Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Unused literary Bond scenes that need filming, Part 002



A couple of months ago, I told you about how I teamed up with the Artistic Licence Renewed site to discuss our favorite scenes from the Bond novels that haven't yet shown up in the movies. Then I totally forgot to mention when the second half of that article came out. So go read that!

Jump Tomorrow, Happy Idiot



When I posted my White Elephant Blogathon review of Jump Tomorrow, I had no idea that Tunde Adebimpe (the lead in that movie) is also the lead vocalist for TV on the Radio, which makes me like that band even more. The Speed Racer-inspired video for "Happy Idiot" is almost as awesome as the song itself. Enjoy!

Monday, June 29, 2015

What's your favorite comics character makeover?



Which comics characters do you like one of their later looks better than their initial look?

A bunch of comics readers (including me) answered that question on the Comics Reporter site a while back. Curious to know what you think.

The Yellow Nineties [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I'm loving the second season of Penny Dreadful, which is set in that glorious decade known as "The Yellow Nineties." I doubt many horror fans understand the significance of the color yellow in turn-of-the-century horror. We've all heard of The King in Yellow because Lovecraft praises Robert W Chambers as: "very genuine, though not without the typical mannered extravagance of the eighteen-nineties." We also know HPL appreciated Arthur Machen: "Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if any can hope to equal." He even points out Oscar Wilde's masterpiece: "Oscar Wilde may likewise be given a place amongst weird writers, both for certain of his exquisite fairy tales, and for his vivid Picture of Dorian Gray." So what happened in the 1890s that was so important? And why yellow?

To understand this you have to know that the Victorian world was crumbling, slowly, but surely. Technology like the rail system gave us the need for magazines, something to read on the train, but it also opened many doors that the Victorians feared. Doors like women's rights, workers' rights, looser sexual practices, more foreigners in England as trade expanded, and new ideas around aesthetics. Technology and commerce came from Germany and America, while artistic and sexual ideas came from France. Here's where the yellow comes in.

French novels of an explicit nature were sold in yellow wrappers, the color version of the letters XXX today. Vincent van Gogh painted a still life called "Parisian Novels" displaying a pile of yellow-covered books. This should not be surprising, for Impressionism in painting, like Naturalism in writing, were the enemies of Victorian bourgeois Romanticism. These radical approaches, along with the Pessimism of Oscar Wilde and the Fin-de-Siecle school (whose ideals included perversity, artificially, egotism, and curiosity) under Aubrey Beardsley, also attacked traditional forms, but from different angles. The Old School was under attack on many fronts and the banner of the enemy was yellow.

The men who led the charge in England along with Beardsley were American editor Henry Harland and John Lane, co-founder of the Bodley Head publishing house. Together they created The Yellow Book, a magazine of supposed illicit nature that has a reputation that is much bigger than its actual contents. The publication ran from April 1894 to April 1897 (the complete run is in PDF). Beardsley was "let go" partway through the run,but the contents are pretty uniform despite this. John Lane was willing to exploit the title's supposed evil reputation to sell copies, but he never really allowed Beardsley to go wild. Lane had to peruse every Bearsdley illustration for hidden naughtiness. The artist defied his critics (especially in Punch) by publishing three images in the third issue, two under pseudonyms. The critics attacked the drawing with his name on it, but praised the other two.

So where does horror come in? The Yellow Book published no great amount of horror stories, though it did publish works by authors who have written in the genre, such as Henry James, AC Benson, HB Marriott Watson, R Murray Gilchrist, John Buchan, Vernon Lee, WB Yeats, as well as fantasy writers E Nesbit, Max Beerbohm, Richard Garnett, and Kenneth Grahame. Perhaps the most strongly identified was Oscar Wilde, who never appeared in the magazine at all. Wilde had published his horror/art thesis, The Picture of Dorian Gray five years earlier. At his trial in 1895, he appeared in court holding a yellow book and many thought it was the magazine of that name. But it was actually a French novel. He was released in 1897 before becoming an exile on the Continent, living under the name "Sebastian Melmoth," after the Gothic character.

1895 was a most important year for horror. John Lane published Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan," which was both a high-water mark for horror fiction as well as a mini-sensation when critics tore at it for its sexual content. It established Machen, but also tied him to the "Yellow Nineties." In America, in the same year, Robert W Chambers published The King in Yellow, a collection of weird stories and sketches from his travels to Paris. One story in particular resonated with horror fans, "The Yellow Sign" (there's that color again!) and would inspire HPL in creating his Cthulhu Mythos. The King in Yellow is supposedly a play that shows up in the different stories. The play is so terrifying and bizarre that it drives readers mad. Can there be much doubt that The Yellow Book played some part in Chambers' creation?

The tempests of the 1890s passed along with much of the Victorian Age as the Boer War, then World War I, smashed expected norms to pieces. The Jazz Age found HP Lovecraft and his friends writing horror tales for amateur magazines, and just a little later, for the pulps. The Cthulhu Mythos acquired the classics of the past from these Yellow Nineties authors along with others like Algernon Blackwood, HG Wells, and Lord Dunsany. HPL gave us the yellow-wrapped priests of Leng as well as the terrible book filled with cursed knowledge. I should think, if credit was due, The Necronomicon would come in a yellow wrapper.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

7 Days in May | Inside Out



Didn't get a lot in this past week, but I did go see Inside Out. Although I have to admit that I wasn't excited about it after that trailer with the dinner table scene.



Ninety minutes of stereotyped dialogue between emotions didn't interest me. But enough people raved about it that I decided to give it a look. I'm usually not as crazy over Pixar films as a lot of my friends are, so I kept my expectations low, but I also understood that maybe that was just a lousy trailer that focused too much on one, out-of-context scene. And yep, that's the case.

Inside Out is wonderful. I don't want to have to rank my favorite Pixar films, but it's as great as anything they've done. It's not only funny and has a lot of heart, it's also very wise about the value of emotions. All of our emotions. We're often tempted to want to cheer up people we care about when they're feeling sad, but Inside Out points out that sadness isn't just a useful feeling, it's also a beautiful one. If you've ever seriously grieved and experienced well-meaning people trying to put a positive spin on whatever you're mourning, you know what I mean. Sometimes, you just need to allowed to feel freaking sad.

There's a lot else to be said about the movie, but just go to Rotten Tomatoes and read some of the many positive reviews. They all dissect and praise it better than I can. Just wanted to add my voice to the chorus.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Music



During the production of For Your Eyes Only, John Barry was still in tax exile from the UK. He'd been able to work on Moonraker, because it was made in Paris, but FYEO returned the production team to Britain, meaning that Barry was back out. To replace him, he recommended Bill Conti, the man behind the amazing Rocky theme, so that's who Broccoli and Wilson hired.

For the title song, Conti teamed up with lyricist Mick Leeson. I can't find much about Leeson's career before this, but he'd go on to work with Sheena Easton quite a bit after. He and Conti worked on a couple of variations on the song with input from Maurice Binder who always liked to have the title said early in the song so he could put it on screen at the same time. There was also a version that Blondie submitted, and it sounds like they were considered, but only if they played the Conti/Leeson song. They passed and ended up releasing their own song on their next album, The Hunter.



At United Artists' suggestion, Sheena Easton was hired to sing "For Your Eyes Only." She'd just had a big hit with "Morning Train" and she totally fit the easy-listening, soft-rock vibe that the Bond films were in love with at the time. The song isn't horrible, but it's too sentimental and earnest. I don't like it. I'm not a huge fan of the Blondie song either, but it's at least got blood pumping through it.

