The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

For Your Eyes Only, starring Roger Moore, 1981

Apparently the story within the story of who the real Bond, James Bond is will go on as least as long as the freaking producers are willing to put up cold hard cash to see who still gives a damn about the question. I thought I had been done, had finished with this question once Will Bradley conceded that Sean Connery was head and shoulders the best of the lot (conceded by silence, by giving up the ghost of trying to keep going with his ill-conceived premise, an almost laughable one that one pretty boy Pierce Brosnan was the One). Nobody else was even considered worthy enough to have a champion and make the argument multi-faceted. (By the way that Connery-Brosnan controversy, what my old friend Sam Lowell, the legendary film critic who still wanders the cinematic world with a large shadow behind him, has called on more than one occasion a tempest in teapot had no serious other contenders at the time-now either) Two events though have cast a long shadow over the question. The news of recent origin that one Idris Elba British to the core but as black as night was being considered for the role of Bond in some future episode which will put a whole new spin of the question and a possible recasting of the standings of the “others” who fill out the ranks of who have played Bond when I did an off-hand review of  George Lazenby’s solo 1969 performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which put him at the bottom of the list. That got me, if not battered and bruised Will Bradley, rethinking the placement order which meant having to watch, re-watch a Roger Moore Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, among others to see who would take the coveted third spot now that George Lazenby is comfortably seated in last place. This is necessarily provincial since if the Elba rumor turns out to be true we could have the whole apple cart upset.

Since I have no competition as of yet over who will fill out the “third through” ranks I will argue that Roger Moore, a little woodenly, a little less spritely than either Connery or Brosnan, and a little less technologically competent that Brosnan and less suave and off-handed than Connery nevertheless should fill the third slot. Not because the story line is qualitatively better than any of the others-they divide simply between the more interesting since more realistic Cold War Soviet as main enemy films as here and the post-Soviet demise amorphous international criminal cartels films and not much more since all are threats to Her Majesty’s reign and governments and so much fodder for ace Empire hitman Bond the only person standing between the continued regime and chaos.   

This film follows the tried and true Soviets as villain formula. Somebody, some third party, has blown away an important spy ship containing an important defense gizmo which will save the Empire and all civilization as we know it will be sunk if the damn Soviet’s get their greedy hands on the item. Problem: said system is located somewhere in the briny deep and everybody is scrambling to get to the locale first and win the prize. Enter Roger Moore as James Bond who of course has to go through hoops before getting to the locale. Along the way there are the standard ruses and deceptions, a few moves under the silky sheets and some hand to hand battles with whatever passes for the latest technology-planes, submarines, skis, yes skis as old James skis like he was an Olympian among his many other manly skills. As a sign of the times, 1981, Bond rather than get the system back to MI6, cornered and backed into a corner with the system by Russian agents throws it off a cliff so nobody gets it-détente at work. All very civilized at the end and Roger Moore seems to me to epitomize that calm, determined Bond needed by the times when the Soviet Union was in trouble and who knows what would happen. More later when we get a chance to view more Moore footage but for now he is king of the number three spot.                       

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

The Continuing Saga Of Who Is The Real Bond, James Bond- A Ringer’s Story-Roger Moore’s “For Your Eyes Only” (1981)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

For Your Eyes Only, starring Roger Moore, 1981

Apparently the story within the story of who the real Bond, James Bond is will go on as least as long as the freaking producers are willing to put up cold hard cash to see who still gives a damn about the question. I thought I had been done, had finished with this question once Will Bradley conceded that Sean Connery was head and shoulders the best of the lot (conceded by silence, by giving up the ghost of trying to keep going with his ill-conceived premise, an almost laughable one that one pretty boy Pierce Brosnan was the One). Nobody else was even considered worthy enough to have a champion and make the argument multi-faceted. (By the way that Connery-Brosnan controversy, what my old friend Sam Lowell, the legendary film critic who still wanders the cinematic world with a large shadow behind him, has called on more than one occasion a tempest in teapot had no serious other contenders at the time-now either) Two events though have cast a long shadow over the question. The news of recent origin that one Idris Elba British to the core but as black as night was being considered for the role of Bond in some future episode which will put a whole new spin of the question and a possible recasting of the standings of the “others” who fill out the ranks of who have played Bond when I did an off-hand review of  George Lazenby’s solo 1969 performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service which put him at the bottom of the list. That got me, if not battered and bruised Will Bradley, rethinking the placement order which meant having to watch, re-watch a Roger Moore Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, among others to see who would take the coveted third spot now that George Lazenby is comfortably seated in last place. This is necessarily provincial since if the Elba rumor turns out to be true we could have the whole apple cart upset.

Since I have no competition as of yet over who will fill out the “third through” ranks I will argue that Roger Moore, a little woodenly, a little less spritely than either Connery or Brosnan, and a little less technologically competent that Brosnan and less suave and off-handed than Connery nevertheless should fill the third slot. Not because the story line is qualitatively better than any of the others-they divide simply between the more interesting since more realistic Cold War Soviet as main enemy films and the post-Soviet demise amorphous international criminal cartels films and not much more since all are threats to Her Majesty’s reign and governments and so much fodder for ace Empire hitman Bond the only person standing between the continued regime and chaos.    

This film follows the tried and true Soviets as villain formula. Somebody, some third party, has blown away an important spy ship containing an important defense gizmo which will save the Empire and all civilization as we know it will be sunk if the damn Soviet’s get their greedy hands on the item. Problem: said system is located somewhere in the briny deep and everybody is scrambling to get to the locale first and win the prize. Enter Roger Moore as James Bond who of course has to go through hoops before getting to the locale. Along the way there are the standard ruses and deceptions, a few moves under the silky sheets and some hand to hand battles with whatever passes for the latest technology-planes, submarines, skis, yes skis as old James skis like he was an Olympian among his many other manly skills. As a sign of the times, 1981, Bond rather than get the system back to MI6, cornered and backed into a corner with the system by Russian agents throws it off a cliff so nobody gets it-détente at work. All very civilized at the end and Roger Moore seems to me to epitomize that calm, determined Bond needed by the times when the Soviet Union was in trouble and who knows what would happen. More later when we get a chance to view more Moore footage but for now he is king of the number three spot.                       

