The Indiana Jones Trilogy

I enjoy reading the cover of this set: "The Complete DVD Movie Collection," because Indiana Jones Meets Aliens in the Kingdom of the Crystal Turd and the Treasure is Knowledge is not included. I can pretend it doesn't exist, because I'm still disappointed.

Originally just called Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first film is one of the best adventure movies ever made, and easily one of Steven Spielberg's top five best directorial efforts. Much has been written about Raiders, so I'll skip most of the lip service. Raiders is an iconic adventure film — one that I come back to often, and one I can't resist watching if I find it playing on television.

In my comic book collection, I have a copy of Marvel Super Special, Issue #18. While it's not a valuable item, it means a lot to me because I'm pretty sure I snagged it from my grandma's garage sale when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. No idea how she got it.

I got the comic before I saw the film, so my perception of Raiders is strongly affected by that comic adaptation. In the comic, the Ark is described as having a low humming sound, like a great energy building up throughout the film. Once that energy was released in the climactic scene, the Ark went back to a lower, less intense hum. I always liked that touch, but I've always been disappointed to not hear the hum in the film. There were other changes, some bigger than others, and they're detailed here.

To establish greater continuity, the creators agreed to re-title the first film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is maybe the wisest change to any George Lucas or Spielberg project. I've never had a problem with the title change, just like I've never really had a problem with Lucas re-naming Star Wars to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Makes for better continuity.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom comes next. A prequel before most people knew what a prequel was, I found the film confusing when I was a kid. Where were the Nazis? Where was Marian? And why is the blonde woman screaming so much? These were important questions. At least there was a kid in the film. I always wanted to help Indiana Jones.

Once I got older and understood Lucas and Spielberg's motivations behind this film, I could get on board with the prequel concept. I still can't deal with Kate Capshaw screaming constantly, though. Capshaw is, hands down, the most annoying part of the Indiana Jones series, and I'm even including Shia LeBeouf. "The biggest trouble with her is the noise," Indy says at one point, making the most amazing understatement of the whole series.

The best part about Temple of Doom being a prequel is this: You can watch Raiders and Last Crusade back to back, ignore Temple of Doom, and not miss much.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade should've been the last Indiana Jones film, but Lucas and Spielberg couldn't resist going back to squeeze the dusty udders of the cash cow one more time. Let's forget about that for a moment.

Wisely going back to Judeo-Christian archaeology, and including Nazis and a Belloq-type as the antagonist(s), Last Crusade is a spectacular finale to the trilogy. The addition of Sean Connery as Henry Jones, Sr. makes for one of the best father-son dynamics ever put on film.

When junior and senior, along with Sallah and Brody (who were back for this one), literally ride off into the sunset at the end of the third film, they had the perfect ending to a perfect Indiana Jones film. Indy and his father had drunk from the grail, ensuring everlasting life, and they could live on together, having adventures and saving precious religious artifacts from evildoers (or just retiring to quiet lives of lectures and campus life). Really, after the Holy Grail, there's not much more worth finding.

Like Raiders, I can't resist watching Last Crusade if I find it playing on television. For some reason, I always seem to pick up the film during the tank scenes. I still watch to the end.

How about River Phoenix channeling Harrison Ford? What a loss. The "Young Indiana Jones" TV show had some merit, but there's only one true young Indy, and River nailed it.

I love the Indiana Jones films because they're timeless. Even if the special effects look dated now, I don't care, because Lucas and Spielberg wanted to pay tribute to old, cheesy adventure serials. They ended up creating something far better.

In fact, these three films are still better than any imitator before, during, or since. All those Romancing the Stone, King Solomon's Mines type films couldn't compete, and neither could the contemporary TV shows like "Tales of the Gold Monkey." Even now, the National Treasure films seem thin and silly by comparison. Nothing else comes close — not even a fourth Indiana Jones film.

I wish Lucas and Spielberg had taken Henry Jones' advice and "let it go" after the third film, but they reached for the Grail anyway. They chose...poorly. Rather than go on a tirade about all that was wrong with the fourth film, I just like to imagine they left it alone instead.

Incubus

My father-in-law, ever the merry prankster, got me a copy of Incubus for my birthday a few years ago, right after I started this project, fully aware that I'd eventually have to sit through it.

(He also likes to stop by the house and rearrange my DVD collection. He doesn't rearrange many of them — maybe switch one or two around, just to see if I notice.)

Incubus is a Leslie Stevens film starring a pre-"Star Trek" William Shatner in an early film role. The great Conrad Hall shot this one, and did a fine job. Incubus was the second film ever shot entirely in the "universal second language" of Esperanto. The first, Angoroj, pre-dates Incubus by a few years.

From the "About this DVD" section:

"For years all the original film materials of this picture were believed to be lost. Most of them in fact were destroyed or misplaced through a strange chain of events that has come to be known as 'the Curse of Incubus.' Fortunately, in the mid-nineties, producer Tony Taylor discovered a lone French subtitled print of the film in Paris where it was playing in a weekly midnight show Rocky Horror-style. With the help of the Sci-Fi Channel, Mr. Taylor was able to oversee the restoration of this print and it's [sic] transfer to video including the overlay of English subtitles over the French subtitles. It is from these materials that this DVD is made. In addition, the soundtrack has been digitized and filtered to improve the sound."

