A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2021 Paramount Home Media Distribution and Lucasfilm Ltd.  Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s mid-afternoon here in my corner of Florida on Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Currently, the temperature is 83˚F (28˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 73% and the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 9 MPH (15 KM/H), the heat index is 92˚F (33˚C). The forecast for the rest of the day calls for occasional thunderstorms throughout the afternoon and evening hours; the high will be 85˚F (30˚C). Tonight, storms will continue to pass through our area, and the low will be 74˚F (24˚C). The Air Quality Index (AQI) is 34 or  Good . If you recall, I ordered the Indiana Jones: 4-Movie Collection 4K UHD Blu-ray box set on Amazon as a pre-order on March 16. Paramount Home Media Distribution scheduled a release date of Tuesday, June 8 – just a few days before the 40 th Anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s theatrical release (June 12, 1981). Initially, Amazon – basing its estimates on Paramou...

He is always close at hand, in a very positive way, musically; he’s extremely fond of music. His greatest pleasure, he tells me…and I believe him…is the time when he can come sit on the stage and listen to the orchestra play as we accompany the film. – John Williams on Steven Spielberg, in an interview with Lukas Kendall Not too long ago in a country not so far away, adventurer-archeologist, Indiana Jones, embarked on a historically significant search for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. Joining him on this supernatural treasure hunt was the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of composer John Williams. Were it not for many crucial bursts of dramatic symphonic accompaniment, Indiana Jones would surely have perished in a forbidding temple in South America or in the oppressive silence of the great Sahara Desert. – Steven Spielberg in his director’s note for the 1981 album of the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack In the spring of 1981, Columbia Records – which at the time...

After the cancellation by ABC of his ambitious and expensive television series,  The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,  executive producer George Lucas tried several methods to save the show and give viewers - especially pre-teen kids and young adults - its trademark mix of education and entertainment. For instance, after ABC axed  Young Indy  from its lineup (citing the show's lavish budgets as its primary reason), Lucasfilm Limited produced four made-for-TV movies which aired on cable's Family Channel over a two-year period (1994-1996).  Another life-saving measure was the hiring of film editor T.M. Christopher, who not only had worked with Lucas as an editor on the Classic  Star Wars  Trilogy, but also with Milos Forman in cutting 1984's  Amadeus. Christopher (who also was involved in the 1997 updating of the original  Star Wars  films into their still controversial Special Edition versions)  was assigned to  re-edit 44 episod...

Blogger's Note: This review was written originally for Amazon sometime in November of 2003, then updated (twice) for Epinions. It is not about the four-movie box set which was released in late 2008 after Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, nor is it about the soon-to-be-released Indiana Jones Blu-ray box set. Since the advent of the Digital Video Disc format in the late 1990s, there were two long-awaited movie trilogies: the Classic Star Wars films and the Adventures of Indiana Jones. The former was first released in September of 2004, but the daring fedora-wearing archaeologist had almost a year's headstart when Lucasfilm and Paramount Home Video released a 4-disk set in November 2003. The Adventures of Indiana Jones  box set consists of the first three films of the George Lucas-Steven Spielberg collaborative creation, 1981's  Raiders of the Lost Ark , 1984's  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom , and 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Cru...