The Struggle In Ireland In Song-The Harp Beneath The Crown- With The Chieftains In Mind

The Struggle In Ireland In Song-The Harp Beneath The Crown- With The Chieftains In Mind

By Sam Eaton

“I’m as Irish as the next goddam bogger,” shouted Jack Callahan, “I just don’t like to wear it on my sleeve. I don’t have to break out in song every time I think about what my maternal grandfather, Daniel Patrick Riley and that should be Irish enough for you, called the “old sod.” For him it was the old sod since his own grandparents had come over on the “famine” ships in the 1840s after the bloody Brits had starved them out of County Kerry with their wicked enclosure policies so they could have grazing land for their sheep or something and they, the Brits hoarding enough food for a full larder for everyone and the starved broken bodied piling up on the roads after eating tree bark or something you wouldn’t feed a pig. At least that was the way my grandfather told me his grandfather told him.” 

Jack’s whole uproar over his heritage, over his bloody green flag, harp beneath the crown heritage had been brought about innocently enough as he and Bradley Fox, a friend whom he had known since his school days at Riverdale High, sat in The Plough and Stars bar on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge when Bradley had mentioned that the Chieftains would again be doing their yearly series of shows around Saint Patrick’s at the Wang Center in downtown Boston and had assumed that Jack would once again jump at the chance to show his green side.

And that outburst was the way that Jack had answered him with some put-upon air of righteous indignation that he had to prove himself and his Irish-ness. Prove it he added to a half-breed like Bradley whose own father was descended from the bloody Brits, had only with fire and determination on his mother’s part had he been brought up in the true church rather than some heathen Protestant chapel with those god-awful hail high Jehovah psalms beseeching an unjust god to forgive them their bloody heathen sins, and who had only been saved by his mother’s full-blooded Irish lineage (his mother’s great-great grandfather having come over on the famine ships with Jack’s maternal great-great-great grandfather if that was the right number of “greats”)from being totally ostracized in the whole neighborhood by the old “shawlies” who commented on every little deviation. So no this year he would not be going to the annual concert, maybe would not even go to the Saint Patrick’s Parade over in South Boston which he had been going to since he was a kid although less frequently over the previous few years as he had lost patience with the drunks, the rowdies and the one-day-a-year Irish. The Polish Irish they would call them when they were kids, the Poles being the other big ethnic group in the town, the ones who worked on the watch factories that had dotted the river in those days. They would come into school on Saint Pat’s Day all in green calling themselves MacWalecki or something. That was the way the two old friends left it that night, left like they did many a blow-up argument with a semi-smile since half the time after a certain hour or a certain number of whiskeys they would collapse in on their arguments. This one had that same fate.            

[What Bradley did not know that night, did not know for several more weeks, was that Chrissie (nee McNamara) Callahan, Jack’s wife of many more years than any of them wanted to count and who had been the classic high school sweethearts was giving signals that she wanted to leave Jack now that the kids were grown and they were “empty-nesters.” Wanted to in her words “find herself” before it was too late and that she had felt like a stranger in Jack’s presence. That fate weighted heavily on Jack since Chrissie had been his rock through those many years and he was not sure what he would do if she left him high and dry like that. Tried to argue her out of her thoughts always going back to the usually tried and true argument about how they had first gotten together and that night had pledged their eternal love. Bradley had known that story since he had been at Molly’s Diner the night it happened. Jack had had a crush on Chrissie since sixth grade when she had invited him to her twelfth birthday party and as such things went at “petting parties” she had given him a big kiss that he never really forgot about. But being shy and self-conscious he never pursued the matter. Time passed and as they entered high school it turned out that Jack was a hell of a football player who led his team to the state division championship senior year.

So Jack could have had any girl he wanted from sophomore year on. But he still retained his Chrissie thing and his shyness. Chrissie had been harboring some such feelings as well although as more outgoing and a beautiful girl she did not lack for dates and the evil intentions of guys. One Friday night in the later fall of sophomore year though she had had enough and knowing that Jack and the boys would be at Molly’s playing the latest rock hits on Molly’s jukebox while having their burgers and fries she went into Molly’s front door, drew a bee-line to Jack, and to Jack’s lap. The way Bradley always described it later was that Chrissie had had such a look of determination on her face that it would have taken the whole football team to get her off that lap. A look a Jack said that it would take the whole football team and the junior varsity too to get her off his lap. So that night their eternal love thing started. Jack had told Bradley in confidence that he could have had anything Chrissie had to offer that night when they left Molly’s for Jack to take her home. That would come later, the next spring when on Saint Patrick’s’ Day night after the parade was over and after they had both consumed too many illegal beers they went over to nearby Carson Beach and Chrissie had given Jack all she had to offer. So those mist of memories had been were driving Jack dyspeptic response to Bradley’s question.]              

Later that night after Jack got back to Hingham where he had his business, his Toyota car dealership (he was perennially Mr. Toyota in Eastern Massachusetts), and his too big house, Chrissie asleep upstairs (in one of the kids’ bedrooms, so that was the way things were just then) turned the light on and went into his den. Sat down on his easy chair and turned the light off. He had just wanted to think in the gentle dark about how he was going keep Chrissie with him but he found that he started to drift back to the days in Riverdale when he was a kid and being Irish meant a lot to him, felt he had to uphold the Easter, 1916 brotherhood, had to buck the trend that his parents and their generation had bought into-becoming vanilla Americans. Losing the old country identities that men like his grandfather held too with granite determination in the flow of too many other trends driving them away from what they had been, where they had come from in this great big immigrant-driven country.           