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up-Once Again On The War Of Words About The Man-And The Legend-With “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969)-A Film Review

Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up-Once Again On The War Of Words About The Man-And The Legend-With “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1969)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, starring Diana Riggs, Telly Savalas, George Lazenby, based on the novel by Ian Fleming, 1969

Young up and coming young writer Will Bradley, folded like an accordion, folded int one of those origami constructions when divine site manager Greg Green asked him to once again do “dueling” reviews with me on the world historic question of who the real James Bond, you know Bond, James Bond, was, is since they are still cranking the bastards out and are even talking about bringing in a black Bond to reflect the times and despite Brexit the changing demographics of the British Empire, or whatever they call the remnant of an empire upon which the sun never. Of course that world historic question finally resolved itself around my championing the original cinematic James Bond, ruggedly handsome and every young women’s wet dream at the time Sean Connery who could probably still pull his weight in the role and young wet behind the ears and clueless Bradley plucking pretty boy and prissy Pierce Brosnan out of his slumber. Needless to say I beat poor young Will like a gong every time he even tried to put these two in the same paragraph. Made him look silly and naïve to think that somehow a guy like Pierce’s Bond who admittedly was nothing but a technie wonk and had no inner resources to get him through the hard parts could cut the mustard. So when the question came up about reviewing this post-Sean venture, On His, No Her Majesty’s Secret Service drawn from an Ian Fleming book he pleaded illness or something. Seeing that non-descript mercifully one-off George Lazenby was to do the Bond role that might have been the beginning of wisdom for the lad, for him to learn his craft a bit by bowing out. (Christ would anybody, even Will, want to champion a Bond named George against guys with names like Sean and even Pierce.)           

It is probably just as well Will bowed out since although I am feeling mellow these days while I am working with my protégé Sarah Lemoyne trying to get her up the vicious film reviewer food chain I am nevertheless ready for some verbal fisticuffs. I have stayed on the sidelines while Sarah learns the ropes, learns how to take on all-comers including the legendary Sam Lowell on his own turf, his film noir expertise. (In the inevitable need these days for transparency I have to admit that Sam and I have known each other forever, grew up together, which however does not preclude me from being miffed at him for hanging around too long and not letting the younger set go through their paces and so I was, am happy to help sweet young Sarah out and she appreciates me giving her the real deal lowdown.)

Even Sam recently admitted that she had talent despite his salacious remarks that there was “something going on between us,” between Sarah and I which has gotten her in trouble with her companion Clara. For the record, and both Sarah and Clara know this since I spoke about it one night when I took them both on to dinner, if I wanted to have a romance with Sarah I would not be shy about taking dead aim at her (and made Clara laugh that night when I mentioned just as she had done in her turn with Sarah). But I am not doing so for a couple of very good reasons which should end the gossip-I still am shell-shocked by my three unsuccessful marriages with its attendant brood of college worthy kids whom I am still paying off college tuitions on and for crying out loud I am no Johnny Silver with his young Penn State graduate student for I am old enough to be Sarah’s grandfather, have kids older than her. Done.       

To the film which is what I get paid to do. Whatever short-comings I found in Pierce Brosnan’s Bond by comparison with this Lazenby guy he seems like a ruggedly handsome virile, energetic character not afraid to speak more than one sentence at a time. Where the fuck they got this guy and why after Sean left is beyond me. Maybe he reflected the serious decline of the Empire or whatever the configuration, Commonwealth I guess they call the neo-colonial set-up and the inability as in Sean’s time to single-handedly save the Queen’s bacon. Lazenby could only save the queens, you, know the guys that in the old days we called light on their feet, prissy, silly which is a polite way to say not manly enough for the job. The plotline such as it reflects that since if you can believe this Lazenby’s Bond has only one lady-love, fetching Diana Riggs as a countess. No love them and leave them for dear George. Sickening.     

Here’s the play. Bond is still hot as hell in attempting for many reasons to nail this bastard Blofeld who has been nothing but a nemesis for a long time. Looking for leads he runs across the Countess whose father is a king hell king leader of a mob, a well-connected mob. The price for the Blofeld info-from Papa charm daring apple of his eye, or rather spit in his eye daughter. And Jimmy buys in. In any case the leads from Pa get him to Switzerland and Blofeld’s latest front-a research lab for ravenous young women. Real deal-they are the latter day “angels of death” evocative of the old Nazi crowd who are brainwashed into ruining the world’s food supply via various toxics which is really what dear Mr. B, played by hard-ass television star Telly Savalas and his private army of thugs and hangers-on are about. Naturally with a world-wide apparatus of deadly agents B makes his big play-pay or die world. And the world crumbles including sweet boy M (who never got over being roasted alive by Kim Philby and the Cambridge boys) of MI5-Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

But not Jimmy, not the Countess and more importantly not Papa who has his own ax to grind with blowhard B. Together they take down or think they have taken down B and his nefarious plans. Figuring B was toast Jimmy got all swoony over the Countess and they got married and  all lovey-dovey. Except remember this is loner Bond, love them and leave them Bond, and we have to think of the next film and whoever will do the Bond role since George rightfully bowed out -Blofeld didn’t die and came back to machine gun the poor Countess down leaving Jimmy bereft. WTF even Will would have to back off on this one.           

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Casino Royale” (2006)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Casino Royale” (2006)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Casino Royale , starring Daniel Craig, Judith Dench, 2006

[I am not a guy who endlessly speaks about how this and that was better in the old days although surely some stuff was and some stuff today is unquestionably better as well. After yet another firestorm around this freaking two bit 007 Bond, James Bond series which site manager, Greg Green, the guy who figures what films to review and by whom in an effort, a futile effort if you ask me, to reach the younger more action film-oriented crowd I am coming to believe that maybe in the old days when the Hollywood studios sent out the press releases on films they were releasing and you took it from there better. A film reviewer, critic, acrobat or whatever you want to call him or her only had to if he or she was in his or her cups, had snorted too much cocaine or was off on a tryst for a few days just snipped off the top, added a couple of synonyms, added his or her name and sent it along for payment to whatever publication was footing the fool’s bill. (Those the days when we were getting paid by the word and could depend on some 3000 word minimum on a press release especially when the writer when crazy describing the plot. Now I can’t even charge for this foolish in brackets introduction part of the review which maybe longer than the review itself and certainly to me at least more interesting.)

I could, and maybe someday will, tell you some tales about the profession, about big time film critics like Arthur Lemay, Heddy Harnett, and our own Sam Lowell which would make your hair stand on. The beauty of the scam was that the studio, or rather the screenwriter for the film who did double-duty writing up the press release since he or she at least had the story line down even if the film was based on a book and the author had disowned the film as being nothing like he or she had written hand, wasn’t going  to complain when the reviews were uniformly positive and the poor schmuck of a writer couldn’t claim any infringement since that would expose who wrote the damn thing so nobody kicked. Nobody except the audience who actually had to watch the ton of turkeys that had gotten undeserved thumbs up. Such is life.         

