Thursday, March 25, 2010

in honor of mr. hitchcock

in honor of the fact that i just watched 'north by northwest,' i feel the time has arrived for me to share just how much i love alfred hitchcock. which is a lot, basically.

i'm not by any means an expert on the film industry, but i am an expert on buying lots of films and watching lots of films. i can certainly appreciate all the groundbreaking accomplishments hitchcock made in the world of cinema, and while those groundbreaking accomplishments certainly contribute to why i think he's great, the main reason is that he was a character and a half, and that translated into his movies.

when i say i love his movies, i don't just mean the ones everyone's seen, like 'psycho,' 'vertigo,' 'the birds' and 'north by northwest.' i collect hitchcock dvds like your grandfather collects coins. i'm the kid who can tell you where in each movie you'll find hitchcock's cameo, and i'm a walking encyclopedia on not jut the movies you've seen, but the ones you haven't. i've watched 'psycho' more times than i can count, of course. but i've also seen movies like 'the man who knew too much' and 'strangers on a train' a million times because you can only watch 'rear window' so many times before you start suspecting your neighbors of murdering their wives.

that's one of the main reasons hitchcock's movies are so great. they're so good, you can get invested and involved in these movies in ways you can't with others. the only reason i don't watch 'the birds' day in and day out is that i don't want to develop a pathological fear of pigeons. that being said, i love that if i watch 'the birds' too often, i know i will eventually develop said pathological fear, however irrational it may seem. i watch 'notorious,' wherein cary grant essentially pimps ingrid bergman out to her father's nazi friend so she can be a cia informant, and hitchcock makes it look thrilling and fun. he makes me want to be a secret agent, before my grasp on reality sets in and i realize i would be an abysmal secret agent.

you know what else? he managed to create that signature hitchcockian suspense even within the considerable limits of the censorship laws that existed at that time. it's fascinating that the movies aren't all that scary, per se, but there's enough anticipation to give the audience that exhilarating thrill of psychological suspense. the shower scene in 'psycho' doesn't show much skin or actual stabbing because of the incredibly strict censorship codes, but it's almost better that way. no, not almost. actually.

one sort of morbid reason hitchcock is so awesome is his ability to dream up new and interesting ways to kill people. hitchcock once said, "a murder without gleaming scissors is like asparagus without the hollandaise sauce: tasteless." the gleaming scissors worked in 'dial m for murder,' but throughout all of his movies, hitchcock killed countless people in highly entertaining ways. strangulation with rope or neckties or scarves, drowning in various lakes or rivers, stuffing bodies into trunks, stabbing with knives or scissors or any other sharp object, sawing, hurling down stairs, pecking by birds, locking people in carbon monoxide-filled cars... the list goes on.

watching all these movies makes me want to crawl inside hitchcock's head and see what goes on in his imagination, a la 'being john malkovich.' the great thing about his movies, though, is that watching them sort of gives you a glimpse into that mind. now, i'm off to go watch 'to catch a thief.'

Monday, March 22, 2010

memorization: the convenient intellectual crutch

i'm not a science person. in fact, i've done just about everything in my power to avoid science like the plague because in my objective, highly refined opinion, science is stupid. all throughout high school, i trudged my way through science classes. the only thing that saved me from complete and utter failure was my ability to memorize almost any information and regurgitate it with remarkable precision.

part of what makes the memorizing thing work is putting things into song form. most of the ridiculous songs i came up with to remember all that scientific gibberish were just memorable enough to get me through whatever quiz or exam i had, but not so memorable that i could actually recall it at the end of the semester for finals. that being said, i can recite all the elements in the periodic table because of a song, but not one that i made up. it's because of NCIS.

there was this episode i really loved that happened to contain a song listing all the elements. abby cracked the encrypted hard drive of the victim and found out that the last thing emailed to him was the element song, where tom lehrer sings all the elements in the periodic table within a span of about a minute and a half. it's great.

i watched the episode a zillion times because i loved the plot where one of the witnesses turns out to be one of gibbs' ex-wives, but i also cracked up every time the song came on. eventually, i started to catch on to the song. then, of course, i downloaded it and listened to it because it's awesome. it's been years since i've actually had to know anything about the elements, and the irony of me learning this song years too late isn't at all lost on me, but now i know every element, no periodic table required.

there's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
and iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
and lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
and gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
and iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

there's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
and boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
and strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
and bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

there's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
and phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
and manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
and lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
and tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
and cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

there's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
and also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
and argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
and chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
tungsten, tin and sodium.

these are the only ones of which the news has come to harvard,
and there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.

yeah, it's pretty useless information for an advertising major whose lack of ability in the science department has astounded instructors for years. it's a little unsettling to think what things i could be learning and retaining if my head weren't full of information like a list of the periodic table of the elements. it goes to show how a) songs actually do help with memorization and b) even someone like me can sound impressive if they watch enough tv. thank you, NCIS.

