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Indiana Jones and the Internet Critics' Pre-emptive Strike: Ain't It Cool News Sandbags Spielberg and Co.

Posted by Phil Nugent

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull makes its official debut with a press screening at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, four days before it opens wide theatrically. The picture has been immersed in a protective bath of secrecy; Steven Spielberg likes his intended surprise to, you know, surprise. But, perturbingly enough, the first reviews have started trickling in, thanks to that bastion of cutthroats and jacka;s known as the Internets. The initial "quick reaction" was posted to Ain't It Cool News last Thursday evening by "ShogunMaster." The spoiler-heavy review reports that Harrison Ford "has a few lines that work and a million that don't", trashes the other performers, laments the last of tension or suspense "During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero ... was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience. In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it.. He just never shows signs of worry or distress."), and sums up the proceedings with the judgement that this is "the Indiana Movie that you were dreading."

Not having seen the movie ourselves, we have no way of verifying these claims, but the truest thing in the review (which has since been joined on the site by what Michael Cieply describes as "two other less critical, but less than sparkling, reviews") is probably its author's admission that "it doesn't matter what I say, you will see this movie regardless." Still, you have to wonder who the fellow is and how he managed to be one of the first people on Earth to see the movie. Now Cieply reports that "ShogunMaster", "reached via the Web site, said he is a theater executive who saw the film at an exhibitors’ screening this week." Cieply notes that "Such screenings are required in about two dozen states that have laws against blind-bidding, a practice in which theater owners were once asked to bid on films they had not seen. As a practical matter, there is little or no actual bidding in the contemporary theater business, which relies instead on negotiations between distributors and theater owners. But distributors continue to hold screenings for theater company executives in the weeks before a film’s release, whether as a courtesy or as a way to avoid conflict with a patchwork of state laws. Theater executives may have an incentive to play down a movie’s prospects after such a screening, to get better terms." If that's what ShogunMaster is all about--trying to dampen the perception of public enthusiasm for a sure-fire hit as a negotiating ploy--then Ain't It Cool News' participation for the sake of a scoop might threaten the good name of on-line film criticism, if it had a good name. As everybody keeps reminding me, it kind of doesn't, but still!


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