A few discussions have taken place lately -- here and here -- about the things that Stephen King says about plotting in his book, On Writing. Basically, King is very much against the use of outlines and making careful determinations of each event, as it is to happen, in his works prior to writing them. His approach is more spontaneous, and I was thrilled when I read it, because it mirrors mine quite nicely.

I don't generate outlines of my plot prior to writing a story, nor do I write character sketches of the main players. I start with one thing: a situation. This can take many forms, but generally it's a one-sentence statement of the fix that my main character either is in at the beginning of the story or that (s)he will get into early on in the story. Here are a few examples of situations I've used:

:: A book from the library happens to contain a note written by a woman who was murdered fifty years ago.
:: A pen collector's latest pen is haunted.
:: The new beer that a bartender has just started carrying is magical, with some very strange effects on the bar's patrons.

Now, there is a ton of leeway there for exploration, and the first thing that I have to establish is the main character. Basically, the question I ask myself is, "Now, what kind of person would get him/herself into this situation?" So, I decide who finds the note in the book (a lonely artist who has lost his inspiration), who is that pen-collector (an apostate Jew who fancies himself a writer but who can never finish a single work), and who owns the bar (a woman in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania). This isn't to say that these situations couldn't happen to someone else; in fact, they most definitely could -- these are merely the people who, in my mind, have ended up thus. And then, once I know Who has What Problem, I go from there, pretty much letting my characters determine their own actions. At least, that's how it feels to me. In each of my stories, I have at some point felt a certain bit of surprise at one or more junctures along the way -- and that's me, the writer, being surprised. I love those surprises, and they cropped up even when I was using outlines. Then, I would end up feeling slightly resentful either of the surprise, because to follow it meant shelving The Outline, or of The Outline itself -- because the surprise had just revealed it to be at least partially bogus. Thus, I stopped outlining altogether, except for a single project of mine -- a lengthy bit of self-indulgent Star Wars fanfic that I only work on very sporadically, and thus I find an outline helpful in knowing just what was going on when I stopped last time. Once I have my situation and my protagonist, I start writing with the protagonist, get him/her into the mess, and then watch him/her try to get out. As often as not, I will know the ending in advance; but even when I do know the ending, somehow it always turns out quite unlike what I had known would happen.

Now, this approach sometimes leads me to wrong turns. I started three drafts of the "pen-collector" story before I realized where I kept going wrong and subsequently finished it, and just this week I completely restarted the bartender story after I realized that I began it at the wrong point and had some of the events wrongly sequenced. Stopping and starting over, beginning drafts with no assurance that they will be finished, and sometimes having to shelve works for a while until I figure out what went wrong: these are all part-and-parcel of my writing process, a process which works for me and which I find enjoyable -- especially during those Eureka! moments of realization, when I recognize the correct resolution to an outstanding problem and, implementing that solution, have the rest of the story write itself. This isn't to say that this process will appeal to all other writers; far from it. To some writers, the approach I've described above is anathema. They look at this and say, "Good God, man! How can you stand to start a story and not know if that's the correct starting point? and how can you possibly write the beginning and middle of a story if you don't know how it ends?" To those authors I shrug and say, "Good God, man! How can you stand to just knock off the next part of the outline each time you sit down to write? and how can you resist it when a plot development that's not in the outline but would totally rock pops into your head?" Both of us would answer the same way:

"Well, it works."

That it does. So if Stephen King wants to start a novel with nothing more than the kernel "A teenager named Carrie, whom everyone hates, turns out to have psychokinetic powers", and if J. K. Rowling wants to write the last chapter of Harry Potter, Book VII before she's even finished Book V and started Books VI and VII, well, bully for both of them.

Well, now I have a reason for that roadtrip to Calgary that I've always wanted to take....

(link via Julie Winningham.)

I've caught up on some animated films during the past week. (When a member of one's immediate household is three years old, one quickly becomes conversant on animation.)