To go with the song, Binder basically made a music video. For Your Eyes Only predates the debut of MTV by about a month, but music videos were already becoming a big deal thanks to USA Network's Video Concert Hall. The FYEO credits are mostly interested in Sheena Easton's face as she sings the song with generic silhouettes running around doing the same stuff they always do in Bond credits. There's also a water theme to the imagery, teasing at and leading into the opening scene of the movie where the spy boat with the ATAC is sunk by a mine. It's mostly weaksauce.

Conti doesn't use the Bond Theme as much as I'd like, but he uses it more than Barry does. A lot of the action in FYEO is set to this weird, disco-y music that sounds like its from a '70s or '80s TV cop show. During the cold open, when Bond's hanging from the helicopter, Conti mixes that music with the Bond Theme, but it's not satisfying. There's also a short, wa-wa guitar version of the Bond Theme after Lisl's death when Bond is captured. That seems like a weird spot to put it since Bond isn't doing anything cool right then, but it works as an "oh crap, they don't know who they're messing with, they're going to get it" moment. Even though don't get what's coming to them right then, it makes it very clear that they're going to later.

The best uses of the Bond Theme though are during the mini-sub trip and when Bond finally gets up to the monastery after killing the last guard. The mini-sub is as close to a gadgety vehicle as we get in FYEO and the monastery scene is when Bond is finally going to make the bad guys pay. Great moments.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. You Only Live Twice
5. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
6. Live and Let Die
7. Dr No
8. Thunderball
9. Goldfinger
10. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia with Love
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Live and Let Die
9. Moonraker
10. The Man with the Golden Gun

Friday, June 26, 2015

For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Villains



The biggest flaw of For Your Eyes Only is that it has a dull villain. Kristatos is smart - I like how he uses Columbo to throw Bond off the scent, and how he tricks Melina into coming to the Alps so that he can bump her and Bond off at the same time - but he's just not that interesting or cool. Julian Glover (General Veers from Empire Strikes Back, and of course Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) plays him as coldly arrogant, so it's difficult to connect with him. His interest in sponsoring Bibi's Olympic career could have been humanizing, but even that turns cynical and sour by the end. And for no good reason.

And really... Kristatos isn't the film's actual villain anyway. He's just a very powerful henchman.



Emile Locque has a great look for a cold-blooded assassin. He doesn't have anything to prove; he's just frightening as hell.

I also love how he sub-contracts the Havelock's deaths to Gonzales, presumably to protect Kristatos' involvement. And then how he stays detached when the crap hits the fan at Gonzales' estate.



Erich Kriegler looks like your typical big, blonde, thuggish henchman in the tradition of Grant and Hans. He's got a lot more backstory than Hans though. He's introduced as an Olympian friend of Bibi, but we quickly learn that she doesn't really know him and that he's standoffish in general. Then we find out that he's actually an assassin and we assume he's working for Columbo and then Kristatos, but nope! He's a KGB agent working for Gogol. Which leads us to...



This is an interesting role for Gogol. He's been in two movies before this and both times he was a friendly ally, united with Britain to bring down an independent threat. This time, he's the Big Bad. He makes some noises early on about not taking a direct role in the search for the MacGuffin, saying that he'll simply buy it if it becomes available. But then he immediately puts out the order to contact Russia's "friend in Greece," who turns out to be Kristatos. So he is responsible for everything that happens in the movie. He hires Kristatos, who has the Havelocks killed and starts looking for the ATAC. Gogol even sends a KGB assassin to assist Kristatos in all the murder. Sounds like a pretty direct role to me.

Not that I'm complaining. The script and especially Walter Gotell do a great job of making him the villain without compromising the goodwill he's built up in Spy and Moonraker. He runs the KGB. Of course he's going to end up on the opposite side from Bond occasionally. If anything, FYEO helps his character out by showing that he's not a big marshmallow. But his history with and fondness for Bond come through even here and I love his reaction to the final détente scenario. Easy come; easy go.

He also doesn't ever screw up. He almost gets exactly what he wants. Except for a ridiculous coincidence where someone said the wrong thing in front of a parrot, he and Kristatos would have won.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. General Gogol (For Your Eyes Only)
8. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)
9. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
10. Hugo Drax (Moonraker)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
6. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
9. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
10. Tee Hee (Live and Let Die)



For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Women



I started talking about Melina Havelock some yesterday, because I love her and I love how real her relationship with Bond feels.

Carole Bouquet can't do big emotions very well, which is a problem when the moment calls for her to be seething with rage, but she's great at the little stuff. I love the fun she's having during the car chase. I love her conflicting emotions about whether to let Bond help her or just do things on her own. That's a complicated decision and I can see her struggling with it the entire movie. She also does "sad" extremely well.

She never turns stupid and she's a vital part of the film right up until the end. She storms the monastery right alongside the men and is crucial in taking it. My one regret is that we don't get to see whether or not she would have killed Kristatos. The movie does a lot of work to get her to that point and then chickens out at the last minute. That's too bad.

I usually try not to talk much about the attractiveness of the women in the series, because I don't want this to be about that, but I'm making an exception for Bouquet. She's so beautiful, I can't even stand it. I'm not going to pretend that's not a huge part of why I love her and this movie, but it makes me so happy that the rest of the film is also awesome.





Okay. Moving on...



Bibi Dahl isn't really a Bond Girl. Not if you only count women whom Bond actually makes out with. But she so very much wants to be and it's great to see Bond show some restraint for once in his horndog life. His relationship with her is perfectly summed up in the line, "You get your clothes on and I'll buy you an ice cream cone."

Here's the hilarious thing though. Actress Lynn-Holly Johnson is only one year younger than Carole Bouquet.



I've always had a problem with Lisl von Schlaf, but I've warmed to her the last couple of times I've seen FYEO. Mostly, I think my problem is that by this point in the movie I'm fully invested in Bond and Melina as a couple. This whole interaction feels like it belongs in another movie.

But there's a really lovely part when she lets her accent slip. Moore is so wonderfully real and casual with her when he asks if it's from Manchester; then she drops her guard and admits that she's from Liverpool. It's just this sweet, human moment between two people who are supposed to be playing each other, but find a genuine connection in the process. Bravo, For Your Eyes Only.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Melina Havelock (For Your Eyes Only)
3. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
4. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
5. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
6. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
7. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)
8. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
9. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
10. Honey Rider (Dr. No)

Thursday, June 25, 2015

For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Bond

Actors and Allies



I've read that Roger Moore didn't enjoy making this movie and I believe it. It's not the kind of Bond flick he's known for and I expect that he liked making those kind better. But he's great in it. It works really well that he's getting a little older, even though Carole Bouquet (Melina) is 30 years younger than he is. He's still super active (that ski chase is amazing!), a handsome man, and I buy that she's temporarily attracted him as an anchor point in the chaos her life has become. Especially as a surrogate father figure after the death of her dad.

Bond isn't just a potential lover to her, he's a mentor. In fact, he's that first, offering her counsel on the price of revenge; something he knows a lot about. And I absolutely love that at the very end, he's going to let her make the decision about whether or not to murder Kristatos. It's taken out of both of their hands by circumstance, but it's important to me that Bond isn't the one to step in and deny her what she's spent the whole movie looking for. He obviously cares a great deal about her; enough to let her make her own choices.

