Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Empty Skull

Last night, late, after American Idol and the delight in David Cook's success, after the news, a friend, her kids and her kid's friends showed up at the door and kidnapped me. The destination? The opening show, 12:01 a.m., of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Well, I wanted to to see the movie anyway, why not stay up until 3:00 a.m. on a week night? I had more than a couple reasons, but went anyway, encouraged by the positive reviews coming out of Cannes, I decided in the spirit of teenagers everywhere, what the hell?

Speaking of teenagers and Indy nerds generally, two mega theaters were not quite sold out but they were full and it was midnight. Long lines filled with grinning people congregated. I imagine that this is what it felt like to be in Portland waiting for Barack Obama. Dude, it was an experience. A young Indiana showed up with his beautiful sidekick Marion (one presumes). The crowd clapped at the opening credits. Whoops came at exciting parts. This was a crowd that would be easy to please.

And yet....my friend who is a die-hard Indiana Jones fan came out of it feeling meh. She wasn't thrilled with the ending and didn't see it coming. I'm no prophet, but the opening set, Area 51, gave me a clue about what to expect. Just a little one.

Before I share what bugs me about the film, let me just say that the requisite one-liners, snappy dialogue and nail-biting action sequences filled the screen. The familiar John Williams score made me feel nostalgic. And Harrison Ford is old and seems to be lost in actual irony. His age is acknowledged right off the bat and then five minute later, he's beating men senseless half his age. He looks pretty believable doing it. Well, kinda believable.

And that brings me to what bugs me about the film. The overall tone was the problem. (Warning: Mild spoilers ahead. Do not read further if you want to flinch at every surprise.) The movie opens at Area 51, the Russian bad guys headed by wacky parapsychologist and Lenin lover Irina Spelkt (Cate Blanchett), want something and they mow down five innocent American soldiers at the entry check point to get it. The audience collectively flinched, but what I found disconcerting was the way the camera lingered and there was no outrage or sense of wrongness about this event. Those deaths don't get avenged. It's irritating as hell. Indy is in one of the trucks, he's there. One pithy line of vengeance, but no. They are American soldiers. They deserve to die.

It gets worse. Indy escapes and ends up back at his college campus where McCarthyism has taken root and poor Indy is being suspected as a traitor. The emphasis throughout is not on communism's badness but America's ridiculousness and that takes some plot-slowing turns:

Or, rather, it isn't; instead of plunging into the thick of things, we have to spend some time with Indy back on campus, where concerns about his patriotism see him dismissed from his position;

How dare anyone question anyone's patriotism? A communism protest gets run over. An all-American town gets torched. A sympathetic hero gets "swift-boated". Ten minutes in, I wanted to throw up. My friend just found it boring, which it was.

And so it went. The adventure takes Indy all over the globe again. His youthful sidekick just seemed wrongly cast. The story is choppy and there is one glaring plot hole that is still bugging the hell out of me. After you guys all see it, maybe you'll have an answer, but I've wracked my brain and have come up with a big fat nothing.

I'll be curious about how Indy fans take this movie. I give it 2.5/5 stars. Vote once you see it.

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was
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	Meh
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Hugo Chavez Beats Breast

Liberals and communists swoon.

Oh bleh. I feel the same way about Chavez as I do about Iraq's little troll Mookie al Sadr. Dull-witted, thuggish, and masters of intimidation, these guys are gutless underneath. That doesn't mean they won't bite if they have the chance, just that they will turn tail if pushed back. America needs to seriously push against Chavez. He's a menace explains Fausta:

What happens is that Chavez's minion Correa of Ecuador has been saying that Ecuador will not renew a 10-year lease on the base in the Pacific port of Manta when it expires next year. No one is surprised at Correa's position considering how he's under Chavez's orders, and how Venezuela has become the choice port of departure for the South American drug trade. After all,

Manta is the United States' only military base in South America. Surveillance flights the United States runs from there are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.

As Ed points out,

In 2007, the Manta base caught 200 such [drug] transports in approximately 1200 missions.

Wow, it's so lovely the new economic prospects Chavez has brought Venezuela. It's amazing how quickly one person can destroy a country. Amazing and disturbing.

