Experiment Farm

Who's Clara?

2013-05-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

I learned most of what I know about storytelling from improv. Fortunately I studied improv with people who were less interested in making people laugh and more interested in telling a good story. One of the things that was hammered home to me over the years was that the most important ingredients for a good story are characters and relationships not plot. If you have the first two the third either doesn't really matter or will come naturally.

Lots of things go into making good characters and relationships, but the cornerstone really is a character's motivations. Looking back at all of the companions in the Doctor Who reboot, the most interesting ones had the most interesting and complex wants and needs.

On some level most companions are looking for adventure. This was certainly true of both Donna and Rose. They both wanted to get out of their dead-end lives and see the universe. Rose also wanted to protect her mother and reconnect with her dead father and... well she didn't even know what she wanted from Mickey, but that made that relationship interesting. Whereas Donna wanted to protect her grandfather and get away from her mother (while still craving her approval) and find a husband.

Martha, on the other hand, wanted the Doctor. She too had relationships with her family back at home, but mostly she was just in love. This made for a rather one dimensional season as all you could really do with that was shit on her while Ten ignored her and pined away for Rose.

Amy wanted her "raggedy doctor" to be real. That was perhaps the initial genius of Steven Moffat's takeover of the series. He takes over a series with millions of adult viewers who watched the show as a child and fantasized about what they would do if they traveled around with the Doctor. So Moffat gave those viewers a companion living out her childhood fantasy of traveling with the Doctor. A fantasy that was so all consuming that it was getting in the way of her living her life to the point that she ran away from her wedding to sort it out.

Rory on the other hand, just wants to be with Amy. He loves her so deeply that he's willing to travel to the ends of time and space to protect her and be with her (or spend thousands of years guarding her while she's trapped in the pandorica.)

That was an interesting dynamic for a couple of seasons but couldn't sustain itself very long largely because Amy and Rory had no relationships outside of each other and the Doctor. Eventually we had a few interesting episodes with Rory's father, but we never really knew Amy's parents, largely because they didn't even exist there for a while. Then we had Amy and Rory's kid and River Song add a little complexity, but towards the end things just sort of puttered out.

Now we have Clara. She's been around for half a season and I have absolutely no idea what she wants. She doesn't seem to have a particularly onerous life back on Earth in the present, that we know of anyway. Although now that we've spent an episode with the kids she nannies, I wouldn't blame her for wanting to get away. Except that even in that episode, Clara and the kids were rarely in the same scene together, so we never really got a sense of that relationship to each other. So really, the only relationship we've seen Clara have has been with the Doctor, and I don't even know what she wants from him.

That's why, as I watch this season with Clara, I keep feeling like there's nothing there or there's something missing. She has no motivation. Nothing is driving her. Nothing is moving her or her story forward. Without that, her character doesn't really exist, and without characters, the story's not going to be very good.

Doctor Who Returns!

2013-04-02T11:31:00.001-07:00

The second half of the current season of Doctor Who started up again this weekend with the episode "The Bells of St. John." I find id interesting the nearly at the same time we find out officially that David Tennant and Billie Piper will be in the 50th Anniversary Special this fall we get a reference to the Tenth Doctor in the episode. In case you didn't catch it, as the Eleventh Doctor is shedding his monk's robes and getting re-dressed in his regular garb, he grabs two coats, one of which was Tenth Doctor's which he then tosses aside in favor of his current, shorter coat. I'm going to bet that won't be the last reference to Tenth Doctor, or any previous Doctor to pop up this season.

Given how Steven Moffat likes everything to connect, I would normally assume that Tennant and Piper's reappearance would be more than just a random occurrence but would rather be an important piece in a larger puzzle. However, they seem to be making the special a stand-alone story, given that it will happen after the current season ends and be shown in theaters the same day it airs. But who knows.

I also saw an interesting post on Facebook pointing out the similarities between Clara Oswin Oswald and CAL, the girl from Moffat penned "The Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" episodes during the Donna Noble season. CAL has a similar name, looks a bit like one imagines a young Clara to look, and there is the similarity of their story-line CAL was a girl whose intelligence was uploaded to a computer but didn't realize it. Clara, in her first episode, had her intelligence residing in a Dalek, but didn't realize it. Then in this week's episode, she gets her mind actually uploaded into a computer, in a way that one assumes Charlotte Abigail Lux's was uploaded into CAL.

Are they really connected? Hard to say. It's tantalizing to think this story could loop back around to the library. That could open a door for the Tenth Doctor's appearance in the Anniversary Special as well open the possibility of putting a button on the River Song song character arc. That's a hard thing to do, given that we've already seen all of her major life events from birth to death to meeting the Doctor to the Doctor meeting her and even their wedding. Still, she feels unresolved in some way, even with these out in the ether.

Of course, as I'm writing this, the person I really want to see in the Anniversary Special is Captain Jack...

How is Easter Sunday if Good Friday's Friday?

2013-03-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Today is Good Friday, the day that Christian's "celebrate" the death of Jesus. Then Sunday is Easter, celebrating Christ's resurrection. Except that Christianity also tells us that Christ died and on the third day he rose again. Wait a minute. As my wife pointed out the other day, if he died Friday afternoon, Sunday morning is barely 36 hours later. That's not three days and three nights. How does that work?

The best answer I've found comes from this article on the United Church of God web site. The first thing to know is that "Easter" is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. In fact, the idea of celebrating and commemorating Christ's resurrection isn't mention anywhere in the bible (neither is the concept of Lent). Whereas celebrating Passover is mentioned in the New Testament, something early Christians did but modern Christians have long since dropped. Instead, like all good Christian holidays, Easter was co-opted from pagan festivals celebrating the beginning of spring. The word "Easter" comes form the Anglo-Saxon word "Eostre", the goddess of spring. Bunnies and eggs all come directly from this pagan tradition.

It was a long time before any of these traditions were officially adopted by the church as official holidays. Then there were all sorts of battles over when the holidays should be, and what should be celebrated when. When everything was settled, Christ's death was Friday and his resurrection was Sunday mostly due to a lazy reading of the Bible.

The Bible talks about Christ dying and being buried just hours before the Sabbath began. Then the women, after resting on the Sabbath, show up to his tomb the next day to anoint him with oils and he's gone. So, he died the day before the Sabbath and rose the day after. He died Friday. He rose Sunday. The Jewish Sabbath being of course on Saturday. But that's not three days.

Right, because if you read the Bible more carefully you realize that somewhere in there the women had time to go buy and prepare the oils. Something they couldn't have done on the Sabbath itself.

Remember how I mentioned early Christian's celebrated Passover? That's because Jesus celebrated Passover and the subsequent Feast of the Unleavened Bread. Those two Jewish festivals are generally combined these days into one event, but they weren't always that way. You'd have your Passover seder, then you might have a day to prepare, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread would begin... with a "high day" or Sabbath.

Ding ding ding. There were TWO Sabbaths that week. We have a winner.

In the year 31, the Feast of Unleavened Bread started on Thursday. Read the Bible closely, and you realize that Jesus died on Wednesday, the day before the "high day" Sabbath that began the festival. Sunset Wednesday to sunset Thursday is one day and night. Sunset Thursday to sunset Friday is day two, and the day the woman buy and prepare the oils. Sunset Friday to sunset Saturday is day three, the regular weekly Sabbath. Christ then presumably rises Saturday night, which by the Jewish reckoning is already Sunday. The woman go to the tomb before sunrise the next day and find it empty.

There you go.

So Good Friday should really be Good Wednesday, and the Last Supper was Tuesday night. What did Christ do all night Saturday? Who knows. Maybe he rested up from dying or spent one last wild night on the town turning water into wine before he had to start ministering to his followers. In any case, good luck getting the world's 2 billion Christian's celebrating Good Wednesday.

Skyfall: Boyhood Bond

2013-03-11T16:31:00.000-07:00

Skyfall - 2012

Bond: Daniel Craig
Directed by: Sam Mendes
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "Skyfall" performed by Adele, written by Adele and Paul Epworth

If you're wanting a Daniel Craig Bond movie to harken back to the good old campy days of yore, then you're in for a disappointment. Still, with Craig's third spin at 007, the producers wanted to step back a little from the uber-serious realism of the Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace duo. The resulting movie does a great job of harkening back to the good old days without losing its modern realistic take.

In the end Skyfall accomplishes something bordering on genius, which is perhaps why it's grossed over $1 billion. It makes Craig's three movies feel like a prequel trilogy. It ends in a very familiar satisfying place that leaves us the viewer in a very unique position. On the one hand, we know what's going to happen next. On the other hand, because it's a reboot, we don't know anything that's going to happen next. It's a wonderful mix of comforting familiar and excited anticipation. My only advice to the producers would be the advice Mallory gives to Bond in Skyfall: Don't cock it up.

(Stop here if you're looking to avoid spoilers...)

Javier Bardem makes a brilliant villain, even if he is playing the Bond-Universe version of The Joker. Okay, not quite. He's not only making chaos for chaos's sake. He has a specific personal motif, but he's nicely unstable and uses a tried and true method of modern-day villains: he gets himself caught on purpose. Still, it manages to feel unique because Bond does the same thing, giving us our first Bond homosexual flirtation scene and the brilliant line "What makes you think this is my first time?"

In many ways, the closest thing to a Bond girl in the film is M. No, Bond does not seduce her. He gets his seduction on with the doomed Sévérine played by Bérénice Marlohe whose death is one of the most tragic in the series. It's also implied that he gets it on with Eve (Naomi Harris) who of course is revealed to be Miss Monneypenny at the end of the film. A friend of mine thought it was terrible that they allowed Monneypenny and Bond consummate their attraction. I liked that all of their sexual tension from here on out can be grounded in personal history. If you don't like either option, you can choose to believe they never did it, as we never saw anything more than foreplay.

But no, M fills the role of the woman he's protecting through the film's climax. Daniel Craig's Bond and Judi Dench's M have always had a much more personal relationship than any previous Bond/M combo, and it's quite enjoyable to watch. I especially liked how after Bond's numerous trips to her personal abodes, she gets to visit his boyhood home at the end of the film. Watching them fight side-by-side is unique and oddly heartwarming.

There are many other things I would be remiss in not mentioning, like how wonderful it was to see the old Goldfinger Aston Martin, how nice it was to see Bond's boyhood home and then see it so fabulously destroyed, and of course Adele's Oscar and Grammy winning theme song. It's also worth noting that the producers originally thought about approaching Sean Connery to play Kincade (Albert Finney) but decided against it because it would have been too distracting because goddamn would it have been too distracting. (Although it's amusing to imagine Connery uttering the line "Welcome to Scotland.")

