In reality, no job is actually mundane unless you make it that way. Washing dishes or delivering mail can be terrific if you’re happy, and you’re with people who make you happy. My point is – a job is whatever you want it to be. You can quote me on that. “A job is whatever you want it to be.” – Man wearing pajama pants Anyhoo – in the movie world this tends to be different. Very rarely do we see a character shuffling fries and acting completely content. The best however, is when a mundane job is used to juxtapose the badassness of the character – or better yet, the badass character just happens to have a mundane job attached to them. These are by far the best combinations of “boring” vs “badass” I could think up in a single afternoon while not wearing any pants. Shop smart, everyone:

A lot of people who comb through movie news will recognize Lawrence Kasdan‘s name next to all the Star Wars developments that have been pouring out in the past two weeks. Some will know the franchise (as well as Indiana Jones) as his legacy while others would point to his intimate portrayals of life’s difficulties in movies like Grand Canyon and The Big Chill. He’s gone through eras of great prolificness and droughts where work seemed impossible to find, and after four decades, he’s amassed a great amount of wisdom and expertise. He’s also in the unique position of abandoning (and being all but abandoned by) the studio system years after having been a mid-wife to massive franchises. So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the man who told us who Luke’s father was.

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Broken Projector! This week, hosts Scott Beggs and Geoff LaTulippe ask you to vote for which historical wrong Quentin Tarantino should right next and Rob Hunter reviews Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad. And in the main event, Scott takes The Last Crusade while HitFix‘s Drew McWeeny take Temple of Doom in a debate over the best Indiana Jones sequel. Download Episode #1

There’s an overwhelming notion that I’ve lived with for some time, a deeply person issue that conflicts me as a pro movie watcher. Unlike so many of my colleagues, I’ve just never been captivated with superfandom, not for Star Wars, nor Lord of the Rings, not for any number of geek fetish properties. Perhaps, I’ve wondered, I simply don’t have the capacity to love. Many of my ex-girlfriends might agree. Then there’s Indiana Jones. My hero. It takes a little bit, in each of the first three movies in this franchise, to get to the hero score composed by John Williams. You know the one. But once it hits and we meet our hero, my spine tingles and a part of my brain that’s usually deep in analytical thought is washed over with pure, unadulterated amore. Indiana Jones has always been my guy. A scientist, an adventurer, a cavalier man of the ladies. He belongs in a museum, as monument to absolute manliness. And this week, he’s making his big debut on Blu-ray. Lets explore.

Welcome back to This Week In Discs! I hope you’ve been saving your pennies because there are tons of fantastic releases worth buying today. All three (or so) Indiana Jones movies finally make their Blu-ray debut, genre fans get one of the year’s best horror films (The Cabin In the Woods) as well as Scream Factory’s stellar Blus of two Halloween classics, David Fincher fanatics will rejoice at Criterion’s release of The Game and my favorite film from 2011 hits DVD as my Pick of the Week. As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Oslo August 31st Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie) is out on leave from drug rehab for the purpose of a job interview, but it’s a job he knows he’ll never hold. Instead he visits an old friend, touches base with his family, searches for an old flame and fights the urge to kill himself. This Norwegian drama finds both heartache and vitality in its story and in its lead character, and Danielsen Lie makes it all so palpable and affecting. That said, there’s also an undeniable desire for life here that struggles against his depression with desperate intensity. Make no mistake, Anders is sadness incarnate, but he’s also a man at a crossroads with a decision before him that you can’t turn away from. Check out my full review.

It’s going to be an exciting month for fans of Indiana Jones. On September 18, the entire series of films — all four films — will be accompanied by 7-hours of bonus features in the first ever Blu-ray release. Today, September 7, marks the release of Raiders of the Lost Ark back into theaters in the IMAX format for an exclusive one-week run. Fully restored and projected as big as Iehova intended. To celebrate, we’ve scored a great prize pack to give away to you, our beloved readers. One (1) lucky fan will receive a copy of the Blu-ray box set, a fedora and a whip. This way you can watch Indiana Jones and be Indiana Jones at the same time. Just don’t take out your cat with the whip. Those things are dangerous.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column about movie news that wasn’t exactly nightly this week, so it’s giving you a Friday edition with a little extra umph… We begin this evening with one of four new images from Pacific Rim, courtesy of the most recent edition of Empire magazine. It features Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba and those sweet, shiny suits worn by the drivers of the giant-ass robots in Guillermo del Toro’s exciting next film. Now, when are we going to get a shot at those robots in action?

