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A hearty “Welcome!” to people arriving by way of Demosthenes‘s link. As he points out, mine is not a political blog. I’ve outlined my reasons for avoiding politics in the past; although I am a fairly solid liberal, I choose to leave the political discussions in the hands of people like Demosthenes (and, from a different standpoint, Steven Den Beste) in favor of other pursuits. Mainly, I talk about books, music, films, sports, and the culture and future of my city (Buffalo, NY). I only dabble in political discussion on a very sporadic basis, and even then mainly when I read something that strikes me as particularly wrongheaded.

(Thanks to Demosthenes for the plug!)

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I am attempting to add a commenting system to Byzantium’s Shores. This is the test post; hence its complete lack of content.

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Every ten years, a British magazine called Sight & Sound (the official magazine of the British film institute) polls a number of directors and critics to determine the greatest films of all time. Two lists are generated for each group, and it is interesting to compare the lists, note where the directors and the critics diverged, and realize that neither group lists a film made since 1980. Both lists name Citizen Kane as the top film of all time. For the complete lists, plus additional commentary and some samples of the lists given by the critics and directors polled, read Roger Ebert’s column on the subject.

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It’s always a bit surprising to find an idea that one has had also occurring to someone else. It’s particularly surprising to encounter it somewhere in the Blogosphere — well, maybe not “surprising” per se, but rather “interesting” or “eerie”. I’m tempted to ascribe it to the old canard that “Great minds think alike”, but I’ve only discovered Terminus‘s blog today, and thus any such statement would be premature. Anyway, Terminus has started his own cycle of James Bond reviews. He’s doing it one film at a time though, leading up to Die Another Day, as opposed to plowing through them all at once, as I did. He is also discovering, as I did in college when some friends and I decided to try watching the entire series in order, that it’s hard to actually find them all at the video store.

(And apparently someone named Ed is doing a Bond retrospective. Hmmmm….)

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Ah, the wonderful world of Buffalo politics. Current Mayor Anthony Masiello, who is in the first year of his third term as Mayor, has a new problem to deal with: his predecessor, James Griffin (who held the office of Mayor for four terms and was at the helm during the implosion of the Buffalo economy starting in the late 1970s) has produced a petition calling for Mayor Masiello’s removal from office and the holding of a new election. Presumably this is because Masiello has, for the most part, been unable to stimulate any real economic development in the city. While Masiello’s performance is far from admirable (and is barely adequate, if even that), it’s laughable to see the former Mayor, a man whose administration was marked by all manner of cronyism and corruption, shilling for his ouster. It’s yet another distraction that the city doesn’t need.

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James Bond Redux, conclusion.

Parts I, II, III, and IV.

