harrison ford

Chris Knight's avatar

I had no idea that Raiders of the Lost Ark had returned to theaters for its fortieth anniversary until my iPhone suggested it from a list of movies playing nearby.  Whatever other plans I’d made last Sunday got dropped like a hot Sankara Stone as I headed to the big cinema the next town over.  And that’s how, for only the second time in my life, I got to behold my all time favorite film on the big screen.

 
I was far from alone.  About forty-some others had shown up too.  Including the family of four that sat in front of me.  Two little girls, maybe seven and eight.  Just how old I was when I first saw Raiders.  I could tell this movie was giving them thrills and chills, just as it did me.
 
Maybe it made some of the same impact on them that watching
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Chris Knight's avatar

This is not a good sign…

That’s Harrison Ford as Graff and Asa Butterfield as Ender, in the first official pic from the production of Ender’s Game, based on Orson Scott Card’s classic science-fiction novel.

For the record, I think Butterfield is a terrific and astounding young actor. The first time I saw him in anything it was in Hugo and he brought a spirit and sense of adventure to that film that I hadn’t seen from a movie in an awful long time. The kid has a brilliant future ahead of him.

But looking at that pic, with his Ender getting stared-down by Graff… I can’t but wonder if this film is being cast well at all.

It’s like this: Ender should be smaller. And younger. Butterfield in this photo looks like he could be Ender Wiggin, but a few years down the line. At this point in ...

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So sayeth Harrison Ford, adding that he’s already getting in shape and that work on a new Indy movie has progressed further than most of us have suspected…

“The story for the new ‘Indiana Jones’ is in the process of taking form,” Ford told France’s Le Figaro. “Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and myself are agreed on what the fifth adventure will concern, and George is actively at work. If the script is good, I’ll be very happy to put the costume on again.”

Others may disagree, but I thought last year’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a fine addition to the Indy mythos. That and that it was as good a homage to Fifties B-movies as Raiders of the Lost Ark was a tribute to the Saturday serials of yesteryear. With that in mind, I’ll gladly welcome another Indiana Jones movie (and maybe even ...

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One of my all-time favorite movies, The Fugitive, came out fifteen years ago today, on August 6th, 1993.

(How much is it one of my favorites? Well, it’s on my iPod, for one thing…)

Starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, The Fugitive was based on the 1960s television series about Dr. Richard Kimble, a physician who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife, then escapes and goes on a cross-country search for the real killer: a one-armed man. Complicating matters is Phillip Gerard, a law enforcement agent obsessed with recapturing Kimble.

The movie took a number of liberties with the story from the television show. But it also benefited from enormous production values and a very strong cast which also included Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, and Julianne Moore in one of her first film roles. Also among the cast, playing Frederick Sykes (AKA “the one-armed man”) was Andreas ...

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Shortly after E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial came out in 1982, I heard something very interesting: that among numerous scenes that were filmed but deleted from the final print, there was a cameo appearance by Harrison Ford. He plays Elliott’s principal, in a scene that takes place after Elliott goes nuts in the science lab. When Steven Spielberg re-released the movie in 2002 he re-incorporated a lot of the previously deleted material, but Ford’s appearance wasn’t among the additions. The story is that Spielberg wanted E.T. to be a movie about the children, and the principal’s office scene lingered too long on the adults.

So for a quarter-century, I’ve always been intrigued by this scene. I never thought I’d ever get to see it. And then this morning word reaches me that the deleted Harrison Ford cameo from E.T. the Extra-Terrstrial is on YouTube!

Here it is…

Some thoughts here: I find ...

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Yesterday on the official Indiana Jones website, this photo – taken by Steven Spielberg – was posted, the first in more than 14 years of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones:

Ford looks great! I never had any doubts that he would fit back into the role again. But showing this pic ain’t the reason I’m making this post. I’m here ‘cuz I’m completely fed-up with this “age-ism” nonsense.

Just about everywhere that I’ve seen this photo or otherwise heard about the next Indiana Jones movie being talked about, I see where he’s referred to as “Old Indy”. Look people, he is not “Old Indy”. He is an older Indiana Jones… just like you and I are gradually getting older… but other than being old-er, what differentiates this Indy from the one we first saw in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yeah, older, maybe a little wiser, ...

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