Movie Pass (get it? Hockey, pass)

On this extended weekend, I got my hockey fix out of the way on Friday night. After a quick pow-wow with the wife, I exchanged my Saturday night practice for the Heineken cup game in Grapevine. A team representing Euless I-league rostered by a majority of Komets and me, secured the cup for our fair city (if you've been following the Komets here, then you know that any win is a big win). I played a very pedestrian game but the offense kicked it in at the half-way point and delivered an 8 to 4 woopin' to our Grapevine counterparts.

With that out of the way, I was free to do a bit of house painting on Saturday (joy!) and after the grocery store run on Sunday, took my Twelve year old son to see the new Indiana Jones flick . . .

I didn't do my homework and re-watch the originals like I had planned (I have the set on DVD) but let's work this through in our heads. I think everyone would agree that the first, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was the best, as it usually goes, Hollywood makes a winner and immediately returns to the well. The second one, "The Temple of Doom" tried to capture the same sort of emotion but was short on content and went for a lot of cheap gross-out scenes and ill-advised comedic relief, I was young enough when this came out that I pretty much lapped it up, but it certainly does not hold up well. In the third, "The Last Crusade", they spent a little more prep time and cashed in on a lot of nostalgia (flashback scene with River Phoenix, twenty minutes minimum) rather than go with an obscure Thugee cult from India, this time they used a more familiar myth to the American public and built it around the Holy Grail. It was not too bad, certainly not as good as the original but I didn't object to the whole Connery thing, and re-uniting much of the ancillary characters from the first was critical to the new formula . . .

"The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" tries to do what Crusade did, rather than what Raiders did. It is ranked by me as third in this series. The first scene of Indy laying on his stomach with an overhead shot, you realize this is an OLD MAN, almost white, sparse hairs cover the back of his head, and when he stands to cover his head with the hat, you can glimpse his wizened chest through the open shirt, sad. But, I must admit that I soon lost sight of his age issues and he played the older Indy pretty well.

CAUTION! SPOILERS CONTAINED BELOW

The Russians are the new Nazis in this one and they cast another Evil temptress (like in Crusade) that never develops a second side to her character (unlike Crusade) so that they don't complicate the re-introduction of Marian Ravenwood (from Raiders). Of course Shia LeBoeuf is revealed to be Indy's kid by Marian, and his whip is a switchblade, his hat is a Harley and a jacket, it's really pathetic. The "snake gag" gets worked into this one also, by "worked" I mean forced. While sinking in a sand pit, Indy for some reason is without his whip, so he is thrown a snake to lift haul himself out, hilarity ensues! The would have been worst moment happened at the end of the movie as Shia LeBoeuf goes to put the hat on his head but Indy takes it away and puts it atop his own head, I almost yelled at the screen.

The best part of the experience was that I got to see it with my Twelve year old son, which is the key demographic for this movie so he really enjoyed it, and I enjoyed that.

"The Love Guru" is probably not going to be as good as all of us hockey players would hope, but, If Molson is on board with it, it can't be too bad, right?