:: The Living Daylights. After Roger Moore’s departure from the role of James Bond, a casting search was begun for the next film in the series. Pierce Brosnan almost won the role at that point, but he was unable to escape his contractual obligation to NBC for the Remington Steele television series (which, incidentally, was cancelled soon afterwards). The role went to Timothy Dalton, who decided to base his portrayal of Bond more on the character as described in Ian Fleming’s novels than as portrayed by Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. Dalton’s Bond smirks less, and is a much more serious person in general. I greatly enjoyed his concept of Bond, and it would have been nice had he been able to do it in more than two films. In any event, once again the producers of the series decided to “dial it down a bit” after a pretty excessive installment. A View To A Kill had been roundly panned by critics and fans alike, and thus The Living Daylights was written to be a more streamlined espionage thriller, which it succeeds in being. This film is another high point in the series, presenting a story in which there is no villain bent on world domination but rather a trio of villains who are involved in a scheme involving diamond smuggling, gunrunning to Afghanistan, and disinforming British intelligence. The plot twists and turns more than is typical in a Bond film, which is rather refreshing. Bond is kept guessing throughout, and at times he has to trust his own instincts to get him through a certain tough spot. The heroine here is a lovely blonde cellist from Bratislava named Kara, who just happens to be the girlfriend of a Russian official who wishes to defect (or so he says). Bond is actually supposed to kill her early in the film, but he refuses to do so, and eventually she is drawn into his efforts to find out what is going on. (In a particularly charming scene, Bond and Kara are about to flee the KGB, when she realizes that she has forgotten her cello and insists on getting it. No real musician would ever leave their instrument behind — especially when it later turns out that the instrument is a Stradivarius. This, of course, is revealed only after Bond has managed to put a bullet hole in the cello.) Her character is quite strong, as evidenced when she talks back to a Mujaheddin commander. Instead of a single villain, here there is a team of three: an American arms dealer named Whitaker, the defectee named Koskov, and an assassin named Necros. All are interesting and menacing characters — particularly Whitaker, with his encyclopedic knowledge of war and weaponry and his hallway filled with statues of folks like Hitler and Genghis Khan. There is also a Russian general, played by the wonderful John Rhys Davies (Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who is caught in something of a crossfire. The action sequences are first-rate, including a teaser sequence featuring a trio of agents parachuting onto the Rock of Gibraltar and some amazing stuntwork involving a cargo-plane during the climax. John Barry’s music score is one of the best in the series. The Living Daylights is one of the very best Bonds. (The Gadgets: Bond drives the Aston-Martin again, although its weapons have been upgraded. Instead of whirling tire-spikes, the wheelhubs fire lasers which cut through the chassis of a car alongside Bond. The car also fires missiles and carries outboard skis for snow-driving. Bond’s other gadget is a key-ring finder equipped with lockpicks, an explosive charge that detonates at the sound of a wolf-whistle, and a stun-gas pellet that discharges if he whistles the opening notes of “Rule Brittania”. This is everything a Bond gadget should be: simple, elegant, and when used cleverly, totally lethal.)

:: Licence to Kill. In my view, this is the most underrated of all the Bond films. It performed poorly at the box office when it was released in 1989, backed by a lackadaisical advertising campaign and tough competition from films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon II, and even Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The film takes place entirely in the Caribbean and in Latin America, and it marks a stark deviation from the standard Bond formula. He is on no sanctioned mission for Her Majesty’s Secret Service this time; in fact, he is acting totally on his own, at one point running from a meeting with M who has personally come to chew him out for his vigilante behavior. The reason for his actions is a druglord named Franz Sanchez, who has escaped US custody (Bond had helped put him there in the teaser sequence), killed Felix Leiter’s young newlywed wife, and seriously maimed Felix himself. (The manner of Felix’s maiming is actually taken from Ian Fleming’s novel of Live and Let Die.) Bond goes after Sanchez, destroying parts of his operation before ultimately infiltrating it with the help of the beautiful CIA agent Pam Bouvier, played with terrific sass by Carey Lowell. (“Are you armed?” she asks Bond at one point. He shows her his Walther PPK, at which she shakes her head sadly and shows him her sawed-off shotgun.) Miss Bouvier is the strongest of all the Bond heroines; she is tough, fearless, and she gets to save Bond a number of times. There is palpable chemistry between her and Dalton; there is also great chemisty between Dalton and Robert Davi, who plays the evil Sanchez to the hilt. Davi’s Sanchez isn’t merely evil; there is a sense of honor behind the things he does. “This isn’t personal; it’s just business,” he says to Felix Leiter before having him horribly injured. The film’s closing action sequence, a gonzo chase scene down a series of dusty mountain roads involving a series of tanker trucks, is one the most exhilarating action set-pieces in any Bond film. The music is provided by Michael Kamen, and it’s a surprisingly effective mix of Latin elements and Kamenesque action writing. (Kamen also did the music for the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard films.) Licence To Kill should be more popular than it is. (The Gadgets: Here Bond works with a rifle that responds to his palmprint alone, a tube of toothpaste that actually dispenses plastic explosive, and a lighter that is really a flamethrower. Q has his beefiest role in the series in this film; he comes to equip Bond after a worried Moneypenny begs him to, and he actually helps out in the field. He has two especially nice moments: one where he tries to console Pam Bouvier when Bond has gone off with Sanchez’s stunning concubine, and one where he dresses as a farmer along the road as Sanchez drives by on the way to his hideout. In this latter scene, Q speaks into the broom he’s holding, which is really a microphone, alerting Pam that Sanchez is on his way. Then, that accomplished, he tosses the broom aside and walks away — a wonderfully funny character moment after all the times that Q has chided Bond over the years for never returning his equipment. Of course, I’ve always wondered: if he always wants it back, why does he almost always set it up so it explodes?)

:: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough. (Given that these films are the most recent, I’m lumping them together into a single capsule.) Due to legal wrangling there was a six-year gap between Licence To Kill and the next Bond film, GoldenEye. In that time Timothy Dalton decided to move on, and thus Pierce Brosnan finally took over the role, and he’s had it ever since. As far as I am concerned, he’s welcome to it until he’s too old or he simply doesn’t want it anymore. He brings to the part a blend of Dalton’s seriousness, Moore’s playfulness, Lazenby’s emotion, and Connery’s toughness. Some feel that Brosnan doesn’t have the physical gravitas to really be convincing as Bond, but I don’t agree. In fact, I think he’s getting better — his performance in TWINE was his best Bond yet. We’ll know more in a few months, when Die Another Day is released.

As for the films themselves, I’ve enjoyed all three, although each has its faults. GoldenEye is quite good, although its setup takes too long, its music (by Eric Serra) alternates between merely functional and utterly horrid, and at several points it meditates on deeper aspects of Bond’s character in a way that reminds me of the psychological baggage that has been pumped into the Batman character ever since Frank Miller’s Dark Knight series came out. The heroine, a Russian computer operator played by Izabella Scorupco, is lovely and strong; Sean Bean’s villain is excellent. His scheme, though, is a bit hard to swallow.

Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the most relentlessly paced Bond films; its emphasis is most definitely on action over plot. Bond is less a spy here than an action hero, and although the film works I’m not sure if that change is a good one. I’m of the opinion that James Bond should do more spying than heroics, but TND is chock-full of action set-pieces and the effect is generally overwhelming. Nevertheless, there is a lot to like in the film; Michelle Yeoh’s heroine could be an action-star in her own right; Jonathan Pryce’s media-mogul villain is in the best tradition of Bond-baddie-megalomania; David Arnold’s score is a tremendously fun listen. TND is not a bad film, but pedal-to-the-metal really isn’t the proper pace of a Bond film.

The World Is Not Enough. The title is an allusion to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Part of that film’s plot deals with heraldry, and “The world is not enough” turns out to be the ancestral motto of the Bond family. I found this film a mixed bag. Robert Carlyle’s villain, a terrorist who is dying from a bullet in his skull that also has rendered him impervious to pain, is one of the creepiest of Bond baddies. Sophie Marceau may be the best femme fatale of the entire series. In this film, M actually figures in the action, giving Judi Dench something to do other than tell Pierce Brosnan what to do. Desmond Llewelyn plays Q for the last time, before his role is taken over by John Cleese, a perfect bit of casting if ever I’ve seen one. “Ah, there’s the famed 007 wit,” Cleese says. “Half of it, at any rate.” (Tragically, Llewelyn himself died in a car crash shortly after the film’s release. He was 85 at the time.) The film involves more espionage than Tomorrow Never Dies, but there are also some incredibly loud and over-the-top action sequences — particularly a boat-chase on the Thames and the climax on a submarine that looks strangely like the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The plot’s twists and turns are sometimes hard to follow, and at times Bond’s actions are unexplainable. The worst thing in the film, though, is its heroine: Denise Richards has less charisma than any other leading lady in any other Bond film, by far. From the first moment she appears — when the film tells us that she is a nuclear scientist, and her name is “Christmas Jones” — her character is completely unbelievable. The World Is Not Enough gives me the impression of a film that needed one more draft of screenplay done, and one key role re-cast entirely. (Special note: this film would be an excellent instructive example for people who don’t believe that letterboxing for home video is desirable. In the fullscreen video release, some of TWINE‘s action sequences — most notably a fight and chase in a nuclear missile silo — are all but impossible to follow. I don’t know if the film is out on Widescreen DVD, but that would be the way to see it.)