More than just about any other Bond movie, his romantic relationship with Melina builds naturally (The Living Daylights and Casino Royale are other exceptions). There's even a really lovely montage of Bond's tagging along as Melina shops the Grecian markets for supplies for her crew. It's not a love to last the ages or anything, but it's believable and I appreciate the work that went into them as a couple.

I also like the way Bond's age factors into his reactions to Bibi. And he's back to flirting with Moneypenny, but it's mellowed out a lot. There's no danger in it, which is kind of sad, but it also makes sense that at some point these two would move past the flirting and just be friends. However, there's also something sad in the way Moneypenny starts putting on makeup when she notices that it's time for Bond's appointment. I can willfully re-interpret that as something else, but it's clearly supposed to be her holding a torch for Bond. Really, their whole scene together has an air of melancholy about it that I don't care for.

Moving on to Bond's other allies, this is the first movie in the series without Bernard Lee. He died of cancer, sadly, before they got around to shooting his scenes, but the script was already written and filming had already begun on other parts of the film. To work around his absence, they rewrote the story to explain that M is "on leave" and that Bill Tanner, M's Chief of Staff, is filling in. In the novels, Tanner is Bond's best friend in the Service and there's some of that camaraderie here, too. Tanner is more relaxed than M ever was and when he tells Bond to "try not to muck it up again," he's probably teasing, although it's a little hard to read that line.

The reason Tanner might be serious is because the Minister of Defense is also involved. The only "again" Tanner can be referring to is Melina's killing the Cuban assassin before Bond could question him, but that seems unfair to put on Bond. Except that the Minister already doesn't care for Bond thanks to the all times that Bond's embarrassed him one way or another. In FYEO, the Minister seems to know that Bond's a good agent, but he's still chilly towards him. And that's probably not going to change after the situation between Margaret Thatcher and the parrot.

Q's got a new assistant named Smithers who shows up again in Octopussy. There's not much to him here other than Bond knows his name and - more importantly - he's played by Jeremy "Boba Fett" Bulloch.

In the field, Bond's first ally is a fellow spy named Luigi Ferrara. He's competent, but mostly inconsequential and only there for exposition and to provide some pathos when he's killed. I like him though. He's a nerdy little guy and physically, he kind of reminds me of Roman Polanski.

Bond's biggest ally turns out to be Columbo, aka The Dove. Like in "Risico," we start off thinking he's the bad guy, but he turns into one of Bond's most memorable friends. He's one of those Fleming characters like Kerim Bey or Marc-Ange Draco who are not only Bond's pals, but sort of mentor/father figures to him. What's interesting in FYEO though is that the actor who plays Columbo (Topol from Fiddler on the Roof) is eight years younger than Roger Moore. He's letting his gray hair show though, so the age difference seems less and he and Bond treat each other as peers. It's a cool relationship and another reason I like older Moore in this movie. He's playing his age and it's great.

Another cool thing about Colombo is his obsession with pistachios. He uses them once as sort of an impromptu warning system, but they aren't in the movie as a plot device. They're just a character quirk and it's stuff like that that makes me love FYEO so much.

One last sort-of ally is Bibi's trainer, Brink. She's just a background character for most of the film, but when things get tough at the end, she turns out to be loyal and great. I like her a lot.

Best Quip



"That'll come in handy," regarding Smithers' fake-cast weapon.

Worst Quip



"He had no head for heights," after Locque goes over a cliff.

Gadgets



True to it's scaled-back tone, FYEO doesn't do much with gadgets. In fact, it comments on this by having Bond's white, "burglar protected" Lotus blow up right before a chase, forcing Bond and Melina to escape in a tiny and cute, but unglamorous Citroën 2CV. Q's able to repair and repaint it, but Bond never uses any of its gadgets. The only field gadget he ever uses in the movie is a pager watch with a two-way radio transmitter.

The biggest gadget of the film is the Indentigraph (inspired by the slightly lower-tech Identicast system in the novel Goldfinger) that Bond and Q use to identify Locque. I like how Bond walks into the Identigraph room with Q and immediately grabs a tape reel to load up. He's clearly used the system numerous times.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Glastron CV23HT (Moonraker)
5. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
6. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
7. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)
9. Attaché case (From Russia with Love)
10. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)

Bond's Best Outfit



I really like Bond's mountain climbing outfit from the end of the movie, too, but he's too dapper in this blue, double-breasted number with brass buttons. Reminds me of his Naval uniform.

Bond's Worst Outfit



Sunny yellow short-sleeves with high-waisted pants. Hi, Dad! (That's a joke. My dad never wore anything that dorky.)

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

For Your Eyes Only (1981) | Story



Plot Summary

A MacGuffin goes missing and Bond has to locate it before a) the Soviets do, and b) a beautiful avenger kills everyone who knows where it is.

Influences

Moonraker was a huge financial success, but producers Cubby Broccoli and his stepson Michael G Wilson realized that there was no way to go bigger. Instead, they intentionally went smaller; back to basics. They didn't invite back Christopher Wood - the man behind the over-the-top scripts for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker - but brought back original Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum. He and Wilson worked on the story together, merging two of Fleming's short stories, "For Your Eyes Only" and "Risico."

There's no super villain in For Your Eyes Only with a mad scheme to extort money from world powers or destroy the planet. It's a simple Cold War spy tale and it is fantastic. I enjoy some of the craziness of the Moore era, but that's not the Bond I'm most interested in seeing. Give me classic, close-to-literary Bond any day.

For Your Eyes Only uses several elements right out of the short stories, like Melina and Bond's meeting as they both infiltrate a remote estate to assassinate the man who killed Melina's parents. The opening scene from "Risico" is also played out very faithfully, including Kristatos' mistaking Bond for a narcotics agent and Colombo's staging a fight with Lisl. Later, when Bond tries to get information from Lisl, he even pretends to be a writer like he does in Fleming.

My favorite Fleming homage though is pulled from the novel Live and Let Die when Bond and Melina (Solitaire in the book) are dragged behind the villain's boat as shark bait. That's a great, memorable Fleming scene and it was a shame it didn't get used in that movie.

There are some weird coincidences attached to that scene though. Like how the sharks don't really go for Bond and Melina, even though Bond is leaking blood badly. They sure do like that non-wounded guard the second he goes overboard though. And is it a thing to leave your SCUBA tank at the bottom of the sea in case you need it later to get away from bad guys? I don't know anything about SCUBA. Maybe that's common practice.

And speaking of coincidences, how nice is it that the parrot just happened to pick up and mimic the very information that Bond needed to continue his investigation?

Those are small complaints though in my favorite Roger Moore movie. Director John Glen, freshly promoted from editor on the series, does a great job building suspense and keeping things logical. I love the way he does the sequence towards the end where Bond's hanging on a cliff face as a bad guy pounds out the pitons keeping Bond there. Each time a piton is removed, Glen shows the strain on the others. It makes me nervous every single time. And the underwater attacks by the JIM diving suit and mini-sub are legitimately scary thanks to weird camera angles and POV shots.

How Is the Book Different?

The movie is shockingly faithful to the short stories it's based on. I'm amazed at how seamlessly the script puts them together. "Risico" is the main plot with "For Your Eyes Only" mostly just adding complications to it. The big differences are 1) the addition of the ATAC MacGuffin and 2) Bond's relationship with Melina.

