Far up! Far out! Far more! James Bond 007 is back!

In celebration of today's much-anticipated (by me, at least) debut of the new Bond flick, Quantum of Solace, I'm throwing my two cents in for the James Blog-a-thon at Lazy Eye Theatre (which I found out about via Electronic Cerebrectomy).

This is a reposting of an entry from August 13, 2004 (which is why there is no mention of Daniel Craig or the new Casino Royale). It's my defense of perhaps the most-maligned entry in the Bond series, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Enjoy!

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Not only do I disagree with the apparent majority opinion that OHMSS is the worst James Bond film, I actually think it's one of the best -- top three, at least. (And how anyone can think this is the worst when A View to a Kill exists is beyond me.) If Sean Connery had stuck around to star in it, I think everyone would agree it was the very best.

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: George Lazenby is no Sean Connery. I know that. He's not my favorite actor, either. In fact, he's almost certainly the worst actor of the five to have played Bond in the series (the "official" series; I'm not counting the Bond spoof Casino Royale). I personally liked Roger Moore less in the role than Lazenby, but judging purely on acting skills, Moore was better. Lazenby was a novice actor in a high profile gig taking over from an incredibly popular predecessor, under a great deal of pressure to fill an iconic role. He couldn't possibly meet such expectations, even from those who bothered to give him a chance. That said, Lazenby wasn't terrible. He actually wasn't half bad -- certainly not as bad as some people want to believe he was. He definitely had the look, and, though wooden at times, he musters enough charm and competence to get by.

The Bond girl, on the other hand, was excellent. Diana Rigg had already made her name on The Avengers, and she's great in this film, playing a similarly strong, smart, dangerous, beautiful woman. Who eventually caves to Bond's seduction, sure, but what kind of a Bond film would it be without that? The fact that Bond actually gets married to her sets a milestone in Bond's character development, and the development of the series as a whole. No other Bond film has had such an emotional core to it.

Blofeld is the ultimate Bond villain, and he exacts the ultimate vengeance against Bond -- by killing his wife, Blofeld takes away the only thing Bond has ever loved. James Bond, for all the women he's gone through, has never cared for any of them. He's at heart a cruel and selfish man. The fact that he allows himself to fall in love in this film marks a real change in the character, which makes her death all the more powerful. And Telly Savalas is great as Blofeld.

The film's snow chase is also one of the most spectacular stunt scenes in any Bond film -- which makes it one of the best stunt scenes ever filmed. Ah, for a return to the days when actual people performed stunts, rather than computerized images!

The film has its faults: Blofeld's evil plan is kind of dopey, but then, so are the plans of most of the Bond villains. And Lazenby's looking at the camera at the beginning of the film and muttering a complaint about "the other guy" (meaning Connery) was a jarring, awkward, integrity-breaking way to get things started. But the film makes up for it in so many ways, from the scenery and music (yes, even the music is great) on up. If you like the Bond films, but have always had something against this one, I say give it another chance -- this time, without thinking every other second, "Connery was better". Of course he was. But thinking like that keeps you from enjoying a great film.

MOVIES: The Cannonball Run

I've always had fond memories of The Cannonball Run, so when I saw the DVD in one of those budget two-packs (with Caddyshack) at Best Buy, I decided to pick it up. And oh my lord, that is one of the stupidest damn movies ever made. Why did I used to like this?

First of all, there's no character development, there's no story, other than the big race. Nor should there be, really; it's a light road comedy, you want to get to the action as quickly as possible. But still, how hard is it to go, "Here's Burt Reynolds' character, J.J. McClure; here is what makes him human; here is why you should give two shits about him." But that doesn't happen, so unless you're still living in 1981, and are so fully invested in and charmed by Burt Reynolds as a person that you love him no matter what character he's playing, you just don't care about him or his antics at all. And he's the most fully fleshed-out character.

Other participants in this train wreck of a movie:

• Roger Moore, playing Seymour Goldfarb, Jr., a man who thinks he's... Roger Moore. A Roger Moore who has all of James Bond's gadgets and women. But James Bond is never explicitly mentioned. In fact, in one scene, you can see by lip-reading that Moore is talking about the film The Spy Who Loved Me, but what you hear is The Fly Who Bugged Me. Think they were threatened with a lawsuit? (Another strange dubbing moment on this DVD: one character very clearly forms the words, "Slicker than shit through a goose," but the vocal track says, "Slicker than shot through a gun." The cursing remains intact throughout the rest of the film; why that one overdub?)


