Tag: Art

‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ is Fantastic: The way they used to make movies, family-friendly, happy endings, and a real love for the audiance

The really good news is that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a wonderful movie. I have said it for years, and it’s certainly true here, one of the extraordinary measures of a society’s health is its box office because it tells the world what people are buying at the movie theater as an entertainment option. It accurately describes what kinds of things people really like in the world and provides a measure beyond political beliefs to the truth of public sentiment. It’s much more difficult to understand when you get into television ratings and streaming services. And I think what happened with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is something that we talked about last year with the release of Top Gun: Maverick, another movie that, like Indiana Jones, was delayed for many years in production before being released to the public. I’m sure that Steven Spielberg will deny it, along with the diversity crew at Disney, but clearly, what happened with Indiana Jones and the newly directed James Mangold Dial of Destiny is that they learned some important lessons with Top Gun, one of the first big hits coming out of Covid. And as a result, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fantastic film that seeks to be more like Raiders of the Lost Ark than the more slapstick Last Crusade. If you understand Indiana Jones like I do, and many people who have been with this character for over four decades now, and have watched all the television shows, read all the books, read the comics, played the video games, this Indiana Jones movie does a great job of showing a very complete character in a way that Hollywood has never had to deal with. And the movie pulls it off spectacularly and very respectfully. As only Harrison Ford could play, this is a very complex character, more so than most reviewers could wrap their minds around, and the result is something extraordinary with a very happy, family-friendly ending. I don’t think there was a single curse word in the entire film, and it didn’t have anything woke in it. It was an offering from Disney that was begging for forgiveness from the movie-going public.

What was clear to me was that this new director, James Mangold, loves Indiana Jones as many of us do, and he understands the character and his significance to actual history. I’ve also said many times that Indiana Jones has done more for science than almost any other resource in the history of the world. The publishing industry has really flourished because of Indiana Jones, not by direct correlation, but the hunger for the kind of content that is often discussed in Indiana Jones films and in Dial of Destiny; a lot is going on, things that work at many different levels that were built around a movie with a true love for the world of Indiana Jones and the way that fiction carries over into fact. I would go so far as to call Dial of Destiny as brilliant and ambitious while being very safe in the continuation of the character. As many have discussed, Indiana Jones is an old man in this movie. Harrison Ford is 80 years old, so we aren’t talking about a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type mixed with Humphrey Bogart as Raiders of the Lost Ark was often characterized back when it was first released. This is something unique and entirely of its own making that now has its own history that everything is measured from. And some of the real Indiana Jones types that are out there in the world doing great work, clearly inspired by these movies over the years, like Graham Hancock, the Joe Rogan Show, and even the religious writer Jonathan Cahn have shown that most of the thrill of Indiana Jones isn’t a youthful man fighting bad guys and escaping under speeding trucks. Over the years, the greatest thrills in Indiana Jones movies are more intellectual than physical, and that’s why Dial of Destiny works so well with an old Indiana Jones doing what only he could.

Instead, I would have Disney not made this Indiana Jones movie before I saw it. I raised my children on these movies; now, my grandchildren are tremendous fans. I enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as an ambitious film that many didn’t like because it stepped out of the formula established in the first three films that were all released during Reagan-era politics in the 1980s. As much as people didn’t like the movie, and that Steven Spielberg didn’t seem to want to make it, there were a lot of positive things that came from that fourth film, such as the History Channel’s show Ancient Aliens, which culminated in the lives of great writers like Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Daniken. These Indiana Jones movies open the broader market for these kinds of unique adventures into history, such as The Gold of the Gods so wonderfully portrays. Indiana Jones may have started as an adventurous playboy grave robber in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But he evolved quickly into the pent-up frustrations of George Lucas himself, a very smart person who wanted to live the lifetimes of dozens of the most brilliant people in all of human history, that over the years was attempted to flush out in all forms of media available to tell these stories. This movie, Dial of Destiny, does all that while still managing to keep Indiana Jones the person we have always known. He shoots guns in this movie, which I thought Disney would avoid altogether. There are fistfights that are not unbelievable for an 80-year-old man. And the development of Helena Shaw was respectful, fun, and dashing. I would easily see a movie that featured her as a main character. Played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, she was a fun character, and I could see a sequel to Dial of Destiny where she is the feature, and Indiana Jones makes a guest appearance to help the movie along. This might be the last Indiana Jones movie, but I don’t think it will be the last Indiana Jones appearance by Harrison Ford, based on how this movie ended. 

It will be interesting to see how much business this movie does for Disney. Disney has severe brand damage now with their commitment to woke politics. But this movie is a clear peace offering to the ticket-buying public to help repair that brand. To invite people to come back to the theme parks. This is Bob Iger attempting to get Disney back in the public’s good graces. At least this film deserves to be in the billion-dollar club. But the Disney brand has made some people very, very angry. Yet this movie is as good as movies can be made and does not destroy a character the world has fallen in love with. And it leaves the door open to a happy ending for him, given that Indiana Jones is old. And that John Williams, who does a fantastic job with the musical score, as usual, is now in his 90s. This happy movie gives fans what they are looking for, and I couldn’t recommend it more. This is the kind of film that movie theaters were made for, that we used to get all the time in the 80s and 90s, but are now very rare. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is something special, and it was wonderful to see that movies like this can still be made. 

