Praise the Lord! Dano's heart murmur is "innocent" and nothing to worry about, according to the pediatric cardiologist he went to today. Hooray!

Dano is growing up so fast! On Thursday, he started cutting his first tooth, the upper right front one. On Saturday, the left top front top tooth appeared under the gum and the one on the left of it came through! The left front top tooth came through yesterday, and today, the tooth to the right of the top front one showed up and will probably come through in a day or two. Yikes!

And so far, he hasn't bitten me while nursing. What a nice baby! He used to chomp down a few months ago, and I pretty much broke him of that, so here's hoping :-D

Um, yeah, so... wanna know my reactions to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

Giddiness. First and foremost, there's giddiness. It was all I could do not to actually cheer when the Lucasfilm logo appeared on screen and I truly realized I was about to see Indiana Jones on the big screen for the first time. On the way out of the theater, I had to try very hard not to start skipping. Or jumping up and down. Even now, nearly 24 hours later, I'm still giddy when I think about it, full of giggles I can't suppress. I'm actually thinking about ordering an Indy t-shirt online. Yeah.

It's not a perfect movie -- it's nowhere near as brilliant as Raiders of the Lost Ark. But I'd put it on par with Last Crusade, and it's head-and-shoulders above Temple of Doom (which I've only seen once and, despite my devotion to both Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones, don't wanna see again). The plot is complex, but not convoluted, and my suspension of disbelief was only over-stretched once. I'll put more spoily comments below, but put them in white, so only highlight them if you've seen the movie or don't mind spoilage.

Okay, the only time my disbelief was stretched instead of suspended was when they went over the three waterfalls in their little WWII Duck-like vehicle. That did honestly make me go, "Yeah, right." Other than that, I could go with everything as much as any other Indiana Jones movie. The aliens, the weird power of the crystal skull to communicate if you look in its eyes -- I could deal with those. Even Indy surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator (and surviving being tossed around in said fridge a whole lot) -- I could accept that. This is Indiana Jones we're talking about, after all.

I went into this movie hoping to like it, and I did. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to like Shia LaBeouf, who I was feeling the most iffy about pre-viewing. He had a good presence, good chemistry with Harrison Ford, he wasn't snotty enough to tick me off, but had a nice slightly rebellious thing going on. Plus, what a great entrance he had, so hat-tipping to Brando in The Wild One. I laughed out loud at that, which made a couple of people around me look at me funny, but it just tickled me.

So yup, I dug it, I hope to see it again next weekend with Johnnycake and Dimples ( who were supposed to come up this weekend, but J got a cold), and I expect to own it on dvd. It gets only one Warhead, so hooray for Indy!

I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this afternoon. I'm a little too tired right now to blog about it properly, so let me just say this: when I got home, I still hadn't stopped grinning.

More later!

"Jumbo" (1962) -- Initial Thoughts

I watched Jumbo (1962) yesterday. I think this must be my month for unusual casting, because first there was Peter Lawford in Easter Parade, then Clifton Webb in Stars and Stripes Forever, and now... Stephen Boyd?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he-who-played-Messala-in-Ben-Hur made a musical. He even sang a song, though I'm sure the voice was dubbed. And he actually looked quite at home, not just on the set of a musical, but in a circus tent! DKoren, if you've never seen this, you really should, because he is 100% lunchable here! He shows up in a turtleneck, and I normally loathe turtlenecks, because most people cannot wear them well (Val Kilmer being a notable exception). But Stephen Boyd doesn't just wear that turtleneck well, he makes it look sexy! And that's a pretty rare feat.

So anyway, the Jumbo in the title is a trained elephant who's the star of a little family-owned circus. Jimmy Durante and Doris Day are father-and-daughter circus owners and performers back when circuses had one ring and paraded down main street of every small town they set up near. Jumbo is an exceptionally well-trained elephant that this other circus owner wants. A lot. This other owner, played by Dean Jagger (what? Dean Jagger as a bad guy? Noooo!), has tried repeatedly to buy Jumbo, or the entire circus, but Jimmy Durante always refuses, even though he's up to his famous schnozz in bills and has a gambling problem.

Enter Stephen Boyd in a turtleneck. From the first time we lay eyes on him, we can tell he is Up To Something, but it takes most of the movie for Doris Day and company to figure that out as well. Mostly because he keeps distracting everyone by walking tightropes or wearing tight white t-shirts that show off all those muscles he acquired by driving chariots a few years earlier. After some skulduggery and remorse and penitence, there is a happy ending, and when you get to the part where they start singing about spangles and stardust, just stop the movie. Because they go on for about ten minutes, singing the same song in an ever-more-elaborate parade of costumes. So just end it after one chorus, and all is well.

Here is a pretty cool discussion of Shadow of a Doubt, the Hitchcock film that got me started on Joseph Cotten. It's on Todd Alcott's blog, which Noumenon just turned me on to. Todd Alcott was one of the screenwriters of Antz, among other things, and his blog is quite groovy. He's got great comments on all the James Bond movies too. If you're a movie nut who likes reading about movies (like I am), you'll probably dig him.

"The Stars and Stripes Forever" (1952) -- Initial Thoughts

My "new" musical last week was The Stars and Stripes Forever (1952), a musical biopic of John Philip Sousa that stars... Clifton Webb??? Yes, that's right, the very man who brought weasely Waldo Lydecker to life in Laura, eight years later plays a lovable, if very control-enthused, Sousa. He's got a beard and a much less nasal voice, and it's hard to believe it's the same guy.

Most of the musical numbers are either bands playing marches, or a few staged songs. On a whole, it was okay, though it never grabbed me the way Yankee Doodle Dandy did. I don't have much to say about it -- it was a solid biography of a man who wrote music.