Digging For Vacuity

The plan to try and catch up with the summer movies this year has gone completely array. It started off well, back in mid-May, when I saw Iron Man, but since then, nothing. It could have been that it was such a perfect summer movie there was no point seeing anything else.

Anyway, June seemed to be dominated by the fourth Indiana Jones movie, which left everyone looking down in the dumps. What clips I saw, including the last ten minutes, didn’t seem that inspiring. Instead I stayed home with Frank Darabont’s 2003 draft, Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. It was a particularly good read, especially since it omitted the irritating kid. Why George Lucas turned it down only goes to show the man has more money than sense.

Thinking back to the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, made back in the early 1980s for $20 million, compared to the $185 million spent on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull twenty-seven years later, it made me wonder why Lawrence Kasdan hadn’t been invited to write the new film. Dreamcatcher may have been a piece of crap but that was five years ago. Isn’t it time to let the guy out of Hollywood Jail?

Indiana Jones seemed to loom large over the new BBC archaeological drama, Bonekickers, although the title Cock Knockers ultimately seemed far closer to the truth. It was if the viewer was having Time Team (with a matronly Lara Croft running the show), CSI, and Waking the Dead rammed down their throats, along with a hint of The Da Vinci Code, only for them to wildly percolate around before being expelled in the most massive belly laugh.

I never bothered reading Dan Brown’s book because people told me not to bother, and I found the film adaptation mildly diverting because it had quite an interesting central idea. Expect rather than a film, I thought it would have worked far better as a four-, five-, or six-part miniseries. That way more time and effort is used up to decipher centuries-old clues.

The problem with that film, and with the episode of Cock Knockers, was that someone comes along and solves each puzzle at each stage almost instantaneously. When it comes down to the fact that people had been scratching their heads down through the ages because they hadn’t picked the right book off the library shelves, it all turns out to be a bit rubbish.

Mercifully, last night the telephone rang long before the episode had ended and I had a long chat with Work Buddy, which was far more entertaining. In fairness I caught the rest on iPlayer this evening. Before it started, the Parental Guidance box appeared, highlighting the fact that with Adult Themes involved, Bonekickers: Army of God may be unsuitable for young audiences. Obviously that statement should have finished three words earlier.

Although I would like to know how, having spent the whole day down in a muddy trench, they managed to stay so clean. My memory of living in the countryside was that any activity involving a shovel and the turning of any soil usually ended with everyone involved covered in mud. Unfortunately, on television these days, the crap seems to stay in the script.