Melina is named Judy in the short story and she's horrible. She starts off all cool and tough, but falls apart at the end, not able to handle the reality of revenge because, you know, girls and feelings. Melina is amazing and badass to the very end. There's a question about whether or not revenge is what she needs, but I don't read that as a gender thing. It's more like a civilian thing: the same advice that Batman gives Robin in Batman Forever.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Fleming's Bond isn't quite as brutal as I remember him. He's actually squeamish about killing in cold blood. But he's still a much harsher character than the wise-cracking movie Bond and that's especially true compared to Roger Moore's campy version.

Except for this movie where Moore kicks Locque's car off a cliff out of revenge. That moment is right up there with Connery's "You've had your six" and it's my favorite thing Moore's Bond ever did.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



The one goofy thing in For Your Eyes Only is that hockey fight. I like the fight itself, but it's stupid that someone's keeping score every time Bond knocks a goon into the goal. Very small potatoes compared to Pigeon Double-Take though.

Cold Open



The cold open sequence sets up the whole retro feel that FYEO is going for. It starts with Bond at Tracy's grave (which nicely has her death as the same year that OHMSS came out) and then has him picked up by a Universal Export helicopter. Unfortunately, the pilot is actually working for a wheelchair-bound Blofeld.

Because Kevin McClory owned the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE, neither is mentioned by name, but it's clearly Bond's arch-enemy complete with bald head and white cat. Incidentally, Blofeld's body is played by John Hollis; better known as Lobot from The Empire Strikes Back. His voice is Robert Rietty, who also dubbed Emilio Largo in Thunderball.

The FYEO teaser has a stunt, but it's way toned down from the parachute sequences of Spy and Moonraker. Bond has to climb out of the back of a helicopter and work his way to the front while in flight, so it's still pretty exciting, but the most memorable parts of the sequence are the references to Bond's past.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. Moonraker
3. Thunderball
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. Goldfinger
6. The Man with the Golden Gun
7. For Your Eyes Only
8. From Russia With Love
9. Diamonds Are Forever
10. You Only Live Twice

Movie Series Continuity



For Your Eyes Only may have a deliberately retro feel, but it doesn't go after nostalgia as desperately as On Her Majesty's Secret Service did. At least, not after the opening credits. One major callback to early days though is that Bond's hat rack trick is back. I'd forgotten how much I missed it. Another is a scene where Roger Moore plays baccarat, which makes me realize that we didn't get a lot of card playing from Moore.

Most of the continuity though is with the other Moore films. The Minister of Defense has returned to represent the Establishment that Bond's working for and Gogol is also back. His first scene is even in the same office where he briefed Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me.

A less welcome bit is when the Cuban assassin identifies Bond as a Double-O agent simply by looking at his gun. And even worse than that is Q's yet again going into the field, but not even to deliver equipment. He simply shows up undercover as a priest to receive some intelligence from Bond. That's way outside of his job description.

But most of the gags are understated compared to the last couple of movies. The Italian wine guy from Spy and Moonraker makes his final appearance on a patio during the big ski chase, but there's no looking at his bottle this time. It's just a cameo for sharp-eyed viewers. The silliest bit is when Margaret Thatcher tries to talk with Bond at the end, but actual thought went into that joke and it makes me laugh every time.

Even Know-It-All Bond is toned down. He shows a solid knowledge of wine and expresses his preference during dinner with Kristatos, but he doesn't pull out any weird, arcane knowledge the entire movie.


Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Noel Tuazon likes to Kill All Monsters



I forgot to share this great drawing that Noel Tuazon made for my birthday last month. If you don't know Noel, he's the amazingly talented artist on Elk's Run and Tumor. Both of those are awesome thrillers written by Josh Fialkov and you should check them out.

Thanks again, Noel!

Kill All Monsters: "Ministry of Robots" Pt 2 in August!


The second installment of Kill All Monsters: "Ministry of Robots" is coming to Dark Horse Presents #13 on August 19. Make sure to let your store know you want one!

 Here's the full solicitation:
Dark Horse Presents #13

Alex de Campi (W), Ken Pisani (W), Rich Woodall (W), Fabian Rangel Jr. (W), Michael May (W), Anthony Zicari (W), Jerry Ordway (A/Cover), Arturo Lauria (A), Craig Rousseau (A), Pablo Clark (A), Jason Copland (A), and Oscar Capristo (A)

On sale Aug 19
FC, 48 pages
$4.99
Ongoing

Alex de Campi and Jerry Ordway's Semiautomagic returns! Occult professor Alice Creed has rules when it comes to magic, and she's broken them—and breaking mystical rules never goes well!

Plus, new chapters of Michael May and Jason Copland's Kill All Monsters, Anthony Zicari and Oscar Capristo's Grimm Arcane, Ken Pisani and Arturo Lauria's Colonus, and Rich Woodall and Craig Rousseau's Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl! Fabian Rangel Jr. and Pablo Clark's Black Past concludes!

Monday, June 22, 2015

City Pages at MSP Comic Con 2015


Nerdy Fun with Comic Artists at MSP Comic Con 2015 from Voice Media Group on Vimeo.

Forgot to show you this great video that City Pages made at MSP Comic Con back in May. It's a great look at what makes that show so special, and at about 00:53 there are a couple of shots of my wife Diane painting some faces.

Among the excellent interviews is one by our friend Chandra Reyer  and her amazing, awesome daughter Gillian. If we ever start having guests on Dragonfly Ripple, Chandra and Gillian have to be the first ones. That's some A+ nerd parenting going on right there.

The Sword of Charlton, Part 2: Anthologia [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

Charlton beat Marvel and DC to the sword-and-sorcery punch when they released Adventures of the Man-God Hercules and his back-up sidekick, "Thane of Bagarth" in 1967-68. But this wasn't the last of the sword-and-sorcery tales at Charlton. Like the Warren titles Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, and DC's House of Mystery and Witching Hour, Charlton's "mystery" lines would irregularly feature a sword-and-sorcery tale starting with "The Promise" in Ghostly Tales #101 (January 1973), written and drawn by San Ho Kim. A Korean soldier fleeing the Japanese takes shelter in a house with twin sisters, agreeing to marry one of them. The ten Japanese soldiers die by the sisters' swords, the first sister disappearing to return to her grave. It is only then that the soldier sees who he has married. The second sister is terribly scarred. The soldier kills his new wife and flees through a graveyard. A cold, dead hand grabs him from a grave, allowing Japanese soldiers to find and kill him. Some claim "The Bushi" by Sitoshi Hirota and Masaichi Mukaide in Star*Reach #7 (January 1977) was the first manga to be published in America , but "The Promise" predates it by four years, making it a significant contribution by Charlton.

With Conan in full swing, the heroic fantasy content at Charlton becomes more definite with Midnight Tales #4 (July 1973) and "The Tower Maiden," written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Tom Sutton. A hero named Harvard battles his way through demons and ogres to get to a maiden in a tower, only to find she is made of wax. He takes her anyway, figuring he can use her as a candle. The best thing about this flippant tale is Tom Sutton's artwork, perhaps the best sword-and-sorcery drawing in Charlton's run.

In the same issue was "The Wizard's Wife" written by George Wildman and drawn by Wayne Howard in his usual mock-Wally Wood style. Alekhine, a wizard-prince, goes in search of a worthy wife and falls for the un-magical Melanie, the daughter of a baker. His family protests but the problem is solved when Alek realizes that Melanie doesn't bake bread but magical babies. Howard deserves a note here in terms of creator's rights. His name was featured on every cover of Midnight Tales. The idea of a hat trick of stories based on a theme as well as the characters in the frame of the comic were all his idea, and he was credited for it, a first in the comics industry. Howard inked Val Mayerik's Thongor in Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #26 that same year.

