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November 29, 2008
EBERT: "JAMES BOND IS NOT AN ACTION HERO"
Roger Ebert wrote a killer critique of what one friend of mine called "A Quark of Quiet" (in reference to the ridiculous title of latest Bond movie - I love it; it sounds like a story about Miss Piggle Wiggle and her placebo-esque cures for naughty children).
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081111/REVIEWS/811129989
Ebert has had a rough couple of years. He has some medical condition that keeps him from speaking. At least he can still write. There are times when I totally, totally disagree with him, and yet he champions movies that I wouldn't see otherwise. I find his celebration of films like DARK CITY and JUNO charming. Did CRASH and MILLION DOLLAR BABY deserve the glowing accolades he bestowed on them? Probably not. And I am disappointed when he gives stellar reviews to movies just because they share his political leanings (like this year with "W" - Ebert has always inexplicably been a huge Oliver Stone supporter, but also in the past with SYRIANA and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN), and frustrated when he fails to see the merits of something like FIGHT CLUB or THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
But I'd be lying if I didn't note that Ebert taught me to watch films at once more critically and compassionately, and that he writes with a wit and intelligence that no working critic really has. His criticism of the new Bond is spot-on: Bond's lack of wit, the villain who is about as terrifying as an angry co-op worker, the incomprehensible action sequences.
Anthony Lane, the best reviewer I've ever read who (unfortunately) works sporadically, reviewed QUANTUM as well. While he clearly liked it more than Ebert, I love the way he summarizes the romance as "their sole point of contact is the kind of kiss that tennis partners exchange when they win a mixed doubles."
Posted by Andytown at 8:23 AM | Comments (0)
November 28, 2008
JUST LIKE THE MOONRAKER FLIES
Here's something to tide over the post-Thanksgiving Tedium
---- ANDY RANKS THE BOND MOVIES -----
22 DIE ANOTHER DAY
21 A VIEW TO A KILL
20 FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
19 THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
18 QUANTAM OF SOLACE
17 LICENSE TO KILL
16 OCTOPUSSY
15 THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
14 LIVE AND LET DIE
13 GOLDENEYE
12 THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
11 DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
10 CASINO ROYALE
9 TOMORROW NEVER DIES
8 MOONRAKER
7 YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
6 THUNDERBALL
5 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
4 DR. NO
3 GOLDFINGER
2 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
1 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
--- ANDY RANKS THE TOP 10 BOND SONGS -----
10 THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN - Lulu
9 TOMORROW NEVER DIES - Sheryl Crow
8 LIVE AND LET DIE - Paul McCartney
7 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE - Matt Monro
6 DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER - Shirley Bassey
5 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME - Carly Simon ("Nobody Does It Better")
4 MOONRAKER - Shirley Bassey
3 YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE - Nancy Sinatra
2 GOLDFINGER - Shirley Bassey
1 ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE - John Barry (instrumental)
--- ANDY RANKS THE TOP 10 VILLAINS (NOT HENCHMEN) -----
10 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasance), YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
9 Karl Stromberg, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
8 Eliot Carver, TOMORROW NEVER DIES
7 Emilio Largo, THUNDERBALL
6 Hugo Drax, MOONRAKER
5 Scaramanga, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
4 Dr. No, DR. NO
3 Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
2 Rosa Kreb, Grant, Kronstein, Blofeld, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
1 Auric Goldfinger, GOLDFINGER
--- ANDY RANKS THE TOP 10 BOND GIRLS (THIS LIST IS ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE AND POSSIBLY MISOGYNISTIC) ---
Vesper Lynd, CASINO ROYALE
Wai Lin, TOMORROW NEVER DIES
Pam Bouvier, LICENSE TO KILL
Holly Goodhead (ha!), MOONRAKER
Pussy Galore, GOLDFINGER
Kissy Suzuki, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
Honey Rider, DR. NO
Tracy Di Vicenzo, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
XXX, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
Tatiana Romanova, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
A few thoughts:
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is not only my favorite Bond movie; it's one of my favorite movies. It may be the best USA v. Russia spy movie, and its premises / villains / Macguffins make it unrelentingly suspenseful. Back in the old days of the James Bond marathons, I taped three movies off TNT - one of them was RUSSIA. However, the tape ran out as Bond and Tatiana were escaping on a train. So I did not get to see Bond's infamous fight with Grant (played by Robert Shaw, who later become an icon in JAWS) in the compartment of the train. My Dad told me about it, and it made me so excited that I had to rent it. This movie has gypsy fights, nerve gas, boat chases, train fights, a briefcase, a guy who escapes through a woman's eye, catacombs, an evil chess genius who is plotting the demise of the world, a lesbian with a knife in her shoe, a wonderful macguffin of a decoding machine, a base where bad guys train to become badder guys, an obstacle course where the object is to kill James Bond . . . amazing.
