Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Moving on to my brother's favorite and possibly the darkest of the series, the Temple of Doom. Everything Spielberg couldn't get into Raiders he stuffed into this one. Escape the bad guys behind a rolling gong, use an inflatable raft as a parachute and safety blanket as he flies from a burning plane and a mine cart chase.

This movie has it all. Indie is back in the prequel to Raiders that is set in 1931 a few years earlier than Raiders. Doom was released in 1984 and was so violent, it helped garner a new system than introduced a PG-13 rating. The violence includes Molorom ripping a dude's heart out.

Doom centers on rural Indian villages that have been robbed of sacred stones. Indie must save the day. Doom has a lot of cult mysticism, child slavery and bizarre customs. Loaded with critters as opposed to snakes this time, Doom is sure to make even the strong squirm.

What my brother and I enjoyed so much about this movie was the character of little Shortie as Indie's sidekick. How we wished we could have been him as kids. To be our hero's sidekick would have been glorious. We always pretended we were Shortie and that we could save Dr. Jones whenever he needed help.

For the second time, this series won best visual effects at the Academy Awards. John Williams adds the typical awesome score. This movie is loaded with great action and is equally as entertaining as the first, but the darkness and weird spirituality are kind of a turn off in the series. I tend to think this is the weakest of the trilogy.

The thing I love about rewatching these movies is the old school sound effects. The punches sound so ridiculous and way over the top violent, which makes the movie even more exciting. I wonder if the new Indie will use the same? Probably not...

Thank you for #2 in the series which was equally as entertaining and thrilling. The adventures of Indie will stand the test of time and any kid will always think of Indie as the greatest hero of all time. Much better than today's "super"-heroes.

These movies are so well-developed and clearly thought out. It really is one of the best ideas for a hero ever. Thank you Lucas for that but not for Star Wars. I prefer the possible (haha, yeah Indie is very believable).

Harrison Ford gets more and more injured with each movie. In this one, he hurt his back. The previous, his ribs. He is probably in a wheelchair after Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.


4 of 5 stars

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

As the newest installment of Indy approaches, I felt the need to watch the original trilogy, which began in 1981. Can you believe that 27 years have passed and yet here comes another with Harrison Ford on his death bed?

The story of Indiana Jones is legendary and was one of my favorite movies as a kid. The adventure and daring escapades of Indy are incredible to a kid. Indy was easily the greatest character ever.

Harrison Ford was the perfect choice in this epic Spielberg film. His guise as a professor/archaeologist hides the truth that he is a treasure hunter. He is a handsome, rough teacher that his students greatly love.

Set in the 1930's, Indy is hired on by the government to beat the Nazi's to finding the Ark of the Covenant that is supposedly in Egypt. The thing with Indy is that he does all the grunt work - finding legendary treasures by passing all the traps - and some bad guy jerks it out of his hand and leaves him for dead.

The bad guy in this one is some Hitler cronie with an ugly face and a disgusting laugh. I really hate that guy.

The Ark is ripped from Indy and he and Marion (his girl) must get it back to discover the secrets within and to ensure it does not make the Nazi army invincible. The movie turns sci-fi (true to Spielberg and buddy and story writer George Lucas form) when the Nazis open the ark.

The Ark is legendary from Biblical times when the Hebrews carried it around at God's instruction as they wandered the wilderness. Anyone who touched it instantly died. It has spiritual power of some kind and has never been found.

The great thing about this epic movie is all the adventure as I previously stated. It still has some of the best fight scenes and action sequences of all time. This movie really stands the test of time. The movie is loaded with good humor as well.

Indiana Jones is one of the greatest characters/heroes ever made and I love him to death. I am so glad they made more than one movie and I can't wait for the next one. Ark is the best of the trilogy and likely the best of the series.

I didn't realize how well this movie was received back in the day. It was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, which I find kinda hard to believe. O well, awesome. It won 4 - Best Art Direction, Best Effects, Best Editing, Best Sound.

Congrats Spielberg on one of your best movies and series ever. I could watch this every day forever.

4.5 of 5 stars

Shotgun!

I saw this picture and almost busted a gut laughing. Not to take away from all that Rosa Parks accomplished, but this is just a funny picture. No doubt it was tough what she went through, but if you can't laugh in life then you're screwed.