Personal Rankings: It's very tempting to rank this above the Cansino Royale / Quantum of Solace duo, but it owes too much to those films to rank above them in its own right.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

* Quantum of Solace would rank #9 individually, but when seen in conjunction with Casino Royale, sits along with it as one long movie.

2012 Context

President: Barack Obama
Queen: Elizabeth II

The world does not end.

Best Picture Nominees:
Argo

Bond at the Oscars

2013-02-25T10:43:00.001-08:00

Last night was a good night for Bond at the Oscars. Not so much because of the 50th Anniversary tribute segment, but because Skyfall took home two awards. The Oscars for Sound Editing (shared with Zero Dark Thirty) and Original Song were the first Oscar wins for a Bond film since Thunderball took home a Best Visual Effects award in 1966. In fact, Skyfall racked up as many wins last night as the entire franchise previously. Bond's only other Oscar was also a Visual Effects nod for Goldfinger in 1965.

Adele's masterful theme for Skyfall is not the only Bond theme to earn a nomination, but it's the first to win. The other nominees were Linda and Paul McCartney for "Lie and Let Die", Marvin Hamlisch for "Nobody Does it Better", and Bill Conti and Mick Leeson for "For Your Eyes Only".

Last night certainly marked the first time two Bond themes were performed live at the Oscars. In addition to Adele, Shirley Bassey earned a standing ovation for belting out the grandaddy of them all "Goldfinger" after a rather odd tribute to the music of Bond that only featured two other Bond themes played over a lifeless montage of clips mostly from the Connery and Craig years. (On a side note, I realized my problem with most modern highlight montages for both movies and sports: they're all about flashy visuals and don't attempt to tell any sort of narrative.) I half expected Carly Simon to join Barbara Streisand on stage during the Marvin Hamlisch tribute singing "Nobody Does it Better" to make it number three.

Producers apparently tried to assemble every Bond actor for the tribute in what would have been a first time for such a gathering, but rumor has it that Connery and Brosnan declined. That's too bad. Seeing them all onstage in tuxedos would have been priceless.

Quantum of Solace - Casino Royale 2

2013-02-12T15:55:00.000-08:00

Quantum of Solace - 2008

Bond: Daniel Craig
Directed by: Marc Forster
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "Another Way to Die" performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys, written by Jack White

This movie was billed as perhaps the first direct sequel in the Bond franchise. It's true, the action picks up exactly where Casino Royale left off, but aside from that and continued references to Vesper, it's about as much of a sequel as From Russia With Love is. The primary plot and characters really bear no direct relation to previous film. This isn't The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back or anything like that. Still, clocking in at a short 106 minutes, I do suggest watching this movie back-to-back with Casino Royale, or at least within a week of one another. It retroactively adds some clarity to Casino Royale, and the warm fuzzy glow you have from watching Casino Royale will help keep you from realizing there's not much to Quantum of Solace.

I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way. It's a very nice 106 minutes. It's just a little heavy on the action and lacking in the character development spectrum. The two films really just make each other better, like strawberries and champagne. They're more co-dependent films than parts 1 and 2.

Where Casino Royale focused on terrorism, Quantum of Solace focuses on environmentalism and greenwashing. Our squirrely, ferret-like villain Dominic Greene (played creepily well by Mathieu Amalric) uses an environmental conservation company as his legitimate business front, when really he's conspiring to do nasty things to Bolivia. Why do we care about Bolivia? We don't. We care that Greene is part of the mysterious crime organization that lead Vesper to her death and is thus Bond's target for revenge. Then, to make the story even more personal, we bring in "Bond Girl" Camille Montes, played by the stunning Olga Kurylenko, who is after the Bolivian General for murdering and raping her family. This is the personal revenge story that License to Kill was trying to be.

I put "Bond Girl" in quotes above because Camille and Bond never sleep together. Outside of M, it's probably the only strictly platonic male/female relationship Bond has in the franchise.

The entire time I watched the movie I wanted the name of the mysterious crime organization to be SPECTRE, except of course I knew that it couldn't be because Kevin McClory owns SPECTRE. Still, I thought naming it Quantum to somehow tie in the title more was a little cheap. The title, incidentally, is the name of one of Ian Fleming's Bond short-stories. Specifically, Fleming wrote "when the 'Quantum of Solace' drops to zero, humanity and consideration of one human for another is gone." That theme is the only direct connection between the movie and the story.

The true Bond Girl of this film is Gemma Arterton as Strawberry Fields, which somehow works as a perfect Bond-Girl name without really having any overtly sexual implications. She's the perfect embodiment of how Bond's charms get him laid and get people killed. Her death is a deliberate reference to the death of Jill Masterson in Goldfinger. Their character arcs are similar, and their deaths are nearly identical, only now oil has replaced gold in its importance and value.

The real "sequel" moments come when (SPOILER ALERT) Mathis dies, because that's just sad and the emotion is heightened by his character arc stretching back to the previous film, and at the end when Bond finally confronts the man who tricked Vesper into loving him. Remove those, however, and the movie stands alone very well.

Personal Rankings: In spite of everything I just said about this movie not really being a sequel, I still always think of it and Casino Royale as being one long movie. If I had to place it on its own, it would come in at #9.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

2008 Context

President: George W. Bush

Queen: Elizabeth II

Barack Obama is elected the 44th President of the United States

Best Picture Nominees:
Slumdog Millionaire

Casino Royale - One of the Best

2013-02-01T10:00:00.002-08:00

Casino Royale - 2006

Bond: Daniel Craig
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "You Know My Name" performed by Chris Cornell

How do you take a film series with a tradition bordering on science-fiction and reground it in reality? Start with a sequence in black and white, of course. Strip away all the flashy sizzle, and focus the audiences attention on the people on the screen.

That's just one example of how Casino Royale does just about everything right. Not that it's flawless, mind you. Chris Cornell's theme song isn't going to end up on a lot of "Favorite Bond Songs" lists, but it's no "The Man with the Golden Gun" by Lulu either. Is the plot incredibly complicated? Yes, but so are "real" spy stories, like the novel Casino Royale, which the movie actually follows very closely.

That's the genius of the film. Not the complicated plot, but the reality of it all. The plot, the characters, the situations, the action, all of it feels like it could really happen. When there's violence, it's realistic, not only in its depiction, but in its aftermath. There are real consequences and real emotional reactions. If you doubt that, just watch the Eva Green shower scene to know what I mean.

Bond, as a character, has depth. He's inexperienced and vulnerable, but supremely confident. He's a "blunt instrument", as M calls him, but he's also extremely intelligent. He just escapes into the blunt instrument by necessity. When he gets poisoned, he doesn't magically come up with an antidote. He makes himself vomit in the bathroom and has to defibrillate himself. Because that's what he'd do. Then there's the torture scene, which is also lifted almost directly from the book. He's naked. He's getting tortured. He shows us he's in pain, but he also keeps his confident, arrogant humor. It's brilliant.

I'll admit, I was skeptical of the casting of Daniel Craig. He's blond. I'd never heard of him. At the time, it seemed like an odd choice, but it certainly turned out to be an inspired one. Connery was the perfect Bond for the 60s, rugged and manly. Moore was the perfect Bond for the 70s, suave and cartoonish. They never quite got it right in the 80s. Brosnan was the perfect Bond to revive the series in the 90s, manly and self-aware. Craig was the perfect choice to reboot the series in the 00s, manly and real. He's also, by far, the best actor of the bunch. People like to think of Dalton as being the best actor, but give that man a piece of furniture and he'd chew on it till the cows came home.

Casino Royale also plays brilliantly with concept of status. People's statuses and their status relationships are constantly getting flipped in this movie. M is Bond's boss. She has status over him. When she's mad at him for killing the bomb-maker on embassy grounds, he flips her status to gain an advantage. How? He breaks into her home to meet her, where she's not his boss, but a normal person. In doing so he proves that he's really good at what he does and is able to keep her on his side. (SKYFALL SPOILER ALERT: I also like the symmetry of their first screen time together being at her home and their final screen time together being at his.)

Vesper starts out with a higher status than Bond. She controls the money and disdains what he does. By the end that's reversed. Bond gets money from the CIA, and she sees the reality of the dangers Bond faces. Even our villain, Le Chiffre gets his status upended, twice. First by the warlords who come to collect their money, and then by Mr. White. It's always fun to see villains helpless against their own enemies.

And I haven't even mentioned how visibly stunning the action sequences are, or Bond's romantic entanglements, or how I always forget that so little of the movie actually takes place during the card game, or how awesome it is that "Bond, James Bond" comes at the end, or... I actually watched the movie almost two weeks ago, but I was so immersed in the experience of watching it, I almost forgot to write about it. It's just that damned good.

Personal Rankings: It is only out of respect for the early years of the franchise that Casino Royale does not go straight to #1.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

2006 Context

President: George W. Bush

Queen: Elizabeth II

Montenegro, the location of Casino Royale in the film, declares independence from Serbia.

Best Picture Nominees:
The Departed
Babel
Letters from Iwo Jima
Little Miss Sunshine
The Queen

Bond and the Need to Reboot in 2006

2013-01-26T18:08:00.001-08:00

Sam Mendes, the director of the latest Bond film Skyfall, gave an interview over the summer where he likened James Bond to the Doctor Who franchise in that each new actor who assumed the role wasn't just recast in the role, but regenerated Bond into a new character. Like each new Doctor, each new Bond is the same character but different at the same time. This is really a great way to look at it and renders every "Best Bond" argument pointless. The problem is that the Doctor is an alien who has a long lifespan and regenerates instead of dying. Bond is human.

With Roger Moore and Sean Connery having been essentially the same age, we saw the character age linearly for 25 years. You could believe that the Bond bedding Grace Jones and battling Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill was the same character that bedded Ursala Andress and battled Specter in Dr. No. Then you regenerate Bond into Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, make the character twenty years younger, and put him in a movie that makes no direct reference to any detail or situation from a previous film, and we're left as an audience not sure what to think. Dalton's Bond who beds Miryam D'Abo and battles Joe Don Baker would have been a teenager in the early sixties. He couldn't be the same person, could he?

This is where time starts to stretch and pull in the Bond reality, and it would continue through the Brosnan years. Is Bond just ageless? Or is this a different person with the same name? Is "James Bond" just the name they give any agent with the license to kill number "007"? Who knew? No attempt was made to answer those questions, and for the most part they didn't matter.

