Movie Review: The Death of Stalin

 

I can't be the only person out there with a list of movies we know we SHOULD be watching instead of streaming Avatar: The Last Airbender again, right? I mean, rewatching Community a fifth time feels a lot easier than slogging through an "important" movie made for grown-ass adults.

Well, I finally tackled two in my to-watch list this past week, and I'm happy to report that the experience was not altogether unpleasant and I will certainly consider watching non-super hero, non-Star Wars, non-animated-or-made-for-tweens  motion pictures again in the near future.

The first was "The Death of Stalin" from 2017, available to steam on Netflix. The movie presents a truncated version on the events of March 1953, leading up to the titular death of Joseph Stalin and the subsequent power struggle among the Soviet Central Committee. But there is much more packed into what would otherwise be a by-the-numbers drama. The movie is directed by Armando Iannucci, Scottish satirist best known in the States as the creator of “Veep,” but who has worked in British television for decades. This movie, though, looks anything but televisual. There's a quality to the film's set-dressing and photography that really evokes a mid-century aesthetic in the colors on the screen. I found it quite visually arresting. 

In any case, the movie balances more than bold color. The tone of the movie is expertly managed, chiefly in its central conceit; the script uses current vernacular speech in lieu of employing the typical Hollywood trope of making people in period movies set in Russia sound either like very posh Brits or like borsht-belt hacks. (Or in the case of “The Hunt for Red October,” literally both.) The effect this has in the framework of the movie is revelatory; it shows starkly that this power struggle was, at day’s end, nothing more than a venal pissing-match between powerful but petty men, regardless of the pageantry of the dictator’s funeral or the real stakes for world-ending catastrophe.

This contrast between high and low comes to brutal ends as Nikita Khrushchev, played as a put-upon cynic by Steve Buscemi, consolidates power in the political equivalent of a back ally mugging. The event puts punctuation to a film that is at turns hilarious and truly frightening.

It's fitting then that the second movie we watched this week is also a visually intriguing study in contrasting tones... but I'll need a few more days to get it all together in my brain. In the mean time, comment below if you've seen "The Death of Stalin." How did it strike you as a work of history? Were you put off by the shenanigans? I didn't even try to make contemporary comparisons, but there is a certain rats-from-sinking-ships quality that maybe begs the question RE: certain current occupants of the White House. Is that a stretch?

The Many Many Fast and Furiouses…Furioi…whatever...

Movie review? Movie review.

Edward here. I've been away from my family for a bit now and that means I'm not actively engaged in the roughly 17 billion distinct tasks lumped under the category of 'parenting.'

What am I doing with my spare time? Am I investigating the rings of Saturn with a telescope? Have I composed a new sonnet? Am I reading the latest in East Coast literary fiction, or even keeping abreast of current events?

Nope. I'm watching [The?] [Fast and] Furious 6. (Are they using articles anymore? Is it "A Fast and Furious?") I'm not sure what the ACTUAL title of the film is, but it turns out it's the SIXTH one of these. Can you even believe that?

I mean seriously, they didn't even get around to making "Casablanca 2: The Road to Berlin." Sad.

Vin Diesel, man.

Vin.

Diesel.

Remember when people made movies with Vin Diesel in them? (I mean other than these.) Those were innocent times, man.

Before we launch into a plot synopsis, a word about spoilers. I'm going to basically assume that, if you're reading this, then you have basic brain functions, like you're not a brain-in-a-jar, or in a vegetative state or Encino Man. Did you see the trailer to FF6? Then the conclusion of the climax is basically spoilt anyway.

And in case you didn't, [SPOILER ALERT!] the good-guys are NOT in that plane!

And since you, dear reader, are a person of distinguishing tastes, or refinement and rare intellect, I know (and you do too) that you will guess every beat of the plot. This is a spoiler-proof movie.

The plot: Vin is a noble and now retired automotive based thief with a gang of wealthy peers who live in exotic and beautiful locations with apparent great wealth. The Rock shows up one day and says that the actress who was written out of the series two movies ago wanted back in so...

…apparently all roads led to this.

It's of interest to The Rock because Michelle Rodriguez (who I could never get behind on Lost) is running with a NEW gang of automotive based thieves! But we know that they're badguys because…well at first we're just told that they're bad'uns, but later we see that there's no loyalty in their gang, no sense of family.

