Wednesday, October 24, 2007

My nerdiness is showing...

The History channel is playing the Young Indiana Jones Adventures, a show I really liked back when it first came out. The show follows a 9 year old and a teenage version of Indy in his adventures around the globe. The ones with the younger Indy I never really liked as much, the child actor isn't that good and the pacing of the shows is bad. I do give them points for actually filming on location. The Moroccan episode is pretty good but an Egyptian segment left me scratching my head. In it, the young Indy and his tutor are left high and dry by their camel driver when they decide to climb one of the small Pyramids on the Giza plateau. Aside from the unlikeliness of a guide abandoning the balance of his pay, there are NO other tourists in the area??? By the time they get down the sun is setting. A young T.E. Lawrence arrives on a bike and they decide to make a camp for the night using camel dung for fuel.

But having been to the Giza plateau I know that its actually a very short walk from the Pyramids to the edge of Cairo. In fact, we could see the Pyramids from our hotel room at the Mena house Hotel (which was a hotel at the turn of the century as well). They could have walked a few hundred yards, sat down for tea and gotten a cab. Hardly an epic journey.

I know they had to raise the tension but I hate when basic facts are messed with. I won't even go into the Egyptology parts where they meet up with Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings. They show a man blasting the area with dynamite, which I don't believe Carter ever did since the area is unstable limestone, (although the Italian Egyptologist Caviglia did use Dynamite on one of the pyramids).

I know, I know. It's just a show. But it bugs me.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Being of Greek national origin, you may now appreciate the way I feel about the movie the "300." (Can you sing: Hollywood.)

Sir Constantine.