But it still hurt the franchise. It added a level of the ridiculous to every plot-line, which became a liability heading into the new century. In the post Bourne Identity post 9/11 world, people didn't want ridiculous spy movies, but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make Bond real as long as he was going to be played by an actor who wasn't even alive when Goldfinger was released. Yes, Pierce Brosnan was, but he was 11. I'm talking about Daniel Craig. Whoever was going to replace Brosnan was going to be younger than the franchise itself.

However, just before the release of The World Is Not Enough, an interesting thing happened that gave the producers the perfect solution. Through a complicated series of happenstances, MGM/UA acquired a tenuous claim on the character Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Sony Entertainment was trying to develop Spider-Man into a franchise launching film. On the flipside, Sony through acquiring Columbia, acquired the rights to the book Casino Royale, which Flemming had sold off separately before the Eon produced Bond franchise was launched. They struck up an agreement with Kevin McClory of Thunderball and Never Say Never Again fame, and announced they were going to launch their own Bond franchise. This left the possibility of two studios launching two competing franchises about the same characters.

As that would have been disastrous for everyone concerned, in 1999 they worked out a deal. MGM/UA gave up its rights to Spider-Man, and Sony gave up its rights to Bond. That put Casino Royale under the Eon blanket for the first time.

And Casino Royale was the first Bond novel.

And Batman Begins had just successfully "rebooted" the Batman franchise out of the stylized Burton-Schumacher years and into the grounded-in-reality Christopher Nolan years.

Bingo! The perfect solution to the ageless Bond: start over. Show us the character's origins. Ground the action in reality, and make a spy movie that will play to modern audiences. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we got Casino Royale and the Daniel Craig years.

Die Another Day - See Another Movie

2013-01-18T16:12:00.000-08:00

Die Another Day - 2002

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Directed by: Lee Tamahari
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "Die Another Day" written and performed by Madonna

"I thought it just went too far – and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!" - Roger Moore

Every actor to play Bond to this point had at least one really terrible movie. Connery had his Diamonds Are Forever. Moore had Moonraker. Dalton had License to Kill. Even Lazanby had that middle part of On Her Majesty's Secret Service where he wears the frilly shirt and pretends to be gay. Brosnan is no exception with Die Another Day serving as his turn at stinking up celluloid.

So much is wrong with this movie, it's hard to know where to begin. So I'll start at the beginning. You can tell things aren't going to go well as soon as you see the altered gun-barrel sequence with the bullet shooting towards the audience. Why mess with a good thing? Director Lee Tamahari spends most of the movie trying way to hard too put his personal stamp on the franchise through slow motion punches, stylistic transitions, and crude sexual innuendo, even by Bond standards. Maybe he should have spent some time on plot or acting notes.

Then the film moves right into a surfing sequence which I guess is supposed to look cool because there's no dramatic tension as we don't know who these people are or what they're doing. Then we have some clumsy exposition worthy of the Roger Moore years, followed by setting up our North Korean villain who then immediately dies. Our henchman gets a ridiculous diamond-studded face for no reason other than it looks cool. I think every creative decision for this movie was made on the grounds that it "looked cool", no matter how terrible it made the movie. Even if it involved kite-surfing down a calving glacier.

And this movie is terrible. Not just because the acting, dialogue, CGI, and plot are all terrible, but also because of timing and dumb luck. Two things happened between the release of The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day that made the franchise, in its then current state, unsustainable: 9/11 and The Bourne Identity. 9/11 made shit real. The Bourne Identity showed you could make a really good spy movie grounded in realism. Die Another Day is not a spy movie grounded in realism. In fact, it's the most ludicrous Bond film since Moonraker.

Here's all you need to know this movie's absurdity: race change through DNA replacement therapy. I don't even need to mention the giant mirror in space turning the suns rays into a weapon that can destroy nuclear missiles and clear the DMZ of land mines.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the franchise, the film is crammed with references to nearly every preceding film. Which is cool, if you're like me and you can play "spot the reference", but makes the movie feel even more like a series of loosely strung together gimmicks with no real point or emotional stakes. It's like one of those terrible ESPN highlight montages set to a popular rock song that doesn't give you any context for what you're seeing.

The torture sequence could have been remarkably ahead of its time, given events that would happen in the immediate years to follow the film's release, except that it's not handled with any sort of realism. It happens as a stylized montage throughout the opening title sequence. It's hard for the torture to have any real impact when it's happening in between shots of naked women dancing to a Madonna club remix. And did I mention Madonna's IN the movie? Remarkably, she probably gives the best performance because she seems fully aware of how ridiculous the whole thing is. When a Madonna cameo is the highlight of your movie, you've got issues.

That's not true. Halle Berry walking out of the ocean in her bikini is the highlight of the movie, even if it is an homage to Ursulla Andress in Dr. No. She and Rosamund Pike form two of the most blindly attractive Bond girls of the franchise. Yet somehow Berry manages to turn in a terrible performance in spite of the fact that she won her Oscar during filming, and Pike isn't much better. Not that I'm complaining exactly, but why is Pike mostly topless in her final sword fight with Berry? Oh right, because it looks cool.

Wait, I take it all back. The best part of this movie is John Cleese, in his one and only performance as Q. His witty dialogue with Bond in the "old gadget warehouse" is the most enjoyable and vaguely believable piece of dialogue in the film. Here, just follow this link to YouTube (embedding is disabled on the clip), skip to a 1:16 and watch the scene. See how many gadgets from earlier movies you can spot. Skip the rest of the movie.

Personal Rankings: It would go straight to the bottom, except that nothing could be worse than The Man with the Golden Gun... except Moonraker.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

2002 Context

President: George W. Bush

Queen: Elizabeth II

The U.S. invades Afghanistan.

Best Picture Nominees:
Chicago
Gangs of New York
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Pianist

The World Is Not Enough - Close But No Cigar

2013-01-11T15:48:00.001-08:00

The World Is Not Enough - 1999

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Directed by: Michael Apted
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "The World Is Not Enough" performed by Garbage

Fun fact: I often confuse the titles "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "The World Is Not Enough" in my head because they both start with T, have the same number of syllables, and are both in iambic meter. "The World Is Not Enough" is in fact the Bond family motto, as 007 jokes in this film (I always thought that was a clever bit of writing). If you listen closely during On Her Majesty's Secret Service you'll hear it referenced in one of the heraldry scenes, which would make it the only Bond film title to be spoken in more than one film if it weren't for the ubiquitous use of the phrase "license to kill".

This is one of the few Bond movies that you should really only watch once. Not because it's terrible. It's actually quite good... the first time you see it. Sure it has its flaws, but it does some unique things with the plot and the villain. Bond has some interesting character development moments, and Judi Dench's talents are used well in an expanded role for M. Unfortunately a lot of the dramatic tension that runs through the film goes away completely once you know how it ends. So while the first viewing is something of a roller-coaster, the second is more like waiting in line at the exit. It's just sort of boring.

Where Goldeneye had a tank chase, and Tomorrow had the hand-cuffed motorcycle chase, World never has a signature action sequence, unless you count the speed boat chase on the Thames in the pre-title sequence, but being remembered for a pre-title sequence is something of a dubious honor. In fact, the speed boat chase was supposed to be the first thing after the main title, but they moved it in front of the title because otherwise the pre-title sequence was deemed too boring. As a result, the film boasts the longest pre-title sequence in the series at 14 minutes. However, whenever you have a problem with part of your movie being "too boring", you know you've got issues.

Where Tomorrow had two wonderful performances by actress in two complex roles, World has one good performance by an actress in a complex role (Sophie Marceau as Electra King) and Denise Richards as Christmas Jones, who somehow manages to give Lois Chiles a run for her money as the worst performance by an actress in a Bond film. Not only is she terrible, but the part is terrible. After raising the bar on female characters so high in the previous film, they immediately reduced it back to the pretty scientist with a puney name who's only in the film to look good in a wet t-shirt:

Apparently there was some controversy about Sophie Marceau's nipple being briefly visible in her love scene with Bond, which I find funny considering Denise Richards may as well be topless during the entire flooded submarine sequence.

Robert Carlyle is great as Renard, but the reason you're not going to see him on any top 10 Bond villain lists is because the role just isn't that menacing. In fact, he's kind of a sap. Carlyle's talents are wasted in this film, especially considering how good he is at playing bad guys.

World is Desmond Llewelyn's last film as Q. This was not by design, although you would think it given his final scene which plays like a sad farewell. He intended to play the role until he died. Unfortunately for him, two weeks after World opened, at the age of 85, he did just that. Not from old age, mind you, but from a head-on car crash. He had appeared in all but two Eon produced Bond films. (Peter Burton played the role in Dr. No, and Q does not appear in Live and Let Die.) World sets up his successor with John Cleese masterfully playing Q's assistant whom Bond jokingly calls R.

This was definitely the beginning of the end for the Brosnan years. That's easy to say knowing that he only had one movie left, but the real problem was that the world was about to change. Much like Bond had to be reinvented after the fall of the Soviet Union, he'd have to be reinvented again after 9/11.

Personal Rankings: This isn't Brosnan's best, but it's not his worst either, and it does play well initially.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1999 Context

President: Bill Clinton

Queen: Elizabeth II

The Euro is established.
Skyfall director Sam Mendes wins an Oscar for directing American Beauty

Best Picture Nominees:
American Beauty
The Cider House Rules
The Green Mile
The Insider
The Sixth Sense

Tomorrow Never Dies - Brosnan's Best Bond

2012-12-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow Never Dies - 1997

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Directed by: Roger Spottiswoode
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "Tomorrow Never Dies" performed by Sheryl Crow, written Crow and Mitchel Froom

Every actor to play Bond to this point had the opportunity to do a slower-paced more character-driven film. Connery had his From Russia with Love. Moore had For Your Eyes Only. Dalton had License to Kill. Even Lazanby's only film falls into that category. Brosnan, on the other hand, gets his character development sprinkled in throughout his films, perhaps because he was the better actor of the four. (Yes, I would argue that Brosnan performed the part better than his predecessors, even if he didn't make the better films.) Tomorrow Never Dies is the closest he gets to a FRWL or a FYEO, and in many ways, because the character exploration doesn't get in the way of the action, it's the most well-rounded film of the bunch. They were clearly evolving towards what would become the Daniel Craig years.

Bond has two of his most interesting relationships with women in this film, giving Brosnan ample opportunity to act and give Bond some emotional complexity. It helps that the movie features two of the best Bond-Girls of the franchise in Teri Hatcher as Paris Carver and Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin. "Best" in that they could act circles around every previous Bond-Girl with the exceptions of Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman, and had two of the most interesting parts. And, yes, are both very good looking.

