Disneyland Resort Trips Report – June/July 2008 Part 1: The Food

July 9, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner2 Comments

The headline for this post is not a typo. This report is going to cover two different stays at the Disneyland Resort over just a few short weeks of time. We first spent 4 nights at the resort on June 22-25 and then stayed overnight again on July 4th.

We have a membership in the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) timeshare and had originally planned to make a trip to Walt Disney World in late June right after our son completed his first year of pre-school. After our October trip last year, we found that our son had become pretty skittish on rides and attractions and we decided it probably would be wise to delay our trip until December to increase the chance that he would grow out of that a bit. Canceling that trip meant that we ended up with a number of DVC points that we had to use by August or end up forfeiting them.

My parents live in the Orlando area and they decided to come up to visit us during the same period that we had originally planned our Florida trip. They were interested in staying down at the Disneyland Resort for a few days, so it then made sense to use up those points with a stay down there. After researching, we discovered that we had the points available to cover the cost of a concierge-level room at Disney’s Grand Californian hotel for those 4 nights in June with enough left over for the 4th of July as well. We had used points to stay there on July 4th for the last few years (avoiding the need to drive home after the fireworks) and it was very appealing to do that again this year while also having the chance to enjoy a longer, multi-day stay at the Grand Californian as well.

Instead of trying to test my memory with a day-to-day report on our visit, I’m going to categorize my report. In this first part, I am going to concentrate on our dining experiences during the trip. I’ll likely add additional parts to this over the next few days reporting on other aspects of the trip.

Character Dining

My parents arrived mid-afternoon on June 22 and we decided that a character dinner would be a good way to start the trip. Around the 60 day mark before our trip, we made reservations at Goofy’s Kitchen (at the Disneyland Hotel) for that first-night dinner. Our reservations were at 6pm and we were happy that they were able to seat us within about 5-10 minutes of our arrival at the restaurant. Walk-up guests were being told that there was a 90 minute wait, so reservations are definitely a very good idea here.

Before seating, they gathered our family together for a photo with Pluto. About halfway through the meal someone came to our table to try and sell us a pretty overpriced (around $40, if I recall) package of the photos. They did the same thing when we did the character breakfast at PCH Grill later in the week (this time with Daisy Duck), so this must now be standard at the character meals. In both cases, we declined as the packages were pretty costly and the photos weren’t that great. I don’t remember encountering this there before (although it has been a while since we last did a character meal at DLR) and I don’t really care for this system. I don’t mind the pre-meal photos, but I’d much rather they use Photopass to sell the photos. At least at PCH, a CM did offer to also take a couple photos with our own camera, something that wasn’t offered at Goofy’s Kitchen.

The food at Goofy’s was ok, but nothing special. This was consistent with our past experiences there. We have always found that you definitely go there much more for the character-experience than for the food. The food is definitely better than a low-end buffet like a Hometown Buffet, but I would also say it is closer to that than it to what you typically find at a high-end hotel buffet such as at the better Vegas hotels or at somewhere like a Hilton or a Hyatt. Those used to the Walt Disney World character meals are also apt to be disappointed by Goofy’s based on our typical experiences.

The buffet does feature carved prime rib as a main entree and it was pretty decent. On my first trip up there, I did get a piece that turned out to be quite a bit more rare than I generally like (and I prefer beef to be medium to medium-rare), but I can’t fault them too much for that since I didn’t specify a preference. On a subsequent trip up there, I was easily able to get another slice that was more to my taste. I do think they should probably ask before serving the meat that rare, but it still wasn’t that big a deal. I did think the rest of the selection at the buffet was somewhat more limited than it should have been, which was not unexpected based on past visits. For example, I was really surprised that they only offered one variety of roasted potatoes (which I couldn’t eat because they had onions) and didn’t even have the mashed potatoes and gravy that are usually commonplace at this kind of buffet.

I actually thought that the children’s section of the buffet was a better selection. They had a couple different kinds of pizza, chicken strips, popcorn shrimp (I actually had quite a bit of this), macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti. Our son actually completed finished off two pretty full plates of food, which was a larger meal than we are used to him finishing. He especially liked the spaghetti and ate two pretty big helpings of that.

Ranking the Pixar Movies

July 1, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I read a couple Disney-fan discussion boards and every time a new Pixar movie comes out, there is inevitably a thread or two in which everyone ranks all of their films to date. This is probably a result of the relatively few films they have made so far (9) and the game will likely start to die out as the number of titles makes it increasingly difficult. For now, I figured I’ll play along, but do it as a blog entry where I can be more easily verbose with explanations.

I do see a distinction between a list of "favorites" and "best" when discussing works of art or entertainment and this list is going to be favorites. What that means is that the order is based more on how much I enjoy the movies and am apt to return to them. Essentially, this is based more on the "fun" factor than on the full collection of merits. Finally, the rankings can’t help but be a bit arbitrary and I openly admit that the order could easily change, especially based on how recently I’ve seen each movie.

1. Monsters, Inc. – Of all the Pixar films, this is the one that I am most apt to stop and watch if I come across it airing on TV or cable. The film succeeds due to great casting, humor that hits the mark with an amazing consistency, truly exciting action sequences, and a story that takes place in a fully-realized and unique world of its own. Finally, the closing shot of this movie is right up there towards the top of the list of the all time best endings. While all of this is in service of a somewhat conventional buddy-movie plot, the whole package simply works.

