Eerie Indiana

So I recently began a viewing regiment for the Indiana Jones series in preparation for the upcoming sequel. I’ve channel surfed my way past Raiders several times over the years, but I probably haven’t watched any of them the entire way through since they were first released. My impressions of the series have changed a bit as a result of these repeated viewings, though.

First of all, and I’m sure this has been brought up repeatedly, but I have no idea how these movies are rated PG. There’s more murder and blood in these movies than some horror movies released these days. Indiana alone probably kills as many people per movie as a Rambo or a Jigsaw. And quite nonchalantly to boot. I could maybe understand if it was cartoon violence, but again, if a death is accompanied by blood, it no longer falls in the “comic mischief” category.

Secondly, I didn’t particularly like Temple of Doom. Most of the scenes I remembered, or thought I remembered, from throughout the entire series all wound up showing up in Raiders, which I thought was a good thing at the time. I thought “wow, now the other two movies are gonna be surprises all the way through!”, which would have been a good thing if the cheese meter wasn’t dialed up so high (I have yet to get Last Crusade, so I’m not sure how that one will turn out).

The Temple of Doom was sexist, racist, ageist, and some scenes just plain ignored several of Newton’s Laws. I wanted to shoot the love interest for ¾ of the movie, and the last quarter I wanted to shoot Indy for repeatedly saving her.

Quite honestly, as of right now I think that National Treasure is better than either of the first two films in the series. Raiders definitely beats out National Treasure 2 though. And Temple, well the list of things that beat out Temple is too long to put in one blog entry. I know I haven’t really written anything bad about Raiders to explain why I’d put Nat’l Treasure above it, but that’s because I don’t think there was anything bad. It was a great ride. I just had more fun with Treasure, partly because I liked Cage’s supporting crew more. It’s more of a peanut butter and jelly vs. peanut butter and jam type of thing. Both delicious, but given the choice you just gotta go jam.

Tech $ux

I like having money. I also like shiny things. This obviously creates a conflict of interest. I understand that a lot of technological products have absolutely no use; nevertheless, I’m powerless every time I pass by a Best Buy. What I don’t understand is why the pricing for some products are so varied. I mean, with cell phones, I recognize the whole carrier subsidization thing, but there’s still such a huge disparity in pricing amongst the full price versions.

The standard features now are usually some sort of camera, mp3 functionality, some sort of web browser (either mobile or full html). All other things should be basically cost negligible (calculators, notepads, different sized address books, etc. And yet, the cost range between phones sold at full price can be as much as $500. The only varying factors are, I guess: camera resolutions, internal memory, GPS functionality, and interface (I’m not including smart phones in this group).

Now, I’m going to eliminate internal memory since the percentage of phones that have any relevant amount is relatively small. Concerning camera resolutions, most phones don’t have the highest quality of lenses, so that factor becomes moot, and the actual camera features are usually pretty slim. And since if you look at the digital camera market right now and take something generic like a 6MP camera, the prices range anywhere from $100 to $350. The higher ranges tend to go to those with slimmer profiles and advanced features. So back in the phone realm, one has to assume phone cameras blow and are more so in the $100 range, and thus cancel out.

With interface, there are multiple screens, screen sizes, screen resolutions, touch screens, etc., but in no way could the difference between the cheapest combination and the most expensive be more than say, $200. So why do all the things I want cost an exorbitant amount of money? Especially when a PSP has most of the features of pretty much any phone or mp3 player, yet costs under $200? Why are you still reading this?