Paris Carver is the wife of the film's villain, Elliot Carver played by Jonathan Pryce in his best role since Brazil. (And possibly his only role since Brazil. Seriously, can you remember him in anything else? Except as the guy who barely talks in Glengarry Glen Ross?) The unique thing about Bond's relationship with Paris is that, for the first time, we see Bond having a history with a woman. They used to be involved. They used to be in love, but as Paris says: Bond's "job is murder on relationships." The whole first half of the film, Bond gets to have a very personal and emotional character arc that culminates in her eventual and inevitable death. It's like a whole mini On Her Majesty's Secret Service with the back-story implied and without the wedding.

Then he falls into a classic "beautiful female agent he's forced to work with" scenario with Chinese spy Wai Lin. Only this time the romantic-comedy "I hate you/I love you" trope works much better than in previous films, in part because Michelle Yeoh is bad-ass in her action sequences. Wai Lin could have been the star of her own Hong Kong spy film series, and I would have watched them all. The chase sequence where Bond and Wai Lin are hand-cuffed together is one of my all-time favorites because they are forced to interact and work together the entire time. Plus, jumping a motorcycle over a helicopter is just cool to watch. (Director Spottiswoode realizing he couldn't get any "bigger" than the tank chance in GoldenEye, deliberately went smaller with the motorcycle chase to great success. You can watch the whole sequence here.)

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the film's other amazing chase sequence: the remote-controlled BMW chase. If you want to watch Brosnan have a great time playing Bond, watch that sequence. It's so much fun.

Jonathan Pryce puts in a solid performance as the Rupert-Murdoch-like media baron trying to start World War III so he can get broadcast rights in China.. Somehow he manages to both play an almost parody of a megalomaniacal Bond villain while at the same time giving him a grounded human side. Again, this plays into the self-aware nature of the Brosnan films. Pryce doesn't shy away from being over-the-top, because he knows what role he's playing. He just also knows when to pull it back in.

This film fires on just about every cylinder. The pre-title jet-fighter sequence is exciting. The Sheryl Crow theme hit #11 on the charts. The plot moves along nicely, features some good character-development, and taught action sequences. The end features an attack on a super-lair. What more could you want really?

Personal Rankings: This is by far Brosnan's best Bond and a challenge to place. It does romantic-comedy better than TSWLM and Asia better than YOLT. But TSWLM does epic better, and YOLT does megalomaniacal-villain better. As a result, it slips in just under YOLT.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1997 Context

President: Bill Clinton

Queen: Elizabeth II

Princess Diana is killed in a car accident.

Best Picture Nominees:

Titanic
As Good as It Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential

GoldenEye - Excuse Me, I'm a Bond Movie

2012-12-10T15:48:00.001-08:00

GoldenEye - 1995

Bond: Pierce Brosnan
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Produced by: Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli
Theme: "GoldenEye" performed by Tina Turner, written by Bono and The Edge

Connery was the "Man's Man" Bond.
Lazenby was the "Sensitive Renaissance Man" Bond.
Moore was the "Gentleman" Bond.
Timothy Dalton was the "Brooding Angsty" Bond.
Pierce Brosnan was the "Self Aware" Bond.

Every second that Brosnan is on screen as Bond, he looks like he's having the time of his life. Even when he has to be all serious and act. He's the first Bond to really have fun with the part. Everyone previous to him had a love/hate relationship with the part, except maybe Dalton who had a hate/hate relationship with the part. Connery quit the role three times. Lazenby fought for the part, then pissed it away. Moore spent nearly a decade signing one-movie deals to play Bond just one more time. Dalton turned the role down, twice, then resigned with one movie left to go on his contract.

Cassandra Harris with Roger Moore in FYEO

This was Brosnan's dream job. He'd had it, and he lost it, and when he got a second chance he was going to enjoy the fuck out of it. His first wife, Cassandra Harris, was a "Bond-Girl" in For Your Eyes Only, Countess Lisl von Schlaf. During filming, she introduced her husband to producer Albert Broccoli, who immediately started considering him as Moore's replacement. Sadly, after his first shot at the part fell through in the Eighties, she was diagnosed with cancer and died before he finally landed the role in the Nineties.

Legal disputes caused a six year delay between License to Kill and GoldenEye. In that time, the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain had fallen, and critics openly wondered whether a Bond film could be relevant in the post Cold War era. Would his womanizing philandering ways play to a modern audience? How would they make it work?

Scorupco as Natalya

They made it work by doing a brilliant thing. They didn't shy away from any of the criticisms. They attacked them head on, and by naming them, diffused them. They send Bond to Russia to remind the world of the problems resulting from the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union. Then they send him to Cuba, the last bastion of communism. He gets called a "dinosaur" twice. M, now a woman, criticizes him as misogynistic. Moneypenny calls Bond out on his sexual harassment. In a way, this movie is constantly apologizing for itself, but at the same time is saying "Yeah, yeah. We know, but we're making this movie anyway." And it works.

I remember a friend of mine seeing it just after it came out and saying "Bond is back!" In the first fifteen minutes of the film, Bond bungee jumps off a bridge, has a quipy assault on a super-lair, has a ridiculous parachute/airplane stunt, seduces one woman while chasing another in a classic car down a mountain road, dons a tuxedo, and beats an attractive mysterious woman at baccarat in a casino. They crammed in every classic trope they could as quickly as they could. They even get him in with Moneypenny, M, and Q right away. That's how you reintroduce Bond with a bang.

Janssen as Onatopp

Which is interesting considering director Martin Campbell and the producers took rather the opposite approach when they introduced Daniel Craig, but with just as much success.

This movie is a fun ride, with an all-star cast (see my "Everyone's In GoldenEye" post) that holds up very well almost twenty years later. The tank chase through St. Petersburg is one of the best "car" chases of the series. Sean Bean as the villain and Famke Janssen as the henchwoman put in solid performances. While Janssen steals the show with her raw sex appeal (and several near orgasms on screen), Izabella Scorupco is easy on the eyes herself. There's lots of tension, some character development, a tacked on romance. Everything you need really.

This movie marks the first time we see another "00" agent as a fully realized character. We saw glimpses of them in Thunderball. We saw one in clown makeup in Octopussy. I think we saw one or two of them die at the beginning of The Living Daylights. This is the first time we get an actual character in "006" Alec Trevelyan turned master criminal Janus. (An idea we'll see done even better in Skyfall.)

The movie even tries to bridge the gap between the Dalton years and the Brosnan years by setting the pre-title sequence in 1986, just before the events of The Living Daylights. Or maybe they were trying to pretend the Dalton years never existed and Brosnan got the part back then. It's hard to tell. It's a little confusing actually. Then they try to give us some backstory by revealing that Bond is an orphan (a fact taken straight from the books) to make sure we realize this is really the same character, except how could he be, given that Pierce Brosnan was 9 when Dr. No came out? It's one of those "suspension of disbelief" things.

GoldenEye is the second Bond film to have an original title not taken from one of Fleming's stories, and the first since The Spy Who Loved Me to not draw any plot elements from one of Fleming's stories. I think that's a testament to Fleming's productivity. The title does have very close ties to Fleming. He wrote all of the Bond novels and stories at his estate in the Bahamas which he named 'Goldeneye' after a secret mission he had worked on as a member of British Naval Inteligence during WWII. It's part of a hotel complex now. You you can rent the "Fleming Villa" for between $6,000 and $9,000 a night. It still contains Fleming's original writing desk.

Personal Rankings: I'd forgotten how much I like this movie.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1995 Context
President: Bill Clinton
Queen: Elizabeth II

Star Trek: Voyager premiered on UPN.

Best Picture Nominees:

Braveheart
Apollo 13
Babe
Il Postino
Sense and Sensibility

Everyone's in GoldenEye

2012-12-07T17:02:00.002-08:00

A lot of people were in GoldenEye before they were famous, or before they were super-famous anyway. I would be remiss if I did not highlight the later-to-be all-star cast, but doing so in my regular write-up of the film would have made it overly long. So here's a breakdown that leaves one wondering, couldn't they have found a bigger name to play Natalya?

Pierce Brosnan was already famous for Remington Steele and... um... Mrs. Doubtfire. Playing Bond, of course, would amp up his A-List credentials.

Remington Steele - 1982

James Bond - 2002

Judi Dench was well known to British theater goers and TV audiences, but few people in America knew who she was unless you were a big fan of the Eighties British sit-com A Fine Romance.Since she started playing M, she's won an Oscar and been knighted.

M - 2012

Laura Dalton (A Fine Romance) circa 1981

Again, Sean Bean, was reasonably well-known to British audiences, but he certainly hadn't been a meme yet or become famous for dying in all of his roles. Of course GoldenEye came out in 1995 during the early days of the internet, so few people had been a meme yet.

Boromir - 2001

Janus (GoldenEye) - 1995

Robbie Coltrane was probably the most famous of the GoldenEye character actors before he played Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky. Cracker had quite the cult following. He'd played Falstaf in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, and who hadn't stared at a copy of The Pope Must Diet at their local video store and wondered WTF? Still, he hadn't played Hagrid yet. There's not much topping playing Hagrid.

Hagrid - 2011

Zukovsky (GoldenEye) - 1995

It's hard to imagine time when Alan Cumming wasn't famous, but in 1995 he had a lot of minor TV credits on his resume and a turn as the Emcee in Sam Mendes's Cabaret revival. He still had Spy Kids, Nightcrawler, The Smurfs, and hosting Masterpiece Mystery on his horizon, as well as a highly respected stage career.

Boris (GoldenEye) - 1995

Eli Gold (The Good Wife) - 2010

Who would have guessed watching GoldenEye in 1995 that two of the films actors would go on to be mutants in the X-Men movies? Famke Janssen hasn't done much other than play Jean Grey, but she hasn't really had to either.

Onatopp (GoldenEye) - 1995

Jean Grey (X-Men: The Last Stand) - 2006

In the "If you blink, you'll miss her" category, Minnie Driver has a non-speaking but singing role in GoldenEye as Zukovsky's mistress. Circle of Friends came out earlier that year and made her famous.

Irina (GoldenEye) - 1995

From The Riches - 2008

Finally we have Joe Don Baker, who isn't really famous at all, unless you're a fan of MST3K. Still, I mention him because he has the rare honor of being the only actor to play a Bond villain in one movie (Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights) only to return as a Bond side-kick in future films (Jack Wade in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies).