And that's the ethos of this film. Whenever a character needs to do something, well family man.

Family?

Yeah man, family.

Well alright, if you say so.

Why would Paul Walker risk life in prison to return to Los Angeles so that he could get very non-essential information for the Plot? Why does Michelle Rodriguez not shoot Vin Diesel to death when they first meet again? Why does her amnesia (!!!) finally start to wear off? Why does The Rock's character (the epitome of law and order) risk his job and countless American lives in the face of a plot twist projected so far in advance that it was legally obligated to change its mailing address? Family.

Or something.

Anyway, there was so much 'honor among theves' that there was no room in the script for physics, which is fine I suppose. I was also left wondering when Professor Charves Xavier was going to show up, because, aside from being attractive enough, this team of super-thieves are clearly mutants with extraordinary powers. They fly, flinch-off  GSWs, some to the chest, are involved in numerous high-speed roll-over automobile accidents unscathed and use cars to shoot down a plane. [See above.]

A character actually says the following: "How did you know there'd be a car there to break our fall?"

You saw the trailer, right? They are not soaring above a marshmallow factory.

She literally characterizes a car as something that will break your fall (as opposed to "your back" or "every bone in your body.") If fact, it's something you want to break your fall, what with all of its shattery glass, sharp edges and the general metal-ness of its body.

To say nothing of the runway in the climactic end scene, which the BBC has addressed "at length." (See what I did there?)

This is not to say I didn't enjoy the film on its own merits. I actually haven't seen a whole Fast / Furious before (Most of one, bits of two, almost all of three, none of four or five, for the record.) and it's silly and inert, but not odious. I enjoyed speculating whether the Vin Diesel's team paid the congestion charge while they were speeding through London's mysteriously semi-abandoned streets, (Picadilly Circus appears at one points and for some reason, the foot traffic is just absent.) and wondering why the McGuffin was conveniently being transported in a tank in the back of a semi. Wasn't the semi enough?

Oh, and Gina Carano is fun to watch, because you're being clumsily pressed to believe somehow that she wouldn't just take Michelle Rodriguez apart in a fight. I mean she's got thirty pounds of muscle on her. And she is literally a professional, and the movie's all like "No no, this is TOTALLY an even match, bro!"

Uh…sorry movie. No

Anyway, I had a quantifiable-unit's worth of fun. You might too.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

Movie Reviews. I said movie reviews were coming, right?

Oh look, here's one now!

What can I say about 1984's "Streets of Fire?" Well, the obvious thing is where have you BEEN all my life?


The answer's going to be "Bottom of Blockbuster Bargain Bin," isn't it?



It's hard (very very hard) to explain what "Streets of Fire" is. First, there is an obvious relationship between this movie and the director's previous work. Remember the vaguely post-apocalyptic characteristics of the gangs in "The Warriors?"


Egads! Baseball mimes!



That sort of stylized ridiculousness (crucially played completely straight) is back in "Streets of Fire." Set in a relatively peaceful district of a troubled major metropolitan area (Times Square ca. 1982 remixed through The Thunderdome), the architecture, costumes, cars, music and attitudes are a mash-up of post-war Americana and the 1980's view of the post-apocalypse. Rockabilly blends with New Wave. Shoulder pads rub shoulders with pompadours.


This must be Flockabilly...of Seagulls?



If this all seems a little...high concept they keeps the plot pretty tight. Remember Double Dragon?



No. Not this one.


This one.



For those new to the Beat-em-up genre. The large gentleman in the white skinny jeans is about to gut punch the girl and hoist her over his shoulder. The garage in the background opens revealing a wicked red Camero and Billy and Jimmy Lee. They fight to save her. The End.

That's more or less the plot of "Streets of Fire." An ex-soldier fights to save his ex-girlfriend (now a well-regarded music star) from a gang. And there's more to this video game connection as well. Thinking back, beat-em-ups really had a double-dose of earnest silliness. Looking back at the plots of classics like Streets of Rage (you fight a gang that has gone to the trouble of training kangaroo enforcers), Final Fight (whole roast turkey's found in rusty oil drums restore life), and especially River City Ransom...


