Goldfinger
This review is part of Project Bond, wherein over the course of 2014 we watch all of the James Bond movies in production order.
Summary: the greatest threat to the world is a gold-dealer who wants to irradiate the US’s stockpile of gold. Also, Pussy Galore has a Flying Circus. And Shirley Bassey manages to rhyme Midas with spider.
Alex: after two Cold War movies, we get one that’s entirely focussed on stopping a British citizen with a weird accent from destroying Britain and America’s ability to shore up the pound and dollar with their gold reserves. That’s an exceptionally weird premise for a movie made in 1964, and does not seem like the sort of thing that should lead to an exciting spy film of the sort surely already expected from the franchise.
Speaking of the franchise, this movie contains some of the most icon parts of the Bond oeuvre. It is in this film – in the opening sequence – that Bond zips out of a wetsuit to reveal a white tuxedo (after previously taking a fake duck off his head; it was his disguise). Felix Leiter is played by a different actor from the one that appeared in Dr No, hinting at the possibility that James Bond and his cohorts are not necessarily stable characters (… or that they’re Time Lords). Bond visits Q in his lair, and we get some snark and the admonition that the gear be returned in working order please, Bond. And Goldfinger and Bond share that immortal conversation:
Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Goldfinger: No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die.
(Thank you, Randall, for this marvellous geeky take on the line). Bond also utters the phrase “heroin-flavoured bananas,” which for some reason hasn’t been as memorable.
There are several ladies featured in this film – more than in the previous two films together. Incidentally, Bond is making out with a nameless woman in the prologue when there’s an attempt at assassination (he sees the assailant reflected in her eyes, promptly turning her to take the
brunt of the blow); he’s being massaged by “Dink” when he encounters Leiter for the first time (he dismisses her with a smack on the butt because they’re dealing with “men’s business). More seriously, Bond seduces Jill Masterson when spying on Goldfinger (for whom she works) – she’s the one that ends up dead from being painted all in gold. He encounters her sister Tilly; they don’t have time to get it on before she’s dead, trying to kill Goldfinger in revenge. And then there’s… ahem… Pussy Galore. Played by
Honor Blackman, who by my reckoning might be the first appearance of someone who’s done the James Bond/Doctor Who double. Galore is a pilot, working for Goldfinger, and perfectly comfortable with his ostensible plan of making a very large amount of money by stealing it. Until she is wooed by Bond, that is, and SOMETHING MAGIC HAPPENS when they have sex but I’m not allowed to mention the trope that this is part of (even though James himself pointed it out during our viewing). What’s really 
awesome about Galore, though, is that she is entirely competent and self-assured (except when Bond is tripping her over and forcing himself onto her… which was way too close to that “she said no but she didn’t really mean it” thing… actually, it’s not CLOSE to it, it IS it.) And she runs a Flying Circus made up entirely of lady pilots, who are all also perfectly competent pilots, even in spite of having to wear black jumpsuits with serious Madonna cone bras underneath.
Yet again, this is not an entirely white film, which I still find intriguing. Of course, the roles for non-whites aren’t awesome… The best of them is Oddjob, Goldfinger’s manservant. Oddjob never really speaks; he grins a lot, and occasionally gestures while saying “Ah” – I’m not sure whether we’re meant to think this is Korean or what. Anyway, he has the coolest hat in the world, with a steel brim: he decapitates a statue with it, and knocks out Tilly Masterson (or possibly kills her. It’s not clear). There are also a lot of apparently-Korean servants running around to do Goldfinger’s bidding, none of whom speak, and a “Red Chinese” agent who has provided the dirty atomic bomb with which Goldfinger plans to irradiate Fort Knox.
Finally, in case we didn’t already know it, Bond is a snob. While having dinner with M and the head of the Bank of England, the latter deplores the brandy while the former doesn’t understand. Bond articulates its inferiority like he’s reading from a wine directory. But he’s also not above cheating, “playing games” with Goldfinger by switching his golf ball during their game of golf. Interestingly, he’s also shown as indecisive when faced with a ticking bomb. Obviously this was done to raise the tension – omg will Bond survive?!?!? – but the result is to make him dither over which wire to pull. And in the end, he’s not the one that disarms it. So he’s not all-knowing after all.