Now though in the age of alternate facts, fake news, extraordinary self-serving bullshit and a phalanx of flaks, flak-catchers and screwballs with monomania you have to at least pretend that you give a damn about most films on your own dime, have to actually watch or hire somebody to watch the damn things. And make pithy comment on such or risk the scorn of some, get this, cinematic studies freshman looking to make goodie points with some erstwhile professor who couldn’t make the real film industry cut. Get cut to pieces in some arty cinema journal which nobody reads, not any live audience, except maybe those kids whose parents paid out a ton of dough so their aspiring film critic could cast scorn on guys who have really done it for a living-and survived to tell the tale.

Of course having to actually look at the film and come up with some interesting slant comes with its own set of dangers as I learned when I made a few casual comments in my last 007 review neo-007 Danny Craig’s Skyfall. I mentioned Bond creator Ian Fleming’s affair with Queen Elizabeth back in the old days in the 1950s when her old man, Prince Phillip, yeah, the Duke of Earl, no, Edinburgh up in nowhere Scotland was off with his Protestant whore out in the moors, mentioned the Rolling Stones Mick Jagger’s, now Sir Mick Jagger, 1960s affair with the good queen immortalized in his tribute song Sister Morphine (and speculated that was how he got that vaunted knighthood), and orphan boy, stone-cold killer 007 Danny Craig’s later tryst with her majesty. None of this history, none as the old time actor Sydney Greenstreet was fond of repeatedly saying was schoolboy history nor Mr. Wells’ history but was history nevertheless. And unless you are that schoolboy which excuses you from knowing anything other than the Pablum they feed you in school then some kind of mock shock at the revelations seems extremely naïve. That is all I can take from the firestorm of criticism not from the usual suspects Phil Larkin and Will Bradley who were as surprised as I was that adults were clueless about the inner workings of the royal households of Europe. While it would take about a ten thousand page book to gather in all the infidelities and off-hand trysts of the incestuous and inbred European royalty shock over modern doings seems bizarre to me.

Let me go by the numbers. Look MI6 in the 1950s was not only the plaything of Soviet spy Kim Philby or of the so-called Homintern, the public schoolboys with a fondness for other boys in their youth carried over when they ran the spy organization and clubbed up with the likes of Auden, Spender, Isherwood and the Queen’s art collector Tony Blount but of serious if bureaucratic types like Fleming who were after the main chance. Fleming saw his road to upward mobility going through Windsor Castle so when he found out the Duke was playing footsie somewhere he took his shot. It was all over the papers at the time that the Virgin Queen, part two (that was a good one back in namesake Queen Elizabeth I times when everybody from the ill-fated Earl Of Essex to the stable boy was the subject of her “favors,” wink, wink) was seeing quite a bit of a junior MI5 officer and wondering whether he was giving her the high hat on Soviet intelligence-or what.

Sure the Fleming scandal was hush-hush in the days when you could count on the media to allude to goings-on and not spread every lurid photograph on the front page but the Jagger affair was much more public in the days when Mick, not the Queen, not Her Majesty was conning older women into his expansive bed. I think Charles said something about it (while he was mussing up his own pillows) but Phillip was pleased as punch since with the Queen shooting up with a known junkie he could run around with one of his Catholic whores for solace. I urge you to go back into the archives, especially the younger set not around when the Queen was eating magic mushrooms and such. I will say in her, their defense that I was appalled as anybody else when the rumor that Mick was cavorting with Queen Mother Mary went the rounds. Is there no decency in the world at all anymore.

The Danny Craig incident is a little more problematic since he was an orphan and was trained to be an old school stone-cold killer for God, Country and the Queen. I don’t know whether it was a mother fixation or his own version of that attraction to older women that Mick went through until he got older and started going the other bopping teenagers but Danny begged to be assigned to the Queen livery or whatever they call it in order to protect her from international terrorists, the IRA, Rupert Murdoch, the late Dennis Hopper whom she called her easy rider, or Prince Phillip once he got impotent and took up with some Quaker lass. That is all I can say for now and I hope that you don’t feel cheated by the film review after all the total truth information I have just laid at your doorsteps. Seth Garth]                  

*****

I really do feel these days that Big Brother is watching over me, and not the usual suspects NSA, CIA or FBI. And no I am not paranoid at least not in this instance where I know from whence my suspicions emanated. Big Brother has a name, two names, Phil Larkin and Will Bradley two fellow reviewers on this site who have also waded in on this seemingly never-ending 007 James Bond series which somehow site manager Greg Green thought might help boost readership among the spy thriller aficionados, especially the 24/7/367 action every minute tribe. Meaning of course that is the kids who those of us who knew better have had a big laugh over since the bastards don’t read toney reviews, don’t read at all as far as I can see. Phil and Will have, or had been having a running feud over who best portrayed the spirt of 007 on the screen the former a partisan of Sean Connery and the later Pierce Brosnan. No others need apply. How I got caught up in this madness was that I have been assigned the Daniel Craig 007 segment and off-handedly mentioned that their respective selections seemed to be the two best examples of the spirit of the Bond character if skewed away from Ian Fleming’s hard copy book hardball flame-throwers. That was like meat to the sharks, the great white probably, as both tried to use that benign comment to enlist me as a partisan on their respective sides.

Of course the reality has nothing to do with the merits of any individual Bond, James Bond actor, hell one of them could have taken Roger Moore if it came to that. It has everything to do though with turf, with moving up the food chain, in the profession which is done, no fooling, by blasting the inadequacies of your fellow’s review of some film or some character. I have characterized this as worse than the back-biting in the academy which is going some since those contenders as least have some intellectual position staked out and probably an array of learned papers and conferences at their beck and call. I have also mentioned that back in the old days, Phil would know this although twenty-something Will would not, we used to just grab our copy from whatever the studios put out, what they called press releases, and either worked from that or just put our names on it and sent it in.

Now it is all about “game,” about cutthroat competition anyway and in any place you can. Thus I was drawn into the abyss by these guys. The latest “play” on this game board was a passing remark I made about a recent Craig 007 review where I mentioned that the gratuitous and seemingly non-stop violence was over the top even for action-filled Bond vehicles. That unleashed a thunderclap of comment from both Phil and Will once again pointing out that their respective candidates got by with plenty of guile and charm and didn’t have to resort to over the top bang-bang and chase scenes to get the bad guys at bay.   