Whitaker (The Living Daylights) - 1987

Jack Wade (GoldenEye) - 1995

License to Kill - Rulthess Killer Bond

2012-11-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

License to Kill - 1989

Bond: Timothy Dalton
Directed by: John Glen
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "License to Kill" performed by Gladys Knight

While The Living Daylights only grossed about as much as A View to a Kill in the U.S., it's worldwide box office made it the third highest grossing Bond film to that day, just behind For Your Eyes Only and Moonraker. As a result, the producers, director, and writers decided to go all out with the gritty and more realistic style that fit with Dalton's scenery chewing when they made License to Kill. While it may have resulted in better "cinema", the resulting dark and violent film just didn't play well to an Eighties audience high off Reagan-era economic success in the waning days of the Cold War. They'd have to wait until Daniel Craig and a post-9/11, post-waterboarding world for that level of gritty uncomfortable realism to play to a wide audience.

License to Kill does a couple of things right, and a lot of things wrong. The film makes the best use of actor Desmond Llewelyn as Q of any movie in the franchise. Why he wasted so many years in the lab, I'll never know. He was meant to be out in the field helping Bond.

A very young Benicio del Toro plays the henchman Dario with an intensity you would expect. Unfortunately he's noticeably absent form the second third of the movie, before showing up at the end. He's one of four Oscar winning actors to appear in Bond films. Christopher Walken had already won an Oscar before he appeared as Zorin. The other three would win their Oscars after making their appearance in a Bond film: Sean Connery (The Untouchables), Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love), and del Toro (Traffic).

There are several other interesting casting notes about this movie. Robert Davi, who plays the drug-lord villain Sanchez, appeared as Agent Johnson in Die Hard one year earlier. His partner in that film, also Agent Johnson, was played by Grand Bush, who plays a DEA agent in this film. They even have a scene together with DEA agent Ed Killifer, played by Everett McGill, who Twin Peaks fans will recognize as Ed Hurley of Big Ed's Gas Farm:

From License to Kill:

From Die Hard:

-"I was in Junior High, dickhead."

From Twin Peaks:

My wife is crazy and wears an eye patch!

Also in Die Hard was The Living Daylights henchman Andreas Wisniewski. He was this guy:

Now I have a machine gun. Ho Ho Ho.

But now I'm getting sidetracked. David Hedison became the first actor to play Felix Leiter twice, returning to the part 16 years after playing him in Live and Let Die. This movie opens with Leiter getting married. When his bride gives Bond the garter, Bond gets all sulky and leaves. Leiter says "He was married once, but that was a long time ago." Damn right it was. It was twenty years ago. I have a hard time buying Dalton's Bond as the same guy wearing a frilly tuxedo shirt and saying "I do" to Diana Rigg, Although I guess I shouldn't. Dalton was offered the role of Bond way back then in his early twenties. How different would the Bond universe be if Dalton had played the part for twenty years and Moore never gotten the chance?

On their wedding night, Leiter's wife is killed by Sanchez, and Leiter is fed to a shark but survives. This launches Bond on a vendetta to get Sanchez. Now, I'm all for a good revenge flick, but this movie goes wrong in a couple of ways. For one, the idea that Bond is out for blood because Leiter lost his wife on his wedding night the same way that Bond did is never fully realized. It's implied, by the aforementioned exchange, but it's never named. So really, Bond looks like he's just gone crazy.

Then he goes off and starts killing people. Yes, Bond is a killer by trade, but it's a little disturbing and out of character to see him killing people just to kill them. Not only that, but he never has any moral qualms about it. He never grapples with the ramifications of his actions or really goes on any sort of journey as a character. Making Bond a cold blooded killer doesn't make him very sympathetic.

Carey Lowell

Talisa Soto

Then, for all it's attempt at realism, the movie tacks on a typical love-at-first-sight Bond love triangle. I can buy Talisa Soto as Lupe, Sanchez's arm candy, but Carey Lowell does not work for me as a bad-ass former Army pilot, especially considering how poorly she acts in this film. Was she as bad in Law and Order? I don't remember. In any case, they both fall instantly in love with James in spite of the fact that he's a psychotic asshole in this movie. At least Lowell and Llewelyn have good chemistry.

This movie marked the end of a lot of eras in Bond-dom. It was the last movie for Albert Broccoli (producer), Richard Maibaum (writer), John Glen (director), Maurcie Binder (title designer), Robert Brown (M), and Dalton. It was also the first movie of the franchise not to take its title from one of Ian Fleming's original Bond novels or short stories. In the end, it grossed less than A View to a Kill, and it would be six years before another Bond film would be released.

Personal Rankings: This is a tough one to place, because for all its faults, it is a well-made film. Based solely on which movies I would rather watch, it slips in below A View to a Kill.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1989 Context
President: George H. W. Bush
Queen: Elizabeth II

The Berlin Wall fell.

Best Picture Nominees:

Driving Miss Daisy
- Born on the Fourth of July
- Dead Poets Society
- Field of Dreams
- My Left Foot

The Living Daylights - Brooding Angsty Bond

2012-11-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

The Living Daylights - 1987

Bond: Timothy Dalton
Directed by: John Glen
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "The Living Daylights" performed by a-ha

Connery was the "Man's Man" Bond.
Lazenby was the "Sensitive Renaissance Man" Bond.
Moore was the "Gentleman" Bond.
Timothy Dalton was the "Brooding Angsty" Bond.

I loved this movie when it came out. I was young. The novelty of a new Bond was fun. Watching it now, I noticed two things about Timothy Dalton's performance:

He's really funny. He has some great comic timing.
Man can he overact. I mean damn, son. Ease up a little on the emoting.

Still, he's a good Bond. He just takes himself a little bit too seriously in this movie. (He takes himself a lot too seriously in the next one.) I think he was trying to do what Daniel Craig ultimately succeeded in doing with the part. Dalton just didn't have the subtlety to pull it off, or the right scripts or social context.

And, of course, he wasn't the producers' first choice to replace Roger Moore. They originally signed Pierce Brosnan. His TV show Remington Steele had just been cancelled, and he was perfect for the part. Except that as soon as it was announced he was going to be Bond, NBC re-optioned Remington Steele. Unwilling to have their Bond also be on a TV show, the producers went with Dalton instead. Without Bond in their TV show, Remington Steele lasted 5 more episodes and was cancelled for good.

A lot was made at the time of Bond's lack of promiscuity in the film. It was the height of AIDS hysteria and they were trying to demonstrate more responsible behavior. He only sleeps with two women! One in the pre-title sequence and one in the main body of the film. Still, that's the same number that Bond bedded in Goldfinger (a third is implied as happening just before the film starts), The Man With the Golden Gun, For Your Eyes Only, and Octopussy. And he only slept with one woman in Diamonds are Forever. So I'm not sure what the big deal was at the time. (Here is a complete list of Bond's on-screen conquests. Bond would add three more one-woman-only films: Goldeneye, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace.)

In a departure from the classic formula, the film has two main villains: Jeroen Krabbé as the duplicitous Russian General Koskov and Joe Don Baker as American mercenary and arms dealer Brad Whitaker. Neither of them are trying to take over the world or destroy civilization as we know it. They're just selling arms and opium to the Russian's in Afghanistan and tricking Bond into killing the head of the KGB. Not overly high stakes, but more realistic stakes that are more inline with the Daniel Craig years than Connery, Moore, or Brosnan.

The always brilliant John Rhys-Davies plays KGB head General Pushkin who took over for General Gogol who moved over into the Foreign Service because the actor who played Gogol in 5 films (plus a henchman in From Russia with Love) was old and could barely handle being in his one scene at the end of the film. For the Impact Theater fans out there, Seth Thygesen's doppelganger Andreas Wisniewski plays the henchmen Necros, another in a long line of buff blond henchmen imitating Robert Shaw in FRWL. Still, he's very versatile. Maryam d'Abo is a passable Bond Girl. If nothing else, she wins the prize for most frequent and breathless utterances of the phrase "Oh James!"

In spite of its flaws, The Living Daylights has a very well laid out plot with lots of surprising and clever twists and turns. The sequence from the opium deal in the Afghan dessert up through Bond crashing the cargo plane into the mountain-side is one of my favorite extended action sequences in all of Bond-dom. I still like this movie a lot, just maybe not as much as I did when it came out.

Personal Rankings: Squeaks in ahead of FYEO because of better action sequences and a more age-appropriate Bond.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1987 Context
President: Ronald Reagan
Queen: Elizabeth II

The Simpsons family first appear on The Tracey Ullman Show.

Best Picture Nominees:
The Last Emperor

Skyfall Spoiler-Free Quick Review

2012-11-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

I'll wait and write a full review of Skyfall when I get to it in its proper order, mostly because I don't want to spoil anything or people who haven't seen it yet. So here's my quick review.

Like all Daniel Craig Bond films, this movie takes a while to come together, but when it does, it comes together well. So if you liked Casino Royale (and/or like seeing Daniel Craig shirtless), you'll have a good time at Skyfall. The plot is also significantly easier to follow. So if you couldn't figure out what the hell was happening in Quantum of Solace, you don't need to worry.

And if you felt the Daniel Craig years were lacking in some of the old familiar Bond tropes, they do a great job of satisfying nostalgic yearnings in a modernized way... or not modernized way as the case may be. One of the running themes of the movie is modern technology vs. "the old ways" that culminates in a stunning siege on the Scottish moors at the end of the film. The movie also delivers a lot of back-story on a lot of characters, which I always find a treat, especially where Bond is concerned.

By the end, I was left with the feeling that the first three Craig-Bond films were something like a prequel trilogy (only a good one). The re-booted Bond's character arc catches up to where we first met the original Bond in Dr. No. I fully expect to see Sylvia Trench in the next film.

And Javier Bardem rockets to near the top of the Best Bond Villain's list.

View to a Kill: Geriatric Bond

2012-11-06T10:00:00.000-08:00

A View to a Kill - 1985

Bond: Roger Moore
Directed by: John Glen
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "A View to a Kill" performed by Duran Duran

Wow. Just... Wow. While there were several tragically Seventies Bond films, this is movie is probably the poster-child for tragically Eighties movies in all their glow-in-the-dark neon glory. Just watch the opening title sequence set to the Duran Duran pop-hit title-song that remains the only Bond theme to hit #1 on the charts (Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" topped out at #2).

Roger Moore was 57 when this movie was made, and looks every bit of it. In a 2007 interview, he even said "I was only about four hundred years too old for the part." He did not have the presence to pull off an action film. True, Sean Connery had an action movie renascence in his 60s, but you'll notice Roger Moore didn't. And watching him put the moves on the Bond Girls in this film is just outright creepy and disgusting. Seeing Moore and Tanya Roberts in the shower together at the end of the movie made me want to take a shower and wash the image out of my brain.