James:
As a young fella growing up watching James Bond I have to confess to being much more interested in the Bond Gadgets than the Bond Girls so I enjoyed seeing the genesis of Q Branch and the start of a long interplay between Bond and Q himself. Also, hello DB5 … perhaps my favourite of all the bond cars – the very car used in the movie was sold recently. Goldfinger introduces another recurring Bond theme, the apparently accidental ‘car race’ vs a girl down a mountain road; another childhood favourite. 2.5 Martinis.
Riddick
Some people will probably find this unbelievable, but I was disappointed by Riddick, the third in the Richard B. Riddick series.
Did Diesel and Twohy realise that Riddick was going to be such a badass when they named him Richard B. Riddick? It makes him sound like a cartoon character.
There are spoilers below, if you care.
I was disappointed to be disappointed, because I really like the first two films. I am so not the target audience of Pitch Black; I do not like horror, I do not tend to like creature features, I do not enjoy being scared. But Pitch Black… well, it has Claudia Black and Radha Mitchell, which helps. The planet and its creepy inhabitants are just so crazy that I liked them, and I found the interaction between the different sorts of characters – the scared, competent pilot; the wine snob; the drug-addicted cop; the imam; and the Riddick – quite enthralling. As for Chronicles of Riddick, I’m only a little embarrassed to say that I love this insane b-grade dystopic over-the-top sf action film. Hell, it has Karl Urban in awesome makeup, and it has mad sets, and Crematoria is spectacularly nuts as a planet. So going into Riddick, I thought – well, how bad can it be? From the ads it was clear they were taking the franchise back to the Pitch Black model, which is fine; I was expecting some equivalent fight scenes against humans and weird aliens, some snappy dialogue, maybe a plot. Also Katee Sackhoff!!
There were some entertaining bits, I’ll admit. That Riddick is now so notorious that mercenaries know his name, and the smart ones know to be terrified, allowed for some pretty amusing scenes. The aliens were indeed as weird and unlikely as I expected. There was a brief shot of Karl Urban in his eyeliner. Sackhoff (whose character is Dahl, which is a very unfortunate name) is kickass with a sniper’s rifle. That one of the mercenaries was actually there in order to get information about the drugged-up Johns from Pitch Black gave it something of a Die Hard 3 feel, which I really liked, and meant that it did actually tie into both parts of Riddick’s past. I was intrigued by the back-to-basics appearance of the film, back to the first appearance of Riddick; it seems to suggest that Riddick makes more sense in a mostly-fighting-animals world, rather than even pretending to fit in, or interact, with humanity like in the second. And that’s an idea worth exploring.
But.
Oh, but. The first third or so of the film is basically Riddick-as-Robinson Crusoe, which was weird. Especially the bit where he domesticates a canine because… does that kind of make the dog a replacement for Jack/Kyra? Also, Riddick with a dog? That he feeds and cares for? ?!?!? That was all a bit odd. And then the movie proceeds to the fighting-the-mercenaries bit, which is where the vague plot actually starts. And Dahl arrives. In a very tight outfit, with belts and straps that emphasise her bust even more. And half the time when the dialogue involved her, it was someone being sleazy. Even Riddick himself gets in on it, which shocked me enormously. The merc on the other team – fine, I understand, he’s a douche; that’s been established already, he doesn’t like a woman being in authority over him, and she can deal with him. It’s not nice, but the writers seem to think that that helps to establish him as being Super Bad. However, I honestly don’t remember Riddick being sleazy or misogynist in the other films. Did I miss something? He’s totally big-brother to Jack/Kyra – actually, not even that to Jack, he’s completely dispassionate. Maybe there’s a moment of maybe-electricity with the pilot, Fry, but no suggestion that they make out, as far as I recall. The comment that Riddick makes towards Dahl is just so crude that I was disgusted. Over at The Mary Sue, the argument is that Dahl – established as lesbian early on, in a moment that impressed me – uses her last line as a come-on to Riddick. I actually didn’t read it this way; for me, it seemed to reflect the situation they were in (a very intimate embrace on a rope hanging from a plane). Maybe I’m just in denial.
