November is the second cruelest month, after April: all my autumnal October ghoulish cheer slides off like a Bond villain off a continental shelf during an underwater chase scene. Glug glug. Down he goes to the depths, just as glug glug this was the month of my bottom alcoholically thrice in the 90s. The month Cassandra brought over ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE on a Friday Night just like this one, and saved my life, for a few months longer...
Bond was there. Bond is here. SPECTRE. Dig.
As whenever a new Bond appears, all the old ones show up on TV, to prep the faithful. I've been updating and elaborating my "Bond by Bond" guide from a few years back, so do revisit, there's a good chap, or girl. Not to be sexshist or lazy, for my keen insights over the years are as sexist, elaborate and thrilling (and grandiose about it) as Bond films themselves.
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| My Favorite: Elektra King (and she has my initials) |
From Father's Day Bond Marathon:
(Acidemic - 6/14)
Following a handful of similar but deceptively elaborate plots that seem to bleed across each other (making each particular film hard to remember), Bond films have always rewarded repeat viewing; as we change from children to men our perceptions of the movies change, too, and new fissures of interest are sussed out. Atomic bomb hijacking minutiae and intrigue, the most boring parts when we were kids, are now fascinating. The giant computers and tracking devices are like windows into a forgotten field of technology, like finding the distant relatives of Skynet.
n THUNDERBALL (1965) it takes about five minutes of real cinematic time to throw a camouflage net over one lousy sunken NATO bomber. Now that I'm an adult lost in a world of whiplash editing, I love that the early Bond films weren't about saving the world but stealing code machines from embassies and foiling relatively un-apocalyptic sabotage-blackmail schemes to save the British government a few million pounds. On pan and scan the copious ocean footage was hard to follow, making whole segments of that film as boring as 2001. Now, on the anamorphic, it's a poem. Connery is at his best here, elbowing a fire alarm at a health spa without breaking his stride down the hall; turning some painful spine stretching into a chance to blackmail his masseuse for sex (but then massaging her with a mink glove); and he's got a great opposite side spy to contend with, a woman who--like him--uses sex freely and often in her work and is smart and ruthless and thoroughly a villain, and now the beds these spies work on are stretched out to the full widescreen to savor their ornate frames framing the screen and exposing our agog minds to the wonders of Mad Men-era decor.
My first memories of Bond: falling in love with the very kinky edges (Largo applying scientific hot and cold to the naked heaving back of kept woman Domino [Claudine Auger]). As a little sadomasochistic seven year-old, it was some hot stuff. That was Bond in the 70s, in a wet suit, shooting at a shark or a bad guy with his harpoon gun while a hot girl with a cute mole lounged in the white sand at his side, this all via network TV, with my dad watching during the time of Roger Moore's SPY WHO LOVED ME, which was a colossal PG hit my parents felt I was too young to see. Then, in the 80s, when sexual harassment was becoming a thing we rented them all from the newly opened video stores at the mall (or from the back room of appliance stores) and saw them over and over, as reminders of the power we were once going to inherit as men, allegedly, but now never would, for with awareness and compassion--forced on us via the very media we sought refuge in--came loss of the kind of naive innocence that allows for the heedless exploitation of others.
(expanded 11/15)
The idea to make George Lazenby's first appearance the same one where he gets married and then cries is a bit of a misstep, makes him seem a weak Bond, like he can't handle the gaffe, but closer examination makes you realize he's damn good, easily the second best, and had he been allowed to continue, who knows? And it's a great film, the only Bond to deal with the issue of post-hypnotic suggestion and mind control (sleeper agents, recalling MK-Ultra Monarch's "angels of death", not to mention Dr. Goldfoot's bikini machina,) complex evil plots (infertility) whole second half of the film is a long winding chase down the Alps, the villains pursuing him relentless and intelligent, the skiing phenomenal (the echoes of Leni Riefenstahl's alpine silents surely intentional). But the whole down the Alps chase is all so well done it achieves greatness leagues beyond the usual (his foes are so dogged and resourceful the chase lasts half the movie). Lazenby is a bit of a cypher in spots--critics ragged on him for being such a blank slate--but that works for a spy, and through it all Lazenby shows real emotion underneath the cold mannequin blanket, the way Connery was the opposite.
