Bond

Here's an exhibit that they've got going on at the Barbican:

http://www.barbican.org.uk/bond/

Spence and Matt and I went.  There were some cool sketches and blueprints and paraphernalia.  This young lady, for instance:

Also, Lotte Lenya's actual flick shoe.  But you may be asking yourselves a question.  What gives?  Why are we continuing the strange tradition by which dads expose their tender male charges to this franchise's casual objectifications (see photo, above) and escalating futurist obscenities (dumb and dumber destructions)?

Good question.  The fact that the boys liked it is not necessarily any justification.  Still, the following true thing:

http://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/titus/1.15?lang=eng#14

Does that last part apply to me?  In answer, reviews!

Goldfinger (UK, 1964)

Epidermal suffocation, eh?  This is partly pleasing in its excessive, winking suavity.  The evening clothes under the wet suit and all.  The film/the franchise is already too big for its own britches, but it’s not quite elephantine, yet.  For instance, the spectacular Fort Knox climax is offset by the very small scale opening, which quite effectively revolves around a simple card game and a single pair of binoculars.  And the women?  That first tryst, which is interrupted by Bond’s seeing the reflection of an assailant in his true love’s eye, is very cynical, very funny, and not at all harmful.  In itself.  This is make believe, after all, and a genre piece, and we can suspend our disbelief without relinquishing our moral agency or responsibility. 

It's good for you

After the prologue that first actual girl registers, maybe because the seductive blocking on that balcony is plausibly related to what attractive, unaffiliated young people in those circumstances might actually do.  The gold paint is pretty cool, and it may also be the Bond series’ fall from grace.  After this gimmick, and after this spectacle, all they can really do is one up themselves.  They’ll keep trying, successfully or not, all the way until Daniel Craig comes along. 

No, not that Casino Royale!

In that spirit, some of what follows is pretty good, and some of it is pretty dumb.  The Q episode is nice, tongue in cheek, but not quite yet the Fonz.  Oddjob is forbidding, but once having established the hat as his weapon of choice, they go to increasingly silly lengths to contrive its varied use.  There is some cool location work and some cool cars in Switzerland.  

(Intertextuality)

We continue.  That Swiss car chase is pretty good.  Oops!  We just killed that girl. Later we have lasers and emasculation—snooze.  Is the cold war over, or am I so surrounded by daughters and gentle sons?  Whichever it is, this testosterone hysteria/anxiety never quite registers or makes sense to me.  “Pussy Galore” is kind of unforgivable, partly because it’s so inelegant.  There’s a place for double entendre, but this is just a pair of 2X4’s.  I guess the character herself is a bit autonomous.  Until James rolls her in the hay (literally!), that is.  

(Here is a clip from a much better film, which is entitled Whisky Galore: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBp2ke5Bye4)

Goldfinger’s lair is pretty design impressive, and it’s impressively captured.  The gangsters are funny.  The humour’s not all intentional, but what they don’t intend can still be interesting.  Again, we’re seeing some un-unpacked stuff about maleness, ethnicity, class or social mobility.  The car-crushing incident is impressive.  That switch from anticipated gold robbery to actual nuclear mischief is unexpected, and pretty clever. 

Meanwhile in Fort Knox we get an hilariously extended bit of parallel montage.  Elapsed film time doubles, even triples the ticking of that timer.  You can see Oddjob’s demise coming from several kilometres away, but when it comes it’s kind of cathartic.  Nice that a mere scientist disarms the device, since James clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing.  Now, after all of the geo-jeopardy, they close with the soon to be obligatory winking ending.  

Their last photo shoot; here in support of an impending, gratuitous Beatles reference

Consider, or compare, the Bond films' mores with, say, the Beatles’ long hair and drug use and such.  Is it because of the Beatles that BYU still doesn't allow beards?  Who knows?  But I ask you, which institution actually mucked things up the most?  

It needn't have been thus.  There's a place, there's a need for the frank exploration/representation of ambiguity and realpolitik and even perfidy.  What if Saltzman/Broccoli/audiences had treated similar subject matter a little more sensitively, or seriously?

Martin Ritt et. al., 1965

  

For Your Eyes Only (UK, 1981)

It’s hard to describe, measure, or comprehend how bad this movie is.  It’s kind of dispiriting to even contemplate having to talk about it.  Witless, inept, flaccid.  To the point that it actually becomes kind of amazing.  Maybe Cubby Broccoli had Quinn Martin in to co-produce.  The skier in the luge run stunt is pretty good, though.