And while Roger Moore looks ancient, Christopher Walken looks so young. For Walken, playing a sociopath is like shooting fish in a barrel (or fleeing miners trapped in a flooding mine), and he puts in a strong performance as a classic Bond villain. Producers originally offered the part to David Bowie. While he's not nearly as good an actor as Walken, that would have been awesome and probably better. "Better" in the sense that it would have taken the movie over the top and made it transcendentally Eighties. It would have been a little frozen cult-classic moment in time. Instead Walken reminds us that there were good actors in the Eighties who still have careers, only none of them except him were in this film. Walken is just too good for this movie. Like Corinne Cléry in Moonraker, his acting style just doesn't fit. Still, Zorin is really the first and possibly the purest psychopath Bond-Villain. He's just psycho to be psycho. He's something akin to the "Joker" of the Bond universe.

Then there's Grace Jones... Wow. She's a terrible actress, but you don't really cast her for her acting ability. And she's no worse than Roberts. May Day has a very unique character arc as a Bond-Girl/henchman hybrid character that kicks ass and turns good in the end. She's sort of the Pussy Galore of this movie, if Pussy had worn a thong and kamikazed her flying circus into Goldfinger's troops. Refreshingly May Day doesn't turn good because Bond seduced her (which he does, which is gross), but because Zorin betrays her (watching Christopher Walken and Grace Jones kiss is also gross... Grace Jones just looks uncomfortable kissing everyone in this movie).

A fair portion of this movie takes place in Bay Area. Bond finally gets his chance to have a car chase through the streets of San Francisco, which if you're familiar with the City is hilarious to watch as he jumps from downtown to Portero Hill and back again in mere seconds. Giants fans might recognize that the sequence with the draw bridge takes place right next to where AT&T Park is now. They also use the Wharf and City Hall and the Golden Gate Bridge and all those oil wells in the East Bay along the Hayward fault... wait a minute... Yes, somehow we are supposed to believe that there are oil wells running along the fault-line in the Berkeley and Oakland hills, where all those rich people have houses... in a state where even the mention of oil drilling anywhere causes controversy...

A View to a Kill is notable for several reasons. It's not only Roger Moore's seventh and last turn at Bond, but it marks the final film for Lois Maxwell as Miss Monneypenny. She'd appeared in all 14 movies to that point. When she was cast in Dr. No, she was offered either the role of Monneypenny or that of Sylvia Trench, who was intended to appear in six films as Bond's off-duty girl-friend. She made a fortuitous choice as Trench's character was cut after just two films.

Given that Sean Connery and Roger Moore were roughly the same age, and Lois Maxwell appeared in every film, we can see how the characters aged over 23 years:

Miss Monneypenny and Bond in Dr. No.

Miss Moneypenny and Bond in A View to a Kill

Personal Rankings: I think this one scoots in right below Diamonds Are Forever mostly because of Roger Moore's advanced age.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1985 Context
President: Ronald Reagan
Queen: Elizabeth II

Coca-Cola releases New Coke

Best Picture Nominees:

Out of Africa
- The Color Purple
- Kiss of the Spider Woman
- Prizzi's Honor
- Witness

Impact's Toil and Trouble - Something Funny This Way Comes

2012-10-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

Impact Theater's production of Lauren Gunderson's new play Toil and Trouble has its first performance tomorrow night in Berkeley, but I've already seen it! Sort of. Two weeks ago I went to a run through because the director Josh Costello wanted to see how it played with laughs in front of an audience. There were about four of us there; so it's not like it was packed to the rafters, but you could still tell that this was a seriously funny play.

It starts at a modern tail of out-of-work or underemployed young people with masters degrees trying to figure out how to make their way in a crazy recession-riddled world. Then slowly morphs into a humorous retelling of Macbeth that slowly spirals out of control. As a writer myself, it was the kind of story where I just hold on tight and think "Oh my god, who is she going to write her way out of this one?" But Gunderson pulls a perfectly satisfying ending with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.

I particularly enjoyed the weaving in of Shakespeare's actual lines. They're introduced slowly and smartly and by the end feel seamless. Giants fans will also get a kick out of the running baseball story-line. Although it was especially meta to be watching the run-through two weeks ago just after the Giants had forced Game 7 of the NLCS. Fortunately for Giants fans, everything worked out and a World Series Victory Parade will pass in front of my office today. So if you want to relish your Championship a little, this play gives you a good excuse.

I didn't see it with costumes or all of the props or even anything remotely approaching the finished set. Still, when I see it again on Saturday night all done and polished, I'm going to have a hard time letting go of my memories of how I saw it last week. It was that good two weeks ago that everything seemed to belong, and using real fortune cookies won't be nearly as entertaining as watching the actors mime ripping the heads off of stuffed animals every time they needed to read a fortune.

Mike Delaney, William Hand, and Jeanette Penley all put in great performances... two weeks ago. Assuming they've tightened things up and don't start phoning it in by opening night, you're in for a treat (not a trick... Happy Halloween!).

Toil and Trouble runs November 1 through December 8 in Berkeley
Get more information and/or tickets here.

Octopussy - Bollywood Bond

2012-10-26T16:35:00.002-07:00

Octopussy - 1983

Bond: Roger Moore
Directed by: John Glen
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "All Time High" performed by Rita Coolidge

Roger Moore originally signed a 3 movie contract to play Bond, which he'd fulfilled by The Spy Who Loved Me. He made Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only signing contracts one movie at a time. After FYEO, he expressed interest in no longer playing the part. Producers looked at Timothy Dalton once again, but extensively tested James Brolin for the part. If you google "James Brolin James Bond Screen Test", you can watch some of his auditions. They're strange because he speaks with an American accent. I'm not sure what they were thinking.

Then Scott McClory moved forward with plans to produce his own Bond film using his rights to Thunderball, and Sean Connery was signed to reprise the role after 12 years. The film would be released the same year as Eon's next Bond film. Fearing that a new actor couldn't compete with Connery head-to-head, Eon talked Moore into returning.

This was the first Bond movie I saw in theaters. My sister took me. I was young. She was in High School. I'm sure the sexual references completely went over my head, although perhaps not the nudity. Nearly every Bond film has back-lit silhouetted, naked ladies dancing in the title sequence. They can get pretty explicit in outline, but you never really see anything, except in Octopussy. With that name, it's not surprising that the title sequence has the least thinly veiled nudity of all. I can only imagine (and try to remember) the amount of detail you could have seen on the big screen. Then there's a shot of Maud Adams' naked in the distance emerging from a swimming pool that must have looked magnificent on a 22 foot screen. (One also imagines that the shot of Barbara Bach showering in TSWLM is wasted on the small screen.)

What could be a more perfect movie for a young boy? You've got small amounts of nudity, the world's smallest jet plane, alligator submarines, elephants, snakes, tigers, a circus, knife throwers, a yoyo saw, and nuclear weapons.

This movie is a pretty typical Roger Moore Bond film. It does a few things really well. It takes a few thing too far. It taps well into early Eighties nuclear war paranoia. For those of you with no memory of the Cold War, we really did live with this linger background level of fear that at any moment there could be a flash of light and you'd be vaporized by a nuclear blast. The idea that there could be a rogue Russian general manipulating things behind the scenes to be able to invade Europe was not outside the realm of possibilities. This movie, perhaps more than any other Bond film, tackles the Cold War head on as it's main plot point.

And then builds an atypically complex plot around that plot point. The movie has 3 villains (General Orlav, Kamal Kahn, and Octopussy) and 3 henchmen (Gobinda, Mischka, and Grishka)! Louis Jordan is great as Kahn, and Bollywood film star Kabir Bedi as Gobinda gives one of the most memorable henchman performances of the franchise. A highlight of the film is the fight sequence on the outside of the plane between Bond and Gorbinda. While a little truncated, it still feels like something right out of the Dark Knight Rises.

After appearing as Andrea in the terrible movie The Man With the Golden Gun, Maude Adams gets a chance to redeem herself by playing title villain, who of course turns good in the end. Producers originally didn't want to user Adams because her character had died in TMWTGG, but she landed the part in the end and plays it well. They even play around a little with her familiarity in her reveal.

Large portions of the movie was filmed in India and are beautiful, if verging on a little racist. This is where the movie starts to derail a bit. The humor starts to verge on the ridiculous and masturbatory. Bond recognizes his contact in India, Vijay, when Vijay plays the Bond theme on his recorder while charming a snake. To be fair, the Monty Norman based the Bond Theme on a song from a never performed musical adaptation of an Indian novel, so the song does have vaguely Indian roots. Maybe it's popular with snake charms. You can hear the original, with lyrics here.

But like a bad stand-up act, the cheap jokes just keep on coming. Vijay was played (quite well) by tennis pro Vijay Amritraj, so they gave him a tennis racket as a weapon during one of the chase scenes. Bond give a Tarzan call while swinging through vines in the jungle. Bond pulls a jet plane up to a gas station and tells the attendant to "fill her up." All of these things I'm sure I loved as a small boy, but now they just make me cringe.

You may have noticed, even if I didn't mention it, that M wasn't in FYEO. Bernard Lee died just as filming began, and rather than replace him right away, they wrote M out of that film. He's back in Octopussy and played by Robert Brown, who previously played Admiral Hargreaves in TSWLM. It's never stated whether or not he's supposed to be the same character played by a different actor or if Admiral Hargreaves was promoted to M. Still, I didn't realize just how good Bernard Lee was until he was gone. Not that Brown is bad by any means, but Lee really had some charm.

Q has an extended roll in this film, helping Bond beyond his usual job of demonstrating new toys. He actually does some field work, and does it well, showing that Q and Desmond Llewelyn were underutilized by the producers and Bond.

"All Time High" is the first Bond theme not to reference the movie title in anyway, for obvious reasons, but maybe for a less obvious one as well. Another Bond title is referenced several times in the film: "The Property of a Lady". Like FYEO, Octopussy is actually the name of a short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights. "The Property of a Lady" is another story in that collection, elements of which are used in the auction sequence in the film. The way it's referenced so strongly makes me wonder (and I can find nothing to back this up) if the writers emphasized it just in case they couldn't get away with calling the movie "Octopussy". In that way "All Time High" would have worked as a theme song for a movie of either title.

