3.18.2014

Bond Notes...James...Bond Notes

For Christmas, my wife got me the Bond 50 Blu Ray collection and, since then, we've been working our way through them.

I've been watching them since I was six, but, watching them all in order in a relatively short period of time has produced a few thoughts and some superlatives.

Favorite Connery Bond
From Russia With Love

Not too silly with gadgets, great bunch of villains, both the physical (Red Grant) and the cerebral (Klebb and Kronsteen), a great ally and character in Kerim Bey and a really solid plot; the best, as far as I'm concerned.

Least Favorite Connery Bond
Diamonds Are Forever

Except for Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (who are amazing), so much of this is shit. Blofled goes from being a real threat to a dapper dandy whose fate is so badly handled they had to wrap him up in a Moore opening sequence years later, that random sexy bodyguard fight, a moon rover chase for no reason...ugh. Not going to continue. Sadness is forever.

Least Favorite Moore Bond
Moonraker

The damn thing is just too silly.

Favorite Brosnan Bond
The World Is Not Enough

This is my favorite mainly because I dislike the other three so much. GoldenEye is just awful; the caricatures, the silly villain names (Janus? Onatopp? Jesus...), bringing in the Q'ed out Z3 and then doing nothing with it (bold choice, gentlemen...bold, stupid choice), Sean Bean utterly chewing the scenery every time he's on camera, the sheer quality and quantity of shitty puns and adolescent sex jokes.
Some of the GoldenEye damage is repaired in Tomorrow Never Dies, but not nearly enough. If anything, Pryce is ever more over the top and scene-chewing than Bean. Plus, starting World War III for ratings really is a stupid plot.
Going back to The World Is Not Enough, a lot of the good done by casting the flat out amazing Sophie Marceau as Elektra King* was udone by casting Poutyface Broporn, Denise Richards as *sigh* Christmas Jones. Sorry. Nuclear physicist, DOCTOR Christmas Jones. Way to shit in your own salad fellas. Carlyle is a great villain on his own, that cold, seething delivery...and even more so when stacked up against the Twin Hams of Bean and Pryce.
And then, there's Die Another Day.
Okay. I'm going to do a "Compliment Sandwich"**.


  • The opening credits (the content, not the music) is one of the best Bond opening credits ever. We see invincible superspy, James Bond broken and tortured for fourteen months. I will freely admit I got chills the first time I saw this. After 19 Bond movies, we finally get to see that he's human.
  • The theme song. She actually says "I'm gonna avoid the cliche" while being a cliche.
  • Halle Berry.
  • Sword fighting. For no reason.
  • Sword fighting on a burning plane. For no reason.
  • Zao is getting gene therapy in order to create a new persona, and yet, while he's had time to get his skin and eyes lightened, he hasn't gotten those diamonds out of his fucking face yet?
  • "I'm Mister Kill." "Well, isn't that a name to die for."
  • Halle Berry.***
  • That whole VR cocktease scene.
  • John Cleese.

I did love how Michael Madsen seemed to not want to be in the movie every time we saw him though. I feel like he was playing the role of the audience.

Aside from these revelations, I also had a few cast off observations.

While The Spy Who Loved Me could have had a really interesting relationship develop between Amasova and Bond, they just tossed the whole "I'm working with you because I have to, but as soon as the mission is over, I'm going to kill you for killing my lover" thing because...I'm not really sure. Instead, they just have her point a gun at him and then shoot the top off a bottle of champagne (which could have blinded Bond with shards of glass but they decided against that ending). I mean, I understand that she might not want to kill him anymore because he saved her life a bunch, but, guys, address it. A line, something, please.

Also regarding Spy, when you place it right next to Moonraker, you begin to notice a lot of similarities. Like the villains' plans. Specifically how they are exactly the same. Stromberg wants to hide underwater and destroy the world because they all suck and Drax wants to do the same, but from space. And with a bit of Fourth Reich flavor. Right next to one another, guys? Really?

I also found myself getting bored with Moore. And the creepy way his cheeks get all sucked in when he kisses girls.
Ew.

I am ready to declare that Dalton is one of my favorite Bonds and that, while he might have been a bit too gritty for the pansy Bond fans of the late 80's, he nailed the essence of Fleming's Bond without going over the top. I love the reference to SMERSH in Living Daylights. I wish there had been more Dalton Bonds.

And, finally, I've discovered that I do not really like Pierce Brosnan's Bond very much at all, especially when wedged between the solidity of Dalton and Craig. I don't Lazenby-hate him, but he doesn't have enough of his own identity. He's a little of Connery, a little of Moore and tried to do the gritty darkness of Dalton but doesn't come close. Should have just stuck to Remington Steele.

Taking a short break before jumping into the Craig Bonds, which, yes, are knocking it out of the park (except for QoS, going to have to try and put my finger on what, exactly, isn't working there for me...), although I'd like them to bring back Quantum. I enjoy a shadowy enemy organization.
Yes I do.





* Did it have to be "Elektra"? Can't you give the audience some credit?

