An Appreciation of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom

Hmmmm, we need to get some spark back around here. We were on such a roll! But it being the holidays and all, you know how it can get. But hopefully we can so some holiday-relates and end of the year things, and get things back on track.

This will be quick because I have football and an Irish breakfast waiting for me actually out in the world. So, we are sitting here trying to figure out what to buy my parents for their Christmas present. We hit on something good a few years ago where we find a show in New York they might like and get them tickets. They seem to enjoy it and they seem to enjoy visiting the City. Some of their grandchildren are around there. I used to go to school in the City so they used to have more opportunities to go down there. Fascinating, no? At any rate, we were coming up snake eyes until we noticed that there was going to be a revival of Anything Goes opening in March, there you go!

So what does all this mean? Nothing really, its just the set-up. A peek (interesting, I am sure) into the way my mind connects different pop cultural points. And here it is the fact that I can't hear the song Anything Goes without thinking of Willie Scott (played by Kate Capshaw) opening up the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom singing a version of this in Cantonese. (Well, in Chinese I'm not sure of the regional dialect, of course)



And that, in turn, makes me think of how much I like Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom. In fact, I was having this conversation with my coworker, friend, and fellow blogger at work just this week. Temple Of Doom was definitely a grower it seems, it feels like it was and still is unfairly maligned. In some circles, people still see it as the worst Indiana Jones movie. Although after Crystal Skull came out, I am not sure how much that opinion has changed. There are definitely still people that somehow consider it the weakest of the real (thats right I said it) and original trilogy. Personally, I don't get it. I can see when it came out people being at least confused by it, because lets be honest as a mainstream tent pole it is nuts and as a follow up (really a prequel!) to Raiders Of The Lost Ark it must have seemed crazier. Here's a movie that starts out with this Busby Berkeley-style musical, to Indiana Jones in a white suit like James Bond movie, then it becomes some crazy dark, update of Gunga Din. I still think that opening at Club Obi Wan is one of the best openings to a movie ever, not just the musical part but the whole sequence with the poison, and the gangsters, and, well, everything....I feel like Spielberg and Lucas took a real chance to try something different with this movie, and while it seemed to have taken a long time to catch on, I feel like it really ends up working. I feel like Raiders is definitely the best, but I have to be honest and tell you that it goes back and forth between that and Temple Of Doom because, really, it's that good.

-K