For example when Lazenby's Bond goes undercover as a snobby genealogist sent up to Telly Savalas' high-in-the-Alps stronghold, Lazenby's Bond puts on a posh droning bore professor demeanor that's so vivid casual viewers think that's the Bond Lazenby has envisioned. When Blofeldt finally unmasks him, we see Bond become very relaxed, even bemused. And then, slightly scared when he has such a hard time escaping in the packed Swiss streets and at his wit's end when Diana Rigg skates over, to the rescue. She's there when it counts, and his kisses on her cheek as she delivers some top notch evasive driving, he needs her. It's not like his usual cavalier élan but genuinely fond, very real, affection. Then there's the worried look in his eye when he realizes he's madly in love with this girl in ways he wasn't with anyone before, it scares him almost as bad as when he was rattled by fireworks and a man in crazy white bear suit at the Piz Gloria rink. At the end, the wedding, he breaks beautifully. See it again and check out his eyes when he says a wordless goodbye to Moneypenny after throwing her the bouquet. He's like a genuinely hopeful child, warm and alive with a new innocence he may not have had since he was a child; Moneypenny recognizes it and the true extent of their bond is made clear. Lois Maxwell's relation to Lazenby's Bond isn't just the usual flirting, both actors make it something real. Lazenby's still Bondian, tough, resourceful, generally fearless, but those tears at the end are earned. Let him grow on you, and Lazenby will grow. And Kojak's a funny Blofeldt (I always crack up when he starts his mind control tape with "You remember when you first came here? How you hated chickens?" And Joanna Lumley's one of the sleeper agent beauties and the great Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti as Draco, Rigg's Italian 'demolitions' mogul father. Ilse Stepatt is second only to Lotte Lenya as far as butch henchmen, like Divine crossed with a German shepherd.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
(expanded 11/15)
This is where Moore's Bond shows the ridiculous kid-friendly slapstick side, with a villain who continually gives Bond free passes for his blunders. I mean this rich killer constructs an elaborate funhouse just to chase Bond through so he can use a golden gun? Why does he have a wax statue of Bond in there before even meeting him? The whole way Bond will finally trick him and win is speled out right there if you have eyes to see way too many twisty movies. In that since, this plays like a long episode of FANTASY ISLAND rather than a real Bond movie and not just because of Hervé Villechaize. Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is an ex carnival sharpshooter and ex-KGB assassin and has a superfluous third nipple. But "who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?" Moore wonders if his situation might improve if he finds Scaramanga first, before Scaramanga shoots him. Brilliant work, OO7. At any rate, now on HD widescreen, his expressionist funhouse shooting range is most attractive, built rather lovely in and around natural cave formations. There's dumb bits of comic relief like the return of the fat sheriff from the last film shouting at the HK locals as a bunch pointy heads in PIE-jamas and idiot things with no real need to be in the film except to provide scenes (a fight scene in a belly dancer's dressing room is just window dressing). Thai boxing and karate demonstrations paint a portrait of Asian culture as sweaty, brutish and quick, overcrowded, humidity condensed on every surface. The way Bond girl (and supposed British field agent) Good Night (Britt Eckland) shouts vital information and bemoans Bond's womanizing (they had an affair years earlier) and acts at all times like she's trying to be ditzy-era Goldie Hawn rather than capable spy Martine Beswick. The first Bond girl to be truly offensive in her endangering incompetence. We wouldn't see Good Night's like again until Cameron Diaz showed up in KNIGHT AND DAY (See: Terms of Endangerment). Good thing then that the script relies on dumb TV plot luck and past Bond formula instead of ingenuity: "I could have shot you down when you landed, that would have been ridiculously easy," notes Scaramanga. Yeah right. Thing is, Connery wouldn't have relied on the villain's idiocy, and certainly wouldn't be such a drag about it. His Bond admitted he was a killer, and callous and confident enough to get away with it --he had a license! Moore's Bond seems to think he's goddamned Pope Pious, on the other hand, all while dropping awkward sex talk that sounds like he's squinting at a Penthouse bar napkin through bifocals. Still, it's got Christopher Lee.