Friday, March 19, 2010

an argument for overestimation

when i was little, i wanted to be matilda. the book was one of the first chapter books i ever read, and amidst the immense pride i felt at having completed a 21-chapter book, i wished i could be as smart as this girl.

around a decade later, 'matilda' is still one of my favorite books. maybe it's a little strange, but i've always felt that the amount of wear and tear a book goes through shows how much the owner loves reading it. by that logic, 'matilda' is one of the best-loved books in existence. i've read it so many times my copy is falling apart. it doesn't have a back cover, the front cover is a tiny bit singed from a campfire accident, the whole book is a little warped from water damage, the pages are turning yellow, and most of them have that telltale dog-ear crease in the corner.

anyway, i read it so often mainly because i loved the character and wanted to be like her. she was my age, maybe even younger, and she loved learning, so she was just like me. well, not entirely like me. not only could she move things with her mind, but she could also do complicated math in her head and read books that were more than 21 chapters long. i'm certainly not a telekinetic, and there are very few things i'm more hopeless at than math, but at least i could read.

in an effort to be more like matilda, i started to attempt to read books way beyond my own abilities in the literacy department. she impressed the librarian by reading books by dickens, bronte, austen, wells, hemingway, faulkner, steinbeck, orwell and more, so naturally i tried to read all these authors too. of course i didn't understand a word of any of these books, and i didn't develop a charming relationship with the local librarian.

entirely undiscouraged, i resigned myself to the fact that i'd have to start out a little smaller than matilda. i read the rest of roald dahl's books, but wanted something more. realizing that while i wasn't exactly 'great expectations' material, i could be shooting for something a little more complicated than 'james and the giant peach.'

i'm sure all those bedtime books my parents read to me as a kid played a big part in why i love reading so much. it's 'matilda,' though, that contributed to my consistent overestimation of my own reading abilities growing up, and my current appreciation of classic literature.

as of now, i have read (and actually comprehended) most of the books matilda breezed through when she was in kindergarten. it doesn't matter what i read, though, because i understand why matilda loved books so much. she could escape into another world, learn about other people and experience their stories. my parents aren't narcissistic, neglecting neanderthals like matilda's, so i didn't rely as heavily on the escapism aspect, but i think everyone likes to know they can read a book and experience something else for a while.

Friday, March 12, 2010

everyone has their 'sound of music'

we all have that one movie, tv show or band we started out mocking, and now we love.

it starts out simply enough. you think it's entirely ridiculous, and you make fun of it. you watch or listen with your friends in a purely ironic way, because you're way too cool to actually enjoy it. any praise you give it oozes with sarcasm, but once you've spent some time watching or listening, however sardonically, after a while you realize you've actually started to like it for real. at first you're horrified that you actually like it, and you call it a guilty pleasure, but soon you realize you're actually okay with it.

for me, it's 'the sound of music.' my baby sister and i grew up with 'sound of music,' mainly because our mom and grandma love it so much. we complained and complained when they made us watch it; we thought it was the stupidest thing ever. we giggled along when our dad made fun of it, and after a while we joined in on the playful ridicule. before we knew it, we were watching it just so we could jeer at the corny dialogue and screech along with julie andrews. and i do mean 'screech.'

i don't know when the switch flipped, but now we love it. my sister and i have seen it so many times we could probably run through the entire movie without actually seeing it. we genuinely appreciate the sixties-tastic vibe, julie andrews' four-octave range and thoroughly cheesy dialogue, whereas before we thought it was about as cool as death valley in august. we clearly just didn't understand the magic.