All the funny little rites of passage. First of all listening to his grandfather’s stories about the heroic men of 1916 (women too but they slipped through cracks in his telling the womenfolk being held in the background in that generation), above all James Connelly who had place of pride on his grandfather’s piazza wall. Then the times once his grandfather was in his cups a bit the singing of all the old songs, some he had never heard of then but which later he would find were ancient songs going back to Cromwell’s bloody hellish times. Later when he and his friends, usually not Bradley since his father was adamant that he not attend some frivolous doings, would sneak out of school, walk to the bus which would take them to the Redline subway station and over to South Boston and the Saint Pat’s Parade. See that day, March 17^th was a holiday in Boston and Suffolk County, not Saint Pat’s Day but Evacuation Day, the day the colonial patriots drove the bloody Brits out of Boston during the American Revolution. But Riverdale in Middlesex County did not get a holiday hence the sneaking out of school.

Of course of all the Saint Pat’s Days the night he took all Chrissie had to offer stood well above all others. He thought about how Chrissie, all prim and proper on the outside, at first refused to skip school until he made a fuse over it that he wouldn’t have any fun without her. That got to her, and so they went with Jimmy Jenkins, Frankie Riley and a couple of other girls whose names he could not remember over to South Boston. They ran into one of Jack’s older cousins who gave them some beers. At first Chrissie balked at drinking the stuff but Jack said just take a sip and if she didn’t like it that was that. Well she liked it well enough that day (which was probably the last time she had beer since thereafter it was respectfully Southern Comfort, mixed gin drinks, and later various types of wine). They drank most of the afternoon, had somehow lost the rest of the crowd from Riverdale and Jack saw his big play. He asked Chrissie if she wanted to go to the beach to sit on the seawall and watch the ocean before going home. She didn’t resist that idea.  So they went to Carson Beach as it was starting to get dark, went to a secluded area near the L Street Bathhouse, and started to “make out.” Jack began to fondle her breasts and she didn’t push him away, didn’t push him away as he put his hand between her thighs either, actually held his hands there. And so they as they saying went after a Howlin’ Wolf song they had heard on Molly’s jukebox did the “do the do” for first time. He blushed as he thought about that first time and how they, foolish high school kids, didn’t have any “protection,” didn’t even think about such an idea. Later they got wise but then they were as naïve about sex and what to do, or not do, about it as any two Irish kids could be.

Jack as he sat there in dark then thought enough of this or he might head up those stairs, kids’ room or not. But above all that night he thought about his sainted grandmother, Anna, by his account, by all accounts, a saint if for no other reason than she had put up with his grandfather and his awful habits but also because she was the sweetest woman in the whole neighborhood and was not, it bears repeating, not afraid of the “shawlies” and their vicious grapevine (which had even caught wind of his and Chrissie’s trysts although they denied the whole thing every time somebody mentioned it-they were after all as good  virginal Catholics as anybody else in the neighborhood so there). He then remembered how when he was young she would sing the songs from the old country while she was doing the washing (the old-fashioned way with scrub board and wringer, clothesline-dried), Brendan on the Moor, Kevin Barry, The Rising of the Moon, and many others. He would always request The Coast of Malabar, ask her to sing it twice when she was in the mood. Such a song of being away from home. He always loved it when the Chieftains played the song as a part of their show.          

Jack had that song on his mind the next morning when after Chrissie had come down for her morning coffee he asked her, half expecting to be turned down, if she wanted to go to the Chieftains concert in March. She brightened and said “yes, yes of course.” Later that day he sheepishly called Bradley and told him to order three tickets for the Chieftains concert. Bradley chuckled. Enough said.         

In Defense Of Consumer Spending- With The Film Adaptation Of Sophie Kinsella’s “Confessions Of A Shopaholic” (2009)-A Film Review

In Defense Of Consumer Spending- With The Film Adaptation Of Sophie Kinsella’s “Confessions Of A Shopaholic” (2009)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth   

Confessions Of A Shopaholic, starring Isla Fisher, Hugh Dancy, from the novels of Sophie Kinsella, 2009

I can’t believe that I have been given an assignment dealing with the addiction of shopping, girl’s stuff, Confessions Of A Shopaholic starring Isla Fisher as Rebecca, a girl’s film that should by right be done by somebody who knows something about the subject, about shopping. For myself I am like the guy, like Luke the money magazine editor, played by Hugh Dancy have set world records for shopping and getting the hell out-fast. But this is the genesis of how I got this turkey, turkey for me not for the people who might get a few chuckles out of the film or could relate to this shopping mania. Greg Green, the new site manager who has very different ideas about the way forward for this site, has been looking, has been foundering as far as I am concerned trying to grab a larger, younger audience and has been running a streak of so-called super-hero bang-bang films and now has branched out to this kind of odd-ball comedy to grab the shopping consuming crowd which peaks on Black Friday after Thanksgiving Day I guess. He had originally approached Leslie Dumont but she balked having written two consecutive women-related film review and had expressed in print that she did not want to be tagged as the token “women’s page” writer. Rebuffed then Greg approached me under the principle of “broadening my horizons” and having avoided those super-hero films could not back off. So here we are.       

Here we are beyond the obvious boy meets girl theme which I will address later that Hollywood has been hatching and working for its entire existence. Rebecca is a shopaholic who also happens to be a journalist working for a low-rent gardening magazine who has dreams of working for the bigs, for a high end fashion magazine on her career rise. By hook or by crook she gets a job working for the aforementioned Luke in a smart money magazine owned by the same parent company who owned the fashion magazine. That will start the long haul attraction which will lead to their love affair by film’s end.