Which brings us to this Casino Royale segment of the Bond legend which was actually Daniel Craig’s first run at the role of the bulky muscled super-man spy. The problem for me was that somehow things got screwed up here in the assignment department and I was given the sequel to this episode first Quantum of Solace where they are many references back to the action and particular the Bond love interest, Vesper, who like a great many of the more serious Bond love interests from the very first film Doctor No has a fatal fate in store for her.  

Of course like all post-Cold War products in this series the obvious bad guys are no longer Cold War Russian enemies or their allies but vague but widespread international criminal cartels who don’t care who or what they fund as long as the rate of return makes the grade. This one involves a young neophyte Bond working his way up the 00 chain. MI6 in the person of M, played by Dame Judith Dench, has given Bond the task of connecting the dots between a well-known financier of international terrorist organizations and that murky cartel.

In the end it is all about Bond’s ability to play high stakes poker with the high rollers, with that financier who made a serious mistake with an African mercenary group who let him invest their money in a scheme to short stock on an airline bringing out a new model which he has hired help to destroy and which James saves from destruction just in the nick of time. Hence our financier’s need for serious dough, a hundred million anyway. Bond, with the aid of fetching but as I have mentioned doomed Vesper, played by Eve Green, his “banker” from the British Treasury and later love interest through several travails including being poisoned by the financier’s girlfriend wins “the pot.” Not good, not good at all by that loser financier’s light and so Bond and Vesper are kidnapped to fork up the dough won at the gambling tables. Bond won’t give up the password to the Swiss account even under torture so as we later find out Vesper, now Bond’s lover, bargained with the bad guys for his life in exchange for the money. That did not sit well with Bond as he thought she had sold the whole operation out. According to M Vesper bargained the dough for the bastard ingrate Jimmy’s life. But that was later long after Vesper had died during the big final scene where Jimmy is facing off against the bad guys in Venice. Like I said the Bond character is hell on women, eye candy love them and leave them as earlier in the series and of late when there is some intimacy and sharing of emotions reflecting a difference sensibility these days.

I noticed when looking at the Internet to see how at the time reviewers critiqued this one they were very favorable in their estimations. A good number thought the change to a more original Ian Fleming book-based stone cold killer even if for a good old cause take made the grade. That and the romance for more than two minute copulation end. I have already mentioned that I thought the plot was thin against other efforts and that the violence and mayhem was way over the top. I guess I have to add now this reversion to a more originally Fleming conceived character did not sit well with me after what Sean had built up from day one. Phil and Will make of that what you will.             

                 

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Skyfall” (2012)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Skyfall” (2012)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Skyfall, starring Daniel Craig, Judith Dench, Javier Bardem, 2012

You really have to know how serious the back-biting and jockeying for position is which drives the film review, the film criticism business if you want to get high-blown about the matter, drives film reviewers as a lot, to understand why this reviewer is not regaling you from word one about some aspect of the film under review Skyfall, another in the continuing saga of one 007 James Bond a creature of the mad monk pen of Ian Fleming way back when (in the days when he allegedly was playing footsie with Queen Elizabeth, no not the monarch, not as far as I know although I wouldn’t put it pass the bugger thinking he could get a free ride off of his fake service to her majesty, fake since it was full of holes just ask Kim Philby or his memoirs now that he has gone to the shades,  but the stately queen of England, the drag queen Malcolm Marcy). The latest “civil war” involves two critics who are also working this series longtime critic Phil Larkin and relative newcomer Will Bradley (or have worked on it since both have now finished their respective sections Phil on original 007 Sean Connery’s seven works and Will on Pierce Brosnan’s four). The “controversy” -which of the two Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan is the real Bond, James Bond by temperament and style (they have eliminated the other four who have played the role out of hand as a bunch of sissy boys and drunken sots who couldn’t shoot straight if they tried except getting a lot of civilians killed in the cross-fire which makes the legendary Sherlock Holmes seem a sniper by comparison).        

How does this humble non-partisan reviewer get embroiled in this thicket? Aside from doing the Daniel Craig version of 007 part of the series I made the momentous mortal error of stating in public that I thought picking either of those two candidates seemed to be the best representatives of the character. That started a firestorm on both parts that my non-committal statement meant I “really” sided with one or the other. Hence the donnybrook. The real reason though for their fire and brimstone, and here they take a page from the academy’s handbook for stirring up a hornet’s nest over trifles, was, is to take me down a peg for being “wishy-washy,” for not coming up with some pearls of wisdom to fortify my position. In short to run the sword through my work as so much vanilla, so much getting paid by the word flutter a dirty remark in the industry these days. All to enhance their  slight little junkie and boozehound insights into whatever it is they are arguing about. Jesus.

Laura Perkins, also a film reviewer here, may have put her finger on exactly what is going on of late in the industry among “the boys” as she called us. She was assigned to review a film Dangerous by Bette Davis from 1935. She had watched the film one night with her companion Sam Lowell another long-time film critic who since retirement had become an occasional contributor when he out of the blue belted out that he hated Bette Davis, hated that she always played the untamed shrew, the schoolgirl with the heart of stone, the vampish destroyer of everything around her. This outburst after Sam had almost always given Ms. Davis high marks in his previous work. (Laura had combed the archives to confront him with this truth.) She speculated that the usually placid, even-handed Sam had been bitten by the 007 bug and felt he had to assert himself in some outlandish way to keep his place in the pecking order. Maybe so.           

Certainly Phil and Will still have the bug. In my last review I mentioned that since I couldn’t win against one or the other or both in the one-ups-man-ship contest that I would just tell what I wanted to tell and be done with. Whatever drugs or other dangerous substances they are into they couldn’t let me just go at that. Phil clamored that I had nothing to say about any film which he declared had been true for a long time and Will, younger and maybe not quite as jaded, felt that my not saying anything out of the ordinary meant that I at least realized that Sean Connery was not all he was cracked up to be. By inference Pierce was. So be it although I am sorely tempted to really go after that pair with my razor wit and let them hope they get work out in Utah someplace with the Mormons like Allan Jackson tried to do. And he got nothing but a big laugh from those guys, those guys with the white underwear for crying out loud.   

Back to the film reviewing business. I mentioned in passing

in my last Daniel Craig-etched Bond film Quantum of Solace that it was heavy on action, almost nonstop, and light on plot except for the inevitable beating down of whatever bad guys he was after for M, for MI6, for England and the Queen whatever. (Once again it is not clear whether 007, this 007 was having an affair with Queen Elizabeth, the real queen not the drag queen previously mentioned who strangely enough performed in a statelier manner than Liz ever could. Don’t make light of this charge since it is well known that even a heavy duty rock star like Mick Jagger had entered her chambers in the old days when he was into older women. How do you think he got that freaking knighthood if not for dedicating Sister Morphine to her from their junkie days so don’t think a slick guy like 007 couldn’t take the tumble either on his way up the MI6 bureaucracy).