MOONRAKER:
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME had been such a huge hit, so popular, the underwater sports car thing so cool, so of its time, thrilling parents and kids alike, so perfectly in tune with the shark-obsessed vibe of JAWS and gadget vibe of STAR WARS, that for the follow-up they made the mistake of trying to deliver more of the same instead of doing something new. Now instead of a car that becomes a submarine, it's a gondola that becomes a comical parade float. Richard Kiel returns as Jaws, gets a Pippi Longstocking girlfriend, and becomes a good guy. The biggest crime, so rare in any Bond movie, is that the filmmakers and Moore presume our love and laughter without bothering to really earn it, and Drax is a dreadfully dull villain, barely an afterthought. The girls all wear dowdy old peasant blouses, the sort that make girls in the 70s sometimes resemble sister wives from old Mormon scrapbooks, or LOGAN'S RUN and ZARDOZ cast-offs and, when not seducing Bond, stand around in readiness like the prostitutes in EYES WIDE SHUT prior to their mind control trigger activation ceremony, remodeled into a WESTWORLD for guys with British spy fantasies. Dumb sight gags abound and repeat: an old coughing Italian man at the Venice cafe sees a floating coffin and throws his cigarette away; the password to get into the secret lab is the notes from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. That's two just off the top of my head.
Thank god the 70s were almost over, and all the variety show schtick that resurged from its watery Vaudeville grave would descend once more into the abyss. With cable there would no longer be a need to appeal to the elderly, children, and everyone in- between all at the same time. But it's still the 70s here and it's a G. And so we have the sort of movie where we get a tour through a priceless antique glass exhibit and know in a few scenes it's gonna be trashed in a brawl--why else is there even a 'glass exhibit'? It's like a delivery boy trying to cross the street with a stack of boxes during the running of the bulls. And bouncy music plays after every lame innuendo, and Kiehl survives everything with a flustered genial slow burn like Wiley Coyote after his latest Acme gadget explodes in his face. Still there's one great moment: a slow Carnivale clown stalk that in its weird shambling silence recalls the previous year's HALLOWEEN!
Thus we see the sad result of our collective capitulation to the ever-shifting desires of third wave feminism: even Bond believes he should apologize for being a man. What Tomorrow Never Dies needs more than Michelle Yeoh is Camille Paglia. Yeoh's got the high kicks, but Paglia could have trounced Jonathan Pryce's media pundit with a single trenchant pop culture essay.
Which brings me to Sophie Marceau, sweet... sweet Sophie. She's got the sense of nymphonic entitlement we ned for a Bond girl. When Marceau lounges in gold-trimmed Middle Eastern richness, she not only breaks the Vogue Kazakhstan fantasia mold, she breaks its American and British neighbors. Being French surely helps; she acts like she grew up in luxury, truly embodying and comfy with the finer things designed for and by the big money French which the petit Bourgeois of America pretend suits them, i.e. Tomorrow Never Dies' first Bond girl, Terri Hatcher, who looks like she'll start stealing the designer shot glasses as soon as Bond steps into the hotel bathroom.
Representing the Americans in World is the much more age-inappropriate Denise Richards as an atomic physicist named Christmas Jones, one of the best pieces of stunt casting in the history of cinema. One look at her marching around the abandoned Russian missile silo in sexy khaki shorts and all your worries slip away. Richard's not a great actress but she doesn't need to be, maybe even shouldn't be. Like all the best Bond beauties she acts from her hips, sexual the more she tries not to be (the way a better actress like Halle Berry can't). She's the ultimate third wave fantasy. The best Bond movies are ageless the more they grow antiquated, but the SKYFALL has so raised the bar that it's tough to go back to the lewd double entendre smirking and embarrassed pun groaning of the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan eras (which the more discreet Timothy Dalton avoided) that's why the very 90s capsule-ish THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has always been unusual for me. One because it has two of my favorite Bond girls, for opposite reasons, two, because for all that it's still not satisfying--it's made at the end of the 90s and is like a tentative swimmer dipping a toe across the centennial Cocteau traversable mirror, unable to let go of 90s things like venetian blinds, Goldie's teeth, post-ecstasy depression, and sexual disillusionment.
But I love Sophie Marceau's Elektra King. The first true femme fatale of the series she easily outpaces the the cancer-stricken-looking miscast Scotsman Robert Carlyle, who was clearly hired because he was so good at being a terrifying Glasgow hooligan in Trainspotting, another quintessential 90s curio. That was clearly a one-time deal - here he's dull as dishwater, just another bloated and bitter townie suffering from his love to a pretty co-ed who wouldn't in a million years take him home to meet her folks. Luckily Marceau's so good as King she redeems the whole affair, survives even Bond's overall trite condescensions, where every woman in the world is supposed to fall for him, give up her life on his whim, and then forget and forgive him while he wanders off with nary a word of thanks once the credits roll. In this case all Elektra has to do is shed a tear and Bond gets all paternal. He deserves all he gets, as does every man who lets himself be blinded by her beauty, myself included. And for her, well, it must suck to be the only mature one in a world run through of stock stereotype snickering, to be in the 'bubble' where no one ever contradicts or refuses you. In fact, if anything Bond reminds me of Fred MacMurray in Billy Wilder's DOUBLE IDEMNITY only Denise Richards is Eddie G. and Sophie is Stanwyck. The difference is, McMurray knew she was evil and was frightened by how much it turned him on, how much her evil itself was an aphrodesiac to potent to fight, even knowing it's only a matter of time before that evil destroyed him.