Along the way it turns out that the perky, vivacious Rebecca has not only a shopping jones, is purebred junkie, which is probably more common than expected but had been eaten up her credit cards. Proved that her eyes were bigger than her pocketbook. Something had to be done if she was to keep afloat, grab that high end job and grab that poor little rich boy (his parents were super-rich but he wanted to pull himself up by his own bootstraps ) while dodging the repo men, the debt dead beat pursuers. The bulk of the film, including a bout with Shopaholic Anonymous, at first as a lark then more seriously, involves her getting out from under without dear Luke getting wind of the idea. That was not be and the couple went through a period of deep freeze once he found out she was in debt up to her ass. Naturally that freeze would only last for a bit until she got out of hock. Got back to the real world, a world without going crazy over consumer goods. Beyond that the storyline could not carry any additional weight. Greg I have done my duty.             

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind

When The Fight To Turn The World Upside Down Was In Full Flower- With The Doors The Unknown Soldier In Mind 

 By Frank Jackman  

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin in the blogosphere) was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers solely to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment by Green designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

******

“The Unknown Soldier”    

Wait until the war is over
And we're both a little older
The unknown soldier

Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Unborn living, living, dead
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And it's all over
For the unknown soldier
It's all over
For the unknown soldier
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Hut, hut, hut ho hee up
Comp'nee, halt
Present, arms
Make a grave for the unknown soldier
Nestled in your hollow shoulder
The unknown soldier
Breakfast where the news is read
Television children fed
Bullet strikes the helmet's head
And, it's all over
The war is over
It's all over
War is over

Well, all over, baby
All over, baby
Oh, over, yeah
All over, baby

Ooh, ha, ha, all over
All over, baby
Oh, woah, yeah, all over
All over, heh

Songwriters
Robbie Krieger; John Densmore; Jim Morrison;Ray Manzarek

[Under the newly installed regime of site manager Greg Green and the “Young Turks” imposed Editorial Board which guides his actions a new policy of openness has emerged. One aspect of that new policy has been an idea that writers with gripes or other things to say about the internal workings of the site should express themselves, if they like, as introductions to their articles. That in response to the “bottled up” emotions under the old Allan Jackson regime where the idea of expressing such thoughts in the public prints were totally frowned upon even by close and longtime friends like me. Also, and I am not sure I agree with this sentiment, to give the readership, and any potential new readership, an inside look at how a social media site works-or doesn’t work.      

We shall see but today I want to take the opportunity to describe the genesis of this article which the readership might appreciate rather than some screed about how the older writers are feeling that they are shortly to be purged, heads will roll, as one of them said, and other arcane comments which nobody except the parties involved care about.

Several years ago, it must have been around Christmas time I was attending an Arlo Guthrie concert, his daughter Sarah opening for him, a benefit concert for the New England Folk Song Society which like all such folk societies and folksingers outside of a few famous ones like the never-ending Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Tom Rush is always short of cash. During intermission (or maybe before the show started) I was walking by the inevitable CD and other paraphernalia tables when I noticed that the Society was selling calendars. Since there are a half a dozen people I know well enough to give such an item to and no more I checked it out.

Wow! Each month had a photograph detailing some 1960s folk minute like Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band at Newport in 1963, Odetta, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joan’s sister Mimi Farina also at Newport. Great photos including the one I am thinking about as I write this short commentary. A photograph of three good-looking young women, or at least I think they looked good to these old eyes sitting on a couch in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War wearing the hats, short dresses, bare stocking-less legs that their mothers would have frowned upon, in style long hair and such of the time.

In front of them though a medium-sized  handmade sign, a sign important at the time when every young man, including me, had some decision to make about fighting, or not fighting, in the Vietnam War. Of even accepting induction, of resisting the draft of the time. The sign in the language of the time: girls only do it with boys who don’t. Christ if I had had that inducement I too might have thought about draft resistance an option. My girlfriend of the time was rabidly pro-war mainly because her older brother was already over in Vietnam. Not long after I would too be in the Army eventually as a military resister. I wonder if that would have counted had I run into them. Frank Jackman]

********
There was no seamless thread that wrapped the 1960s up tightly. A thousand things, or it seemed like a thousand things, came together in pretty rapid succession to draw down in flames, for a while anyway although none of us though it would on be for only a while just as we thought that we would live forever, or at least fast, the dread red scare Cold War freezes of our childhood. But you could traces things a little, make your own “live free” categories of the events that chipped away the ice of those dark nights.

Start in with the mid-1950s if you like with the heat of the black struggle for some semblance of civil liberties down South (and some sense for equality up North), the first break-out of music with the crowning of rock and roll as the wave of the future (black rhythm and blues, scat, rockabilly mixed all stirred up), the “discovery” of teen alienation and angst exemplified by movie star James Dean, who lived fast, and died fast a metaphor that would work its way through youth culture over the next generation. An odd-ball mix right there. Then start to throw in the struggles against the old authority, the old certitudes that had calmed our parents’ lives in places like Frisco town where they practically ran the red-baiters in the HUAC out of town, but of course the biggest event that opened the doors for liberals, radicals, hell even thoughtful conservatives was the sweet breeze coming down the road from Boston with the election of Jack Kennedy.    

That event opened up a new psyche, that it was okay to question authority, whatever the limitations and shortness of the Camelot times with the struggles against some hoary things like segregation, the dead penalty, nuclear proliferation, the unevenness of life which would get propelled later in the decade with fight for women’s liberation, gay liberation, and the fight against the draft, the damn war in Vietnam that drove a nail into the heart of the generation. There were more things, cultural things and experimentations with new lifestyles that all got a fair workout during this period as well.     