Rich Hoffman

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The Art of Holly Denham: Seeing hope beyond the facade of a negative reality

I think raising children is the most rewarding thing you can do. Raising my children was likely the happiest time of my life, and what they have become makes me infinitely proud. What they become largely is the complete responsibility of the parent and any little mistake made along the way can translate into massive problems later down the line. So to see my kids arrive into their late twenties being nice productive people unbroken by the realities of existence is something I never get tired of. Both of my children do unusual things creatively which for me was always my hope for them. Most parents just want their children to be successful and moderately happy in life, but I always expected more with some of the unusual experiences I introduced them to as kids. Then like all parents must—although most don’t accomplish it—you have to have the guts to keep your grubby hands out of their lives and let them live it as much as possible—so that they can authenticate their own way through a complicated world, and you have to trust that what you taught them along the way would give them what they need. My oldest daughter is a successful photographer and is doing great things very early in life. And now her sister is applying her own brand to the world of art which can be seen below.

My first impression of my youngest daughter’s Holly Denham Art platform was pride because she had moved her abilities well beyond just sketching basic pictures, which a lot of people can do, but do it at the level of a top illustrator. It was great to see her arrive at that level, and to witness her work on the many products displayed at the website below. But then peeling back the first impression at the depth of the work and noticing her interest levels, it was obvious not just because she was my kid, that she had developed a truly artistic outlook toward the world. Upon seeing these drawings, I reflected the drawings I had seen of Pablo Picasso recently at the British Museum in London that the famous painter had made about every day life, and I had to tell Holly that I thought she was better at this stage of her work. The reason was that she had managed to reach deeply into her subjects and pull out an optimism that is very distinct for her and show it in her work. Even if at first glance the subjects are dreary and in the style of the pessimism typical of most millennials, there is always a glimmer of hope in what she does that makes her stuff different from similar works of art.

http://hollydenham.bigcartel.com/

I remember how it was when I was her age, I used to hang around with all the crazy artists at 4 AM in the morning at the Perkins in Corryville at the University of Cincinnati campus, and then the Perkins in Montgomery where all the affluent rich kids who wanted to be nothing like their stiff parents came to express themselves with grunge art, music and literature over hamburgers and free refills of Coke all night. There were similar scenes played out all across the world, young people who thought they were the first to stumble out of childhood and into the injustice of the world rebelling with non-conformity—until the age of 30 came closer and the demands of children, house payments and a steady job forced them to do what they knew best, what they learned from watching their parents go through the same cycle. Thus, artists, even the really good ones, find themselves limited greatly by this cycle of observation—even Picasso’s sketches were very didactic in their worldview—featured so prominently at the greatest museums of the world. Most young artists while their window of free thinking is open to them, before the pressures of life close that window only get to the point where they ask questions and represent those questions in their art. It is therefore pretty rare to see an artist who can ask and answer some of those observational questions.

If an artist isn’t breaking through into some realization not obtained any other way, then it could be argued that the work is simply reflectional—and other than looking neat, is useless to the viewer. But capturing some hidden reality, obscured by the lenses of daily pressures is the difference between a good artist and an average one and to me it is quite clear that Holly is peaking at that goodness. Many of the pieces she has shown me recently are already there. I can only imagine what she will be like after another 2000 drawings, which she is well on her way to producing. She has always been a very interesting person and has had a need to express that uniqueness—so its very nice to see that wonder hatching early in the 21st Century for the world to enjoy.

For me however the pride is in elements that aren’t so obvious in the various sketches. Artists in order to be good need to have lived some life and been pushed to the breaking points a time or two, and most people inclined to such endeavors often turn to substance abuse to alleviate the pain of such moments where expectations don’t meet reality. In my daughter’s case, she has a vast intellect that is capable of a great deal—and because of that she can endure observations that are quite harsh without being broken emotionally, and thus can then articulate those elements onto a printed page. As a parent it is hard to let kids live and to defend them when the world thinks they should be doing something else. But the payoff is in the results which I am enjoying from her. Referencing all the “artistic” types that I’ve known over the years where they all fell short was that they become bitter and rather stagnant in their work. But the human mind craves more than anything optimism, the yearning to turn one more corner to get to a new reality and if a person can last long enough, they can achieve anything. Its one thing to identify what ails the world, it’s quite another to see it and work beyond those limits and I can see in Holly a path where she does this naturally, which puts her in a category of uniqueness that no school can teach—only the realities of a life well lived.

All life is about conflict, and the best of art shows those situations resolved, or the preparation of that resolution. Even the Da Vinci Mona Lisa is about that mysterious look captured in the midst of tumultuous times—that steady gaze from the mysteries of time peering at the future with a knowing smile. Exploring the Louvre in Paris the art shown there is mostly of this type and I don’t see it much differently from today’s comic book artists expressing themselves based on modern observational tendencies. Only today there are more options, and the artistic noise is much greater than it was in Da Vinci’s time. But the artistic process is very much the same, an individual witnesses’ life and puts to it hopes, fears, anxieties and even dreams that can punch through the imagination of a viewer to varying degrees. And to see any young person do that is a wonderful miracle of existence—especially when they turn out to be a kid that you’ve cared for from their very first moments to the present with lots of detail, yet without interrupting their own boons to self-awareness. Pride is a limited emotion to describe such a feeling, but it’s a start.

Rich Hoffman

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