Tagged: Indiana Jones

Dark Knight Rules Fourth!

  • News
  • August 10, 2008

The Dark Knight continues to rule the box office as it takes the number one position for the fourth weekend in a row, the first time any 2008 release has achieved this.  Its estimated haul of $26,030,000 pushes its domestic take to $441,541,000, faster than any movie in history.

 

Next week, the movie should surpass Star Wars’ $461,000,000 and become the second highest grossing film in American box office history.  Titanic remains on top of the world with its $600 million record and Warner Bros. suspects Batman will not beat the fabled steamliner.  Instead, they now estimate the film will earn $520 million.

 

Now, adjust everything for inflation and The Dark Knight will wind up not second but 49th while Gone With the Wind remains the biggest film of all with $1.4 billion in 2008 dollars.

 

The stoner comedy Pineapple Express opened in second place with a healthy $22,400,000. Counting ticket sales from Wednesday’s opening, the film already has taken in $40.5 million.

 

In its second weekend Universal’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor dropped 60.2%, taking in just $16,113,000.  With a total of $70,671,000, it chugs along although there has to be some concern that bad word of mouth, poor reviews and steep drop off may mean the franchise is running out of steam despite director Rob Cohen already talking a fourth film.

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Watchmen: Inside the Owlship and Owl Weapons

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

On the heels of the latest trailer, a new Watchmen production journal was released with an inside look at Nite Owl II’s ship. You can check out the video here, but don’t ask me why nobody ever refers to it as "Archie."

 
 
 
And over at prop master Rick Gamez’s (Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4) personal site, he has posted pictures of the new Nite Owl weapons that he had a hand in designing for the new film, which may not be from the book, but are still pretty cool. 
 
UPDATE: Looks like the powers that be at WB didn’t like that Gamez had posted pics of the props, so you can check out the pics for yourself here. Enjoy!

Star Wars, James Bond and Daredevil bring top prices at Hollywood Auction

  • News
  • August 7, 2008

xxx-9555757If you wanted that original T.I.E. fighter miniature from Star Wars, you missed your chance.  You could have outbid the person who spent $402,500, and it would have been yours.  At an auction in Calabasas, CA, on July 31 and August 1 from Profiles in History sold a variety of items for more than $4.1 million.

What else was there? 

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The Weekly Haul: Comics Reviews for July 11, 2008

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  • July 11, 2008

All around, a great week for comics even in the face of a few serious missteps. And while the latest Secret Invasion was quite good, it was the monthlies that really kicked into high gear. Let’s get to the reviews…

jsa16-4829475Book of the Week: Justice Society of America #17 — This book hit a pretty serious lull in the middle of the Gog storyline, as Magog went away and Gog (an apparently benevolent god) made his presence known.

The latest issue is all about that old axiom, be careful what you wish for. Gog is on the peacepath, so to speak, and turns his focus on the members of the JSA, granting their deepest desires.

But his altruism cuts both ways. Damage gets a new face and Pieter regains his sight, while Starman becomes sane ("not a good thing") and Power Girl is transported home… wherever that is.

It’s a slickly done issue by Geoff Johns, who crafts an extremely dangerous story without a whiff of a villain. This series had been needing a kick in the pants, and this issue was a big swing of a steel-toed boot.

Runers Up:

Captain Britain #3 — Even better than Secret Invasion is this spin-off title, which has the Skrulls invading Britain as part of their global conquest. This is one jam-packed issue, with epic fight scenes, tough decisions and even a believable turn from Merlin.

The expected rebirth of Captain Britain was goose-bumps good, and my only complaint is that this Skrull battalion is all fighting and no subterfuge, as they don’t utilize that huge shape-shifting advantage.

The Goon #26 — A classic gangsters-at-war story. Think Miller’s Crossing, except with monsters, zombies and filthy humor. Eric Powell maybe goes a bit too far in places, but all in all it’s a damn fine issue, and his art is brilliant as ever.

