Tuesday, May 27, 2008
INDIANA JONES
The hard sell worked. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” pushed by one of the biggest marketing campaigns in Hollywood history, sold an estimated $151.1 million in tickets in North American theaters over the five-day holiday weekend.
The box office gross, generated between Thursday and Monday, put to rest questions about whether one of moviedom’s most popular characters could strike a cultural chord after a 19-year hiatus from the big screen. Overseas the movie, which generated mixed reviews from critics, sold an estimated $143 million in tickets between Thursday and Sunday; Monday estimates were unavailable.
Read it here...
I didn't see it. Back in the 1980s I did see "Raiders of the Lost Ark". It scared the heck out of me. I was still shaking by the time we got home and have never been able to explain it. Nothing like it had ever happened before, and it has not happened since. It was enough to convince me that I had no business seeing another Indiana Jones movie. Maybe this was why, though I couldn't have made the connection back then:
(IsraelNN.com) The famed archaeologist, the inspiration for the “Indiana Jones” movie series, has spent most of his life searching for the Ark of the Covenant. The ark was the resting place of the Ten Commandments, given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, and was hidden just before the destruction of the First Temple.
The Talmud says the Ark is hidden in a secret passage under the Temple Mount. Jones says that the tunnel actually continues 18 miles southward, and that the Ark was brought through the tunnel to its current resting place in the Judean Desert.
Throughout the many years of his quest, Jones has been in close contact and under the tutelage of numerous Rabbis and Kabbalists. Extremely knowledgeable in Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah sources dealing with Holy Temple issues, Jones has now received permission from both known and secret Kabbalists to finally uncover the lost ark.
Dr. Jones, who divides his time between Texas and Israel, has been here since March 9th ready to finally reveal the Ark. However, he has been waiting for both permission from the mysterious Kabbalist and for project funding to come through.
As recently as last month, the rabbi, who only communicates via messenger, told Jones that the time was not yet right to discover the Temple vessels.
Last Thursday, however, Dr. Jones received a communication from the rabbi reading, “The time is right.”
Read more...
I first encountered Vendyl Jones at a traveling show that stopped off in Akron a number of years ago. They had on display various old copies of the Bible and some archeological finds and provided a movie that came through loudly to me as anti-Catholic. They were selling Jones' books. Jones is a Noahide.
Not everyone believes Jones is the prototype for the Indiana Jones movies. The Jewish Legends website tells us:
The fact that a fictional Indiana Jones, who shares Dr. Vendyl's last name, also found the lost ark doesn't faze Dr. Vendyl, for one reason-he claims to be the source of the Indiana Jones character. Dr. Jones says the man who wrote the first draft of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Randolph Fillmore, was one of the volunteers who worked with him in 1977. “I agreed to help him write the movie as long as – number one – he wouldn’t set it here (in Israel). Some people believe the ark is in Ethiopia or Egypt, some believe its in Constantinople or Rome. I just didn’t want it to be portrayed as being here. The second thing was, 'Don’t use my name.' So he didn’t. My name is Vendyl – V-E-N-D-Y-L. So he just dropped the first and last letters and it ended up Endy Jones," Jones said in an Arut Sheva interview.
This account directly contradicts the director and executive producer of the Indiana Jones films, Hollywood mega movie moguls Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. On the bonus material of the Indiana Jones Trilogy, Lucas explains the name "Indiana"came from the name of his dog, of an Alaskan malamute, that he had in the 1970s. As for the "Jones, " the character was originally named Indiana Smith, but Spielberg disliked the name and Lucas casually suggested "Indiana Jones". The name was thus changed early in the production of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
While a scriptwriter Randolph Fillmore may have been on one of Jones' digs, Philip Kaufman and George Lucas came up with the idea of an archaeologist hunting for the Ark and are credited as such in the film, with Lawrence Kasdan writing the actual script. Furthermore, Randolph Fillmore is not credited, nor is he known to have written any Hollywood script.
Truth or disinformation campaign? I'll probably never know.