Plenty of us in retrospective would weigh the various combinations of events differently in figuring out how the uprising started just as plenty of us have our specific dates for when the tide began to ebb, when the mean-spirited and authoritarian began their successful counter-offensive that we still live with for not taking the omens more seriously.

And then we have the photograph that graces this short screed. This photograph is almost impossible to imagine without some combination of that hell broth mix stirred up in the 1960s. Three self-assured women comfortable with the loose and individualistic fashion statements of the day from floppy hats to bare legs, bare legs that would have shocked a mother. Uncomfortable about the damn Vietnam war that was eating up boyfriends, brothers, just friends at a heavy rate and they unlike their mothers who came through World War II waiting patiently and patriotically for their military heroes to come home, come home in one piece, have a very different sense of the heroic. A sense of the heroic going back to ancient times when one group of women demanded that their men come home on their shields if they had to rather than speak of defeat and others providing a distant echo for these three women pictured here who refused their potential soldier boys any favors if they went off to war. More, much more of the latter, please.                     

A Kinder, Gentler Super-hero- DC Comics’ “Superman Returns” (2006)-A Film Review

A Kinder, Gentler Super-hero- DC Comics’ “Superman Returns” (2006)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins   

Superman Returns, starring Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, the now disgraced sexual bandit Kevin Spacey, 2006

Die Superman, die. That may be an unkind start after babbling about a kinder, gentler Superman in the come-on headline for this film Superman Returns but that is that in the hardball world of film review. The world where one day you are king of the hill the next yesterday’s news fit for wrapping in newspaper used to dispose of the fish. Greg Green, the site manager here for the past few months, has been asking for just this kind of lead-in when he tagged me a while back for a review of another Superman so-called saga Batman versus Superman where the righteous Lex Luthor wasted the faster that a speeding bullet guy without rancor or regret. First of all I bitched out that I had to even do a silly film based on a male fantasy comic book series that I did not read as a young girl and yawned my way through with a bunch of screaming kids who only cared about the non-stop action to keep up their interests. Second of all because        

Greg Green persists against all reason, against all the evidence to the contrary including the numbers, in making his stable of writers without exception have to bow down to this super-hero noise over the past few months.   

But none of that, none of those reasons compare to the foolish feelings I have doing this review after I gave Superman a teary farewell and a hero’s funeral in that previous review only to have to recant here and say it was all a joke. I had grown women gnashing their teeth over that death, children committing mortal sins having lost their faith after their lord protector proved to be made of common clay, and grown men committing felony murders in a rage in revenge for the loss of their illusions. Only to find that Superman took a powder for five years doing some sordid spacewalk seeking his origins like any other geek. We won’t mention, mention in mixed company anyway, that nobody seemed very worried about the whereabouts of alter ego Clark Kent who disappeared at the same time as the man in blue and returned at the same time as well.

Did anybody miss this stup. No way. Old flame Lois Lane moved on, moved on fast and furious picking up a Pulitzer for her expose of the Superman legend/hoax, bore a young son of unknown parentage, and found a new paramour in the boss’ son. Even Jimmy Olsen has grown up a bit, moved on from incompetent copy boy to incompetent cub reporter. Superman/Clark get lost, leave Metropolis alone. Of course that is all fantasy since, as usual, the tootling town is menaced once again by the previously imprisoned Lex Luthor now free to muddy the waters-and seek revenge for the bad rap Superman laid on him making him do a nickel in the slammer.

More fantasy smashed. Lois once she sees the he-man, once he does one of those “leaps tall buildings in a single bound” routines has her heartstrings pulled to the breaking point. Forget the nice earthly deal with the boss’ son, forget that little cottage and nice lawn business. Meanwhile this scene is driving Superman crazy since he figured that Lois was his eternally so he makes a pact with the devil. Makes him work old Lex Luthor into a lather to get him to show his super-human skills once again in crushing the weasel.                        

That trick got played out when Lex and his henchmen grabbed Lois and the kid, a nice kid but kind of out of it from the drugs he was sucking in for his asthma. When things get crazy the kid comes through though saving Mom from one of Lex’s bad boy comrades. Showed he was the righteous son of Superman as it turned out just starting to get in harness with his super-human father side DNA skills. The merely human boyfriend, fiancé, whatever is strictly second fiddle now. Especially after Superman saves, ho hum, Metropolis yet again from a single criminal mind like Lex after Mr.Bad had decided to blow the place to kingdom come (which makes me wonder about the moral fitness of the citizens of the town to be saved). Sure there was an anxious moment, no, anxious second, when nasty Lex stabbed Superman with some off-market generic kryptonite but even the five year old kids didn’t stop munching their buttered popcorn over that little blip. Jesus what couldn’t Superman have had the good sense to pass away and leave what Sam Lowell calls a candid world alone. Better yet why doesn’t Greg Green get off the dime and have us review real films-for adults.       

Love Among The Smart Set-Part Three-Jason Bateman’s “The Longest Week” (2014)- A Film Review

Love Among The Smart Set-Part Three-Jason Bateman’s “The Longest Week” (2014)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Writer Greg Green

The Longest Weekend, Jason Bateman, Olivia Wilde, Billy Crudup, 2014

Readers who have been even marginally attentive over the past weeks know that I have taken over as the site administrator here after Allan Jackson’s retirement (what his old friend and betrayer by casting the decisive to kick him down the road like a can Sam Lowell called with a smirk “putting him out to pasture” which in old “neighborhood speak” meant as he has been spouting recently “purge”) and to get a feel for the job, for what people are writing film reviews about and why I took on a review myself of the 1930s classic The Libeled Lady about the rich and their predilections which I gave a rousing thumbs down to for its quirky and silly premise. The same Sam Lowell whose decisive vote basically got me this job in a subsequent review of another Mayfair swell saga (his term not mine) Preston Sturgis’ The Palm Beach Story took me to task for not drooling over these classic smart set screwball comedies and gave his reasons why. I didn’t expect to keep the dispute going but recently I have had an opportunity to see a film, The Longest Week, which graphically illustrates my point about the thinness of those smart set comedies.

