Birthday Movies

Starting in 2000, I have taken my birthday off from work. It started with just going out to the movie theater and catching three or four movies. I can remember that the first year, I saw Small Time Crooks, Dinosaur and Frequency. This continued until it stopped being fun: taking the whole day off and not seeing the kids. Not only was it not fun, but it felt a bit selfish. So, I started programming the movies so that I could watch them with the girls. Because this leads to astronomical prices at the theater, this has transitioned into movie marathons at home. The biggest one that we did was with all six Star Wars films a few years ago.

With the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this week, we revisited Indy's earlier adventures.

On Friday, we watched his very first adventures from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I found it a bit droll, my wife was disappointed, but the kids loved it. An interesting tid-bit was that Indy was born in 1899. Monday, we delved into the first two films Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom. The unanimous decision was that Marion Ravenwood was a much better adventure companion than Willy Scott. After lunch, we went to Prince Caspian. I did not like this film as much as the first one, but it was absolutely gorgeous in terms of production. The acting was fine, but somewhere in the middle (I think it was during the fight of the two kings), I just wondered if I really cared about the characters or not. We returned home, played a round of Carcasonne, grabbed some dinner and then embarked on the last adventure of the day, The Last Crusade.

All in all, a fun way to spend the birthday.