Experiment Farm

The Last Jedi - It's Salt

2017-12-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Where Rian Johnson goes, I’m not sure J.J. Abrams is equipped to follow. He will either grow as a filmmaker, or Episode IX will be disappointing. I think Rian Johnson recognized that what made Empire great wasn’t the specific plot points or emotional beats of the film, but that it took the characters and tested them in new ways. Just as Luke, Leia, Han and even Vader are tested and grow in Empire, the same can be said of Rey, Finn, Po, and Ren here with Ren even going places Vader never could. Johnson also manages to make this movie really funny, which was a little jarring at times, but made me laugh. It doesn't take itself too seriously.

Are there parallels to Episodes IV – VI? Of course, that’s inherent in the story being told. At the heart of each trilogy is a conflicted Skywalker trying to learn about the Force and resolve family issues. Because J.J. Abrams deliberately revisited A New Hope to make the new trilogy familiar (in ways that frankly did not bother me), the story is left with some inherent parallels. Rather than shy away from those, Rian Johnson confronts them, all of them, and blows past them (or makes fun of them, "It's salt."), leaving us a little shell-shocked and with a blank slate heading into Episode IX. That’s both exciting and a little scary with Abrams at the helm.

The IO9 review largely aligns with my thoughts, if you want to read something more in depth that’s not going to give too much away. I would have been harder on the first 2/3rds of the film, even though the long setup does pay off well in the end (even if you could have cut a good 20 minutes out of the middle). For a lot of the movie I was sitting there wondering “Where the hell is this going?” only to end up thinking “Oh. THAT’S where it’s going…” You have to trust this movie. Plot holes turn out not to be plot holes, etc, etc. Of course that’s how I felt after my first viewing. I’m interested to see how it holds up over time.

(If you've seen the movie or don't mind massive spoilers, this debrief of the ending is pretty spot on.)

Rogue One Spoiler Filled Review

2016-12-31T20:35:00.001-08:00

It's been exactly two years to the day since I posted to this blog. Facebook killed blogging, in my opinion, at least for the casual arm-chair blogger, but I have too many words about Rogue One to fit in a Facebook post, so I'm dusting off the old Experiment Farm. Tap tap tap... Is this thing on?

Things I liked about Rogue One:

Tone: I LOVED the tone. I loved how dark and depressing it was. I loved that all of the main characters die. (I told you there were spoilers.) This movie captured the tone that the prequels should have had. We all knew from the beginning that the prequels were not going to end well, but Lucas refused to commit to the Dark Side because they don't sell as many toys or cartoons. Disney went there because Disney embraces it's Dark Side (see Bambi), and it's still selling toys. I would not bring young'ins to this movie though. The kid in front of us cried.

Darth Vader as a bad ass: We need more scenes of Darth Vader kicking butt in the Star Wars cannon. I'd see this movie again just for the scene at the end where Vader takes out the rebels on the ship.

Mads Mikkelsen: Because he's awesome even if he will always be Le Chiffre.

Jimmy Smits: Because I was not expecting him, and it was a good way to bridge the gap between the prequels and the original trilogy.

I feel like I should have more, but really I just have a generalized feeling of having enjoyed the film. As is often the case, it's easier to elaborate on the things I didn't like.

My issues with Rogue One:

Messy Plot: The plot was messy. Why exactly was it so important to tell the rebel fleet to attack the gate, when they were attacking the gate already? This movie would have been better if the team had had a clear objective from the beginning. You are on an impossible mission to get the Death Star plans. Good luck. Instead it was go to Jedha to this thing, go to Eadu to do this other thing, go to Scarif to do one last thing. This movie could have been The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen. But that would have required the movie to take its time and build character instead of jumping right into action sequences.

Computer Animated Characters: The computer animated Tarkin and Leia were creepy. Especially Tarkin. That whole first scene with him, I was so distracted I missed any and all content. Computer animation has come a long way, but they still looked fake and... well... creepy. Peter Cushing has been dead for over 20 years. It was jarring.

Gender Balance: Or lack thereof. Having a female lead does not mean you don't have to hire any other women. This is a man-heavy movie. Aliens was more gender balanced, and that movie is 30 years old. There really weren't any women soldiers in the rebel infantry? Really? Another woman on the core team would have been nice too.

Forrest Whitaker: Completely wasted in this movie. Whey did he stay behind to die? That was completely unmotivated, as was most everything about his character.