Look the plotline is short and sweet when you think about it. A poor little rich boy, played by Jason Bateman, who is hunkered down in his upscale parents’ swanky Manhattan apartment in the course of a week, a week in which those same parents decide to divorce and leave him hanging, finds himself evicted from said apartment, out of dough, out of luck, out of friends and in love with a beauty, played by Olivia Stone, all the while dealing with his silly plight in a funny way that young audiences today looking at a tough future can relate to but also laugh at. Especially when that foxy lady turns and twists between him and his friend including sleeping with both of them. This is the kind of film we should be, we will be, spending more time reviewing as well as spy thrillers and comic book super-hero films. Let the classics which about twelve people are interested in now mostly cinematic academics with time on their hands go by the board. Forward.      

Once Again Love Among The Smart Set- Preston Sturgis’ “The Palm Beach Story” (1942)-A Film Review

Once Again Love Among The Smart Set- Preston Sturgis’ “The Palm Beach Story” (1942)-A Film Review

DVD Review   

By Sam Lowell, retired film critic

The Palm Beach Story, starring (double) Joel McCrea, (double) Claudette Colbert, (single) Rudy Vallee, (single) Mary Astor, written and directed by screwball comedy legend Preston Sturgis, 1942

Recently the newly installed administrator, the “boss” in common lingo from time immemorial among us slaves, Greg Green, who has deposed my old friend Allan Jackson with what proved to be my decisive vote of no confidence since I felt he was spinning his wheels in some 1960s nostalgia trip which he couldn’t abandon decided as a “democratic” gesture to get his hands dirty writing a film review something that he had never done despite having been what he called the moderator, again “boss” over at the on-line American Film Gazette website. Sandy Salmon my successor here (and also old friend and colleague from our own Gazette days) assigned him the old black and white classic Oscar-nominated The Libeled Lady with an all-star and bankable cast. Apparently in his youth unlike this writer Greg did not spent minute one while in high school or college watching retrospectives from the halcyon days of the black and white film noir days or the screwball comedy of the 1930s and 1940s. He gave the thing a big pan which is neither here nor there and his prerogative. What irked me no little was that he disparaged his grandparents who during their struggle to keep their heads above water appreciated such films. Even if they concerned the Mayfair swells a term he freely admitted he had never of before he talked to me about his feelings after viewing the film.

Well I have news for Greg I am on the trail of another tale from deep among the Mayfair swells when they head to their winter watering holes to escape the hellish Northern winters none other than legendary screwball comic master Preston Strugis’ The Palm Beach Story. On this one though you have to follow the bouncing ball since Mr. Sturgis is up to his “old now you see it now you don’t” best practice.         

      

For openers we see regular middle class striving Tom, played by durable Joel McCrea a Sturgis favorite and Gerry, played by resilient Claudette Colbert ready to tie the knot, get married and they do. Problem though is they are struggling like crazy to even keep their heads above water in the tough racket architecture design world that is Tom’s chosen profession. Gerry comes up with the bright idea that they should divorce so she can find some rich moneybags looking for an eligible divorcee on the rebound. And she does bagging this oil king played by crooner Rudy Vallee who takes her to his digs in Palm Beach then as now the resort of the very rich no plebeians need apply. (If you don’t believe me read the late Hunter Thompson’s Rolling Stone article on the Pulitzer divorce of the 1980s when the Mayfair swells bared their fangs). Its turns out that the oil king money bags has a promiscuous and flighty sister who at some point in her meanderings grabbed a prince and hence is a princess, played by cagey Mary Astor last seen in this space riding the ride, riding down to the big step off after Sam Spade throws her over to save his own worthless skin when a certain golden egg black bird turned out to be a fake.

While all this is going on Tom, you remember Tom, is lonely for his Gerry and flies down to Palm Beach to find out what is what. What is what turns out to be that old moneybags wants to marry Gerry and this looney sister princess has eyes just then for Tom. The conundrum seems like a dead-end for all parties but that is when you have to do double time with that bouncing ball. Let’s put it this way moneybags and the princess both get married. You have to go back to the beginning of the movie to figure out why all of this is not just a huge case of bigamies of which only lawyers would benefit. I am sure the “boss” would put his thumb down on this one too. What the heck did he do in his young man-hood on those what the hell do to vagrant Saturday afternoons.        

A Kinder, Gentler Super-Hero Saga- George Clooney’s “Batman and Robin” (1997)-A Film Review

A Kinder, Gentler Super-Hero Saga- George Clooney’s “Batman and Robin” (1997)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Eaton

Batman and Robin, starring George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman,

I don’t care if I say it, say it right out loud at the beginning. WTF

I had been given the understanding that after several attempts to draw down this fetish with reviewing comic book characters thrown onto film that we were done with this foolishness. Several writers here have rebelled against the trend, at least in print, have rebelled against the idea that the way to reach a younger audience was to cater to this aspect of the American cultural landscape. Still, and here I will name names, site manager Greg Green, Max Steiner, Lenny Larkin, Jim Morris, Ralph Morse, not one of them under forty, still believe that this is the way to go. Hell, Greg Green refused to let any of the writers review a Batman film starring Chris Bale and the late Heath Leger who played the psychopathic Joker when the violence and inanity of the plotline was so over the top he wrote the scathing review himself. That is when some of us thought, foolishly it turned out, that we had turned a corner, that sanity had come back into vogue here as it had under the un-nameable previous regime when reviewing pop culture kids’ stuff was the exception, the great exception not the rule.

