Skip to main content

SHARKS, INDIANA JONES AND MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

 I've watched a lot of films this past month.  Went through two franchises:

  • Jaws.
    • Began with Jaws in 1975, based on the novel by Peter Benchley, directed by Steven Spielberg and featuring that theme song of John Williams, just an alternating pattern of E and F notes, which won an Oscar, and now is the standard sound of sharks.
    • There were three sequels, earning $800 million for the entire franchise.
    • Only the original Jaws movie did well by Rotten Tomatoes, given a 97/90 scores by reviewers.
      • However, the best shark film of all time was a Canadian documentary, Sharkwater Extinction, which got a 100 score.  All about the illegal trade in shark fins.
      • The other Jaws films got 62% (#12 of all shark productions), 11% and 0% (Jaws the Revenge in 1987 got this rating, and ranks #39, the lowest of all shark flicks).  In other words, don't bother to watch these sequels.  On the other hand, I did stay for the Revenge, starring Lorraine Gracy, Mario van Peebles and Michael Caine.  It was almost okay.
    • And by the way, Shark Week began today on the Discovery Channel.  Click on this for the ratings of those films.  Also a warning that most shark movies are junk.
  • Indiana Jones.
    • I touched on watching this series in a posting earlier this month.
    • Keep in mind that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas connived to get these films started.
    • Here is the sequence of this franchise.

  • Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

But if historical timing is what you seek:

  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (opening sequence)
  • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (rest of movie)
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (opening sequence)
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (flashback to Basil Shaw’s home)
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (rest of movie)

Nazis keep returning as the villains because the first film (Lost Ark--and while an ark can be a ship, in this context it is a sacred chest) was set in 1936 when they were beginning to loom large in Europe.  The newest film essentially pulls this same group into 1969, with a time machine plot that shoots them back to the days of Archimedes (around the year 223) and back to today again.  Reviewers did not like this, but the audience said it was okay.

All this background for me to tell you what I saw this weekend.

  • I was set to go to Barbenheimer yesterday, but learned that the best seats are a lot cheaper on Tuesdays, so that's what I'll do.
  • The combo of Barbie and Oppenheimer will do spectacularly this weekend.  It's complicated when you count world revenues, but Barbie made $337 million and Oppenheimer $255 million, or $592 million total for Barbenheimer.  Want details?  Read this.
So let me begin with Indiana Jones, given a 69 score by reviewers and 88 by audiences from Rotten Tomatoes.  
  • Harrison Ford was 81 years old when this film was made.  How did they make him look like 39?  AI?  Nope, Industrial Light and Magic has a process called ILM FaceSwap.  Well, that is, actually, a form of Artificial Intelligence.  Essentially, the franchise has a lot of footage of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and the swap was easy, with doubles where physical exertion was beyond Ford's current capability.
  • About that Dial of Destiny or the Antikythera mechanism, created by Archimedes...it's real, recovered by a sponge diver off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, dating back to around 70 BC.  But linked to Archimedes?  Probably not, and he was killed in that Roman invasion earlier mentioned.  And a time changing device?  Nah.
  • They essentially went back and borrowed the same adventure formula, with more snakes, reptiles, rats and insects (really large centipedes, for example) in all kinds of escapes involving underground caves and car chases.
  • The "surprise" ending has Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, who is now 71) returning in a cameo.  She had married Indiana in 2008's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
  • And about his Goddaughter Helena from this film starring in the next Indiana Jones film?  Well, read this link.
  • Dial of Destiny did have a good weekend box office at the end of June, earning $130 million.

The second film, Mission Impossible:  Dead Reckoning Part 1, was the best-rated (Rotten Tomatoes: 99-94) of all MI productions, and there have now been seven of them, with, of course and 8th coming, as Part 2.   Tom Cruise himself is now 61-years old.  I guess he has two decades of MI life ahead of him.  When released:

Mission: Impossible (1996)

Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Of course you must know that these films were preceded by the TV series from 1966 to 78, led by Jim Phelps, played by Jon Voigt in the first Cruise film, whose Ethan Hunt went on to become the lead character.

  • The antagonist in Dead Reckoning is Artificial Intelligence, I think.  The most sinister in the past is evil Philip Seymour Hoffman from MI3.
  • While DR had the best swarm of Cruise stunts, his scaling of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, is said to be his most dangerous, from Ghost Protocol.
  • MIDR has the highest Rotten Tomatoes rating, scores of 96/94, versus #2 MI Fallout with 97/88.  The worst was MI2 with 56/42.  View the others here.

So to close, my lunch yesterday at Rinka, Ward Complex, next to Consolidated Theaters.

I might add that I also recently had another excellent Japanese lunch at Ayame Curry and Ramen located at the Windward City Shopping Center.
Mochiko Chicken, Pork Ramen and Gyoza, with a Fosters.
I took this photo from the inside, and noticed a sign across the walkway .
Guns allowed?  Into a coin store?  Don't understand.
-
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota.  Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north.  Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge.  If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic.  Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing.  The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University.  Caught a bus. Was called the  Century 21 Exposition .  Also the Seattle World's Fair.  10 million joined me on a six-month run.  My first. These a...
Post a Comment
Read more

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases.  Very few are aware that a new one,   BA.4.6,  is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples .  However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6.  Here is a  reference  as to what this means.  A series of two injections is involved.  Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab  co-packaged with  cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on  subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...
Post a Comment
Read more

IS FLORIDA AGAIN THREATENED BY A MEGA TSUNAMI FROM LA PALMA?

 From the morning  New York Times : Here is a graph comparing average daily COVID-19 deaths/100,000 people, and the USA is doing something really wrong: The difference between our country and Europe is that we have flubbed the availability of cheap and ubiquitous at-home RAPID testing.  They have covered this base. There are two obvious problems: The FDA is much too bureaucratic about quickly approving anything related to this pandemic, including testing. We seem stuck with the test that takes one to several days to get your result. The good news is that the Biden administration has finally realized this problem and through executive order hope to soon flood the market with take home testing that at first will be subsidized to make it affordable. Now, on to getting everyone vaccinated, especially 5-11 years olds ( and we are close to getting to making this happen ), the undereducated and Republicans.  What to do about the latter two? The other concern is whether we a...
Post a Comment
Read more