Indiana Jones - Page 14

I thought KOTCS was a gag reel. Am I missing something?

You're using a different definition of the word "gag".

Showed The Last Crusade to my roommate who had never seen an Indiana Jones before, and had confused the character with Crocodile Dundee. She liked it a lot, laughed at all the right places, awwwwed, when Jones Sr. hugs Jr. and says "I thought I lost you boy." 

 

We're actually snowed in here in Upstate South Carolina. The last two days I've watched three of the four Indiana Joneses, and plan to complete the series tomorrow. I will say this about Last Crusade, I still have fun with it. The opening being so on-the-nose, however, is in such stark contrast to the elegance with which the relationship between Jones and his father is written. 

Alright, I've been looking all day to try and find the correct font for the opening credits from Raiders, TLD and KOTCS and can't find information about it anywhere online. Does anyone know what that font it is? With the hollow centre? 

It may not be a "font", per se, since it was created as a logo for the movies, not with the idea of an entire alphabet.

 

This freebie is pretty close: Adventure. And this one is a good approximation of the subheading.

 

There's also a couple of sites with free fonts based on various movies that have a few other choices: Typenow.net and 50 Free Movie Themed Fonts.

Yeah. thats where my complication comes from. The font I mean is the one DURING the credits sequences. Spielberg actually aped it from the font used for the opening credits of 'Citizen Kane', and I've never been able to find the exact font online ... anywhere. 

 

http://examplify.blogspot.com/2008/05/horrible-typefaces-and-fonts-of-indiana.html

 

You can see what I mean there, the typeface with the hollow centre. I'd love to find that font!

Swahili, So...RAIDERS OF THE LOST...FONT!  It could be the next...Exciting, Indiana Jones Adventure!  Join Indy and friends as they try to find the...Font of Type, written ages ago...The 1980's!  Good luck finding it!

It does look like Penumbra.

Try Ceasar Open:

Here...

Ah, got it. And that linked article about the typefaces of the Indy movies is pretty interesting.

Yeah, that article was an interesting read for sure. 'Ceaser open' is very close, but still not the exact font. I worked on a recut of KOTCS a while back, and want to go the extra distance and retitle the credits 'City of the Gods', but without that perfect font, it'll stand out. 

 

 

 

Is this the font you're looking for?

 

(ETA: It's not, but it's close)

 

http://www.font-zone.com/download.php?fid=501

Not sure if its been posted before. But here it is.

 

Tom Selleck's screen test as Indiana Jones.

felix, Tom Sellick was the first...Pitfall, that Harried adventurer...Dodged!  

John Williams, while maybe not up to snuff to his earlier years did have some good stuff in the prequels, but insecure George just messed it up.

Still had good work later, like:
That List Movie
That Dinosaur Movie
That Boy Wizard Movie

Hell, even Hook had an awesome score.

I did actually do this, but a bit from Jaws came on Pandora and I just visualized some of Star Wars Episode III. Fit so well.

Especially the third boy wizard movie.

A tip of the fedora to Raiders of the Lost Ark, released 30 years ago today.

 

30 years? Oh my, hard to believe!

 

It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.

Watched the 30th anniversary print last night that has been digitally restored, beautiful. The film plays perfect on the big screen. It was amazing to see it and HEAR IT, damn the sound is just booming.   With Frank Marshal, Howard Kazanjan, Ben Burtt and others was fun as well.  I also ran into Devin, well, at least I think it was him... HA HA

MoonBase, I livve in the LA area and wouldv'e loved to have seen Raiders on the big screen, so sorry I missed out.

Tickets were gone in an hour..I was just lucky to pick some up.  Safe to say that if this is the transfer that will be used for the Blu Ray then we'll all be very very happy.

Edited by MoonBaseNick - 6/19/11 at 2:02am

I guess I will have to wait for the blu ray. Raiders was an amazing movie. Just goes to show how much better it was than the new Indy.

You chose the wrong friends. This time it cost you.

 

Moonbase, was the presentation on film or digital? I take it this wasn't the modified version with CG shots that was broadcast in HD a little while back?

It was Digital.  If there were any modified shots in CG, I did not notice them.    Also, I was unaware that there were "prints" of the film that had CG effects added to it.

Assuming that this is legit:

 

 

What  I saw was the original for sure.

Awesome. I attended a 30th Anniversary screening of The Empire Strikes Back last year, and it turned out to be the digital Special Edition version. A number of the original FX guys were there and I overheard one say "If they've CG'd the tauntauns I'm outta here..."