The idea to make George Lazenby's first appearance the same one where he gets married and then cries is a bit of a misstep, makes him seem a weak Bond, like he can't handle the gaffe, but closer examination makes you realize he's damn good, easily the second best, and had he been allowed to continue, who knows? And it's a great film, the only Bond to deal with the issue of post-hypnotic suggestion and mind control (sleeper agents, recalling MK-Ultra Monarch's "angels of death", not to mention Dr. Goldfoot's bikini machina,) complex evil plots (infertility) whole second half of the film is a long winding chase down the Alps, the villains pursuing him relentless and intelligent, the skiing phenomenal (the echoes of Leni Riefenstahl's alpine silents surely intentional). But the whole down the Alps chase is all so well done it achieves greatness leagues beyond the usual (his foes are so dogged and resourceful the chase lasts half the movie). Lazenby is a bit of a cypher in spots--critics ragged on him for being such a blank slate--but that works for a spy, and through it all Lazenby shows real emotion underneath the cold mannequin blanket, the way Connery was the opposite.
For example when Lazenby's Bond goes undercover as a snobby genealogist sent up to Telly Savalas' high-in-the-Alps stronghold, Lazenby's Bond puts on a posh droning bore professor demeanor that's so vivid casual viewers think that's the Bond Lazenby has envisioned. When Blofeldt finally unmasks him, we see Bond become very relaxed, even bemused. And then, slightly scared when he has such a hard time escaping in the packed Swiss streets and at his wit's end when Diana Rigg skates over, to the rescue. She's there when it counts, and his kisses on her cheek as she delivers some top notch evasive driving, he needs her. It's not like his usual cavalier élan but genuinely fond, very real, affection. Then there's the worried look in his eye when he realizes he's madly in love with this girl in ways he wasn't with anyone before, it scares him almost as bad as when he was rattled by fireworks and a man in crazy white bear suit at the Piz Gloria rink. At the end, the wedding, he breaks beautifully. See it again and check out his eyes when he says a wordless goodbye to Moneypenny after throwing her the bouquet. He's like a genuinely hopeful child, warm and alive with a new innocence he may not have had since he was a child; Moneypenny recognizes it and the true extent of their bond is made clear. Lois Maxwell's relation to Lazenby's Bond isn't just the usual flirting, both actors make it something real. Lazenby's still Bondian, tough, resourceful, generally fearless, but those tears at the end are earned. Let him grow on you, and Lazenby will grow. And Kojak's a funny Blofeldt (I always crack up when he starts his mind control tape with "You remember when you first came here? How you hated chickens?" And Joanna Lumley's one of the sleeper agent beauties and the great Italian actor Gabriele Ferzetti as Draco, Rigg's Italian 'demolitions' mogul father. Ilse Stepatt is second only to Lotte Lenya as far as butch henchmen, like Divine crossed with a German shepherd.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
(expanded 11/15)
This is where Moore's Bond shows the ridiculous kid-friendly slapstick side, with a villain who continually gives Bond free passes for his blunders. I mean this rich killer constructs an elaborate funhouse just to chase Bond through so he can use a golden gun? Why does he have a wax statue of Bond in there before even meeting him? The whole way Bond will finally trick him and win is speled out right there if you have eyes to see way too many twisty movies. In that since, this plays like a long episode of FANTASY ISLAND rather than a real Bond movie and not just because of Hervé Villechaize. Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) is an ex carnival sharpshooter and ex-KGB assassin and has a superfluous third nipple. But "who would pay a million dollars to have me killed?" Moore wonders if his situation might improve if he finds Scaramanga first, before Scaramanga shoots him. Brilliant work, OO7. At any rate, now on HD widescreen, his expressionist funhouse shooting range is most attractive, built rather lovely in and around natural cave formations. There's dumb bits of comic relief like the return of the fat sheriff from the last film shouting at the HK locals as a bunch pointy heads in PIE-jamas and idiot things with no real need to be in the film except to provide scenes (a fight scene in a belly dancer's dressing room is just window dressing). Thai boxing and karate demonstrations paint a portrait of Asian culture as sweaty, brutish and quick, overcrowded, humidity condensed on every surface. The way Bond girl (and supposed British field agent) Good Night (Britt Eckland) shouts vital