Actually it wasn't Taylor who discovered the film, but Howard Rubin, an agent, who is referenced at the "Curse" link above. A minor quibble, but perhaps an important one. The history of this film, detailed at the same link, is fascinating, and I don't just mean the whole "curse" thing.

As for watching this film for the first time, I have no idea what I'm getting into here.

My first impression is just how much this film feels like an Ingmar Bergman work (if Bergman did B-horror pictures in Esperanto). High contrast photography, gloomy narration, gloomy music, methodical shots, slow dissolves, otherworldly seasides, and the overall malaise of the film all point straight to Bergman. I don't mean Stevens ripped him off, but anyone who has seen The Seventh Seal will be able to see clear connections in style here.

Structure-wise, the hook comes quickly, as does the exposition. At 76 minutes overall, this film doesn't waste time, maximizing shots and economical dialogue for maximum impact. The English subtitles appear in black boxes, laid over the original French subtitles found on the source print from Paris. Overall, the print looks excellent considering how this was "lost" for so long.

When the succubi summon their master, the noise he makes isn't cheesy or low-rent, but downright chilling, and the incubus they summon behaves with a kind of wide-eyed, feral intensity that only contributes to the horror.

Is the film believable or realistic? Well, no. But viewed as a kind of otherworldly parable or fairy tale, the film works very well, and ended up surprising me with the quality. This taut little cult thriller turned out to be a great birthday present.

Ikiru

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru is another in a long line of Kurosawa films I have not yet seen, but collected anyway, thereby necessitating this project. Critics, scholars, colleagues, and even former students have extolled the merits of this film, but somehow I never found the time until today.

Kurosawa's follow-up to his troublesome The Idiot, Ikiru tells the story of Watanabe, a lonely bureaucrat who is terminally ill and merely passing time rather than really living. Of course, he's not aware that he's terminally ill at the start of the film. He finds out from his doctor several minutes into the story, but not before we see a group of women making a futile attempt to petition the labyrinthine government bureaucracy to have a cesspool cleaned up and a playground built in its place. More on that in a moment.

Watanabe's wife is deceased, and his son and daughter-in-law practically ignore him — mostly just worrying about the fortune he'll leave them when he dies. They don't know he's terminally ill, either. At one point, Watanabe attempts to tell his son, but his son won't listen.

Watanabe takes the news hard, and at first seeks solace in the nightlife with a new friend he meets while drinking. Then he runs into a young female subordinate on the street, and seeks solace in her (platonic) company. She's bubbly, energetic, and in love with the world. She's constantly smiling and full of energy. They spend a great deal of time together, always platonic, and become friends. Finally, after she has taken a job in a toy factory, Watanabe tells her the news. She's not really equipped to process any of it. She can only offer that working with toys all day helps her remember joy.

Back at work, Watanabe finds the women's petition and makes the park his personal mission, doggedly weaving his way through the labyrinth for them in an effort to get the park built. At his wake, his colleagues wonder where Watanabe got all this motivation and why.

Watanabe sees the end approaching and searches his life for meaning, finding little at first, but finding purpose as he goes along.

Ikiru is widely regarded as Kurosawa's best film, garnering a rare 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film contemplates a simple theme: the basic and often unspoken human desire to leave a legacy behind when we die.

For some, a legacy is as simple as having children and counting on them to remember you and cherish what you leave behind for them. For others, a legacy is the creation of some kind of art, again to leave something behind for others to cherish and appreciate. For still others, a legacy is simply making a difference in the lives of others. Once Watanabe knew the end was near, it propelled him.

Do we lead purposeful lives? If not, what are we doing about it? What legacies will we leave? Is a family enough? Is art enough? Is a difference enough?

I have trouble seeing life as anything other than a limited time to make a difference. Our job should be making as much of a lasting, positive impact as possible on as many people as possible. I don't understand how anyone can see life any other way.

The Idiot

Today I attempted to watch Akira Kurosawa's The Idiot, which is an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel. I've never seen this film, nor have I read the book. I lasted about 45 minutes.

I'm not saying the film is bad (though it's far from Kurosawa's best) and I'm not saying the source material isn't worthy of a film adaptation. I don't know that. However, I can tell this is a film that will take multiple viewings to understand, let alone get through, without having read the book.

Admittedly, I'm feeling ill-equipped to say much about the film, which could not sustain my interest for more than a few minutes at a time after the 45-minute mark. I hung in there, but kept finding myself looking out the living room window. The narrative jumps around, the edits are awkward, the music is intrusive, and Kurosawa uses numerous title cards and narration to expedite the plot.

At 166 minutes, The Idiot seems to go on forever. I understand Kurosawa attempted a much, much longer cut, adding another 100 minutes to the run time, but the studio would not allow that. I can't imagine 265 minutes of this. I don't know. Maybe the film works in the longer version. Unfortunately, no print of the longer version exists, so we can't know.