2. Toy Story 2 – Pixar’s only sequel to date brilliantly expanded on the great characters and concept of the company’s first feature to create a more fully-realized film. The movie is uproariously funny (it has the most out-loud laughs of any Pixar film) and it also quite touching at times. The new characters created for the sequel (Jessie, Stinky Pete, and Bullseye) are not extraneous in any way, instead greatly expanding the overall storytelling. The movie also contains the single best musical sequence of any Pixar film with the highly moving "When She Loved Me". This is a very rare case of a sequel that surpassed the original, largely through the careful application of the experience that the Pixar artists had gained with their first two films.

3. Wall-E – If I were putting together a "best" list instead of a "favorites" list, I’m pretty sure this would top it. Pixar’s newest film is also their most bold an most creative. I’ve seen some online debate about whether the film (especially the first 20 minutes or so) is mainly charming and funny or if it is mostly dark and sad. The brilliance of the film is that it is all of those. They were able to take a fairly downbeat scenario and present it in a way that is both palatable and, ultimately, even optimistic. Much of this is accomplished thanks to the title character being Pixar’s most instantly endearing and sympathetic creation to date. The film’s use of visual storytelling and incredibly detailed sound effects design gives it an exhilaratingly unconventional feel. I can see the possibility that this one could move up on my favorites list as well with additional viewing and the passage of time.

4. Ratatouille – This one has the sharpest writing and most sophisticated story of all of the Pixar films to date. While all of Pixar’s films have appealed to a fairly broad age range, this one does seem to skew a bit older than their other films, probably because the appreciation for fine food that is at the heart of the story really has to come with age and experience. The film does still contain its fair share of visual gags and punch-lines, but it also contains a great deal of wit and character-driven humor. This one would likely be a close 2nd on my "best" list.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

June 8, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I’m writing about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull after it has been out for a couple weeks and has probably already been seen by a pretty large percentage of those that were particularly enthusiastic about seeing it. Because of that, this is going to be a commentary rather than a "should you go see it" type of review and I’m not going to worry about avoiding spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film and still plan to, consider yourself warned.

I honestly can’t remember being this conflicted about a movie recently. I can definitely say that I enjoyed the movie and that I even am interested in seeing it again. At the same time, I’m initially did not feel inclined to say it really was a good movie. That is part of the reason why I didn’t get around to writing this until about 2 weeks after seeing the film. In fact, I’ve even gone back and revised this opening paragraph to be a bit more upbeat after realizing that the rest of my review is a lot more positive than I really expected it to be.

Right after seeing the movie, my first instinct was to tell various family and friends that this was the best movie I had ever seen that was made from a really bad script. As I’ve thought about it more, I even think the script was generally pretty good as I recall a lot of snappy and amusing dialog, some good character moments, and well-chosen action sequences. I think the real problem with the film is that the underlying story is very poorly conceived. I really do think that this may be the best example I’ve ever seen of a very talented group of filmmakers and actors making the very best of some pretty bad underlying material.

I’ve seen a lot of comments about how much mileage this movie was able to get out of nostalgia for the character and the earlier films, but I think that wouldn’t really go very far if there weren’t an awful lot that is right with the movie. First and foremost, it still looks and feels like an Indiana Jones movie. Although he played the character as noticeably older, and perhaps a tad wiser, Harrison Ford seemed to pretty effortlessly slip back into the role. I actually hope that other filmmakers will note his performance here and recognize that he is clearly still very capable of playing action heroes. I think he is an actor that has mostly been misused for the past few years.

It was great seeing Karen Allen’s return as Marion Ravenwood, even if she really didn’t have all that much to do in the film. The interplay between her and Indy was pretty much on the mark, really. It was very reminiscent of their relationship in the original film, but with some additional history. While it has been somewhat controversial, I was really happy with the decision to end the film with Indy and Marion’s wedding. I felt it was a good reflection of the maturity that both characters have achieved with age. I also thought it provided some appropriate closure to a series that I suspect probably really is finished, in spite of the various rumors to the contrary.

I do think that Shia LaBeouf was appealing and well cast as Indy and Marion’s son, Mutt, but I can’t really say that I thought the character came close to being distinctive enough to carry a film on his own as has been rumored. With that in mind, and considering how long it took to get Spielberg and Ford’s schedules to coincide (along with that of George Lucas) and all of them to agree on a script, I just don’t see too much of a chance of another film. I could be wrong about this (and almost hope that I am), but this really does seem like one final nostalgic return rather than the re-start of the series.

For the nostalgia factor, I was really happy to see the brief tributes to Marcus Brody (and, consequently, the late Denholm Elliot) as well as to Indy’s father. It was disappointing that they weren’t able to coax Sean Connery out of retirement for at least a brief cameo, but I was glad that they still found a couple very effective ways of acknowledging the character, particularly in the context of the new father/son relationship between Indy and Mutt. As for Marcus, I greatly enjoyed his sort of bumbling comic relief in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and, thus, thought it was absolutely perfect to end a chase sequence by having the bad guys run into his statue, causing the head to go through their windshield. That felt to me like a very sharp, highly in-character tribute.