information and bemoans Bond's womanizing (they had an affair years earlier) and acts at all times like she's trying to be ditzy-era Goldie Hawn rather than capable spy Martine Beswick. The first Bond girl to be truly offensive in her endangering incompetence. We wouldn't see Good Night's like again until Cameron Diaz showed up in KNIGHT AND DAY (See: Terms of Endangerment). Good thing then that the script relies on dumb TV plot luck and past Bond formula instead of ingenuity: "I could have shot you down when you landed, that would have been ridiculously easy," notes Scaramanga. Yeah right. Thing is, Connery wouldn't have relied on the villain's idiocy, and certainly wouldn't be such a drag about it. His Bond admitted he was a killer, and callous and confident enough to get away with it --he had a license! Moore's Bond seems to think he's goddamned Pope Pious, on the other hand, all while dropping awkward sex talk that sounds like he's squinting at a Penthouse bar napkin through bifocals. Still, it's got Christopher Lee.
MOONRAKER:
(expanded 11/15)
Rated G. Am I right? Now my parents had no more excuses. I missed the party, though. Bond seems very old and tired, suddenly, like he should be home watering his garden, not being spun around in a G-force simulator or pretending he could punch Jaws in the mouth and not shatter his wrist. The girls he meets and seduces seem like Valium-zonked call girls paid to pretend he's a spy, tagging along as he romps around his mansion, uncovering little clues his butler sets up the night before, like an easter egg hunt. It's G, so Bond doesn't even carry his own gun, Drax has to supply him with hunting rifles and lasers as needed. He doesn't even drink or smoke. Not even tea. He'd rather quip and try to stand up straight.
Thank god the 70s were almost over, and all the variety show schtick that resurged from its watery Vaudeville grave would descend once more into the abyss. With cable there would no longer be a need to appeal to the elderly, children, and everyone in- between all at the same time. But it's still the 70s here and it's a G. And so we have the sort of movie where we get a tour through a priceless antique glass exhibit and know in a few scenes it's gonna be trashed in a brawl--why else is there even a 'glass exhibit'? It's like a delivery boy trying to cross the street with a stack of boxes during the running of the bulls. And bouncy music plays after every lame innuendo, and Kiehl survives everything with a flustered genial slow burn like Wiley Coyote after his latest Acme gadget explodes in his face. Still there's one great moment: a slow Carnivale clown stalk that in its weird shambling silence recalls the previous year's HALLOWEEN!
(from: The Elektra King Hair Complex: Acidemic 11/08 - revised 11/15)
Which brings me to Sophie Marceau, sweet... sweet Sophie. She's got the sense of nymphonic entitlement we ned for a Bond girl. When Marceau lounges in gold-trimmed Middle Eastern richness, she not only breaks the Vogue Kazakhstan fantasia mold, she breaks its American and British neighbors. Being French surely helps; she acts like she grew up in luxury, truly embodying and comfy with the finer things designed for and by the big money French which the petit Bourgeois of America pretend suits them, i.e. Tomorrow Never Dies' first Bond girl, Terri Hatcher, who looks like she'll start stealing the designer shot glasses as soon as Bond steps into the hotel bathroom.
Representing the Americans in World is the much more age-inappropriate Denise Richards as an atomic physicist named Christmas Jones, one of the best pieces of stunt casting in the history of cinema. One look at her marching around the abandoned Russian missile silo in sexy khaki shorts and all your worries slip away. Richard's not a great actress but she doesn't need to be, maybe even shouldn't be. Like all the best Bond beauties she acts from her hips, sexual the more she tries not to be (the way a better actress like Halle Berry can't). She's the ultimate third wave fantasy. The best Bond movies are ageless the more they grow antiquated, but the SKYFALL has so raised the bar that it's tough to go back to the lewd double entendre smirking and embarrassed pun groaning of the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan eras (which the more discreet Timothy Dalton avoided) that's why the very 90s capsule-ish THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH has always been unusual for me. One because it has two of my favorite Bond girls, for opposite reasons, two, because for all that it's still not satisfying--it's made at the end of the 90s and is like a tentative swimmer dipping a toe across the centennial Cocteau traversable mirror, unable to let go of 90s things like venetian blinds, Goldie's teeth, post-ecstasy depression, and sexual disillusionment.
