ErkkilaDotOrg

We went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night. I think I would’ve been happier if they’d gone out with Last Crusade.

I should’ve known when I first listened to the soundtrack earlier in the day; lots of nostalgia there, but I didn’t feel as if there was much new or interesting. The best parts were recycled from Raiders.

The worst part was the relentless action. It was as if they were afraid if any of the characters slowed down for a second they’d realize their only plot function was to get the skull to the lost city, where everything was wrapped up in the most predictable and hackneyed way possible (and the heroes ceased to be useful well before the conclusion). Believe me, you’ll see it coming, and probably be wondering, like I was, how many more Rube Goldberg-machine-like action setpieces it would take before the evil communist villianess’s face was going to melt off (not literally; I mean it felt that much like a rehash of Raiders).

While I’m willing to suspend some disbelief about these characters being able to make it out of any scrape (think the inflatable raft-jump in Temple of Doom), it was unbelievably cartoonish here. You just wanted to laugh because it was so incredibly stupid–from Indy’s nuclear test site escape to the triple waterfall scene.

And aliens? C’mon. My least favorite theory about various ancient civilizations–that the only way they could’ve done it was by copying the answers off someone else’s test paper. I know this is an Indy movie and the supernatural is expected, but jeez. (Incidentally, there’s an article in Archaeology this month about the crystal skulls. Guess what, not elongated, and they’re also fakes. :)

A few of the jokes and reveals worked (Indy’s age, and who didn’t like seeing that little corner of the Ark during the Area 51 scene? And the Marcus Brody references were a nice touch.) but it was mostly just hokey. The Marion character ceased to be interesting just about instantaneously, when the ‘big secret’ (like nobody saw that coming) was revealed and during the subsequent love-fest (conducted on the run, of course, because they couldn’t possibly give up ONE action scene apparently). I felt like the best scenes (like the one where Indy’s packing to leave and discussing the current political environment with the dean of the college) were just rewrites of scenes from Raiders or Last Crusade (with Marcus). The backstabbing colleague seemed a bit too much like Benny from ‘The Mummy’–especially in the treasure scene. Between him and the giant ants (read ‘carnivorous scarab beetles’) you realize that this was Indy ripping off every movie that came after, and ripped off, the previous Indy films. The Mummy was better at it, unfortunately. Maybe the genre is just played out.

Silly, lacking in dramatic suspense, and a tacked-on ending that felt too little too late. Gee, when does it come to blu-ray?

The Spore folks reconsidered after a lot of bad press and complaints. So, our pre-orders are back on!

The new John Williams score for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is out. How can an 80’s kid possibly resist?

Not to mention a Richard Cheese-ified version of the Indiana Jones theme on Itunes (Plus, so no DRM, if I read the fine print properly).

Baby chicks–Ameraucanas– (and keets–pied) should be here by June 27th or 28th. With any luck the coop will be mostly done, if we can find someone who can blow in insulation before then. If we’re super super lucky, we will get Squeak and the silkies to raise them.

Icky’s on chemo. So far so good, but he can’t have any doggie visitors for awhile. We still aren’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Cupcake’s liver and lipomas, but she goes in for more work on Thursday.

-epe

I don’t get DRM for music. They’re already selling whole albums in non-protected, unencrypted formats (ie the CD), which you can rip and do whatever you want the songs. But if I only want one or two songs off an album, generally I’m stuck with whatever lame DRM’ed, compressed format they feel like selling. And don’t tell me I can go buy a subscription on one of the non-DRM MP3 sites…I only want a few songs at a time, and very rarely what they’re selling (although I did recently buy a copy of Jonathan Coulton’s ‘Code Monkey’).

So what’s the purpose of DRM? To force me to buy entire albums when I only want a couple of songs? To prepare me for some kind of sucky future in which most music is DRM’ed and there are no CD’s? C’mon. Is it so much to ask? I *want* to pay for a copy of these songs. I just want them in the same format I’d get them in if I happened to buy the entire crappy album. You don’t seem to mind selling me a CD that I can rip to whatever format I like. Maybe it would encourage artists to produce albums that are more than just a few good songs, with the rest being filler?

Speaking of DRM, kudos to Sony for making their first-gen blu-ray stuff export full-res over all connections. It almost makes you happy to be an early adopter (well, early/middle anyway, 3 years) of an HD monitor. Still, even though we had a DVD player within about a month of their original release, I doubt I’ll be getting off the fence with regards to HD or blu-ray DVD. It’s not so much the player as the thought of replacing the media in one format or the other.