I recently rewatched THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and found it on many levels to be a perfect action movie. But (as with all the Roger Moore efforts) it lacks the urgency of the Connery movies. In his recent biography - which I really want to read - Moore said that he conceived the character of Bond as a "giggler and a lover." I can see that, and I think Moore plays that giggler well; he's a fit rogue, good with a cigarette lighter and impeccably tailored suits. I've always seen Roger Moore was a poor man's Richard Burton. But in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, Scaramanga accuses him of being a psychopath, and that just doesn't stick to a guy who giggles as much as more.
Regarding QUANTAM OF SOLACE . . . I don't know. I didn't do a whole lot for me, even though I was really excited about it. Its villain was all bark, little bite. There was a subvillain who existed solely so the Bond girl could have a reason to exist. The action was straight out of a Rube Goldberg cartoon.
Daniel Craig looks constipated most of the time he's playing Bond, or like he's thinking really really hard, which I translate as humorless, but most read as cool (For Timothy Dalton, this was a problem; for Craig, an asset). These movies have completely appropriated the aesthetic of the BOURNE identity movies, and to a lesser degree the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE series, except they still have to have Bond being Bond: wearing a tuxedo, cracking wise, and sleeping with impossibly good-looking attaches. Craig's grand idea (a smart one, apparently) is to have the archetypal, suave Bond be the act, while the ferocious, acrobatic Bond is the reality. In other words, a 180 from Roger Moore . . . this is the direction I think the series would have gone if George Lazenby had continued the role.
The story was uninteresting, but at least it snapped along quickly. As you can tell by my top ten villains list, I like a villain with a plan that involves somehow taking over the human race, and this guy just wanted to cause a drought. It ends with a pretty exciting fight in a hotel, but there's no real stakes. Unlike THE DARK KNIGHT, which deepened and made more relevant an old franchise, the latest Bond is passable entertainment.
Posted by Andytown at 10:19 AM | Comments (1)
November 24, 2008
CHINESE DEMOCRACY REVIEW FORTHCOMING
I'm about to listen to it. But until then, here's a blog post from October 28th, 2006 just to show how nutzo I have been about this album:
----------------
LATEST NEWS ON THE GUNS N' ROSES "CHINESE DEMOCRACY" ALBUM!
I cannot reveal my sources . . . okay, it's the Wikipedia.
First, I find it amusing that if you search for Chinese Democracy on the wiki, you get the actual page about the progress of liberalization/revolution in China, followed by this helpful note:
This article is about the political movement in China. For the Guns N' Roses album, see Chinese Democracy.
But here's some interesting quotes from the oddly exhaustive Wikipedia article:
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On April 1, 2006, critic Chuck Klosterman wrote a tongue-in-cheek review of Chinese Democracy at SPIN.com. It was an April Fool's Joke.
According to a March 2005 New York Times article, production costs for the album have reached $13 million, probably the most expensive recording ever. Mercuriadis, however, refuted the article in a letter and claimed that the newspaper's sources for the article had not been involved with the project for "six to nine years."
During a backstage interview at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards on August 31, 2006, Axl once again stated that Chinese Democracy will be released this year.
Sebastian Bach stated that Axl had played the album in full to poolside guests in his mansion after the September 23rd concert.
In September 2005, the Finnish band The Dogshit Boys released their fifth album, also bearing the name Chinese Democracy.
------
All this to say, in many circles, CHINESE DEMOCRACY carries the combined pop heftiness of the Elvis Comeback Special, The Beach Boys' 15 Big Ones, The Beatles playing on a rooftop, and the recent joint announcement by Bono and Eddie Vedder that they aren't going to suck anymore (OK the last one didn't happen, but, hey, I can dream).
Just put it into perspective: APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION was a legendary album. It is one of the greatest rock albums ever made - the ironic soundtrack of my fifth grade year*. GNR became a phenomenon, and had the audacity to release two CDs as a followup, both of which hit the top of the charts. Then they disappeared. Axl got fat, the rest of the guys got drugged up, Axl got drugged up, and fourteen years later, after that hideous Velvet Revolver fiasco, Guns and freaking Roses are back (minus the rest of the guys).
And according to Axl, certainly one of the most charismatic and disgusting band frontmen of my lifetime, we may have this album, which he has been talking about for the last eight years, in our hands by December.