But I love Sophie Marceau's Elektra King. The first true femme fatale of the series she easily outpaces the the cancer-stricken-looking miscast Scotsman Robert Carlyle, who was clearly hired because he was so good at being a terrifying Glasgow hooligan in Trainspotting, another quintessential 90s curio. That was clearly a one-time deal - here he's dull as dishwater, just another bloated and bitter townie suffering from his love to a pretty co-ed who wouldn't in a million years take him home to meet her folks. Luckily Marceau's so good as King she redeems the whole affair, survives even Bond's overall trite condescensions, where every woman in the world is supposed to fall for him, give up her life on his whim, and then forget and forgive him while he wanders off with nary a word of thanks once the credits roll. In this case all Elektra has to do is shed a tear and Bond gets all paternal. He deserves all he gets, as does every man who lets himself be blinded by her beauty, myself included. And for her, well, it must suck to be the only mature one in a world run through of stock stereotype snickering, to be in the 'bubble' where no one ever contradicts or refuses you. In fact, if anything Bond reminds me of Fred MacMurray in Billy Wilder's DOUBLE IDEMNITY only Denise Richards is Eddie G. and Sophie is Stanwyck. The difference is, McMurray knew she was evil and was frightened by how much it turned him on, how much her evil itself was an aphrodesiac to potent to fight, even knowing it's only a matter of time before that evil destroyed him.
---
Finally saw the new Bond and totally freaked out about it. First off, it’s interesting to see Bond as a young man “learning not to trust again” –SPOILER ALERT– by actually falling in love and trying to live a normal life, with all the weeping and acting emotional that such a life entails. In other words, CASINO ROYALE is not a remake of the Peter Sellers version, but a pre-modern re-imagining of the last Bond film that attempted to be this good, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. It’s like every 37 years Bond meets a girl and falls in love for the first time.
The nifty thing about this new Bond approach is the way it remains conscious of the Moebius strip upon which it runs. It is aware, for example, that the entire cycle of Bond films–which stretch from the Cold War straight through to the future–actually involve the surpassing of technologies in real life that were created in the older films as sci fi devices. Consider for example the “full circle” of our post-modern nostalgia over the gigantic “futuristic” computers of the old Bond villains like Dr. No–with their reel-to-reel computer tapes and punch cards–which we watch on plasma screens from super deluxe DVD sets or ultra slim laptop computers. And now Bond is actually younger and the futuristic gadgets he thought were so nifty have not just been invented but have been over-promoted to the point of un-coolness, and promptly forgotten, and his boss has become a woman, and suddenly he is newly promoted to the job he’s had all his life, and he is ready to meet the only woman he will ever love… for the SECOND TIME!
This sort of thing happens on purpose a lot in David Lynch films like LOST HIGHWAY, but in James Bond it happens entirely as a way to keep the films fresh and the character alive, I know that. But that’s what makes digging for Lacanian subtexts all the more rewarding.
One of my favorite theories for life after death and alternate dimensional living is called quantum immortality. I read the phrase in Cliff Pickover’s amazing book, Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves, but actually arrived at a similar theory myself after realizing that alcoholic black-outs proved we would never die as long as we could remember where we were. (more on that some other time). Seeing Bond tonight in his sixth incarnation, in a title-only remake of the film of the book by Ian Fleming, I felt myself lost in a train car of mirrors, traveling the Moebius strip around and around like a tiger chasing its own tail, or serpent eating its own foot, and I loved every first second of it, because I don’t need to have alcoholic blackouts to double back on myself and be assured of the validity of quantum immortality anymore, I have BOND.
Everyone’s talking, for example, about how great it is that this film offers a “stripped down” Bond: no gadgets and space needles and laser beams. Right. Don’t you see, dear reader, what that means when “stripped down” is still using gadgets–such as cell phones, notebook computers, wireless webmail, satellite surveillance–that would blow the minds of Dr. No or Ernst Blodfeldt, that would make them howl with delight? That sort of stuff is, to us, “stripped down.” We have reached the primordial Now of technology already, where there is nowhere higher to go so the imaginary IS the real. With the digital age spinning faster and faster around us we realize it’s impossible to die because we see ourselves re-born before our eyes, right there plain as the phallic nose on your face in the mirror silver screen. How cool would it be in the sequel of they got all the still-alive Bond actors together in one room (top)? You know, like in 2001, when Kier Dullea sits in a room with himself as an old man and then heads back to earth as a star baby? Damn cool, is the answer, especially if they were all yelling at each other.