Rosa Parks did much with her life as an activist who essentially began the Civil Rights Movement. Her refusal to give up her seat for a white person on December 1, 1955, led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is one of the largest movements against racial segregation in U.S. history. This single event propelled Parks into a leadership role within the Civil Rights movement and forever garnered her notoriety.

Martin Luther King, Jr. rose up from the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Therefore, Parks is seen as the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement. She helped ensure equality and the end of segregation. She did help change the world.

So, you have to laugh at the picture because Parks definitely deserves shotgun. Regretfully, she died like three years ago.

Call the picture offensive, call it in bad taste. But I call it hilarious. It does not change my view of her at all but rather emphasizes it. I probably respect her more. She was a great person.

Hopefully she followed all of the rules of shotgun.
1. Everyone has to be outside
2. You have to be able to see the car
3. Everyone has to hear you, especially the driver (so they can defend you if it turns nasty).
4. It's rude to take shotgun twice in a row (but for Rosa Parks, it wouldn't be).

Can I Graduate?

My broseph walked across the stage for graduation from high school this past weekend. Wow, time really flies. As this school year came to an end, I realized, "Crap, I'm a junior." The first two years of college really flew by.

So, my kid brother is not a kid anymore. He is an 18-year-old college boy. Never thought the day would actually happen. I still picture him as the little boy playing with his "mans" all over the house and riding his bike all over the neighborhood.

If he is getting old, then surely I am turning into a codger. I've been looking back at my life and searching for what I have done to make a difference, what I have accomplished as a 20-year-old.

I only wish I had done more in high school, then I would be so much farther along than I am today. Now, I have to go back and do those things I didn't do in high school, like find my passions and all those things I enjoy.

I feel I have done a lot and have a ton more to do. I believe I have done more than the average 20-year-old. I only hope to do more as the year progresses. I need to do so much in the next two years before I graduate.

Dub will be going to college soon with his new laptop, which is so much better than mine (and at half the price, my how technology changes in two years!). He is going to UCO, which is a good choice for him. UCO is a great school and it has tons of possibilities. Plus, he can live at home for free.

My biggest advice from where I screwed up is to try to find something you really like before you get there. That way you can explore all the avenues of the major with a maximum amount of time instead of wasting the first two years doing almost nothing.

College is a great place to not only gain a degree but to establish contacts, create change and enjoy yourself before the real world comes crashing down.

Good luck, Pube.

Happy Gilmore

Happy Gilmore is one of the best iconic examples of the comedy genre from the 1990's. I would venture to place it on my Top 10 Comedy list of my favorite comedies of all time, maybe Top 5.

Why Gilmore sticks out so much is the strikingly original storyline that Adam Sandler created. Sandler was really one of the top guys of comedy during the decade. He was a young genius. His movies were second only to Jim Carrey during that time period.

Happy Gilmore follows the extremely successful "Billy Madison" in 1996. This movie is 12 years old and yet it still makes me laugh out loud despite the immense number of times I've seen it.

The story is genius and Sandler cronie Dennis Dugan catches the best of the story in his direction of Gilmore. They collaborated well in showing the change in crowd at golf events once bad boy Gilmore comes to town. They took a raging character that is everything golf isn't and made him bring in a new crowd.

The thing I like most about this movie is there isn't a big lull like most movies today. Most modern comedies try to mean too much or make some kind of point and usually spend about 30 painful minutes establishing that point.

Gilmore doesn't have this. It does have it's moments of meaning, but there is never a period of more than five minutes that doesn't generate a laugh.

Possibly my favorite character of the movie is Ben Stiller as the orderly at the nursing home. He is hilarious. He forces the old people to make quilts as part of "arts and crafts" and then turns and sells the quilts. There is also the mention of landscaping duty. Haha. So amazing. "You could trouble me for a glass of shut the hell up."

Bob Barker was pretty good and their fight was fantastic. The comedic violence is amazing.

This movie meant so much to my generation. How many kids tried to swing like Gilmore after this movie? I know I did. This developed a youth interest in golf though a fleeting interest.

There are countless lines from this movie that we have repeated over the years. Lines that we always said and never realized where they came from. Lines that are still used in daily conversation that our brains remember based on certain circumstances.

"Gold jacket, green jacket, who gives a -?"
"My fingers hurt."

