RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (NOVELIZATION)

If a novelization flows, it doesn't matter how many times you've seen the movie, since, on the printed page, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK works since it becomes purely pulp adventure... and at the same time there's a closeness to the iconic character, Archeologist/Professor Indiana Jones, that doesn't give away too much of what the motion picture intentionally leaves out... 

Downpoints are Indy making out with one of his students in his house... we don't need to know that he plows the flirting eye-lid girl; or learning that Marion, to purchase the tavern, worked as a prostitute after her father, Indy's mentor, died; or, later on, Marion fighting lustful temptation after Belloq's polite kidnapping and yet, on the other hand, we get to follow Indy going from a crowded Cairo airport to a dark highway, driving through the pouring rain, searching for Ravenwood's place while being stalked by another mysterious vehicle and, along with other nifty insights during the many adventurous sequences, it all works since the chapters are long, thoroughly expressive, the action precise, the dialog intentionally corny (pulpier than the film): and no matter how many times you've seen RAIDERS on the screen, while reading it feels like reliving the legendary classic for the first time. Book Grade: B—

GETTING STRAIGHT (1970)

Director Richard Rush had an incredible style, and the first half of GETTING STRAIGHT showcases his kind of handing-off of camera movements within either subtle shots of action, like an apple being passed from student to student in the opening credits in the central hippie college, to random conversations...

For instance, an envelope is dropped on a machine and as the person who set it in place is speaking, the person answering is on the other side, where that letter wound up: a beautiful baton-passing flow that would peak with THE STUNT MAN, but you can't make a miracle out of the sixties, because hippies are simply the most uninteresting characters to ever wind up on film, ironically dying to be independent-minded and free, they're all cookie-cutter machines... and while each look like they're wearing costumes in recent movies, they even looked made up/put-together back then, when it was really going on (mainly because an actor will go from this movie to an episode of Gunsmoke)...

Centered on a very uncomfortable-looking, horribly unattractive Elliott Gould, with big lips and bushy eyebrows matching a bushy mustache and about ten years too old for the role of a student revolutionary who was somehow in Vietnam and now wants to be a teacher... 

Looking the age of someone who has been a teacher for a decade and just horribly miscast here, spouting 1960's platitudes to his so-called fellow students, and, while he does stand out from the younger hippies (including Harrison Ford, John Rubinstein and Max Julien)... being that he's sarcastically obnoxious and selfishly neurotic like the establishment he's supposed to be so against... director Rush cannot make these people interesting beyond the first twenty-minutes. Rates: **

RETURN OF THE JEDI

alt title: STAR WARS VI  
year of release: 1983

cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
rating: ****1/2

Realizing that Lucas, although not the director, was fully in charge of EMPIRE and this: the last of the original trilogy, the more I can see hired director Richard Marquand's input. Being a director of "Eye of the Needle" and other spy thrillers, he adds an particular British element of meticulous, pinpointed, philosophical intrigue and suspense, mostly centered on the lead-up and climax involving Luke Skywalker and Darth Vadar meeting the Emperor in the almost-completed bigger/better Death Star. One shot in particular, now iconic, of an elevator door quickly slides open, revealing Vadar and Skywalker, is a personal favorite moment (image) of the trilogy.

Mark Hamill, better than ever, along with Darth Vadar and IanMcDiarmid as the Emperor owns this one while Harrison "Han Solo" Ford and Carrie "Princess Leia" Fisher provide the working-class action of the B story...

Having landed on the Forest planet of Endor (where lives too-adorably-contrived creatures called Ewoks who, along with overlong expository scenes, slow down the pace until they prove their underdog defense tactics), they have to shut down the Death Star's shields so that Lando, with the aid of Wedge and other pilots, blow up the Death Star... in a dogfight like no other. And the first act, back on Tattoine, in and out of Jabba's Palace, proves that Jim Henson's puppetry does wonder over CGI, a blend of noir and pirate lore kicking things off with a pulpy roar.

HEROES HAS RELOCATED

title: HEROES

year: 1977

cast: Henry Winkler, Sally Field, Harrison Ford, Val Avery, John Cassavetes, Ron Rifkin, Al Rubin

rating: **1/2

REVIEW HAS MOVED TO THE NEW SITE