Designer's Eye for the Spy Guy

My Cousin Lee Goldberg's blog led me to this extremely cool blog spotlighting the design aesthetic of sixties spy films and TV -- futurism meets Playboy Club meets op art. There's little disagreement that SPECTRE's volcano lair from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE is the apotheosis of spy cool.

The Spy in Black

I like James Bond films. I like Johnny Cash music. But the mixture of the two is not nearly as nice as the meeting of peanut butter and chocolate.

My cousin Lee's blog has clips from a BBC special that include samples of various rejected Bond movie themes -- including a jaw-dropping one for THUNDERBALL from The Man in Black that would be best suited to a movie in which the hero rides off into the sunset while twirling a lariet.

Quantum of Disappointment

I wanted to like QUANTUM OF SOLACE. I really did. But I found it quite a disappointment after CASINO ROYALE. I still think Daniel Craig makes a good Bond. But here's what I didn't like:

1. Not enough fun. The best Bond films manage to balance both drama and fantasy. Heck, in Casino Royale lives were riding on a card game. The only fantasy here was Bond's ability to come through nasty situations without dying; and (spoiler warning) to knock out a whole elevator of fellow agents in two seconds. (And these are his co-workers! Boy, is he going to be unpopular in the service from now on.)

2. Lack of a good through-line for the story. CR benefitted from following the arc of the novel on which it was based (though it departed from the story, particularly in making Bond more active than reactive). This one was just one event after another until the story came shuddering to a halt.

3. Choppy action sequences. Credit the Jason Bourne movies and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN for the subjective, fast-cutting, shaky-camera action sequences that attempt to put the viewer into the action by making things confusing. Well, it was so confusing here that I couldn't tell who was doing what to whom. The editor needs to sit down and watch FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER fifty times so that he can figure out how to cut a fight scene and make it both exciting and coherent.

4. Too damn loud. The volume started with the commercials (used to be that The Bridge had minimal commercials; that's apparently a thing of the past) and stayed throughout the movie. I complained to the theater manager, who informed me that the Sony people had been out before the movie's premiere to calibrate the visuals and sound and that the director had prescribed the precise sound level he demanded. Sounds to me like the director is mistaking a loud soundtrack for a well-crafted soundmix.

5. (Spoiler warning) Bond doesn't get nearly as much sex as he should. (See Point #1.)

On the plus side, the trailer for the STAR TREK movie was cool, as was the one for Bryan Singer's VALKYRIE. (Singer just can't stay away from those nazis, can he?)

Quantum of Merchandise

There's a long, not-so-proud history of merchandising for the James Bond film franchise; around the mid-sixties, the markets were stuffed with Bond gewgaws for tots and adults alike.

The upcoming Bond flick, "Quantum of Solace" (which has the distinction of earning over $100 million before it's even opened in the US) is generating lots of upscale merch. Indeed, several of those obnoxious digital billboards that clutter West LA's lower airspace are devoted solely to images of 007 and the devices he's hawking. The images strobe between posters for the movie, ads for Omega watches, plugs for the incredibly expensive Sony paper-thin TV (the one early adopters will buy at 11 inches because they can't wait for the technology to be used to create a decent-sized TV), a billboard for Bond booze, etc.

It all stands in stark contrast to the worsening economy and the increasing penny-pinching of the world's consumers. One wonders how many Bond watches Omega will move when times are so tough that MI-6 likely confiscated Bond's timepiece and curtailed his expense account.

Besides, anyone who buys a multi-thousand-dollar item merely because James Bond endorses it needs some serious reality therapy.

Solo. Napoleon Solo.

Is it just me, or does Daniel Craig's pose on the QUANTUM OF SOLACE poster look familiar?

Farewell, Miss Moneypenny

I'm posting this from a Wi-Fi Watering Hole (The Funnel Mill) because the Time-Warner techs came to our house Thursday, switched over our digital phone system from the Comcast system to TW, and knocked out our cable Internet modem. We are cut off from the Information Superhighway until they send out more techs next Thursday. Curse Time-Warner Cable. May a syphilitic camel drop dead in their couscous.

Anyway, I was saddened last week to read of the death of Lois Maxwell, the original (and best) Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond movies. Moneypenny was an indispensible part of the Bond formula -- indeed, she shows up early in the first JB novel, CASINO ROYALE.

Ironically, on the day she died I watched the first part of the beautifully restored DR. NO released on DVD last year. You can see in the movie how crucial her few minutes in each Bond film were to the story. The movie opens with two macabre murders. We switch to the MI-6 radio receivers' room; then to the club where we first see Bond. In his first scene, Bond, as played by Sean Connery, is elegant, but as cold as ice. Only when he pops into M's antechamber and banters with Moneypenny do we see a hint of humanity in him. Granted, he shamelessly sexually harasses Moneypenny, but those scenes are just as valuable as the ones in M's office, where we see that M is the only man who can make even James Bond feel like a schoolboy caught in a shameful prank.

As M finally said in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, "What would I ever do without you, Moneypenny?"

No, Mr. Blaze, I Expect You to Fry!

For the second straight week, the GHOST RIDER movie has roared right over almost uniformly negative reviews and skidded to a stop on top of the box office charts.

Could be that -- as I posted below -- fire, skeletons, and bikes all look great on film.

Or it could be that Ghost Rider is one of the few Marvel heroes whose name can be sung to the tune of "Goldfinger":

Ghost Ri-der (wah waah wah! Badabadabum)
He's the ghost
The ghost with the fla-min' head --
Is he alive -- or dead? (Wawawawawaaah)

Placement -- Product Placement

We saw CASINO ROYALE yesterday afternoon at The Bridge. Overall, I really enjoyed it. The action sequences were sharp (particularly the first chase, which brought to mind the agile athleticism of the best Jackie Chan routines), the "origin" touches were effective (my favorite was the use of the trademark "down the gun barrel" shot in the pre-credit sequence), and Daniel Craig provided electric charisma as Bond. The romance aspects fell flat for me, alas.


But the most distracting aspect of the movie was the rampant product placement. CR was the first Bond movie made by Sony (and possibly the last, as it's likely to lose its controlling interest in MGM/UA), and the movie apparently takes place in a world where everyone uses Sony computers, Sony laptops, Sony cameras, and Sony electronic equipment. (Considering that the movie debuted the same day as the Playstation 3, I wouldn't have been surprised if Bond had challenged Le Chiffre to a few video games. "You're the best Madden player on the service, 007 . . . .")

The worst was the in-movie commercial for Bond's Omega watch. ("Your watch. Rolex?" "Omega." "Beautiful.") Product placement is nothing new for Bond movies -- GOLDFINGER moved a lot of Aston-Martin DB5s, and subsequent movies plugged everything from Playboy to BMWs. But in this movie, the placement is exactly the sort of "blunt instrument" M accuses Bond of being.