Category: Entertainment

Posted on
by

We watched the first disc of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles last night. The series has been reedited from one-hour episodes into two-hour movies*, and while later episodes may work better, the series opener really suffers from it.

Sure, the original airing combined two episodes with an eight-year story gap in them, but the story of 9-year-old Henry Jones, Jr. visiting an archeological dig in Egypt and the story of 16-year-old Indiana Jones getting caught up with Pancho Villa in Mexico are linked thematically. More importantly, the Egypt segment sets up a mystery (a murder and stolen artifact) that is only half-resolved in that segment. The rest is resolved in the Mexico segment.

For the DVDs, George Lucas wanted to tell everything in chronological order, so the Pancho Villa segment has been moved later in the collection (I’m not sure what it’s been paired with), and the opening “movie” instead jumps directly from Egypt to Morocco, telling a completely different story linked only by taking place on the same continent. It doesn’t help that it was filmed several years later, making it look like 9-year-old Indy has gone through one heck of a growth spurt between stops on his father’s lecture tour.

The segments work reasonably well on their own — well, except for the fact that the Egypt story isn’t actually resolved — but the overall presentation is weaker.

* OK, more like 45-minute episodes and 1 1/2-hour movies, but you know the score.

Posted on
by
  • 10 years ago I had just started working at an Internet provider and was very glad they didn’t want me in the server room at midnight for Y2K.
  • I just ordered tickets to Avatar in IMAX 3D. It actually *was* cheaper to see Xanadu on stage, even including parking!
  • Made it into Avatar. Got surprisingly decent seats considering how long the line was. We’ll miss midnight, so Happy New Year!
  • Overheard waiting for the movie: “If you lost an eye, would you get a glass eye or an eye patch?” “I’d get an eye patch and grow a beard!”

Posted on
by

Yesterday I spotted a listing on Amazon for the complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus for $35. (It jumped back up to $55 today.) I was seriously tempted, but asked myself: how often would I actually watch it?

Since lugging around several boxes of CDs, DVDs, and even a few VHS tapes (no Blu-Ray yet) the last time we moved, I’ve asked this question (in the broader, two-person sense) about any video I’ve considered buying. If we’re only ever going to watch something once, we’re better off renting it. It’s cheaper and it takes up less space.

In this case, we borrowed the series from a friend a few years ago, so we’ve already watched it once. There’s plenty of good stuff, but I’d probably only rewatch a handful of sketches.

Posted on
by

Vienna Teng: Inland Territory.#1 Vienna Teng, Inland Territory – We discovered Vienna Teng’s music by chance a few years ago, when we heard “Harbor” playing in a restaurant. Katie looked her up by a fragment of lyrics and bought the then-current album, Warm Strangers, and was hooked. It took me a bit longer, but her latest album is my favorite of the year. Stylistically, it’s a very mixed album, ranging from pop to piano to a capella and even music hall sounds.

We caught Vienna Teng’s concert at the Roxy in April, a few weeks after the album came out. The Paper Raincoat opened for her, and I picked up their EP (and later, their first full-length album).

Vertical Horizon: Burning the Days.#2 Vertical Horizon, Burning the Days – After years off the grid (they’re best known for “Everything You Want,” which came out in 1999!), Vertical Horizon finally got back together and recorded a new bunch of songs. It’s not quite as good as the Gin Blossoms’ comeback, but it’s absolutely recognizable as Vertical Horizon and yet still new. (Well, mostly. “Welcome to the Bottom” sounds an awful lot like “Inside You,” though it does have more words.) Musically it’s similar in style to Go (a mix of hard and soft rock), but the lyrics are better, more on a level with Everything You Want.

Butterfly Boucher: Scary Fragile#3 Butterfly Boucher, Scary Fragile – It’s been about five years since Butterfly Boucher’s last album. We heard “Another White Dash” the first time we listened to Indie 103.1 back in 2004, then caught her opening for both Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan, but her second album was delayed by contract problems with her ex-label. As it turns out, it’s very good — Katie described it as the best sophomore album she’s ever heard. It’s a sort of indie rock sound. It was really tough for me to figure out whether to put Burning the Days or Scary Fragile in the #2 spot, but I finally settled on the one that I’ve been playing the most lately.

We saw Butterfly Boucher in concert last June at the House of Blues in San Diego.

»All pages site-wide with this tag