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First CD
So, the CD is 30 years old. What was your first CD? I think mine was C&C Music Factory.
What was yours?
Indiana Jones Geekery, Part One
Update: 3/Sep/12
The book came. Begins in Chicago with Indy almost getting into trouble with some bootleggers before he heads off to the Sorbonne to begin his graduate studies. Breathless!
***
This site is home to the favourite thing I have ever written. With rage pouring through my creative veins, I wrote a review of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull which, unlike most of what I have written in the past, is a post I can still read and am still proud of.
There may be better films, but Raiders is the greatest (sic). So when I caught it on the telly the other night, I inevitably paused between channels to see Indy race away from Belloq and urge Jock to “start the plane!” Jock has “Sky Pirates” written on his shirt and I thought, as one does, “I would like to own that shirt . . . and who are the Sky Pirates anyway?”
(Such is the way my brain works.)
I’ve long enjoyed the Lucasfilm Expanded Universe (EU). In fact, many of the Star Wars Dark Horse comics are the best things to happen to Star Wars since 1980. I suspected that my questions regarding Jock (also, where did he get his pet snake Reggie?) had been answered and the Indiana Jones wiki confirmed it:
Jock Lindsey was an American freelance pilot. Lindsey cut his teeth as a stunt pilot performing in Midwest airshows and relocated to Venezuela after a rumored flight-related tragedy. He frequently was hired by Indiana Jones to fly the archaeologist to remote parts of the world.
And so for reasons perhaps related to my mild OCD I have decided not only to read more about Jock and his Sky Pirates, but also to enjoy the Indiana Jones EU chronologically. I am skipping the Young Indiana Jones ouevre (a few years ago my kids and I did a young Indy marathon) and am starting instead in 1922 which is the agreed terminus for the adventures of non-Young Indy, marking the first fictional event after Hollywood Follies (the last of the Young Indy films).
I have ordered from Ebay a copy of Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi, a novel in which “Indy descends into the bottomless pit of the serpent god and finds a sacred stone that holds the key to the [Delphic] oracle’s prophecies.” Sounds hokey but fun and I shall probably read it to the kids.
Kultur? Obviously not, but I need an escape from the middle-brow psychedelia of Johns Fowles’s The Magus (my summer read) and I have a feeling I’m going to love this journey of geekery. There are a dozen novels, a few comic books and short stories, and a couple of video games.
I have even cleared a space on my shelf for this Indiana Jones literary collection. Right next to my newly restored Rancor. Expect reviews here at KB. Should be riveting stuff.
Why Brad is wrong about Spiderman
In response to Brad’s post at What Culture: Read the rest of this entry
More Danish
Having already blogged about Denmark’s excellent Forbrydelsen, it’s time to introduce you to more Danish televisual excellence, this time in the form of a political drama called Borgen. Now that Sarah Lund has entered the British Zeitgeist (this AbFab skit is brilliant), it seems that BBC4 is keen to continue to scour Scandinavia for cool stuff.
The series tells the story of Birgitte Nyborg, a female politician who navigates around Macchiavelli to become prime minister of Denmark. There’s not much more to say than that, only that it deftly portrays the machinations of European coalition politics and makes its characters believably human, i.e. they do human and not TV-human things. I physically applauded at the end of the second episode, which is an RJH sign that something is good. Fans of The Killing II will be delighted to see the return of the actor who played Strange, Lund’s sidekick. Man crush alert.
Borgen shows on LinkTV. Alas, a US remake is apparently on the cards.
I can’t find an embeddable trailer anywhere. Follow this link instead.
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The best thing on TV is Danish
Denmark’s Forbrydelsen, “The Crime” but called “The Killing” in English, is fast achieving the almost universal acclaim of The Wire — every TV pundit in the UK seems to love it. It can never be The Wire, of course, but if you like proper grown-up crime drama, cast your eyes across the Kattegat and watch The Killing.
AMC’s version wasn’t that bad until they utterly ruined the series with a stupid, craven ending. Forbrydelsen I ended properly and season 2, now showing on the BBC, starts an entirely new story. Sarah Lund — whose Faroe Island sweaters have now kicked off an unlikely fashion craze — is boot-deep in an investigation involving the Danish army, political conspiracy, and a series of nasty murders. With Sweden’s Wallander also serving up a morbid portion of Scandinavian dysfunction and Sherlock ready to return to the BBC, European crime drama is very good right now. Read the rest of this entry
Before Sunrise/Sunset III?
My wife is going to tease me for admitting this, but I’m a fan of the Linklater-Delpy-Hawke story that is Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. For the first film it’s mostly because it’s set in Vienna, a city which has absorbed three years of my own life. Plus, who doesn’t dream in their younger years of exciting romances enjoyed via Interrail tickets?
The sequel is a remarkable example of a mostly ad-libbed character piece set nine years after that night in Vienna. Delpy and Hawke shine and you yearn for a cosmos which will allow them their life together rather than the jaded, thirty-something malaise into which they have slipped.
Now we hear that a third film is a possibility. May Jesse and Celine have better luck this time.
Ricky Gervais has done it again
There was a moment in last night’s Life’s Too Short — the new BBC/HBO mockumentary about dwarf actor Warwick Davis — that had Rebecca and me in stitches. We were literally crying, it was so funny. (And yes, I do mean that literally — tears of joy were escaping our eyes.) Much as I want to share the joke, I cannot for it had to do with dwarfs and paedophiles, two things of which One Must Not Joke. You will have to experience it yourself.
So, instead, I offer you Liam Neeson’s cameo, still agony-inducing but not quite as bad:
The show is about Warwick Davis (aka Willow, Wicket the Ewok) and his attempt to resurrect his career. Along the way he meets various celebs including, last night, Johnny Depp, who gamely serves himself up on a Gervaisian platter of mockery.
Gervais and Stephen Merchant are the undisputed masters of modern observational comedy. Are you not glad Ricky is hosting the Golden Globes again?
Expect it on HBO in 2012.
Arrietty
Studio Ghibli’s latest is the film equivalent of a warm bath, a deep warm bath with bubbles, candles around the rim, all finished with a fluffy towel and a few yoga stretches.
I loved it. I tend to love Miyazaki anyway (he wrote the screenplay), but Arrietty charmed more than usual. The whole thing is charming and enchanting, beautiful, soothing, lovely and of good report. There’s a little less peril here than usual, and some of the fun eccentricities of Ghibli storytelling are missing, but in the context of this story — based on Mary Norton’s classic The Borrowers — Arietty is just perfect. Some of the usual Ghibli characters are there, however: The flawed parents, the brave heroine, the ethereal boy, and the hag.
I saw the British-English overdub with Saoirse Ronan voicing Arietty so I can’t comment on the American version. Obviously the animation is incredible, but so is the music, scored not by Miyazaki’s John Williams, Joe Hisaishi, but by Bretonne musician Cécile Corbel.
Wonderful in every way. See it now.
10/10
Review: Robin Hood
There’s a scene in the new Robin Hood where Sir Walter Locksley (played by Max von Sydow, a Swede) tells Robin (played by Russell Crowe, an Australian) that he stinks.
Oh, how apt. Read the rest of this entry