:: Dinosaur. This film, which combines computer animated dinosaurs with live-action backgrounds, is visually amazing -- and narratively boring. There is a wonderful opening sequence, detailing the "adventures" of an unhatched dinosaur egg after its mother is driven off and its brethren stomped upon. The egg is stolen by some kind of dino-mouse, taken into the woods where it is dropped into a stream, bobs along in the water somehow not being eaten by dino-crocs or stepped on by brachiosaurs (I think), and plucked from the edge of a waterfall by a pterodactyl. Then it ends up on a peaceful island populated by fuzzy, mammals that I think are lemurs. (I'm no paleontology expert; were there mammals during the time of the dinosaurs?) All this is told only through seamless visuals and a wonderful music score by James Newton Howard. However, then the egg hatches, and we then discover that all the animals speak English (except for the villainously ravenous carnotaurs, who only eat other dinos and roar a lot). And thus, after one of the more impressive opening sequences Disney has ever done, we're right back in the midst of what could almost be termed the "Standard Disney plot": plucky orphan with the heart of gold finds a loving family that is nevertheless not his own, and over the course of many adventures he saves his adopted family, learns his heritage, earns the respect of the Gruff Chieftain, and in the end has his own family. We get the obligatory "Young guy knows what to do, but the Gruff Chieftain won't listen to him and takes it as a challenge to his authority" business, and there are the obligatory outcasts and misfits who don't fit in but who end up being Our Hero's closest friends. It's all very slickly handled, although I felt a bit of a pall hanging over the proceedings -- after all, I know that none of it really matters because all of these beasties are going to end up dead, with some of their bones on display in a museum millions of years hence. The film is probably best for young kids who are fascinated by dinosaurs (what young kid isn't?) but who aren't ready to see other young kids nearly torn limb-from-limb in Jurassic Park. Dinosaur isn't bad, but it's really nothing special.

:: Hercules. I can't believe it took me this long to see this movie; maybe it had something to do with the baggage of that Kevin Sorbo television series or something. Anyhow, this is Disney's take on Greek mythology, and it's smart and funny. This is a frothy, light entertainment that is probably the most fun bit of traditional animation Disney has done since Aladdin. (Disney's best entertainments these days seem to be coming from the Pixar division, where the Toy Story films are made.) The film opens with portentious narration by Charlton Heston (very sad about Mr. Heston's illness, by the way) that is interrupted by the Muses, who demand to tell the story themselves. After Mr. Heston says, in that wonderful Heston fashion, "You go, girl", the Muses come to life and become a Greek Chorus by way of a Gospel Chorus, commenting on the action throughout the film. (A nice in-joke is that the Muses are first images on a Grecian urn.) You normally wouldn't think to hear Gospel-style music in a film about a Greek hero, which is part of the charm of this movie: it cheerfully mixes-and-matches so many genres, and is packed with so many witty asides and in-jokes that after watching it one almost wants to see it again immediately just to see what was missed. For instance: two children who are in danger before they are saved by Hercules yell out, "Somebody call I-X-I-I!!". Hercules has a personal trainer, voiced by Danny Devito, who is just like all those cynical old trainers in boxing movies, right down to the "This guy was my best, but he couldn't get it done" bit. (That "best guy" turns out to have been Achilles; later on, some townsfolk jeer him: "Hey, nice job with Achilles, especially his heel. Ya missed a spot!). The villain of the film is none other than Hades, the Lord of the Dead (above whose domain a sign reads "Over 50000000 Served), and he is voiced by James Woods. The drawing style of the film is markedly different from many of the other Disney films, and yet is somehow perfectly fitting with the story. The music and songs are surprisingly good. Hercules seems to be an underrated film in the Disney pantheon.

:: Kiki's Delivery Service. And then, we have a masterpiece. This Japanese anime is by the magnificent Hayao Miyazaki, who is sometimes called "the Japanese Walt Disney". The film tells the story of a young witch named Kiki, who has just turned thirteen. Thus, by tradition, it is time for her to leave home and go into the world. This she does, taking her cat Jiji with her as she flies away on her broom to seek her fame, fortune, or merely her life. She settles in a city by the ocean, where she is befriended by a pregnant couple who own a bakery. Moving in with them, Kiki starts a delivery service, making her deliveries by flying the parcels on her broom to their destinations. And, she makes friends: a boy who adores aviation and is totally fascinated by Kiki and her ability to fly via broomstick; an old lady who is blissfully unaware of her granddaughter's lack of appreciation for her; a painter who lives in the country. The locations of the film seem to be European, but it's a Europe where dirigibles are still in use and apparently World War II never happened. (None of this is really clear; one of the charms about the film is that it is totally convincing of its setting precisely by not spelling out any of its details, but by simply showing it and the people who live there.) Kiki is a charming character whose problems seem real and difficult, although not insurmountable. There is no evil threat here to be surmounted, only the normal difficulties that arise from maturity and dealing with other people. Miyazaki has a wonderful eye for the way people speak and behave; it's a testament to his skills that he can make a movie about a witch who comes to live in the city and not a minute of it feels contrived or implausible.