Then Greg Green lowered the boom, lowered it on me in the first instance when he assigned me to do this film, this Batman and Robin which he said he had previewed and while there was the usual amount of mandatory violence the bad guys were at least socially redeemable. Reason, reason for handing me this heap of ashes, this fucking crap if you want to know my real feelings. I had not done a super-hero flick review and it was high time I did so under the old chestnut rubric of “broadening my horizons.” Me, a guy who has reviewed Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Truffaut, all the French New Wave, done a million reviews of film noir which I helped to revive in this country by getting half empty theater houses to put on retrospectives which filled up those empty seats in campus towns and decent-sized cities, done all the screw-ball comedy classics, done reviews of half the Oscar-winners over the past thirty years or so, reviewing comic book characters for what did Sandy Salmon call them, yeah, butter-drenched popcorn and sugar refill soda cup kids too lazy to even read the freaking comic books. I refused. Then Greg pulled the so-called democratic fast one on me. Asked me flat out with no way to avoid the meaning if I wanted to go before the Editorial Board, his handpicked toadies, stooges and hangers-on for a vote of no confidence, a vote to get canned by that rubber-stamp crew. Having just now three very nicely brought up kids to get through college I folded, tucked away my sword.              

Here is what you missed if you had avoided that comic book craze when you were a kid and need to get updated on what the kids are watching these days. Always, always, the health and safety of a major American city, Gotham, really New Jack City by the Hudson if you want the real life model is left in the hands of one Batman, wealthy scion Bruce Wayne in civilian life, who has been played by half the rugged Type A males of Hollywoodland, here played by cool and calm and collected George Clooney. In this one he is aided by his neophyte young partner Robin, and later by foxy Batgirl or something like that although I will be politically correct and call her Bat Woman hereafter. You know though this trio is not dealing with real New York City plagued by drugs, poor transportation, expensive housing, inadequate schools and social programs, and racial injustices. Batman, alone or with his newfound company, inevitably has to deal with a single nefarious villain who has the capacity to destroy the whole town without working up a sweat. This time it is a holy goof named Mr. Freeze, played by body-builder, former California Governor and Maria Shriver’s ex-hubby Arnold Schwarzenegger, who after diving in a vat of nasty chemical can only live where the air is, well, chilly. His big problem though is that  those chemicals made him a holy goof trying to take down the world into a new Ice Age all because he couldn’t find a cure for his wife’s ailments.          

No question the new version of the Iceman Cometh is a dastardly dude who wants to ransack dear sweet Gotham for diamonds that keep his funny bunny suit going and keep him, well, chilly. Batman and maybe Robin a little grab him and put him where he can’t harm a hair of honest citizens’ heads. The trouble with these comic book-derived plots is that there is plenty of room for holy goofs of all sorts. Enter Poison Ivy, an ex-scientist who went over to the wild side after stewing in her own vat of unhealthy chemicals, played by Amazon luscious Uma Thurman whose crusade is to wipe out the human race and let the fauna and flora run the earth on behalf of some old flea-bitten hag named Mother Earth. You would think that two holy goofs working at cross-purposes would not have any reason to become allies but so it came to pass. A regular holy goof united front to bring down sweet Batman and Robin and Bat Women protected Gotham first with deep freeze and then with plants not out of Home and Garden.  

Naturally after good old boy Freeze is captured and put away the first step in Ms. Ivy’s playbook is to free her fellow holy goof so he can put the big freeze on Gotham. Meanwhile the divine Ms. Ivy started turning Gotham into the second Garden of Eden. She too gets kicked out of Paradise, pushed east of Eden by none other than Bat Women in her first outing as a high profile crime stopper. Ivy behind bars leaving the Frig to menace the town and he does. Batman and friends make short work of him though since we are in the age of climate change on the hot side not cold side. Case closed.

Well, as Frank Jackman likes to say, not quite. This is where the kinder, gentler villain Greg Green tried to convince me was worth my reviewing this turkey for comes in. Seems Ice Cube was a real scientist before the fall, before he left his Eden. Had worked on a cure for his wife, or tried. Here is where that comes in handy, gets him a reprieve from the big step-off. See longtime Bruce Wayne indentured servant Alfred, an English dude from England is dying of the same kind of affliction that had the Freeze man’s wife in cold storage. Batman plays off of the guy’s human side to give Alfred a little more time on the orb. In exchange the good Doctor gets to work his lab stuff in the nut house they have set up for him. Jesus, I can’t believe that I reviewed this silly excuse for a film. Maybe, just maybe, if he has a lucid moment Greg will blue-pencil this one to death. 

Love Among The Smart Set-William Powell and Myna Loy’s “The Libeled” (1936) –A Film Review

Love Among The Smart Set-William Powell and Myna Loy’s “The Libeled” (1936) –A Film Review  

DVD Review

By Writer Greg Green

The Libeled Lady, starring Myra Loy, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, 1936

[Those readers who have been following the latest developments about the direction of this American Left History blog site over the past period and have become aware of the conclusions that returning to the old idea of covering all of the American experience and not just hone in on the 1960s experiences of most of the older writers and changing personal know that I have been assigned the job of site administrator which means I will be handing out the assignments and other projects in cooperation with the writers, young and old. I come here from the on-line American Film Gazette where I held basically the same position although there it was called moderator. (Apparently in the “new age” of media, particularly social media, the tradition terms “editor” or “gatekeeper” have fallen out of favor, have fallen in bad odor.)