"Who?" in Midnight Tales #5 (September 1973) was written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton. Keen the Barbarian is challenged to figure out which of three women is the real Sylvia. The other two are demonesses who plot his death. The story feels like a sword-and-sorcery parody with the barbarian crying over his broken sword and the man riding with three versions of the same woman on his horse. Joe Staton uses a swipe from "The Spell of the Dragon" from Marvel's Chamber of Chills #2 (October 1972), a story featuring John Jakes' Brak the Barbarian, the probable victim of the satire. Nick Cuti would write the lion's share of sword-and-sorcery strips up to 1976.

"Sludge" in Midnight Tales #7 (June 1974) was again written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton. An incompetent wizard named Sorbius discovers a protoplasmic creature named Goo. The wizard promises to defend the city from invading barbarians with the blob-like creature. The battle is lost because Sorbius manages to make a successful love potion, and Goo and Sorbius' daughter, Regina, fall in love, missing the battle.

Midnight Tales #11 (February 1975) was the most sword-and-sorcery-filled issue of all, having only heroic fantasy tales in it. These three started with "Orion," written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Don Newton, in which Zeus' gamekeeper destroys a rival for the hand of Clora by giving false witness. Clora gets her revenge by spurring Orion to shoot one of Zeus' deer for her. The deer turns out to be Clora, a were-deer, and Orion faces execution for his underhandedness.

"Jason" also written by Nick Cuti and drawn by Joe Staton, rewrites the tale of Jason and his Argonauts. They land on an island inhabited not by a one-eyed cyclops, but Argus, a giant with a thousand eyes. To rescue a captive woman and her baby, Jason challenges the ogre to a duel on a sunny day. The Argonauts blind the creature with their shiny shields. It is only after they have killed the giant that they find out the woman is the giant's wife and the baby, like his father, is many-eyed. Nick Cuti got his start in sword-and-sorcery with "The Caliega" (January 1970) in Vampirella #3 and would go back to Warren in 1976, penning one last sword-and-sorcery tinted tale, "E Train to Flushing" (Creepy #94, January 78) with old-time Charlton artist, Dick Giordano, before moving onto editing at DC and then cartoons in Hollywood.

"The Oracle", written and drawn by Wayne Howard, is a tale of Leah, a girl who can forecast the future. As a child she sees Socrates' death by hemlock. She learns she can not change the future, only see it. Because of this she spurns friendships, but falls for the handsome athlete, Menelaos. She sends him away, refusing to accept his marriage proposal. When she thinks she sees him falling to his death, she is wrong. He is only diving off some rocks. Declaring her love, they wed, Leah fortelling their happy family.

"The Malediction" from Ghostly Tales #114 (April 1975) was written and drawn by Pat Boyette. This clever tale has a ruthless warlord and his advisor trapped in a tower because a guardian monster lurks outside. Boyette keeps you guessing whether the creature is real or only a figment of the imagination, created by a spell.

"The Fly" in Midnight Tales #13 (June 1975) was written and drawn by Wayne Howard. Lord Simon lures away Sarena, the beautiful daughter of the wizard Aldon. When she refuses to marry him, he kills her. Ever since Simon's visit to Aldon's swamp he has been plagued with flies. He has his servants kill all the bugs in the castle. Aldon appears for his revenge, turning Simon into a fly. When a servant sees him, he is quickly squashed.

"Distress" from Scary Tales #3 (December 1975) was written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Mike Zeck. Typical to Charlton formula, a warrior climbs a tower in pursuit of a damsel and gets bitten for his trouble. In this case, the damsel is a vampire. Kupperberg would later create Arion, Lord of Atlantis for DC in 1982 and write the adaptation of Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away in 1985.

Midnight Tales #16 (January 1976) features "Ambia," written and drawn by Wayne Howard, an interesting anomaly, a sword-and-sorcery tale without a horror-style surprise ending. The tale chronicles Ambia's war against the evil Vandalkragg, a domain of ogres and monsters. She defeats them by running a guerrilla war against the fiends and finally killing Zagga, their king, herself. This tale was most likely inspired by Wally Wood's The King of the World that was published in parts as early as 1968. Wood was inspired by The Lord of the Rings and Howard's tale also has a Tolkien feel.

"Oberyll," also written and drawn by Wayne Howard, appeared in the same issue. In Atlantis, the harpies of the Fire-Lord steal victims for sacrifice. The king will do nothing to protect his people, but a hero steps forward: Oberyll. The shipwright, armed only with a dagger, goes to the volcano mountain to see what becomes of the taken. Finding only death, he escapes, but damages the fire fortress, setting off a terrible chain reaction. He flees back to the city to warn the people to build ships and flee, but the king has him stoned, and all the Atlanteans die.

"Thief's Gold" in Monster Hunters #5 (April 1976) was written by Joe Gill and drawn by Carlos Vila. A wizard desiring gold has to sacrifice the local villagers to feed a dragon conjured by an ancient god. After the sacrifice, the god sets the dragon on the wizard. It is a slight and frankly disappointing story.

"A Fitting Wife" from Monster Hunters #7 (September 1976) was written by Joe Molloy and drawn by Enrique Nieto. A cruel general tries to take a witch for his harem and gets turned into a dog. After getting changed back, the general takes the witch to his caliph for punishment. The witch beguiles the caliph and the general goes to the torture chamber. The next morning the caliph is found turned into a pig.

The straight sword-and-sorcery stories were done by 1976. It strikes me as odd that one artist who was so important in the early Warren magazines never did any sword-and-sorcery for Charlton. This was Steve Ditko. Unlike Tom Sutton, who did one strip, Ditko gravitated towards modern horror. Perhaps he felt he was done with sword-and-sorcery, having drawn and written Stalker for four issues at DC in 1975 with pal Wally Wood.

By the 1980s, Charlton was on shaky ground financially. To generate some cash they reprinted most of the Hercules issues in Charlton Classics #1-9 (April 1980-August 1981) along with select tales from the anthologies, including "Orion." "Jason," "Oberyll," "The Fly," "Sludge," and "Sir Lancelot and the Haunted Tower." Thane of Bagarth also received two reprint issues in 1985. But before the company folded, it did produce one last set of sword-and-sorcery inspired stories, each containing a fair amount of science fiction elements. These included "Prophecy of Doom" in Charlton Bullseye #3 (September 1981), written and drawn by Ian Carr. In this tale, Janus and Grundar go up against the sorceress Queen Shalastra, with the magic-user losing. The rest of the issue contained science fiction stories.

Charlton Bullseye #5 (January 1982) featured only one story, "Warhund," written by Brad Mielke and drawn by Charles Truog. Warhund races home because his father is dying, but along the way he discovers the truth about his lineage (being descended from space visitors) and his mission to protect the entire planet. The lettering in this issue was poorly done, a sign of Charlton's decline.