I am glad I did not pay to see this, but got to see it at a friend’s house. That said, Diesel has just announced the fourth movie… which makes my prediction of Riddick: the Search for Furya (based on the final 60 secs of this film) all the more likely. If they can get Karl Urban back into his eyeliner, I probably will go and see it. Because I am weak like that.
From Russia with Love
This review is part of Project Bond, wherein over the course of 2014 we watch all of the James Bond movies in production order.
Summary: Bond is lured to Istanbul to help SPECTRE steal a Russian encryption machine. Also, there is bellydancing. And stroking of a cat.
Alex: I’ll start by talking about the gender stuff, because the representation of women’s sexuality is quite interesting in this movie. Two women throw themselves at Bond – which is not exceptional in the canon, but in Dr No Honey Rider was quite reticent and Sylvia wasn’t immediately ripping his pants off, so in 1963 there’s no precedent. Additionally, Kerim Bey – Our Man in Istanbul, and not an especially handsome one – has women dragging him off to bed, and two women in the gypsy camp have a fist-fight over who gets to marry the chief’s son (who as far as I can tell, is never seen). So women are sexual creatures, mostly; the only other woman we really see is Rosa Klebb, but she’s old so clearly she doesn’t count (sarcasm!), because she sure doesn’t do sexy. The young women 
are passionate; in fact, they can barely contain themselves. Bond is generally happy to go along with it; while he doesn’t really initiate anything he does take over when he goes along with it. Bey seems to see pleasing his women as a chore (he actually sighs and says “back to the salt mine” when he agrees to canoodle with one), but has an endless number of sons and extols the virtues of big families. From this I guess we learn that women are ruled by their passions and men are ruled by cool intellect? Or something to that effect. Also, of course, in Bond we have an example of the Magical Penis trope (I really wanted to find a link to explain that, but it wasn’t obvious on TVTropes and NO WAY was I going to google it) – he turns Tatiana into a Good Woman through sex.
The mechanics: we get a prologue! In which Bond appears to be hunted and killed, but it all turns out to be a training exercise for Scary People. From which we learn that Bond is already a force to be reckoned with. There is also clear continuity with past movies: Bond is canoodling with Sylvia, the woman from the opening of Dr No, in his first scene here; and SPECTRE are very keen for Bond to be the agent they lure to Istanbul not least to take revenge for his killing of Dr No. Also, SPECTRE! Whose name is not explained in this film so if you weren’t paying attention the one time the acronym was explained in Dr No, sucks be to you.
I was intrigued by SPECTRE, actually. I had forgotten that the face of Number 1 is never shown: just his hand, stroking the white cat, thus spawning ever so many copycats (Baron von Greenback in Danger Mouse, Claw in Inspector Gadget, the villain in Austin Powers… who have I forgotten?). We don’t know his name, and it’s not given in the credits. SPECTRE as an organisation is clearly well-organised (they have a secret training base! Number 5 is a chess champion! They use live targets in training!), and the movie wants us to be aware of their power: it devotes the prologue and then the first maybe 10 minutes to them, showing them as focussed and driven. Conversely, when we finally do get to Bond, he’s relaxing on the banks of a river with a woman. Where Tatiana has just said she is willing to use Feminine Wiles to serve Mother Russia (she’s an unwitting agent of SPECTRE), Bond is using Masculine Wiles just to enjoy himself. A nice dichotomy is set up, which is somewhat undercut by Bond’s willingness to jump at M/Moneypenny’s orders… until Sylvia persuades him to stay just a little longer.
It should of course also be mentioned that this movie sees the introduction, albeit all too briefly, of Q – the eQuipment Officer. Who gives Bond some gadgets, but they are disappointingly low tech and there is a tragic lack of snark from him.
Other things confirmed by this film: being Bond’s associate is a dangerous business, as Kerim Bey ends up dead. Hmmm… given Quarrel in the previous film, perhaps it’s only dangerous if you’re not white? OK, maybe two films isn’t quite enough to make this generalisation.