The adventures of Indiana Jones as we know them first kicked off (whipped into?) in theaters in June of 1981 with the release of Steven Spielberg‘s Raiders of the Lost Ark, but before those of us not around for the big screen experience back then, Spielberg and George Lucas have a big (no, really, giant) treat to make up for it. The film will have an exclusive one-week engagement in select IMAX® theatres starting on September 7th. The IMAX release comes to us as part of the release of an all-new Blu-ray release of all four Indiana Jones films (yes, four) later in September, and has “undergone a complete restoration for the IMAX exclusive one-week release and subsequent debut on Blu-ray.” The film has been digitally re-mastered for IMAX using the proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. Raiders has also been restored by sound designer Ben Burtt, “with careful attention to preserving the original look, sound and feel of the iconic film.” The all-new Blu-ray set, billed as INDIANA JONES: The Complete Adventures, hits Blu-ray on September 18th. After the break, check out an all-new trailer for Raiders of the Lost Ark in support of the IMAX release. It’s big!

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the next big thing, the opening night every night, the closing ceremony before the event even starts. It’s also a contender in the 100-meter dash. We begin this evening with a great new image from Rian Johnson’s Looper featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his next breakout role. I say next because this guy seems to be on a hot streak of break-out roles. How many breakout roles can one have, anyway?

Just a few months after the glory of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws finally made its Blu-ray debut the world’s most popular director is readying another hi-def premiere. Paramount has just announced the fall arrival of Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures on Blu-ray. The set includes all four three goddammit four films with remastered video and audio. Extras have yet to be detailed, but they’re reported to include special features both old and new. The best news though is evident in the care given to the series’ first and best film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The 1981 classic has been “meticulously restored with careful attention to preserving the original look, sound and feel of the iconic film.  The original negative was first scanned at 4K and then examined frame-by-frame so that any damage could be repaired. The sound design was similarly preserved using [Ben] Burtt’s original master mix, which had been archived and unused since 1981.” Check out the press release and full front-cover art below.

Editor’s Note: The following article contains discussion of events from the third act of Prometheus. You’ve been warned.  Prometheus just can’t get a break. From poor reviews to my upcoming list of the 10 Dumbest Crew Member Mistakes, you’d think we’d have picked on Ridley Scott’s revisit enough. But we haven’t! This just isn’t about Prometheus though. Hollywood has a long history of illustrating stupid people doing stupid things. One that has always bothered me is when people are fleeing gigantic objects. Whether it’s a falling spaceship, a collapsing building, or a gigantic beast, there’s one tried and true method of escaping – and it ain’t running in a straight line.

With a giant pile of movies to his name, Steven Spielberg has the considerable honor of being the only filmmaker who makes entertainment that’s massively popular, critically acclaimed and decade-enduring. It’s an illusive triumvirate. His fundamental success is owed to a lot of things, but principle among them is his childhood sense of wonder and magic – a sense he’s never let go of. His childhood was also spent with a camera in hand. From Jaws to Close Encounters of the Third Kind to Indiana Jones to The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun and Jurassic Park and Amistad and Schindler’s List and Munich and, and, and…he’s been a prolific, skilled presence in the filmmaking world for going on 5 decades, and he’s done so by spanning genres, tones, and subjects. So here’s a bit of free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from a little kid who hid under his bed after watching Bambi.

There’s totally nothing wrong with a bonding between man and beast, but it feels like such relationships are often trivialized thanks to how sensational we make them in films. Teaching your dog to sit and stay is cool, but in the movie world you’d need to at least teach him to solve crimes or play basketball to really turn heads. Anything less is just everyday stuff. It’s because movies tend to over-personify animals that we often forget just how extraordinarily talented they’re portrayed as, and how weird some of the relationships are. Here are some of the weirder ones…

If you’re “too old” to skulk around all hunch-backed in your own yard looking for the painted eggs your little cousin hid for you, why are you holding that remote with the Pause Button at the ready? We all love hunting. It’s in our nature. Just like we love discounted Criterion titles, free scotch and foot massages that don’t mean anything sexual. So here are some Movie Easter Eggs to hunt down. Bonus one? They involve movies, so you have a solid excuse to just watch movies all week. Bonus two? If you can’t find them, they won’t smell rotten after a few days. And be sure to add your favorite in the comments section for fellow hunter/gatherers:

Why Watch? This short film from Elise The might be the perfect companion piece to yesterday’s short, “They Come To Get Us.” They’re both pop culture explosions of strikingly different kinds. The latter is a pure overload by numbers, but Synchronize is electric in its ability to use iconic images and twist them in new ways. Using negative imagery, a cut and paste mentality, and a crazed imagination, this short film is stellar work that celebrates the allure and impact of movies. *Note: Some viewers may have to click through to Vimeo and wait a few minutes for it to load as the video is behind some sort of semi-paywall. However, it’s absolutely worth the wait (especially when you can let it load and come back to it later).* What will it cost? Only 3 minutes. Skip Work. You’ve Got Time For More Short Films.