:: Die Another Day. See you this winter. View the trailer here.

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This week I read a nifty murder mystery/police thriller by Barbara Paul called Kill Fee. (It’s out-of-print, hence the Alibris link instead of my usual Amazon link.) The story presents a neat twist on the idea of “murder for hire”: a killer only known as Pluto identifies a person who would greatly benefit by the untimely death of another person. Pluto then waits until the “client” has an undeniable alibi, at which point he kills the victim. Then, once the client has benefitted by the unexpected slaying of their nemesis, Pluto sends them a bill: “For Services Rendered: One Murder, timed to your trip to ______. Balance Due: $100,000.” And Pluto always collects his fee. This is an exciting page-turner, a fascinating game of cat-and-mouse with sharply drawn characters and a brisk pace. I did find the novel’s ending too rushed and a bit of a let-down, but the trip to that point is amazingly enjoyable.

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Congratulations to Barry Bonds, who hit his 600th home run yesterday and became only the fourth player to ever reach that milestone. He isn’t only the greatest player of his generation; he is one of the greatest players of all time. (And, most importantly, a former Pittsburgh Pirate.)

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James Bond Redux, part IV.

…the ongoing summary of my opinions on the Bond films. Parts I, II, and III covered the series’s first two decades, the 1960s and the 1970s. The 60s Bond films are most definitely stronger than the 70s ones, although I do not share the generally held view that this is because of the “Sean Connery versus Roger Moore” debate. With the possible exception of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery had no outright bad scripts to work from, whereas Moore started out with the four most troublesome scripts in the series (and one, Live and Let Die, that is an out-and-out stinker). So on I go into the Bond films of the 1980s. And, wouldn’t you know it? The 80s turned out to be, at least in my view, the best decade for Bond yet.

:: For Your Eyes Only. After the over-the-top outer-space excesses in Moonraker that nearly turned the Bond series fully into self-parody, a return to smaller-scale stories concentrating on the espionage aspects of the Bond mythos was called for. This was delivered, in spades, with For Your Eyes Only, which is not only Roger Moore’s best Bond film but one of the best in the series. It’s a stylish and slick espionage thriller, the first genuine espionage thriller in the Bond films since From Russia With Love. The film trades on the cold-war dynamic, cleverly showing how the East vs. West antagonisms of the Cold War rarely played out directly but instead were delegated to smaller, allied forces. Bond does a lot of investigating in this film, following one trail and then another as he attempts to learn who is behind the brutal murder of a British agent who was looking for the sunken British spy ship and outrun the Eastern Bloc agents who also want very much to find that ship. The film’s action sequences are superb (with the exception of the teaser sequence, a bizarre thing involving a helicopter and the apparent reincarnation of Ernst Blofeld), including the second-best ski chase in the entire series and a mountain-climbing sequence toward the end of the film that features some eye-popping stunt work. For Your Eyes Only is also notable in that the villain’s identity is actually unknown to us for much of the film; we don’t know who to trust, which heightens the tension. There is no “bad guy sitting in his impregnable fortress surrounded by lackeys” scene here (well, there is, but it’s at the very end of the film and it’s only a handful of lackeys). Bond does not know who he is really up against, a pleasing development in a Bond film. The other great strength is the film’s heroine, Melina Havelock, a strong-willed Greek woman who is out for revenge. (Her father is the British agent killed early in the film.) She is an intelligent and utterly beautiful woman who never is reduced to a mere damsel-in-distress. The score is provided by Bill Conti, who uses some disco and early 80s rock stylings in the music; nevertheless, this actually works (whereas the Marvin Hamlisch efforts on The Spy Who Loved Me are disastrous). There are some wonderfully infectious action cues in the score, and the song is one of the better ones. And Roger Moore’s performance, as far as I am concerned, gives the lie to the idea that Moore was only about playing Bond for laughs. He maintains a fairly serious tone throughout, and there is one scene — where he confronts an assassin who has ended up in a poor position — in which Moore’s Bond is as ruthless as Connery’s Bond ever was. For Your Eyes Only is one of the series’s best efforts. (The Gadgets: the emphasis here, like in OHMSS, is on human abilities. The only real gadget in the film is a computer called the IdentiGraph that collates the characteristics of a physical description and uses the information to identify the person described. In fact, the early-80s computer technology in this scene is the only part of the film that seems dated. Q appears in the film, but mostly in an advisory funtion.)