The overall look, pacing, and rhythm of the film also seem right. While Steven Spielberg has really matured a lot as a filmmaker over the last 20 years, I think it is great that he still likes to periodically go back to the type of popcorn-movie that generally launched his career. If he had been making nothing but films like Schindler’s List and Munich in the years since the last Indiana Jones film, I’m not sure if he could have slipped back into this series effectively. I’m glad he still does occasional projects like the Jurassic Park films, War of the Worlds, and this one.

Some have complained that the now-standard use of CGI animation does give some of the special effects work in this film a less realistic appearance than in the earlier films, but I honestly didn’t really notice it much. I really wouldn’t say that the special effects work in the series ever really fit the definition of "realistic", regardless of the technique used. The effects may look a bit different this time, but I can honestly say that it wasn’t something that crossed my mind while watching the film.

I thought the action sequences and chases were very well-staged and, just like in the previous films, lots of fun. Yes, several of the sequences were completely absurd, but that is not only what I expect from this series, but a large part of its charm. I’ve been a tad surprised to see other reviews that have criticized sequences like Mutt’s Tarzan swing through the jungle or Indy surviving a nuclear blast in a lead refrigerator. Sure, both sequences were insanely over-the-top and kind of silly, but they also both put a huge grin on my face. I really think this kind of pretty much fearless over-the-top action is a big part of the charm of these films.

I’ve now talked a lot about what was right with the film. As I stated at the top of the review, my overall reaction to the film was pretty mixed mainly due to pretty serious story issues. To put it simply, I think the plot is just plain too complicated. The Indiana Jones films have pretty much provided classic examples of Alfred Hitchcock’s concept of a MacGuffin, the term he used to refer to the object that everyone in the film wants to find, steal, protect, or destroy. What that object is or does really shouldn’t matter at all or occupy much time or attention in the film.

In the previous films, the MacGuffin could be explained in just a few words, thus requiring very little of the running time for exposition and allowing the films to maintain a previously almost unprecedented pacing. In both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy was seeking Biblical objects that were already well-known to most people in the audience. Even those that didn’t already know about the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail could pretty quickly get the point when told that the ark was the box that held the tablets containing the 10 commandments and that the grail was the cup used by Christ at the last supper. The ark’s "power to level mountains" and the grail’s ability to grant endless life could also be explained quickly and easily. While the Sankara Stones that were sought in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom were not a well-known artifact, the film pretty much skipped any serious explanation other than that one of the stones brought good luck to a village and that all of them would bring great power when brought together.

In the new film, the crystal skull of the title is essentially a MacGuffin once again, but this time they have given it a much too complicated back-story. To be honest, I’m not even sure I even entirely understood it by the time the film was over. As best as I can tell, the skulls belonged to alien visitors (I think inter-dimensional instead of from outer space) who were, apparently, the gods that were worshiped by the ancient Aztecs, who built their lost city of gold as a tribute. When brought together at the temple in the lost city, they apparently opened some sort of a doorway while also imparting psychic abilities or some sort of eternal knowledge to anyone who was looking into their eyes. It also, for some reason, triggered a launch of a flying saucer that either was traveling to space or to another dimension or something. Anyway, I think that not entirely-successful attempt at a description kind of illustrates the problem here.

The major impact of the over-complicated plot is that this film pretty much slows to a halt multiple times as it makes not-entirely successful attempts at explaining what was going on. Prior to this film, slow spots in an Indiana Jones movie almost seemed unthinkable. A big part of the problem is that even Indy’s motivations and role in the whole adventure become somewhat murky by the end of the movie, particularly after a scene where Indy briefly is forced to stare at the skull and then starts claiming that some of his activities are what it told him to do. In the past films, the characterization was really a pretty simple mix of a desire for "fortune and glory" and a somewhat overdeveloped sense of altruism, again providing an easy framework for action sequences fueled by dogged determination.

The problem with the story also impacted the effectiveness of some of the supporting characters. Cate Blanchett’s villain was particularly hurt by confusing characterization and motivations. I didn’t mind so much that her desire to find the skull was more based on personal ambition than loyalty to her Soviet leaders as that was a tradition that was pretty much established in the first film with Belloq, who remains the best of the series’ villains. The bigger problem is that it really was hard to figure out what those motivations actually were. We were given some indications that she had psychic abilities (or at least thought she did), but that didn’t really amount to much until the confusing climax. I guess she was ultimately seeking knowledge, but that aspect of her personality almost seemed to come out of nowhere at the end of the film. It certainly didn’t help much that Blanchett’s performance was a bit too cartoonish, with a pretty uncomfortable resemblance to Natasha from the old Bullwinkle cartoons…

Another weak link was John Hurt’s role as one of Indy’s old colleagues who had initially discovered the skull. By the time the film catches up with the character, he had apparently gone mad as a result of staring too long at the skull, but it is never entirely clear why that is or why he suddenly returns to normal at the film’s climax. The character is generally inscrutable to the point of being fairly irritating. I think the film would have been better off either eliminating the character entirely or having him remain missing (leaving clues) until the finale.