I still liked it though. The cameos and use of the old pilots were well done. It was better than the prequels, but so was most every movie ever made.

Black Mirror Scratched

2014-12-31T12:47:00.002-08:00

I’ve been seeing a lot of people on Facebook raving about Black Mirror on lately (which is, in itself very ironic), so we watched the first episode last night. If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a Twilight Zone type morality play (different characters and stories every episode that generally have something to do with technology). I’m going to attempt to be vague as I write about it and not give away too many details, but there will be spoilers.

At first, I found the episode to be very disturbing (but in that good way art can be disturbing) and impactful but also a bit heavy handed. Characters said or did things they wouldn’t really say in real-life in order for the story to make its comments on technology. There were also a few plot holes that I let slide. (You’re sneaking someone into a building and you not only don’t clear the street but you let someone hangout by the entrance. Then you let that someone take a picture of the person you’re sneaking into the building and you don’t detain said person or confiscate their phone. You just let them walk away. You’re a moron and deserve for your plan to backfire. OR you spend seemingly hours reconnoitering a building and never bother to do any sort of thermal imaging to determine if anyone is actually in the building.)

Still, I was left chewing on something that didn’t quite sit right. Sure enough, when I woke up this morning, in a half-asleep half-awake daze, it hit me.

In addition to the story itself commenting on technology, we find out at the end that the terrorists weren’t really terrorists but an artist making a comment on technology (which a character has to spell out for us because the viewer can’t be trusted to arrive at the conclusion on their own) that everyone was missing what was going on in real life because they were all inside glued to their TV screens.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my problem with the ending. Did you catch it?

The whole episode is an intricate indictment of how technology can trap someone into having to do something truly horrifying and terrible, but at the end, it completely ignores an entire segment of the technology it claims to be indicting: streaming video.

Not once is a member of the general public shown watching the news on their computer or on their phone. The streets of London wouldn’t have been empty at 3:30 because everyone was inside watching the news. There would have been hundreds or thousands of people too self obsessed or busy with their own lives to be inside watching a TV. They would have been out living their busy lives following the events on their mobile device. The princess would have been discovered before the 4:00 PM deadline. The terrible thing wouldn’t have happened at all.

So the first episode ends up being a rather one-sided view of technology, cherry picking the elements that serve the narrative and ignoring the others. Because, let’s face it, there would have been teams of hackers out there trying to trace the video upload (that somehow this artist managed to make untraceable after single-handedly kidnapping a princess…)

The more I scratch the surface, the more it falls apart. I did like it, at the time. I just hope the other episodes hold up better to a little scrutiny.

Jurassic Parks & Rec

2014-11-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

Chris Pratt is Burt Macklin as Owen in Jurassic World:

New Star Wars Trailer!

2014-11-28T21:10:00.000-08:00

Things I like about this trailer:

Everyone character in it looks scared. That's a good thing. It means there are real, personal, life-and-death stakes, not trade embargoes.
We all know Luke, Leia, Han, and the gang are in the film, but they're nowhere to be seen in trailer. That implies they're not the main characters, which will hopefully keep it fresh.
Things look gritty, not super polished like the prequels.

The comic-relief droid is a little worrisome, but we'll over look that for now and remain cautiously optimistic.

Day of the Doctors

2013-11-24T09:11:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed The Day of the Doctor, but there was a giant Christopher Eccleston sized hole in that story. I suppose it's not Steven Moffat's fault that Eccleston passed on being in the 50th Anniversary Special, but I can fault him for continuing with that story when he knew the Ninth Doctor couldn't be in it in any substantive way.

I noticed his absence the most during the scene when Ten, Eleven, and the War Doctor are standing there with their hands on the button. He really needed to be there in that scene. He was the PTSD Doctor. He was closer to the war and more effected by it then any of them. If this was the story of the Doctor redeeming himself for destroying his own people, Nine needed to be there.

I could have even forgiven his absence if they'd been able to get him in the studio long enough to finish the War Doctor's regeneration sequence. All I needed was for Eccleston to look up and say "Fantastic!" But no. Instead we get old footage of him re-purposed along with old footage of all of the Doctors. It was fine. It worked. It just wasn't satisfying.

And I realize that Peter Capaldi wasn't cast in time for this to be possible, but what would have made the show truly epic would have been to add 30 minutes, include Nine, AND include Thirteen. (I'm going to assume he will be known as Thirteen, but there will be no retroactive renumbering of Nine through Eleven.) There's no reason you have to introduce a new Doctor with his regeneration. You could have brought him in from the future. Maybe that would have been too distracting, but I think it would have been brilliant. At least they worked him briefly into the climax.