Charlton Bullseye #9 (September 1982) gave us "Bludd," written by James Waley and Gene Day and drawn by Gene Day, Vince Marchesano, Peter Hsu and Viktor Laszlo. Bludd, a Viking mercenary trades places with a man from the 31st Century to become a champion against the tyrant Armageddon. The story was begun in 1976 by Gene Day, but as the writer/editor explains the story it was originally planned for Orb, an independent comic that published mostly horror and SF. The editor compares it to Thundarr the Barbarian (which was created after the comic), a sad similarity that is all too true. When the magazine folded, most of the leftovers went to Mike Friedrich's Star*Reach and Ron Van Leeuwen's Andromeda, but "Bludd" lingered on unfinished. It was finally completed in 1982 by the gang. The story was published the month Gene Day passed away. Gene was important to sword-and-sorcery comics largely as a mentor to sword-and-sorcery parodist, Dave Sim, with his Swords of Cerebus.

And so sword-and-sorcery was done at Charlton. But there were plenty of other companies doing short sword-and-sorcery tales including Heavy Metal and Epic Magazine, "Slaine" in 2000 AD along with foreign language comics like Cimoc and Skorpio. Sword-and-sorcery comics continued merrily along in the Marvel mainstream as well as in independents like Warp's Elfquest and First's Michael Moorcock's Elric and Hawkmoon, but they all owed a debt to that poor cousin, Charlton, who lead the way.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

7 Days in May | Jurassic Big Eyes of SHIELD

Jurassic World (2015)



I loved it. When I came out of the theater, I thought that I may have even liked it better than the first one. I eventually backed away from that, because I was forgetting how effective some of the scenes are in Jurassic Park, like the initial T-Rex attack and the raptors in the kitchen. But the first one didn't have Chris Pratt commanding a troop of velociraptors. Or Bryce Dallas Howard saving everyone's lives. Or Jake Johnson at all. Or a fully functioning, open-to-the-public theme park. And I like the kids in Jurassic World better than the kids in Jurassic Park (although the first ones were just fine). There are many ways that World is more of what I want out of this concept than Park is.

It's not a perfect movie. There are plenty of loose threads to pull at if you're inclined to do that. And I often am in a lot of films. Just not in ones as thoroughly entertaining as this. I don't think the problems are major ones anyway, but these actors fighting and partnering with dinosaurs in a working theme park is a thing that's so totally in my wheelhouse that I will gladly ignore anything that might prevent my enjoying it.

Big Eyes (2014)



Tim Burton's latest film does have a major problem though. It's based on the true story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), the wildly popular artist in the '50s and '60s who let her husband (Christoph Waltz) claim credit for her work. Sadly, Big Eyes isn't interested in the burning question I had, which is why Margaret not only let this happen, but was so invested in the lie that she tried to fool her own daughter into thinking that Margaret had given up painting and that Walter Keane was the only artist in the family.

Late, late in the movie, Margaret offers the explanation that she felt dominated and bullied into it, but that's not really how it plays out. Walter turns scary dominating towards the end, but that's when he feels that everything's falling apart for him. Earlier in the movie, when he develops the scheme and convinces Margaret to participate, he's all charm and smiles. But his charisma doesn't explain her total buy-in and none of the movie works for me without understanding that motivation.

Agents of SHIELD



As part of my Marvel re-watch, I'm giving Agents of SHIELD another go. I watched the first few episodes as they aired, but even though I didn't think it was a horrible show, it was tough to get excited about coming back for every week. It seems to reward binge-watching though. I still don't finish an episode all excited for the next one, but it's easier to get in the habit of watching it when I can see a new episode every night or two instead of having to remember every week.

None of that is great praise, but I'm only six episodes in and haven't hit the post-Winter Soldier episodes yet where it reportedly gets better. So far, I like the characters well enough, but none of them are super intriguing. I want to like Melinda May (Ming-Na Wen), but she's being kept mysterious for now, so it's hard to connect to her. The only character with any development so far is Skye (Chloe Bennet). I'm learning to like her, but she's not enough to carry the show. I'm ready for the rest of the team to become as interesting, if not more so.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Ranking the First Ten Bond Movies



I meant to do this before getting into Moonraker, but let's pause and rank the first ten Bond movies. Like last time, I'll do it two different ways.

First, I'm going to list them based on the accumulated rankings of the individual parts I've been measuring in this project: women, villains, theme song, cold open, gadgets, henchmen, and title sequence. There's a complicated, Top Secret algorithm for figuring that out and it assigns a total points value to each movie. Here's how they fall when measured that way. I'm including the points totals this time, too, so you can see how close to or far away from each other they are.

1. Thunderball (154 pts)
2. From Russia with Love (99 pts)
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (93 pts)
4. The Spy Who Loved Me (78 pts)
5. Goldfinger (64 pts)
6. The Man with the Golden Gun (63 pts)
7. Live and Let Die (48 pts)
8. Dr. No (46 pts)
9. You Only Live Twice (31 pts)
10. Diamonds Are Forever (24 pts)

I like looking at them that way, but it's not an accurate representation of how I feel about these movies. Last time, I ended up flipping the Top Two, because I realized that From Russia with Love is more than the sum of its individual parts. And I'm not ranking things like the plots themselves, actors' portrayals of Bond, or tone and pacing. Those are extremely important factors in overall quality.

Right away I can see that Dr. No is too low on the list. I may not like Honey or the Doctor as much as a lot of other characters in other movies, and there may not be as many gadgets or even a cold open at all, and the theme song is kind of clunky, but I love the rough feel of that movie and the energy of Connery's performance. It's still lower on my list than I would've ranked it before this project, but I've got to bump it up a few spots.

1. From Russia with Love
2. Thunderball
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
4. Dr. No
5. The Spy Who Loved Me
6. Goldfinger
7. The Man with the Golden Gun
8. Live and Let Die
9. You Only Live Twice
10. Diamonds Are Forever


Moonraker (1979) | Music



Like everything else about Moonraker, Maurice Binder largely repeats what he did in The Spy Who Loved Me. It's still a lot of acrobatic silhouettes tumbling in front of moody colors and lighting. But he does do some cool things to tie the ridiculous circus gag at the end of the teaser into the space theme of the rest of the movie. As the credits open, Binder gives us a net that's catching silhouettes of falling circus people and props, evoking the chaos of Jaws' crashing into their performance. Those silhouettes are then joined and replaced by naked women that fly and tumble as if they were in zero gravity.

Binder uses more backgrounds than he did in The Spy Who Loved Me and they're all space-related: a cloud-covered moon, Earth from orbit, and stars in space, for instance. One of my favorite things isn't a background, but a flying woman whose silhouette fills with blue and red neon lines like an airline logo. A puzzling moment though is when a woman balances on a faceted, glass ball. I assume that's meant to represent the glass globes that Drax uses to try to destroy the world, but it looks totally different from those.

Over the credits is one of my least favorite Bond theme songs. John Barry was back for Moonraker and hired Hal Davis (the lyricist behind "We Have All the Time in the World") to help write the song. The words fall into my preferred category for Bond themes - a love song based around the title of the movie - but don't work all that well. "Moonraker" is used as a symbol for someone reaching for their dreams, but the singer refers to the dreamer as a third person, so it's just a simile when a metaphor - the singer is the Moonraker - would have been stronger.

The tune is no great shakes either. It succeeds in creating a soaring, weightless feeling, but by definition, that leaves it ungrounded. It's too ethereal. And sadly, even Shirley Bassey's voice can't rescue it. She's okay in it, but the song doesn't play to her strength, possibly because she was brought in at the last minute and didn't have time to make it her own. They'd wanted Johnny Mathis to record it, which would have been amazing, but he apparently didn't like the song and turned them down. There's a disco version over the end credits that I like a little more (because disco), but not even neon and spinning lights can make "Moonraker" a good song.

