Friday, April 18, 2008

One of my favorite..... its been a long time since i watched the last indy..(

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

) pirated version pa nga..
hehe..
This year paramount Pictures will release
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull TV



  • Producer Frank Marshall stated that the film would be shot the same way as the previous three - with stunt men, and using CGI only when necessary.

  • M. Night Shyamalan and Tom Stoppard were each asked to pen a draft of the screenplay.

  • In April 2004, the project was supposedly shelved once more after George Lucas rejected the script by Frank Darabont earlier. Reportedly, Lucas did not like Darabont's handling of the storyline between Indy and his brother (both Indy's father played by Sean Connery and brother, a role for which Kevin Costner was rumored to be considered, were to have roles in the new movie). In media reports Darabont indicated he was "disappointed" with the decision.

  • At one point, Calista Flockhart was attached to the project.

  • Steven Spielberg brought on Janusz Kaminski, who's shot all Spielberg's films since Schindler's List (1993), to replace the now-retired cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, who had worked on all three of the previous Indy films. Spielberg refused to modernize the photography and wanted to retain the comic book style from the previous films; thus Kaminski had to watch all the three previous films repeatedly to study Slocombe's techniques. Spielberg later commented that both he and Janusz had to swallow their pride: "Janusz had to learn another cinematographer's look, and I had to acquire this younger director's look which I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades."

  • Stunt coordinator Vic Armstrong, who worked in all three of the previous Indy films, could not work in this film, as he was committed to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), so he was replaced with Dan Bradley. However, Steven Spielberg was able to meet Armstrong during War of the Worlds (2005) and talk about three action sequences he had conceived.

  • Sean Connery was approached for a cameo appearance as Henry Jones Sr., Indiana's father, but he turned it down, finding retirement too enjoyable. George Lucas later stated that in retrospect it was good that Jones Sr. did not appear, as it would disappoint the audience when he would not come along for the adventure. Harrison Ford also joked that he was getting old enough to play his own father, so Sean wasn't needed anymore.

  • Before ‘The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ was chosen as the title, several other titles were considered and even registered with the MPAA in August 2007, including ‘The City of Gods’, ‘The Destroyer of Worlds’, ‘The Fourth Corner of the Earth’, ‘The Lost City of Gold’, and finally, ‘The Quest for the Covenant’.

  • Shia LaBeouf revealed the movie's official title during his appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards 2007 (2007) (TV).

  • This is the first Indiana Jones film without Pat Roach, who had a role in the first three films. Roach died in 2004.

  • Shia LaBeouf signed on for the film in April 2007, so excited about doing an Indy film that he didn't even read the script. To prepare for his role as the greaser Mutt Williams, LeBeouf repeatedly watched the previous three Indiana Jones films and gained fifteen pounds of muscle.

  • To reprise his role as the legendary explorer Indiana Jones, the 64-year-old Harrison Ford spent three hours a day at the gym, and subsisted on a high-protein diet of fish and vegetables, thus building his body into a condition where he could perform his own stunts (he always kept himself fit anyway, as he hoped to complete all the five Indiana Jones films that were originally planned in the 1980s). Steven Spielberg later stated he was so impressed with Ford's form that he could not tell the difference between the shoots for the third and fourth films.

  • George Lucas cultivated an interest towards crystal skulls while producing "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" (1992), specifically during the episode with Harrison Ford's cameo. He felt the skulls, then an idea in an unused script, were as strong a plot device as the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford were sceptical, thinking the concept of crystal skulls too similar to the previous films, and two years were spent reworking it into something more acceptable.

  • In 2000, Steven Spielberg's personal interest for another Indy film was ignited when his son asked when the remaining two Indy films would be released.

  • When asked if Harrison Ford was too old to return as Indy, producer Frank Marshall quoted Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): "It's not the years, it's the mileage." He explained that it would be interesting to see Indy in a different decade, and deal with all kinds of new and interesting things. The age also adds to Indy as a fallible and therefore believable character.

  • Steven Spielberg did not shoot the film in digital format, which his friend and partner George Lucas had adopted. Lucas approved, seeing that it looked, in his words, "like it was shot 3 years after the Last Crusade, you'd never know there was 20 years between shooting."

  • In 2006, Harrison Ford declared that if this film was not made by 2008, then the filmmakers should drop the idea altogether. This got Steven Spielberg looking for a good script immediately.

  • To be consistent with the previous films, Steven Spielberg shot the film using traditional stunts and kept the use of computer-generated imagery to an absolute minimum, although during filming he estimated about 30% of VFX would have to be CGI.

  • Steven Spielberg cast Russian actors in the roles of Russian soldiers so their accents would be authentic.

  • Steven Spielberg describes this film as "the sweet dessert I give those who had to chow down on the bitter herbs I used in Munich (2005)."