Then there was Tom Baker. I spent the whole episode assuming the asthmatic with the scarf would somehow turn out to be him. Then he pops in at the end. I thought it was a clever way to work in one of the older actors, even if he did ham it up.

Troilus and Go-see-it-a

2013-11-11T15:56:00.002-08:00

I went to opening night of Impact's Troilus and Cressida on Saturday night. I didn't know anything about the play before I showed up at the theater that night, except that it was Shakespeare. You don't need to either. As soon as you open your program, you'll recognize character names and think to yourself "That's what this play is about? I didn't realize Shakespeare wrote a play about that. I wonder who plays the Brad Pitt and Eric Bana characters..."

About halfway through the first act, I found myself thinking "This is really good. It's modern. It's funny. It's tragic. It's way better than that stupid movie. Why isn't this play done more often?". Then the second half began and things started to go a little sideways. Then it started getting really weird. Then it ended, and I thought "Whaaaaat?!" It's not the production's fault at all. It's solid and approachable and engaging and everything you'd expect from an Impact Shakespeare.

It's Shakespeare's fault. Or rather it's time's fault. T & C is one of his "problem plays", a problem because times have changed so much that the humor and dramatic weight of the show are all but incomprehensible to a modern audience.

Even so, I have to highly recommend seeing the show. Why? Think about it: What could be more engaging than watching Shakespeare drive a train wreck? It's riveting to watch just how out of control and weird it gets. The director, Melissa Hillman, does a great job of toning it down and making it hold together into some sort of satisfying arc, but seriously, just go and watch the shit fly. It's worth it for the fight scenes, the humor, and the beer, if nothing else. And you can impress people by telling them you've actually seen a production of Troilus and Cressida that didn't suck.

WHO Doctor Doctor Who

2013-08-06T11:33:00.001-07:00

The casting of the 12th Doctor was announced on Sunday, via a live TV special shown at the same time on the BBC and BBC America, except of course for me because I don't pay for HD cable. As such, my BBC America feed is three hours delayed. Still, the twittersphere did not disappoint in conveying the news to me in real time. The new Doctor will be:

Peter Capaldi

I've never seen The Thick of It, the show for which he is famous for playing the foul-mouthed Malcolm Tucker. But a friend of mine on Facebook, who clearly has seen the show, was nearly peeing her pants with joy. More recently you might recognize him as the World Health Organization (WHO) Doctor in World War Z. (See how that works? He went from a WHO Doctor to Doctor Who...)

My first reaction to his casting was to have a moment of disappointment that they cast yet another white male in the role and passed up the opportunity to cast a minority, whether a woman or a person of color. Then that moment passed because as much as I would like to see that happen someday, I don't trust Steven Moffat to handle either of those things well. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of what he's done for the show since taking over for Russel T. Davies, but he tends to write in broad, stereotypical strokes that would not have gone well. He strikes me as one of those white males who doesn't understand that other people's life experience isn't identical to his own.

Otherwise I quite like the choice. Moving from the youngest Doctor, Matt Smith (27 when he debuted), to the second oldest in Capaldi (55 and second only to the first Doctor, William Hartnell) will provide a nice contrast, and maybe it will stop the companions from falling in love with him. Matt Smith also did a wonderful job of conveying through his performance how old the character is in spite of Smith's physical youth, which I think will allow the transition to Capaldi to be smoother. Smith's Doctor doesn't feel young at all. Now the Doctor will just look more his age.

It's interesting to note that Capaldi appeared in The Fires of Pompeii episode of Series 4 opposite David Tennant's Doctor. I wonder if they'll do some retconing and make his character in that episode the 12th Doctor in disguise. Actually, it would be pretty brilliant to bring back David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and show us that whole episode from the 12th Doctor's perspective pretending to be Caecilius.

In any case, Capaldi will make his debut at the end of this year's Christmas special, undoubtedly poking his face a lot, frowning at his bow tie, and being disappointed that after 11 regenerations, he still hasn't been a ginger.

Sleepy Hollow

2013-07-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

I don't care if it's in this new Grimm knock-off on FOX...

Or the old Tim Burton movie with Johnny Depp and Christa Ricci...

Watching a guy without a head walk around and attack people is impressive.

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.