we have a tradition, tess and me. on christmas eve night, we hole up in our basement with a case of red bull and two cans of pringles, and we make and/or wrap all our presents for christmas morning. while we do this, we watch 'sound of music' until we finish with our gifts. this means we could watch maria scuttle back and forth from the abbey to the von trapp mansion several times before we can finally go to sleep.

we don't just watch, either. we provide our own running commentary throughout the entire movie, engaging in meaningful discussions about how much we hate the baroness von schraeder and conversely, how much we love maria. we hypothesize that liesl isn't really anywhere near as innocent as she sounds while singing 'sixteen going on seventeen.' we explain to each other over and over that the answer to a question like 'how do you solve a problem like maria?' is 'marry her off to christopher plummer, of course.' we observe, each time as if it were the first time, that julie andrews probably couldn't hit that crazy high note at the end of the 'doe, a deer' song if she didn't put one hand on top of her head and stick the other arm in the air.

not many people would be up for a tradition like this. in fact, i can count all the people who could put up with our annual christmas eve 'sound of music' party on two fingers: me and tess. you see, as far as baby sisters go, mine is totally boss. she's the one person who understands everything i say, and has exactly the same sense of humor as me. the fact that the christmas eve viewing of 'the sound of music' is probably both of our favorite traditions probably goes a long way to explaining why she's my best friend. it also explains how we can start out in vehement opposition to something, then grow to love it enough to watch it over and over again on christmas eve.

it's not a classic great movie like 'casablanca' or 'north by northwest.' it's not a 'watch it because it's on' movie like 'the fugitive.' it's not a 'so bad it's hilarious' movie like 'plan 9 from outer space.' it's not even a guilty pleasure like 'the davinci code.' it's in a category all on its own, and we all have a movie or band or what have you that we place in this category.

for my former spanish teacher turned co-chaperone on my sister's 8th grade cedar point field trip, it was neil diamond. her and her friends thought he was ridiculous. they went all-out buying t-shirts, attending concerts and buying cds, all in the most ironic sense. the sarcastic 'we love neil diamond!'s turned non-sarcastic, and they started wearing their concert tees in public, not just on laundry day.

for my job-hunting buddy turned moviegoing friend, it was the jonas brothers. at first she thought they were beyond hilarious. she made fun of them with me and joked with me about how we didn't buy for a second that those promise rings were legit. then somehow, as her collection of jonas memorabilia grew, her outlook changed from ridicule to... appreciation. she's 22, it's not normal. but it happens to the best of us.

i'm not too proud to admit i love 'the sound of music.' i can recite the names and ages of all the von trapp children in order. i know all the lyrics to all the songs. if called upon, i could probably even duplicate that dance they do on the patio during the baroness' welcome ball. i'm glad i have my baby sister to watch with me, if only because i'd feel pretty silly and pathetic being this fanatic about such a cheesy movie all on my own.

but that's what it's all about, isn't it? embracing the cheesiness.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

when 'his girl friday' says, 'become a journalist...'

in high school, i wanted to be a journalist. why? because of 'his girl friday.'

i watched rosalind russell and cary grant having a ball as they bickered playfully, scurried around the newsroom, chased down leads and did anything they had to do to get the story. honeymoons were interrupted, fiances were stolen away, mothers-in-law were insulted, suspects were hidden, fire departments were called, trains were missed and laws were bent, all in the name of keeping an innocent man from the death penalty with a newspaper article, because clearly the journalists were the only people who had all the answers.

i saw how writing and investigating and finding the truth was in their souls, and i wanted to be like them. i wanted to channel all my passion into my writing, and to talk fast enough with enough clever wit to charm and confuse any opposition. i knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that i was meant to be a journalist. i wanted to bring enlightenment to the people; putting my blood, sweat and tears into fighting evil, one story at a time.

i'm now an advertising major.