This Skyfall (named for the estate in Scotland where Bond grew up before his parents were killed and he was left an orphan and to the winds) has much more of a plot aside from the usual ration of mind-numbing action which would put the average human in the hospital for maybe a year-or more. This one gets more personal since it involves the fate of M’s career (played by Dame Judith Dench in this Craig series so far). Involves her maybe needing some retirement time since on her watch an important list of agents who have infiltrated terrorist organizations internationally has been compromised.

By whom? By a former hotshot 00 agent Raoul Silva, played by Javier Bardem last seen here playing a consummate bureaucrat either for the Inquisition in Spain or for the French when they occupied Spain in the wake of the French Revolution in the 1790s in Goya’s Ghosts, who she had to make a split decision to send over to the enemy for the greater good of saving a slew of others. Tough decision and one which Brother Silva holds a very big grudge over since they worked him over something fierce and that was on the good days. So much so that he has made it his main goal in life to do her harm, slowly, in her profession and in the end physically as well since she winds up dying in Bond’s arms after the usual all hell breaking loose final confrontation. Needless to say after a long period of mayhem and destruction including that final blast from hell that rogue agent goes down, goes down hard. Thems the facts Jack.         

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Quantum Of Solace”(2008)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Quantum Of Solace”(2008)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Quantum of Solace, starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, based on a character created by mad monk Ian Fleming, 2008

It probably does no good to moan and groan but here goes anyway since it is on my dime and moreover there is no need for a long summary of this 2008 007 film Quantum of Solace because the overall pattern was established long ago in the very first cinematic run through with ruggedly handsome Sean Connery’s initially offering in Doctor No with non-stop individual heroic action, a fistful of eye candy and every imaginable high tech and low way to off the bad guys-for a while. In a recent review of another Daniel Craig as Bond, James Bond vehicle Spectre from 2015 I casually mentioned that this film criticism profession was worse that the academy in terms of back-biting and one-ups-man-ship. That elicited a firestorm of criticism not from the academy who as least had the sense to duck their heads when the truth is thrown at them. Either that or they are collectively too busy looking for the main chance to one up in their own fellow competitors to not bother about a marginally intellectual pursuit.

No, I have now taken a second ration of grief from my fellow film critics Phil Larkin and young Will Bradley who have taken umbrage that I have sullied the reputation of the profession by publically lambasting their petty little squabble over who is the better personification of James Bond Sean Connery Phil’s contender and Pierce Brosnan Will’s entry. Compared to this the little academic disputes over, for example, who Shakespeare who writing those flowery sonnets for back in the day which has caused so much ink and blood to be spilled in academic circles seems world-historic by comparison.  

For those who did not get a chance to see my little review I was taking Will and Phil to task for making a mountain out of a molehill when I casually had mentioned in a previous review of earlier 007 Timmy Dalton’s The Living Daylights that while I would like Pontius Pilot wash my hands in the dispute, would abstain from any partisanship that Sean and Pierce did seem the only real contenders. That was all either party needed to believe against all reason that I was a partisan of one or the other when I characterized Sean as ruggedly handsome and Pierce as a pretty boy. They went on and on for pages running the rack on my “real position” worthy of any even half-baked academic. All they needed to do was to set up a conference complete with panels and learned papers and they would truly emulate the academics.

That was not the worst of it though. In that Spectre review I made the fatal mistake, although I didn’t know it at the time, of mentioning that I would not say anything about Daniel Craig’s take on the 007 character for fear of setting off another firestorm. Silly me. That only inflamed each party more in their respective championships. Phil took the “no notice” to mean that Craig had the rugged no non-sense “take no prisoners” dash that Sean brought to the character. Will, in his turn, touted my non-characterization as proof positive that the guile and charm that Pierce brought to the role was bestowed on Craig. At this point I will just say what I have to say and be done with since any way I look at it both men are looking at me merely as a foil for whatever each holy goof is after. To tarnish my reputation by indirection and inference. Just like the guys and gals in the academy do with their brethren.         

As I mentioned we can run through the storyline without much ado. As usual in the post-Soviet demise world where it is hard to give a name to a symbol of hard-boiled badness once the international red menace stopped being a bogeyman what Craig’s 007 is up against is an unnamed international cartel that has it fingers in everything, in every important spy organization including MI6. To find out what is what M, the MI6 chief, dispatches Jimmy to see what he can do to uncover the myriad destructive deals these bad boys are up to. Since control of the world’s basic resources oil, water, rare metals and minerals is always up for grabs that is where the threads lead him. This time it is about a criminal enterprise front organization posing as an environment saving entity run by bad guy Dominic Green which is buying up land rights and by extension whatever is found there from lots of places. This one revolves around a deal to overthrow the Bolivian government and replace it with a handpicked bastard General as dictator. In return they get a vast swath of desert and control of water rights. Nice.    

Needless to say this is easy picking for James to roll up. Despite the combined efforts of the corrupt Bolivian national police and Green’s own security apparatus James wastes the whole operation-puts it down easily. (It continues to amaze that one man, one pretty faced, ruggedly handsome man is able to survive full fire fields of the opponent’s fury. These mercenaries aren’t like they used to be-seem to be something out of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight apparently.) James does have a little help downing that general since Camille, played by fetching Olga Kurylenko, a Bolivian intelligence agent not on the take, has a personal vendetta against him for the rape and murder of her mother and sister when she was a little girl. Overall easy pickings like I say although this one seems to have outdone itself with poor fragile Craig busting up everything in sight for more periods that usual in a Bond flick. Make of this what you will Phil and Will.           

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Spectre” (2015)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Spectre” (2015)-A Film Review

By Seth Garth

Spectre, starring Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, 2015    

Sometimes you just can’t win, just can make a simple statement without starting a civil war, a verbal civil war any way. Even in a seemingly placid profession like film criticism, hell, maybe this profession is worse than the academy when it comes to “turf wars.” The average reader is probably not aware of the cutthroat nature of the business, the dog eat dog aspect as each film critic tries to outdo the other either with superlatives or catcalls. It was better in the old days believe me when everybody just took whatever copy, press releases they called them, what a joke, the studios sent out and you just rewrote the thing with maybe a few asides. Jesus you didn’t even have to watch the damn things which from reading the press releases half the time you didn’t want to do anyway.