Personal Rankings: While funnier and not as boring as Dr. No, it's just not as good of a film.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1983 Context
President: Ronald Reagan
Queen: Elizabeth II

Return of the Jedi is released

Best Picture Nominees:

Terms of Endearment
- The Big Chill
- The Dresser
- The Right Stuff
- Tender Mercies

For Your Eyes Only - Back to Basics Bond

2012-10-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

For Your Eyes Only - 1981

Bond: Roger Moore
Directed by: John Glen
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "For Your Eyes Only" performed by Sheena Easton

After taking Bond so ridiculously far that he was actually floating around in space shooting lasers, the producers and first-time director (long-time second unit director) John Glen made a conscious effort to pull back and tell a simpler story. The result is a lovely little character-driven Bond film that borrows elements from On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Goldfinger, and From Russia with Love.

Bond is going after a secret decoder - very FRWL. Bond-Girl Melina is on a vendetta to avenge the deaths of her parents - very Tilly Masterson from Goldfinger. Bond allies himself with an organized crime boss to lead an attack on a fortified mountain stronghold - very OHMSS. If you read the movie's Wikipedia page, a lot of plot elements were taken from several of Flemming's novels and short stories. For Your Eyes Only is actually a short story collection.

This is Moore's smallest and most personal Bond film. Connery had his with FRWL. Lazenby had his one and only OHMSS. The movie opens with only the second direct mention of Bond's deceased wife, as he lays flowers on her grave, which lends weight to his lectures to Melvina later about revenge. Carole Bouquet as Melina watches her parents get killed which then drives her the rest of the film. She's probably the strongest Bond-Girl since Diana Rigg in OHMSS, and she kicks ass with a crossbow.

The actors and characters in this film all work very well together. Moore and Bouquet have great chemistry. Moore and Topol as crime-lord Milos Columbo have a great bro-mance going on too. People in this movie seem to enjoy each other's company. Melvina actually laughs at one of Bond's quips. Bond and Columbo laugh when they nearly kill each other accidentally. It's refreshing.

Another highlight is the back-to-basics car chase. After having his Moore-era trademark Lotus destroyed, Bond and Melina have to flee in an old Citroën. It doesn't have missiles or a smoke screen or any sort of bells and whistles. They just have to evade their pursuers. Imagine that.

Bouquet and Moore were 30 years apart in age, because Roger Moore was old. Fortunately they had good chemistry in the film, as mentioned, but even so the scenes where Bond gets all romantic and sexy are kinda creepy... with anyone, let alone Bouquet. Still, they manage to pull off the age difference by doing something very clever. They included the character of Bibi, a teen-aged sex-obsessed figure skater who desperately wants to sleep with Bond, and everyone for that matter. Bond, aware of the inappropriate age difference, does the gentlemanly thing and spurns her advances. That makes the slightly less inappropriate age difference with Bouquet more palatable.

Not that this movie is perfect. It's enjoyable, but it's not non-stop excitement and thrills. The assault on St. Cyril's, is breathtaking but not particularly tense. The villain is evil, and played well by Julian Glover (who might recognize as the villain from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or as General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back), but he's not out to destroy the world or anything. He's just selling a decoder to the Russians.

And the pre-title sequence is just weird. After placing flowers on the grave of his dead wife, Bond is trapped in an out of control helicopter by his old nemesis, and the killer of his wife, Blofeld. Except he's never named as Blofeld because Kevin McClory owned the rights that character. Bond turns the tables on Blofeld and while Blofeld is begging for his life utters the most inexplicable line all of Bond-dom "I'll buy you a delicatessen, in stainless steel". Then Bond kills Blofeld.

The line does have an explanation. The Italian mafia used to pay people off with delicatessen's made of stainless steal. This was considered a high tribute at one time. The line itself is directed at McClory, as is the unceremonious death of Blofeld. Basically Broccoli was saying, we paid you off, and we don't need your character anymore. Still, it's a ridiculous and strange line.

If you look closely, you'll notice Charles Dance as a henchman in one of his career's early roles. That's just a fun fact that didn't fit anywhere else in this post. Here's another one: Sheena Easton sang the title song and appeared in the title sequence, making her the only theme-song performer to do so. She's not the only theme-song performer to appear in a Bond film, however. Madonna sang the title song for and had a cameo in Die Another Day.

Personal Rankings: This one lands safely in the middle...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1981 Context
President: Ronald Reagan
Queen: Elizabeth II

Major League Baseball players went on strike causing the cancellation of over a third of the season.

Best Picture Nominees:

Chariots of Fire
- Atlantic City
- On Golden Pond
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Reds

Silly World Series

2012-10-24T10:31:00.001-07:00

The World Series starts today. It's something of a difficult time for me as a Cubs fan, especially when it's in town, like it is this year with the Giants playing in their third World Series in ten years. That wasn't always the case. When the Giants played in 2002, I was able to enjoy it. At the time I had no realistic expectations that the Cubs would ever play in one, and I'd never been in a city to host a World Series game before. It was fun. Then 2003 happened, when the Cubs came 5 outs away from the National League Pennant only to blow it. Then they had two solid teams in 2007 and 2008, had the best record in the League in 2008, and got swept out of the Division Series both years by the Dodgers. I just can't enjoy the World Series after that. The Cubs got too close. I probably could if the A's went, being my adopted American League rooting interest, but I just can't get into the Giants. I guess I never forgave them for 1989.

For those who don't know, the Cubs haven't won a World Series in 104 years, and haven't played in one 67 years, both are by far the longest streaks.Other teams have had similar droughts. Before 1980, Phillies fans had never known a World Series Championship. The Red Sox and White Sox ended 80+ year championship droughts in 2004 and 2005 respectively. But all those droughts ended, while the Cubs' still endures.

Still I got to thinking, it's not like I've been alive for all of those 104 years or even all of those 67 years. Effectively, it's just been a 38 year drought for me. I wondered how many other teams haven't played in or won a World Series in that time. Unlike most of you who would have to run to Wikipedia to look that information up, I actually know from memory every team that's won and lost a World Series since 1972, so I could just think on it for a bit.

There are 30 teams. When I was born there were only 26. In my lifetime, 27 different teams have played in the World Series. That's right, more teams have played in the World Series than there were teams when I was born, and the Cubs still haven't made it. I only had a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a fan of a team who wouldn't play in a World Series before I would turn 39, but I defied the odds.

The other two to miss are the Seattle Mariners and the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, neither of which have ever played in a World Series in franchise history. To be fair, the Mariners didn't exist until 1977, so they're only working on a 36 year span of futility. The Nationals didn't move to D.C. until 2005, so unless there are a lot of Nats fans who lived and died by the Expos, they can't really feel my pain. Sure, as a city, Washington hasn't hosted a World Series game since 1933 or ever won a title, but they also didn't have a team for over 30 years in that span. I suppose you could argue which is worse.

Of the 30 teams, 20 have won a World Series in my lifetime. The 7 who have played and not won are the Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays, Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, Cleveland Indians, and Milwaukee Brewers. With the exception of Cleveland, none of those teams existed the last time the Cubs played in a Worlds Series in 1945. Cleveland, incidentally, has the next longest active title drought at 64 years, but even they've won a World Series since the Cubs last even played in one.

All that is to say... this sucks.

World Series appearances and wins (in bold) since 1974:

New York Yankees: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2009
St. Louis Cardinals: 1982, 1985, 1987, 2004, 2006, 2011
Philadelphia Phillies: 1980, 1983, 1993, 2008, 2009
Los Angeles Dodgers: 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1988
Atlanta Braves: 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1999
Boston Red Sox: 1975, 1986, 2004, 2007
Oakland A's: 1974, 1988, 1989, 1990
San Francisco Giants: 1989, 2002, 2010, 2012 (outcome undetermined)
Cincinnati Reds: 1975, 1976, 1990
Detroit Tigers: 1984, 2006, 2012 (outcome undetermined)
Miami Marlins: 1997, 2003
Toronto Blue Jays: 1992, 1993
Minnesota Twins: 1987, 1991
New York Mets: 1986, 2000
Kansas City Royals: 1980, 1985
Baltimore Orioles: 1979, 1983
Texas Rangers: 2010, 2011
San Diego Padres: 1984, 2000
Cleveland Indians: 1995, 1997
Chicago White Sox: 2005
Los Angeles Angels: 2002
Arizona Diamondbacks: 2001
Pittsburgh Pirates: 1979
Tampa Bay Rays: 2008
Colorado Rockies: 2007
Houston Astros: 2005
Milwaukee Brewers: 1982

Moonraker - Star Wars Bond

2012-10-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Moonraker - 1979

Bond: Roger Moore
Directed by: Gilbert Lewis
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "Moonraker" performed by Shirley Bassey

Moonraker is not only one of the worst Bond films; it's one of the worst movies ever made. I'm shocked and appalled that it doesn't show up on more "Worst Movies of All Time" lists. There are so many terrible things about this movie, if I tried to detail them all, I'd be recapping the entire film. You'd be better off watching it, but don't do that. It's terrible.

To be fair, if the reason you like Bond movies is because they're over-the-top and ridiculous, this is probably your favorite one. I can see how with the right level of insobriety, the right mindset, and the right group of people, watching this movie could be hilariously entertaining. Still, I find myself watching it marveling at just how absolutely nothing in it works.

The villain isn't particularly villainous, unless you find talking in an emotionless monotone villainous. The love-interest Lois Chiles is a terrible actress who has absolutely no chemistry with Roger Moore, unless you find talking in an emotionless monotone sexy. And the "science" in this science-fiction Bond film has absolutely no grounding in actual science.

True, this movie was released before any Space Shuttles had launched, so a modern viewer has the benefit of knowledge the writers and viewers of the time didn't. Still... Suddenly there are laser-guns (that never show up again), astronaut soldiers who can be launched into space with a few hours notice, a giant space station that can be rendered invisible by a radar jamming system (never mind that you could see it with a dime-store telescope), the U.S. loaning a Space Shuttle to the U.K. and flying it there fully-fueled on the back of a 747 that the villain steals for reasons that aren't addressed until a throw-away line near the end of the film.

Sigh... How did this movie happen? Because Star Wars happened.

The credits of The Spy Who Loved Me end with the line "James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only", which was intended to be the next film. Instead they decided to jump on the space bandwagon. It's a testament to how popular Star Wars was that this abomination of celluloid became and remained the highest grossing Bond film until Goldeneye.

In order to switch films quickly, Bond producers needed a script fast. Christopher Wood, who'd written TSWLM did the late-Seventies equivalent of a find/replace in Microsoft Word to convert his TSWLM script into Moonraker. "Nuclear submarine" was replaced by "Space Shuttle". "Under the sea" with "outer space". And "KGB" with "CIA". This results in a mess of a script with muddled and nonsensical plot elements and character motivations. The soul of TSWLM was the basic premise of a Russian agent being forced to work with a British agent who killed her lover. In Moonraker, that's replaced by CIA agent voluntarily choosing to work with a British agent with whom she has no personal connection. There's just nothing there.

