Thursday, October 16, 2008

Indiana Jones and the Best Damn DVD Ever

So, without gushing too much, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has one of the best damn 2-Disc packages ever. Simply put, the DVD case doubles as a pictographic journal of the filming of the movie. You open it up, read the intros from Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, and on to the pictures. It's really beautifully amazing, and when a DVD package makes me smile from the word go, I get my hopes up for the special features.

There's a great, two hour documentary on the filming of the movie, plus extras on special effects, props, locations and makeup. What I wish I could have seen were deleted scenes, because the documentary shows off some interesting footage that didn't make the final cut, but would have been interesting to see as extras.

The film doc is a monster: seriously in-depth reveals as to how some of the stunts were performed, especially in Harrison Ford's case. There were a lot of times in the film where I thought it was a stunt double, but it turns out it was, in fact, Ford jumping and swinging wildly away. For a sixty-something, he's pretty spry. I know I probably couldn't do half of the stunts he did for this film.

As for the movie itself, it plays better on the small screen than on the silver screen; something about watching it on TV makes it feel, for me, like more of an Indiana Jones film than it did in the theater. It's still just as entertaining, but something about watching it from the couch makes me go "Oh yeah, this feels familiar."

So pop yer popcorn, shield yer eyes from the aliens, and enjoy the sometimes-unintentionally-hilarious action thrill ride known as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not as good as Temple of Doom, but better than Last Crusade.

Overall 4/5 (-1 for the horrible dialogue; who writes this shit?)

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