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Continuing my Official And Correct Ranking of the James Bond films! This time we will go from Number 20 to Number 16. Our first entry contained the one Bond film I outright dislike, followed by several that just don’t do a whole lot for me and which are almost never my flick of choice when I decide I want to watch a Bond movie. With this list, we start getting into “Not my favorite, but watchable and sometimes I’ll turn it on for fun” territory. Here’s the ranking thus far: 26. LIVE AND LET DIE 25. DIE ANOTHER DAY 24. THE SPY WHODown the rabbit hole….

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It’s only natural that with the arrival of a new James Bond movie, the eternal cottage industry of ranking all of the movies up to that point revs up production again. I’ve seen a whole lot of these articles popping up the last month or two, and as I start writing this I’m listening to a podcast that is generating a ranked list of the Bond films via a “draft” like a sports draft. That particular podcast is taking its sweet time: two episodes, each of which is more than four hours long! So we have a group of peopleDown the rabbit hole….

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…is this one. We watched Casablanca last night, and I remain as entranced by the film as I ever was. This close-up is one of the most affecting parts of the movie. The camera holds Ilsa’s face as she listens to Sam playing “As Time Goes By”, and she’s remembering everything that she knows she’s about to have to confront. To this day, Casablanca remains that film that would be my favorite of all time, if not for Star Wars. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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 Last week was the 40th anniversary of the initial theatrical release of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Raiders arrived in the summer that my family uprooted from Hillsboro, OR, for Allegany, NY, all the way across the country. I was still three months shy of turning ten, and this would be my sixth cross-country move in that time. (Fortunately it was the final such move.) Raiders was the big movie that summer, and when it came out I knew nothing about it at all, save for that it starred my favorite actor at the time, Harrison Ford. I also knew from theDown the rabbit hole….

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Actor Ned Beatty has died at the age of 83. Beatty had a long and wonderful and varied career, and he played a wide variety of characters. I suppose he’s seen more as a “character actor” than as a lead, but…I don’t know, surely there should be something between a character actor and a proper lead, right? Beatty was always recognizable, but he never seemed the same, if that makes any sense. Every time I saw him in something he managed to create something all new. My first exposure to him was in Superman: The Movie, which remains my favoriteDown the rabbit hole….

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 I suppose I am lucky that I never had to negotiate the world of dating as a single adult, out there in “the wild”. My dating life was mercifully short, and it took place in the context of the sheltered existence of college. It was also by the greatest good luck that the last person I dated in college ended up being the last person I dated at all, because we’re still together now. What Happened Was is a movie that not about dating, but it’s about one specific date, and that’s it. Ninety minutes that track the entirety of aDown the rabbit hole….

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 Apparently they made a movie about Sherlock Holmes’s younger sister Enola, featuring Mille Bobbie Brown in the title role. The movie drops on Netflix just a few days before my birthday. If it’s good, this might be one of 2020’s stopped-clock moments (even a stopped clock is right twice a day)! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Fifty years ago today, on December 18, 1969, the sixth James Bond movie opened. Its initial reception was mixed, partly because the Bond mania of the 60s was simmering down, and partly because it was the first time that Sean Connery had not starred as Agent 007, in favor of complete unknown newcomer George Lazenby. While I didn’t see the movie until an ABC telecast sometime in the early 80s, I liked it from that very first viewing and it very quickly shot up my personal rankings until by the time I was fifteen or sixteen I was willing toDown the rabbit hole….

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OK, so now that I’m done cranking out the words every day in a final push to complete a novel draft, what should we talk about? Why…how about the teaser trailer to Star Wars Episode IX that dropped a few weeks ago? If you haven’t seen it, here it is: As with all teasers, there’s simultaneously a lot to unpack there and…there’s nothing to unpack there. Teaser trailers are designed to tantalize in any of a hundred different ways, and since this thing showed up online during the Star Wars Celebration fan festival, the Interwebs have been all a-tizzy asDown the rabbit hole….

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I suppose I am hardly unique among Americans in that The Wizard of Oz has been a part of my life almost as long as I can remember. I grew up during that hazy prehistory when the only way to watch Wizard was to wait an entire year for one of CBS’s annual airings of the movie—usually in springtime, as I recall. When you’re a kid that wait is so long that you’re barely aware of it. Suddenly one day it’s spring again, and one day you’re in front of the teevee to watch The Wizard of Oz. I don’tDown the rabbit hole….