  • Screenwriter David Koepp looked at all the film's previous drafts, and kept what he felt were good ideas. He tried not to make his work a "fan script," avoiding any trivial references to the previous films. He noted that the story would have to acknowledge Ford/Jones's age, and also aimed for the mix of comedy and adventure from the first film, trying to make it less dark than the second film and yet less comic than the third film.

  • John Hurt wanted to read the script before he signed on. He had previously heard about actors who signed on to a Steven Spielberg film before reading the script, since "Spielberg -- you know, GOD -- was doing it!" Hurt replied, "'Well, I need to have a little bit of previous knowledge even if God is doing it." The filmmakers sent a courier with the script from Los Angeles over to London, who gave the script to Hurt at three in the afternoon, reclaimed it at eight that evening and flew back the following day.

  • At a pre-production press conference at Yale, producer 'Frank Marshall (I0' said that Indy's fictional Marshall college is indeed named after him. He quipped, "If my last name was Yale, it would be Yale College."

Sunday, April 13, 2008

GOODBYE INTEL PHILIPPINES....

The No.1 processor maker INTEL plans to leave our contry...(Phils)


op company officials informed local employees during a meeting Apr. 2 that the company was exploring "multiple options" for the manufacturing hub, one of which included plans to close the facility. They added that severance pay packages have already been arranged for the employees, should these plans fail to work out in the next six to nine months.

First set up in Makati City in 1974, the manufacturing plant was later moved to a bigger facility in General Trias, an industrial town where the biggest industry is semiconductor, in the province of Cavite, located just south of Manila.

In 2002, six years after the move, the Makati location was closed and Intel consolidated all its manufacturing functions including Flash memory design, to the Cavite facility, which currently employs about 3,000 employees.

Rumors have been circulating 2005 that Intel had already made a decision to pack up and leave the Philippines after the year 2010. The writing on the wall became clearer in 2006 when Intel inaugurated a US$605-million test and assembly plant in Ho Chin Minh City in Vietnam.

During the Vietnam launch, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett said the facility was simply an expansion and would not affect the operations of other plants located in countries such as the Philippines.

However, the telltale signs were obvious. Among the countries in Asia where it has test and assembly plants, the Philippines was the only site in which Intel made no significant plans to invest or expand.

Compared to the Cavite plant which received no part of Intel's US$1 billion investment plan for Asia in 2006, Intel poured a whopping US$270 million to increase the capacity of its Malaysian plants and another US$300 million to expand its facilities in Shanghai and Chengdu in China.

During the media interview, Barrett said the company considers "political stability" as a major factor when making investment decisions and singled out Vietnam as a favorable investment climate.

Intel was the first American semiconductor company to set up shop in the Philippines in 1974, and to date, the company has poured some US$1.5 billion worth on investment in the country. Intel chose the Philippines as the base of its second Asian offshore assembly operations center, after Malaysia.

According to Intel's local Web site, the Cavite assembly and testing facility provides "integrated circuits known as Flash memory, as well as microprocessors and chipsets that are marketed worldwide".


A brief statement from the company stated: "In an effort to keep employees informed, Intel has updated its employees that significant investments would be required to ensure the long-term viability of its factory building in Cavite." It did not explicitly disclose plans to shut down the manufacturing site.

However, an Intel representative said in a phone interview that offering exit package was the right thing to do since closing the plant is one of the options the company is exploring.

"We can't blame the employees if they feel [the offer of severance packages meant] that they're about to lose their jobs," said Teresa Pacis, external communications manager of Intel Technology Philippines, the manufacturing arm of Intel's local subsidiary.

"The company was just being honest with the workers when it announced the compensation package as Intel explores its options," Pacis told ZDNet Asia.

According to various blogs, Intel had discussed the possibility of moving the factory to an IT park in the neighboring province of Laguna because the current Cavite building is structurally unsound.

But employees dismissed this option, questioning the need to offer staff severance packages if the company had intended only to transfer to another location within the country.

Industry observers have cited high electricity and labor costs as two major reasons why Intel is planning an exit strategy. The Philippines has the second most expensive energy cost in Asia after Japan.

Intel's impending pullout is a huge blow to the Philippines, where the electronics market—which encompasses semiconductors—is the country's largest export earner.

The chipmaker's decision to put up a manufacturing hub was a symbolic vote of confidence that paved the way for other foreign companies such as Texas Instruments, to locate their operations in the country.

In fact, the current Cavite plant was where Intel's mobile processor Centrino was first assembled and shipped to the global market. Pentium 4 chips were also manufactured in the facility.

Aside from making chipsets and processors, the local site also houses a Flash memory design factory. However, employees who specialize in Flash are expected to move to Numonyx, a joint venture set up between Intel and STMicroelectronics.

In 2004, an Intel-commissioned study by University of Asia and the Pacific showed that the chipmaker's investments resulted in US$713 million in direct and indirect export contributions.

The report further noted that Intel accounted for 22 percent of exports in Cavite and was the largest employer in General Trias.