Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

[MacGuffin]

Madsen Favorite To Play Indiana Jones' Girl

Sideways star Virginia Madsen so impressed co-star Harrison Ford in new thriller Firewall, she's now the frontrunner to play his love interest in the fourth Indiana Jones adventure. Madsen plays Ford's wife in the new movie and admits they both found an unusual chemistry on set - after the ageing action man handpicked her for the role. And now Madsen is a clear favorite to play the leading lady in Indiana Jones 4. Ford tells movieline.net, "She was an absolute delight - professional, very talented and simply, very sweet. She also took what could have been a fairly one-dimensional damsel in distress role and added so many layers to it - there isn't many who could do that. I'd work with her again in a heartbeat. I'm actually hoping she'll come over for Indiana Jones. We've talked about it."

[Kal]

Damn... she is a great actreess but if they expect Indiana Jones to be a hit again they need someone way hotter!

[Pozer]

Quick, delete your post before someone sees it!  Oh... too late.

[modage]

Steven Spielberg to Take a Year Off
Source: Fox411 March 6, 2006

Fox News columnist Roger Friedman talked to Steven Spielberg at the Academy Governor's Ball last night and says that the director revealed he is taking a year off after having produced and directed both War of the Worlds and Munich.

Spielberg said that he does not have a project on the front burner right now. His main work in 2006 will be preparing his Abraham Lincoln film with award-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin, and acting as a producer, not director, on several other smaller projects.

He was also asked about the highly-anticipated Indiana Jones 4. Spielberg said he will still direct the film, which, given the fact he is taking some time off, might be a while.

Jeff Nathanson wrote the latest draft of the "Indy 4" script, but he has been succeeded by David Koepp.

"I have David Koepp on it now, and he's my 'closer,'" Spielberg said, using a baseball reference to the pitcher who comes in during the 9th inning and finishes up a winning ball game.

"He wrote 'Spider-Man' and 'War of the Worlds,'" Spielberg added, "so he'll get it done."

[The Red Vine]

Harrison Ford is gonna be dead by the time they do this thing.

[MacGuffin]

Indy 4: Is There a Consensus?
Ford and Lucas say it's ready to go.

We've heard a lot of things about the Indiana Jones IV script lately. Lucas suggested that a draft by Jeff Nathanson (Rush Hour, Catch Me if You Can) had been approved and was ready to shoot, while director Steven Spielberg said he was having War of the Worlds collaborator David Koepp work on it some more.

The latest from star Harrison Ford, however, is that Spielberg does have a script he is satisfied with. "Steven Spielberg and I now have a script in hand that we both like. I believe that we can start with the filming soon," the actor told German magazine Fit for Fun, according to E! Online.

Spielberg's publicist Marvin Levy also told E! Online, "[The script] certainly seems to be [in the can], but I don't think we're at that point where we have a firm start date. But this is certainly the closest where we've been in this whole development process."

Lucas spoke about Indy IV again this week, this time with Time magazine. "I've been working on Indy 4 for ten years. So I've been more involved, so no matter how you count it on this one I'll be more involved than I'll have ever been on the other three put together. It's taken forever to get a script of it. That's my part of it."

Lucas also gave a caution, apparently aimed at the same sort of fan base that had conjured up their own ideas of what the Star Wars prequels would be like and then came away disappointed. "You know the problem there, which is not a problem, is that we don't have to make that movie. All we can do is hurt ourselves, all it's going to do is get criticized. I mean it's basically Phantom Menace we're making. No matter how you do it, no matter what you do, it won't be what the other ones were in terms of the impact or the way people remember them."

Lucas also mentioned that Spielberg was planning to use his own tried-and-true film techniques while making Indy IV, instead of Lucas's cutting-edge digital technology.

"He'll win. He's the director. The great thing about working with Steven is that we don't have agendas. We want to make the best movie possible, I want him to be happy. If he wants to shoot it on film and cut it on a Movieola... Hey, he's got a great editor. Michael Kahn can cut faster on a Movieola than anybody can cut on an Avid. And I don't really care."

So where do things stand now? A high-level production source has confirmed for IGN FilmForce that, as was previously reported , Spielberg is indeed taking a year off, despite all the recent progress on the Indy IV front. Script revisions will continue, as will development on the Oscar winner's long-planned Abraham Lincoln project. Hang in there, Indy fans!

