JAMES BOND 007: VERSION 6.0

Artist Robert McGinnis imagines life as Sean Connery's James Bond in You Only Live Twice.

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The reviews for Casino Royale, the reboot of the long-running James Bond series starring Daniel Craig as 007, are finally starting to trickle in, and the word, at least initially, looks pretty encouraging. For Anthony Lane, the quip is always paramount, but there’s seems to be a bit of Brit provincialism peeking out from underneath the wisecracks in his review—Lane wants the lustre restored to Her Majesty’s super-spy franchise and it seems he thinks he’s gotten his wish: “Casino Royale, though half an hour too long, is the first semi-serious stab at (Ian) Fleming, and at the treacherous terrain that he marked out, since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in 1969.”

Kim Newman in Empire magazine, may be even more enthusiastic: “(Casino Royale) has almost everything you could want from a Bond movie, plus qualities you didn’t expect they’d even try for. It does all the location-hopping, eye-opening stunt stuff and lavish glamour expected of every big-screen Bond, but also delivers a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Fleming’s short, sharp, cynical book with the post-WWII East-vs.-West backdrop persuasively upgraded to a post 9/11 War on Terror.” And as for the controversy regarding the casting of Craig, Newman says relax: “Contrary to pre-release nay-sayers, Daniel Craig has done more with James Bond in one film than some previous stars have in multiple reprises. This is terrific stuff, again positioning 007 as the action franchise to beat.”

All right, but what does the American have to say? David Edelstein writes in New York magazine: “After serving up a sleek male mannequin in four so-so films, the corporate executives of the James Bond franchise have opted for his opposite in Casino Royale-- Bond as a bit of rough trade. And he’s good! Better than that, he’s what Bond hasn’t been in a quarter-century, since a certain rugged Scot said, ‘Never again.’ He’s fascinating.” And Edelstein gives us a little perspective on director Martin Campbell: “Campbell… also made Pierce Brosnan’s generally flaccid debut, GoldenEye. He doesn’t screw up this time. Working with the crack editor Stuart Baird, Campbell propels Bond (and his quarries) onto impossible precipices and stands back while the world’s highest-paid stuntpeople earn their paychecks. In the early Bond movies, the violence was both brutal and stylish, with witty curlicues; here, it’s mostly brutal, but at least the director has a Hong Kong-style awe for the poetry of human bodies doing things that, evolutionarily speaking, they haven’t needed to do since the saber-toothed tiger died off.”

I’ll be there Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. at the AMC Burbank 16, escorting my 80-year-old mother-in-law, she of the very small frame, quiet Japanese comportment and voracious appetite bordering on bloodlust for all kinds of extreme violence and Hollywood action fare. The first movie we ever saw together was The Last Boy Scout, for God’s sake, which was released in 1991, and set the tone for our cinematic investigations to come. We saw virtually every big, bloody explosion-fest that came out all the way up through the summer of 2004—you name it, and I’ll virtually guarantee we munched popcorn together through it. Though her various infirmities have curtailed our movie outings since then (she even skipped Die Another Day and waited for the DVD), the excitement of this new Bond was just too much catnip for her to resist. It might take her a while to climb the stairs of the stadium auditorium, but with me there backing her up I foresee nothing but blue skies and Daniel Craig’s blue eyes for her to get lost in, that is when she’s not grooving on the big action set pieces that sound like a sure thing on this movie’s menu. I always hope the movie we see together will be fun for her sake, but it sounds like Casino Royale might be fun for both of us.

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And speaking of fun good enough to carry you and I up to opening night, my pal Sal alerted me earlier today that some giddy, crazy person has done us all a favor and posted YouTube clips of the opening title sequences for all the official 007 movies on one single page. So take a look and a listen and then drop back by the comments column and let me know: What are your five favorite Bond theme songs? I’ll get it started:

5) “The Living Daylights”: If this one had been graced with stronger vocals than the wispy boys of Aha could provide, I think it’d be recognized as a classic.








4) “The Man with the Golden Gun”: On one level, I know it’s god-awful. But Lulu belting out lines like "Love is required/Whenever he's hired/It comes just before the kill" and “One golden shot means another poor victim/Has come to a glittering end” is just too much for me to resist.





3) “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”: The best of the instrumental opening titles of the Bond series is a theme almost as good as the one Monty Norman wrote for 007 himself. (Thanks, Flickhead!)








