The Split Diopter

Mornin’ y’all…

I’ve started a sub-blog to this one, entitled “The Split Diopter.”   The blog will focus only on film (and possibly TV once in a while).  Check back for updates!

Sean

Tips for Retards™ – Tip #45

This isn’t so much a tip as a recounting of my run-in with a local retard.

I get to my building on Tuesday night and didn’t immediately want to commit homocide of some kind.  This is likely due to the fact that my building management has decided to plunk down some of its surplus cash and improve the relative dump that is my building.  I have always maintained, however, that I love my apartment itself¹.  The reason I moved there was because of the space I was living in, not the space outside my hallway.  But I digress…

…I enter the building and head to the new, snazz-o-fied ^© elevators.  As I hate everyone, I generally try to avoid going up in the elevators with anyone in hopes of evading the inevitable, useless and trite conversation homo sapiens are forced to engage in order to maintain the planet-wide illusion that they give a shit about the meat-bag next to them.   This particular day, I was lucky enough to encounter a scooter-bound brontosaurus (who had parked directly in front of one of the elevator cars so as to prevent anyone unfortunate enough to be riding in it any hopes of escaping the metal death-box) and another goober who was shiftily waiting behind him².

I wanted nothing to do with this side-show-Laurel-and-Hardy;  I continued walking to my mailbox.  Rounding the corner to the mail room,  I heard the elevator “ding!” followed by the screaming of strained metal and informercial-purchased gears as the scooter lurched slowly forward.   I arrived at my mailbox.  From what I could hear, it was apparent that the bronto-scooter didn’t really count on the goober behind him wanting to actually use the elevator.  Like a good douche, he stopped immediately upon entering the car, leaving no room for anyone else.  Not to be outdone, the Goober took it upon himself to force an entry anyway.  He crowbarred his goober-girth into the 2 available inches behind the scooter.

“Dude!  My feet!  DUDE!  MY FEET!  SHIT!  FUCK!”

My snickering was audible.

“Fuck man!  My feet!”

I closed my mailbox and started back towards the elevators.

“Fuck!  Ah – that’s ok, Chris…I’ll take the next one.”

The thought being such a world-class fucktard to a “friend” made it all the sweeter.  Laughing loudly, I got to the elevator bank and hit the “Up” button.  The next elevator came seconds later; I entered.  Goober followed quickly behind me and hit his floor.

You fucking asshole.

I think I actually said it before hitting “25.”

¹this would seem to fly in the face of the notice I gave my landlord on April 1, 2009, but these kind of plot loopholes only serve to exacerbate the constant migraine  that I endure daily.

²I have previously encountered said goober in the laundry room:  On that particular day, I had noticed that the vents must have been blocked, causing the dryers to not heat up at all.  The result was a lot of hour-long-tumbled clothing, still sopping wet.  I warned Goober of this tragedy.  He looked at me blankly and said, “That’s ok – I don’t live in the building.  I live in a halfway house near here.”   I was bathed in relief…

I has returned…

…from my survey mission to Meeeeeepzorp XII.  With a glad heart, I report to Star Command that I successfully eradicated the dust bunny infestestion of the third moon of Meeeeeepzorp.  Commanderette Zircon…OUT.

City of Pillars – Dominic Peloso

A Mini Book Expo Review

City of Pillars

Dominic Peloso

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Invisible College Press (December 1, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 1931468001
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468008

Shipping within Canada & US sponsored by Invisible College Press

I seem to be having a run of bad luck with my MiniBook Expo selections lately.

City of Pillars by Dominic Peloso follows the spiralling decent into madness of it’s narrator, Mitchell Sinclair, after he is mistakingly (or so he thinks)  saddled with an ancient manuscript while stopped at a commuter toll-booth in San Francisco.  A series of credibility challenging events follow the character until he has no other choice but to invest his entire existence in the pursuit of deciphering the mystery and violence.  As Mitchell Sinclair’s insatiable obsession drives him deeper into the convoluted world of the multi-lingual tome, his ethics, morals and sanity melt away.