The Idiot is part of the Criterion Eclipse Series called Postwar Kurosawa. When I went through my great Kurosawa collecting binge a few years back, this was one of the last pickups. Although I Live In Fear really worked for me, The Idiot just didn't.

I don't feel particularly bad about this one, though. This isn't the film Kurosawa intended — this cut is the result of studio interference and forced cuts he really did not want to make. If I'm going to bail on a film, at least it's not a masterpiece, and at least it's not what the director intended anyway.

For more info on this one, go here.

Idiocracy

I can't watch Idiocracy often, but I feel that I must own a copy, if only to remind me of how the world would be if the idiots really won.

Comedian Bill Hicks used to have this bit where he pointed to "American Gladiators" as something the American public would rather consume than, say, the truth about the JFK assassination (or, for that matter, even critical analysis of the facts at hand). Here's a clip:

Idiocracy supposes the world will devolve to the point where we're all wearing logo-covered sportswear, eating Carl's Jr. food from rude outdoor vending machines (and sporting Carl's Jr. tattoos), and watering our crops with sports drinks instead of water.

I note that no one in Idiocracy seems to exercise (aside from sexual acts), so I wonder why all the sports drink consumption. Do these people even sweat? How do so many of them get to be so musclebound?

But then again, why all the sports drink consumption now, in our time? The United States of America is the fattest country on Earth. If Gatorade were only consumed by people who exercised regularly, the company would go under.

In our time, energy drinks seem to dominate our culture, what with [insert number]-hour energy drinks and 16 oz. mega cans of "energy drinks," which might as well be just like this one:

Also, I had 36 oz. of Diet Mountain Dew today. I'm not proud.

The film, directed by Mike Judge (Office Space) and released in a very limited run in 2006, not so subtly satirizes the anti-intellectualism so prevalent in our culture, which peaked during the George W. Bush administration in America and threatens to peak again.

All through the film, reading, writing, and speaking coherently is considered "faggy." (How come stupid people always equate intellect with homosexuality, yet the same stupid people don't connect sports rock anthems with the homosexuals who perform them? "We Will Rock You," anyone?)

It's as if we are doomed to live in a world where this is interpreted as Truth:

Or:

Just recently, Indiana lawmakers voted to incorporate creationist study in public schools, thereby blithely disregarding that whole separation of church and state thing. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but then I read this, which is yet another chestnut in the "Indiana is full of morons" collection.

But every once in a while, smarts win out, and I sleep a bit better.

Before I let this turn into a harangue about how everything sucks, let's be fair. Everything doesn't suck — but everything could be better. Other countries are full of stupid, too.

America is far from the worst country on the planet, and I love the freedom we Americans enjoy. What we can do as a nation when we band together with a common goal is nothing short of breathtaking and awe-inspiring.

Oh, but when we screw up, we look like the World's Biggest Bunch of Assholes — especially when we don't apologize or even accept responsibility for our actions.

When you go around saying how America is the Greatest Country on Earth, shouldn't you look and act the part? You can't just go around saying America is the best and then be an absolute idiot.

Well, in Idiocracy, you can.

Idiocracy is a funhouse mirror that amplifies our laziness, complacency, and ignorance, and works as a warning to audiences. Our future might not be all sports drink agriculture and television shows with grown men getting kicked in the testicles, but where are we going, anyway?

Like any funhouse mirror, Idiocracy gives us an idea of "what if," and leaves us to do the rest.

I Love You, Man

I was so happy when I Love You, Man came out.

Finally, a full-length motion picture that prominently features Rush, my favorite band. Finally, a film that depicts two grown men eating delicious fish tacos and playing music in a garage. But mostly, finally, a film with Rush in it:

Rush is my favorite band. A buddy made me a mix tape of Rush back in...7th grade? I say "mix tape," but really it was just a straight copy of Chronicles. Doesn't matter. That tape changed my life. I still have that tape somewhere, but it doesn't play. I keep everything.

Pretty soon, I'd collected all of their albums on cassette — like real, store-bought cassettes. After that, the CDs, and then all the vinyl on Mercury...and then all the CDs again when they remastered all of them in the late '90s. Did I mention the MoFi gold discs? Yeah, those too.

I wore out most of those cassette tapes — especially A Show of Hands, which I used to play in the car on the way to work. I found that the distance from my parents' house to my old job was exactly the duration from "Force Ten" to the end of the album. Some of those tapes melted. I have them in a box somewhere. Told ya, I keep everything.

Some guy I worked with gave me a copy of All The World's A Stage on 8-track, as a joke, but it was awesome. That tape is upstairs on my stereo right now, with nothing to play it.

When I was in grad school at Ohio University, I stopped in at Haffa's Records and found a Hemispheres picture disc, and — holy shit, those are expensive now.