The Mayans, the wise race of ancients who created hot cocoa, set December 21st, 2012 as the end date of their Calendar, which the intelligent and logical amongst us know signifies the day the world will end, presumably at 12:21:12am, Mountain Time. From now until zero date, we will explore the 50 films you need to watch before the entire world perishes. We don’t have much time, so be content, be prepared, be entertained. The Film: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) The Plot: When the Nazis threaten to find and unleash the power within the Ark of the Covenant, the US Government turns to the only place that can save them: Academia. Back in the 1930s, Professors and Archaeologists were made of a lot tougher stuff, and were far more attractive to co-eds than they are today. The manliest among them, Indiana Jones, fresh off a disastrous trip to a South American jungle, embarks on a global quest to find the Ark first.

When I purchased my ticket for the Thursday night midnight show of Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, I had no idea what I was in for; not because I hadn’t seen any of the previous Twilight films – I have, in fact, seen them all – but because I had never seen a Twilight film in a theater before, much less on opening night. The Twilight subculture befuddles me, as I’m sure it does any non-initiate of the series. Having seen all the films, I still feel like I’m viewing them from afar, like it’s some strange anthropological project of a phenomenon whose worth and value I will never fully understand. Twilight seems to encapsulate the drastic changes that have taken place in big-budget event filmmaking in the last thirty years. Rather than a film made with the intent of mass appeal (like franchises ranging from Indiana Jones to Jason Bourne), the Twilight films play almost exclusively to a specific – but dedicated – demographic. Of course, one could make this argument about many film franchises. Everything from Star Trek to The Dark Knight certainly have rabid fanbases at their core, but the audiences for these films seem to be “filled in” with a significant amount of casual fans. For example, I once viewed the Harry Potter films similarly to the way I now approach Twilight – not in terms of filmmaking quality, mind you, but in terms of being a cult phenomenon surrounding a fictional narrative that I

In an interview with Empire Online, legendary director Steven Spielberg talked about the development of future sequels for two of the biggest properties he has ever launched, Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones. While both of these franchises are huge name brands, and future sequels will probably rake in boatloads of cash no matter what, they’ve also both had some less than stellar installments already. So, artistically, if Spielberg is going to get us movie geeks to buy into the fact that more movies in these series are necessary, he’s got some explaining to do. Spielberg seems to readily admit that Jurassic Park 3 was a B-level film unworthy of carrying his weighty name in its credits, because he comes right out and assures us that a fourth installment won’t resemble that film in any way. He said, “The screenplay is being written right now by Mark Protosevich. I’m hoping that will come out in the next couple of years. We have a good story. We have a better story for four than we had for three…” Protosevich has been the writer on films like Thor, I am Legend, and the remake of Poseidon, so probably you can judge how much you trust Spielberg to get his story told correctly based on how you feel about those films.

In 1993, Peter Jackson was coming off Dead Alive and sitting firmly in the splatstick world of horror when he went into a theater to see Jurassic Park. The sights provided by Steven Spielberg, Stan Winston Studio and ILM had a profound effect on the freshman filmmaker from New Zealand – they propelled him practically mortgage his house in order to get a computer that could do the kinds of things he knew he wanted to do as a storyteller. The next year, he put out Heavenly Creatures. That was the first step in the road to buy dozens, then hundreds and now thousands of computers that make up WETA – the digital effects studio crafting The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn which is being directed by, of course, Steven Spielberg. The sphere of influence comes full circle here, and the footage and discussion offered up today by the two modern masters was an exciting promise that big adventure would soon be coming our way.

“I don’t believe in magic, a lot of superstitious hocus pocus. I’m going after a find of incredible historical significance and you’re talking about the Boogieman! Besides, you know what a cautious fellow I am.” Anybody who has watched any amount of the History Channel knows that Hitler was obsessed with the occult. What this movie presupposes is that he probably lost the war because he diverted too many of his resources towards the doomed goal of acquiring the Ark of the Covenant, which in case you didn’t know, is the chest that contains the original stone tablets on which the ten commandments were written. According to religious hocus-pocus, any army that marches while carrying the Ark would be unstoppable on the battlefield, as they would have the endorsement of the good Lord Himself. So what does the U.S. government do when faced with the task of racing the Third Reich to unstoppable power and endless influence? They hire an archeology professor from Marshall College, one of the most rough and tumble adventurers in the world, to go out and find it first. They get Indiana Jones. The only problem with the plan is that the key to finding the Ark is in the possession of one of his ex-girlfriends, and she’s kind of a crazy drunk.