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Sheila O’Malley re-shared her post on the anniversary of Roger Ebert’s passing today, and I thought, why not do the same? Here’s what I posted the day he died. I still miss his writing. There’s something about those Chicago newspaper men…. I was trying to figure out something to write on the passing today of Roger Ebert, but nothing was leaping to mind, so I figured I’d just repost my original thoughts, from January 2012, on his book, Life Itself. I have loved and admired Ebert since I was nine, and his output of thoughtful writing even in the faceDown the rabbit hole….

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Elmer Bernstein, one of the most consistently delightful of all film composers, was born one hundred years ago today. Bernstein died in 2004, after a long and prolific life of making our cinematic world better. Here’s a sampling of his work. Thank you, Elmer Bernstein! From Westerns to science-fiction films to comedy scores to character dramas to sword-and-sandal Biblical epics…and more. Elmer Bernstein was one of the greats.   Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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(NOTE: As this review heavily references ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, I have revised and reposted my long essay about that film as well.) After a series of production false-starts, headaches, and then a global pandemic, No Time To Die, the twenty-fifth James Bond film and the last one featuring Daniel Craig as Agent 007, finally arrived in late 2021. For a while it seemed like the movie would never get here: Craig’s reluctance to return after the grueling SPECTRE shoot, and then a troubled development phase with scripts being reworked and writers and the original director coming and going, and then delays inDown the rabbit hole….

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A repost, with some revisions and additions throughout, to accompany my review of NO TIME TO DIE, which is coming tomorrow. I wrote this more than ten years ago, and if anything, my esteem for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE has only increased since then. I rewatched the film on one leg of our recent journey from Buffalo to Honolulu, and the film still holds up. Here we go. Additions to the post’s original text will be in blockquoted offsets. Far up! Far out! Far more!!! Sometimes I change my mind about movies. Sometimes I don’t. Some movies meant aDown the rabbit hole….

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Filmmaker and special effects guru Douglas Trumbull died earlier this month. His body of work is not large, but its influence is gigantic. For filmgoers of a certain age and a certain disposition to genre–say, 50ish and inclined to fantasy and science fiction–Trumbull’s work is likely as big an influence on how such stories are visualized as George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic. Trumbull was instrumental in the look and feel of such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner, and, probably the granddaddy of them all in terms of lasting influence, 2001: A Space Odyssey. TrumbullDown the rabbit hole….

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John Williams was born ninety years ago today. I’ve written many times in the years I’ve been blogging about John Williams’s influence on my creative world. He has been a central figure in the cinematic stories that shaped my life and stamped their print on my storytelling soul, all the way back to when I was five years old. Williams is, of course, best known for his many filmscores to some of the most prominent movie franchises of the last fifty years: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and more. The Winter Olympics are going on right now, so I’m sure we’reDown the rabbit hole….

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And at last, here we are: the top five James Bond movies. I like that my top five has quite a bit of variety: it spans more than 40 years of films, and five of the six men who have played James Bond are here. I’ve always considered it a point of personal pride that my Bond fandom does not center on one or two particular actors; you’ll never find me offering up an opinion of who the best Bond was, or the worst. I find such discussions limiting and honestly downright boring, and not just in terms of James Bond. When youDown the rabbit hole….

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So here we go: the first half of my person Top Ten James Bond movies! Let’s refresh our rankings to this point: Part One: 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME 23. GOLDFINGER 22. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER 21. A VIEW TO A KILL Part Two: 20. TOMORROW NEVER DIES 19. QUANTUM OF SOLACE 18. THUNDERBALL 17. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE 16. SPECTRE Part Three: 15. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 14. NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN 13. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH 12. DR. NO 11. MOONRAKER With lists like this, the ones at the top probably end up as vexing as the ones at the bottom, especiallyDown the rabbit hole….

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With this entry, we move from my bottom half of the Bond rankings into the top half. It’s worth remembering that this is all relative: there’s only one movie, Live and Let Die, that I find basically unwatchable. Every one of these movies entertains me on some level, so when I throw rocks at a particular movie, one shouldn’t assume I’m throwing particularly large or hard rocks, or that my aim is very good. By way of refresher, here’s my ranking as we enter this post (nos. 21-26 here, nos. 16-20 here): 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHODown the rabbit hole….