Over the years, I've collected some strange, rare stuff, like the Max Webster Universal Juveniles CD, with the song "Battlescar," which is a duet with Rush. That was a good find. Throw in some posters, calendars, and other random stuff that says "Rush" on it, and you have a pretty good idea of what my wife has to deal with now.

I've seen Rush four or five times — every tour since 1994, save the most recent one, when they were just touring on hits and the prices were outrageous. And you thought I was lame before this paragraph.

I think I have...10 Rush t-shirts?  Maybe 12.  Some of them are threadbare, pitted-out, and falling apart, but I kept them anyway. When I ruined my white Test For Echo t-shirt, I went online and bought two more so that wouldn't happen again.

Rush became part of my identity. People started to know me as "a Rush guy." This sort of thing happens when you wear 12 Rush t-shirts around town, and write Rush lyrics all over your notebooks, and cite Neil Peart as a world-renowned poet, and say stuff like "Alex Lifeson is the best guitarist in the world," even when you know the correct answer is Eddie Van Halen.

Of course, I never have anybody to go with when Rush tours, so I always ended up taking a significant other (whoever that was at the time), or my buddy Brian, who also likes Rush — just not enough to do anything that I'm talking about here because he's mostly normal. I have one buddy, Mike, who wanted to go see one of their recent shows, but I flaked out. I should've gone with him. Regrets.

But here's the thing (and how this all ties in with I Love You, Man). Whenever I go to a Rush show, I look around and I think, "Man, what a bunch of weirdos." All the air-drumming and air-licking and weird proggy head-banging just seems strange to me.

I have a hard time making friends with other Rush fans. For a band with such a particular type of music and a specific type of audience, you'd think that I'd be in an arena with 25,000 friends at each concert, but that's not the way it goes.

Of the Rush fans I know, most of them are on the Internet — Kevin in Wisconsin, Meghan in Tennessee, Nat in New York — all great people I've never met in real life but get along with great over Facebook. I'd love to meet these people someday, if only to prove that not all Rush fans moonlight as D&D players who don't shampoo or wear deodorant.

So the Rush thing — it's hard to make friends if you're a Rush fan. That band polarizes people. "I don't like his voice," people will say. "Their music is too weird for me," other people will say. "Geddy Lee looks like Death," my wife will say.

I can see what you mean. It just takes me longer. (Those are Rush lyrics.)

(For the record, my wife allowed my groomsmen and I to enter to "Hope" from Snakes & Arrows on our wedding day. So she's not a devil woman.)

But that's not to say that it's impossible to make friends with people who like Rush. I'm being an asshole when I take the D&D/hygiene potshot. They're friendly, well-read people who take their music very, very, very seriously.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG AND TELL ME IT IS NOT FUCKING BRILLIANT, MAN!

OR THIS ONE:

ROCK!

Anyway, I saw this film and immediately thought about my friends, many of which would see this film and think, "Ha! A movie about a dude who likes Rush! That makes me think of John King!"

So in a fit of narcissism, I created a Facebook group: "People Who Saw 'I Love You, Man' and Thought of John King."

I'm the only person in that group right now.

Please be my friend.

I Live in Fear

Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear (1955) is one of five films in Criterion's Eclipse Series 7: Postwar Kurosawa DVD set, which was part of my Kurosawa binge from a few years back. I've never watched this one before tonight.

I'm starting to like watching films for the first time as part of this project. I get to log my first impressions, which isn't something I often do when I watch most films at home (especially rentals), aside from the occasional snide remark or glowing review on Facebook or Twitter.

With foreign films, writing as they play is especially tough. A few seconds of staring at the monitor or into space, searching for a word or phrase or new direction for the next paragraph, can mean missing crucial plot and character development in subtitles I miss. Then I have to back up, start again, etc.

With I Live in Fear, I found myself watching about the first 30 minutes before typing a word. The premise of the film is simple: the elderly patriarch of a Japanese family becomes obsessed with the idea that his entire family will be killed when another atomic bomb falls on Japan. Mind you, the film is set in 1955, ten years after V-J Day.

I Live in Fear is one of the first films I've seen that tackles Japanese emotions about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. What's interesting to me is how the patriarch's paranoia puts him firmly in the minority, while his family somehow remains aloof. Wouldn't one suspect the fear to be a bit more prevalent in this family? I mean, this is a country that was hit with atomic power, not one that just dealt with Russian and/or Cuban bluster. Yet most of the characters appear ready to live rather than watch the skies all day.

This sort of reminds me of growing up during the latter portion of the Cold War — in the Reagan '80s in America, you still had your kooky bomb shelter people, sure, and they stored food and other provisions underground or elsewhere. You also had your strangely aloof people — the ones who either didn't believe there was any imminent danger, or ones who did believe in a real threat, but somehow achieved a strange zen state of acceptance. "You have to die someday," they appeared to assure themselves. And then they watched Rocky IV or something and felt fine.

Lack of control seems to lead some people to paranoia, anger, and other irrational behavior, whereas many other people — often the majority — view a lack of control with resignation and calm. "Keep Calm and Carry On" comes to mind. Of course, under all that, the anxiety brews.