Things I did not know until I went to IMDB: Daniela Bianchi, who played Tatiana, was dubbed for this role because her English was so poor! But she was 1960’s Miss Rome so I guess that makes… no, it doesn’t make sense at all.
James: First a note to the editor, if the phrase ‘Magical Penis’ is used in another review my subscript notes will cease.
Alex: it’s a real trope! Happens all the time!!
James: Another tip of the hat to the negative restoration and transfer quality for the Blu Ray nerds. So much of this film has been filmed on location in Istanbul and it really shows, much less blue screen etc. Compared to future Bond the majority of the film centres around one city and few locations, the two embassies and some tourist highlights in Istanbul (The Blue Mosque, Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia and the Bazaar). One thing that doesn’t really make sense is that all film the good guys know the bad guys are lurking and yet they are so casual about security … For example on the train Bond tells Tatiana ‘Lock the door, I’ll knock three times’ as the bad guys walk up and down the corridor and occupy the cabin at the end of their carriage. I did enjoy that Bond marks the major villain who’s been stalking him all film by his choice of red wine with fish, and not a million other more obvious things he’s done. 2.5 Martinis (which curiously don’t feature in this film at all).
James Bond in pictures
You think we’re crazy for watching all of the James Bond films in a year? This guy is watching them in a much, much shorter space of time than we are, and is using the artistic prowess that neither of us possesses to capture each film in one picture. He’s not going into enormous depth with his reviews, but is including lots of screen caps with entertaining captions for those of you who prefer more graphic-oriented overviews. His stuff is definitely worth checking out.
Project Bond involves us watching every James Bond movie over the course of 2014. You can find our reviews here.
Doctor No
This review is part of Project Bond, wherein over the course of 2014 we watch all of the James Bond movies in production order.
Summary: Bond is sent to Jamaica after the MI6 agent there (Strangways) is killed. It turns out that he was investigating Crab Key and its mysterious inhabitant, Dr No, as possibly being the source of interference that has Cape Canaveral and NASA all het up. Bond continues this investigation, ending up on the island and eventually foiling Dr No’s dastardly plan. Which involves an atomic reactor. Along the way Bond sleeps with a few ladies, gets one ally killed, and kills several people himself. And he has a shower.
Alex: It was interesting to see how many of the elements that define Bond in the cultural mind are present from the outset. The opening scene has Bond gambling with a beautiful woman, whom he ends up sleeping with (this is a mutual seduction); he drinks a martini that’s been shaken; he flirts outrageously with Moneypenny (and throws his hat on the hatstand), and M is also present; there are car chases galore, and even Felix Leiter and SPECTRE. The one aspect missing is Q, and any sort of technogadgetr (Geiger counters don’t count). The other thing that’s really different is the opening credits: there’s no prologue before them! But there are some dancing-lady silhouettes, so that foreshadows later developments, as does the man-in-gun-barrel shot. Also the theme music; I love this original score. Interestingly, there is no mention of “James Bond”; there are some “007”s plastered on the screen, but that’s it – the movie is “Ian Fleming’s Dr No”.
The introduction of Bond as a character says a lot. As mentioned, Bond is first seen gambling in a club. Someone is looking for him, so we already know his name (that would never happen in a film today), but when the camera gets to the card table we don’t see his face for ages. We see the back of his head… then his (well-manicured) fingernails… then his face, as he lights a cigarette and gives his name as “Bond. James Bond” in reply to the woman asking. I have no idea how popular Connery already was by this stage, but he can’t have been an unknown – not to get that sort of treatment. Bond’s character is relatively nuanced throughout the film. He goes from gambling and flirting with a stranger, to flirting with Moneypenny, to being deadly serious with his boss (and being petulant when told his Beretta is a sissy gun). In Jamaica he Gets Things Done: turns the tables on would-be murderers, orders people around, deals with a nasty spider, and kills with (apparently) absolutely no qualms. He’s cold and hard when it’s required, but warm and flirty when he can; he’s calm while the spider crawls all the way up him (if he’d been a woman this would have happened with the sheet off, rather than wrapped around him) – but then jumps out of the bed, clearly panicky. This characterisation surprised and pleased me.
The supporting cast left a lot to be desired, although there were some good bits.