• Farrah Fawcett, whose character allows Burt Reynolds to call her "Beauty" rather than her real name, gives the impression that this is because she feels a man's name for her is clearly superior to her actual name. Her character is an environmentalist, sweet and demure except for the fact that she keeps telling (or trying to tell) complete strangers that she loves trees "because you can lie under them at night, and look at the stars, and listen to the wind in the leaves, and ball your brains out!" ("Ball"?) Also, she's kidnapped by Burt Reynolds early in the film, literally kidnapped and driven cross country, but she succumbs to the most rapid and complete case of Stockholm Syndrome ever seen.


• Jackie Chan, who is Chinese, plays a Japanese driver named... Jackie Chan. This was his first American film. And he was never heard from again.


• Terry Bradshaw is in this thing. Terry frickin' Bradshaw.


• Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. disguise themselves as priests, hard-drinking, foul-mouthed priests. Ah, the good old days, when drunk driving was funny. (See also Arthur.) The one bit in this movie I remember liking as a kid that I still liked was when Sammy says, "Why'd he call me shorty?" and Dean says, "Because you're small. Small. S-M-All." That's funny. Well, it is!


• Bert Convy is in this thing, too. Game show host Bert Convy. Wow. He drives a motorcycle, and makes his male teammate wear a bridal gown, on the theory that cops won't pull over newlyweds. But his teammate is so fat, Convy can't make the motorcycle stop popping a wheelie. Ha.


• Adrienne Barbeau appears in this movie for the sole purpose of sexily unzipping her skintight racing gear. Bless her heart.


• God, I can't list all these sons of bitches. There's also Jamie Farr, Jimmy the Greek, Valerie Perrine, Jack Elam, Mel Tillis, and Peter Fonda, none of whom, now that I think about it, deserved anything better than this film.

And, lest you think I forget, the #1 reason I enjoyed this film as a kid: Dom DeLuise. I thought he was the funniest thing ever. Captain Chaos! Dun-dun-DUNNN! Watching the movie this time, I just felt sad for him. Burt Reynolds is always yelling at him and slapping him. And you just know that's a carry-over from real life. Some guys, however handsome and popular they are, still want to have someone demonstrably less handsome and popular by their side, someone they can belittle and abuse to make themselves feel even bigger, someone who will willingly take that abuse for the privilege of joining the popular club.

The same kind of thing happens with Dean and Sammy. Dean's constantly slapping Sammy in this movie. And those are real slaps. I'm sure that's only the smallest sample of what Sammy had to endure to be the only black guy admitted to the Rat Pack. I laughed at the time, but now it just makes me cringe.

Horrified by the awful, humorless writing and acting, I thought, well, at least there'll be some cool driving action. Uh, nope. We see cars driving a lot, but very little interesting driving. Jackie Chan launches his car off a sand dune. Terry Bradshaw drives his car into a swimming pool. Some guy named Mad Dog drives his truck into a hotel lobby. Roger Moore has smoke screens and oil slicks, of course. But there's really very little racing action for a movie all about a cross country race.

And the race ends in a very stupid way (you will be shocked to hear). The way the race works is, you punch a time card in at the beginning of the race, then punch it in again at the end of the race. Best time wins. At the end, a whole group of drivers are running to the finish line. Burt Reynolds slows them down, and Adrienne Barbeau winds up punching her card first. And everyone else just stands there and groans with disappointment. Hey, shitheads! Some of you left the starting line after Adrienne Barbeau did! If you'd just punch your card, your time might still be the best. But nobody does. They all concede the victory. Jesus, why race 3,000 miles if you're going to give up in the last ten feet? Idiots.

Now I want to watch Smokey & the Bandit again, to see if it also fails to measure up to my recollection of it. But I'm scared to. I don't want to ruin all my childhood memories. Not all at once, anyway.

Count/Pointercount

Welcome to those of you visiting from The Hurting!

Earlier this week, Tim posted a reply to my recent post on movie trailers -- specifically my comments about Sky Captain -- more specifically my wish for more real-life stunts, rather than CGI-created stunts. Since there are no comments on his site, I'm responding here.