In the case of I Live in Fear, the patriarch wants to take his family away from Japan to the only place on the planet where he feels everyone will be safe — South America. He's even got a scheme worked out where he'll barter with someone living in Brazil — a person who wants to "return to Japan." As bartering is not a major financial transaction (in his head, anyway), the idea seems simple and easy, but convincing his family is another idea entirely. They want him declared incompetent so they can protect what money they have left. The patriarch is slowly spending them into oblivion after trying to build a bomb shelter and arrange for transport to another continent.

Their case comes before a court, wherein representatives must deliberate whether to declare the patriarch incompetent. One of them says, "his anxiety about the bomb is something we all share. [...] We just don't feel it quite as strongly. We don't build underground shelters or plan to move to Brazil. But can we claim that the feeling is beyond comprehension?"

What we do with our anxiety in times of great stress is what often sets us apart.

Kurosawa films are always satisfying, even when they tackle heavy content. Toshiro Mifune is in proper form here — not surprisingly, he simply owns the lead role. The supporting cast is capable, even the extras who play in the spraying water of the garden hose outside the foundry seem to capture a kind of carefree resignation toward it all. You cannot live in fear, even if you have every reason to be afraid.

With this film, Kurosawa seems to be saying that living in fear is not living at all. In that way, one could argue that postwar Japan was very much like Cold War America. Sure, the threat of annihilation was there, but if that's all we thought about, nothing would get done, and all that constant worry would be our undoing.

People have to get up and live, not cower every time a plane flies overhead or tremble at the sound of approaching thunder. For two cultures that are so drastically different, at our core, we share very human ways of dealing with what we dread. I'm sure this isn't an earth-shattering revelation, but for Kurosawa to put this theme forth in postwar Japan is extraordinary.

I Confess

I Confess is a minor Alfred Hitchcock film that I've never seen, and part of my great Hitchcock binge of 2011, wherein your intrepid author purchased some 50 Hitch films on DVD (many of which he has never seen but for some reason could not talk his way out of owning).

The gist of I Confess is a man confesses a murder to a priest, and because of the secrecy of confessional, the priest cannot reveal the murderer to police. Ah, but the murderer was disguised as a clergyman, which casts doubt on the silent priest. Here's the trailer.

This is the first time I've watched Montgomery Clift on film. The guy had some chops. He died of heart failure in his mid-40s, unfortunately. Health problems plagued him throughout his life. Seeing him here is cool — an actor I've heard about for years finally gets a face to the name.

Karl Malden appears in the film as a police detective (shocking). I've never thought of Malden as a heavy hitter in Hollywood (even though he sort of was as a character actor). Malden was never a suave leading man, but that nose, and those distinctive looks made for some great character acting in his long career.

Anne Baxter is here, too — another actor I've heard about from time to time but never really watched. Stuff like this makes me want to watch more old movies, because great swaths of Hollywood remain blind spots to me, including the bulk of Hitchcock's career. I've seen the great Hitch films, but feel obligated to dig deeper.

As long as I call myself an aspiring screenwriter (read: as long as there are older screenwriters and/or younger ones who suck, yet somehow get regular work), then I feel compelled to know Hitch well. As I'm writing this while the movie plays, I guess it's time to focus.

The Hudsucker Proxy

If you're from Muncie, Indiana, and you see a movie that mentions Muncie, then you know it's a real thrill. If you're not, then I'm sure it's the same feeling if you catch a reference to your own hometown in the movies, whatever town that might be. Of course, I wouldn't know that for sure, because I'm not from your hometown. I'm a Muncie man.

So, unless you're a Muncie Girl (or Guy), you might not know that feeling. If you are, you're probably someone I know, which puts you in the 100 or so people who read this blog regularly, and you know what I mean.

(Hey, a hundred readers is pretty swell. Go Eagles!)

Speaking of swell, Muncie might be the least swell place on the planet — a sleepy, post-industrial midwestern town famous for its ordinary averageness. Hollywood seems to enjoy pointing this out. That's fine.

The Hudsucker Proxy makes Norville Barnes, a Muncie native, out to be the biggest imbecile in New York, and of course, viewers can extrapolate that all Muncie natives are stupid if they want. One look at the stories and letters in the Muncie newspaper won't help.

(Side Note: Many of my Muncie friends who have moved to big cities east or west tell how the news from Muncie is so bizarre, so unbelievable, they often show non-midwestern friends, who in turn read the Muncie paper for entertainment. I'm not kidding.)

There's not much Muncie in The Hudsucker Proxy, but what's here is eerie. My high school colors are gold and blue, and our mascot is the eagle. Imagine my surprise when I saw this in 1995-ish with my then-girlfriend (also from Muncie) and discovered Norville Barnes is not only a Muncie native, but one who came from a similarly themed, (fake) college. Sure, not a high school, but still.

At least the fight song is different.

"The Muncie College of Business Administration" sends a few hundred dreamers to Hollywood every year, and few have done much out there. Joyce DeWitt, maybe. The rest are scrapping to make it happen, and more come and go all the time. None of them are imbeciles for trying. I'm proud of all my friends and former students who give it a go.

