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Under discussion:

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade  (1989)

Raiders of the Lost Ark  (1981)

Indiana Jones [Film Series]  Production Year

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull  (2008)

With the fourth installment of the adventure series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, hitting theaters in a week, there’s too much debate going on as to the real-life relevance of Dr. Jones. Is he a crook, as was suggested last month? Or is he a model archaeologist, enough to be granted leading membership into the Archaeological Institute of America? Apparently Indiana Jones portrayer Harrison Ford has been elected to the AIA’s board of directors, as a way of honoring the fact that his iconic character has “played a major part in stimulating interest in the field of archaeological exploration.”

Yet in the same week, ABC News has another report on how archaeologists view the guy most associated with their profession. And somehow one member of the Archaeological Institute is quoted as contradicting the organization’s inclusion of Ford as a member. Mark Rose, AIA’s online editorial director, told ABC, “There are codes of ethics in archeology and I don’t think he would be a member. Not in good standing, anyway.”

Read on through the article, though, and you’ll discover Rose is used to walking about in Midwest cornfields, so he sounds like the person least likely to come in contact with a colleague resembling Indy. Another guy, SUNY Stony Brook professor Paul Zimansky claims some familiarity with Indiana Jones-like moments, whether they involve “breakneck speed” drives to the hospital or simply students who play dress up.

Another professor says he screens the Indiana Jones movies for students to show them examples of what not to do. The Smithsonian Institute’s Jane MacLaren Walsh, though, sees at least some people doing the job correctly in those films, and she gets my recognition for the best movie-related statement I’ve read all week:

“Not a whole lot of what we know as archeology goes on in these movies, except what the Nazis do. They seem to be doing some real archeological work,” said Walsh, who wrote the cover story in the May-June issue of Archaeology magazine examining the real history of crystal skulls featured in the new “Indiana Jones” movie.

I know cinema really loves Nazis, but to sorta claim they’re actually the good guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? That’s going just a bit too far.

My trip to Cannes begins at a bar at JFK––a Chili’s Too!, to be precise––where I flip through an abandoned issue of VOGUE whilst waiting to board. It just so happens that this issue of VOGUE exists to promote the Sex and the City movie––which, not so long ago, was rumored to be premiering at Cannes, before its gala debut was inexplicably bumped up a few days and over the English Channel (for coverage, Google “‘Sarah Jessica Parker’, ‘crazy hat’”).

This issue of VOGUE is the ultimate work of movie marketing synergy. It’s not just that Sarah Jessica Parker is on the cover, it’s not just that there are pages and pages of ridiculous photos inside, most of a couture-clad Parker canoodling with on-screen love interest Chris Noth, both ostensibly in character (more on that later). The story and the pics were literally baked into the movie itself, with the actual author of the story and the actual photoshoot’s actual director playing themselves in a VOGUE shoot scene in the film. Meta, right? Not really––it seems to be a matter of pure economics, and rather than be cynical about, sitting in that Chili’s Too! I decided to embrace it.

The VOGUE spread restores a bit of the legitimate, grown-up class that has seemed to be lacking from the SATC campaign all along (see: the Houlihans thing, the Fergie thing).  Cannes likely would have been able to accomplish the same thing; the VOGUE spread is probably cheaper, and it has the affect of reaching an audience of comparable demographics as those who would be exposed to as Cannes coverage, without ever having to make the actual quality of the actual film an issue (the story actually reads as if author Plum Sykes didn’t see the film before press time; even if she had, she seems unlikely to be convinced that the movie itself is more important than the photoshoot within it). New Line just fired hundreds of people. Such frugality on their part is almost respectable.

Also, the VOGUE pictorial accomplishes what I previously assumed was impossible: it makes Sex and the City seem kind of sexy.

It’s not every photo––I think we could all do without the shot of Parker gazing out a window whilst dressed in a matronly, cardboard-stiff marshmallow puff, or the narratively improbable centerfold of Noth trailing after Parker, unable to catch up due to the five or six pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage on his back. But there are three or four shots in the piece that are amazing. Each spins on that magic combination of commodity fetishism and “pure” romance that the show traffics in, but these still images somehow do it better than a decade’s worth of labored voice-over introspection and finely-tuned multi-layered drag jokes could manage.

Maybe it’s because the photos use the consumer fantasy as support for the romantic fantasy, which seems to be the opposite of what the SAtC brand is usually up to. In one photo, Parker and Noth are shot from way above, sprawled out on the famous red-carpetted steps of the Metropolitan Opera. They’ve thrown down their programs and opera glasses and have collapsed on the floor, embracing and laughing, the train of Parker’s gown tripling the amount of space her body takes up on the floor. In another, the image that seems least characteristic of what the brand has previously told us about their characters, Noth sits in a chair and points a video camera at Parker who, dressed in Marchesa, is writhing at his feet.

Yes, these images take place in luxurious locations; yes, Parker is unfailingly dressed in something impractically amazing; and yes, in the one image, Noth’s video camera seems unrealistically professional for recreational bedroom use. But over and over again, the couture is on the floor––expensive tastes have been literally thrown down in the name of passion.

On the show, this relationship their relationship was a protracted negotiation, always more about class rules than apparent emotion. In these photos, it’s a fever. The value of luxury items is trumped by by the value of what I think we’re supposed to assume is wanton middle-aged honeymoon sex, and I find it hard to see a problem in that. I just wish I could have confidence that the attitude invoked by the photos was, like the photoshoot itself, baked into the movie. The outlook on that, based on early reviews, does not look so good.

Enough of all that. I’m typing this from the airport in Paris, where I await my connecting flight to Paris. If all goes according to plan, I’ll arrive in time for a late-night screening of James Toback’s documentary on Mike Tyson, which Anne Thompson says is “too revelatory, too dramatic, too juicy not to be widely viewed.” Then, tomorrow: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys, and Arnaud Desplechin’s Un Conte de Noel, which stars Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric.

Today on FilmCouch we re-examine the intersection of web video and cinema. Specifically, how does a filmmaker find the land of milk and honey that lies somewhere between the flash-in-the-pan uber-meme and making videos for three Youtube contacts. To aid in our search we talk to two internet-famous creators who have found the sweet spot. First up, Brad Neely, the demented mind behind The Professor Brothers, Baby Cakes, and that unbelievably funny George Washington rap video. Then we talk to Finnish director Timo Vuorensola, whose film Star Wreck has found a global audience online. Vuorensola and company are now on to their next project, Iron Sky, a sci-fi romp involving a super secret Nazi Moon colony, which is currently generating funds using a brilliant grass-roots effort called Wreck A Movie.

*Small correction: Paul says the URL for Iron Sky is ironsky.com, it’s not, it’s ironsky.net.

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