 

Meanwhile, Spielberg just did an interview, excerpted over on AICN, in which he says he won't be modifying any of his old films from this point on. I wasn't sure though whether that would apply to the flicks he's made for George.

Thought you guys might get a kick out of these, I posted them in the Crystal Skull thread a year or two ago. There's a couple more videoclips up in my profile there too, I tried taking some of the worst elements out of Crystal Skull and tighten it up. Tried to get rid of some of the overt gag failures and hammy dialogue. 

 

You cut out the flying fridge and the monkey scene, nice.

I'm gonna drag this thread up just to say that there is officially a MacGuffin for film #5. Or a "genre," as Spielberg originally phrased it -- perhaps Lucas and Spielberg are going to pay homage to another genre of cinema this time out, similar to how they mixed it up to pay homage to sci-fi B-movies with Skull? If so, what late 50s or early 60s movie genres could be used? Film noir? Spy flicks? Indiana Jones in the style of James Bond sounds sort of cool, especially since Spielberg's always wanted to do a Bond movie. This could be his chance, in a pretty bizarre way.

JMulder, Maybe Indy meets up with an...OSS agent, named...Ian!

Is there anyway they could do a 5th film without either Lucas or Spielberg?

I hope not. They seem to know what they're doing.

Strictly from anecdotal evidence, I've found that the favorite Indiana Jones film for women is The Last Crusade, and they hate Temple of Doom.

 

Discuss. 

They hate Willie Scott. *shrug*

 

Not all women do, though. Some get that she's a parody of the damsel in distress.

 

I imagine some women dig Last Crusade because it humanizes Indy, turns him into a fumbling kid trying to win Dad's approval. It's essentially the most comedic of the series, too. Of course, there are likely exceptions to that generalization, too. I imagine some women would find Indy something of a dick in the movie.

 

Temple is the closest to for-the-hell-of-it pure cinema, and the most heartless (no pun intended).

Last Crusade is where the series lost its balls, so there's that too.

In terms of the quality of the female characters, I would think women would prefer Raiders over Last Crusade. I'd even think Temple of Doom would rank higher than Last Crusade. Willie Scott may have been a shrill and annoying, but at least she wasn't a treacherous, conniving bitch.

 

In terms of the quality of the film, anyone who doesn't prefer Raiders is a very silly person.

Pretty sure Connery's a factor here.

Well that applies to me, but I'm not a woman. I think "Raiders of the Lost Ark" has a better female lead, but I like "The Last Crusade" more because of the relationship between the Connery and Ford characters. I'm sentimental, so I'm a sucker for stuff like that.

 

I hate "Temple of Doom" because of the gore and poverty in it. Not that I automatically mind gore and poverty in a movie, I just thought it was stupid and out of place in that particular movie. I didn't mind the kid and the girl in "Temple of Doom".  The kid was bland and didn't really contribute anything positive to the movie, but I didn't find him excruciatingly annoying like many seem to.

 

The Willie character was grating at times, but I mostly found her amusing. The only thing I really loved in "Temple of Doom" was the mine cart sequence. Probably the best scene in the whole trilogy, followed by the boulder scene. Fuck the story, though, and all that gross bullshit with the natives.

Again, bearing in mind this doesn't work for every woman everywhere — f'rinstance, Pauline Kael's favorite of the Indy films she lived to see was Temple of Doom.

 

But Last Crusade has the most "heart" of the four. It's also, interestingly, the only one where Indy doesn't wind up with a woman at the end.

 

Elsa: yeah, she's a Nazi stooge, but conflicted about it (like Belloq) and she has a rapport with Indy based less on how cheesecake she is than how amused she is by Indy, batting his attempts at sizzling badinage right back at him. Our feelings are mixed when she dies. I wish Alison Doody had had more of a career; apparently she was considered for Eowyn in LOTR.

Yeah, plus Doody still looks pretty damn fantastic on the docs on the Jones DVD trilogy. I'd like to see her pop up in something soon that is actually widely acknowledged as having happened.

 

And I love Temple, especially the first half. There's a lot of pretty great setpieces punctuated with genuinely good gags -- going from Jones' fight with the Thuggee in his room, to the collapsing spiked chamber, to the Thuggee ritual scene, etc. Plus, I find the weird surrogate family built up around Jones in that movie to be oddly endearing. Even Willie. It's a lovable bunch of misfits.