Muncie's most famous export isn't in Hollywood, though. This guy went to New York, and 30 years later, he's doing just fine. (Technically, he's from Indianapolis.)

I never went to Hollywood or New York. I never learned how to hula hoop, either. Can't hula, can't roller skate, can't skateboard, can't ski, can't swim, can't play basketball — why, it's a miracle I learned how to ride a bicycle or walk and chew gum. I can run, though, and write a little bit. I took those skills to Chicago after college, along with a truckload of moxie, see.

The opening montage of "experience needed" reminds me of pretty much every job hunt I've been on since I finished college — especially my days in Chicago, where even entry-level jobs require 3-5 years of experience. This is what happens when tens of thousands of people have the same idea. Big pond.

The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorite Coen brothers films, but despite the obvious connections to my hometown, I tend to forget the film even exists. Maybe the film offends me a little (not much, but there's a little pin prick each time). Maybe the film is overshadowed in their oeuvre by greater films such as Fargo, No Country For Old Men, or my favorite Coen brothers film, The Big Lebowski.

In fact, one could argue, as my wife the Hudsucker newbie remarked, "So...it's Lebowski as a period piece?" Well, yeah, kinda. A schlub gets in over his head and almost dies. There's a dance number, a white-haired millionaire, and so on. There's even a narrator who seems to know all. Then again, even The Big Lebowski is a period piece, so what do we know?

Say, how come when the janitor stops the clock at the end, freezing Norville Barnes in mid-air and leaving Sidney Mussberger's kinetic balls floating in mid-reaction, essentially stopping time, why do the snowflakes keep falling?

Betcha didn't expect that question from a Muncie man.





Kinetic balls.  Heh.

Hot Shots!/Hot Shots! Part Deux

Watching Hot Shots! again makes me think about how effectively they skewered more than just Top Gun. Twice.

Yeah, most of the sight gags are weak — the opening sequence on the aircraft carrier has a guy doing semaphore ballet, another guy roasting a hot dog by a jet exhaust, and of course some guy falls off while catching a football. In the modern parlance, we call this "weak sauce."

But at least Lloyd Bridges gets to do his schtick again for two films. His work in Airplane! is top notch, and he picks right up here and knocks it out of the park. The guy does not have a flat joke in either film.

Idle thoughts: Why do people keep sitting on small dogs?

Whoa, Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer worked together before "Two and a Half Men"?

Jim Abrahams has written and directed three comedies featuring airplanes..? Add his involvement with the Naked Gun films, plus Top Secret! and The Kentucky Fried Movie and you have one of the most successful and prolific comedic minds of the late 20th century.

I use the "blow it all on hats" joke just about every time the wife and I talk about money. I'd forgotten where I stole that joke until tonight. Here's a movie that came out before I finished high school, and I'm still using that joke in semi-daily conversation.

This is my life. I'm not proud.

Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux are just a couple more examples of the kinds of films I grew up watching and for which I still have a soft spot despite some pretty major gripes, which I'll get to in a moment.

My siblings and I probably watched this a half dozen times when we were growing up, and a few more times on television. Funny thing, though — I don't feel nostalgia in quite the same way as with many other films, and here's why:

Remember when killing Saddam Hussein was a wishful joke in silly movies? Google sort of takes the air out of those jokes now, you know? Evil tyrant, mass murderer, horrible human being, yes. And now if you want, you can go on Google video and watch him die.

So, can I laugh now when Topper drops a bomb into Saddam's lap in the movie? (I guess so, because somehow he lives.) Or how about when they go to assassinate him in the sequel, and he speaks with a lisp?

I mean, I don't feel any pangs when Saddam hands The Dude his bowling shoes in that dream sequence in The Big Lebowski, but that's different — even tasteful.

The Hot Shots! films, released shortly after Gulf War I, are some pretty strong indicators of the lack of closure in western culture re: Saddam. They make Saddam out not so much as a brutal dictator as a bungling fool, stepping on rakes, tripping over dog beds, and running face first into a bug zapper. We couldn't get him then, so we settled for making him a joke. Humor is a great way to deal with pain.

For more than 10 years, that lack of closure festered and ultimately led to another war.

Both Hot Shots! films are a strong indicator of the mood of this country in the period between the two Persian Gulf Wars. Throw in a parade of jokes that are simply racist and ignorant and you have possibly one of the lowest points in American cinema, right?

Except I don't think it's that simple.

Consider, instead, that these films were made precisely to lampoon the jingoistic bullshit of films like Top Gun and Rambo: First Blood Part II (and III). Richard Crenna even shows up here, spoofing his own role in the Rambo movies!

I mean, an Iraqi torturer steps out of the shadows wearing a Holiday Inn towel on his head. You don't get a whole lot more racist than that. But is this more of a comment on what viewers think rather than what the filmmakers think?