Quarrel, the local Jamaican boatie who was helping Strangways has some good moments: suspicious of Bond, he manages (briefly) to have him at a disadvantage; his local knowledge and boating skills are clearly valued by Bond and Leiter. At the start he clearly
sees himself as Bond’s equal, although this seems to disappear over the course of their partnership. Annoyingly, when they get to Crab Key Quarrel is depicted as superstitious and needing to drink rum to bolster his confidence – the former I could cope with because Honey Ryder also believes in the dragon, but the latter is totally unnecessary. Also, he dies an unnecessary death and is then forgotten. Boo.
I tried to keep track of the non-white characters throughout the film, expecting it to be pretty dire. They do mostly appear as murderers and servants, and often as totally under Do No’s sway… but there are a few white characters who fit this bill, too, so it’s not a racially clear-cut thing. The worst bit, race-wise, is that as far as I can tell two of the characters are in ‘yellow-face’: Miss Taro and Dr No himself are played by white actors. (I may be wrong about Miss Taro – perhaps she’s not meant to be of Asian descent – but the eye-liner and hair seem to be suggesting it…).
Dr No says that his father is German while his mother is Chinese, so I guess there’s an excuse for not using a Chinese actor, but still…. I was also reminded of Stella Young’s comments at the Splendid Chaps podcast about villains and disability. Dr No has something wrong his hands – we’re not told what, although Bond assumes his hands are fake. In the book I think he also has weird eyes. The point being, he’s not right somehow. Bond is the epitome of Manliness, and is Defending Humanity; his opponent is somehow less than/different from human (I mean all of this in the context of the movie of course), and is therefore deserving of being taken down.
Honey Ryder (in the book, she’s Honeychile) – played by Ursula Andress – is the most famous part of the movie, I think; her walking out of the ocean must be one of the more iconic moments in popular cinema. Like Quarrel, her best moments are at the start of her relationship with Bond. She’s suspicious of him, afraid that he’s going to steal her shells; she’s defiant and doesn’t want to have anything to do with him. She’s confident of her own abilities and indeed proves herself very useful – taking Bond and Quarrel somewhere to hide, showing Bond how to stop the mosquitoes from biting, and so on. Sadly, this utility and resourcefulness do not survive under the weight of James Bond. She quickly becomes fearful and a bit useless – dressed up as a doll, taken to dinner then dismissed while the men talk of great things, and then chained up so she can be rescued. Sad.
There is a good case for arguing that this is a science fiction movie. Dr No is being investigated because he is somehow interfering with the Mercury missions being launched from Cape Canaveral – Leiter says they’re about to try moon fly-bys, which by 1962 standards are absolutely SF. Additionally, Dr No’s evilness is driven by atomic power, also SF-nal for 1962. And there are automatic sliding doors.
I enjoyed this more than I had expected. The fights are cheesy, the car chases involve a lot of blue screen, and some of the dialogue is dreadful. But a lot of it was actually shot in Jamaica, which is beautiful; it’s well-paced – no extended fights or chases; and I liked that Dr No isn’t completely transparent. This was definitely a good start to Project Bond.
James: Well, what has Alex left unsaid? I enjoyed that right from the gun (see what I did there) we’re off and racing with the traditional Bond theme blaring out on trumpets… Classic and colourful lettering … Dr No, Ian Fleming and then the short credits. The quality of the blu-ray transfer is striking. Having watched these films growing up on VHS etc to see them re-scanned from the original first generation camera films is a treat. Film’s look is timeless, the colour is beautiful and of course the technology dates it but otherwise it could be any modern film.
If I had one observation it’s that the whole film somehow seems more dated and cheesy the longer it goes on. It’s still from that era when cinema seems overacted compared to more modern films. I loved how many of the key Bond elements are firmly in place, the booze, the women and the regular supporting cast and yet somehow the cliche doesn’t feel tired? How many books had Fleming written before this film was made? I rate this Bond 3 Martinis.
