i miss the desert. i miss the sea.
my sister and i saw indiana jones and the dial of destiny (which i still think is a stupid title) on saturday and if you can get past the idea that it's not a movie that needed to be made it's not as bad as i was expecting. (to be fair my expectations were low.) it has some vague callbacks to previous movies (well, 1, 2, and 4 - i can't remember any references to last crusade) and of course the fedora and the whip and the nazis and the exotic locations.
stuff i liked:
antonio banderas as spain's best frogman who is still hot even in his middle age. i mean, i wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers.
toby jones who was very un-zola-like and adorable
the fedora <3 and the whip <3 and the leather jacket <3
teddy even tho he kind of gave off short round vibes in a copycat kind of way
helena's clothes
marion <3
"where doesn't it hurt?" "here."
while i do not in any way think we need to see a retirement age indiana jones i did kind of like that it was a theme - he's old, he's creaky, he's cranky, he no longer has anyone around who loves him
(I DID NOT LIKE THAT MARION SENT HIM SEPARATION PAPERS. AND WE HAD TO SEE THEM. WHAT THE HELL, MANGOLD.)
helena deciphering the code on the grafikos (graphikos? that thing) like she's teaching a class
teddy flying the prop plane and the pilot waking up all WTF
apparently there's a holy hand grenade of antioch in the nazis' plunder train in the opening scene (but fortunately no homicidal bunnies)
the staff of longinus being a fake
archimedes' students/assistants/whoever they were going "you cannot go outside there is a battle and you will be killed" and archimedes just not listening
the time travel, actually
(i was very surprised i liked what they did with the time travel. but i did like it! archimedes found voller's watch, got to talk to a time traveler, got to see the finished antikythera, and didn't keep it. and helena knocked indy out and dragged him back to his own time so no history was changed. but man, did he want to stay.)
i was a little weirded out by the cgi in the opening scene that made indy look younger - he wasn't quite young enough and i was very very aware that i was watching a special effect. it wasn't too uncanny valley (nothing will be as freaky as de-aging tony stark back to like nineteen or twenty in cacw, or giving us babyface princess leia at the end of rogue one) but i only half bought that i was watching the younger indy.
stuff i did not like:
a lot more good guys/not-villains got shot than i remember from the previous movies (renaldo!)
what the hell was indiana jones doing living in a dinky new york apartment and teaching at hunter college? all due respect to hunter, but come on, guy used to have a nice house and taught at princeton. i really wanted to know how he ended up where he did. according to the trivia on imdb james mangold wanted him to be on the parade route for the astronauts but i would have liked a little in-universe explanation.
did i mention MARION WANTED A SEPARATION?
sallah was a cabbie who lived in queens! no shade to cabbies or folks from queens - i mean, there's nice parts of queens and cab driver is as good a way to make a living as any - but he was the best digger in cairo and he had a nice house and a passel of cute kids and seemed like a prosperous guy, and now he's an old man driving a cab for a living and his grandkids are rolling their eyes at him like "yeah, yeah, grandpa, suez crisis, whatever". so unfair.
HOWEVER. i could buy that a lot easier than i could buy indy's comedown, mostly because i think that did happen to a lot of people after the war - their businesses and their homes were destroyed and some of them came to the us (or were brought to the us) because they figured they could make a better living there.
the car chase through tangier was too long
did i mention it didn't have to be made? who's begging for the story of seventy year old indiana jones shuffling through his old age? right?
and a thing that briefly kicked me out of the story:
men landed on the moon in july. the celebratory parade in new york for armstrong and aldrin and collins was in august. college would not have been in session yet. why was indy teaching already? and why was mason wearing a coat? it's hot in new york in august!
a lot of it is ridiculous, because that's the genre. it wasn't awful, i'd watch it again altho not in a theater, and it's probably unfair to compare it to raiders or even last crusade. (i can't compare it to crystal skull because i only saw that the one time and it was... dumb. even with cate blanchett and ray winstone and john hurt and karen allen.) it didn't have to be made, and it probably shouldn't have been made - altho apparently there were originally going to be five indiana jones movies so maybe it did have to be made - but it could have been worse. not totally sure i'd recommend it tho, unless you're an indy completist or you really love harrison ford.
