Raiders of the Lost Ark in Concert

Last night I had so much fun watching the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen at Abravanel Hall as the Utah Symphony performed the score by John Williams live!  I love this movie concert series that the Utah Symphony has started (go here and here) so much because listening to the music played live makes the movie so much more entertaining.  I may or may not have cheered out loud when we heard the iconic fanfare for the first time as Indiana Jones runs through the jungle.  It has been a really long time since I've seen this movie about an adventurous archaeologist and his quest to locate the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis do.  I was my nephew's age when this first came out and it is really the first big epic adventure that I remember watching in the theater.  It felt just as exciting to me last night as it did then.  I'm starting to respect Steven Spielberg more and more because, just like with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I think the special effects in this movie hold up incredibly well.  There are so many scenes that I loved such as when Indiana shoots a man who dramatically brandishes a sword at him, when he fights one of the Nazis near the propeller of a plane, when he crawls underneath a moving truck, when he is trapped in a tomb full of snakes (this gave me nightmares when I was a kid), and when the Ark burns the faces off of the Nazis.  I also thought it was really clever to use a red line across a map to indicate a long journey and I liked the use of shadows (that fedora is instantly recognizable).  It is such a great movie and the orchestra played the music magnificently under the baton of guest conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos.  It was a really fun way to begin the weekend.  The next movie in this series is The Nightmare Before Christmas in October and tickets may be purchased here.