ESPECIALLY River City Ransom.



...which really latched on the that 1950's America aestetic, these games all share that neon, bubble-gum absurdity that I really enjoyed in the movie.

The cast has a surprising number of familiar ("Hey I KNOW that guy! What is he from?") faces. Rick Moranis plays against type (Alright, he's still a nerd. But he's a pretty commanding one.) and That-Lady-Who-Played-Kevin-Costner's-Wife plays a rough-and-tumble dame.


Who is also an ex-soldier. Army must be cutting back on reenlistment bonuses. Or basing them on some kind of reverse drabness scale.



But it's not the plot or the cast or even that weird setting that makes this one pop. It's actually the dialogue. No. Not at all in a Tarantino way. It's snappy and wry but ultimately goofy, And yet it works. In the same way that Tarantino's movies are steeped in the traditions of the genre films he grew up with, director Walter Hill clearly has an affection for the schlock and grind, yet even in something like "The Warriors" which is all about brawling street gangs, there's an earnestness, an honor to his heros. Tarantino can only rarely film something this blissfully unaware of itself (the bar scene in "Inglorious Basterds" comes to mind).

And it's not silly in the arch and epic and wonderful way the classics like "Flash Gordon" are. This isn't a film that is so bad it's great. In fact, for many it's going to be so bad it's bad. It's more like a film you made with your friends one summer if your friends had access to dozens of exploding motorcycles, a rain machine, the set from "The Outsiders" and the budget to hire Willem Dafoe.


Willem Dafoe moments before the film's climactic railroad hammer fight.



Did I not mention that Willem Dafoe plays the psychotic villain? That he channels Eric Von Zipper via the video for "Beat It?" That the movie ends with a mano-a-mano duel with railroad hammers? Hm. How could that have slipped my mind?

Here's the catch sports-fans: parts of the movie haven't aged well. It opens with the ex-girlfriend in concert belting out an 80's power single. It's a liability. You have to just soldier through that man. You won't regret it. Number 2: it has another medley near the end featuring beloved staple of easy-listening stations "I Can Dream About You." By that point, you'll have likely already invested in the movie and you'll just let it slide. (Protip: avoid eye contact with anyone in the room.) Third: Bill Paxton's in it.


Boo!



However in the plus column we have Ed Begley Jr's cameo, a cigar chompin' sheriff, a railroad hammer fight, and hey! Bill Paxton's in it.


Yay!



Walter Hill said he made the film because he wanted to cram a bunch of awesome stuff into one movie and then he rattled off a list: "...custom cars, kissing in the rain, neon, trains in the night, high-speed pursuit, rumbles, rock stars, motorcycles, jokes in tough situations, leather jackets and questions of honor." If you can read that list without snickering, this might be a movie for you. Meridth waltzed in during the last twenty minutes and found herself enjoying it, but well confused at my enthusiasm. I thought about it a minute and then explained that if I'd seen this movie when I was 10 it would have been my favorite movie ever. At 30, it's flaws are so apparent, but who doesn't want to be a little less cynical about movies these days?

A Season of Sequels

I've put a lot of thought into this and I think the hubris of the evil Galactic Empire is best exemplified through the second Death Star, the one that was under construction in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

Yes, this is what I do in my spare time. Choke on it.

Think about it. The Battle of Yavin (where the first Death Star was destroyed - duh!) took place only a few short years before the debut (and subsequent destruction) of the second Death Star (Battle of Endor). With the Empire's defeat at Yavin, which, remember, was so very catastrophic and unexpected that Grand Moff Tarkin refused even considering evacuation AND where the only survivor of the roughly 1.5 million on-board escaped by accident, you would think that the Empire would have applied those "leassons-learned" to their super-weapon design in the future.

No sir. They just built a bigger mousetrap, because that was really the biggest problem with the first Death Star: it was about 7 times too small a target. And as everyone knows, a gigantic two meter exhaust vent was a little too excessive. I mean if an untrained farmboy could hit it with a proton torpedo well... So they decided to fix that by...wait a minute...they still had gigantic shafts that led through the superstructure of the space-station? Right to its volatile easily-explodable core? Big enough to fly freighters through?!? Aw for Pete's sake!