Then Pauline Kael, no, well her and her highbrow pieces and the notion in the film schools that film criticism, cinematic studies is the usual ploy, was the way to fill classrooms for those who were clueless about what to do in the industry but were hungry to learn something about film. You wouldn’t want any one of these kids to get within fifty miles of a camera much less a movie studio but a few witty comments wouldn’t hurt anything since nobody read that stuff anyway-film attendance was all word of mouth among neighbors. Then somehow people started taking them seriously since they were from the academy just like they started taking weathermen seriously once they had Doctor or something behind their name.    

Sorry for going off but I had to get that off my chest because frankly I didn’t really want to review this film, this can you believe it 24^th Jimmy Bond film starring Danny Craig in the 007 role in Spectre. This is where two bad situations occurred, converged, a couple of fellow film critics and a drummed up from fluff “controversy” over who is the real Bond, James Bond. Like my old friend and mentor Sam Lowell, who has probably written about a billion film reviews, said every time something came up from nowhere and hit him in the face-WTF. This one started out innocently enough when I reviewed Timmy Dalton’s The Living Daylights a film I did want to review and mentioned in passing the “controversy” between older film critic Phil Larkin and younger critic Will Bradley.

The controversy was over whether the original 007 ruggedly handsome Sean Connery or pretty boy Pierce Brosnan represented the real James. They have scourged each other in several reviews going back and forth like two wombats some of the stuff thrown pretty funny. My mistake? I happened in one doomed sentence to mention that while I took no sides in the “controversy” between them that those two contestants were the only real contenders.

That simple unembellished declarative sentence set off a fire-storm if you can believe that. Phil used that first part about Sean Connery being ruggedly handsome to mean that he had been entirely correct when championing Sean as the epitome of 1950s and 1960s manhood when eye candy was for loving and leaving after a little bout in the silky sheets (implied then not shown), when brute force was as likely to defeat the bad guys as some techno-gadget dreamed by Q’s crew and when craft and guile were at a premium. Will took the later part of the sentence about the “pretty boy” to mean that Pierce used his charm and good clean looks to do in the bad guys and that part of that was to take full advantage of the techno-world possibilities afforded by Q’s brain works to foil the bad guys. Worse of all both parties, seeking their respective real goals to tarnish my reputation and tout their own, taunted me for being wishy-washy when I took a hands-off approach to their silly dispute. Yeah, WTF. In any case I had to take this foolish assignment just to have a place where I could expose these holy goofs for what they are-holy goofs.                   

So to the film. I won’t even dream of trying to place Danny Craig in whatever position he deserves in the Bond-ian pantheon and just give a summary. Although except for the names of the bad guys and who plays the eye candy all of which could have been photocopied from a film review of the first cinematic Bond film Doctor No. (I will say that the role of eye candy had gotten better with time giving the young women a more professional role as here with Lea Seydoux as a psychiatrist and more decisive part in doing in the bad guys). This time Spectre is back in the total coverage intelligence racket with a front guy who is a high ranking member of MI6  called “C” by Bond looking for the main chance to use the new technology to gain power and profit. The go round this time involves the leader of Spectre Blofeld, played by Christoph Waltz who turned out to have been the kid whose father raised Bond after he had been orphaned. So a scorched earth quasi-sibling rivalry. 

Going through a million escapades Jimmy and that talented shrink fold the bad guys’ plans without much difficulty even though their fire-power was vastly greater than Jimmy’s. Nice cars, nice gal, nice finish where Jimmy walks away rather than waste the bad guy Blofeld although “C” got blasted to kingdom come when Jimmy decided to blow the joint up. Ho-hum this one is for the holy goofs in the film critic business to dissect.           

In The Glory Days Of The Cold War Night-Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up –Timothy Dalton’s “The Living Daylights” (1987)-A Film Review

In The Glory Days Of The Cold War Night-Will The Real Bond, James Bond Stand Up –Timothy Dalton’s “The Living Daylights” (1987)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton, Maryam d’Abo, 1987

No question guys like John LeCarre, Tom Clancy and the creator of the Bond, James Bond series Ian Fleming although not all the storylines in the long-running series have had tough sailing since the demise of the arch-villain Soviet Union back in 1991-92. Sure there has been plenty of international dramatic tension possibility since, the “war on terror,” the drug trade, cyber-theft but nothing like those glory days when the smooth as silk and just as deadly good guys wore white hats if only metaphorically and the ham-fisted, can’t shoot straight bad guys wore black, no. red and you had something like the world on the edge with every action-and reaction.

Just look at the difference let us say with a non-descript plot against some holy goof outfit (which also cannot shoot straight) in a post-Soviet demise Bond flick like 2015s Spectre and the action in the film under review, The Living Daylight with late Soviet era-Afghan War as a backdrop. You knew who to root for, or thought you did when the action turned to the Afghan situation later in the story. (That “thought you did” courtesy of the hard fact that those “allies” the mujahedeen turned out to be some nasty Taliban guys when the dust settled later in the beginning of the 21^st century).                  

Of course the attentive reader is wondering not so much about plotline as the burning question of the day-who is the real James Bond. Much cyber-ink has been spilled in this space between the lovely Phil Larkin and the pretty boy youngster William Bradley as they have gone into hand to hand combat over whether their respective choices ruggedly handsome Sean Connery for the former and pretty boy Pierce Brosnan for the latter. Here we have another entrant Timothy Dalton who I would while I don’t want to get in an ambush by either partisan does not measure up to their respective choices. Doesn’t portray the rugged individualism of Connery or the charm the pants off you of Brosnan.

But to the story as Sam Lowell always liked us to get to before the reader wondered why he or she spent their precious time reading a film review like this. This is straight up KGB (even those initials today sent shivers up and down the spine thinking about Siberian exiles or being shot in Lybinaka dungeons) versus M-led MI6 and James Bond agent stuff. Seems the bad ass KGB’s new leader is reviving the old policy of death to spies when caught. Meaning some MI6 agents have been wasted forthwith. his though is just a ruse for a corrupt Soviet general “on the take” to whoever will pay the graft in money, dope or armaments to work his plan to make huge profits off the Afghan opium trade and buy arms to supply whoever has the dough and need for such arms.

This Soviet general is really kind of clever, for a while, as he fakes a defection to the West to put the whammy on the new KGB leader who is actually a reformer of sorts maligned by that renegade general. Has the help of his angel-faced girlfriend Kara, played by Maryam d’ Abo (nice name) who also plays a mean classical cello. This is the ruse Timmy, oops, James must breakup at whatever costs. First he has to realize, which he does in short order, that this general’s flight is bogus. Second he has to gain the confidence of Kara to set the trap to grab this bad ass general who is ready to do business with a don’t give a damn American arms dealer who will sell anything from firecrackers to nuclear weapons to whoever has the dough.