The filmmakers uniformly substitute obscure words and mumbled names of famous people as foreign language. "Kareem of onion! Al Jarreau!" "Omar Sharif!" "Sufferin Succotash!" And if you're sharp-eared, you can catch it. If you just hear foreign language as so much gibberish, you won't even hear English. The filmmakers are testing you.

There's just so much legitimately brilliant comedy here that I can't get upset no matter how badly I want to decry this film as racist or ignorant. I can't get self-righteous about them. I can see these films as equal opportunity offenders.

Ryan Stiles, who plays a demolition expert and seems like an early, much milder draft of the character Danny McBride plays in Tropic Thunder, really nails it:

"Know what I'm gonna do if we make it? I'm gonna go back to Eagle River and marry my gal, Edith Mae. Gonna get us a nice little place with a white picket fence. You know the kind. Two-car garage. Maybe a fishing boat. And in 15 years, when they're all paid for... I'll set my charges and blow the shit out of them."

The more I ponder that quote, the more I feel that those words are a microcosm of what makes the Hot Shots! films brilliant parodies of American culture, not just Top Gun. (Read a certain way, Top Gun is a brilliant parody of American culture.)

Also consider Miguel Ferrer's line, "Thank you, Topper. I can kill again. You've given me a reason to live." Later, he has another great moment, smiling and mugging for the camera before saying, "War: It's fantastic!"

Both Hot Shots! films are a comment on the American dream and our insatiable thirst for violence, and not just in film. There's even a video game counter at the bottom of the screen in Act III, tallying the death toll and declaring this the bloodiest film ever. Do we not keep a death toll during times of war?

Nothing is safe from parody here — even the audience's world view. They even take a shot at Apocalypse Now, throwing in Martin Sheen for a cameo, and turning Iraq into Vietnam, just with Iraqis this time. For so many Americans, what's the difference?

Hot Rod

I'm a sucker for stupid comedies done well. Hot Rod is one of the stupidest and best I've ever seen, and that makes it magnificent.

Hot Rod is basically the first film from The Lonely Island. Andy Samberg plays Rod, a wanna-be stunt-biker a la Evel Knievel. He wears a cape. He doesn't know how to talk to women. He barely knows how to drive a moped. He can't convince his stepfather (Ian McShane?!?!) that he is a real man. They fight with bow staffs and medicine balls. Rod usually gets his ass kicked.

When his stepfather falls ill and needs a heart transplant, Rod vows to earn the $50,000 required for the procedure — so that when his stepfather recovers, Rod can kick his ass.

Certainly the Idiot Manchild sub-genre of film comedy gains no new ground with Hot Rod, an Andy Samberg vehicle that was intended for (and not good enough) for Will Ferrell, but damn if this movie isn't funny anyway.

Sometimes, that's all I want. Give me a film that flopped in theaters and got dumped to DVD, but still had, you know, a crowd of townsfolk following the main character and doing a big musical number that escalates into a riot. Give me a preposterous plot with characters who are too stupid to be real, yet seem like people I knew growing up.

These flyover states have created their share of Idiot Manchildren. Maybe it's because we grew up on violent cartoons and TV shows like "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The A-Team." Maybe you combine that with the bombastic, stupid rock music from the '80s, all synth-heavy and screeching. Even movies like The Karate Kid, No Retreat, No Surrender, and Rad taught us that we could be badasses, no matter who we were or how much we sucked at being a kid or growing up. If we tried hard enough, we could do anything.

Informed by all that silly '80s stuff that we totally bought back then, The Lonely Island pretty much makes a living making fun of all that. Awesome. Stupid and awesome.

Here's the first minute or so.  It's pretty much all you need to know:
But here's the musical number/riot anyway, if you still need convincing: Cool beans.

Hot Fuzz

A lot of people would kill to make just one brilliant film that stands up to repeat viewings as well as Hot Fuzz. Edgar Wright made three between 2004 and 2010. All three are critically bulletproof, and if you disagree, you are incorrect.

My wife is English, so this film speaks to her in a way that most Americans don't understand. By that I mean that she was the only person in the theater who was laughing when the model village appeared, or when the Anglo slang term "nob" appeared on the swear box, or when the key code for the police evidence room was "999" (Britain's 911), or when the hedgehog randomly appears in the riot room — I could go on and on.

Hot Fuzz is a distinctly English film that parodies great American action films such as Lethal Weapon, Point Break, and many more. But they don't restrict the nods to American action movies. Check out this list for more references and this one for subtle stuff that's sure to geek you out — if you're a geek, anyway.

How about the swear box at the Sandford Police Station? All of the swears have symbols in strategic places, so as not to offend with the actual word — except the last word, the one at the bottom, the mighty C-word. I'd type that word here, but this is a family blog sometimes.

Timothy Dalton, the great British actor who once played James Bond for two 007 films, shows up here to chew every bit of scenery around him. He's like a buzz saw — a buzz saw who wants ice cream.

Dalton isn't the only great British actor who appears as a citizen of Sandford. There's Edward Woodward, for a start, along with at least a dozen others in the cast, along with a slew of cameos — the best being this one.