2013: the tv and movies
So it’s that time of year, when everyone does their wrap-ups. Me, I’ve been keeping track of most of the tv and film I’ve consumed over the year, because I think it’s interesting – particularly to see what I re-watch…
Movies for the first time:
Hotel Transylvania * Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (on the plane, ok??) * Pitch Perfect * Brave * Cloud Atlas * Oblivion * Iron Man 3 * The Prestige * Jack Reacher (I may have fallen asleep) * The Odd Angry Shot * Much Ado About Nothing (2012) * A Good Day to Die Hard * Pacific Rim * RED 2 * Star Trek Into Darkness * Gravity * Olympus Has Fallen * GI Joe: Retaliation * Thor: The Dark World * Elysium * The Wolverine * Ender’s Game * Man of Steel
Total: 23
Movies re-watched:
Die Hard with a Vengeance * Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark * The Avengers * The Mummy * Airheads * Skyfall * Iron Man * Iron Man 2 * Good Night, and Good Luck * Knight and Day * Space Cowboys (in honour of Cmdr Hadfield) * The Lord of the Rings (all three, extended editions) * Thirteen Days * Apollo 13 * The Odd Angry Shot (yes, again) * Snow White and the Seven Dwarves * Nicholas and Alexandra * Oblivion * Singin’ in the Rain * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2
Total: 22
TV seasons (not including rather a lot of Doctor Who):
Caprica (first and only season) * Warehouse 13 (season 1) * The Triangle (three-part series I am embarrassed to have watched) * FarScape (season 1) (rewatch) * Downton Abbey (season 1) * Wallander (5 episodes) * Downton Abbey (season 2) * Game of Thrones (season 2) * The Bletchley Circle * Downton Abbey (season 3) * Newsroom (season 1) * Battlestar Galactica (season 1) (rewatch) * Battlestar Galactica (season 2) (rewatch) * The Day of the Doctor (…twice…) * Battlestar Galactica (season 3) (rewatch) * A Very British Coup
Total: 14 seasons
I would have thought we watched more tv this year, so that’s interesting. Battlestar Galactica has fairly long seasons, though, so that’s taken a fair bit of the last quarter of the year.
Project Bond
I like James Bond movies. In fact, I went through quite a phase as an 18 year old of reading all the Bond books I could get my hands on (even, gasp! non-Fleming ones).
My husband likes James Bond movies.
Together, we have seen all the Brosnan and Craig films, and a few of the classics when the opportunity has arisen. A few weeks ago we went to Melbourne Museum’s Designing 007 exhibition, and it’s incredible. Costumes (golly the women have been tiny), props, mood boards, story boards… an enormous casino room, clips from films, etc etc. Brilliant!
But.
Now, it must be said that I have a spectacularly poor memory. Yet even taking that into account… well, it turns out that I may not have seen as many classic Bonds as I thought I had. As many as I had assumed, and been assuring the husband of.
And thus is born Project Bond. Said husband dreamed it up while drunk on the glory of Aston Martins and sharp suits. We have purchased the entire suite of James Bond movies from the last 50 years (all 23 of them), and we plan to watch one a fortnight for 2014. And the only way that I was convinced to go along with this crazy idea was the tantalising suggestion that – you guessed it – I should review each one. It was briefly suggested that perhaps I would refrain from indulging in too much ranting over the gender politics… but this suggestion was quickly retracted.
2014 starts this week, and so does Project Bond. Stay tuned for our first review, as James Bond takes on the nefarious Dr No.
Thor 2: a spoilery discussion
SPOILERS, right? You’ve been warned.
Let me get this out of my system: oh my GOODness WTH Greenwich? GREENWICH? ARE YOU FOR REAL??
Ahem.
So. Thor’s second solo(ish) outing. I think it’s got a slightly better plot than the first. It’s still a crazy romp (see here for The Mary Sue’s review that suggests it’s not as crazy as it could/should be – too caught up with realism for a story that is hello, based on Norse mythology – which I agree with). There’s going to be a conjunction of the nine worlds (which makes me think that Lara Croft should be finding something awesome, amiright?), and this is causing all sorts of gravitational ructions between the worlds… and the Dark Elves are waking up, having been totes smashed by Odin’s dad a while back, and they want reveeeeeeenge. Also the Aether, a magic substance that will help them bring about everlasting darkness (which raises all SORTS of questions about why they have eyes, etc, but this movie is not the place for a discussion of evolutionary biology (insert joke about Chris Hemsworth’s abs here)). Things go wrong for everyone, surprise! There are battles, there is science, there are monsters, and there is kissing.
