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It took awhile, but the Star Wars prequels are now considered cool. Will Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull get the same critical re-evaluation? It hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it shouldn’t considering the film features a scene where Shia LaBeouf swings through the jungle with a bunch of CGI monkeys, but… what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the Indiana Jones movie with the aliens. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull writer David Koepp recently appeared on the Script Apart podcast, where he discussed the decision to add extra-terrestrials to the Indy...

Archaeologist suing makers of Indiana Jones, claiming their Crystal Skull is too accurate Can a fantastical movie be too historically accurate? Dr. Jaime Awe, director of the Institute of Archeology of Belize, has filed suit against Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures claiming that the prop skull from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bears a striking resemblance to one of the "real" Crystal Skulls originally discovered in Belize. So why is that a problem? Well, according to Awe, the skull was stolen, and the filmmakers are profitting off of ill-gotten goods. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of...

BERLIN, March 10 (UPI) -- A Swiss journalist said a crystal skull believed to have belonged to Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler was found hidden in a German home. Journalist Luc Burgin said the skull, found hidden on a roof beam in the home of a woman who was once married to a high-ranking SS officer, appears to be one of a series of skulls revered by the Mayans in ancient Mexico, The Daily Mirror reported Thursday. Himmler, who committed suicide after being captured by British troops during World War II, was well-known to have been fascinated by myths and...

WASHINGTON — Some mysteries are such fun you almost don't want to know the truth. That may help explain why people are fascinated with crystal skulls. "People like to believe in something greater than themselves," Smithsonian anthropologist Jane MacLaren Walsh said, and crystal skulls are mysterious and beautiful.

It's more than you might think.By Sharon McGovern The Indian Jones movies are more than they seem; canny explorations of the American presence in the world, the power of (and responsibility to) the sacred, and—in the latest—a thorough denunciation of one of the great evils of the 20th century, communism. While the last isn’t—or shouldn’t be—controversial, it is unusual. And the construction of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pays homage to its successors in such a way that the set is tied together beautifully. It is more than its reputation would suggest. The first Jones movie,...

WEST HOLLYWOOD Actor Shia LaBeouf reportedly was driving drunk when he crashed his pickup truck into another vehicle, and rolled the truck twice, at a 2:24 a.m. crash in West Hollywood, authorities said Sunday. LaBeouf, 22, was taken by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where was surgery for his left hand at 9 a.m., said Sgt K. Aloma of the sheriff's West Hollywood station. At least two other people were injured as well, including the woman who was riding with him in the actor's Ford F-150 pickup truck. LaBoeuf had a supporting role in this summer's "Indiana Jones and the...

The most recent Indiana Jones film more than recouped its big budget with an estimated $311 million in global box office sales through the long weekend, according to studio estimates Monday. Families went in droves to catch "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," a PG-13 adventure starring Harrison Ford as the whip-cracking archaeologist who took 19 years to return to the big screen. Paramount Pictures estimated the action sequel made $151.1 million in the U.S. and Canada from Thursday to the holiday Monday and $160 million overseas. It marked the second biggest Memorial Day weekend opening ever,...

He has battled against Nazi villains, a Beduin swordsman and a pit of poisonous snakes. Now Indiana Jones can add the Communist Party of St Petersburg to his list of adversaries. Party leaders accused the actors Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett yesterday of promoting crude, anti-Soviet propaganda in their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They have urged Russian moviegoers to boycott the film and told Ford, 65, not to visit the country. The swashbuckling archaeologist’s fourth adventure is set in the Cold War in 1957. It pits Indiana Jones against a sinister KGB agent,...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Communist party members in St Petersburg on Friday condemned the new Indiana Jones' film as crude anti-Soviet propaganda that distorted history and called for it to be banned from Russian screens. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" stars Harrison Ford as an archeologist in 1957 competing with an evil KGB agent, played by Cate Blanchett, to find a skull endowed with mystic powers. "What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have...

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Indiana Jones returns 19 years after his last adventure, and early reaction suggests the majority of Cannes film festival's notoriously picky critics are happy the whip-wielding archaeologist is back. Harrison Ford reprises his most famous role in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," a high-octane fantasy set in the 1950s when Jones no longer faces Nazis but a KGB agent after the ultimate Cold War weapon -- mind control. There are plenty of jokes about 65-year-old Ford's age, and he reunites with Karen Allen, co-star in the first Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of...