Naturally in these thrillers we see the latest in what Q-MI6s master technie has put together, see whatever three hundred actions per minute put Bond (and Kara) in harm’s way across Vienna, the Alps, Tangiers, Afghanistan and who knows where else before that bad ass general and that amoral arms dealer bite the dust. Naturally as well there has to be the little dance between Bond and Kara before they go under the sheets that everybody knows from the minute she shows up on screen is going to happen. Well at least unlike in the past where the women who fall all over whatever Bond is in play are strictly eye candy Kara can play that mean cello too.             

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up –Part VI-Timothy Dalton’s “License To Kill” (1989)-A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up –Part VI-Timothy Dalton’s “License To Kill” (1989)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Alden Riley and Sandy Salmon

License to Kill, Timothy Dalton, Cary Lowell, 1989

The knowledgeable reader is probably wondering what the hell is going on when two film reviewers who are allegedly fighting a “mock heroic” battle over the merits their chosen “real” James Bonds, Sean Connery for Sandy Salmon and Pierce Brosnan for Alden Riley are jointly contributing to a review of yet a third Bond, James Bond player Timothy Dalton in License To Kill. But perhaps that knowledgeable reader missed something a while back when this “fight to the death” started after Sandy had given Sean Connery top billing as the “real” James Bond and Alden had asked the new site manager Greg Green to give him space to tout Pierce Brosnan. Both reviewers agreed that those two were the only real candidates for number one and so they agreed, half-heartedly agreed since they are in another dispute over what is happening to the site currently now that any talk about the internal struggle that roiled the blog last year and mention of the previous leadership is verboten, to collectively trash Timothy Dalton’s pathetic excuse of a Bond player.

Alden had put that Brosnan request in the form of “blackmail” of a new kind when he threatened a “vote of confidence” showdown among the writers when Greg first balked at the request. That vote of no confidence doing in the previous unmentionable leadership. Greg the beneficiary of Alden’s leadership of the purge of the previous site manager in order to gain his job took the hint immediately and granted Alden’s wish. Initially Greg’s idea in resurrecting the seemingly never-ending Bond series for review at this site was the great success that such reviews had among the younger readers over at his previous job as site manager at American Film Gazette when the films came out. He thought such efforts might help stem the declining youth readership here as well. (That was the basis for the ill-fated although not completely abandoned run of comic book-derived super-heroes as well.) Greg had only expected to have Sandy, formerly the Senior Film Critic under the old regime, do a quick run through of the Connery films to see what would happen. Alden, formerly the Associate Film Critic under that same old regime then threw his complaint in the mix and the “battle” was joined.

That “battle” a little heated at times, at around the “water cooler” times, not necessarily reflected in the reviews themselves got a boost when Alden started to complain out loud about his “demotion” along with everybody else to just writer status and about the new rule that the old site manager should essentially become a non-person after that internal struggle purge. Sandy, who had actually supported the old regime manager tried to cool Alden down. Greg stepped in with the Dalton suggestion as a means to lower the temperature. We shall see.             

********

No question that the long running seemingly never-ending series of Bond films are run by a very defined formula from the opening camera eye agent shooting at us scene through the inevitable song reflecting the film title through the obligatory “Bond, James Bond” tip of the hat and through the equally obligatory Cold War-tinged thrilling action a minute involving improbable feats and almost equally implausible high tech gadgetry. And of course the inevitable string of foxy women ready to get down under the silky sheets with a Bond merely at the sight of him. Although there has been a welcome trend, reflecting the reality of the women’s movement in the Western world at least, away from that passive foxy female role and a more active role, for good or evil, along with that downy billows stuff (“downy billows” courtesy of the writer Tom Wolfe). So the real comparison is between the attributes and demerits of the stable of Bond players. As demonstrated in this his last film as Bond young Timothy Dalton did not make the cut.    

Here’s why. The bad guys in this one are south of the border, meaning Hispanic, Latino drug dealers (the Cold War tip being their working at least in transit via Cuba). Meaning they are serious bad asses lead by psychotic sadist Sanchez in the world of high end drug trade. A thorn in the side of DEA and maybe the CIA if not exactly MI6 material which is to knock out high tech blow up the world stuff by some evil forces and save the West or at least Britain. Way out of mission statement sluggard seriously understated and poker-faced Timothy Dalton’s starts off his cinematic journey on the way to a wedding where he is to be best man or something. WTF neither Connery or Brosnan would be caught dead within a hundred miles of a wedding chapel except maybe to exercise some lordly feudal right of first night with the bride, blushing or not.

Not so Timmy boy. See he is buddy-buddy with the local CIA chief and his lovely bride. Shortly after the wedding those bad ass drug traffickers throw the agent through the grinder, the shark tank grinder to show how sadistic that crowd is and kill his bride for kicks. So Timmy is on a mission not for Queen and country but personal revenge. How the mighty have fallen. So despite being warned off by M, and later loaded up with gizmos by Q also Bond series standard stuff Timmy is off to kill bad guys- no prisoners here, after all he has a license to kill in case you have not been paying attention to all this secret agent stuff of late.

He starts working his way up the food chain and along the way while trying to see how the cartel operates he comes across the head bad guy Sanchez’s mistress who is on a boat used to transfer drugs for cash. Naturally a drop dead beauty, a hot-blooded Spanish beauty whom he does not go under the sheets with right there and then. Connery or Brosnan would have had her for lunch and had time for a nap afterward. Maybe Timmy, is as they used to say in Sandy’s old neighborhood before everybody got okay with having gay guys out of the closet, ‘light on his feet” or something. They crossed paths a couple of times and no go. Something is definitely wrong here.        

As Timmy gets to the top of the food chain, gets to the country (fake named but based on real drug route Panama in the old days maybe now too) where the bad hombres are headquartered he runs into a dish, a good looking young woman, Pam, played by Cary Lowell, who also has abilities like being able to fly a plane (and later drive a heavy duty truck). They hit the sheets quickly after a little repartee so that question about Timmy sexual preferences gets answered seemingly he is just a shy boy or something. Working together they start moving in on the bad guys, start taking names and numbers and not asking questions until the big finale when after blowing up the bad guys’ cocaine laboratory among other things the bad guys head on the road to deliver their goods via oil trucks (through the marvels of modern chemistry cocaine could be dissolved in oil for easy and safe delivery-nice ploy). The final confrontation shows a lot of trucks being blown up and the bulk of the bad guys including the head bad guy Sanchez burned-literally.