I will say that my initial reaction to hearing that the film involved aliens was generally not very positive, but I now don’t really think that was a bad idea. Necessarily, the film shifted the setting from the 1930s to the 1950s and a storyline involving aliens fits in pretty well with the types of serial adventure films from that time period. I think the big mistake was that they way overdeveloped the idea. Had the story involved a very straightforward and simple artifact that just happened to be alien in origin (instead of religious like in the other films), I think it would have worked just fine. The error was in seriously trying to over-explain the whole thing. We have long heard that Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford wanted to do another film, but it was long delayed by trying to get the right story and script. In a lot of ways, the end result really seems like the work of too many screenwriters severely over-thinking what needed to be nothing more than a lightweight framework for lots of action and adventure.

Despite these huge misgivings about the story, the good really does outweigh the bad here. As I said at the beginning, I have felt very conflicted about the movie and I think this review probably reflects that. Looking back at what I wrote, the first half reads a lot like a rave review and the second half reads like a pan. I think that does basically reflect the two sides to the movie itself, but what is good is so good that I would have hated to miss it. For me, I think it boils down to being glad that we got one more Indiana Jones film after all these years while also feeling like it was something of a missed opportunity.

A Dozen Years as a Californian

May 31, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

This week marks the 12th anniversary since I moved from Columbus, Ohio to Southern California. Those 12 years have resulted in so many major changes in almost every aspect of my life that looking back at that move almost feels like I’m looking back at a different lifetime.

My father (who has now retired to Florida) was a social worker and typically worked in non-profit or government agencies that didn’t always have a lot of long-term stability. As a result, we moved around a lot. Prior to my move to California, I lived for various lengths of time in Illinois, Iowa, Florida, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. As long as I can remember, though, I always had a dream of eventually settling in the Los Angeles area once I grew up and was on my own. I never really liked the cold mid-western winters (I don’t care for snow) and the stories of the very mild Southern California weather along with my affinity for the entertainment industry combined to form a very appealing destination.

After finishing college in Milwaukee, I actually sent a lot of resumes and applications out to various California-based companies, but without any success. I ended up spending that summer with my parents back in Ohio and then found a job with Columbus-based CompuServe, the online information service pioneer. Although I spent the next 4 1/2 years living and working in Columbus, I never really lost the interest in a life in California and I even privately set a 5-year goal for eventually figuring out how to make that change.

In 1995, my sister and I started having conversations about vacationing together in Los Angeles. She lived in Orlando (actually still does), so our idea was for each of us to fly out there separately, but split the cost of hotel accommodations, rental car, and other expenses. We ended up actually making the trip in September of that year. Other than a family trip when I was too young to remember, this was my first actual visit to the Los Angeles area. During those 10-days, we visited many common tourist destinations (Hollywood, Disneyland, Universal Studios, Magic Mountain, Santa Monica Pier, Griffith Park, Century City, Beverly Hills, etc.) and, thanks to a friend that I knew from the old GEnie information service, we even were able to visit the Paramount studio lot and the non-public part of the Universal lot. As a special splurge, we even ate dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s famous Spago restaurant one night.

My reaction to this vacation was that my expectations for the area were pretty much met. What had been a personal dream based largely on stories and reputation was now much more rooted in reality. I returned to Columbus determined to start a very concentrated job search with a goal of getting moved as soon as possible. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I was starting to see the future at CompuServe as somewhat limited with the rise of AOL to industry leader and the growing influence of the World Wide Web. I was increasingly aware that my career would benefit from a change of employer, regardless of whether I moved or not.

Indiana Jones Memories: Last Crusade

May 21, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

Click here for my post on Raiders of the Lost Ark
Click here for my post on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The 5 years between the second and third Indiana Jones sequels were pretty eventful ones in my life, as is probably typical for the years between age 14 and 19. In early 1985 (a little over 1/2 year after Temple of Doom came out), my family moved from Flint to Kenosha, Wisconsin. My parents ended up making another move to Sandusky, Ohio just 3 years after that, although I was attending college in Milwaukee by that time.

We ended up all seeing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on opening day at a theater in Cleveland, so the movie’s opening day (the Wednesday before Memorial Day 1989) must have been shortly after I completed my sophomore year of college and returned to my parents’ home for summer vacation. While there were a couple movie theaters in Sandusky at the time, they were generally older theaters and their presentation usually left a lot to be desired. As it was only about a one hour drive to Cleveland, we quickly got into the habit of going there to see most movies. My grandmother also lived in Cleveland at the time, so we were able to often combine a trip to the movies with a visit to see her as well.

I don’t remember the name of the specific theater where we saw the film, but we basically picked it out by looking in the paper for the closest theater that listed a 70mm 6-track presentation and Lucasfilm’s THX sound system, which had become pretty commonplace in larger cities by that time. Our whole family (including my mother this time) got up fairly early to head into Cleveland for the first opening day matinee of the movie. I’m not sure if there were any midnight showings of this one, but we did go to the first regularly scheduled showing at that theater.

Even with the show being fairly early in the day on a Wednesday, the theater was pretty full, although I don’t recall for sure if it was a completely sold-out show. The most memorable audience moment actually came during the previews. Just a couple minutes into them, the film broke and the lights came back up. A few moments after that, someone in the theater started loudly humming the Raiders March. It took only another moment or so until pretty much the entire audience had joined in. I strongly suspect that this was considerably more frightening to the poor employee that was tasked with getting things up and running again than the more traditional audience taunts and complaints would have been. Fortunately, they were able to get it fixed pretty quickly and the movie itself played through without interruption.