[polkablues]

"I mean it's basically Phantom Menace we're making."

I just got a shiver all up and down my spine.








***TANGENT WARNING***

Here's what drives me crazy about George Lucas... the man honestly believes that the reason the new Star Wars trilogy is criticized is because people had heightened expectations, or they're being unfairly compared to the original trilogy.  If anything, people cut those movies a tremendous amount of slack, just because they're part of the Star Wars Whatever.  Those movies are awful.  Incompetently awful, no matter how you slice it.  Sorry, George.  You seem like a nice guy, but you're delusional.

***END TANGENT***

[sheshothim]

***TANGENT WARNING***

Here's what drives me crazy about George Lucas... the man honestly believes that the reason the new Star Wars trilogy is criticized is because people had heightened expectations, or they're being unfairly compared to the original trilogy.  If anything, people cut those movies a tremendous amount of slack, just because they're part of the Star Wars Whatever.  Those movies are awful.  Incompetently awful, no matter how you slice it.  Sorry, George.  You seem like a nice guy, but you're delusional.

***END TANGENT***

***CONTINUING TANGENT WARNING***

Oh George Lucas...don't even get me started. I am a die-hard Star Wars fan. The originals are just my favorite movies of all time, and always will be. Being such an insane fan, I do like the new movies....but they were definitely nothing compared to the old ones. The story (I suppose that's the word I want to use) is just so drab compared to the old movies. It may contribute to the fact that you know what to expect, they just gave it a little life, but it seems like they were just thrown together without much work. Especially once you get to the third one. Hayden Christiansen's acting was absolutely putrid. I went to the midnight premeire, and I laughed...a LOT...at lines that weren't supposed to be funny. I'm just a little bit upset by it all. I think I went off on my own tangent. But hey, I'm posting again, so yay me.

[killafilm]

Revenge of the Sith is good.  Real good.  As good as Return of the Jedi good.

That is all.

[polkablues]

Revenge of the Sith is good.  Real good.  As good as Return of the Jedi good.

That is all.

You're smoking crack.

That is all.

[killafilm]

My crack addiction is beside the point.

[sheshothim]

I liked Revenge....I mean, the action was good, but the dialogue in that movie was the worst I have ever seen.....ever.....in my life. (Or heard, I suppose would be the proper term)

[killafilm]

Worst the AOTC?

The only parts of dialog i'd say where questionable would be between Anakin and Padme.  And that clocks into what, like a 10th of the movies total running time.  People also seem to forget some of the AWFUL delivery in the OT.  If you enjoy the OT I don't see how the second half of the movie isn't one of the most visceral/depressing/what have yous of recent cinema. 

What I think is really going to let ROTS pass the test of the time is the impact it was on the three films that follow it in the story.  It changes everything.  Everything becomes a bit more sad.  The way Lucas has built visual links throughout the two trilogies is great.


'The Empire Strikes Back'

By Judith Martin
Washington Post Staff Writer
May 23, 1980
To call "The Empire Strikes Back" a good junk movie is no insult: There is enough bad junk around. And surely we're getting over the snobbery of pretending that it is undemocratic to recognize any hierarchy of culture, as if both low and high can't be appreciated, often be the same people.

But when light entertainment is done well, someone is bound to make extravagant and unsupportable claims for its being great art. You will hear that this sequel to "Star Wars" is part of a vast new mythology, as if it were the Oresteia. Its originator, George Lucas, has revealed that the two pictures are actually parts four and five of a nine-part sage, as if audiences will some day receive the total the way devotees now go to Seattle for a week of immersion in Wagner's complete Ring Cycle.

Nonsense. This is no monumental artistic work, but a science-fiction movie done more snappily than most, including its own predecessor. A chocolate bar is a marvelous sweet that does not need to pretend to be a chocolate soufflé; musical comedies are wonderful entertainment without trying to compete with opera; blue jeans are a perfect garment that shouldn't be compared with haute couture. There are times when you would much rather have a really good hot dog than any steak, but you can still recognize that one is junk food and the other isn't.

"The Empire Strikes Back" has no plot structure, no character studies let alone character development, no emotional or philosophical point to make. It has no original vision of the future, which is depicted as a pastiche of other junk-culture formulae, such as the western, the costume epic and the Would War II movie. Its specialty is "special effects" or visual tricks, some of which are playful, imaginative and impressive, but others of which have become space-movie clichés.

