More of a Personal Post

As someone who owns the collectors set of Indiana Jones, I am a huge fan. They are great stories, I grew up on Westerns when I was a kid. My dad and I used to just watch them together. Shows like “Have Gun Will Travel” where decidedly awesome. Yeah they are hokey but what kids shows aren’t?

Looking back I think I know why those shows were good, the stories were simple. The plot can honestly be summarized with “beginning, confrontation, resolution”. You introduce the main character, oh shit there are bad guys poisoning the water hole, kill/arrest them, end of show. There is a great deal of simple charm to that formula, and when you have a bad guy you don’t like for simple reasons it’s even better.

That’s why Nazis have always worked in Indy flicks. They are the bad guys, why you may ask, because they are Nazis. Things blow up along the way, we may see a few big names, someone’s face melts, and there are some laughs, all around good time, life is good. Kinda like beer and pretzels night with a gaming group. I know the recent OWbN podcast made fun of folks who use this formula for characters in LARP, and I agree, LARP is far too moody and "mature" for that. Nazi killing and evil mustachioed men are at the heart of beer and pretzel gaming though. When I think of beer and pretzel "role playing" I think of those old westerns. Thats the inherent charm in Indi flicks, beer and pretzels, its a beer and pretzels movie trying to capture the charm of beer and pretzel dime novels.

So after seeing these movies for the umpteen times and loving it I am excited for the new one. I am going to Kublacon this weekend and will be seeing it with some gamers there in SF hopefully. To get ready for the movie my girlfriend and I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with the RiffTrax.com commentary of it. It was totally worth the $3.00. I shared the file with some friends who downloaded it on their machines from the Rifftrax site legally. Just like the one for 300, adding this commentary puts a whole new spin on the movie.

Seriously though, it was a pain in our ass. If you ever try these don't use their player. Its kind of a gimmick and it fucked with the dialog. I think we had an option turned on that if we would have turned off would have been fine, honestly though, just do it the old fashioned way. Its kind of confusing with this movie because they often use the fade of the production trademark as the point of reference and this movie really doesn't have that (think of the MGM Lion's roar with the Dark Side of the Rainbow trick). Once we got it work though, it was worth it.

I am looking forward to the new Indi flick. I am one of those people that like to make fun of the movie as we watch it with my friends. I went to go see Speed Racer and every time Racer X talked we implanted lines from Lost…

Also, happy birthday George Lucas…hopefully this year will make you much much much wiser.