Last Crusade is a very good film with some considerable strengths. Sean Connery is absolutely great as Indy’s father and he and Harrison Ford played off each other wonderfully. It was also nice seeing Denholm Elliott and John Rhys-Davies reprise their roles from the first film and, of course, the action sequences and big set pieces were as much fun as ever. I can easily understand why most people seem to prefer this one to Temple of Doom and some even consider it to be the best of the original three movies.

For a couple reasons, though, it is pretty solidly in third place for me. While Temple of Doom was able to genuinely surprise me by going off in a different direction in setting and style compared to its predecessor, Last Crusade instead repeated a lot of key elements from Raiders pretty directly, whether it be the reuse of the Nazis as the key villains, the quest for another famous Christian religious icon, or even the use of some very similar settings and locations. I couldn’t help but feel like Lucas and Spielberg took the complaints about Temple of Doom too much to heart and responded by largely reworking Raiders for the third film.

I also can’t help but think that the difference in my memories of the films are somewhat reflective of the different viewpoints of an 11-year-old, a 14-year-old, and a 19-year-old. By the time Last Crusade came out, I was a pretty avid moviegoer that was seeing a pretty wide variety of movies of many different styles and genres. As excited as I was about seeing this one, I doubt I was quite as receptive to it as I was when I was younger. I do recall still seeing the film a few times over the course of that summer, but I don’t think it was more than a handful. Even taking into account home video, I have a hunch that I still probably haven’t seen Last Crusade as many times in total as I saw Raiders in the theater during its first year of release.

With that in mind, I’m very excited to go see an opening-night showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tomorrow night, but I also can’t help but wonder exactly how I am going to respond to one of these movies now that I’m 38-years-old, married, and a father. There is a good chance I’ll write a review of the movie over the next couple days, but I suspect I won’t really have enough distance to write another one of these "memories" articles about it for quite a few years.

Indiana Jones Memories: Temple of Doom

May 20, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

Click here for my previous post on Raiders of the Lost Ark

By the time the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out in 1984, the dominance of the multiplex was really starting to take hold. The sequel opened both at the big single-screen Flint Cinema where Raiders played, but it also opened at a suburban multiplex (the Genesee Valley Theaters) that was much closer to our family’s home. This was the same release pattern that was used for Return of the Jedi the year before. My sister and I saw Jedi at the first after-school matinee at the multiplex and then saw the film again that weekend in the better 70mm 6-track Dolby presentation at the Flint Cinema.

We had expected to follow the same basic pattern with Temple of Doom, which was also opening the Wednesday before Memorial Day, a week or so before school let out for the summer. Much to our surprise, my father had other ideas. At the time, the local newspaper in Flint came fairly late in the afternoon. After work, my father was looking through the paper and called my sister and I into the room. He then showed us the full-page ad for the movie that announced a midnight showing that night at Flint Cinema and asked us if we could promise to still get up and make it to school the next day if we all went to see it. Of course, our answer was a definite "yes".

Not being a night person at all, my mother again opted out of the first showing (another good excuse to see the film again soon…), but my father, sister, and I headed out to the theater late that evening. This was my first experience seeing a midnight movie. It wasn’t a sold-out show, but the enthusiasm level of the audience was about as high as it could get. The crowd cheered and applauded at all the right moments and clearly was having a great time. I particularly got a kick out of the reaction to Indy’s entrance. The first time we see the character in this film, he is well-groomed and dressed in a white tuxedo. The audience reacted with applause, although it was a bit restrained and even a little delayed as it took a moment for it to register that it was him. At the end of the prologue, Indy makes a second entrance dressed in his traditional leather jacket, fedora, bullwhip, etc. and that prompted cheers and wild applause.

I obviously had a much better idea of what to expect than I did prior to the release of the first film, which led to quite a bit more heightened excitement about the film, but also a lot less mystery and surprise. What I actually liked a lot about the film (and I’m a bigger fan of it than many people are) was that I felt that Lucas and Spielberg really did find some surprising and unexpected directions to take the movie. Right at the very start, I certainly wasn’t expecting the movie to open with an entire Busby Berkley style musical number. I even recall momentarily wondering if they were running the wrong movie. A lot of people were also put off by the darker tone and overall modified structure compared to the first film, but I felt that it made the movie seem a bit fresher than most sequels. The film was, if anything, even faster paced than the first and, even with the ultra-late showtime, I certainly had no trouble staying awake for the movie. Yes, I did make it through the school day the next day as well.

I liked the film a lot and did see it several times in the theater that summer, but not as many times as the first film. In fact, it wasn’t even really the movie that most dominated my attention that summer. As a 14-year-old boy, I was right in the primary target audience for Ghostbusters, which became my favorite movie of that summer and the one that I gave the most repeat viewing. The Indiana Jones films have overall likely withstood the test of time better over the last 24 years and I suspect most people might even be a bit surprised to learn that Ghostbusters was actually a bigger box-office hit overall that summer. Still, it did play through the whole summer and I do recall several return trips to see it again.