Hot Fuzz is one of only a handful of films that my wife and I can watch over and over together. We never get tired of this film. Since seeing this one in the theater with my buddy Brian and laughing our arrrrses off, we've probably added another 20 viewings.

I aspire to write a film as densely packed with established details and genuine, rewarding payoffs. For every little detail you get in the early going, that same detail appears in some way toward the end, playing a vital role in wrapping up the story. A great screenplay does that.

Hot Fuzz is a rare film, indeed. I'm happy to have the 3-disc edition featured above, as well as the Blu-Ray, which would render the DVD redundant if I didn't enjoy having both so much.

Film informs a lot of what I want to do when I visit places. For example, when I visited Los Angeles for the first time in 2000, I mostly just wanted to go to a Ralph's as a nod to The Big Lebowski. In the case of Hot Fuzz, I just wanted a Cornetto once I got to England in 2008:

Tasty, indeed.

Hoosiers

Hoosiers is a beautiful film, but I'm from Indiana and I grew up watching Indiana basketball, so I'm biased (and of course I own a copy on DVD).

Sure, I get bothered sometimes because the film is about a fictional high school and a fictional game, based only loosely on historical events. I wish this were really a play-by-play re-enactment of the Muncie Central vs. Milan game on which this film is loosely based, because that's real Indiana basketball history. But that's not this film.

Instead, this is a film that doesn't get too much into specifics — a fictional team from a fictional town with fictional players leaves room for more vicarious viewing, I think, and as such, this is a tribute to anybody who played or dreamed of playing Indiana basketball. I'd say basketball in general, but this film is called Hoosiers for a reason.

The music also bothers me. Jerry Goldsmith's score might be the worst I've ever heard by someone other than James Horner.  Here's a film set in the 1950s, but instead of music that fits the period, we get '80s synth music throughout.

I've long been a fan of stripping bad scores from '80s films and replacing them with music that doesn't sound so horribly dated and awful. Hoosiers tops my list of films that need new scores.

I love this film anyway.

Is the Indiana countryside beautiful? You bet. Even the shots of an overcast autumn day are pretty, because they look like home. Even that shot of Barbara Hershey attempting to hoe her garden is a pretty one, because it looks like a billion back yards around here (even if Hershey appears to be hoeing in the dead of winter, and keeps banging the hoe up and down in the same spot, essentially just digging a hole in the mud — I'm no gardener, but what is she doing?).

A lot of people I know, including my wife, don't understand why I prefer the Big Open Nothing of Indiana so much, with all the quiet, remote towns where you actually can hear yourself think, and people know who you are, and they don't just want your money. I prefer the Big Open Nothing because I'm all that's there, and I can look in all directions and see possibilities instead of people in the way.

Of course, that's an idealized view of small town America, where if you're the wrong color or religion or sexuality, you can get hurt. In many cases, you're not welcome in these parts, like Coach Dale isn't welcome for the first hour of the film. At least they got that part right.

But something beautiful and poetic happens in Indiana small towns to this very day. Dreams are born and often realized in high school gyms and gravel driveways and in living rooms in front of televisions.

This year marks 25 years since the Indiana Hoosiers won their last NCAA title with this shot. I was 12 years old, and it was the greatest game of basketball I've ever seen.

In 1993, Delta High School — my high school — advanced to the sectional title game by beating Muncie Central, the same school that little Milan toppled some 40 years previously to win the state title. (Alas, that next game was a different story, but beating Central is a big deal in my part of Indiana.)

The underdog success stories are special, because what really happens to little teams in Indiana is this. That's my old high school on the losing end of the state championship just four years after I graduated. The following year, Indiana switched to class basketball, so the rare and beautiful underdog stories like Muncie Central vs. Milan, or Central vs. Hickory, can't happen again.

That makes Hoosiers even more special, commemorating all the teams that made it, all at once. "Let's win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here."

Indiana high school basketball hasn't been the same since 1997. They broke it, as far as I'm concerned.

We need underdog stories. I've either been an underdog or been around underdogs my whole life. I like it that way. Victory is sweeter if no one expects it from you.

I was never good at basketball. I wasn't very fast, wasn't very tall, couldn't shoot well, and forget dribbling altogether. Still, because of games like that '87 NCAA title game and films like Hoosiers, I probably spent half my teenage years in my parents' driveway, playing ball until I got sleepy or until the sky got so dark I couldn't see the hoop.

I'd bring the ball inside for the night and go straight to the sink to wash my hands, which were covered in the kind of dirt that I didn't want to wash off, because it made me feel like a part of it all.

Postscript: Tonight, I tried to put the Hoosiers special features disc in my DVD player. As I was taking the disc off the spindle in the case, the disc cracked. In 10 years of collecting DVDs, I've probably handled 2,000 discs, and I've never shattered one taking it out of the case.  I figured I'd grab the Blu-Ray and upgrade, but the HD version doesn't have the bonus features. So I'll be getting another DVD instead, because in my book, if you grew up on Indiana basketball, you ought to have a spot on your shelf for this film.