'his girl friday' taught me that life is not at all like the movies, especially not 1940's screwball comedies. being a journalism major is nowhere near as fun as it looks. you don't get to write about interesting things like the one piece of information that could set an innocent man free. instead, you write about things like school board meetings and people who dress up their pets for halloween. you don't engage in heated discussions defending your point of view, ultimately convincing all naysayers that yours is the best idea. no, you just spend a lot of time getting yelled at, either by your editor or an angry reader. there isn't much traipsing around town, accusing the guilty and protecting the innocent. in fact, you pretty much just sit in front of a computer making calls, then you occasionally go outside and practically beg someone to talk to you.

when you're watching 'his girl friday,' you don't realize that people actually hate talking to journalists. you don't see how long it takes sources to call back. they don't show you the editor-journalist relationship that doesn't involve witty banter and ex-spouses who are still in love with each other.

to clarify, i've always known i wanted to write, but once i saw how much fun rosalind and cary were having as journalists, i sort of figured that was the only way to write for a living. not true at all. i'm sure i'm not the only one who saw someone in a movie and wanted to be like them, and while it's a little ridiculous, it's also somewhat understandable.

take 'casablanca,' for instance. doesn't it make you want to escape to casablanca, marry humphrey bogart and run a cafe? it's not realistic, and when you really think about it you know you'd never move to casablanca to run a cafe in a million years, but that's the great thing about movies. we can escape into other peoples' lives for a while. you could watch 'goldfinger' and think about how cool it would be to be james bond, but even as you think it, you know you'd probably be the worst secret agent ever.

i am here to tell you from experience that while it's perfectly okay to think about how great your life would be if you were a bank robber or an intergalactic princess or a pie-maker-by-day, crime-fighter-by-night, you should by no means pursue these careers.

maybe more movies should be like 'silence of the lambs,' where at the end you'd rather do almost anything than be a psychiatrist.

Monday, March 8, 2010

ocean's 11 cons, a decryption

i have a near-stratospheric tolerance for repetition when it comes to watching movies, especially movies i like. take 'ocean's 11,' one of my favorite movies. i've seen it so many times i can quote every line, and i still like it. the thing is, with a movie like 'ocean's 11' with a great heist plot, once you've figured out how all the cons worked, you start to figure out all the con man lingo, if you will. at least i do.

toward the beginning of 'ocean's 11,' when george clooney is first trying to convince brad pitt to rob the casino and asks his opinion of how they would pull it off, brad pitt goes, "off the top of my head, i'd say you're looking at a boesky, a jim brown, a miss daisy, two jethros and a leon spinks, not to mention the biggest ella fitzgerald ever." now, i knew the line after watching the movie a few times, but once i knew practically the whole movie and still wasn't sick of it, i started to figure out what it actually means. pathetic? sure, but also a little bit cool.

if you don't know the movie like i do (a fairly probable scenario), you might not be quite as entertained by all this as i am, which is entirely okay, but i'm going to share the knowledge i've amassed anyway.

the boesky: saul playing lymon zherga, the whale who asks benedict to put his jewels, which are actually TNT, in the vault. if you've seen 'wall street,' you'll know about gordon gekko, who was loosely based on ivan boesky, a wall street trader who was involved in a securities fraud. that's where they got the idea of lymon zherga, an uber-rich bankroller with insider information.

the jim brown: the fight between frank catton, who's impersonating a blackjack dealer, and linus caldwell, who's impersonating a representative from the nevada gaming commission, a fight meant to distract benedict so linus could pick benedict's pocket, getting the security codes to the vault. after watching enough espn classic games with my dad, i learned all about jim brown, who many people hail as the greatest football player of all time. the fight between two characters is called a jim brown because it's a physical confrontation, one of the cornerstones upon which the sport of football is built.

the miss daisy: references the swat truck our con men used as their getaway car. 'driving miss daisy' is a movie about a woman who has to get a chauffeur to drive her around. under the guise of the swat truck, george, brad and the gang can escape without a hitch.

the two jethros: refers to the malloy brothers, turk and virgil. the two jethros are the 'hillbilly, gear-headed types" who are hired to look after miss daisy. in the movie, they provide general two-man work like the distraction they pull with the balloons covering the security camera on the casino floor so livingston can get into the video surveillance room.

the leon spinks: the distraction in the form of disrupting the boxing match. there was this episode of ncis once where the director went home to chicago to investigate the death of his boxer friend. in the episode, they mentioned this boxing match where leon spinks beat muhammad ali, and it was a total upset that no one expected. no one expected the power to go out in the middle of the match in the movie, either, and it created absolute chaos, which was great for our con artists.

the ella fitzgerald: the idea to loop a tape of a robbery over benedict's security system, a robbery which had actually been staged the previous night as a distraction while the real robbery takes place. it comes from a commercial for memorex i saw in my ad production class the other week where a recording of ella fitzgerald's voice breaks a glass, then the voice over says, "is it live or is it memorex?" the concept is that benedict doesn't know if the robbery he's seeing is the robbery that's actually happening.

so that's how watching tons of movies and commercials teaches you about references to heist movies. and that's just 'ocean's 11.' i can do '12' and '13,' too, mostly because i pay attention far too closely to the movies and watch far too many movies.