The rest of the music for Moonraker tends to be as goofy as the movie itself. I feel like a traitor for saying this, but I miss Marvin Hamlisch already with his generous use of the Bond theme. Barry goes for silly circus music as Jaws tries to fly and crashes into the big top, polka music while Bond's taking the hovercraft gondola for a tour around the Piazza San Marco, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" when Jaws meets Dolly, and the theme from The Magnificent Seven for Bond on horseback. For that last one, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly would have been more appropriate since Bond's costume is clearly copying Clint Eastwood, but I'm never going to complain about having to hear the Magnificent Seven theme. It's dopey for a Bond movie, but sadly, that's where the series is headed.

All this novelty music doesn't leave much time for the Bond Theme, which only gets played a couple of times. It's in the teaser as Bond goes into a parachuteless dive after the pilot (probably my favorite moment in the whole movie) and again during the gondola/speedboat chase (before it gets ruined by the hovercraft). The From Russia with Love 007 Theme also comes up again during the Amazon River chase, but I think I enjoy spotting that nostalgic throwback more than I enjoy the music itself.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. The Spy Who Loved Me ("Nobody Does It Better")
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Diamonds Are Forever
4. You Only Live Twice
5. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
6. Live and Let Die
7. Dr No
8. Thunderball
9. Goldfinger
10. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia with Love
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Live and Let Die
9. Moonraker
10. The Man with the Golden Gun

Friday, June 19, 2015

Moonraker (1979) | Villains



Hugo Drax has always been a villain I've loathed, but he's slowly forcing his way into my Love to Hate category. He's sort of lame, because he's just repeating Stromberg's motivations from the last movie, but more than that he's frustrating for being so undeservedly arrogant. He obviously has some intelligence, but you can't tell it from the way he conducts himself with Bond. There's something about him though and unlike Stromberg, certainly no one can claim that he's boring.

I've already mentioned how little information Bond has to go on in the Moonraker case. He shows up at Drax Industries grasping at straws and Drax immediately starts trying to have Bond killed. Bond knows nothing, and Drax hands him everything. His stupidity extends to his keeping around Chang, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Drax irritates me from his very first scene. He's stolen his own space shuttle and he has the balls to act snotty about Britain's "losing" it. He's so tickled over his stupid paraphrase of Oscar Wilde's quote about parents. The man gets under my skin on a personal level and that's as much Michael Lonsdale's performance as it is the way he's written. I hate Drax. I hate his stupid face. The scary thing is that that may mean he's the most effective Bond villain ever, but I hate him too much to let him have that.

One moment makes me feel something for Drax other than seething malice. After all the stupid ways he's tried to kill Bond - by flight simulator, by hunting "accident," by freaking Coffin Gondola and anaconda - he complains that Bond persists "in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you." It's a wonderful moment of clarity for a character who's otherwise blind to his own faults.

AND the guy has an awesome hideout in an Amazon temple. So that's cool. I have no idea why he leads Bond right to it, but that's just the preposterous kind of person Drax is. I'm shocked that I'm actually going to put him in the Top Ten (for now), but he'll be low on the list.



Chang is the worst henchman ever. He's incompetent and clumsy, even when he's had time to prepare and surprise. He and Drax are peas in a pod.



Is Jaws the only henchman anymore? Stromberg hired him for The Spy Who Loved Me, then he was working for whomever Bond was investigating pre-Moonraker, and finally Drax hires him to replace Chang. I do like that he doesn't start off working for Drax. Drax's reaction when he finds out that Jaws is available is also pretty great. "Oh yes, well. If you can get him of course."

I notice that when Jaws attacks Bond at the cable car in Rio, he's got another bald accomplice with him like Sandor from The Spy Who Loved Me. I'm tempted to read too much into that, but don't have the energy.

Another cool thing is the creepy clown costume that Jaws wears during Carnaval. He cuts a horrifying figure as he silently shambles through the crowds of people. Sort of reminds me of Michael Myers in Halloween actually.

One really weird thing is that Jaws' teeth apparently aren't the only parts of his body that have been replaced with steel. Bond finds this out the hard way when he tries to kick Jaws in the balls. I wonder if Jaws' new girlfriend knows.

Which leads us to Dolly. Moonraker is a clash of tones and Jaws' girlfriend is the poster child for that. She's cartoonishly nerdy and silly; barely a character at all. But she brings real emotion to Jaws' story when he realizes that Drax is never going to let her live. The way I read that scene, I don't think Jaws is thinking about himself and his own place in Drax's future. He gives a significant look to Dolly and that's when he switches sides. Which is pretty great, because it means that Jaws' transformation is probably going to stick. If he was just out to save himself, we might expect to see him fighting Bond in a later movie. But Dolly has softened him and it's really sweet. I love that moment when he finally speaks and his voice is so gentle. Makes me wish we had seen Jaws later on, but as an ally.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Francisco Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)
6. Doctor No (Dr. No)
7. Karl Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
9. Hugo Drax (Moonraker)
10. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)
2. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
3. Grant (From Russia with Love)
4. Nick Nack (The Man with the Golden Gun)
5. Naomi (The Spy Who Loved Me)
6. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
7. Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
9. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
10. Tee Hee (Live and Let Die)

Moonraker (1979) | Women



I really like Drax's helicopter pilot, Corrine Dufour. Corinne Cléry plays her sweetly and also very smart. She doesn't fall for Bond's baloney, but she likes him anyway and I get the feeling that she's helping him simply because she knows Drax is creepy and up to something and she wants to do the right thing. It makes me legitimately sad when she dies, even though I kind of love how dramatic and spooky that scene is. It doesn't match the tone of the rest of Moonraker, but then Corrine belongs in a better film herself.



Manuela is an MI6 agent from Station VH in Brazil. She's a rubbish agent who obviously knows Bond's reputation and is looking forward to nothing but screwing him. She meets him in his hotel room wearing negligée and even tries to talk him out of investigating Drax's warehouse for no good reason that she offers. The impression that I get is that she wants to spend the whole evening having sex, but Bond is professional enough to cut that down to just the afternoon.

When they do go to the warehouse, it's being guarded by Jaws. I guess? It's not really clear why Jaws is there. At any rate, Jaws attacks Manuela while Bond's inside and she pulls a knife on the metal-toothed giant. I'm not saying that she should have come prepared to fight Jaws, but she doesn't even carry a pistol? And when he picks her up and tries to kill her, she doesn't make a peep, even when a crowd of people show up. It's no wonder we never see her again after that night. Bond's clearly dumped her and moved on alone with the investigation.



I feel like Holly Goodhead gets a lot of grief as a Bond Girl. Among my friends, she was the Christmas Jones of the series before the actual Christmas Jones showed up. I may have even felt that way myself. But the last few times I've watched Moonraker, I've decided that she gets a bad rap. It's probably her name.

Lois Chiles is as good an actress as most of the Bond Girls up to that point and I really like her character. She's smart, she's tough in a fight, she's a great pilot, and she is absolutely Bond's equal partner in saving the world. If anything, she may be so multi-talented as to be unbelievable, but this is a movie where Bond is an expert in the history of missionary work in South America. We need to cut her some slack for being a CIA agent and also an astronaut.