2) “Goldfinger”: Probably the greatest Bond song of them all. Everything that’s good about the Bond series, and Goldfinger itself, is encapsulated in this tune and in Shirley Bassey’s spine-rattlingly sexy vocal.






1) “You Only Live Twice”: It’s my favorite Bond and my favorite theme song-- the seductive strings of the orchestration undulate past delicious Japanese instrumentation and underneath the slightly dazed emotionalism of Nancy Sinatra’s purring vocal.

Honorable mention goes to Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” Gladys Knight’s “License to Kill” (for her vocal only) and, at the risk of losing all my Bond credibility, Sheryl Crow’s “Tomorrow Never Dies.”

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And one last tidbit before Version 6.0 takes off on Friday-- the projectionist at my hometown movie theater in Lakeview, Oregon was a kindly old gentleman by the name of Mr. Tatro, who also got up every Monday morning at 5:00 a.m. to change the marquee so that it would reflect the new program upcoming for the week. It so happened that I was a close friend of the son of the owner of the theater, so I would always take great enjoyment in pointing out the various misspellings that would occasionally appear on the marquee, due undoubtedly to a mix of the bleary time of morning and Mr. Tatro's natural, old-fashioned dottiness. For example, I knew that every time a picture starring that blue-eyed guy who liked to drink beer and race cars came to town, his name would inevitably be posted as "Pual Newman." And imagine my surprise when I found out that Duck You Sucker! starred Charles Coburn. (I'll give him credit for this, though-- Mr. Tatro sent me scrambling for my early edition of Leonard Maltin's book to find out who this mysterious Charles Coburn was!)

But no marquee Mr. Tatro ever assembled ever matched the one that greeted early risers on their way to work and school on a Monday morning sometime in 1971. I was excited about the movie's arrival and couldn't wait to catch a glimpse of the one-sheet and the official announcement on the Alger Theater marquee. But if Charles Coburn confused me, imagine the head-scratching that went on when I read this, laid out above South "F" Street in giant black-and-red letters:

SEAN CONNERY is WARD BOND 007
in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER

Mr. Tatro, ever the film historian, had inadvertently expanded the world of John Ford and Frank Capra for me and at the same time gave me the single biggest gut-busting laugh I ever had reading the marquee at the Alger Theater. I couldn't wait to tell my buddy what was screaming out off the front of his dad's theater, and after I did I immediately regretted it-- when I walked past the theater again later that day, the delightful mistake had been corrected and Bond was James once again.

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(If you like that painting from You Only Live Twice seen above, please do avail yourself of the Web site of artist Robert McGinnis and check out his great movie posters gallery. He’s done a lot of the Bond films, and some of his other work will be instantly recognizable as well-- thanks, Mr. McGinnis, for Barbarella!)

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UPDATE 11/15/06 5:35 p.m. Wow! After commenting below that he was worried that the new Bond might be chasing after a Bourne-style realism, That Little Round-Headed Boy checks in on his eponymous site with a real treat aimed straight at the heart of those who love the Bond films (especially the Connery entries) for the oversized grandeur, spectacle and wit that came largely courtesy of production designer extraordinaire Ken Adam. Hear TLRHB sigh:

"Realism, realism, what's so great about realism? Anybody can do realism. Give me imagination! (Adam) was a man not pinned down by rule-bound notions of architecture or set design. He blended the "hip" jet-age look with heavy concrete and steel spaces that interlocked like mechanical puzzle pieces. When you see his sets on film, it's like watching the Great Pyramids move on a hinge."

That LRHBoy can write! As one who can't imagine an action cinema without the great volcano Adam designed for You Only Live Twice, the one that opens up to reveal a giant missile silo complex hidden beneath, I really appreciate TLRHB taking the time to throw the spotlight on Adam's brilliant work. He bowed out of the Bond series with Moonraker (perhaps one movie too late, eh?), but 007 was only part of his story-- he was the man who made Kubrick's War Room in Dr. Strangelove... and-- Well, enough of me. Get yourself on over to That Little Round-Headed Boy's excellent piece entitled "The Man Who Designed the 20th Century" and realize how familiar you already are with the wonderful world of Ken Adam.

And while we're clicking, a friend of mine just sent me a link to a gallery of Bond girls that is somewhat pleasing to the eye, courtesy of James Bond Multimedia. Thanks, Mike.