'ocean's 12':
- when danny and rusty take linus to meet with matsui, they pull a 'lost in translation' on linus, which means they're talking in complete gibberish to confuse him.
- when linus finally talks in the meet with matsui, he tries to come up with his own gibberish, but what he says is "oh let the sun beat down my face, with stars to fill my dream. i am a traveler in both time and space to be where i have been." this is actually a lyric to the led zeppelin song, 'kashmir.' in fact, when danny and rusty haul linus out of the meeting, rusty says, "kashmir? is that your idea of a contribution?" i didn't actually put two and two together until i saw 'fast times at ridgemont high' and heard the song in the soundtrack, recognized the lyrics, and looked it up.
- the 'looky-loo with a bundle of joy' con linus, basher and turk pull refers to them bringing in danny's wife, tess, played by julia roberts. they all agree tess looks a lot like julia roberts, and they bring her in to impersonate the celebrity, who happens to be pregnant at the time.

'ocean's 13':
- the 'susan b. anthony' the characters keep referring to is a reference to the susan b. anthony dollar distributed by the us mint in the late '70s. it looked very similar to a regular quarter, so lots of people fed them to slot machines and vending machines, not realizing how much they were worth. in the movie, it's when they rig a slot machine so that the next quarter someone puts in will pay out the jackpot, then leave a quarter lying around so an innocent bystander can get the jackpot without realizing what just happened.
- the 'billy martin' danny offers to al pacino's casino owner character, willy bank, is basically a last chance to reinstate ruben after bank cuts ruben out of their partnership deal, with the idea that if he rejects the billy martin, danny and the rest of ocean's 11 will hit his casino. billy martin was a baseball legend, who later managed the yankees. he was forced to resign because of his drinking problem and his negative attitude, but was reinstated when the yankees fell into a slump later on.

that's it, that's all i know. clearly, i've watched these movies far too many times, but i still keep watching them, because they're still good.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

the vocabulary corner

i'm one of those creatures who is genuinely fascinated by languages. it's not just learning new languages, it's discovering new words and phrases in the english language. to me, learning new words is beyond fun. i carry a thesaurus around with me. i have dictionary.com text me the 'word of the day' every day. on the occasion that i hear or read a word i haven't heard before, i freak out. i love it so much.

in honor of the fact that i just watched this really cool documentary called 'wordplay' about the american crossword puzzle tournament and how they make crosswords, i decided it would be fun to make a list of words i've learned recently from books and movies.

- aleatory: accidental, impromptu, random, spontaneous, unintentional
- ataraxia: aplomb, assurance, composure, imperturbability, steadiness
- axiomatic: understood, aphoristic, indubitable, presupposed, proverbial
- ecru: beige, cream, light brown, neutral, tan
- eschew: avoid, cease, forego, spurn, withhold
- gambol: caper, cavort, frolic, leap, play
- hornswoggle: swindle, bamboozle, cheat, deceive, trick
- infundibuliform: shaped like a funnel
- obfuscation: bafflement, befuddlement, confusion, discombobulation, stupefaction
- perspicacious: observant, perceptive, astute, discerning, sagacious
- portentous: exciting, foreboding, apocalyptic, impending, premonitory
- quondam: former, bygone, erstwhile, one-time, preceding
- quotidian: ordinary, commonplace, everyday, trivial, useful
- usurp: encroach, commandeer, displace, preempt, seize
- verisimilitude: authenticity, credibility, genuineness, plausibility, reality

there you have it: 15 words you may or may not have known already that i've learned because when i read or hear a word i don't know, i have a compulsion to look it up.