In my post on Raiders, I mentioned that the John Williams score was something of a milestone. While the sequel score wasn’t as much of one, it did come as something of a surprise to me and still remains one of my favorites. The big surprise was Williams’ decision to abandon all of the themes that he had written for the first film with the exception of the iconic Raiders March. At that point, I never really had conceived of a sequel score that would essentially start from scratch instead of further developing the first film’s music. It caught me a bit off-guard, but also appealed to me very much.

I will close with probably the silliest and oddest personal story that relates to this movie. At the very end of the credits is a somewhat cryptic credit that simply says "Thanks to Reed Smoot". Being a couple teenagers, my sister and I both thought that was kind of a funny name and were also intrigued by the mysterious credit. It then became a running joke for the two of us for quite some time, with us often joking about being the only members of the "Reed Smoot Fan Club". Without the vast information available online today, we didn’t have any success finding any information on Mr. Smoot. We were pretty sure he wasn’t the early-20th century Utah Senator that was the only reference we found to the name. I now know that Mr. Smoot is actually a respected cinematographer that is best known for his work on a variety of IMAX features. He apparently did some second-unit photography work on the film, which was the basis of the credit. If Mr. Smoot ever stumbles on this, I hope he doesn’t mind that a couple silly teenagers had some goofy fun with his credit.

Indiana Jones Memories: Raiders of the Lost Ark

May 19, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

Unless you have been living under a rock (and possibly even then), you probably know that a brand-new Indiana Jones movie is opening this Thursday. My wife and I have already arranged for a babysitter and purchased our opening night tickets. With that in mind, this seems like a good time to reminisce a bit about my experiences seeing the previous movies in the series. In this post (and later ones about the other two films), I’m not really going to write reviews, although I expect to reveal at least a bit of my opinion of each. Instead will just tell a bit of the story of my own experiences.

With 19 years having past since we last saw Indy in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and 27 years since the character was first introduced in Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’m part of a likely pretty large group of adults who will be going into this new movie with a hope of recapturing a little bit of magic from my childhood. I was only 11-years-old when the first movie came out and was 14 and 18 when the previous sequels came out. As a long-time movie enthusiast, I probably would list other films (including others by Spielberg and Lucas) as somewhat higher on both my lists of favorites and bests, but I can think of very few that invoke more fond memories or that had quite as much influence on my love of movies and my cinematic preferences.

When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out back in 1981, I was already a fan of the Star Wars films (The Empire Strikes Back came out one year earlier) and, not surprisingly, was immediately very receptive to the promotion of a new George Lucas movie starring Harrison Ford. My older sister (who was 14 at the time) also had a definite movie-star crush on Ford, which also helped to build our family’s interest in the movie.

The first that I ever heard about the film remains my pick for possibly the most amusingly wrong magazine article I’ve ever seen about a movie. I don’t remember the specific publication (although my sister may still have the clipping somewhere in her files), but it was a movie rumors column in either a teen magazine or a general entertainment magazine of some sort. The short article ran right around the time that The Empire Strikes Back was released and announced that the 3rd film in the Star Wars series would be coming out only one year later and would center around the character of Han Solo. The title of this new film would be "Lost Raiders of the Ark". I’m sure that whoever wrote that is very proud…

Back in 1981, I didn’t really follow the movies very closely and certainly didn’t have access to the kind of ready information on the topic that is out there today. For the most part, the first real awareness of Raiders came primarily when the ads started hitting. Back then, George Lucas and, especially, Steven Spielberg were not really household names, so the ads heavily promoted the movie as "From the creator of Star Wars and the director of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind". As I said, the Star Wars connections were the big draw for me, although I had seen and enjoyed Close Encounters (but only on TV). I didn’t see Jaws until a few years later. After seeing Raiders, I quickly became a Spielberg fan, something that really solidified a year later when our family went out to see a sneak preview of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial without knowing much of anything about the film other than that it was from the same director.

My father took my sister, my best friend, and me to see the first evening showing of Raiders on its opening night. We were living in Flint, Michigan at the time and saw the movie at The Flint Cinema, an old-fashioned single-screen theater. Built in the late 60s shortly after the end of the movie palace era, it wasn’t anything overly fancy but was mainly known for a large screen and 70mm, 6-track Dolby presentation. I think Raiders was actually the first film we saw there as the first two Star Wars films had opened at the nearby Eastland Mall Cinemas instead. The movie pretty much blew us all away. We knew it was supposed to be a fast-paced adventure movie, but I don’t think any of us really were prepared for the scope of the film or the sheer level of adrenaline it would pump.

My Mom wasn’t originally sure she was that interested in the movie (she hadn’t really liked Star Wars) and decided that she didn’t feel like dealing with the opening night crowds for the movie. We, of course, all came home and told her that she needed to see the movie as soon as possible and we all went out to see it with her the next weekend. As a joke, we all conspired ahead of time to repeatedly warn her that the movie started out very slowly, but promising her that it got better as it went along. As you might expect, the very exciting opening sequence in the idol cave caught her very much off-guard. She really loved the movie, although the intensity did get to her a bit at times. She was holding my Dad’s hand during much of the movie and afterwards they laughed that she instinctively pulled her hand to her mouth, thus biting my Dad, during the Well-of-Souls sequence when the snake climbed out of the skeleton’s mouth.