I also like that she's at least partially inspired by Gala Brand from the novel in that she's a law enforcement agent disguised as one of Drax's top employees. Brand is one of my favorite characters in Fleming, so I like that she's at least partially represented in Goodhead. On the other hand, Goodhead is also inspired by Anya Amasova from The Spy Who Loved Me with the whole rival-agents-who-learn-to-love angle. Moonraker is a giant copy cat.

One other minorly irritating thing about Goodhead is that it's never really explained why she's undercover at Drax Industries. What put the CIA on Drax's trail? There's no more reason for them to be investigating him than there is for MI6 to be there.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
3. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
4. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
5. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
6. Holly Goodhead (Moonraker)
7. Mary Goodnight (The Man with the Golden Gun)
8. Andrea Anders (The Man with the Golden Gun)
9. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
10. Anya Amasova (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Moonraker (1979) | Bond

Actors and Allies



Roger Moore is doing a fine job as Bond (or at least as his version of Bond). Connery didn't really settle into the role until his fourth film, Thunderball, and would never be that comfortable with it again. Moonraker is Moore's fourth and he's felt good in the role from the beginning.

I don't always give him credit for being as active as he is. He has a reputation for just joking and smooching his way through missions, but Moore's actually very good at the physical stuff whether he's being choked by Jaws or recovering from a bad spin in the spaceflight simulator. Even in a movie as silly as Moonraker, Moore is doing great work.

My only problem with Bond in this story is a script problem and even then it's not really Bond's issue. When he's given the assignment of figuring out what happened to the space shuttle, he has no clues whatsoever. He decides to begin his investigation not at the crash site or even talking to the people who inspected it, but at the facility where the shuttle was made? Why? What logical reason is there for starting there? Of course his "instincts" prove correct, but there's no believable rationale for his trip to visit Hugo Drax. What happens when Bond gets there is a subject for the Villains post, but it really irritates me that the movie kickstarts the investigation in such a horrible, obvious way.

Once Bond knows that he's on the right trail though, his detective work isn't half bad. Drax makes it easy for Bond to know who did it, but Bond has to work pretty hard to stop the scheme and that's fun to watch.

M seems unnecessarily irritated at Bond when the movie opens, but maybe he's just stressed about the missing shuttle. When Bond shows up in M's office, the boss is highly impatient and chastises Bond even though Bond was returning from another mission when he got the call to come in. I suppose though that there have been a lot of times when Bond's taken his time coming back. We don't really know how long it's been since the teaser sequence, so maybe M has reason to be cranky. How many times have we seen M check in with Bond at the end of a mission only to be embarrassed by catching Bond in a compromising position.

That's what happened at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me, which might explain the souring of Bond's relationship with the Minister of Defense. In Spy, Bond calls him "Freddie" and the Minister seems to truly value Bond's skills. In Moonraker, the minister dismissively refers to Bond as "your man" when he's talking to M. That's after a huge embarrassment that he thinks is Bond's fault, but it's still a long way down from the relationship they appeared to enjoy in Spy. I'm wondering if catching Bond in bed with Major Amasova in front of General Gogol had something to do with that.

Speaking of Gogol, he also shows up briefly in Moonraker. It's almost a cameo appearance where he appears just long enough to deny that the Soviets had anything to do with Drax's satellite, but it's an important role. Of course the US and Britain would wonder if that mysterious, hidden satellite was Russian. And they wouldn't have much reason to believe Soviet denials about it, except that it's Gogol. Viewers trust him because we saw him being so chill in Spy, so we believe that the US and Britain trust him too.

Back to Bond's bosses though. They have reason to be ticked at him, but M does show some conspiratorial camaraderie with Bond after they're both chewed out by the MoD. Instead of following the MoD's suggestion about taking Bond off the case, M gives Bond even more freedom by letting him have a two week leave of absence to keep after Drax. That's the third time something like that's happened (On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Man with the Golden Gun being the other two), but I always like how it reminds me of the wonderful relationship between Bond and M in the books.

This is also the third time that Bond hasn't flirted with Moneypenny. There was a little of it in The Man with the Golden Gun, but their relationship is purely professional (though friendly) in Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker. I don't remember how it goes for the rest of the Moore films, so I'm curious to see if we're done with that. If so, it may suggest not very nice things. Lois Maxwell was exactly eight months older than Roger Moore. Was she considered too old for him to flirt with? Lois Chiles (Holly Goodhead) was 20 years younger than Bond, but that's okay? I don't mean to sound surprised. This is an old, old story in Hollywood and Bond movies were never known for their awesome treatment of women. But I also need to be careful about getting too upset, because for all I know, we'll see Bond and Moneypenny affectionately teasing each other again in For Your Eyes Only. I'm expressing some preemptive indignation and that's not really fair.

Best Quip



"He had to fly," after blowing Drax out an airlock.

That's Bond's best quip. Top honors actually go to Q though for "I think he's attempting reentry, sir."

Worst Quip



"Play it again, Sam," after dropping Chang into a piano.

Gadgets



There are a bunch of cool ones in Moonraker. M's apparently got a mirror that turns into a briefing monitor in his office. I bet he hates it and never uses it.

The big, personal gadget of the movie is the wrist dartgun. It has blue-tipped armor piercing darts and red-tipped cyanide darts. Either of which would've been great against Jaws or that anaconda if Bond had remembered to use them. That's keeping this one out of the Top Ten for me. I hate weapons and powers that only get used when it's favorable for the plot and don't exist the rest of the time (see: The Force in Star Wars: The Clone Wars).

A similar case is Bond's watch with a built-in explosive and detonator. I can't decide if I like or hate the way he pulls that out of his butt. It's not like the wrist gun, because I don't know of an earlier instance where it would have come in handy, but it does seem very convenient for him to suddenly have it. Then again, why wouldn't he have something like that? I don't necessarily need it to have it explained.

Q's safe-cracking technology has improved since You Only Live Twice. I like the x-ray device in a cigarette case. I question the need for "007" monogrammed on his microfilm camera though. Seems a little ostentatious, but then again, Bond is world-famous and I bet it helps him hook up in bars.

The two major gadgets are both watercraft, but they couldn't be more different. First, there's the totally ridiculous motorboat/hovercraft gondola. The motorboat part is actually kind of cool, but the hovercraft is bonkers. It's there as a joke and nothing more. I know a lot of people like that kind of thing about Moore's Bond, but it's too excessive for me.

The other boat though is amazing. It's a Glastron CV23HT outfitted with mines, a torpedo, and roof that converts into a hang glider. All of that stuff is cool, but not as cool as the look of the boat itself. That chase sequence on the Amazon River is my favorite part of the whole movie.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Lotus Esprit (The Spy Who Loved Me)
2. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
3. Jet pack (Thunderball)
4. Glastron CV23HT (Moonraker)
5. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
6. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
7. Ski pole rocket (The Spy Who Loved Me)
8. Magnetic buzzsaw watch (Live and Let Die)
9. Attaché case (From Russia with Love)
10. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)

Bond's Best Outfit



I continue to be surprised by how much I like Bond's '70s fashions. I especially dig this all-black outfit, even with its giant-size collar. Very dangerous and romantic. Bond actually wears it twice in the movie. I would too.

Bond's Worst Outfit



The yellow space jumpsuit is bad enough, but what the heck's going on with that "helmet"? Goodhead makes both work, but as long as we're ripping off Star Wars, Bond should trade his in for a black vest and a blaster.

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