Work finished, revenge taken, Timmy and Pam go to a party where the head bad guy’s now ex-girlfriend although not dressed in mourning black courtesy of Timmy makes a play for him leaving Pam blue, very blue. Except Timmy, and this will tell the tale as well as any about why this James Bond is not up to snuff, rebuts the senorita and goes to that very blue Pam. Yeah, true blue Timmy that kind of says it all about this fake news Bond, James Bond. Fortunately Pierce will follow Timmy in the role and all will be back to jump street again.           

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part V-Pierce Brosnan’s “Die Another Day” (2002)-A Film Review

Will The Real James Bond Stand Up Part V-Pierce Brosnan’s “Die Another Day” (2002)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By former Associate Film Critic Alden Riley

Die Another Day, starring Pierce Brosnan, Halle Berry 2002      

I have been warned off, warned off complaining about the loss of my hard-fought for title of Associate Film Critic which was leading me with Sandy Salmon’s retirement to being the Senior Film Critic pretty soon. As anybody who has been paying attention to this space now knows there has been a just completed internal power struggle and the creation of a new regime under the leadership of site manager Greg Green. Greg, although fobbing off the decision officially on his rubber-stamp Editorial Board, has abolished titles under some obscure democratic theory that every writer, young or old, male or female, gay or straight, white or not, should just write under their God-given names (his term) and that alone.

That is one thing I have been warned off of talking about in this by-line. The other the current campaign to obliterate the name and the work of the former site manager Allan Jackson in the name of “leaving the past behind,” “moving on” or whatever the day’s excuse for creating non-persons is like this was the old-time Soviet Union and Allan, yes, Allan Jackson, was like his buddy, like some latter day Leon Trotsky knocked off his pedestal by an avenging angel Stalin (and his minions). I said in my last review, my review of beautiful James Bond worthy Pierce Brosnan’s The World Is Not Enough that while the amnesty Sam Lowell negotiated for pieces in the pipeline prior to the agreement lasted I would use this space as a bully pulpit to cry shame on those who want to liquidate the memory of Allan Jackson. (I have also mentioned that due to some crazy things Allan did to me, made me do, last year out of hubris there was no love lost when he went into exile rumored to be out in Utah somewhere after the purge so this is bigger than a personal issue, a lot bigger.)          

Here’s the funny part, not laughter funny either I was not warmed off by Greg Green. Greg wouldn’t do that he would have one of his lackeys on the Ed Board like Lenny Lynch or “Timid” Timmy Walton give the axe. No I was warned off by Sandy Salmon, warned off by none other than my old “boss” and fellow combative in this so-called titanic struggle between my sweet baby James Pierce Brosnan and his hoary old goat ready for assisted living quarters Sean Connery Bond, the guy who started the whole twenty-plus episodes back in 1949 or some time like that. Sandy, an old defender of Allan Jackson in the internal fight, apparently has gotten weepy Sean Connery-like now that Greg and the toadies have pulled the hammer down. Have implied you are either with us or against us and if you are against us then you will have fun reviewing re-runs of I Love Lucy or worse reviewing super-hero comic book figures made into films. Whatever, I will not bow until I am sure that the amnesty is over and I have to toe the line, or else. And maybe I will take the “or else” road.    

I will never forget that Sandy had taken my side on one of the immediate causes of the internal fight last year when Allan had gone over his head and ordered me to write a stinking review about a has-been blues singer, a girl from Texas, Janis Joplin, whom I had never heard of but who was supposed to be some mover and shaker in the 1960s when a lot of the older writers for this blog got their starts in life-and never forgot it or let us forget it. But this warning off business is way beyond his grade level-now. I won’t say more but it is rather indicative that Sandy’s bowing down to the powers that be now kind of puts paid to his devotion to the old tiger Sean as Bond, James Bond.

In any case I have review to do and I might as well get to it. Although both Sandy and I should be heartily fed-up with this by now pabulum Bond series since with the exception of a few name and bad guy organization changes, a few less dumb but beautiful young women who last read a book in about 1980 and more agent-like women, a sea-change number of high tech gizmos and a revolving door of male stars to carry the water in the role they are all the fucking same. The same no matter how much dough, moola, kale, they make for their production companies.     

Take this 2002, damn I almost forgot the name, Die Another Day, too bad they couldn’t fork up some script-writer dough for some real title better than grade school choices. That 2002 should ring a bell since that is post-9/11 axis of evil time with one of those axes being North Korea this time rather than the old tired out Soviet Union-China-SPECTRE bashing. Here a rogue Harvard-educated, that tells a lot, North Korean colonel named Moon with influence in high places is running a scam operation to deal with conflict diamonds in order to amass a ton of dough to act the rich spoiled boy wonder of the world. He is aided by his comrade the nefarious Zao. This pair is on Mister Bond’s hit list since they have had him captured, imprisoned and tortured to perdition for fourteen months. The big story here though is that Jimmy has been betrayed by somebody in MI6, been done in by one his own. He righteously seeks revenge and maybe stop the conflict diamond trade and save the known world in the bargain.

When that Colonel Moon and Zao disappear (you can see the film if you want to know how and why) after a losing fight with Jimbo they reappear in Cuba (always need to the get the commie, even if tame commie angle in these never forget the Cold War that spawned you sagas) with genetically altered faces, more Western less Asia faces, to start their activities to destroy Western Civilization as we know it. Of course these post-World War II days dinky shrunken British Empire secret agents don’t have that game to themselves. The NSA have their agent, beautiful, smart, resourceful and bed-worthy under the silky sheets Jinx, played by foxy Halle Berry on the case. (You don’t even have to ask whether James and Jinx hit the sheets nor do you have to ask whether his female adversary, he MI6 agent who betrayed him, who is helping the Colonel and Zao is to be found in his bed since our James is an equal opportunity bed-mate.)

The long and short of it is the Colonel and Zao (and their female playmate) all go down in the mud after a million fights, scrapes, collisions and those best laid plans of mice and men of Colonel Moon and his cadre go asunder. As James and Jinx go under. Here’s Pierce’s beauty. Who wouldn’t go crazy to have a secret agent who can surf, fly an airplane, or any flying object, a hovercraft, ski, leap tall buildings at a single bound, drive every kind of exotic car, hold his breathe forever under water, drink hard liquor, hit the sheets with smart and/or evil women and never put in an expense account. All for her majesty. Sean would go dizzy just thinking about that, except maybe to hit on that eye candy who hasn’t read a book since 1949.