Over the course of that summer, this became the first movie that my sister and I went to see multiple times in the theaters during its initial release (we had seen Star Wars and a few Disney films more than once due to re-releases). By the end of the film’s run, I saw it a total of 13 times. My father absolutely fell in love with the movie as well and went along with us to many of those showings. Prior to that, he had never been much of a movie fan and didn’t typically see anything more than once.

John Williams score to the movie also represented a bit of a milestone for me. I had started to become interested in movie scores a couple years earlier. My interest was first sparked by John Barry’s orchestral score to Disney’s The Black Hole, which ended up being the first score soundtrack that I purchased. My interest expanded dramatically after getting first The Empire Strikes Back and then the original Star Wars soundtracks and I then started a collection of movie score LP’s from movies involving outer space. Over a year or so, I bought a bunch of albums including Close Encounters, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Superman, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. After seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark and hearing Williams amazing music for the film, I immediately wanted that soundtrack. It was at that point, that my interest really broadened to film scores in general instead of just to souvenirs of space movies. This really established my musical tastes for the long term as film scores remain the dominant part of my collection and my music purchases today.

I loved the sequels and have certainly been very impressed and excited by other action/adventure movies over the years as well. I think Raiders will always hold a very special place in my memory, though, and I don’t really believe any other movie will ever quite match the surprise and excitement that surrounded this one.

Obama vs. Clinton and the Primary System

May 12, 2008 Jeffrey GraebnerLeave a comment

I’ve been resistant to delving into political topics on this blog, mostly out of fear that I might expose too much about my own ignorance. :) I do tend to follow political debate (particularly at the national level) quite a bit, though. As a registered Democrat that will almost certainly end up supporting and voting for whichever candidate becomes that party’s nominee, I have certainly been taking a lot of interest in the 2008 primary season.

I disagree with the increasingly widespread commentary accusing the Democratic Party of self-destructing simply because both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are still active candidates with more than 3 months remaining before the party convention and with several states still having yet to have their primaries. As I see it, the Democrats are prompting a fair amount of criticism and doomsday predictions simply because the candidate selection process is working essentially as designed. This primary instead seems to be illustrating how the basic method being used to select candidates usually doesn’t work very well and has largely become an outdated relic of a very different time.

I think that the result of the Republican nomination is much more troublesome, although very typical of the process for both parties during the typical modern election, including all the ones since I’ve been eligible to vote. John McCain was widely accepted to have clinched his party’s nomination after the March 4th round of primaries, even though the primary season still had several months to go. Much has been made about the voters of Florida and Michigan being disenfranchised in the selection of the Democratic candidate due to those states violating party rules regarding scheduling, but it is that really worse than the fact that the Republican primaries in 10 states have ended up being basically irrelevant?

The extended, highly staggered primary process made quite a bit of sense in a time when traveling from state to state could take days or weeks and when 24-hour news networks and the Internet weren’t available as a means for the candidates and parties to get their views, positions, and even personalities quickly and widely disseminated to every part of the country. In today’s era of air travel and mass communications, though, campaigning for a simultaneous, nationwide primary would certainly be feasible and would avoid large portions of the population from being essentially disenfranchised from the selection of the candidates. There might be a grain of truth in the concern that such a system could pretty sharply reduce the importance and influence of smaller states and rural communities, but the current system usually seems to have largely the opposite effect, which really seems to make even less sense. I really hope that this year’s primary will prompt some serious discussion of this long overdue change.

My Last Baby Tooth – Part 2

May 10, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner1 Comment

Click here for part 1

The tooth is gone now. Rather than simply pulling it, as I had expected, the dentist ended up essentially pulverizing it last Wednesday afternoon. Apparently, it wasn’t as easy a tooth to remove as had been hoped or expected.

As a bit of a preface, this ended up being my family’s week for unpleasant dental procedures. My wife had learned a couple months ago that she needed to have her wisdom teeth removed and, coincidentally, that was scheduled for last Saturday, just 4 days before the extraction of my baby tooth. Since she only had two wisdom teeth that needed to come in (the lower ones never came in), she decided to have the procedure done with just local anesthetic instead of being put to sleep for it. When she got there, the oral surgeon immediately asked her if she wanted to re-consider that, which obviously wasn’t a good sign. She decided to go through with it, though, and when she came out she immediately told me it was one of the most miserably painful experiences she remembered.

Since my baby tooth extraction was scheduled to be done only using a local, her experience obviously made me very nervous. I even called the dentist’s office on Monday and asked them to advise on what I should do. They still recommended sticking with the local and essentially said that this should be a much easier experience. When I had my own wisdom teeth out around 12 years ago, one of them was removed using only a local (it was something of an emergency as it had become infected) and the other two were removed while I used a combination of laughing gas and valium. I didn’t remember either procedure being overwhelmingly bad, so I decided to stick with the original plan this time as well.

The first thing that the dentist told me on Wednesday was that he was going to use a lot of the local anesthetic and that I shouldn’t really feel anything at all during the extraction. To his credit, this turned out to be pretty much accurate, even when the extraction did turn out to be a bit more difficult than expected. The amount of anesthetic used was by far the most I ever remember receiving for a dental procedure, with the dentist even having to stop to refill the dispenser at one point. He applied it at several different locations in my mouth and I was overall pretty thoroughly numb. My dentist has an excellent bedside manner and pretty regularly double checked during the procedure to make sure that I was ok and not feeling any pain.