The animation is, of course, wonderful; that goes without saying in a film by the man behind Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro. Here, Miyazaki captures the essence of flight to such an amazing degree that I have to wonder if he actually has experience with broomstick flight. In any event, the way he depicts flight in this film is completely convincing, far moreso than the broomstick flights in, say, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

The Disney Company now owns the distribution rights in the United States for all of the Studio Ghibli films (Ghibli is Miyazaki's production company). They are bringing these films out fairly slowly -- they've had a dub of Laputa: Castle in the Sky in the can for a couple of years now -- and with relatively little fanfare, which I find surprising. (I only learned of the US release of Kiki when I spied it in the video section of my local supermarket.) Disney's intention seems to be to capture a fairly sizable share of the anime market in this country, but beyond that seems to have little interest in expanding that market by promoting Miyazaki's films as the first-rate family films that they are. Not all anime is about robots that fire lasers from their eyes and the cyberpunk teenagers who battle them; the films of Hayao Miyazaki not only reveal the breadth of anime but also provide beautiful alternatives to watching Peter Pan or The Lion King for the tenth time in one week. Princess Mononoke probably isn't appropriate for very young children, with its violence and fairly dark storyline, but Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro are family films in every sense of the word. So, for God's sake, see these movies!!!

I've added a permanent link to Terminus's blog. Thus far he's captured my interest.

In keeping with my recent retrospective on the James Bond films, I found this site -- linked by the picture above -- that is devoted to all manner of 007-related artwork, from the original covers of Ian Fleming's novels to the poster campaigns for each film and an analysis of the main title sequences of each film. It's a great site. I always wondered if the incredibly long legs on the poster for Octopussy were intentional; now I know. (They are, and the reason is one I wouldn't have suspected. It has to do with forced perspective when viewed from below.)

(By the way, playing Bond in the image above is an actor named Bob Simmons. His version of the "gunbarrel sequence" was used on the first three Bond films; a version wasn't filmed with Sean Connery until Thunderball.)

In the "Wild, Wacky Stuff" Department:

There was a young man hight Jaquandor
Who wished he were born in Numenor.
When advised it had drowned
He made nary a sound
But fell in a faint to the bar floor.

That was written by, of all people, Guy Gavriel Kay on the message boards over at Bright Weavings. It seems that GGK (as he is known to his fans) has a book of poetry, entitled Beyond His Dark House, coming out in April of 2003. This is exciting news, but not nearly so exciting as my finding myself immortalized in verse by such a fine writer as Mr. Kay. (Although, a limerick?! Of course, I brought it on myself by suggesting on the message boards my hope that none of his works begin, "There once was a man fron Nantucket...." I offered a bit of proper poetical response; the thread can be read here. Mr. Kay is from Toronto, by the way -- it's part of my joke.)

In the absence of a new novel by GGK (that will probably be another year to eighteen months in the offing), a book of his poetry will be fascinating. Here is a bit of his verse that I have loved since I first read it. It is from his novel, A Song For Arbonne (currently out-of-print, but a reissue in trade paperback is due out this fall):

Even the birds above the lake
Are singing of my love,
And even the flowers along the shore
Are growing for her sake.

It's a funny thing about people who decide to tempt fate: what happens if they take up Pascal's Wager and lose?

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has existed for over one hundred years. How many of its musicians, in that time, have been African-Americans?

One.

And in what year was that musician hired by the orchestra?

2002.

That is simply amazing to me. More on it here, courtesy Norman Lebrecht.

Apropos of the decennial Sight & Sound poll of the top ten films of all time is interesting article by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, in which he describes his general ambivalence to these types of listing exercises. Basically, he feels that it is folly to attempt to distill a lifelong love-affair with film down to a list of ten, and only ten, films. Knowles is at his best when he gives full flower to the passion he holds for the movies, as he does here.

Ah, we're three weeks into NFL Training Camp Season. Rosters are being shaped, we're starting to get an idea of what our teams' weaknesses will be (in Buffalo, guess what? It's the offensive line....) as well as their strengths, and most importantly, the Tuesday Morning Quarterback has returned.

TMQ is the name of the weekly column by writer Gregg Easterbrook, who is a witty and knowledgable football observer. He is also brings a surprising amount of erudition to the table: this is a guy who composes haiku about football and peppers his columns with all manner of literary allusions. For a different slant on the sport of American Football, check his column out. (Fans of the Washington Redskins who are new to TMQ should check out next week's installment, when Easterbrook says he will outline just why he calls them the Chesapeake Watershed Region Indigenous Persons.)

I've linked to Steven Den Beste almost since I started this site, not because I agree with his viewpoints -- more often than not, I don't -- but because even when I disagree with him I find him very thought-provoking, and generally enjoyable to read. It's not uncommon for me to finish reading one of his posts and think, "He's wrong"; but not until the last few days have I read a post of his -- two, in this case, here and here -- have I said afterwards, "How disappointing."