(Note: I'm always hesitant about replying to things I see on other blogs, because no matter what you say, you're most likely going to look like a pissy jerk. Which is not my intent. And yet, here we are.)

Number one, let me just say that this sentence:

Watching real violence – or a realistic portrayal of fantasy violence designed to titillate the worst instincts of the average moviegoer - is just depressing.

is the only thing that really rubs me the wrong way. The rest is just someone having a different opinion from me, which I've learned to live with, despite the fact that I'm always right. But I really don't care for the implication that there's something wrong with me for getting a kick out of John McClane wasting Hans Gruber. Some of us average moviegoers are able to differentiate between fake movie fights and, say, the war in Iraq, and thus can enjoy action scenes for what they are, whether they involve human actors or CGI monsters.

Other notes:

--Action scenes with real people don't have to be violent -- I'm thinking of, say, the suspended from the ceiling bit in Mission: Impossible, or one of the comic car chases in The Blues Brothers.

--As for the ones that are violent, the CGI-type action scenes are generally violent as well, as in the Jurassic Park movies, or The Matrix movies, or Will Smith Kicks a Bunch of Robot Ass (known to some as I, Robot). Why is CGI-created violence acceptable and human-stuntman violence not, when you know they're both equally fake? And are there then varying degrees of acceptability? Is CGI-created human-on-human violence less acceptable than dinosaur-on-human CGI violence, which is less acceptable than alien-on-robot CGI violence?

--Speaking of which.... The specific scene I was thinking of when I mentioned "a million CGI robots fighting a million CGI aliens" was the Gungan vs. droid battle at the end of The Phantom Menace -- a movie which I hated almost in its entirety, but especially that bit, because after a while I started thinking, "There's nothing but a grassy field up there. I'm watching a grassy field, with 1s and 0s superimposed on it. Whee." That works for some people, obviously, but it bored the hell out of me. A real person doing a real thing can be exhilirating, like James Bond snow-skiing off a sheer cliff just before opening his Union Jack parachute; things that aren't there doing things that never happened is, as Mike put it so well, "like watching someone else play a video game."

--As far as the aliens vs. robots being "not something I can see outside my window every day": I've been in car crashes, too... but I've never seen 100 cop cars get demolished by a couple dozen 18-wheelers, like in Smokey & the Bandit 2. I've been in fights... but I've never seen Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Ziyi in a treetop sword battle outside my window. Because it involves real people, that doesn't automatically mean it's something that's been seen before. Just as simply being computer-generated doesn't mean it hasn't been seen before -- if you've seen one CGI spaceship explosion, you've seen 'em all.

Damn. That's a lot of words about something no one will care about. Oh well.

And on a personal note: Tim, if you really see violence every day -- dude, you should move.

TRAILER TRASH

Taxi: This movie could not look worse if it really were a big-screen adaptation of the TV show, with Jimmy Fallon as Latka and Queen Latifah as Reverend Jim. Instead, it's a bunch of supermodel-looking bank robbers being chased by policeman Fallon in cabbie Latifah's souped-up super-taxi. No, really. This movie is for people who kind of liked Bringing Down the House, but thought it was a little too intellectual.

The Aviator: So, did Martin Scorsese not see Gangs of New York? I mean, he directed it, but maybe he never watched it. Because if he had, why in the hell would he still think Leo DiCaprio has the presence to hold together an adult film? (Not adult-sexy, adult as in grown-up.) DiCaprio is a teen heartthrob (and actually those teens are probably over him by now), not a Scorsese lead. He doesn't have the look, the voice, or the talent to be a believable dramatic anchor for a movie like this. It's hard enough already to try to pass off Howard Hughes as a romantic dreamer, rather than coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, but with DiCaprio in the role, I can't for a second believe his pretty little head could contain such ambitious ideas. Screw around with actresses like Hepburn, Gardner, and Harlow -- sure. Design and build airplanes -- no. And Marty, it's not just Leo you need to think about recasting. Gwen frickin' Stefani as Harlow? Oh, Marty, Marty, Marty.

After the Sunset: I liked this movie just fine the first time I saw it... when it was called The Thomas Crown Affair. Salma Hayek is Rene Russo (though probably a lot less naked), Woody Harrelson is Denis Leary, and Pierce Brosnan is Pierce Brosnan. Big-time thief pulling one last heist, yada yada yada.