An interesting idea to be sure, but as it is now, City of Pillars doesn’t completely work.  As one other blogger pointed out, the fundamental problem with the book is the writing.  Presented as a confessional by Mitchell Sinclair, the entire story is told in the first-person.  This approach may have worked with a more adept novelist, but Dominic Peloso doesn’t appear up to the task.  I have never read Peloso’s other work; however, an assessment based on City of Pillars would not be in his favour.

Sinclair is a very loosely drawn character and the author never really engages with the reader, save for the first couple chapters.  As the novel opens, the protagonist and his world are fascinating.  As the novel progresses, however, the outlandish and (frankly) unbelievable violence and perils that befall Sinclair leave the reader feeling bored.  The final chapters of the novel especially push the credibility of the character and the premise completely.

Had City of Pillars been presented as a longer, more in depth examination of trauma-induced insanity, I might have been more impressed; sadly, the City of Pillars I read was unimpressive.

Oscars 2009

Not gonna write a huge entry about the Academy Awards, but just a few things…

YAY

• Sean Penn’s acceptable speech
• Hugh Jackman’s opening musical number
• 5 previous winners presenting the acting awards
• Wall-E being featured so prominently

NAY

• Hugh Jackman’s mid-show musical number (WTF?)
• Sophia Loren’s barf-inspired “gown”
• No acting clips (WTF?)
• Wall-E’s song being performed by someone other than the Great Peter Gabriel (who was sitting in the audience)
• Unapologetic homophobe Jerry Lewis picking up a humanitarian award
• Kate Winslet’s speech (OTT fur rurlz)

Qapla’

This is hilarious…and sad.

Colour me annoyed…

So, to coincide with the similarly named remake being released on February 14, 2008, Paramount Pictures has released the original Friday the 13th Uncut on DVD and Blu-ray.  I left work yesterday, completed stoked that I was going to splurge and buy this little gem to view some Hi-Def death scenes from 1980…and UNCUT!  Sweet.

I walked to HMV on Yonge and found the disc – $26.99.  Pretty good price, and it was available for purchase in a “2 for $50″ deal with another Blu-ray disc.  Super sweet.

I grabbed it and started to look for another disc for potential purchase.  As I walked around, I began examining the cover…

…pretty f’ing cool.

Then I turned it over…

…nice.

Then I began to read more closely and discovered that the footage falling under the label of UNCUT totalled 10 seconds.

10 seconds…

Eerily enough, this image of the back of the disc doesn’t appear to mention that, but the one in the store did.  Seriously, it takes me longer than 10 seconds to say, “UNCUT!”

Uncut this, Paramount.  I’ll keep my $26.99 plus tax and spend $4 to rent the standard definition version.

Lame.  Buyer beware indeed.

Gra…? Part II

Fascinating…

Axis Mundi Sum – D. A. Smith

A Mini Book Expo Review

Axis Mundi Sum

D. A. Smith

Product Details

• Paperback: 484 pages
• Publisher: Invisible College Press, LLC (July 1, 2003)
• ISBN-10: 1931468168
• ISBN-13: 978-1931468169

Shipping within Canada & US sponsored by Invisible College Press

When I requested a copy of Axis Mundi Sum, a novel by D. A. Smith, I was initially intrigued by the eccentricity promised in the blurb at MiniBookExpo:

Brainwashing! Computer hacking! International intrigue! Psychedelic drugs! Female secret societies! Fringe science! Chinese beer! Walking corpses! The Goddess of Confusion!

Perhaps it was my heightened expectations (or perhaps I just expected something else entirely) but Axis Mundi Sum was in short, a disappointment. The plot, the characters, the style, and even the editing left me wanting more.