My Last Baby Tooth – Part 1

April 25, 2008 Jeffrey Graebner8 Comments

I’m labeling this post as "Part 1" as this is, unfortunately, a story that is going to have at least a couple more chapters over the next several weeks.

When I was a child, a routine dental exam revealed that one of my baby teeth did not show any signs of a permanent tooth growing beneath it. The dentist explained that without a permanent tooth coming in, I would not lose the baby tooth in the normal manner and that the baby tooth would hopefully last for a pretty long time. On the other hand, he did acknowledge that baby teeth obviously aren’t intended to last a lifetime and that, sooner-or-later, it would begin to break down and have to be removed. This was back in the late 1970s. Over the subsequent years, I’ve had two different fillings put in the tooth in order to help strengthen it but, otherwise, it has largely served as an odd conversation piece during visits to new dentists.

A few weeks ago, I started to notice that the area around that tooth was becoming sensitive. Touching the jaw-line around the location of that tooth causes a jolt of pain, focused around the spot where the baby tooth meets the gum. It hasn’t yet given me any kind of continuous pain and, usually, it hasn’t really been too much of a problem while eating. I was obviously concerned that the discomfort was an indication that the tooth was failing and put off a visit to the dentist for a few weeks on the faint hope that the problem would just go away. Earlier this week, I finally decided that it wasn’t going to clear up (and it was also getting a bit worse), so Thursday I did go to see the dentist.

The dentist did confirm what I was afraid of. The tooth is finally breaking down and now will need to come out. His recommendation is to replace it with an implant, which is an artificial root that is put in by an oral surgeon and then can be used as the support for a crown. The implant is a titanium rod that the oral surgeon basically screws into the jawbone through an incision made in the gum. I hope that is more fun than it sounds but I somehow doubt that it will be. On the positive side, the dentist assured me that the use of a crown with the implant is pretty much indistinguishable from a real tooth in look, feeling, and function.

At Thursday’s appointment, they took an X-ray and the dentist did a short exam to confirm the problem. They then took a huge number of photos. I find it interesting how much high-tech digital technology is now involved in dentistry. They now have monitors at the dental chairs and all the photos and X-rays are immediately transferred to a computer (running Windows XP…) and displayed right away. At the beginning of the appointment, the hygienist took several digital photos of the tooth in addition to the X-ray. They have a tiny digital camera at the end of a wand (similar to the electric toothbrushes they use for cleanings) making it easy to take the close-up photos. For some reason, I found it really funny that every time she took a photo, an old-fashioned camera shutter sound played loudly from the computer behind me.

After the diagnosis and determination that an implant was going to be needed, the dentist then took a whole bunch of photos of my teeth using a Nikon digital SLR camera. The camera had a very large, presumably specialized lens that was also fitted with a number of lights, which I would imagine were needed to get anything recognizable in the photos. Presumably this was intended to fully document my mouth to help with getting the right sizing and coloring of the implant and crown. The whole thing felt rather weird, though. I’m not an extraordinarily comfortable photographic subject under good conditions, so it felt really strange having someone snap all these close-ups of my mouth, often with a metal instrument (the doctor called it a "lip retractor") holding my mouth wide opened.

Finally, to better inform me on the implant, they showed me a short video about it. This was obviously produced by the manufacturer and was hosted by a doctor who was apparently one of the designers of the procedure. The whole thing was kind of cheesy and I was a bit amused how he kept explaining all the potential side effects or complications with statements to the effect of "we are ethically obligated to inform you of this, but it very rarely ever happens." Fortunately, it did sound like most of the risks were pretty minor and included the typical "risk of infection" that is there with any surgical procedure as well as potential impacts to bite, speech, appearance, etc. any of which could easily be corrected.

The video also went over the alternative treatments that were available. Ever since I first learned about this tooth, I remember being told that eventually a "bridge" would be needed to replace the tooth. Doing a little research online, I found that implants started becoming generally available in the early 1980s (not that long after I first found out about my tooth), but I suspect that they have probably become much more common and routine in recent years. A bridge is a much more destructive approach where the dentist files down the teeth on either side of the gap and then fits crowns over both. The artificial tooth is then attached to and anchored in place by those two crowns. Obviously, the big disadvantage of this is that it requires otherwise perfectly good teeth to be damaged and crowned. The implant process leaves the other teeth alone.

The next step of this process will be the extraction of the baby tooth, which is scheduled for Wednesday, May 7th. They mentioned that they would call me if an appointment opens up that would allow it to be done sooner, but I admit that I’m not in that big a rush. I’m sure I’d be more anxious if I were in more continuous pain, but right now I simply find this to be something I dread more than welcome. I know I need to get it done, though.

In addition to doing the extraction at the May 7th appointment, the doctor said that they would take the necessary measurements and impressions to prepare for the implant procedure. They also will give me all the remaining information that I need at that appointment to get the surgery scheduled. I’m not sure how long it will end up being between the two procedures. Fortunately, the tooth is towards the back, so I shouldn’t look too much like a clumsy hockey player during that time.

Look for the next installment of this story shortly after May 7th!