So the Empire just kept chugging along with nary a thought of changing course in spite of overwhelming evidence that it would be good to change everything about what went wrong before. Wait for it...

Hang on. It even kinda looks like the unfinished second Death Star. Weird.

I've been at it again. I should have known that once Meridth pointed out during the last debacle I had with the dreaded McZoo that I'd be better served if I had a McRib instead of mere bacon to represent pork, I'd have to try it again...this time at full magnitude! So there I was again, eyes resting upon those sundry cartons, each a small treasure chest of cardiac distress. Each taunting me, ever taunting!

NEVERMORE!

They really forced my hand with this one. November was McRib month. For the first time in many years the McRib would be available nationwide (and I mean WIDE) at your local neighborhood McDonalds. It wasn't going to last though. Just a narrow window to squeeze my engorged body through to become one of the elite: a Full-on McZoo veteran.

So I engaged the target.

Ugh! Unbelievable!

That photo says it all, the greasy discarded bread discs, still glistening with unholy nectar. I can't believe I'm finding myself here again. What is wrong with me?!? There has to be some support group for this...



So let's do the math: that's a 1/3 pound Angus burger at the bottom, then the McRib patty, a grilled chicken slab, and a Fillet-o-the-Fish on top. And a red onion. For flair. It may seem incongruous to the entire spirit of this ill-advised exercise to select the grilled chicken in lieu of its fried and breaded brethren. I admit, it's the road less traveled.

Fast-food and a Robert Frost reference. Who loves ya baby?

And brother, that made all the difference. Meridth asked me at half-time how it tasted and I was (and am) ashamed to say it's extraordinarily delicious. So much better than the McZoo I. I'm forced to conclude that it is because the Fillet-o-your-Fish and the southern-style fried chicken I had with the first McZoo simply overloaded the grease-center of the taste-bundle at the apex of my spinal column. (I looked it up on wikipedia.) This time around with the Fillet-o-Phish as the sole "breaded/fried" entrant, I got the blendation of greasy-beefy, sauced-an-mold-injected, faux-healthy and breaded/fried. It's all about balance, friend.

Yep, balance. It's the peak-level yoga position of meals, right there.

Am I going to hell for this? Maybe. Between all the factory-farm terror, the oppression of the hispanophonic McDonalds workers required to bring me the meal, the amount of exercise I will have to (and already have had to) do to purge my roller-coaster -ride of a body AND the remote possibility that some impressionable thing will read this blog-entry and foolishly try to emulate, or worse still, to top my absurd quest for gonzo-food creation...

Hey kids! Why not top your favorite pizza with MORE PIZZA?!?

...there's certainly a case to be made for my infernal eternal rest. That being said, I regret nothing.

And will never ever do this again.

Film Review: Airborne (1993)

Today's film review is a delightful little blast from the nineties called 'Airborne.' Don't remember it? Yeah, it was slight, unimportant, nonsensical really. No big stars, no real plot, no chance during awards season. Yet I remember seeing it at 12 or 13 and pretty much loving it. Why? It's got roller-blading (or in-line skating if you prefer) and a delightful fish-out-of-water story of a cool guy in a square place: Cincinnati.



Did you watch the trailer? What's not to love?
The plot is an oh-so-clever reversal on 'The Karate Kid;' cool surfer guy Mitchell "The Goose" Goosen from California is forced to move to Cincinnati when his professorial parents go on a research trip to Australia. His laid back style, wise adherence to the principles of Mahatma Gandhi and less-than-macho hair attract the aggressions of the tough-guy jocks and hijinks ensue.

In this clip, you get the whole, unmitigated Mitchell Goosen experience. Both barrells of highly-concentrated, California-grown 'laid-back.' This is what everyone in California sounds like, right?



Did I mention that Seth Green plays his unconfident, formless cousin who he convinces to be himself to earn the love of a plain girl?



That really elevates things.

So finally, Mitchell's parents send him his in-line skates (or roller-blades, if you will) in the mail and he finds an outlet for his frustrations. We are then treated to a montage of Mitch "bladin'" across Cincinnati collecting a following of like-minded shredders and BMX kids, some so enthralled by his moves, they depart the stoops upon which they were loitering with nary a thought to their abandoned juice-boxes (I'm not making this up.) In the meantime, Mitch meets an intelligent and prudent young girl (she carries an umbrella) with whom he wiles away an afternoon in a botanical garden, proving his sensitive bona fides by identifying sundry flowers, yet asserting his manly-virtues by rebelliously skating throught the verdant horticultural expo. How awesome is that?