** You get how that works, right? Good thing, bunch of shitty things, good thing? Good.
...her name is Elektra because she kills her father...like in the Greek plays, Electra.

*** BUT, I thank God and all his Angels EVERY DAY that they didn't follow their original plan to give "Jinx" her own spin off film series. Dodged a huge shit bullet there, people. Get on your knees and give thanks.

3.04.2014

Some Oscar Movies I Saw

A friend lent me some screeners and, after agreeing to "destroy this disc by cutting it in half" once I was finished watching them"*, I watched "Captain Phillips", "12 Years A Slave" and "Philomena". I also watched "Drive". Because of Hotline Mimi.

As far as big ol' based-on-real-life let's-engineer-this-to-be-an-Oscar-movie movies go, "Captain Phillips" hit every note.
Tom Hanks? Check.
Score by Hans Zimmer? Check.
Harrowing real-life drama that turns out okay for America? Check.
Introduction of some foreign, talented unknown actor? Check.
Tom Hanks crying? Check.
I'll admit that my staggering lack of awareness of "current"** events made this movie much more suspenseful that it should have been.
What else needs to be said?

"12 Years A Slave" was fantastic and brutal and horrifying, the serious version of "Django Unchained". I wish there had been more Michael K. Williams, and I wish I'd known that Ejiofor was the super-badass, completely fucked up mercenary from the final episode of Firefly.
Damn.
Paul Giamatti is the worst person in the world and probably had a great time portraying it, Michael Fassbender is, literally, hypnotizingly evil, and Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely amazing until he, with all sincerity and heartfelt intention says the words, "you are an extraordinary nigger", at which point the audience is reminded that a nice slave owner...yeah, still a slave owner.
My only issue with this film was Brad Pitt playing that role. It felt so...I don't know...self-indulgent? I might not have felt that way if his company, Plan B, hadn't produced it and it had just been a weird casting choice. But him as Solomon's savior was a bit too much.
Seriously though, other than that?
Wow.
One question though, just something to think about: why are there still films being made about slavery and the Holocaust and other such atrocities? Do we need films with famous actors to remind us that these things happened? Are these movies for people who don't know anything about history? I'd like to hope they aren't just being made to garner Oscars. But, Kate Winslet did make a pretty compelling argument in Extras.
Maybe films like "12 Years A Slave" are made to mitigate the existence and *gag* success of Tyler Perry's cavalcade of loose feces that is his entire filmography.
Just something to chew on.
The question, not the loose feces.
Don't chew on the loose feces.

"Philomena" was sweet, but not Oscar sweet, na' mean? It was wonderful to see The Coog *** sing his insurmountable snark for the forces of good. For the most part. And Dam Judi nch. Good lord. She played an actual leprechaun and made it believable. One thing that did kind of boggle me a bit: her totally cool and laid back reaction to her son being gay. I understand that she was a nurse for thirty years, but she was so wide0eyed and naive in so many other ways that her complete acceptance, like, not batting an eye, was a bit hard to swallow. Also, wasn't her son taken when he was something like two or three years old? Can you really nail down that your kid is gay by then? In the forties? In Ireland? In a nunnery? When you didn't even know what sex was? Again, a bit of a stretch, but, like I said, not quite up the "standards" (read "rigorous and intentiona codtructional guidelines") of an Oscar movie.
I would now like to see the sequel to "The Trip" starring Judi Dench and The Coog.
Chop chop, we've all got places to be.

And, then, after a conversation with Ray about Hotline Miami, he urged me to watch "Drive".
And I did so.
Yikes.
First things first, I don't think I've ever seen anything of Ryan Gosling except for the meme with him being the best boyfriend in the world and riding on a white horse, so his character, who bounced between three states of being namely, being good with kids and Carey Mulligan (who looks like a grown up version of Drew Barrymore from "E.T." AKA as cute as the very cute nose on her very cute face), pure, cold nothing and Kill Machine X-15 was quite a shocking introduction. I have this crazy urge to not see anything else he's ever been in and let this be the Ryan Gosling that I know.
I love love love the idea of Ron Perlman and ALbert Brooks (!) as aging, Jewish gansters who are also brothers. LOVE. Brooks did a great job of being that bad guy who you hate to hate. He was just so nice...the way he murdered Bryan Cranston so humanly...wait.
Oh, and yeah, Bryan Cranston.
Why did they pick Zombieland over him as Luthor?
Silly.
And the quickness and brutality with which they dispensed Christina Hendricks?
Holy fuck.
Aside from a few too many shots dragging on for a few took many seconds, this was a really solid film. Surprisingly so.

Planning on checking out "Gravity", "Matthew McConaughey Gets AIDS In The 80's And Learns A Lesson About Being A Homophobic Asshole" and "Batman, Hawkeye, Hunger Games, Lois Lane, Hangover, No Actual Plot, Just Stars: The Movie" soon.





* Oh, Hollywood. Do you honestly think your movies are THAT valuable or that someone couldn't just download a torrent of them in the time it would take for someone to put said screener in the mail?

** There's no way I can get away with calling 2009 current without ironic quotation marks, is there?

*** What Steve Coogan's friends call him.