Did I mention that Sebastian Bach is involved? Does this make you more excited, less excited, thoroughly creeped out? Discuss.
Things are going to change, I can feel it.
Get the Klosterman April Fools Joke here
* - Imagine a gangly, awkward, thick-glassesed eleven year old playing Gyromite and being nervous about going to church, rocking out to PARADISE CITY.
Posted by Andytown at 6:53 PM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2008
BYE PHIL
In 1995, a highly ranked Tennessee team was beating a higher ranked Florida team 30-21 at halftime in Knoxville. As Steve Spurrier walked off the field, he seemed unconcerned and typically cocky. The final score was 62-37. Danny Wuerrfel, with his navy haircut and pinpoint, zipline passing that fit Spurrier's "Let's put five receivers on the field and one of them will break coverage" tactic like a glove. After the game, Spurrier noted that he felt Florida could score every time they had the ball. This was a team that ended up playing for the National Championship, but Tennessee had Peyton Manning, the best corps of receivers he would ever have, and a defense full of future NFL players. This game is symbolic of the problem Phillip Fulmer poses: as my friend David Ozier says, he is a great guy, but he doesn't inspire fear in his opponents. In an extremely frustrating 1999 loss, I remember watching Spurrier draw a play up on the sidelines which, of course, worked. The camera went back and forth between him and Fulmer, where Fulmer looked bored and slightly confused. Spurrier adjusted, Fulmer didn't.
Phillip Fulmer seems like an incredibly nice man. From what I've heard, players love him - he finds a balance between being an authority and a paternal figure that most coaches never have. He is also such a Tennessee archetype - if Phillip Fulmer didn't exist in the East Tennessee celebrity world, we'd have to invent him. Despite some really stupid allegations, he has never discredited the program by allowing a scandal to happen under his watch. He is a good manager, a soft-spoken, friendly, likeable, and reassuring presence, a good role model, a family man who never flaunted his wealth and always reminded you of his roots. But he was not a great coach, and the last few years attest to that.
When faced with other brilliant football minds (Urban Meyer, Spurrier), Fulmer is outmatched. He should not shoulder all the blame for this, but the degree to which his coordinators have failed is a detail we will probably never really know - my assumption has always been that Fulmer micromanages everything and always has the last word (as, in theory, he probably should), as the basic offensive mentality never really changed under either Cutcliffe, Sanders, or Clawsen. But we'll never really know until someone writes a tell-all book. But my guess is all that finger-pointing will turn ceremonial, and Fulmer's move will be viewed as graceful rather than fully defeated.
I have watched pretty much every game Tennessee played on television in the last 16 years. I know a lot about John Milton; I can tell you what he was doing when was 13 and when he was 42. But there is very little I know more about than Tennessee football - it is an obsession I have often threatened to abandon, but of course that doesn't work with obsessions. The geography of my growing up is painted largely in orange (god, that was pretentious). I have watched the videotape of the 1999 National Championship game more times than I have read PARADISE LOST; it was a perfect moment when Tennessee's talent overwhelmed a very good team. Though they often struggled to beat teams they were clearly better than, that team was one of the most talented groups to ever take the field. Fulmer's game plans make me want to tear my hair out, but I don't hate him; I just shudder when I think of 12-7 victories over Vanderbilt (1995) when Peyton Manning is your quarterback or losing to LSU in the SEC Championship (2001) when all they had left was a second string quarterback and running back. Or going into the Auburn Game 3-0 (2004) and having no defensive change-up counter best running attack in the history of the SEC (and then losing to a bad Notre Dame team later that year). Or this season when Tennessee clearly has playmakers but no idea how to use them. Maybe the good does outweigh the bad, or at least maybe for a while it did, but at the moment the guys who pay for stadium expansions don't think so.
Fulmer's exit is necessary, and hopefully the future is bright. Tennessee does not have to fill this spot quickly to reassure its fan base (like LSU after Saban left, or any institution that has ever been involved with Larry Brown). They should wait until the end of the season and see who's available - and my guess is that it won't be a hard sell. But as fans, we should be patient with 2009, which will likely be a rough year; look what happened at Alabama last year, and look what's happening this year.
I'll be interested to see how the blogosphere and Vol publications respond. My guess is that they will share my sentiments (good guy; mediocre coach; wretched season), but there are definitely loyalists. We'll all sing Rocky Top again, but I have a feeling this event will divide Vol nation, and challenge the already questionable ability to recruit top talent.
But it is strange to think of a game where Fulmer is not draped in orange and looking like a pumpkin on the sideline.
Posted by Andytown at 12:42 PM | Comments (1)