I worked on final exam review topics all morning before class, and so I thought I had good examples to discuss during my last lecture of the semester. At least one student informed me that he was feeling reasonably confident about the final exam next week. I hung around the empty classroom for a while afterwards to use the computer. I saved a lot of old documents onto the USB flash drive. Even after I saved tons of stuff onto it, the pie graph showing the capacity indicated I’d used only about one-eighth of the available storage space.
For my late lunch, I went over to Bongo Burger. I used the big table in the place to lay down all my bags and book and papers. I had the Persian burger.
I went to the record store to look around. I thought about buying CDs of Peter Tosh, The Pogues, and Steely Dan, but on this night I decided to stick with people I thought were A-list artists. I bought the first Creedence Clearwater Revival album, a John Lennon Anthology disc, Neil Young’s “Live Rust,” and Prince’s “Around the World in a Day.” I always associate “Suzie Q” with the Playboy Playmate sequence in “Apocalypse Now.” The John Lennon CD had a lot of strong songs, like “Working Class Hero,” “God,” “I Found Out,” “Mother,” and “Jealous Guy.” I actually couldn’t remember if I already had “Live Rust” or not. Neil Young has put out quite a few live albums. I had a vinyl copy of the Prince album once upon a time, but now I don’t know where it is. I suppose I like “Raspberry Beret” best from it, partly because Warren Zevon did it. I saw stickers on the Beatles CDs that said that 09/09/09 will be a big day for new Beatles releases, with remastered music and the video game.
It seems that I’ve completely lost track of what CDs I own. I had it in my mind that I had to buy a Marvin Gaye anthology album, but when I got home and looked at my shelves, I saw that I already had one.
I went over to the theatre to see “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” They showed a commercial before the movie in which people collide with each other and turn into splashes of Sprite which shower down on people on a hot day. It was amazingly bizarre to me. Is the point that people are willing to die for a Sprite? It all seems very unsanitary to me, too, especially in light of the swine flu all over the world.
The movie starts off with Kate Capshaw as singer Willie Scott, singing Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” in Chinese. She is Indy’s love interest, although I don’t see why. Steve Spielberg’s huge mistake in this movie was not reworking this character so that she’s more likable. She’s constantly screaming and complaining, and she is so grating in some scenes that it’s unbearable. She’s like the complete opposite of Karen Allen’s character in the first movie. What about showing some strength and spunk and sense of humor, like Katharine Hepburn in “The African Queen”? The script doesn’t give her too much to do, other than sing her song. Did Kate Capshaw do anything after this movie? It seems like a career-destroying performance, like Elizabeth Berkley in “Showgirls.”
As in a James Bond movie, the first scene has action and suspense. The bad guys have poisoned Indy’s drink, and they offer the antidote in exchange for a diamond. Any child, though, could have told you that Indy shouldn’t have taken that drink. The lesson is to never take a drink at all in these situations.
Short Run was a pretty good sidekick for Indy, driving the getaway car and throwing in some good punches at the bad guys. It was disturbing to see him get whipped in one scene, although the political incorrectness of the moment was OK with me, because he bounced back and showed a toughness that you don’t see in too many children. I wonder what ever happened to this kid. Is he a thirty-year-old man now?
Some of the violence in the movie is unsettling, too, with the grabbing of the heart thing and the burning of the flesh to break the spell Indy is under. Some of the bad guys meet with a gruesome demise, on the tracks or getting eaten.
Indy, Willie, and Short Run escape from Shanghai, only to board a plane that’s going to crash somewhere in India. The explosion of the plane when it hits the mountain looked fake, as did the shots of those guys falling off the broken bridge. Was there real improvement in special effects from “The Birds” in 1963 to this movie in 1984?
The movie is supposed to reflect the cheap thrills of old-time serials, so I guess that’s why some of the shocking and disgusting images are thrown in there, but I still couldn’t stand the sight of those monkeys with the tops of their heads cut, as a dessert of chilled monkey brains is served at the meal. Remember that there was also that soup with the eyeballs in it. Spielberg certainly didn’t present India in a sensitive manner, as Jean Renoir with “The River.” Would Spielberg have ever shown Jews in this sort of light? It’s doubtful.
My complaint about that chase sequence in the mine has to do with what happens with that broken track. Even for a movie with elements of fantasy, it was too difficult to accept. Sometimes in a movie, you can accept the impossible, as in “The Matrix,” and sometimes it just seems ludicrous, as in “The Lady in the Water” or “The Village.”
There are a few scenes that hint at some deeper emotion, like when those child slaves are freed from their shackles. That feels like an anticipation of “Schindler’s List.” When Indiana Jones returns to the village at the end, it has faint traces of the tone of the homecoming in “The Color Purple.”
It wasn’t exactly a beautiful movie, but it was a reasonable crowd pleaser. It sounded like the same guy behind me during “Back to the Future” a couple weeks ago was back, doing the same screaming. I walked on home and listened to the radio a bit. Damon Bruce was complaining about the Giants, as usual. I heard that the Lakers lost to the Nuggets.
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