Ladder 49: Same joke, change punchline to Backdraft. No, wait, I didn't like Backdraft. And that had Robert De Niro.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: I've gone back and forth on this one. At first I thought it looked kind of stupid, but that it still might be the kind of movie I'd get a kick out of. Then I thought it would be pretty darn entertaining for a general audience. And now, the more I read about how everything but the actors is computer-generated -- the entire movie was shot against a bluescreen -- I don't think that's the kind of filmmaking that deserves to be rewarded. Maybe if it were some kind of one-time experiment, that would be fine, but this is the kind of movie that could raise acceptance of computer-generated imagery to a new level (if not by audiences, then by production studios, who may find it more cost-effective), and I do not want that to happen. I think action films are on the verge of being ruined once and for all by over-reliance on fake, uninteresting CGI. Even James Bond films, the last bastion (in America) of real, live, human stuntman-based action scenes, are degenerating into CGI-fests -- I'm thinking particularly of that idiotic windsurfing scene in Die Another Day. I know that even the simplest of action scenes usually have some kind of CGI involved in them (if only to erase the stunt wires), but still, there's something more compelling, more viscerally engaging, about a stunt with one real person in one real car, than a million CGI robots fighting a million CGI aliens.

MOVIES: Far up! Far out! Far more! James Bond 007 is back!

I've been a little comics heavy on the blog recently, so to balance things out, my defense of the much-maligned James Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.



Not only do I disagree with the apparent majority opinion that it's the worst James Bond film, I actually think it's one of the best -- top three, at least. (And how anyone can think this is the worst when A View to a Kill exists is beyond me.) If Sean Connery had stuck around to star in it, I think everyone would agree it was the very best.

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: George Lazenby is no Sean Connery. I know that. He's not my favorite actor, either. In fact, he's almost certainly the worst actor of the five to have played Bond in the series (the "official" series; I'm not counting the Bond spoof Casino Royale). I personally liked Roger Moore less in the role than Lazenby, but judging purely on acting skills, Moore was better. Lazenby was a novice actor in a high profile gig taking over from an incredibly popular predecessor, under a great deal of pressure to fill an iconic role. He couldn't possibly meet such expectations, even from those who bothered to give him a chance. That said, Lazenby wasn't terrible. He actually wasn't half bad -- certainly not as bad as some people want to believe he was. He definitely had the look, and, though wooden at times, he musters enough charm and competence to get by.

The Bond girl, on the other hand, was excellent. Diana Rigg had already made her name on The Avengers, and she's great in this film, playing a similarly strong, smart, dangerous, beautiful woman. Who eventually caves to Bond's seduction, sure, but what kind of a Bond film would it be without that? The fact that Bond actually gets married to her sets a milestone in Bond's character development, and the development of the series as a whole. No other Bond film has had such an emotional core to it.

Blofeld is the ultimate Bond villain, and he exacts the ultimate vengeance against Bond -- by killing his wife, Blofeld takes away the only thing Bond has ever loved. James Bond, for all the women he's gone through, has never cared for any of them. He's at heart a cruel and selfish man. The fact that he allows himself to fall in love in this film marks a real change in the character, which makes her death all the more powerful. And Telly Savalas is great as Blofeld.

The film's snow chase is also one of the most spectacular stunt scenes in any Bond film -- which makes it one of the best stunt scenes ever filmed. Ah, for a return to the days when actual people performed stunts, rather than computerized images!

The film has its faults: Blofeld's evil plan is kind of dopey, but then, so are the plans of most of the Bond villains. And Lazenby's looking at the camera at the beginning of the film and muttering a complaint about "the other guy" (meaning Connery) was a jarring, awkward, integrity-breaking way to get things started. But the film makes up for it in so many ways, from the scenery and music (yes, even the music is great) on up. If you like the Bond films, but have always had something against this one, I say give it another chance -- this time, without thinking every other second, "Connery was better". Of course he was. But thinking like that keeps you from enjoying a great film.

MOVIES: The Bourne Supremacy

I caught a sneak preview of The Bourne Supremacy last Tuesday night. Since it's not due to be released until July 23, I'll consider this entire review a spoiler, and hide it accordingly.

(Actually, I wasn't even going to post this review, since it kind of rambles, and honestly, my heart's not really in it, but, hell, it's Movies day, and I gots nothin else.)

Overall, I was disappointed. The acting was fine, the story was interesting, and the characters generally did smart, logical things. Where it failed totally was during what should be the highlights of a spy thriller -- the action scenes.