Naturally, his inamorata is the little sister of Jack, the jock's ringleader. What's a skating long-haired pacifist landlocked surfer to do? Naturally, he has a lucid dream about the situation in which he finds himself on 'the perfect wave' which is guarded by a hispanophone shark named Pepe who says: "La ola es mia." The wave is mine. Whoa.

So Mitch proceeds to ingratiate himself into Jack's crowd by participating in roller-hockey contests against "the preps," wealthy-types from a rival school. Also: The preps ringleader, an albino named Blaine, is the unwilling ex-boyfriend of Mitch's gal-pal. So there is that.

The epic epic climax is initiated when Mitch and the boys challenge their rivals to a race down Cincinnati's Devil's Backbone. (An aside: I assumed this Devil's-Backbone-in-Cinncinati thing was a bunch'a hooey, but there is a Devil's Backbone Road in that fine mid-west city. Go figure.) Will Mitch be forced to abandon his Gandhi-inspired pacifism because of the brutality of this race? Will the preps finally be brought low? Will Mitch find true love with that girl who's name I can't remember?

Seriously, you need to see it to find out.

Oh yeah, and Jack Black's in this movie.

Seriously, watch it on Instant Play on your Netflix. Do it today!

Why I Need Meridth: A Gonzo Tale

When Meridth isn't around I have the tendency to go off the rails just a bit. When she was in NYC for the summer of 2006 I watched all three (at the time) Terminator movies back to back to back, had a severe case of food poisoning, worked 60 hours a week, ate 1500 Otter Pops and ran seven miles every morning. It was a gonzo summer. Suffice it to say that Meridth centers me in an important stabilizing way and when she's gone, things tend to become pear-shaped, like an ill-formed lump of clay on a potter's wheel...


...which leads us to this peculiar photograph. What is it? What does it mean? What does it have to do with my dignity? It's simple really...


BEHOLD THE McZOO!!

Yes, like the cast-off cigarette butts tossed aside by the wheezing emphysemic, these buns are the husks lesft over in the construction of this...this...monstrosity...this abomination. What is it you ask? What drives a man to so alter the natural constitution of the 'burger' phenotype? What was its unholy aim? It's an elegant theory actually...like the ancients in their construction of the Tower of Babel, I only sought to reach the heavens of deliciousness by melding all the varieties of animal flesh offered on the McDonalds menu into one Voltron-like mountain of meat. How could this be a sin?


So one Saturday last month I rolled up to the drive through and ordered one Third Pound Angus Bacon Cheeseburger, one Chicken Selects Chicken Sandwich, and one Fillet-o-Fish...

(Meridth: "It would have been cooler AND grosser if you had the McRib." Edward: "Don't I know it, but you have to work with what's available and Bacon = Pig. Good enough for me.")


Looking at them all just sitting there with their accusing stares was intimidating. Like the Tell-Tale Heart, I was consumed with madness. Working swiftly and with surgical precision I deconstructed the sandwiches, unveiling their meaty cores and combined them, knitting flesh-to-flesh like a culinary Doctor Frankenstein. And the result was no less monstrous and incapable of being loved.


In his epistle to the Romans, Paul called me out as one of the "inventors of evil things" chasing that stupendous and gonzo line between culinary genius and coronary disaster. I ask you: what was the result?


I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could combine so many different meats, I never stopped to think if I should!

Next month I'm going to try to stick two pieces of each type of meat on one sandwich and call it the McNoah's Ark.

I like this guy...

It's Edward's birthday today, so I've been thinking about how stinking lucky I am to claim this guy. First off he's a pretty great dad. Uschi's certainly a fan.He's also a pretty entertaining friend(Here we are moving from Monterey to San Angelo, only taking what we can in our car. Everything but the kitchen sink anyway.)Hooray for Edwards and hooray for Birthdays.

My Brother-in-Law Looks Like This

It's true.




And obviously I mean the guy on the right.