 

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Indiana Jones and the Godless Commies, by Dennis O’Neil

Now we know. That Indiana Jones still swings a mean whip.

I liked the new Indy flick better than the critics I read, all of whom said something like, well, okay, it was all right but not up to the earlier entries in the series. Which makes me wonder: what would they have thought if this had been the first Indy flick, instead of the fourth. It’s like those clichés in Hamlet – they weren’t clichés to the greasy-chinned groundlings at the first (or fourteenth, or eighty-third) performance of Shakespeare’s story of a screwed-up kid with severe mama issues. Way back in 1981, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and a platoon of talented collaborators took elements from Saturday afternoon serials, silent comedies and maybe a few other sources and combined them in the right proportions to create entertainment that was not only right for the time, but provided a template for a lot of entertainment that followed.

Was the fourth as good as the first (or second, or third?)? That’s me, scratching my head and muttering, I dunno…And, frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Years and years ago, a brilliant science fiction writer told me that Goethe’s criterion for judging art was found in two questions. To wit: What was the artist trying to do and did he succeed in doing it? I’ve never found a good reason to argue with Herr Goethe and by his criteria; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a success. We entered the multiplex hoping to be amused, hoping to forget Bush’s ongoing follies and the Democrat’s internecine dogfights and – voila! We were amused and we, temporarily, forgot. Value received. Money well spent.

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Indiana Jones and the Secret to Adventure, by John Ostrander

Spoiler warning: Spoilers. Why did it have to be spoilers?! I hate spoilers. Hate ‘em! Unfortunately, I can’t talk about what I want to talk about regarding the latest Indiana Jones flick unless I spill some beams. So I’m warning you upfront. The spoilers won’t appear until after the break and I’ll give you a final warning before I go into them. If you want to just skip the column this week, I’ll understand… this week. Don’t make a habit of it. I know where I live.

Wait. That didn’t come off right.

Okay, I’ve gotten out the fedora and went off to see the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. As much as I’m a Star Wars fan (and I’d better be – I’ve been writing Star Wars for about eight years now and you can see what I’m doing in Star Wars: Legacy and, yes, that’s a plug), I’m a bigger goon for Dr. Jones. Even before Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, I was a fan because George Lucas talked in interviews about how his new movie originated in his and Steven Spielberg’s love for the old Saturday Matinee Serials. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I loved ‘em, too. Still do.

Saturday Matinee Serials are also known as “chapter plays” and originally were shown in movie theaters on Saturdays as a way of getting the kids to come back, week after week. They would last 12 to 15 chapters and each one would end with a cliffhanger for the hero or heroine with no way out. Of course, when the next chapter appeared, they showed you the segment that they hadn’t previously shown you which allowed said hero/heroine to escape just in the nick of time. The serials date back from the dawn of cinema to the early 50s when they fell prey to the confangled new invention that was to blight/enrich all out lives, television.

And it was there that I discovered the Saturday Serial. The old serials were re-packaged for Saturday Morning TV kid’s fare and, like the old matinees, were part of a package. It was here that I discovered these often cheesy pleasures. I remember Tim Tyler’s Luck – a 1937 Universal jungle adventure adapted from the comic strip of the same name. The strip petered out only in 1996. I also remember Don Winslow of the navy, also based on a comic strip of the time. In fact, it’s amazing how many of the comic strips and books of the time were adapted into serials – Dick Tracy, Superman, Batman, the Shadow (yeah, he had a comics strip), Spy Smasher, and an excellent version of Captain Marvel, among others.
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ComicMix Radio: Shake-Ups On TV – We Need A Hero!

cmixradio-200-4020296The fall lineups for the major networks continue to be revealed and you may  not be happy at where a few of our favorites landed. To ease the pain, we poke Heroes‘ star Milo Ventimigila to find out what he picked up at his local comic shop, plus:

— Iron Man buzz hits the comic racks with two sellouts

— You can see Indiana Jones early – if you fly to Cannes

— BSG‘s Number Six meets Spidey!

