Say It Ain’t So Jo(aquin)!

With the aging of Harrison Ford, my favorite actors over the last few years have been Matt Damon, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix.

It’s been a tough year for my favorite actors. Tragically, Ledger died of an accidental overdose back in January, and now comes the news that Phoenix is retiring from acting.

At 34, Joaquin isn’t moving into a retirement home just yet. Apparently, he’s taking a break from the movie business to pursue a career in music.

Back when he play Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, I was blown away by Phoenix’s voice, and I have no qualms with him recording some albums, but here’s my basic thought: if people like Jessica Simpson who don’t seem to have talent in acting or music can do both at the same time, can’t Joaquin at least give it a shot?

Harrison Ford, Propagandist

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the night after it came out. I didn’t think it was amazing, but I wasn’t too disappointed either.

The plot was far-fetched, and there were parts that were absolutely ludicrous, but really, since when do we go to Indiana Jones seeking realism?

All in all, I thought Crystal Skull fit in pretty well with the other three movies in the Indiana Jones franchise. It may have been the worst of the four, but it didn’t shame the series or anything like that.

Well, that’s just my opinion—the Communist Party of Russia apparently disagrees.

According to this article, they sent an open letter to Harrison Ford calling for Crystal Skull to be removed from Russian theaters and condemning it as “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

The film is set in 1957, and with no more Nazis left to fight, Indy finds himself competing with a group of vicious Soviet agents to find a mystical crystal skull in Peru.

The letter to Ford takes great exception to this, reminding him that, “in 1957 the USSR was not sending terrorists to America but sending the Sputnik satellite into space!”

It’s a year Soviets remember clearly—after Sputnik, everything was pretty much downhill.

Oh and by the way, so far, the Communist Party’s pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears: Crystal Skull is being shown on over 800 screens in Russia, which is the most ever for a foreign film.