Michelle Obama's Heart Speaketh Again

The democratic presidential hopefuls must endure assaults from the inside. Who do you like less? Michelle Obama, with her distrustful view of Americans or Bill Clinton with his pernicious narcissism? It's a toss up.

This post from Gateway Pundit might make you like Michelle Obama less:

Mrs. Obama discussed her party's socialist plans for America yesterday to a group of depressed women in Harrisburg, NC.
Charlotte.com reported:

Most Americans, she said, don't want much.

"They don't want the whole pie," she told the women. "There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach."

After law school, she and Barack were beset by loans they'd still be paying had her husband not written two best-sellers, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams From My Father."

Those debts early in their marriage, she said, equips her husband to better understand the problems many Americans face.

Should she become first lady, she said she'd focus on family issues.

"If we don't wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership...for how we want this country to work, then we won't get universal health care," she said.

"The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."

The pie argument is annoying. A friend of mine went down this Marxist road, trying to convince me that there is only one pie, only so many pieces and some people get short changed and never get the piece they deserve. The American Pie has steadily grown over the years to the point where even having a sliver of it is more than most people the world over have if they are given a big slab of the nothing pie they eat from in their country.

How has the collectivist impulse worked in Nigeria? How is it working for Venezuela? How did it work for Cuba? I'll tell you how it works: the leaders grab power and money and impoverish the common folk.

Michelle Obama has had every privilege and she talks like she's in touch with the common man. There has not been one common thing about her cushy life. She needs to acknowledge her blessings and be grateful for a country that made it possible instead of trying to stoke rage. She has nothing to complain about. Neither do most Americans.

Communal Property

A simple lesson via James Lileks:

At least we have closure on the Element problem. They finally figured out why the heater kicks out when I go through a car wash. It’s a design flaw that affects all Hondas. All of them. Each and every one. If the blower’s open, it shorts the heating element.

Pause.

“Well, that’s stupid,” I told the service guy.

“We were all pretty surprised,” he said. “I finally called Honda and they weren’t surprised, they said they get calls about this all the time.”

I imagine they do.

In the meantime I’ve been driving a Sportage, which has nice pickup but feels as substantial as a car made entirely of cellophane. I drove it to the auto show to shoot a video, and parked in a ramp, heedless of door-dingers. A wonderful lesson on the psychology of communual property, that. It's not that I dinged anyone else's door, but I simply worried less.

When everyone worries a little less, which everyone does when it comes to things that don't belong to them, apathy ensues. And then things end up looking like, well, like public housing.

What's So Bad About Communism?

What's so bad about communism asks a John Hawkin's reader? Johns answer:

Communism is a system that forces human beings to behave in a method that runs contrary to human nature and as such, is always destined to fail, impoverish the people living under it, and crush the human spirit. Communism is all about forcing people to work for the state, stealing the fruit of their labor, and giving faceless bureaucrats unlimited power and control over every aspect of the human existence.

My short answer: Your lazy brother-in-law makes as much money as you do and then reports you to the collective if you don't keep up the hard work and enthusiasm that keeps his lazy ass in the crappy manner he's accustomed.

Communism comes into vogue because a fundamental flaw in the economic system frustrates the people (oligarchies, rampant poverty and corruption, no middle class, no rule of law) and the underclass believe that "evening the playing field" would save them their despair. The citizens of Venezuela and many countries before them quickly learn that they get more than they bargained for: oppression, loss of property rights, loss of any rights.

The Left likes communism for many reasons:

1. They believe everyone is stupid and could use their intelligent guidance
2. They believe life isn't fair and want to make it fair
3. They deny their own human nature and urge to dominate, and communism fulfills authoritarian fantasies.
   

The same rich celebrities who blithely wear Ché shirts, are the same people living in 20,000 s.f mansions and demanding that you and I wipe our butt with one piece of toilet paper. In a communistic society, they'd actually get to enforce their pet ideologies on everyone while living their hypocritical, privileged life--if they didn't tangle with the collective first and end up before a firing squad. Who would the poor and their reps go after first? I'd say the toilet paper police would be the ones meeting the business end of a military device, first, much to their shock and dismay. But in the Left's never ending stupidity, they think they would be immune from the rules because they already follow all the really important ones. Their denial makes them dangerous.

And watch out for "socialism". It's just another version of the same failed ideology.