Steven Spielberg and The Return of Indiana Jones : Entertainment Inc.

If ever there was a megalomaniac of cinema (the Hollywood kind) it is undoubtedly Steven Spielberg. There is nothing this man cannot do. Benevolent alien beings, not-so-benevolent alien beings, swashbuckling treasure hunters, dinosaurs, sharks, thieves, war heroes, war-profiteer turned heroes, racism, Nazism, colonialism - you name it he's done it.

Although it reeks of the assumption 'If it's bigger it must be better' Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull is so great to watch only because it is unpretentious and unapologetic about its need to entertain. I mean, just look at the opening sequence - the audaciously self- conscious introduction of Indy Jones as his shadow creeps up on the edge of a jeep and he puts on 'the' hat, a rapier-toting Cate Blanchet, highly magnetised mummified remains and a chase that ends in a nuclear blast which of course Henry Jones survives (and how!) . The scale of imagination (for a rationalist like myself) is just unbelievable. It's good stuff as far as entertainment is concerned. And the promise of a thrill-ride is well-kept right till the end.

Of course the tendency to indulge in some all-American flag-waving did not go unnoticed. "Better be dead than Red!". Come on! We already know what you mean Mr Spielberg when you have the Russians running amok looking for aliens that landed smack in the middle of the U.S of A. So leave the 'west is best' sloganeering where it deserves to be. Back in the 50s.

But let's call a spade a spade. This film shouldn't be judged for its cinematic appeal. Or for political correctness. Or for Spielberg's directorial abilities. For that evidence is plentiful in the form of his other films. Wikipedia has a whole other page devoted to a 'list of Steven Spielberg's films'. The point is that here is a man so comfortable with the medium at hand that he can do virtually anything with it. And for that - just that nothing more - he deserves to be remembered long after his time.

"Marty Goes Undercover"

When I heard that Martin Scorsese had won the Directors' Guild of America Award for filmmaker of the year(post-super successful film "The Departed"), the inevitable smile crept up and was glued there for about the whole day. The talk of the town is that Marty is now more than ever in the running for the Best Director accolade doled out by none other than the Academy. This is more fact than fiction at the moment given that in the parallel history of the Guild and the Academy very rarely has the winner of the Guild Award lost out on the Oscar for the same picture in the same year. The precise number would be 6. Sceptics may refer to Wikipedia.

Martin Scorsese may have waited far too long for this one but the naked truth is that he should have won it aeons ago. Having lost out on films like Raging Bull and The Goodfellas, winning while riding on the commercial success of The Departed won't be winning after all.

After watching The Departed, exhilarated as I was, I couldnt help feeling a little cheated. Seems to me that Scorsese had lowered his guard a bit too much to deliver a star-studded big banner production that fell far below the bar he had previously set for himself with films like Taxi Driver, Raging bull, Goodfellas and the heavily underrated Casino. Of course The Departed is not comparable in genre or style to Taxi Driver. I'm not suggesting that. But what I am suggesting is that Scorsese was next to invisible in the film that is being touted by some as his magnum opus. Save for some recognizable tropes like use of voiceover and familiar gangster territory, the watermark blazed into each work with astonishing cinematography and a powerful screenplay was nowhere to be seen. A critic put it eloquently when she wrote, "Marty went undercover on this one."

But to give due credit to the director and the film, the soundtrack was vivid and the editing impeccable as always (thanks to long time collaborator thelma Schoonmaker). Sound performances by both Leo Dicaprio and Mark Whalberg. Frank Costello's transformation from the smooth overlord to an absentminded close-to-senile overlord is remarkable. But cinephiles ask yourself this - does Costello surpass in character the likes of Jake La Motta, Nicky Santuro, Ace Rothstein and Tommy DeVito?

So if Marty does win, I'll be cheering myself hoarse but it'll be for a victory won long before when the Movie Brats were still bratty enough to believe in a producers' nightmare like Travis Bickle!

P.S. - The Movie Brats were Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and John Milius.