Without giving too much away, the novel follows several characters and several plots: from an over-worked assassin who cavorts with a legendary Chinese corpse and is visited nightly by Egyptian gods, to a group of overweight college students who plot to crash the computer systems at their school (and nearly every other academic repository in the country), to a couple of love-struck women who travel to Europe, avoiding attempts on their life at various locations, to the staff of a Los Angeles diner who are visited by beings from another dimension, to a couple disenfranchised nerds who dream of allowing everyone to discover the virtues of LSD and a girl who is brainwashed and the subsequent investigation by her best friend and a female reporter from a conspiracy magazine.  Got that?  Good.

Sadly, the plots (and the characters) never really hit a good stride narratively.  You don’t really end up giving a shit about anyone in this book and with about 100 pages left to overcome before hitting the finish line, I started to actively dislike them.  The sheer volume of characters (the hard drive crashing thread alone involves nearly ten) doesn’t allow the author to explore any of them with any kind of efficiency or depth.  I think D.A. Smith might have been overwhelmed with the exposition involved in making his point.  At the end of the book, however, I was left wondering if it was worth the journey.  The characters aren’t particularly likeable (based on their lack of engagement with this reader), so their activities don’t come off as particularly important.

The absurdity and wackiness implied in every write-up I read about Axis Mundi Sum was there, but only scratching on the surface.  Perhaps if more commitment had been made to the more off-the-wall things hinted at in the book, the novel might have been more successful (and interesting).  The Vonnegut-ness of this piece wasn’t as prevalent as I thought it would be and by the time I hit the end (or perhaps sooner), I noticed myself reaching for an old, dog-eared copy of Cat’s Cradle.

As a footnote, I would also like to complain about the very haphazard editing of this novel.  Several spelling mistakes were present, not to mention some layout problems that were jarring to the reader.

Haiku Movie Review™ – Moonraker (1979)

Opening sequence
Is a brilliant metaphor
For this weak Bond outing

Haiku Movie Review™ – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Steel-toothed villain, Jaws
Moore finally IS James Bond
Stellar effort here

Haiku Movie Review™ – The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Nick Nack and heavy
Francisco Scaramanga
The only highlight

Haiku Movie Review™ – Live and Let Die (1973)

Tee Hee and Whisper
Numerous honkies. Shazaaaaam!
Bad ass bayou chase.

A Very Merry Unbirthday To Me…

…and a very special message delivered by whispermaphone…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to my own (not so) little Lorax, J.

WTF…

…happened to Jason Priestly’s face?

Before

After

EEEK!

Alphabet Movie Meme

Alien
Batman Begins
Casino Royale
Dr. No
ET – The Extra Terrestrial
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Halloween
Incredibles, The
Jaws
King Solomon’s Mines
Live and Let Die
Mary Poppins
Nightmare on Elm Street, A
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Poseidon Adventure
Quantum of Solace
Rosemary’s Baby
Spy Who Loved Me, The
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Uncle Buck
View To A Kill
World Is Not Enough, The
Xanadu
You Only Live Twice
Zardoz

Haiku Movie Review™ – Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Mediocre flick
“Right idea, Mr. Bond.”
“But wrong pussy.” Ha!

I was it…but now I’m not…

Sharkboy tagged me in a meme.  This one is easy – go  to you flickr account (or equivalent) and hit the 6th image on the 6th page.

I will admit I slightly cheated – I used the public version of my flickr account since the 6th photo on the 6th page that is displayed when I look at the account (without restrictions, obviously)…is a little private.  C’est la vie.

But seriously – it’s a pic of a gorilla giving me the finger.  C’mon, people!!

I shall tag:

Jtree

RainbowDishes

Deep South Mark

The Fluffy Pink Blog

An Ode to a (Retarded) Spring

Pummeled by idiocy,
Engulfed by feeble minds,
Starving in a desert
Devoid of common sense

Southerly
Oriented
Chevrons
Mean down

Shiny
Illuminated
“Occupado”
Means occupied

Sidewalk strolling
Can you spare change?
Do you have any change?
Antithetical synonym

Assigned seating
Twenty-third place in line
First place in line
Exemplary synonym

Curtains on shower doors
In gyms
Aren’t meant to solely act
As dust covers
For unused shower-heads

Lungs filled with apathy
Drowning in puerility

Jazz Hands – STAT!

