Topic: George Lucas

Indiana Jones: big adventure, big nostalgia

By David W. Shelton | May 23, 2008 |

With the advent of Memorial Day Weekend, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull kicks off the holiday stretch with a rousing race through jungles of all types, promising action, reunions, and lots of booby-trapped labyrinths and ancient artifacts. This third sequel to 1982’s masterpiece, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a fitting addition to the Jones pantheon. It clearly resides in the shadows of Raiders, and never quite reaches the fever pitch of breathtaking awe that it could achieve.

It’s by no means a bad movie. In fact, it’s really quite good. Director Steven Spielberg, Producer George Lucas, and Harrison Ford all fit back into their old clothes quite nicely, especially the latter as he puts on the famous hat and title role once again. To put it plainly, he’s still got it. Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones. He owns the role like a seasoned Rolex, and there’s no sign that he ever let it go.

Set in 1957, nearly twenty years after the events of the Last Crusade, Crystal Skull picks up in an eerily-familiar warehouse that supposedly houses a particular artifact that Soviet KGB officials seem to require. The Soviets are led by Irina Spalko(Cate Blanchett), one of the least-developed villains in the entire series. Blanchett has done well with her Russian accent, but aside from that, there’s really not a whole lot going for her. «Read the rest of this article»

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Not so long ago in a theater near you …

By Christine Anne Piesyk | May 24, 2007 |

Once upon a time there was a handsome young man from a broken family, living on a planetary wasteland with an aunt and uncle…he races around his lunar-like landscape on a landspeeder, running errands for his uncle — things like buying androids and robots from very short creatures wearing inter-galactic versions of monks robes — but in one violent afternoon, he finds himself en route to becoming an inter-gallactic hero …

Welcome to world of Luke Skywalker, Director George Lucas’s ground-breaking fantasy that would rev up the imaginations of millions of moviegoers. That was 30 years ago (May 25, 1977). Where were you when Star Wars changed the face of movies? «Read the rest of this article»

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