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Some critiques on the “Crystal Skull” Indiana Jones movie, from Russia.

Communist Party members in Russia want to ban Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from local theaters, calling it anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history.

(Anti-Soviet propaganda? Get with the program: the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. As for distorting history: wait till you see the Matrix!)

“It’s rubbish,” said Sergei Malinkovich, a leader for the St. Peterburg Communist Party. “In 1957 the Communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?”

(Come on! It’s not nearly as bad as when we tricked them with the lies of Harry Potter)

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett [are] second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA,” the Party member wrote in a blog entry. “We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country.

(Why? Because Russia already HAS enough second rate actors?)

Source:

Communist Party members in St. Petersburg said on a web site this week that the Soviet Union in 1957 “did not send terrorists to the States,” but launched a satellite, “which evoked the admiration of the whole world.”

(Oh that Sputnik thing? Looks like a crystal skull to me!)

Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev said Saturday “it is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

(I bet he finds this disturbing! Considering who lost the previous one.)

Source:

“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 no shame,” said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg.

(Scare kids with Communists? And WHO is accusing us of that? HAHAHAHAHA)

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones [movie] outright to prevent “ideological sabotage.”

(And which ideology exactly would be sabotaged by this work of pure fiction?)

“Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957,” St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.
“They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war.”

(Your kids don’t know what happened in 1957? Blame on you, Russia! As for us making them think you guys almost started a nuclear war in 1957: True, that’s distorting history alright, we all know that didn’t really happen until 1962)

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia’s Culture Ministry to ban the film for its “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

(Soviet propaganda? See above. Having a Culture Ministry banning movies: way to go guys!)

Source:

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.

(Well, if Ford doesn’t get to go to Russia, then you don’t get to play in his next movie! So! There!)

The Communist Party’s ideology committee in Russia’s secondlargest city saw red over the plot. In an open letter, it declared: “Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people, who remember the difficult Fifties when our country was concluding its reconstruction after the Great War, but did not send merciless terrorists to the USA.” It said that Russians had loved Ford in previous serious roles ” which include a Soviet submarine commander in K-19: The Widowmaker – but went on: “You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised.”

(Beaten and despised. Yes we have grown up a bit since the end of the cold war …)

The party’s central committee called Steven Spielberg’s film an attempt to “slander Soviet Communists” and poison the young against them. It called Ford and Blanchett “capitalist puppets”.

(Capitalist puppet: Psst, here in the west, that’s a compliment!)

Source:

“Our women don’t look like Nazis, but maybe Cate Blanchett was threatened by unemployment, so … she made this film,” Perov said.

(What DO Nazis look like?)

“The film is low-quality and would raise a smile if there wasn’t a danger of drawing into its orbit teenagers who know nothing about the 1950s,” Vladimir Mukhin, another member, said in comments on the Internet site.

(Low quality films raise smiles in Russia? As for your ignorant teenagers: why not TELL them about the fifties? Oh I know… I know.. it IS a bit embarrassing, but hey, they deserve to know!)

“Indians and aliens unite with Jones and his untrustworthy buddies to save the world from a Russian threat – what rubbish, simply a paranoid Churchillian fantasy,” Mukhin said.

(Right! Fantasy! Finaly one who ALMOST gets close!)

 

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.”
And God granted it.
Voltaire

*sigh*

I guess that’s what a life long exposure to state sponsored propaganda movies, presented as the truth and historically correct, does to the less enlightened minds: it apparently grows a blind spot for the genre of ‘FICTION‘.

 

To be sure:

Not all Russians are communists and apparently the above sentiments don’t quite represent the opinion of the average Russian:

The protests appeared to have little impact on the film’s commercial prospects. It was released on Thursday on 808 screens in Russia, a record for a Hollywood film.

We saw Casino Royale today.

And both my wife and I liked it. A lot.

There was some blasphemy in the movie: At the poker table Bond ordered the wrong cocktail! Instead of his trademark Vodka Martini (shaken, not stirred!), he ordered a Vesper (3 measures of Gordon’s gin, 1 measure of vodka, ½ measure of Kina Lillet. Shake until ice cold and serve in a deep champagne goblet with a large thin slice of lemon peel. Easy on the fruit).

This was probably in honor of  his leading lady Vesper Lynd.

But then a little later, when he does order a Vodka Martini, the bartender actually asks him “Shaken or stirred?”, and Bond frowns and answers — oh horror –: “I don’t care”! (Correction by commenters: He actually said “Do I look like a man who gives a damn?”)

I asked my wife if she liked the ‘new’ Bond character and she fanned herself. “YeahHeah“, she said… “He’s hot hot hot … everything about him is hot!”. (Correction here too: the adjective SMOKING was used: see comments)

I must admit, fair is fair, that he, indeed, does look a bit like me: same blue eyes and he plays a mean hand of Texas Holdem too…