My buddy Glen and I were watching the HD PBS documentary about HRH Elizabeth II and her posse last night but I also noticed that the (somewhat well publicized) Rosie O’Donnell Variety Show was on.  I set the PVR and we continued to watch Liz until 9pm.

Then I turned on the Variety Show…

…all I have to say is, thank GOD I have a PVR.  The hour long program was reduced to a 7.5 minute fast forward session, only stopping to watch Liza warble and shake her way through a song,  Alanis Morissette starting to sing, the Gayken making lame jokes about his bald-faced lies to his fans for years…and finally (the only funny thing in the show), Kathy Griffin’s amusing Nancy Grace impression.

Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

Rosie O’Donnell, single-handedly making middle America
believe that “Jazz Hands = Complicated Coreography”

…now this…is coreography!!

Quantum of Solace

Quantum of Solace (or QoS as I will henceforth refer to it) is the 22nd installment of (far and away) the most lucrative film franchise in the history of cinema. Raking in a total of $4,915,824,812¹ (yes, that’s four BILLION) since 1962’s Dr. No was released, each film averages around the $200,000,000¹ mark. So, there was little doubt that this chapter in OO7’s illustrious history of box-office domination would disappoint financially; critical success however, is another story.
Bond movies from around 1965’s Thunderball onwards have been fairly critic-proof. Even as the obsessive, psychotic and all-around nit-picky Bond freakshow that is me, I cannot deny that the films’ ability to defy opinion has often baffled. Take 1979’s Moonraker – possibly the most intelligence-insulting plot to ever be spewed from an audience-hating-writer’s odious pen. Yet until 1992’s Goldeneye, it was the highest grossing Bond film world-wide. What the hell do critic’s know anyway, huh? I would be remiss to not admit to often popping in my Moonraker DVD just to watch the eye-popping opening (with Bond and Jaws battling at 5,000 ft in free-fall) or Shirley Bassey’s wonderful take on John Barry’s theme (originally written for Johnny Mathis).
Still, as that obsessive, psychotic and all-around nit-picky Bond freakshow, I have certain things that I expect as a Bond fan – I’m happy to report that QoS delivered on most of them, but the ones that it fumbled (or just plain didn’t bother with) were major. Having said that, QoS is a proud achievement in the Bond franchise and ranks up at least in my personal Top Ten (but that is a whole other post…).

A more in-depth look…

SPOILERS AHOY

First off – at little background of the nerdicious minutea variety…

Regardless of your opinion of the movie, QoS will go down in history (at least Bond history) as being the (kinda) first (sorta) sequel in the franchise. From Russia With Love (1963) dealt with the events of Dr. No (SPECTRE was royally PO’d at OO7 for vanquishing their operative, Dr. No and set out to kill him, but obviously not before humiliating him with a sex scandal – his being a spy, as in NOT a public figure, notwithstanding) and 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever very loosely touched on the events of 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Bond’s wife is killed in the final moments of OHMSS and DAF opens with Bond searching for the killer, Blofeld. Upon a recent review of the first twenty minutes of DAF, however, I am now more inclined to believe that the audience is being subtly asked to ignore the events of OHMSS completely, and instead assume that Bond is simply enraged over Blofeld’s escape in 1967’s You Only Live Twice, not the death of his wife). In any event, QoS is the first Bond film which takes place moments (some sources say an hour) after the end of Casino Royale. The former film concludes with Eva Greene’s Vesper Lynd committing suicide rather than facing her betrayal of OO7 (as a response to blackmail involving an unseen boyfriend) and Bond’s subsequent tracking of Mr. White, a mysterious figure who supposedly orchestrated the entire operation. These plot points hold (somewhat loosely) with Ian Fleming’s original novel, save the use of SMERSH (replaced by Quantum in QoS) and the fact that Vesper Lynd was working for SMERSH the entire time. QoS opens with Bond transporting Mr. White (trussed in the boot of his Aston Martin) as he is pursued by a bevy of not-so-inept guards trying to stop him. It is revealed that Mr. White works for Quantum, a world-wide consortium of terrorists and other nefarious criminals – not unlike SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) from the earlier Bond films. Unsurprisingly, Quantum was created as a replacement of sorts for SPECTRE, to which EON no longer holds the rights to², even replacing the SPECTRE octopus ring with a Quantum “Q” lapel pin.

The plot follows his investigation into Quantum and the slow blossoming plans of the latest uncovered member, Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric). In the process, he meets Greene’s lover, Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko), who is on a vengeful mission of her own: attempting to exact justice against a corrupt and deplorable despot who mercilessly killed her parents. When Greene uncovers her plot, he orders her killed.  Like a well-oiled Swiss watch, OO7 crashes into the scene, saving Camille. With her help, they uncover what appears to be a scheme involving oil, but turns out to be a plan to hold Bolivians hostage for water (which Greene is hoarding, having dammed up the local water supply). Bond is wracked with pain over the death of Vesper and it affects most of his decisions – from his dealings with an increasingly irate M (Judi Dench) to his seeming inability to let contacts get information out before he ruthlessly liquidates them. Everything comes to a head in the middle of the desert, with Bond and Camille foiling the plans of Greene, Camille getting her revenge and Bond, taking the high road as only he can: allowing Greene to live (albeit in the middle of the desert with only a can of motor oil for refreshment).

The film itself deserves credit for allowing viewers to see more layers to the character of James Bond, but it comes at the expense of the rest of the characters in the film. Kurylenko’s character is a prime example: a Bond girl created very much in the vein of Melina Havelocke from For Your Eyes Only, however the only explanation of her need for revenge is a single expository scene with Bond and a few throwaway lines from Greene. Giving the character that depth doesn’t take long, either – Melina’s entire need for revenge was perfectly captured in a 2 minute scene in which her parents are brutally assassinated before her eyes. The audience is also never granted a single glimpse into why Greene’s henchman, Elvis, looks or acts the way he does – he’s just there, which in a Bond movie doesn’t really fly unless his tick is outlandish (steel teeth, a mechanical arm, extreme strength, etc).
When director Marc Forster was asked about his ideas for QoS, one thing he said several times was that Casino Royale was too long and he wanted his movie to be “tight and fast [...] like a bullet”³ This “need for speed” on the part of the director is at the heart of my relatively few complaints about QoS. I love a frantically edited action sequence and they occur with abundance in QoS, but I also love the well-crafted scenes that give background to characters and make you care about them.

In addition, many of the set pieces on QoS have a distinct air of “been there, done that” to them: the opening car chase was reminiscent of the Lotus chase in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me; jumping docks and boats in Haiti looked very similar to a motorbike chase in 1983’s (non-EON) Never Say Never Again; the boat chase had shades of the spectacular opening of 1999’s The World Is Not Enough; Bond is ambushed in a hotel room the exact same way in OHMSS (this concept is hardly original, but even the editing of the ensuing fight echoed the OHMSS sequence); the airplane scene was very similar to a bit from 1995’s Tomorrow Never Dies as well as being forced to jump without a parachute, which occurred in 1979’s Moonraker; in A View To A Kill (1985), the movie’s climax has Bond battle the ax-weilding arch-villian, very similar to the ending of QoS.  The death of agent Strawberry Fields is also something we’ve seen before, but clearly being an homage to Goldfinger, it defies complaint.  Thankfully, Forster’s pacing of the film doesn’t really allow the audience too much time to contemplate these parallels.  Moreover, I knew every single one that popped up in the film’s hour and forty-five minute running time (for those keeping track, QoS will also go down in history as the shortest Bond film to-date) but didn’t much care in the end.
Although Casino Royale was a reboot to the franchise and QoS its sequel, the lack of Moneypenny and Q for two films in a row is completely unacceptable. They are as important to the world of Bond as M and to neglect them for more than one movie (Q himself was missing from Dr. No and 1973’s Live and Let Die) is a bit ludicrous, especially considering the ease with which a good writer can include them (Miss Moneypenny in Diamonds Are Forever, for example; or Q in License to Kill). One final complaint – the gun barrel sequence: stop it, just please…stop it. Put it at the beginning and call it a day. Its appearance in QoS is laughably pointless and completely out of context – to place it at the end of the film is idiotic. Period.

For all of the bad things in QoS, there are some great things that definitely outweigh them. The title song (Another Way to Die) by Jack White of The White Stripes and Alicia Keys is stellar, as is the title sequence that accompanies it. Since Maurice Binder’s death, Daniel Kleinman has taken over the task of creating the Bond titles. Kleinman did a respectable job, but the titles never really quite felt as sexy as Binder’s simplistic versions. Thankfully, the producers hired company MK12 to do the titles for QoS and they returned to the unabashed use of dancing, naked female silhouettes, returning to the sensuality of the originals.

The action in the film is spectacular. The opening car chase contains some jaw dropping work and the rest of the film maintains that level of excitement: foot chases across roofs, crashing through glass ceilings, an airplane stalling in mid-flight, a boat chase across the hulls of other boats, etc.  QoS did indeed deliver on the action aspect of the Bond formula in spades.
QoS’s plot was also fairly original. “Fairly” because with Bond movies, you expect certain plot elements and although surprises are welcome, the viewing public at large seems to shy away from them in droves (ie, OHMSS and LTK). Holding an innocent people hostage for a base resource is clever enough, but a small mountain-top village in Bolivia is hardly “worldly.” Still, the premise was solid.

The relationship between M and Bond reaches new depths in this film. Always an antagonistic but respectful one, Judi Dench admonishing OO7 as she’s removing her make-up and applying cold cream adds a layer of realism to the head of MI-6. Realism that has been unmatched since the charming scene in OHMSS when Bond visits Admiral Messervy (that’s Bernard Lee’s M’s real name for the laymen out there) at home as he engages in the pastime of lepidoperty (that’s butterfly collecting for the laymen out there). It is a bit of a shame that Craig’s Bond is never given the opportunity to really display the snobbish “British-ness” that Connery & Moore brought to the role, a very Ian Fleming touch, straight out of his original creation. Craig is a great instigator of violence, which is also something Fleming gave Bond, but a little moment here and there to appreciate the benefits of being on Her Majesty’s payroll would be nice.  It is an intrinsic quality of the previous Bonds that Craig is still a bit lacking in (again, a little more time spent on developing character would have probably solved this).

Finally, the creation of Quantum, an obvious replacement for SPECTRE, was the real highlight of this film.  It is truly unfortunate that EON lots the rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld in the settlement with Kevin McClory², but Quantum is at least a step in the right direction. The great thing about SPECTRE as a group of antagonists is that it at it’s simplest it seemed like an organization that would challenge Bond. Successful Bond movies have one thing in common – although the audience knows that OO7 will be alive as the end credits roll, you have to convince them that he won’t be (or at least that he might not be). SPECTRE filled that bill well, if for no other reason that you knew that Bond as an individual couldn’t take them all on at once. Blofeld as a character was especially effective in this regard as Bond rarely, if ever, even got close enough to smack him, let alone kill the guy.

In the end, a worthy addition to the Bond franchise.  As I mentioned earlier, definitely in my Top Ten.  Daniel Craig is the most believable Bond since Connery, but this entire debate of “Who’s the Best Bond” does my head in.  When people ask me, I always say that I like them all for various reasons.  When a new one comes along, the script they’re given is ALWAYS and WITHOUT EXCEPTION tailored to their demeanor and character as people.  Connery could never have been in OHMSS, just like Roger Moore could never have done Goldfinger and neither Connery, nor Lazenby, nor Moore could have been in LTK.  They’re all good for different reasons, just like the Bond movies themselves are all immensely watchable, but some are better than others.

Good Bond film.

---

¹James Bond – Box Office History

²Eon lost the rights to SPECTRE (and it’s leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld) when Kevin McClory filed suit requesting an injunction against the production company, claiming that he and Ian Fleming jointly created James Bond when writing the script for the then first Bond film, Thunderball, in the 1950s. The script and project was abandoned, but Fleming heavily based his novel Thunderball on the aborted script, claiming sole creative credit. A settlement was reached that gave McClory the rights to Thunderball alone, prompting Broccoli and Saltzman to take him on as a producer for their film version of Thunderball.
When Eon put The Spy Who Loved Me into production in 1975, an advanced script hit McClory’s desk and revealed the plot to involve a resurrection of SPECTRE and Blofeld (although SPECTRE was usurped by a more resourceful criminal organization in the script). McClory filed another injunction, delaying production until 1977. The result of that court case was the granting of rights to the plot elements of Thunderball to McClory. Save those appearing in other Bond novels (Bond and his sphere of orbiting characters: M, Q, Moneypenny, etc.) while SPECTRE, it’s revolving characters (Blofeld, any of the various assassins) and their myriad of schemes were creatively controlled by McClory. In the end, Eon provided an amusing slap in the face to McClory, ignominiously killing off an unnamed, bald, wheelchair-bound, neck-brace-wearing, Persian-cat-stroking man in a Mao-suit in the opening moments of 1981’s For Your Eyes Only – their way of saying they didn’t need Blofeld or SPECTRE to be successful.
McClory managed to gather funds for a remake of Thunderball entitled Never Say Never Again in 1983, even coaxing Sean Connery back into the role. Released opposite Roger Moore’s Octopussy in 1983 and touted as “The Battle of the Bonds,” the viewing public made their opinion of who the better Bond was quite clear:
Octopussy – $27.5 million budget – $187.5 million world-wide gross
Never Say Never Again – $36 million budget – $160 million world-wide gross

³Alistair Harkness (2008-10-30). “A Quantum leap”, The Scotsman. Retrieved on 30 October 2008.

Haiku Movie Review™ – On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

Bond and Mrs. Peel,
Fighting SPECTRE Head Blofeld
Cinema heaven

Haiku Movie Review™ – You Only Live Twice (1967)

Ernst Stavro Blofeld,
A volcano lair and a
Piranha pit – sweet.

Haiku Movie Review™ – Thunderball (1965)

Bond and Domino:
Sucking poison out of her
foot – that shit is hot.

Haiku Movie Review™ – Goldfinger (1964)

Odd-Job, gold-dipped girl,
And Pussy Galore. Full Stop.
Oh – and that cool car.

Haiku Movie Review™ – From Russia With Love (1963)

Lesbo subtext unt
Poisoned toe-knife vielding bitch
Best. Evil. Bond. Girl.

Haiku Movie Review™ – Dr. No (1962)

J and I have been working our way through the Bond movies recently, having just watched OHMSS (SCHWEEEEET!) on Friday evening.

Bond’s debut is strong,
Honey, goddess of the sea,
Great baddie in Doc

Haiku Movie Review™ – Quantum of Solace

I will write a more extensive review soon – haven’t been feeling much like writing long diatribes lately. Here’s a little preview, however.

Bond battles on land,
Air, op’ra stages and
Desert hotels – wurd.

Haiku Movie Review™ – Let The Right One In

Oscar, bullied boy
Eli, a Swede vampire-kid
Best. Romance. Ever.