previews included another expendables (speaking of old men doing action adventure movies...), another equalizer, the next mission impossible, the marvels (very excited), and i think something else. lots of sequels.
on sunday i went to tamalinn's house for a crafternoon and made some progress on
a wretched cross stitch of scum and villainy:
i still have a ways to go - i have to finish the big sun and stitch the whole skyline and add two little flowers - but it's closer to being finished than it was on saturday.
i think we were all there to cross stitch and pet the dog. and eat pizza. and bitch about stuff and nonsense, as one does.
monday i had to go in to work (i hate going in on mondays - just let me sleep late!) to check out a hotel's event space because one of my groups is having a thing next year in conjunction with another group in another department and the project manager wanted me to see the space now. then we went out for lunch and back to our building and talked for like THREE HOURS. good lord that woman can talk. she wasn't really keeping me from anything, but still.
and today was the monthly admin lunch so i went in again because a. food, but more importantly b. air conditioning. because it was 95º today or some such nonsense and i am not dealing with that in my house. the admins have the option of coming in two days a week and working from home three days for four random weeks over the rest of the summer - it's up to us which four weeks but come on, either give us three days at home for the entire rest of the summer or don't offer it at all.
in other cross stitch news i'm doing the july stitchalong from shitpostsampler on tumblr and it's fun. they release a new square of pattern every other day and you... stitch along. :D
fortunately it's a little pattern so i'm not that far back.
and in back porch garden news, we have tomato!
:D
well, we HAD tomato. it has since been eaten. we have like five tomato plants on the back porch so i predict a lot of tiny tomatoes over the summer.
please tell me someone else is watching (or already watched?) the lazarus project because i need someone to understand what i mean when i say HOLY SHIT, GEORGE. i think there's going to be a second season which is great but i have no idea how the first season is going to end. it's a grim show but i like it. ditto secret invasion altho less with the grim. i mean, it's not a cheerful show but the world ends a lot less frequently.
if you go to a mcdonald's in thailand you can now get a real cheeseburger which is actually twenty slices of cheese on a bun. TWENTY. it's apparently "too intense".
stuff i liked:
antonio banderas as spain's best frogman who is still hot even in his middle age. i mean, i wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers.
toby jones who was very un-zola-like and adorable
the fedora <3 and the whip <3 and the leather jacket <3
teddy even tho he kind of gave off short round vibes in a copycat kind of way
helena's clothes
marion <3
"where doesn't it hurt?" "here."
while i do not in any way think we need to see a retirement age indiana jones i did kind of like that it was a theme - he's old, he's creaky, he's cranky, he no longer has anyone around who loves him
(I DID NOT LIKE THAT MARION SENT HIM SEPARATION PAPERS. AND WE HAD TO SEE THEM. WHAT THE HELL, MANGOLD.)
helena deciphering the code on the grafikos (graphikos? that thing) like she's teaching a class
teddy flying the prop plane and the pilot waking up all WTF
apparently there's a holy hand grenade of antioch in the nazis' plunder train in the opening scene (but fortunately no homicidal bunnies)
the staff of longinus being a fake
archimedes' students/assistants/whoever they were going "you cannot go outside there is a battle and you will be killed" and archimedes just not listening
the time travel, actually
(i was very surprised i liked what they did with the time travel. but i did like it! archimedes found voller's watch, got to talk to a time traveler, got to see the finished antikythera, and didn't keep it. and helena knocked indy out and dragged him back to his own time so no history was changed. but man, did he want to stay.)
i was a little weirded out by the cgi in the opening scene that made indy look younger - he wasn't quite young enough and i was very very aware that i was watching a special effect. it wasn't too uncanny valley (nothing will be as freaky as de-aging tony stark back to like nineteen or twenty in cacw, or giving us babyface princess leia at the end of rogue one) but i only half bought that i was watching the younger indy.
stuff i did not like:
a lot more good guys/not-villains got shot than i remember from the previous movies (renaldo!)