SHORT ROUNDS: GO FOR ZUCKER!

“Writer-director Dani Levy’s genial, bittersweet comedy, Go For Zucker (Alles auf Zucker!), has one foot planted in the traditions of Jewish comedy, which Levy has described as distinguishing itself 'through its blunt, brazen and self-ironic treatment of human weaknesses and quirks—including the peculiarities of Jews themselves,' and the other in the comedy of what being a German Jew means some sixty years after World War II…
Funny, then, that he uses the morbid template of one of Germany’s most famous expatriate Jewish film artists, Billy Wilder, in which to ground the structure of Zucker, a movie that will, despite its most outrageous conceit, find much more common ground and comfort with its more conservative impulses than with the kind of clear-eyed, brutal honesty with which Wilder might have observed this wacky (but not too wacky) mispocha."

You can read the rest of my review right now at Flickhead, the Web site. And while you’re there, don’t deny yourself the pleasure of going through the whole table of contents. This site is one of the best at, as Flickhead itself puts it, “keeping it reel.”

BORAT: BASED ON A TRUE STORY?

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, does it get any meta-dumber than this? Two frat guys are suing because a movie producer took them out drinking, an activity they surely would never have engaged in otherwise, and interviewed them on film in a situation designed to allow them to express their most repellent, honestly-held opinions on women and various other topics. These poor, exploited boys are seeking “unspecified damages for 'humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress, loss of reputation, goodwill and standing in the community.'" (Bold is mine.) Jim Emerson links to a Salon roundup of “the stories behind various staged and/or improvised scenes in Borat,” a subject of increasing interest around the water cooler in my office, to be sure. And he asks a great pair of questions: “Can these guys sue themselves? Will they call Mel Gibson as a character witness?”

A RIVETTE-ING FILM RETROSPECTIVE

Unfettered film fans in Los Angeles (and there is rumored to be a few of those flitting about) have the AFI Film Festival running through Sunday to occupy their schedules. But as retrospectives go, it’s hard to beat the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, which is featuring an unbeatable one indeed, The Complete Jacques Rivette, which begins tomorrow night and runs through December 31. News like this may do little for those stuck in places other than New York and unable to attend fabulous events such as these, although there are a few Rivette films available on Netflix, including Gang of Four (1988), La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Secret Defense (1998), The Story of Marie and Julien (2003), Va Savoir (2000) and Wuthering Heights (1985). The availability of these titles will make you thankful for Netflix all over again, but the MOMI retrospective includes all of them PLUS lots of stuff still unavailable on DVD. If I were able to spend this holiday season in Astoria, New York, here are the tickets I’d buy:

Céline and Julie Go Boating(1974) (which is available on a region 2 PAL DVD.
Saturday, November 11, 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 12, 4:30 p.m.

Jean Renoir, The Boss (1967) Made for the series Les Cinéastes de notre temps, Rivette’s documentary portrait of the great director includes a conversation between Renoir and actor Michel Simon, who discuss The Rules of the Game.
Sunday, November 19, 2:00 p.m.

Up/Down/Fragile (1995) Rivette’s whimsical homage to MGM musicals.
Friday, November 24, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, November 25, 6:30 p.m.

L'Amour Fou (1968), which will be introduced by Chicago Reader film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. “You emerge from it changed,” Rosenbaum once wrote of the film. “It’s a life experience as much as a film experience.”
Sunday, December 3, 4:30 p.m.

And if that’s not Rivette to keep you riveted, The House Next Door comes through again with a link to this wild 1998 interview with Rivette, conducted by Frederic Bonnaud and translated by Film Comment’s Kent Jones, in which the cranky elder statesman of les politiques des auteurs holds forth on various movies, directors and actors, particularly Sandrine Bonnaire in the director’s 1998 Secret Defense. The interview is structured as commentary on various film titles, and I can’t resist giving you just a taste:

On The Night of the Hunter: “The most seductive one-shot in the history of movies. What can you say? It's the greatest amateur film ever made.”

On Vincente Minnelli: “He was meticulous with the sets, the spaces, the light...but how much did he work with the actors? I loved Some Came Running (1958) when it came out, just like everybody else, but when I saw it again ten years ago I was taken aback: three great actors and they're working in a void, with no one watching them or listening to them from behind the camera.”