But the total effect is fast and attractive and occasionally amusing. Like a good hot dog, that's something of an achievement in a field where unpalatable junk is the rule.

In this film, as in "Star Wars," a trio of nice, average-looking young people (Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia) is pursued by a sinister figure in black mask and cloak, Darth Vader. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that Skywalker is dull-witted -- for various reasons, he is hanging upside down during most of this film and is always having to be rescued by the others -- but brave young heroes traditionally are.

There are new bad robots, as well as the good robots, C-3PO and R2-D2, whose humanistic fussiness charmed audiences in the earlier film. A new puppet, representing a great guru but looking like an elderly, Eastern rodent, is a success; an invented beast of burden that looks like the rear half of a cheap camel costume is not. The monkish character played by Alec Guinness is back with sparkling lights on his shoulders and a transparent body to indicate that he was killed off in "Star Wars."

The Future is no longer quite pictured as belonging to white males plus one pedestal princess in a white gown. The princess has put on more sensible clothes for wartime, and there is exactly one other woman in the universe, who can be glimpsed working at the home base. There is one black, Billy Dee Williams as a man who seems to have been set up with his own planet by the Small Business Administration and keeps complaining that he has "no choice" about betraying everyone.

At the beginning and end of the new film, the bad Empire and the good Rebellion are still at odds. The fact is that there is no beginning or end, just several middle-of-the-story chases -- one on ice, several using spacecraft in airplane dog-fight style, and some classic duels, except that the swords are laser beams and use of the mystical "Force" means that one can will one's weapon back in hand after it is knocked away.

As for the idea of the Force, it is a mishmash of current cultic fashions without any base in ideas. It doesn't seem to be connected with ethics or a code of decent behavior, either. Shywalker is never called to account for having behaved unpleasantly to his guru before knowing who he is -- even to the extent of knocking food out of the hungry guru's hand. How many religions of any kind would tolerate a disciples having refused to share his food with his disguised spiritual leader?

But then, you don't go to junk movies for your philosophy or religion, do you?



And to get back on track, Raiders is the best of the Indy films.

[MacGuffin]

New Indy Details
Story timeline and possible shooting locations.

Is Indiana Jones headed Down Under? Australia's Herald Sun newspaper recently caught up with producer Frank Marshall who hinted at that very possibility and gave an expected timeline for the film's story.

Marshall, who was in Australia promoting Eight Below, said, "My job as producer is to get the movie made so if I can do it better and cheaper here in Australia, then I am going to do it.  Australia is a definite possibility for Indiana Jones and a couple of other things I am working on at the moment." He also gave Europe and the United States as other possible production locales for the long-awaited film.

Indiana Jones 4 is expected to go into production next year, once Steven Spielberg returns from his planned year-long filmmaking hiatus. At last report, the much-delayed script for the film now appears to have been completed to the satisfaction of all parties involved. The supposedly approved script was penned by Jeff Nathanson (Rush Hour, Catch Me if You Can) with a final polish by David Koepp.

And while we don't know anything about the film's storyline, Marshall has revealed that the film will take place roughly a decade after the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. "It is going to be 10 or 12 years later," said Marshall. By our calculations, that would place it roughly around 1948-50.

[MacGuffin]

George Lucas Says Indiana's Next Crack Of The Whip Will Be Tamer
Writer/producer says he's finished writing script to sequel.
Source: MTV

NEW YORK — George Lucas is looking for a lot more than just fortune and glory these days.

Contrary to how Hollywood usually hypes its blockbusters, the writer/producer says Indiana Jones' next adventure actually won't be any louder, bigger or faster than his last one. In fact, if Lucas gets his way (hint: he usually does), the Jones sequel will prize dialogue over decibels.

"I think Tom Cruise proved that people are getting bored with that kind of stuff," Lucas said Monday at a Jazz at Lincoln Center dinner celebrating Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people. "What they want to see is something different. And 'Indiana Jones,' if nothing else, is always different."

And Lucas is, if nothing else, reliably vague. He's not yet ready to give up the treasure trove of what lurks in the plot for the first "Indiana Jones" movie since 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," except to say the script is finally done and the flick will "probably" start shooting next year.

"We're working on it, we're working on it," Lucas said. "We've been working on it for 10 years. I think it'll be a great film, but it's completely different. It's still got a lot of action, and it's still very funny. I think it works like crazy."