Last news from Indiana Jones - the awaited movie and the Disneyland "Summer of Mysteries" show.

Here are the latest news both about the Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull and the new Adventureland "Summer of Mysteries" show. And, above, a new picture from the movie.

Let's begin by the "Summer of Mysteries" show for Disneyland, Anaheim. The excellent theraider.net web site have some news about it and it seems that the show should begin on may 22:

"...As if we Indyfans don't have enough going on that day! Yep, May 22nd is the day that Indy returns to the big screen and will be making his appearance on the crowded streets of Adventureland!

Now lets talk a little about the show! While most Disney message boards have painted the image of this being a full out stunt show, that is not the case. Nor is it the case that there would be a show similar to the recent Pirates Lair show. Not even that scale. Why? Because we're in Adventureland. The smallest area of the park, and certainly the most populated. "We already have the Indy attraction in Adventureland, that's the big one. Our "show" is made to compliment the attraction," says the Creative Team Member.

The Indiana Jones Summer of Hidden Mysteries will be made of 2 different street shows! I don't know if I'm right, but I'm thinking they could be similar to the shows seen at the Disney Hollywood Studios on Sunset Blvd, or maybe even like "Laughing Stock" in Frontierland!

So what can we expect to see on May 22nd?? Well lets start with one show, the one that involves the female Archaeologist. Aparently, she gathers up some kids for an expedition, and they set off to find some artifacts in Adventureland. Only in the end, she pulls an Elsa Schnieder, double crossing her dig team. But don't fear, Indy makes an appearance and sets things straight!

The second show involves Indy, who is going after an artifact, but beware, Bad Guys are right around the corner, trying to get the artifact for themselves! This will consist of some hand-to-hand combat, on the rooftops, on the balconies, and possibly even on the rope bridge in Tarzan's Treehouse... Well, we all know how Indy will get out of that one! How awesome would that be?

Behind-the-scenes, I've been told that all members of the creative team are very much into making this an amazing experience for guests. The Creative Team Member continued by saying that "even members of the Art Department were coming over and saying they HAD to be a part of it, that it had to be true to the characters, that certain things would, or would not, happen in the world of Indiana Jones!"

That even while it may not be a large scale show, there will be a lot of "layers" to it. There will be little "things" added into Adventureland that only the die hard Indyfans will understand! So if this is done correctly, it could be very cool to find more Indy relics in Adventureland. All that's there now is the "Coronado" life saver that can be seen on the dock from the Jungle Cruise!

Long story short, the Disney Entertainment Department is very dedicated to making this a great addition to the summer entertainment. This will NOT be a permanent addition to the park, and is just a summer promotional piece and no word yet on how long it will stay, so be sure you don't miss it on May 22nd!!"

Good news isn't it? Now, about the movie, here are some excerpts of a long interview that Spielberg and Lucas gave to Entertainment Weekly:

EW: So what took so long to get to installment No. 4? It's been 19 years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the last of the original trilogy of films.
LUCAS: When we got to [the idea of making a fourth] one, I had already said, ''No. I can't think of another MacGuffin.''
SPIELBERG: There's not one that hasn't been supernatural.
LUCAS: The supernatural part has to be real. [He taps the table] Which is why they're very hard, and you run out [of options] very fast. You have to have a supernatural object that people actually believe in. People believe that there was an Ark of the Covenant, and it has these powers. Same thing with the Sankara stones, same thing with the Holy Grail. We may have exaggerated some of its powers, but basically there are people who believe there is a Holy Grail, brought back by the Knights Templar.

EW: Well to bring us into Indy 4, what kind of developmental push and pull went on once you decided to set the new film in the 1950s?
LUCAS: The idea was to take the genre of Saturday-matinee serials, which were popular in the '30s and '40s, and say, ''What kind of B movie was popular in the '50s, like those B movie serials were popular in the '40s?'' And use that as the overall uber-genre. We wouldn't do it as a Saturday-matinee serial. We'd do it as a B movie from the '50s.
SPIELBERG: The Cold War came to mind immediately, because if you're in the '50s, you have to acknowledge the Cold War.
LUCAS: If you're going to make a movie about the 1930s, it's almost impossible to do it without the Nazis. And it's the same thing when we got [to the '50s] here. We have to deal with the Russians because that's where we were. It's not like we set out to make a film about Russians. It was, What was going on in the world? What were the issues? Who was doing what?
SPIELBERG: Totally.
LUCAS: You do a whole lot of research around the subject matter to try to get it as plausible as possible. We don't deal with time machines. We don't deal with phony notebooks that don't exist. We don't deal with pyramids in 10,000 B.C., because there weren't any.

EW: So, Nazis out, Russians in. And that led you to a Russian villainess.
SPIELBERG: Well, we had a villainess last time, too [in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade]. But blonde Elsa wasn't bad from the get-go.
SPIELBERG: Right. Irina Spalko is a villain when she [first] gets out of the car.
LUCAS: She's an uber-villain.
SPIELBERG: The privilege for me was working with the great and talented Cate Blanchett. Because she is really a master of disguise.
LUCAS: She's just amazing.
SPIELBERG: She is so unrecognizable in this movie. But she's been unrecognizable in many of the choices she's made in her career, to play characters, like Bob Dylan, that are so removed from who she is as a mom and a wife in real life. She's a very threatening villain. Of all the villains I've been able to work with in the Indiana Jones movies, I can say she's my favorite. And I think Cate made her that way. We gave her a template for this, but she invented the character.

EW: You've made Indiana much older in Crystal Skull. The character is nearly 60. And Harrison Ford turned 65 while you were making the film.
LUCAS: There was never any question about the fact that we were going to have Harrison play his age.
SPIELBERG: There's a line that was thematic for me, and it's not a line that's actually in the movie. And it illustrates why I was comfortable letting Harrison age 18, 19 years. In the first movie, he says, ''It's not the years, sweetheart, it's the mileage.'' Well, my whole theme in this movie is, It's not the mileage sweetheart, it's the years. When a guy gets to be that age and he still packs the same punch, and he still runs just as fast and climbs just as high, he's gonna be breathing a little heavier at the end of the set piece. And I felt, Let's have some fun with that. Let's not hide that.

EW: Plus he's got a sidekick to show him up Shia LaBeouf, who plays a young ''greaser''. Did he even know what a greaser was?
SPIELBERG: He didn't.
LUCAS: I had to train him. Shia got sent to the American Graffiti school of greaserland. And I became the consultant on his comb.

More of this long interview can be read on the Entertainment Weekly web site.

Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull is released May 22 in the U.S, but on May 21 in France!....and the running time of the movie will be 2 hours, as now officially announced by Paramount Pictures.