 

Really, the only thing I don't like about it is the racism. But all the Jones movies are guilty of that anyway.

I can't stand...The Last Crusade.  It is a duller, version of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  I thought Connery was...Terrible in the film as well.  Allison Doody, was also the...Worst of the 3 of Indy's leading ladies by a mile.  There are...2 classic Indiana Jones films.  Raiders and Temple.  Kingdom of The Crystal Skull ends...Pefectly with the wedding of Indy and Marion.  I found the film to be entertaining.  Even with it's faults, KOTCS is...Still far better than The Last Crusade!

You say treacherous, conniving bitch as if that's a bad thing. That alone makes her a more interesting character than Willie Scott.

 

He is always a factor. The man made Highlander 2 watchable!

I've always loved Temple of Doom. While plot-wise it's a lot slighter than the other films and its bloodiness isn't for everyone, it hits that pre-pubescent boy's obsession with death and gore to which many classic pulps catered (Which helps explain why women probably don't like it as much). In this one, the Beards basically regress to 8-year-old boys dismembering their toys in a big play battle, possibly to reflect Indy's relative immaturity in the story. Being a prequel, he's still obsessed with 'fortune and glory', and hasn't fully learned to value the people close to him or respect the power of the artifacts he's chasing. It's the most fully 'pulp' of all the films.

 

Last Crusade I've had ups and downs with over the years; when I was a kid it was my favourite, then least favourite as I got older and learned to appreciate the first two films more fully. Nowadays, I consider it joint second with Temple of Doom. It's much more a character piece than the first two, and the relationship between Indy and Henry Sr. is genuinely touching. Even aftyer all these years, it's genuinely great seeing Henry going from horror at what the fuck Indy does with his life, to stepping up and becoming a man of action himself. It's also arguably the most wildly inventive of the films as far as the quest for the mcguffin goes, with some wonderfully realized clues and traps.

 

The thing is, it's the tonal change that trips people up. It's less violent, less scary (Apart from Donovan's death) and turning Brody and Sallah into bumbling comic relief remains the film's least successful aspect. When you look past those things, however, it's equally as exciting as the first to and arguably the best realized in terms of characterization.

 

Raiders is still unimpeachable, though.

Elsa was definitely a more interesting character, but I was speaking strictly in terms of her being a character with whom a female veiwer would identify.

 

And detractors can bag on Temple of Doom all they want, but at the very least it had the balls to be something radically different from its predecessor, something sorely lacking in the pervasive "more of the same" school of thought regarding movie franchises.

Well, Raiders is one of the best films of all time. So that's the elephant in the room here.

 

I always found Last Crusade the most entertaining, and Raiders occasionally dull (I know), but that doesn't stop me from realizing it's the worst one (not including 4, obviously). Throwing in an additional character to pad out Indy's own characterization is just bad writing, and sort of misses the entire point of what was charming about Indy from the get-go -- that is, he's voraciously independent. Short Round was good because he's a foil to Indy that emphasizes the need for him to act responsibly, more immediately in the interests of the people he lugs along who might be less competent. He does this in Last Crusade too, where Henry Sr. is also a foil -- but he's mostly one that results in comedic exasperation from Indy and some ham-fisted reconciliation by the movie's end. I like the daddy issues in Spielberg films, for the most part, but on a textual level (there is virtually no subtext) they become too fucking cliche in Crusade to actually be resonant beyond being amusing.

 

For some weird reason, I actually think the movie achieves more than that with Short Round. Maybe it's because the Thuggees end up actually torturing a kid, which demands a pretty serious reaction from Indy in the context of a movie and ends up throwing his character into a dimension we never see in the other films, where everything is light and "fun." Maybe it's wrong to put Indy into a dark environment with kids getting whipped and him being faux-brainwashed. But when it's done sparingly -- is it sparingly? -- as in Temple, it elevates the whole thing. I dunno, really. I just dig it.

What's also great about Short Round is that they have the sense to hold off bringing in the 'Indy has to be responsible' stuff until Shorty gets tortured. Up to that point they focus on the banter between them, which does wonders for Shorty as a character and makes him feel 'right' in Indy's world. Result: We enjoy Shorty as a character, buy the friendship between him and Indy and the responsibility/sentimental stuff is earned rather than just shoved in there willy-nilly for the audience to obediently process. It's one of the few, few instances where 'bringing in a kid' has been done right.