On Bunuel and That Obscure Object of Desire: “More than those of any other filmmaker, Buñuel's films gain the most on re-viewing. Not only do they not wear thin, they become increasingly mysterious, stronger and more precise… François and I saw El when it came out and we loved it. We were really struck by its Hitchcockian side, although Buñuel's obsessions and Hitchcock's obsessions were definitely not the same. But they both had the balls to make films out of the obsessions that they carried around with them every day of their lives.”

On Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: “The craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground.”

On Paul Verhoeven, Starship Troopers and Showgirls: Starship Troopers doesn't mock the American military or the clichés of war - that's just something Verhoeven says in interviews to appear politically correct. In fact, he loves clichés, and there's a comic strip side to Verhoeven, very close to Lichtenstein. And his bugs are wonderful and very funny, so much better than Spielberg's dinosaurs… But I prefer Showgirls (1995), one of the great American films of the last few years. It's Verhoeven's best American film and his most personal… Like every Verhoeven film, it's very unpleasant: it's about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that's his philosophy. Of all the recent American films that were set in Las Vegas, Showgirls was the only one that was real - take my word for it, I who have never set foot in the place!”

Wait till you hear what he has to say about James Cameron and John Woo (not to mention Kate Winslet and Stanley Kubrick). The comments column for Matt Seitz’s post on this Rivette interview is well worth checking out, particularly Matt’s response to Rivette’s characterization of Kubrick. After reading the piece, you may feel like adding a comment of your own. Feel free to do so either there or below.

(Keith Uhlich has more on the retrospective from The House Next Door.)

DRIVE-IN TRAILER PARK: SEXPLOITATION!!!

The Drive-In Trailer Park theme of the day is Sexploitation, and the three ads featured in this post give a nice overview of some of the stuff an innocent underage filmgoer could be exposed to if his parents (or grandparents) subscribed to the right newspapers at the right time. One of the things that I love about ads like the one for the Magdalena/Crazy for Love/Tread Softly Stranger double feature (the ad is dated from 1960) is the mantle of seriousness bestowed upon the movies by the exhibitor, as if to ward off any accusations of pandering (while, of course, at the same time, emphasizing the “adult” nature of the program):

“Notice form the management: We wish to advise our patrons that Magdalena is a drama best understood by adults. Therefore, please comply with our policy of ADULTS ONLY.”

I love the euphemism “best understood.” And I also like the plea to keep the kids at home. It doesn’t say anything like “no one under the age of…” will be admitted. So if you were a potato-headed parent circa 1960 and felt that Magdalena was something it was okay for your six-year-old to be in the presence of, the box office attendant might wag his finger at your decision, but he’ll still take your money. My, how things have changed!


The Babysitter double bill is vintage 1975, a superb Crown International night at the movies that is very typical of the stuff I saw advertised, and also some of the stuff that was actually still playing when I was old enough to see them for myself (I saw Van Nuys Blvd. and a double feature of The Van and The Pom Pom Girls in Eugene, Oregon drive-ins, all courtesy of the good folks at Crown International. But none of the drive-ins where I saw any of these T-and-A classics was ever so aptly named as the one showing The Babysitter and Weekend with the Babysitter. Where else could one indulge one’s appetite for smut and edifying content so completely than at a drive-in called the Wak-Art?


Finally, you absolutely must love the guy who put together the bill for the Turnpike Drive-in in Albany, New York. Here’s a guaranteed cigar-chomper who undoubtedly figured that any movie with the word “virgin” in the title or the advertising must be pretty racy. Going in reverse order, “revealing hit #3” is Virgin Island, a comedy-drama starring John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee, with the provocative tag line (provided by the exhibitor, undoubtedly), “Alone… on an island of love!” Unfortunately, the movie itself seems to be something different—it is described by one IMDb user as a movie “for those who love fairy tale, Field of Dreams-type movies-- a "Must-See." Well, that doesn’t sound too racy…

Adult Shocker #2 , The Last Paradise, or as it is known in it’s country of origin, L’ Ultimo Paradiso, turns out to be some kind of Italian documentary which probably promised the occasional glance at a denuded native girl, but was also probably a whole lot less provocative that its tagline (“The Virgin Paradise of Ten Thousand Thrills!”) would have you surmise.

