mac, I don't know what kind of people you're used to dealing with, but nobody tells me what to do in my place!"

*sigh!* I love this movie so much.

And also, some quick numbers because I miscalculated yesterday's!

Missed Monday mileage: 0.5
Tuesday evening miles: 2.5
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1268.2
Miles out of Rivendell: 810.2
Miles out of Lothlórien: 348.2
Miles to Rauros Falls: 40.8
annathepiper: (Indy and Marion)
So my Raiders of the Lost Ark fangirling is still going strong, folks. A few spins through the Raiders soundtrack, and all I can think is "God-DAMN, I love this music! I love this movie!" *sighs happily* I love each and every note in this soundtrack, from the opening bars of "The Raiders March" to that high, sweet violin note held out in the End Credits track, as the orchestra segues from Marion's theme back into the main theme. This is the music that made me want to join the London Symphony Orchestra as a kid, and made me giddy every single time my middle school band teacher told us to get out our parts for the Raiders March.

This past weekend, [livejournal.com profile] spazzkat even helped matters along some by deciding he was in the mood to watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Which is certainly the least of the Indy movies, but which does at least have the fabulous Short Round as well as Indy's best pickup line ever: "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." Which really, really needs to be an icon, and I may have to get on that. Still, after all the spins I've taken through Temple of Doom, I still want to strangle Willie every single time she shrieks. And when she coos to Indy that "you'll never have better". *snork* I keep wanting to pipe up "Oh yeah he will! Next year, when he crosses paths with that two-fisted, hard-drinking, smart-mouthed brunette!" ;) Yes, fangirls of my Friends list, I am a total Indy + Marion OTPer. 'Cause, well, how could you not be?

All of which brings me around to mentioning that I keep hearing rumors about Indy IV. This both thrills me and scares me. Thrills me, because there's still a corner of my fangirly brain that would slurp up a new Indy movie with great glee. Scares me, because the rational part of my fangirly brain does point out that Mr. Ford is sixty-four years old now, and really too old to be chasing after archaeological relics across the big screen. Plus, I can't exactly say I trust Lucas to cough up a good script anymore.

If Indy IV actually does make it to the theaters, I strongly suspect I will be holding my DVD copy of Raiders over one ear and my laserdisc copy over the other, going "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T SEE YOU" until I see some reviews that assure me they won't fuck it up. Please oh please, Harry, don't fuck it up.

So tell me, people, what are your favorite moments in the Indy movies? Any one. Open call! :)
annathepiper: (Archaeologist)
So last night, thanks to the birthday of Mr. Ford, I felt a great, grand, passionate need to screencap the hell out of Raiders of the Lost Ark and bolster Harry's presence in my icon set. Between this and the help of some very pretty color textures by [livejournal.com profile] colorfilter, I have accomplished tonight's icon. (And for extra giggles and grins, it could easily be mistaken for a Paul Nighman icon, at least to anybody familiar with my and [livejournal.com profile] mamishka's RP days from Star Wars MUSH!)

I also have the following ten bases, which I will be doing more fun things to as soon as I figure out what I want them all to look like. If you'd like to play with the bases yourself, have at--just please do not hotlink to the images. Copy them to your own server!

Marion Blitzed Marion Excuse me Marion Pensive Marion Smug
Indy Verandah Indy OMG Indy Survey Indy Stoic
How About Here Dont Look Marion
annathepiper: (Default)
... but a certain rugged archaeologist is still my all-time favorite movie character, and Raiders of the Lost Ark is still my all-time favorite movie, and according to the official Indiana Jones website, the Indy trilogy is COMING OUT ON DVD ON 10/21!

GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME. Because mmmmmmm Indy.

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