To get a feel for the job  I have taken up this assignment which Sandy Salmon the film critic thought I might be interested in doing to “test the waters” since I have very little experience with the older films that have been the staple of this site. In the future nevertheless the tilt for films will be much more contemporary which everybody, or almost everybody, has agreed is necessary to lure a younger crowd not formed by the rush of the 1960s when black and white films were like catnip to student audiences. P.S. I will weigh in on whether my predecessor Pete Markin, whom I have known for years by reputation and early on from the time he worked at the American Film Gazette when this site needed a cash infusion, was purged or gently put out to pasture some other time. Greg Green]  

Sam Lowell who was I have heard the main culprit (not my term but Sandy Salmon’s) during his tenure as film critic before he retired to write on occasion, very occasionally who drove the overwhelming preponderance of old-time black and white films. In those days before Alden Riley and a few stringers came on board with Sandy he did all the reviews himself or were done under his guidance. So he was able to feast on the films that he would watch as a young man in high school (that is where it started) on Saturday afternoons at his local movie theater.

I would assume that the film under review, The Libeled Lady, would be one that he watched on those Saturday afternoons but for the life of me I can’t understand why. Certainly it is not the collective talents of the cast Jean Harlow, Myra Loy, William Powell and Spencer Tracy the last one the only one whose work I am familiar with. So it must be the plot, the story line, the screenplay writers because from what I have read this is supposed to be a screw-ball comedy in an age and time when such fare was grist to the mill. Maybe that bill of fare is what got my grandparents and maybe my parents although they were probably too young to appreciate this through the Great Depression that those same grandparents endlessly carped on whenever anybody complained about anything, about not getting this or that unnecessary to them object like that was a talisman to ward off all discussion.     

 Let’s see what you think of this, think of a film that was on the short list for the Oscars in 1936. Mayfair swell (not my term of choice but from Sam since I couldn’t think of a better one when we talked about the upper class which dominates this film), Connie played by Ms. Loy (I got used to following New York Times honorifics at American Film Gazette and will continue to do so here for now) sued some low-rent New York City newspaper for libel over a false allegation that she broke up some happy household. She decided to go big or don’t go at all and claimed five million dollars would make her “whole” to use a legal expression. The newspaper in the person of its managing editor, Warren, played by redoubtable Mr. Tracy panicked and tried to lure ladies’ man and ace reporter Bill,  played by the inestimable Mr. Powell better known according to Sam as the male duo in the Nick and Nora Charles The Thin Man series with Ms. Loy to run a scam on Connie. The idea, pretty lame its seems even for a low-rent up against it urban newspaper was to get Bill alone with Connie and have his “wife” find them together. To blackmail Connie out of the law suit and out of having to hand over those five very big ones.         

I said lame and I meant because there was one little problem with the weasely scheme. Bill was a happily unmarried man with no wife and if anybody was asking, asking at least for public consumption no mistress either. No nonsense the company comes first, freedom of the press even when it lies Warren volunteers his girlfriend something of a goofball flossy if you asked me Gladys, played by the ill-fated Ms. Harlow. Here is where everything gets balled-up not funny. Bill and Gladys marry, a marriage of convenience easily divorced once that onerous court case is over. Problem though those is that while cruising back to America on a luxury liner Bill and Connie fall in love and get married. No problem right since Bill and the hapless Gladys are divorced. Problem Gladys has lost her yen for Warren and wants Bill back. Then through some sleigh-of-hand divorce foul-ups courtesy of the apparently frazzled screenwriters Bill and Gladys are still married. Not to worry though once Bill and Connie put the squeeze play on Gladys runs, no, walks back to her Warren. I hope to high heaven that Sam didn’t spent his hard-earned dollar on this cuckoo of a film. Short-listed for Mr. Oscar or not.       

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part II-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes” (1939)-A Film Review

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part II-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes” (1939)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Danny Moriarty

(Once again as I did in my initial offering on the bogus Sherlock Holmes legend Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, hah!, in the interest of transparency which has become more of an issue these days when every medium is under scrutiny Danny Moriarty is not my real name. As then and will be discussed again below in my research about the “fake news” legend of Mr. Holmes I have run into a notorious cult-like band of desperadoes known as “The Baker Street Irregulars,” why that name I do not know. This clot of criminals, who I am told have very stylized rituals involving illegal drugs and human blood, and are the bane of the London Bobbies, have been connected with the disappearance of many people who questioned the Sherlock myth, and not a few unsolved murders of people who have washed up on the Thames over the years.

This need for an alias, for cover, is no joke since that first review I have been threatened, threatened with I won’t death, death threats, but some nasty actions which necessitate my keeping very close tabs on my security apparatus as I attempt to deflate this miserable excuse for a detective, a parlor detective at that. I will not be stopped by hoodlums and blood-splattered junkies.)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring Basil Rathbone (if that is his real name which is doubtful although unlike myself he has never been transparent enough to say that he is using an alias), Nigel Bruce (a name which has been confirmed as a British National active in the 1930s and 1940s), 1939 

We live in an age of debunking. An age perhaps borne aloft by cynicism, hubris, sarcasm and above all “fake news,” not the fake news denying some reality that you hear so much about these days, but by the elaborate strategy of public relations cranks and flacks who will put out any swill as long as they are paid and not a minute longer. That hardly started today but has a long pedigree, a pedigree which has included the target of today’s debunking one James Sherlock Holmes out of London, out of the Baker Street section of that town. From the cutesy “elementary my dear Watson” to that condescending attitude toward everybody he encounters, friend or foe, including the hapless Doctor Watson this guy Holmes is nothing but a pure creation of the public relations industrial complex. As I have noted above I have paid the price for exposing this chameleon, this so-called master detective, this dead end junkie, with a barrage of hate mail and threats from his insidious devotees.