Another great example of the Bond effect that comes to mind is in the end of TERMINATOR 3 when future, past, future/past, and past/future all suddenly connect and stop into an eternal now with just Clare Danes, two turntables and a microphone… that future when machines take over, baby, that’s already happened. It’s as clear as the “look” on your face. And you know what?? we LOVE it. We invented it after all, and what can’t kill us only makes us smaller, faster, and more efficiently designed. (James Bond Rides the Strip)
(Acidemic 11/08)
 |
| Maxwell, in her grrlish days |
Moneypenny doesn't give Bond thanks but what he truly appreciates. She sets herself up as an upper-middle class spinster, pining for a secret agent who prefers more exotic, younger women. And he in turn professes to love only her, implying he's sleeping with everyone but her as he can only love the one he hasn't quite gotten around to yet. And if she pushes the issue, he instantly propositions her: "Drinks, my place. Tonight." But she ignores his request; sure that he is not being serious. Between the two of them is an implicit understanding regarding the parameters of their pretend courtship. If she took him seriously, or if he was actually sincere, bad blood would instantly erupt. Alas, in our post-PC era, no such parameters can really be established, so the fine art of fake flirting is all but gone. Too bad, because it's great practice... the pair switch role from pursuer to pursued on a regular basis, each claiming they pine for the other, and so forth.
Thus, Moneypenny's desire for James is innately dependent on his withholding of that desire's gratification. Such examples occur throughout cinema as well as in life, but this one is worth noting since it's ubiquitous and recognizable, a key signifier of the Bond series. This regularity itself makes it a fine example of the Lacanian phallus. Bond "owns" the phallus, as the ultimate "one who enjoys" the way that's impossible in the Real; but Moneypenny is the one who truly owns its lack in the purest Lacanian sense; she alone understands that having access to the phallus will not prevent its lack, but will in fact destroy the position from within which that lack originates. (MORE)
(Bright Lights - 11/08)
Critics are mixed and audience feedback wildly disparate over Quantum of Solace, but while you are formulating your opinion or, like me, waiting for the initial crowds to disperse before taking in the second Daniel Craig entry, why not give a ‘flix to the Bonds of the illustrious past? Better yet why not look at their hot babes? And better yet, the babes who are also evil henchmen, seductress-spies and/or the super villain of the film themselves!
The first such babe appears in Dr. No. Zena Marshall plays the sinister-spy secretary Miss Taro. A buxom, sumptuous Asian-hybrid babe in the early Playboy tradition, Ms. Marshall oozes libidinal treachery as Taro, but she’s an amateur in the spy game and James is a professional. After surviving the ambush set for him en route to a booty call at her hilltop chalet, Bond “takes what’s coming to him” as a survivor’s fee–letting her think he doesn't suspect she's stalling him until the second round of assassins arrive. He’s aware though, naturally. After the post-coitus haze has cleared, he hands her over to the authorities and calmly waits in her darkened bedroom for the next cockblocking killer to creep in.
Sexual chessboard spy games would become taboo with the dawn of “political correctness” Bond, where sex must be harnessed to confessions of love with moistened eyes or at least some amount of mutual respect, but seen today, this sort of grudge-f*cking is fresh and totally tantalizing (Connery's Bond especially never misses a chance). Why shouldn’t male spies be active in the web of counter-seduction, rather than moping around passively like Claude Rains in Notorious or John Gilbert in Mata Hari? That stuff is for chumps! The East German Stasi had a whole program of handsome undercover spies seducing lonely NATO secretaries. Sean Connery’s Bond knows full well that the best intel is won between the sheets, and he’s just the man to go after it, letting his target think she’s playing him for a sucker all the while. Call it sexism all you like, but I would argue, in hindsight, Bond shows Miss Taro real equality; she’s treated like a spy among spies, and not some precious third wave princess who must be showered in jewels and pampered royally just to get it on already.
That's all, but Erich Kurtz will return in ANYTHING THAT KILLS YOU MAKES YOU COOL FIRST.
