Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull screened in Cannes today at 1pm local time. The film, I believe, is over two hours long, so I was wondered how quick it would before the first review popped up online. And so I have to take my proverbial hat off to Jeff Wells who got his first impressions — "lots of eye-filling thrills and acrobatic derring-do but with an almost cartoonish emphasis on slapstick foolery" — up on his site using his iPhone, sitting in Palais' salle de press conference, waiting for the Indy press conference to start.
The speed at which people are posting nowadays is quite alarming. There's simply no time for reflection or contemplation as everyone — online journalists and print media alike — rushes to be the first to have their thoughts aired. The second but last time I covered Cannes for Premiere I was posting every second or third day. And that seemed like a lot at the time. The problem with today's need for speed, going live with a review almost as soon as you've left the cinema, is that you actually spend less time seeing films which, call me old-fashioned, is one of the joys of attending a film festival like Cannes...
UPDATED: It seems even Jeff Wells was "outdone" by one Eric Kohn who was live-blogging during the actual screening. WTF? I'd call that disrespectful to both the filmmakers and those sitting near you...
7 comments:
Live blogging? He may as well have just brought in the camcorder and streamed the whole thing live onto the net...
To be honest, I find such hasty responses pretty useless, as how often is your opinion of a film fully-formed come final credits? I know I personally will typically (and obviously) have quite a strong reaction either one way or the other - ie it's good/it sucks - but I'd never feel comfortable bashing out a review of a film within minutes of its ending.
And live blogging via SMS? Yeesh...
Yeah, live blogging is pretty lame. It leaves you no chance to enjoy watching the film which isn't that the point?!
Just home from it. Had a ball!
That's good to know. How's it compare to what's gone before? I had to miss the press screening here on Tuesday and so will be seeing it this weekend, by which time you will have seen it seven times...
Well, I'm meant to turn in a review on Monday and will need to go again; at tonight's screening, the first two minutes were a black screen set to "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog" thanks to an especially careless projectionist. But really, it's just a lot of fun. After a mildly clunky first act, things pick right up. In terms of tone, it's more parts Raiders than anything else, though even more OTT (which I think works). It's nothing mindblowing, but delivers a lot of action, laughs and plays nicely on nostalgia. Like I said, I had a ball.
Loved how it looked, too - knowlingly studio-bound, perfectly period-appropriate. Though lookout for that great jungle swordfight sequence to cop King-Kong-stampede flak by those who choose to take winkingly cheesy rear projection-esque effects as a job bodged.
i don't normally do this (post about another blog on someone else's blog), but the lyrics to the indiana jones theme have been uncovered!
it's from gizmodo. Click here!
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