:: Octopussy. This is one of my favorites. It goes for a bit more of an epic feel than For Your Eyes Only, while retaining that film’s emphasis on character and espionage. This story also plays on the Cold War dynamic, pitting Bond against a fiendish plot concocted by a rather renegade Soviet general. (I find it interesting that the Bond series didn’t really employ the Russians in any kind of villain capacity until the films of the 1980s. True, in From Russia With Love Bond initially believes himself to be working against the Russians, but it turns out that he’s really up against SPECTRE. Russians don’t really figure much at all in the Bond mythos until For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy.) The story involves jewelry smuggling, fake Faberge eggs, a traveling circus, and finally a secretly planted atomic bomb; and all this transpires in India and in Germany (which was still divided at the time). The Indian locations are gorgeous, and a highpoint is the scene where Bond has to elude an elephant-hunt staged by the villain. The film actually boasts more memorable action sequences than most Bond films: the teaser sequence, in which Bond flies a one-man jet and avoids a heat-seeking missile, is excellent; there is a fun chase through the streets of New Delhi; and the film’s entire last act — involving Bond’s race against time to stop the atomic bomb from exploding — is riveting. Louis Jourdan is excellent as Kamal Khan, the villain, who has one of the better henchmen in the series, a giant named Gobinda. (Gobinda is not just brainless muscle: during the film’s climax, when Bond is clinging to the outside of Khan’s airplane, the look on Gobinda’s face when Khan orders him to “Go out and get him” is priceless.) Maud Adams stars as Octopussy, the film’s heroine and title character. She is another strong woman; if at the end of the film she does turn into a damsel-in-distress, it’s not for lack of effort on her part. The only blemish on the film’s acting is Steven Burkoff, who plays General Orlov in over-the-top fashion that is at times very hard to swallow. John Barry returns to do the score, and turns in another fine effort. Octopussy is excellent. (The Gadgets: There is the afore-mentioned one-man jet plane of Bond’s, used in the teaser sequence. He also has an assortment of useful wristwatches: one that tracks a homing device he is able to plant in the faberge egg, and one that is a tiny television that provides him with some very timely information toward the end of the film. And given my love of fountain pens, I loved the one in this film that actually dispenses acid that “dissolves all metals”. You never know when that may come in handy. Q actually gets something of an action sequence as he pilots a hot-air balloon.)

