I'll admit it, "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" is the only movie I'm looking forward to this summer. I'm not a superheroes guy, which rules out about half the films on the calendar. And I couldn't care less about the gals in "Sex and the City."
But Indiana Jones? That's pretty much my summer movie wheelhouse. I've just prepped for the big day -- May 22, mark your calendars -- by re-watching the new box set, "The Adventures of Indiana Jones," which includes all three Indy films and a fourth disc of Indy-nerd extras and interviews with director Steven Spielberg, producer George Lucas, and Dr. Jones himself, Harrison Ford.
But of course the main attraction here is reliving the films. When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came out in 1981, it revolutionized summer movies. Not wasting a single second on back story or exposition, it launches headfirst into one of the giddiest opening sequences of all time, with Ford's fedora-clad, bullwhip-cracking archaeologist going through a series of booby traps (poison darts, bottomless pits, giant tarantulas) to snag a golden idol before being chased by a giant boulder. There are Nazis, biblical mumbo jumbo, romance, and melting faces. "Raiders . . ." pretty much has everything a kid -- or anyone who remembers being a kid -- could want.
Re-watching 1984's critically reviled "Temple of Doom," I'm convinced it got at bad rap. Some saw it as dark and nasty and its plot about the mystical Sankara stones as rubbish. The only thing wrong with it, in my opinion, is the constantly shrieking Kate Capshaw. 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" got things back on track by bringing back those nefarious Nazis, tossing in the Holy Grail, and adding Sean Connery as Indy's tweedy dad. The interplay between Ford and the onetime 007 is priceless. It was the perfect way for the series to end. Or so I thought.
Now, with a new Indy installment on tap, the kid in me can't wait for the series to start all over again.
Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Untraceable," Diane Lane plays an FBI agent tracking a cyberweirdo; in "The Frank Sinatra Golden Years Collection," the Chairman of the Board shows off his acting chops; and in "Square Pegs," a young and awkward Sarah Jessica Parker plays a misfit in a 1980s TV series.
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