I absolutely love this movie. The comedy is so perfect and Sandler delivers the punch throughout (literally and comically). This will always be one of my favorite movies. I could watch this movie every day for the rest of my life and laugh just the same. Gilmore is one of those movies that, although you have it memorized, is still hilarious with every viewing.

So much better than today's comedy. I was disappointed to find that Sandler and Apatow are good buddies. I think Sandler is a whole lot funnier. His 90's movies lack the Apatow-life-lesson-lull of today. They also lack the vulgarity of an Apatow movie. Whoever decided extreme vulgarity was funny is beyond me.

Gilmore is hands down Sandler's best movie to date. It is loaded with unrivaled comedy and definitely has a timeless appeal. This is slapstick at it's best.

4.5 of 5 stars

Generation Rx

Today's youth addiction is prescription medication. This has affected suburbia greatly for the past several years. I have not personally known anyone to be addicted to prescription pills, but there are many in my town.

I never understood the obsession with pills. I remember back in high school a kid would rave about having extra pain pills after surgery recovery. Everyone would be like, "Oh, that's awesome."

I would just sit there and be like, "OK."

This particular kid would mention it all the time, I guess looking for some kind of reaction. No matter how many times he said it, people would be jealous and wish they had some pain pills to get through the day. They would swap (more than likely fictional stories) about different meds they had taken while in the hospital or for some kind of sickness.

I'm pretty sure he never actually took them, he just liked to say that he had them. Again, I never saw what the big deal was. I guess the kids I knew liked to pretend they knew all about meds because it was the big thing to be in the know and the addiction to prescription medication.

I can't tell you how many movies I've seen that involve characters who ingest pills on a regular basis "to heal the pain." I think many look to medication as a type of crutch because they feel they can't do it on their own.

Those that lean on medication to get them through the day are more than likely delusional. I think a lot of people make excuses for their behavior so they take pills to help them "calm down." I think people become crazy because of their dependence on prescription meds.

I believe this is a total farce and used as a lame excuse. But whatever, I don't know everything.

So, whenever someone tells me about what kind of meds they have stashed at home or I see some movie with some addict, I just try to ignore the insanity. Today's society has become too dependent on medication to solve our problems, which instead tends to cause more.

Watch "The Chumscrubber" for a good commentary on suburbia and the kids that take pills for the "high."

Whoever Finds God, Finds Life

I've grown weary of the incessant insults directed at the methods of teaching at Life Church. Too many complain about how Life Church does business. "I couldn't watch the teacher on the screen." "Life Church is too mainstream."

Please. There is a certain point when you need to step back and look at just exactly what the church does before ripping it.

A lot of naysayers from the traditional church background would even go as far as calling Life Church immoral for it's use of rock music, televisions and videos. "That kind of thing does not belong in a church."

We've heard these whiners enough over the past 10 years. Contemporary church goers say Life Church is too commercial and tries to hard to gain membership and does not actually focus on the message.

These people are just searching for something to dis because they do not want to admit that Life Church's methods are successful. Some deep Christians claim Life Church has no room for growth, which I will agree with to a certain extent.

You must understand the mission of Life Church before you decide to insult it. Life Church's main goal is to bring in people, which I greatly applaud. We need all kinds of churches in this world to accomplish everything we can for God.

We need churches that can plug deep and drag in the unlikely. We need churches that can train future church leaders. We need churches that work solely with missions and helping others.

Life Church is a church that focuses on bringing in as many people as possible and sharing God's love with them. Life Church can do this on such an extreme level. They can market and spread the word about the church with it's 4,000 weekly attenders.

Life Church has also spread throughout the country in an effort to reach more people. Their goal is huge but attainable because of great leading from the top. Life Church does work like a corporation, but a corporation the world has never seen. A corporation that builds believers not revenue. A corporation set to change the world.

I wholeheartedly agree with Life Church's approach and greatly commend them for it. To me it's all about spreading His Word and Life Church does that very effectively. Life Church is able to reach thousands of new believers or non-Christians in a single week through multiple campuses and the Internet ("o no, a church cannot have a Web site, it's evil. We should never use the Internet to promote God's Word, I do not think God would approve.").

For those looking to grow more intimate with Him, Life Church is probably not the place for you. But don't knock Life Church for being too commercial or mainstream. That is their mission and goal. They have succeeded and will continue to succeed as long as there are unbelievers in the world. Life Church is doing it's part to change the world.