:: Never Say Never Again. This film exists because of the court decisions that gave the rights to the Thunderball story to producer Kevin McClory. This is not an “official” Bond film (it was not made by Eon Productions, the company responsible for all the others), so it lacks such standard Bond touches as the gun-barrel opening sequence and the James Bond Theme. That said, though, it’s an excellent film which gave audiences in 1983 the chance to directly compare Sean Connery’s Bond with Roger Moore’s. (Octopussy had opened earlier that year.) Connery returns, looking twelve years older but still quite fit, and he play Bond one more time with amazing gusto. In truth, this film tells the Thunderball story much more effectively than Thunderball. The pacing is excellent, moving along at a zippy pace thanks to the directorial hand of Irvin Kershner (whose most notable film is an underrated flick called The Empire Strikes Back). There is also some wonderful dialogue in this film: when Largo asks Bond if he loses as gracefully as he wins, Bond says, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never lost.” Bond’s contact in Nassau, played by Rowan Atkinson, is very nervous about Bond’s arrival: “Your reputation has preceded you, and you’re going to jeopardize the tourist trade if you start going around killing people!” And the film’s Q-figure, a strange man named Algernon, tells Bond: “Now that you’re on this, I hope we’re going to have some gratuitous sex and violence.” Kim Basinger, in an early role, plays Domino fairly well; she’s not very convincing at first but as Bond — and we — get to know the character, she loosens up. Klaus Maria Brandauer is a wonderful villain, and Barbara Carerra as assassin Fatima Blush nearly steals the show. The film’s only real blemishes are the climax, which is a bit of a letdown, and the music score by Michel LeGrande, which is a disaster. Never Say Never Again may not be an official Bond film, but “a rose by any other name….” (The Gadgets: Bond has a motorcycle that is equipped with guns and a rocket-thruster, a wristwatch that is really a laser, and — my favorite — a pen-pistol that fires very explosive bullets. There is also a gonzo bit of transportation, used by Bond and Felix Leiter toward the end of the film, that I can’t even describe.)

:: A View To A Kill. This, Roger Moore’s last appearance as 007, is generally held to be the series’s worst film. I actually like it, though it’s not without faults. The biggest one by far is the Tanya Roberts character, who is simply the worst Bond heroine to date. This is the best example I’ve ever seen of blaming an actor or actress for faults in the screenplay; while no one would ever claim that Tanya Roberts is a particularly skilled thespian, I seriously doubt that even Meryl Streep channeling the spirit of Ingrid Bergman could have done much with this role. It’s not Roberts’s fault that the script has her character not showing up until halfway through the film, and then standing around screaming “James! James! James!” And I suspect that it’s not Roberts’s fault that at one point her character fails to notice a certain object behind her. (If you haven’t seen the film, wait. It’s not to be believed when it happens.) And the other big fault is, sadly, Roger Moore, who tries but can’t really overcome the fact that he really looks too old this time out. He was starting to age in Octopussy, but it’s far more noticeable here. The film also plays a couple of its action set-pieces for laughs, most notably the fire-engine chase through San Francisco. But there are actually good things in A View To A Kill, starting with the villain. If ever an actor was born to play a Bond villain, surely it is Christopher Walken. He perfectly captures the sense of ego and psychosis that is at the heart of any good Bond baddie, and he is actually chilling during the climactic scenes when he is overcome by laughter at key points in the action. His henchwoman is played by Grace Jones, and although her character is interesting, the film does too much with her going around killing people. (Also, an early action sequence severely tests the suspension of disbelief: would it really take that long for her to reach the ground after parachuting off the Eiffel Tower?) And fans of The Pretender, take note: Walken’s associate, Scarpine, is played by Patrick Bauchau, who played Jarod’s father-figure Sydney on the television series. I suppose that I consider A View To A Kill to be something of a guilty pleasure. It’s definitely off-the-mark, a dangerous retread of the Bond excesses of the 1970s — but I can’t bring myself to actually dislike it. Oh well. (The Gadgets: While there is never a scene where Q sits Bond down and explains all his new gizmos, Bond has a ton of them. It starts in the teaser sequence, with a boat disguised as an iceberg. He has a Norelco shaver that detects listening devices; a credit card that pops open window locks; sunglasses that allow him to see through draperies; and a pocket-gizmo that he can press to a blank check and, using the imprint on it, generate a copy of the last check written. Q seems to spend his time working with a goofy robotic dog-thing. for some reason.)

…to be continued (only five more films to go)…

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IMAGE OF THE WEEK

The orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, whose debris trail Earth is now entering, causing the yearly Perseid meteor shower. This is one of the finest of the yearly meteor showers, and is beginning now. The peak night will be August 12. If you have clear skies at night between now and then, get out after dark and watch. (The picture links to a more informative MSN article about the phenomenon.)

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