Maybe I better refresh for those who may not have read the first review, may be shocked to find their paragon of a private detective has feet of clay, and an addiction problem no twelve step program could curtail in a million years. Here are some excerpts of what I said in that review which I stand by this day no matter the consequences:      

“Today is the day. Today is the day I have been waiting for since I was a kid. Today we tear off the veneer, tear off the mask of the reputation of one Sherlock Holmes as a master detective. Funny how things happen. Greg Green assigned me this film out of the blue, at random he said when I asked him. However this assignment after viewing this film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (of course he doesn’t face, hadn’t been anywhere near any danger that would put death in his way but that can wait until I finish out defanging the legend) set off many bells, many memories of my childhood when I first instinctively discovered this guy was a fraud, a con artist.

Back then my grandparents and parents hushed me up about the matter when I told them what I thought of the mighty Sherlock. They went nutty and told me never to speak of it again when I mentioned that a hard-boiled real private detective, a guy who did this kind of work for a living, a guy named Sam Spade who worked out in San Francisco and solved, really solved, the case of the missing black bird which people in the profession still talk about, which is still taught in those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lesson things you used to see advertised on matchbook covers when smoking cigarettes was okay, who could run circles around a parlor so-called detective like Mr. Holmes. 

[Even Sam Spade has come in for some debunking of late right here in this space as Phil Larkin and Kenny Jacobs have gone round and round about how little Spade deserved his “rep,” his classic rep for a guy who was picked by some bimbo out of the phone book and who couldn’t even keep his partner alive against that same femme he was skirt-addled over. Kept digging that low-shelf whiskey bottle in the bottom desk drawer out too much when the deal went down. The only guy who is safe is Phillip Marlowe since nobody can call him a “one solved murder wonder” after the string of cold as ice, maybe colder, cases he wrapped up with a bow over the years. They still talk about the Sherwood case out on the Coast even today, talk in hushed tones too. You notice nobody has tried to go after him, not even close. D.M.]            

That was then. Now after some serious research as a result of this film’s impact on my memory I have proof to back up my childhood smothered assertions. Sherlock Holmes (if that is his name which is doubtful since I went to the London telephone directories going back the first ones in the late 1800s and found no such name on Baker Street-ever) was nothing but a stone-cold junkie, cocaine, morphine, lanadum and other exotic concoctions which is the reason that he had a doctor at his side at all times in case he needed “scripts” written up. A doctor who a guy like Sam Spade would have sat on his ass a long time before as so dead weight.

That junkie business would not amount to much if it did not mean that high and mighty Sherlock didn’t have to run his own gang of pimps, hookers, con men, fellow junkies, drag queens, rough trade sailors and the flotsam and jetsam of London, high society and low, to keep him in dough for that nasty set of habits that kept him high as a kite. There are sworn statements (suppressed at the time) by the few felons whom the Bobbies were able to pick up that Sherlock was the guy behind half the burglaries, heists and kidnappings in London. And you wonder why the Baker Street Irregulars want to silence me, show me the silence of the grave….

Of course the Bobbies, looking to wrap up a few cold file cases which Sherlock handed them to keep them off the trail, looked the other way and/or took the graft so who really knows how extensive the whole operation was. In a great sleight of hand he gave them Doctor Moriarty who as it turned out dear Sherlock had framed when one wave of police heat was on and who only got out of prison after Holmes died and one of Holmes’ flunkies told the real story about how Holmes needed a “fall guy” and the wily Doctor took the fall.”             

This The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes cover-up is a classic example of police collision to cover their own dirty tracks. Everybody knows that Sherlock made his name after he beat down some poor mistreated dog who should have been reported as abused to whatever they call the humane animal treatment society in merry old England.

You don’t have to be one of those correspondence course private detection in ten easy lessons that you used to see on matchbook covers when cigarette smoking was okay like I said before to know that these high society cases are inside

jobs. Naturally the luckless and clueless Holmes has his fall guy all set up. A guy like I mentioned before named Professor Moriarty (no relative since if you remember this is my alias) who is a salt of the earth type but whom Holmes has a deep hatred for ever since the good doctor stopped feeding him his drugs, told him to go cold turkey. That good advice and good cheer despite the obvious fact that no twelve step program was going to do anything but drive Holmes to who knows what paranoid delusions. All the good professor did was to clue in a guy whose father had been bamboozled by this high society young woman’s father. Had been murdered by the dame’s old man.

The dispute had been over dough money which the guy should have gotten as inheritance but didn’t and wound up on skid road. While this young heiress and her ne’er do well a con artist and card shark from the word around town brother lived high off the hog. The stuff you heard about the good professor trying to take the Crown jewels is nothing but fake news. They were never in danger of being stolen but our man Sherlock raised a big hue and cry after smoking too much hashish and thought he saw them floating over the Thames. Called copper for them to nab favorite fall guy the hapless professor. You never hear about this of course since the coppers kept it hush-hush but that was the night in a drug frenzy Sherlock tried to murder the good professor. Kill him dead. RIP, Professor, RIP. Didn’t happen but the good professor got the slammer anyway and it was only Sherlock’s overdose death that sprung him after “Five Fingers” Benny Boren gave the real story.   

Like I said last time, a fake, fake all the way. Unless that Irregular crowd of thugs and blood-stained aficionados get to me this is not the last you will hear about this campaign of mine to dethrone this pompous junked-up imposter. I am just getting into second gear now.      

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.