Not Krusty.

The Raccoon Mafia

Yesterday morning at about 0445 I was on my way to work driving south on the CA 1 when a raccoon darted in front of my car. I hit him. I was a bit bummed out about it at first, but soon forgot about the whole thing.

Until this morning. Our recycling had been ravaged and raccoons had pooed on my Subaru. Although there are raccoons a'plenty in our neighborhood, they'd never bothered us until last night. Coincidence? I'm sure.

"We gots a message from Rocco da Mask! Dat palooka you whacked was made. There's gotta be consequences!"

Mini-burger MATCH UP!

Just cos March is through, must the MADNESS really stop. "No sir, it must not."

With that, I bring you a welterweight showdown of epic scale and truly vivid dramatic scope. These beefed up contenders may seem small, but in a mano-e-mano, no-hold-barred, duke 'em up (or out) who emerges victorious?

In this corner the crown prince of the franchise characterized by royal deliciousness and a laissez-faire "Have it Your Way" attitude, the Burger King Burger Shot.

And the challenger, the blue-collar man with a shady past, the Jack-in-the-Box Mini-Sirloins.

Even before I got my hot little hands on these twin treasure chests, the opening salvos of the coming war were released. You see, the BK Burger Shots were almost half as expensive (burger for burger) than the Mini-Sirloins. One to BK for price.

Still, that lack of cost shows. Lets go to the side-by-side comparison...

...would you look at that. That deflated sad-sack on the right is the contender from BK, while that robust fellow to his right is the Jack-in-the-Box entry.

And look at the wreck that is the alleged "tear-an'-share" concept BK has given us. Between you and me, it looks like an open lesion. Appearance has to go to Jack.

Lets talk taste! First up, the Burger Shot:

Okay this thing has a soft, golden, carb-riddled bun that has the texture of cotton-candy and the weight of a Buick. Because of the aforementioned 'tear and share' concept, it has the propensity to get pretty manhandled in transport from box to gob, but no harm, no foul, right?

The first-taste impression was a little disconcerting. Dominant taste? Ketchup. Hmm. There is however a tasty pickle and a bit of gooey yellow cheese-fooode which aren't so bad. Inside, the meat is nothing to write home about, (Har.) and even comes with what I MUST assume are artificially applied grill marks. Really, if you've eaten at Burger King in the last sixty years, the taste of the burger shot will not surprise you in the least. What was surprising was the little touch of rare-ness in the burgers I got. See exhibit No. 1-

I donno if you can see that sickly pinkness, but there you go. I imagine that it can't take too long to grill these little firecrackers, so maybe mine came right off the heat with a quickness. Still, as I said, the taste was mediocre at best and outside the novelty of eating a really small burger, you'd do just as well ordering a cheeseburger.


Look at this thick little beastie! And no, the bun doesn't have that "spun-from-a-unicon's-mane" lightness but they gave it a kiss of toasty, which was a nice touch. And the beef! Look at them side by side:

Ah! Don't be fooled by that pickle on the left. That BK patty is about as thick as a hobo's wallet and, compared to Jack's, about as tasty. The beef on these things was good quality, make no mistake. That was the dominant flavor of the Mini-Sirloin. Just beefy-beef. The onions too, were tasty and welcome. All around, good news for lovers of diminutive ground-meat sandwiches.

Seriously, clear winner here. Taste trumps value. Looks are just a bonus.



Just don't eat them all in one go.

So...how was it?

In a word...kinda. In three words...yeah, I guess.

In some more words...I grew up with the Indiana Jones movies as these epic ideals of hyper-manhood, adventure and reverence for ancient cultures. They were amazing movies that blended humor and action and Nazi-fighting into this crisp package, tastier than tempura sushi. In short, I have a pretty high opinion of the Indiana Jones franchise.

How can 2008's Crystal Skull really live up? In 1985's flawed Temple had come out after the rest of the series had percolated into the legendary status it holds, would I be as ready as I currently am to gloss over the apparent flaws? Is it time that makes Skull so hard to love?