what the hell was indiana jones doing living in a dinky new york apartment and teaching at hunter college? all due respect to hunter, but come on, guy used to have a nice house and taught at princeton. i really wanted to know how he ended up where he did. according to the trivia on imdb james mangold wanted him to be on the parade route for the astronauts but i would have liked a little in-universe explanation.
did i mention MARION WANTED A SEPARATION?
sallah was a cabbie who lived in queens! no shade to cabbies or folks from queens - i mean, there's nice parts of queens and cab driver is as good a way to make a living as any - but he was the best digger in cairo and he had a nice house and a passel of cute kids and seemed like a prosperous guy, and now he's an old man driving a cab for a living and his grandkids are rolling their eyes at him like "yeah, yeah, grandpa, suez crisis, whatever". so unfair.
HOWEVER. i could buy that a lot easier than i could buy indy's comedown, mostly because i think that did happen to a lot of people after the war - their businesses and their homes were destroyed and some of them came to the us (or were brought to the us) because they figured they could make a better living there.
the car chase through tangier was too long
did i mention it didn't have to be made? who's begging for the story of seventy year old indiana jones shuffling through his old age? right?
and a thing that briefly kicked me out of the story:
men landed on the moon in july. the celebratory parade in new york for armstrong and aldrin and collins was in august. college would not have been in session yet. why was indy teaching already? and why was mason wearing a coat? it's hot in new york in august!
a lot of it is ridiculous, because that's the genre. it wasn't awful, i'd watch it again altho not in a theater, and it's probably unfair to compare it to raiders or even last crusade. (i can't compare it to crystal skull because i only saw that the one time and it was... dumb. even with cate blanchett and ray winstone and john hurt and karen allen.) it didn't have to be made, and it probably shouldn't have been made - altho apparently there were originally going to be five indiana jones movies so maybe it did have to be made - but it could have been worse. not totally sure i'd recommend it tho, unless you're an indy completist or you really love harrison ford.
previews included another expendables (speaking of old men doing action adventure movies...), another equalizer, the next mission impossible, the marvels (very excited), and i think something else. lots of sequels.
on sunday i went to tamalinn's house for a crafternoon and made some progress on
a wretched cross stitch of scum and villainy:
i still have a ways to go - i have to finish the big sun and stitch the whole skyline and add two little flowers - but it's closer to being finished than it was on saturday.
i think we were all there to cross stitch and pet the dog. and eat pizza. and bitch about stuff and nonsense, as one does.
monday i had to go in to work (i hate going in on mondays - just let me sleep late!) to check out a hotel's event space because one of my groups is having a thing next year in conjunction with another group in another department and the project manager wanted me to see the space now. then we went out for lunch and back to our building and talked for like THREE HOURS. good lord that woman can talk. she wasn't really keeping me from anything, but still.
and today was the monthly admin lunch so i went in again because a. food, but more importantly b. air conditioning. because it was 95º today or some such nonsense and i am not dealing with that in my house. the admins have the option of coming in two days a week and working from home three days for four random weeks over the rest of the summer - it's up to us which four weeks but come on, either give us three days at home for the entire rest of the summer or don't offer it at all.
in other cross stitch news i'm doing the july stitchalong from shitpostsampler on tumblr and it's fun. they release a new square of pattern every other day and you... stitch along. :D
fortunately it's a little pattern so i'm not that far back.
and in back porch garden news, we have tomato!
:D
well, we HAD tomato. it has since been eaten. we have like five tomato plants on the back porch so i predict a lot of tiny tomatoes over the summer.
please tell me someone else is watching (or already watched?) the lazarus project because i need someone to understand what i mean when i say HOLY SHIT, GEORGE. i think there's going to be a second season which is great but i have no idea how the first season is going to end. it's a grim show but i like it. ditto secret invasion altho less with the grim. i mean, it's not a cheerful show but the world ends a lot less frequently.
if you go to a mcdonald's in thailand you can now get a real cheeseburger which is actually twenty slices of cheese on a bun. TWENTY. it's apparently "too intense".