Monday, March 1, 2010

why i am consistently disappointed by indiana jones and the temple of doom

i recently just re-watched all the 'indiana jones' movies for the umpteenth time, mainly just to have something on in the background while tackling a huge pile of homework. i wondered vaguely why i had seen 'raiders of the lost ark' so many more times than the rest of the movies until i was about 15 minutes into 'temple of doom.' i've seen 'raiders' a zillion times because it's my favorite, but i've only seen 'temple of doom' a handful of times because it's awful. i had forgotten just how awful it was until i found myself trying to refrain from fast-forwarding through the entire movie.

before i talk about why it's a failure of a standalone film, i first have to address the cinematic elephant in the room whenever one watches 'temple of doom:' it's not 'raiders of the lost ark.' spielberg and lucas really had something with 'raiders,' obviously. it warranted a sequel, even just at the beginnings of the blockbuster era when hollywood hadn't really figured out just what a gold mine sequels are.

now, the indiana jones series has a clear and entirely functional formula: take one part harrison ford and one part harrison ford's shirtless torso. add some universally appealing object wanted by two parties: indiana jones and the bad guys, preferably led by a creepy foreign henchman. introduce a hot girl into the mix, going heavy on the 'damsel in distress' element. garnish with a few quotable lines, end with a bang and bam! you've got four movies.

'raiders of the lost ark' made this formula shine. it had the ark of the covenant. it had multiple bad guys; bellach, indy's french nemesis, and the asian dude who burned the coveted headpiece into his hand and had me thoroughly skeeved out during the entire movie. it had karen allen, the daughter of indy's old teacher who had the alcohol tolerance of an irish steel worker but still managed to get captured consistently. it had quotes like "why'd it have to be snakes?" and "it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage." it ended with the good guys winning and the bad guys dying, and everyone loved it.

'temple of doom' followed this formula to a t, so why wasn't it anywhere near as good? harrison ford was shirtless more often than not, there was that disgusting face-painted guy of whichever indigenous tribe that was meant to be, there was that stone everyone wanted, it even had kate capshaw, who made most damsels in distress look like xena: warrior princess. it had that cute little kid who said things like "he's not crazy, he's nuts!" all ended happily after a ridiculous bridge stunt, so why does everyone not love it?

i have two theories. one of them is that 'temple of doom' followed the formula well enough, but all the elements were half-assed on their own. once they were all put together into one great formula, all we got was epic half-assery, if you'll pardon the oxymoron. think about it: there was never one really well-defined bad guy for us to focus our energy on despising. the relic everyone wanted was a glorified rock, and- actually, it wasn't really glorified at all, it was just a rock. who wants to cheer on indiana jones as he participates in a creepy ritual, escapes through a rock mine run by children and risks getting eaten by crocodiles, all to reclaim a rock? then there's the matter of the girl, who took 'damsel in distress' a little too far, sniveling and whining her way into indy's heart. adherence to the formula? check. quality adherence? not so much.

my other theory about why 'temple of doom' seems terrible relies on the idea of expectation. 'raiders' was a truly great movie, so i was expecting spielberg and lucas to do it again. it wasn't an unreasonable expectation, given these two cinematic greats; i mean, look at the first three 'star wars' movies. alas, 'temple of doom' didn't deliver on my hopes of what it could have been. without this expectation, i might feel differently. if i had seen 'temple of doom' first, i might have liked it enough, then been positively blown away by 'radiers of the lost ark.'

i'm sure there's an element of the first theory in the mix, and i hate to give too much credit to the expectation theory (what if 'raiders' was only good because no one expected anything of it?) but we can take the 'expectation' theory to the next level with indiana's third installment, 'the last crusade.' it certainly wasn't on par with 'raiders,' but 'the last crusade' is a decent movie in its own right. it has a quest for the holy grail, double-agent nazis and best of all, sean connery. it has all that "don't call me 'junior'" stuff, and it shows us how indy got his start. the best part about this movie, though, is it's not 'temple of doom.'

then, of course, we have 'kingdom of the crystal skull,' which could have been pretty awesome, if the entire movie-going public hadn't been expecting it to be more awesome than it actually was. with advancement of special effects technology, the return of karen allen, the casting of shia labeouf and a substantial amount of the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" effect, loyal audiences expected way too much and were consequently disappointed. people who hadn't seen any of the other movies (read: the 15 and under demographic, the 'living under a rock' demographic) liked it enough because as a standalone movie, it was actually okay.

it's the expectation factor. that's why i am consistently disappointed by 'indiana jones and the temple of doom.'