I'm assuming that the director previously worked in videos and commercials -- and that probably tells you all you need to know about his style of directing. The camera just would not sit still for one damn second. Always zipping and whirling and jittering and jumping, 8,000 cuts per second, spinning and whooshing right past what you wanted to look at. It got to the point where I wanted to yell at the screen, "Sit still and show me what the hell is going on!!" The fight scenes may or may not have been well choreographed, the chases may or may not have been cleverly staged -- I don't know, because I couldn't see a god damn thing that was happening. The camera would only show a millisecond of a fist moving, or an extreme close-up of a head jerking back, or some damn thing or another blurring past my field of vision. (During the car chase, for example, I could never tell which car was where, but I remember about a dozen good shots of the gas pedal, because that's important.) I actually got angry at the direction, and a little bit queasy. I'm not an idiot, who can be distracted by shiny, flashy objects. I just want an action scene presented in a straightforward, easily comprehensible, and entertaining manner. Is that too much to ask for? These days, probably yes.

It's a shame, because so much of the rest of the film is well done. Brian Cox -- and I'll warn you again, these are all spoilers -- Brian Cox returns from the first film, reprising his role as the man who created the Treadstone program responsible for Bourne's training; he is revealed here as the traitor everyone is looking for -- which, really, is obvious fairly early on. I mean, he's the only major character in the government who is insisting that Bourne be killed; he runs interference on every move Joan Allen, as head of the search for Bourne, puts forward. But Cox is a great actor, and he plays the villain well. Joan Allen is also a great performer, but she doesn't have an awful lot to do here; it's like Judi Dench's role in the Bond movies, overkill for an underwritten role. But she's a solid presence, anchoring the team hunting down Bourne. Franka Potente also returns from the first film; she's sweet during her limited screentime, but sadly, she doesn't last very long. Julia Stiles also returns, and again, it's overkill for her small role. She's excellent in her few scenes, especially the one in which Bourne interrogates her, but she could be starring in her own films, rather than taking small parts in the Bourne series. Makes you wonder why she's even here. Chris Cooper, who was killed in the first film, even has a cameo in a flashback, which was a nice touch.

And Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is fine as well. His character doesn't get much development here; apparently, he's sworn not to kill again, at the request of his now dead love, Franka, but his decision to leave certain of his enemies still breathing after he's gone to such lengths to hunt them down is a little mystifying (especially the man who put the bullet in Franka's head -- and especially considering there's at least one other person he does kill). A lot of his backstory is left out of the film; when Joan Allen reveals Bourne's real name at the end of the film, I realized that this film doesn't even explain that Bourne doesn't know his real name. And when Julia Stiles lists the side effects some of the Treadstone agents have suffered, Allen asks, "Amnesia?" And Stiles replies, "Before Bourne? No." If the viewer hasn't seen the first film, he might assume the project caused Jason's amnesia, rather than a blow to the head.

But Bourne for the most part plays it smart -- the film and the character both. Bourne gets captured in an airport -- but only because he wants to be caught, to identify the people who are chasing him. To buy some time after a fight, he pulls a gas hose out of the wall, then stuffs a magazine in a toaster and pushes the lever -- a unique time bomb. He arranges a meeting with Julia Stiles in the middle of a protest march, so he can grab her and get lost in the crowd. And a scene at the end, where he confronts the daughter of a couple he killed in his pre-amnesia career, and breaks the news to her that it was not a murder-suicide, as he had staged it to look, that her mother did not pull the trigger -- it's a tough, compelling, dark, smart scene, well-played by Damon. You almost hope the daughter will kill him in revenge. I think it's bold to have a scene like that so near the end of the film; he's attempting to redeem himself with this confession, but he only makes himself look more horrible to the audience. It trusts the audience to stay with the character, and it works. Somehow, though, I get the suspicion that scene will be changed after these test screenings; might be I'm the only one in favor of such a dark scene.

Would I recommend The Bourne Supremacy? There are things I enjoyed, but in the end, in its present form: no, I would not. Maybe on DVD, or on HBO, but definitely not for full price in the theaters. I just think the action scenes, which are vital to a film like this, are thoroughly inept in their execution, and completely unenjoyable, and I don't think there's any way they can be fixed without re-editing them from scratch. Which won't happen.