Things I liked:
Sif is awesome.
Jane was science-y! (And thanks to a science discussion early on with Darcy, the movie passes the Bechdel test.)
Friga was brilliant. With a sword. Also the tricksiness.
The relationship between Thor and Loki. Prickly but sad, angry but wanting-to-be-hopeful… more nuanced than I was expecting, to be honest. Not knocking Hemsworth but I think a lot of that was down to Hiddleston, because as the wrong-doer he had a harder job making Loki both unrepentant and dismayed at the outcome of his actions. That moment when you realise that everything you’re seeing in Loki’s cell is a trick? – sheer brilliance.
The end! (of the movie itself that is, not the stingers). I was pretty sure I knew what was going down, but it was nice to see it actually happen.
Things I was sad about:
There is not enough Sif.
I will never get the image of Stellan Skarsgard in y-fronts out of my brain.
GREENWICH. You cannot be serious about using Greenwich as as the locus of the nine worlds’ conjunctions. And you really cannot be serious about drawing lines that converge there that start at Stonehenge, Snowdon and… other unnamed places because if you named them it’d be even more obvious how STUPID this is…. And in conjunction with this, you really, really cannot be serious about the ancients having left messages for us from “last time”: the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Mayans… the MAYANS? The Mayans were not building monumental structures at the same time as the Egyptians and the Chinese! I… I have no words. Look, even Skarsgard is dubious about his own words!
Darcy and the intern getting it on. Yes I was expecting it, but still.
I liked it. I love superhero movies (except for Spiderman. It just hasn’t worked for me). So… there are explosions and fight scenes and some delightful snark. And Loki. It’s exactly what I expected.
Han Solo
What can I say, I’m one of those people who thinks that Solo is really the star of the Star Wars movies; I was very annoyed that eps1-3 didn’t make a reference to him, even something as small as ‘here’s this kid I’m teaching to be a smuggler…’.
Anyway, a friend was cleaning out her house of books and I became the recipient of a Rather Large Bag of Star Wars novels… and I have finally dipped my toe in. I started here partly because SOLO, and partly because of this article about the author, AC Crispin, having recently died. And I had no idea that AC = Ann.
So. Solo.
Look, this is not a novel that was ever going to win literary prizes. The prose is a bit clunky, some of the characters are a bit stock, and yes the overall plot is a bit hackneyed. BUT! But.
a) It’s SOLO. Who doesn’t want to know how the galaxy’s most loveable rogue got to where he is? Who doesn’t want to know why someone so rough on the outside actually has such a soft smooshy inside? (Much like a tauntaun…). Plus, how did he GET that tough exterior? How did he and Chewbacca find each other, and what about the Millennium Falcon? These are questions I really want an answer to. So, I’ll read the novels.
b) It expands the Star Wars universe. I think one reason why I really like the idea of the enormous number of tie-in novels is that they’re all set in the same universe, but they don’t concentrate on just one bit. The Zahn novels didn’t; this one novel takes the reader to a few different planets, and while most of them are (as far as I recall) referenced in the original movies, this book looks at them from a rather different perspective – and it still works. It’s a lot grubbier, mostly. Yes Solo is a smuggler in the movies, yes Tatooine is the planet-futherest-from-the-bright-centre-of-the-galaxy – but really you don’t see much of the seamier side of the planets, let alone of the empire as an Evil Empire. Contrariwise, Crispin sets a lot of her story in the criminal underground, or on a slave plantation. Some people are nice, some are downright rotters.
c) Gratuitous Star Wars references. Sure Solo’s miff-ed-ness at being called scruffy got a bit tired after a while, but still – funny.
d) It takes Star Wars stuff but it makes it different. There’s an elderly Wookee woman that Solo’s friends with, and there are clear parallels to Chewbacca (also with his non-human companion Muuurgh) – but it’s not identical. There’s a romantic interest and again, parallels to Leia but by no means identical, and indeed provides some rather thought-provoking points on why Solo reacts the way he does to Leia (abandonment issues). Links to the Hutts, being a pilot, etc – all of these essential elements are there, but Crispin does interesting enough things with them that it’s by no means ‘young Solo just imitates old Solo.’ And that’s cool.