This is not to say that there aren't moments. There are instances where I almost lost myself, where I thought that I was in classic Indy territory once again. And then a gopher joke, a pack of swinging monkeys or a crotch gag would remind me that I'm still firmly in George Lucas' world where the beloved icons of my youth lose their teeth and their chutzpah in the name of tying up narrative loose ends and getting cheap laughs. (Remember the poop joke in 1999's Phantom Menace?)

Let's not be hyperbolic. It's a better movie than most. Typically a movie this good would easily make my year's top three. The problem is I was not sufficiently blown away. It was not sufficiently superlative. I was not as dazzled as I ought to have been. Is this an unfair standard? Perhaps, but when you place the "Indiana Jones" name on what otherwise would have been "just" a decent adventure movie, you expose yourself to the exacting standards of the past incarnations. It's just the nature of the beast.

After you've seen the movie, read this online discussion of it. It touches all the relevant bits and contains some thoughtful musings about nostalgia and fair critiquing. Honestly, any real fan of the series will have mixed feelings about the movie, but I can't imagine the reinvention of a beloved icon after 19 years off-screen having any less drastic an effect.

In the end I'm just grateful that it wasn't as bad as it might have otherwise been. Remember the Prequel Trilogy? Yeah, me neither.

MREs, Candy and the Black Market

Let's talk about MREs. For the uninitiated, MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) are precooked prepackaged (in some cases, pre-chewed and digested) meals the army uses when they are in the field. You can buy them at Army Surplus stores if you'd like an example. They come in a heavy plastic brown bag and break down further into maybe 5-7 pouches, each a processed food item.Your typical MRE might have say... Italian Chicken with shell pasta. In addition to your entree, you get a small pouch of trail mix, an envelope of powdered electrolyte drink, a pouch containing a palm sized piece of wheat snack bread, a pouch of fortified cheese spread (with bacon) and a fig bar. Ideally, the MRE contains 1000-1300 calories to sustain soldiers in the field who are burning more calories, but with so many pouches of snackish foods the Basic training soldier typically turns quickly to economics and trade.


Allow me to back up a moment: In basic training one isn't given a lot of time or a lot of choice concerning food. Granted in the chow hall soldiers can select from as any as 5 entrees and side choices, not to mention an alright salad bar. However one typically has a mere 7 minutes to wolf down their food. This tension, combined with a logical lack of any and all junk food and a blanket ban on any food outside the chow hall (i.e. no between meal snacks) makes the typical BCT soldier somewhat edgy about his/her food.

Back to MREs. Soldiers can get pretty picky about MREs even though we're not allowed to choose our own. It's a lottery with the lucky winning the popular choices (Beef Ravioli because it has stellar side items) and losers taking what's left (Tuna on pita bread because it's measly.) On top of that, and again, although it's ostensibly prohibited, there is a lively market for trading sides. Fortified peanut butter often trades slightly higher than it's counterpart cheese spreads (in plain, bacon or jalapeño) and Hooah Bars (like an Army Powerbar) run much higher than carrot pound cake but are roughly equal to mint chocolate brownies, which are pretty rare. The trading of entree items happens more rarely but it's not unheard of. Some soldiers go so far as to trade their entrees away for a pair of wheat snack breads and a fortified peanut butter, but this is rare as it will likely leave the trader somewhat hungary.

Now rarely but occasionally a package of M&Ms or Skittles will be inside a MRE. Some platoons are allowed to eat theirs in spite of aforementioned ban on junk food. In our platoon, however, we are not allowed. Sadly only the naive (like myself) ever really turn candy over to the drill sergeants. Part of the Gimbel tendency to rabidly avoid trouble, I suppose. Most soldiers who find candy secret it away under their body armor, into their briefs or, if they are foolish, into their pockets. Pockets are for the foolish because of the random contraband shakedowns that happen on occasion.

Yes many like to eat the candy but there is also a vigorous black market for goods of this nature. I have heard, for example, that a Snickers bar will go for about $8 and soda runs for about a dollar an ounce. Getting it is the tricky part because you have to know a private with PX privileges.

Anyway, all this explains why you guys have to curb the impulse I know you're all feeling to send me care packages fulll of crispy snack crackers, chewy cookies or scrummy fudge. Fight the impulse! Your letters will have to suffice. As soon as I get home you can bet that I'm gonna whip up a batch of fudgy brownies with walnuts first thing. Yum!

~Edward