Stop looking at the goofy TV stars and press the button!

 

 

  And remember, you can always subscribe to ComicMix Radio podcasts via badgeitunes61x15dark-7593382 or RSS!

‘The Incredible Hulk’ Smashes Other Movie Standees

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Theater lobbies littered with cardboard standees promoting Indiana Jones, Dark Knight, Hellboy II and other movies may be a familiar sight these days, but to paraphrase the Hulk, they’re just "puny banners!"

Selected theaters across the country recently received life-size maquettes to promote the release of The Incredible Hulk on June 13. And when we say "life-size," we mean it! 

Measuring over 8-feet tall and as wide as a truck, simply standing next to one of the maquettes is enough to understand why that anonymous soldier in the classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby origin issue called him a "hulking monster."

You have to wonder which movie theater employee gets to take this home.

The Real Hero, by Dennis O’Neil

Deju vu all over again? Why, sure.

About 19 years ago, I was being pulled into the summer movie/blockbuster season anticipating two of the myriad entertainments soon to be playing at a theater near me. One was Tim Burton’s second Batman flick, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and Danny Devito as a particularly nasty Penguin. Oh, and Michael Keaton in his final appearance as the Caped Crusader. (Back then, although he was not a barrel of laughs, he may have been just an eensy-bitsy too cheerful to qualify as a Dark Knight.) Batman was soaking up most of my professional life – I was editing the comic books – and I was writing a comics version of the screenplay, and so I had a distant, tenuous but real interest in the movie. And anyone who’s ever been involved with a Major Motion Picture knows that there is an excitement to such projects that ripples outward to touch even us at their distant edges. (Which may be why working in movies seems to be, for many, so addictive.) In sum: yeah, I was awaiting the Batman flick with more than idle curiosity.

But what I was really waiting for was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Batman was my job; Indy was my hero. I may have been associating him with an earlier hero, Mr. Paladin, who was the central character in a once-popular, 30-minute TV western called Have Gun, Will Travel. What No-First-Name Paladin and Indiana Jones had in common, besides impressive looks and charisma, and the ability to look good riding a horse, a powerful sense of right and wrong, and great prowess in combat with either fists or weapons, was this: They were smart. More – they were readers! And more – they were even intellectuals!

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Paramount Announces New ‘Indiana Jones’ DVDs

  • News
  • March 10, 2008

raiderssmaller-8864262Even though Paramount already released a superb DVD box set of the Indiana Jones Trilogy back in 2003, they’re doing it again. This time around, the new DVD releases of the classic trilogy will be available individually instead of as an exclusive box-set like before and will be released on May 13th — just in time to whet your appetite for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull‘s opening on May 25th.

These "Special Edition" DVDs, as they are being called, boast new features and exclusives not found in the earlier box-set releases. According to Paramount, some of these features and exclusives include interviews, discussions and new documentaries about the making of the three films that give audiences a new insight and appreciation for these classic films.

Examples include:

 
Indiana Jones: An Appreciation– The cast and crew of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pay tribute to the original trilogy
 
The Melting Face–A recreation of the amazing physical effect of the villain’s melting face in Raiders of the Lost Ark, including Steven Spielberg and George Lucas commenting on the evolution of visual effects and CGI
 
Locations–Travel across the world to discover where the films take place and where they were shot
 
Friends and Enemies–Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Indiana Jones writers discuss how they created the most iconic characters in film history, including a look at new faces in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
 
The Women: The American Film Institute Tribute–The three Indiana Jones women (Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw and Alison Doody) reunite for a discussion
 
Interesting note: There’s been no word yet on whether these new Indiana Jones DVDs will get the Blu-Ray treatment. They’ve already been shown in HD on the HDNet Movies network, so why not release them in Blu-Ray now that the "format war" is over?
 
For a complete list of all the special features and other details about each of the three new DVDs, check out the official Indiana Jones site.

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