But, as any good showman would, I’ve saved the best for last. The come-on reads like a promise of the nastiest bit of pulp you’ll ever encounter: “Certain essential scenes in this film should be seen only by adults. They are not suitable for younger, more impressionable minds. We strongly recommend this film for adults only.” Unbelievable that they missed the opportunity to let on that the film in question comes from that hedonistic hot spot known as Sweden. So what is steamy Adult Shocker #1? It’s called The Virgin Spring (Yeah? Mmm!) and it stars Swedish hottie Birgitta Pettersson (Yeah? Uh-huh?)… and it was directed by that well-known Swedish pornographer Ingmar Bergman (Sound of air escaping overly engorged balloon…)

Who needs the drive-in’s in-car heaters with this much raw sex being projected onto the big screen? I wonder how many requests the management got for refunds based on lack of erotic stimulation after sitting through this triple feature! I’d have been pissed too—but not so much that I wouldn’t have inquired about the drive-in’s “popular bear club.”

In keeping (sort of) with today’s theme, here’s two offerings that have unique takes on the subject of marriage. First, from the land of Russ Meyer, comes his 1967 classic Common-Law Cabin (Don’t forget— in lieu of cold statistics, we offer you Sheila!):


And finally, here’s the British “restricted” trailer for a beautiful story of the unassailable bonds of marriage, bonds that can survive infidelity, incompatibility, and even one spouse’s transformation into a carnivorous slug from another world. Oh, how I wish I’d seen this one before doing up my Underrated, Ignored or Forgotten Horror Movies list last month…


Hearing Air Supply sing "You're Every Woman In The World To Me" will never sound the same... and a big "amen" to that! Have a great weekend!

IT AIN'T CALLED SEESAW III, FOLKS...

What would Andy do?

Here’s yet another account of idiot parenting that would be even more remarkable if there weren’t the nagging feeling while reading it that this kind of thing happens a lot more often than many of us are even aware. Today’s edition of the Burbank Leader features a movie review written by voice-over artist and character actor Matt Bellner for Saw III, certainly not a movie anyone is likely to mistake for Flushed Away or Open Season. Yet Matt felt compelled mid-review to interrupt his enthusiastic comments with this grim observation:

”This is one of the hardest R-rated movies I've ever seen. The biggest shock of my movie-going life, however, was seeing the family next to me sitting comfortably with their 3-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. Watching those poor kids sit through this type of entertainment was much more appalling than witnessing the violence in this film. Don't be an idiot. Keep your kids at home.”

One might reasonably think that such a plea wouldn’t be necessary, that any sane, rational grown-up, parent or not, would realize an auditorium screening Saw III was no place for a seven-year-old child, and especially not a child four years younger even than that. I’ve seen moms and dads with three or four underage children padding their way into Saving Private Ryan and Kill Bill Vol. 1, both a considerable stone’s throw from the Blue’s Clues universe, and both rated “R” for a good goddamn reason. Yet these selfish, potato-headed parents, treating their kids as pull toys to be dragged along to whatever occasion, either won’t (or can’t) pony up for a baby-sitter, or won’t wait for the movie to be released on DVD—they’ve gotta see it now, and if it means branding hard-core images of torture and humiliation into the brains of kids who are already exposed to far more than previous generations ever were at their age, and are “growing up” too damn fast as a result, then whatever, dude. If I saw a mother or a father pounding away at a child in a grocery store, I would either intervene or call for store security, in the name of the child’s safety. Is it such a reach to think of taking a three-year-old to see Saw III as a form of child abuse that might warrant similar intervention? (Some theaters, like the Mann chain, claim that no child under the age of five will be allowed admittance to anything harsher than a flat "PG," but I seriously doubt that policy is strictly enforced, and I can’t say other chains have similar restrictions.)

I’m not trying to condemn Matt Bellner for not saying something to these parents—on the contrary, I commend him for using his opportunity to review Saw III to even mention how horrified he was. But as a parent of two daughters, ages four and six, I’m finding it harder and harder, especially if I’m within a seat or two, to refrain from at least asking the mom or dad in that situation, “What the fuck are you thinking bringing those kids in here?”

Or should I just shut up, eat my popcorn and enjoy the gore that I paid to see, just like the Addams Family sitting next to me is trying to do? What would Andy Griffith do? What would you do?

POST-ELECTION "ADJUSTMENTS"

For some reason, I feel like going home, having a beer and watching Joe Dante’s Homecoming tonight. And good riddance to Bad Donald too.