If you're a fan of Seventies french erotic cinema, you might recognize Bond Girl Corinne Cléry from The Story of O playing Corrine Dufour, especially since she seems to still be acting in that film instead of this one. She manages to fall so deeply and believably in love with Bond as soon as they make love, that you start to feel like you're not watching a Bond film, but a Seventies french erotic film. This feeling is only compounded by her overly dramatic artsy death scene where she's chased through the forest by dogs.

She's the only bright spot in the film.

You might also notice the tones from Close Encounters as the door code in Drax's lair, because if you're going to go over-the-top and self aware, you might as well go all the way with it. They got special permission from Stephen Spielberg to use it. A few years later they returned the favor by letting him use the Bond theme in the movie The Goonies.

Personal Rankings: Right to the bottom...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1979 Context
President: Jimmy Carter
Queen: Elizabeth II

The Shah falls and the Iran hostage crisis begins.

Best Picture Nominees:

Kramer vs. Kramer
- All That Jazz
- Apocalypse Now
- Breaking Away
- Norma Rae

Screwing the A's

2012-10-09T11:35:00.003-07:00

Oh boy, does Baseball love screwing the little guy.

In the old days the 2-3 format for a 5 game playoff worked great when teams didn't earn home-field advantage. Back when it alternated every year by division, it was a great compromise. Sure, one team had fewer home games, but they started at home and were guaranteed at least two. Another team got more home games and got to finish at home, but they had to start on the road and were only guaranteed one home game. There were pluses and minuses for both sides.

But that doesn't work when home-field advantage is supposed to be an actual advantage. So when teams started earning that privilege based on their records, they quickly switched the more advantageous 2-2-1 format.

Except this year. With the new wild card, the opening games in Japan, the unbalanced leagues, the calendar, and Bud Selig's desire to have as few World Series Games in November as possible, the Division Series were switched back to the 2-3 format. They just closed their eyes and hoped it didn't end up screwing the Yankees, because everyone knows that anything that screws the Yankees leads to Armageddon and immediate rule changes.

But screwing the A's, well that brought joy to Bud Selig and Lew Wolf's cold steel hearts. After winning six straight at home, rather than build on that momentum by starting the playoffs at home, the A's, in spite of having a better record than the Tigers, had to travel to Detroit for two cold-weather games on the road in less than 24 hours. Now they limp back to Oakland down 2 games to none with only a shred of a chance of advancing.

But that's good for Bud Selig and Lew Wolf. They can't have them actually win because it would expose as bullshit any argument any team makes to tax payers about needing a new stadium to remain competitive. If the A's with the second smallest payroll in baseball, a starting rotation of rookies, and a stadium deemed unfit for baseball, can win it all, then anyone can.

So why should Oakland or San Jose build them a stadium? Why should any city build any team a stadium? They shouldn't. San Francisco didn't, and the Giants built their own beautiful park across the Bay.

Now you might think that if the A's don't win it this year, they'll be even better next year given how many rookies are on the team. Think again. As soon as the season ends, Lew Wolf will trade all of the rookies for other rookies who hopefully won't accidentally make it to the playoffs next year. He can't field a good team that people might actually want to come see play. If that happened, he might have to keep the team in Oakland.

Happy Birthday Mr. Bond

2012-10-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the release of Dr. No. Over on the James Bond Twitter feed they're giving away lots of prizes today. I noticed a bit too late to make a play for the Blu-Ray box set they gave away an hour ago. D'oh.

If I get my act together I'll try to get my Moonraker review posted today.

In the meantime, here's the theme for the new movie, Skyfall, performed and co-written by Adele:

http://youtu.be/7HKoqNJtMTQ

I like it so far. We'll see if it grows on me. Earlier in production, rumors were that Duran Duran was going to come back to do the theme. They of course did the theme to A View to a Kill, the only Bond theme to-date to hit #1 on the charts. Given how popular Adele is these days, it doesn't surprise me they went with her.

And here's a preview of the film:

http://youtu.be/6kw1UVovByw

It looks so good! And there's a Q, who looks perfect for the part, I might add. It's sort of how you imagine Desmond Llewelyn would have looked at that age if he were that age today.

The Spy Who Loved Me: A Movie I Love

2012-10-02T16:54:00.000-07:00

The Spy Who Loved Me - 1977

Bond: Roger Moore
Directed by: Gilbert Lewis
Produced by: Albert R. Broccoli
Theme: "Nobody Does It Better" performed by Carly Simon

This is another one of those "fond memories as a kid" movies. I remember watching it with my sister, being allowed to stay up past my bedtime to watch the end, and how astounded we were at the reference to Bond's wife. "Bond was married?" I can still see us looking at each other, mouths a gape. I still love this movie and watch it frequently.

Why do I love this movie? Lets see...

1. Bond: Roger Moore finally comes into his own in this movie, or rather the writers finally figured out how to write for someone other than Sean Connery. He's funny. He's flirty without being creepy. He has some depth. It's the right balance of "Bond-as-caricature" and "Bond-as-character". Only Moore in the Seventies could have pulled off the "England needs me" line followed by the iconic British flag parachute jump that defines Bond to this day.

2. The music. Yes the above clip is a little more disco than is my taste, but this movie did come out in 1977. Otherwise, Marvin Hamlisch puts together a score like no other Bond film, complete with classical music and one of the best Bond themes, that you might not even have known was a Bond theme:

3. Barbara Bach as Russian spy XXX, Anya Amasova. Barabara Bach is hot. Ok, she's a terrible actress, but it says something that I didn't notice how terrible of an actress she was until the last couple times I watched the movie. Previous to that I was either too distracted by her hotness to notice, or I attributed it to her Russian character not having a firm grasp on the English language. Ok, to be fair, until I looked her up, I'd always assumed she was foreign. She was from Queens. She's also been married happily to Ringo Starr for over thirty years. How many celebrity couples have that kind of longevity?

4. Jaws. He might not be as popular as Oddjob, but he's certainly the most well-liked and beloved of all Bond henchman. Played by the always likable Richard Kiel, he was supposed to die in the movie. A screening of a rough cut got such a strong reaction though that they re-wrote it to have him survive. Audiences applauded when they saw him swim away from the climactic destruction of Atlantis at the end unscathed. He even comes back in Moonraker.

I had always thought that he was so popular, that they wrote an almost identical character into the movie Silver Streak for him (another movie I love from childhood TV viewing), but no. Silver Streak came out the year before. "Large Henchman on a Train" is just apparently the role that Richard Kiel was born to play. I also figured his name and the presence of a deadly shark in the film were a nod to Jaws. That may or may not be true. Jaws came out in 1975, but TSWLM was in production before it was released. In fact, Steven Spielberg was considered as a director for TSWLM, but they didn't want to take a chance on him until they saw how Jaws worked out. The production was delayed because Kevin McClory sued them because SPECTRE was originally to be the villain in the film. (McClory owned the rights to SPECTRE.) So it's hard to tell at what point Kiel's character took on the name "Jaws" (at least through internet research anyway).

5. Egypt. A huge sequence in the film takes place in Egypt, and it's beautiful. Gilbert Lewis made this movie on an epic scale. The sequence between Bond, Amasova, and Jaws at the Pyramids and the Sphinx is an amazing use of environmental lighting and sound. Shortly after that, we see a three-day long cat and mouse chase sequence among the three where Bond actually wears the same tuxedo for three days because he never gets back to his hotel room. I love linear stuff like that.

6. Character development. Bond films aren't big on character development, but when they are, they always score well with me. This film marks the first overt mention of Bond's wife and her death. We never think of Bond as a widower, but he is. The fact that he's given an opportunity to react and have feelings about that is huge. Plus there's the underlying plotline that Bond killed Amasova's lover (in the pre-title sequence), and she has vowed to kill Bond once their mission is over. That's some pretty meaty stuff that the movie actually dips into here and there. Again, it's no art film, but when seen against the utter lack of character depth in The Man with the Golden Gun, we might as well be watching Lawrence of Arabia here.

This movie, unlike most Bond films, doesn't ignore Bond or any character's past. We see Commander Bond in his naval uniform (in the books Bond was recruited into the secret service from the navy.) M is refereed to by his first name "Miles." M calls Bond "James" for only the second time in the series (otherwise he's always 007). And for the first time other than the credits of Dr. No and From Russia With Love, Q is refereed to by his real name "Major Boothroyd."

7. The "Dr. No" Plot. This movie, in a lot of ways is a remake of You Only Live Twice, which in turn steals it's plot from Dr. No. The basic idea is that an independent evil power, steals or destroys something (a satellite, a space capsule, a nuclear submarine) from the Western powers and then from the Eastern bloc and pits them against each other. This movie twists the formula a little by not having the villain pit East vs. West and instead has East and West work together.

All this plot stealing was not arbitrary as you might think. When Roald Dahl wrote YOLT he complained that the book was just a travelogue of Japan and had no plot to speak of, so he stole it from Dr. No. When the writers were working on TSWLM they faced a similar difficulty in adapting the Ian Flemming novel, in that they couldn't. Not legally anyway. When Flemming sold Eon the Bond rights he specifically mandated that only the title "The Spy Who Love Me" could be used but no elements from the actual novel. Why? Because he took an artistic chance with that novel, writing it from a female character's perspective. Bond doesn't even appear until the last third of the book. When it didn't get the reaction from critics and fans he'd hoped for, Flemming essentially disowned the story and wouldn't even let it be published in paperback in his lifetime.

So with YOLT director Gilbert Lewis set to direct, why not just steal that plot again? Even the climactic battle sequence is almost a shot-for-shot remake of the climax of YOLT, only done better on a larger scale with a bigger budget. They had to build a whole new soundstage large enough to fit the set and hold 1,200,000 gallons of water. Although uncredited, Stanley Kubrik consulted on lighting the sequence. It's done quite well.

Does the movie have it's flaws? Certainly. Roger Moore is old, but our memories of a youthful George Lazanby have faded enough by now that we don't mind so much. Besides, this movie has a Lotus sportscar that turns into submarine! What's not to love?

Oh, and if you're wondering why there's that line about the villain not liking to shake hands with anyone, it's because he had webbed fingers.Or so IMDB Trivia says. Apparently you can only see it on the big screen.

Personal Rankings: This one edges out Live and Let Die if only because of its lack of overt racism.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - In a place all to itself

1977 Context
President: Jimmy Carter
Queen: Elizabeth II

Star Wars is released. That's really the most important thing that happened in 1977.

Best Picture Nominees: