The Sweet Spot: Nov. 9
By THE NEW YORK TIMESA.O. Scott and David Carr discuss today's spy movies. "Spies, they're just like us."
A Two-Hour Supercut, '50 Years Of James Bond: The Movie' via The Playlist
Published on Nov 6, 2012 by James Bond
Approximately five minutes from each of
the 22 Eon produced James Bond films have been cut together, in order
and in sequence, beginning with the first five minutes of DR. NO (1962)
followed by minutes 5-10 of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), minutes 10-15
of GOLDFINGER (1964), minutes 15-20 of THUNDERBALL (1965), continuing on
through each of the remaining 18 Bond features (accounting for
variables in each title's running time) culminating with the final five
minutes of 2008's QUANTUM OF SOLACE.
This fresh look at the "James Bond Formula" provides a new exploration of the evolution of the series into a filmmaking genre uniquely it's own. With few exceptions, each title's transition into the picture that follows it is nearly seamless, creating a viewing experience that at first might serve to reminds us "if you've seen one Bond film, you've seen them all," but looking more closely it is in fact an endearing homage to a character who single-handedly shaped modern cinema's action/adventure formula and who continues to leave an indelible mark on generations worldwide.
This fresh look at the "James Bond Formula" provides a new exploration of the evolution of the series into a filmmaking genre uniquely it's own. With few exceptions, each title's transition into the picture that follows it is nearly seamless, creating a viewing experience that at first might serve to reminds us "if you've seen one Bond film, you've seen them all," but looking more closely it is in fact an endearing homage to a character who single-handedly shaped modern cinema's action/adventure formula and who continues to leave an indelible mark on generations worldwide.
From NYTimes
Movie Review
What a Man! What a Suit!
‘Skyfall,’ With Daniel Craig as James Bond
Francois Duhamel/Columbia Pictures
Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in "Skyfall."
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: November 7, 2012
When James Bond dashed into Buckingham Palace in July to pick up Queen Elizabeth so they could parachute into the Olympic opening ceremony,
it was tough to picture what he could do for an encore. Zip Line into
the next European summit meeting with Angela Merkel tucked under his
arm? Wrestle nude on the frozen banks of the Volga with Vladimir Putin? Turning Britain’s royal octogenarian into a Bond girl
was a stroke of cross-marketing genius that profited queen and country
both, while also encapsulating the appeal of the 007 brand in the age of
aerial drones.
It’s the human factor, to borrow somewhat perversely a phrase from Graham Greene, who worked for Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6. In his novel “The Human Factor,”
about a double agent, Greene sought, he said, to portray the British
secret service unromantically, with “men going daily to their office to
earn their pensions.” Bond is wearing a silver-gray suit when he powers
into “Skyfall,”
the latest 007 escapade, but it isn’t cut for office work. The suit is
seductively tight, for starters, and moves like a second skin when
Daniel Craig in his third stint as Bond races through an atavistic
opener that — with bullets buzzing and M (Judi Dench) whispering orders
in his ear — puts him back on mortal, yet recognizably Bondian, ground.
And just in time too, given that he looked
as if he were on the Bataan Death March in his last film, “Quantum of Solace.” Directed by a surprisingly well-equipped Sam Mendes, “Skyfall” is, in every way, a superior follow-up to “Casino Royale,”
the 2006 reboot that introduced Mr. Craig as Bond. “Skyfall” even plays
like something of a franchise rethink, partly because it brings in new
faces and implies that Bond, like Jason Bourne,
needed to be reborn. The tone is again playful and the stakes feel
serious if not punishingly so. This is a Bond who, after vaulting into a
moving train car, pauses to adjust a shirt cuff, a gesture that eases
the scene’s momentum without putting the brakes on it.
That “Skyfall” includes a sequence on a
train — a passenger one, no less — suggests that this may be very much
like your granddaddy’s Bond, even without the bikinied backdrop. From
the initial sequence, one of those characteristic supersize set pieces
that precede the opening credits, Mr. Mendes shows that he’s having his
fun with 007. The opening doesn’t just take place in Turkey, one of
those putatively exotic locales adorned with woven carpets and
dark-complexioned extras, it also includes smoothly choreographed mayhem
in both a crowded bazaar and outdoor market. There, amid these familiar
action-cinema signposts, Bond and another agency operative, the
suitably named Eve (Naomie Harris), chase down a baddie as locals and
oranges scatter.
Bondologists may linger over that Turkey
location. Globe tripping has always been as crucial to the movies as
groovy gadgets: it’s an elegant way to map the geopolitical coordinates
while providing armchair adventure for the rest of us. Here, though, you
have to wonder if Mr. Mendes and the writers Neal Purvis, Robert Wade
and John Logan have folded some 007 arcana into the mix. Turkey plays a
major role in the second, often most critically celebrated Bond film, “From Russia With Love,”
which, like this one, includes a lethal fight on a train, a formidable
blond male adversary and an island headquarters. But whether the
filmmakers want to intimate that this is the rightful follow-up to the
rebooted Bond is less interesting than this type of longitudinal
thinking the movies inspire.
One of the satisfactions of these screen
spectaculars, one that Mr. Mendes nicely capitalizes on, is that they
have made all of us Bondologists. We each have favorite Bonds (Sean
Connery for me, followed by Mr. Craig), our preferred 007 women,
outlaws, slick gizmos, sweet rides, command centers and double
entendres. We know what kind of cocktail Bond savors and whom he works
for and that he often behaves more like a killer than a tradecraft
wizard. We also know that, like the cowboy’s six-shooter and horse,
Bond’s gun and sports car are genre givens, as is a sizable body count.
And while, over the years, there have been cruel, suave and silly Bonds,
there is always only one Bond, James Bond. The movies have schooled us
well.
Mr. Mendes, a British film and theater
director whose dubious screen achievements include embalming the
American dream in “Revolutionary Road,”
gets Bond just right in a story that first turns on a domestic threat
and then on a personal one. Mr. Mendes grasps the spy’s existential
center, as typified by the ritualistic mano a mano grappling that almost
every action movie now deploys to signal that, when push comes to
punch, the hero can still kill with his bare hands. There’s brutal death
here, but there’s also a pervading sense of mortality that makes the
falling bodies register a little longer than they sometimes do in a Bond
movie. As a director of films like “American Beauty” and “Away We Go” Mr. Mendes has indulged in a noxious blend of self-seriousness and condescension. There’s none of that here.
Instead he honors the contract that the Bond
series made with its fans long ago and delivers the customary chases,
pretty women and silky villainy along with the little and big bangs.
Whether Mr. Mendes is deploying an explosion or a delectable detail, he
retains a crucially human scale and intimacy, largely by foregrounding
the performers. To that end, while “Skyfall” takes off with
shock-and-awe blockbuster dazzle, it’s opulent rather than outlandish
and insistently, progressively low-key, despite an Orientalist fantasy
with dragons and dragon ladies. As Bond sprints from peril to pleasure,
Mr. Craig and the other players — including an exceptional, wittily
venal Javier Bardem, a sleek Ralph Fiennes and a likable Ben Whishaw —
turn out to be the most spectacular of Mr. Mendes’s special effects.
“Skyfall” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). The usual. if mostly bloodless, violence.