Thus this novel was definitely light entertainment. It’s light because it doesn’t require an enormous investment of time or thought-process from the reader – although it does raise genuine issues and does not simply ignore them. It’s entertainment because there are pirates, and smugglers, and chases, and Han Solo.
Bogarde
Once upon a time, I was 16. One 16-year-old Saturday afternoon, I switched on the television to discover a black-and-white Dirk Bogarde being sentenced to death by He-Who-Would-Be Rumpole (Leo McKern). I was horrified and mesmerised. And then when Bogarde declaimed “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known” … well, there was definitely Something In My Eye. Such that my mother had to ask what the problem was, and when I told her Dr Simon Sparrow was on a tumbrel, headingfor the guillotine… she just shook her head.
I am of an age to remember when Friday nights were a Great Night for movies. My dad stayed up super-late with me once, to watch Breaker Morant, and had to almost physically prevent me from ranting and raving about the injustice of it all, because who does high-horse morality better than a 15 year old? Anyway, the ABC went through a period of classic British films, whence my introduction to Carry On. And after Carry On came the Doctor films. And Dr Simon Sparrow just stole my heart. (Seriously! Look at those eyes!)
All of this is the long-way-around way of saying that a few years after all this, my mother bought me a biography of Bogarde. That was quite a long time ago now. I have an unfortunate habit of appreciating the books she buys me but not reading them for ages. In my defence this is a BIG book – like 700 pages big – and somehow 700 pages of biography is different from 700 pages of space opera. Because I finally, finally read it. Hooray! And it took me quite a long time (like over a week).
I vaguely remember Mum breaking it to me that he was gay; I had no idea that he went on to have such a successful career as an author, nor that his film career was quite as… fraught.
The bio had some excellent bits in it. I was fascinated by the discussion of film-making in Britain in the 50s and 60s (and a bit horrified); the idea of Judy Garland and other such bright lights going over to Bogarde’s place for Sunday lunch kinda blew my mind. But there are some problems here as well. Firstly, and most annoyingly, Coldstream makes quite a deal of the fact that in his memoirs, Tony Forwood often appears as entirely marginal, sometimes only as a manager vaguely hanging around. The reality is that they lived together for something like 50 years. Coldstream makes this part of Bogarde’s fear of being outed as gay (totally reasonable in the 50s when Britain still had its laws making homosexuality illegal), but also part of his rewriting of his personal history. My main beef with this, though, is that Coldstream doesn’t actually interrogate Bogarde and Forwood’s relationship himself. I don’t mean that I wanted to read an expose of their sex life; I mean that I was left wondering whether they actually were lovers, or had an entirely platonic relationship or… what. Coldstream fell into the same problem – not entirely ignoring Forwood, but not properly considering his significance – that he accused Bogarde of. Which means there’s this huge part of Bogarde’s life – was he gay? Was he asexual? – that is ignored. And if you’re writing a bio, that should (I feel) be either part of the discussion, or completely left out, and if the latter then that needs to be spelled out for the reader. Especially in Bogarde’s case where his drop-dead-beauty was part of his appeal as a film star, and where his sexuality has been cause for discussion for a very long time.
My other gripe with this book concerns two really weird bits. One: Coldstream sent off samples of Bogarde’s handwriting to a graphologist. That’s someone who analyses handwriting and tells you about your personality. Um, weird. Two: the biography ends with a totally bizarre story of the people who bought Bogarde and Forwood’s estate in France being superstitious about a possession of Bogarde’s bringing them bad luck. Also, um, weird.
If you’re interested in film history, this is awesome. I’ve left it with my mum and I think she’ll get more out of it because she’ll know more about the people being mentioned. If you’re interested in biography generally this actually is quite a good one – it’s perfectly readable and Bogarde really did have a fascinating life, serving in WW2 then acting in theatre and films – and oh the drama (heh) around that – then going on to writing and public appearances.
Randomly Yours, Alex 