Den Beste's strength is almost always in the formulation of his arguments. He presents his viewpoints with a great deal of logical rigor; he shows that he has carefully considered his premises and frequently he'll provide extensive justification for them alone before proceeding with his conclusion. This can lead to some very long posts indeed, but that's fine with me. (For the most part, anyway. His recent epic analysis of the scientific plausibility of the film Reign of Fire went over the top, but even he admitted so.) I find it sad, then, that he so eagerly employs rhetorical misdirection, non sequitur, and argumentum ad hominem in a recent flap with Demosthenes.

He recently announced that he was planning to search for "an intellectually honest antiwar voice in the blogosphere". Judging by the post in which this announcement appears, he considers "intellectual honesty" to consist of logical argumentation, presentation of alternative courses of action, and avoidance of fallacious reasoning and fuzzy thinking. And judging by the two posts that disappointed me, he has not found those things in Demosthenes. The problem is, he does not demonstrate this. Instead, he goes another route: he questions Demosthenes's sincerity and background, now basically insisting that because Demosthenes does not post under his real name, nothing can be known of his background and thus his arguments cannot properly be evaluated. But more than that, he ascribes certain motivations to Demosthenes for wishing to remain pseudonymous, motivations that he creates out of whole cloth. Steven says the following:

When someone won't even reveal his name, it should set off alarm bells unless he provides a legitimate reason for keeping it secret. If someone is confident about what they're saying, they should be willing to own up in public to holding those opinions. A person who debates anonymously may not be wrong, but you should certainly be far more skeptical about anything they say.

All of this is, though, totally irrelevant. A logical argument is a logical argument, regardless of who advances it or why. I am disturbed that Steven, who is normally so stringent in his own logic and insistent on similar rigor in his opponents' arguments, has drawn the line here. It seems to me that I should be equally skeptical of Steven and Demosthenes; not because one posts under his own name and one doesn't, or because one uses a quality commercial program to update his blog on a server that he himself owns and one uses a free (if temperamental) blogging tool to update his blog that is hosted on a free server, or for any other reason. I should be equally skeptical of both because both are advancing arguments. That is the only reason for skepticism.

Now, knowing someone's background can certainly illuminate their motives. Knowing the business background of George W. Bush, for example, I am skeptical of his motives for wishing to drill for oil in ANWR and for his general ambivalence about conservation strategies. But that still has no bearing on the actual question of whether we should drill there. Likewise, I am skeptical about President Clinton's decision to launch a military strike on the very day that the impeachment vote was to be held -- but that does not imply, in itself, that the military strike in question was unnecessary.

Secondly, Steven interprets Demosthenes's decision to use a pseudonym as "shame", as in, "D. is ashamed of what he writes". This is simply not borne out by what D. has written of his pseudonymity. It could be true; but then, I could also think of any number of other possible motivations based on what he has said on the subject. Thus, in the absence of a definitive word on D.'s motivations, Steven employs a Strawman. (And as he demonstrates here, he is quite aware of what a Strawman is.) And still, it has no bearing whatsoever on the logical validity of his arguments or, more importantly, the moral authority of his arguments. This seems to be Steven's real sticking point: he provides no analysis at all of D.'s arguments as logical constructs (at least, not in these posts; he has done so in the past and now I must wonder why he has suddenly stopped). Instead, he questions D.'s moral authority. This is a red herring. As Plato argued in the Euthyphro: "What is moral is not moral because the Gods love it; rather, the Gods love what is moral because it is moral." Or, put another way:

Moral authority does not come from whether or not one uses one's real name. Moral authority comes from advancing a view that is morally correct.

If D.'s position is the moral one, then that is all the moral authority that he needs. To insist that he provide background information, to properly demonstrate his moral authority, is to ignore the logic and instead focus on the person. This is utterly fallacious. In Steven's words: Demosthenes would, I suspect, respond to that: "Listen to the arguments, not to the arguer." But if the arguments are convincing, then why doesn't the voice who presents them act as if he believes them? Well, consider the reverse: if the arguments are not convincing, then why does it matter in the slightest how the voice who presents them acts? If a token of sincerity is to be demanded before an argument will even be listened to, then I wonder how Steven can justify disregarding what might be the ultimate form of sincerity: the willingness of the Palestinians to blow themselves up, as long as they take some Jews with them. But, as Steven adroitly points out here, logic has little to do with sincerity. Or some illusory standard of "moral authority".

Finally, I must ask one more thing: what would knowing D.'s real name actually prove? What would it establish? You don't really know anything about D. right now, and knowing his real name wouldn't change that (unless, of course, he happens to be someone famous -- but then that would probably fall under Steven's qualifier of "a legitimate reason" for pseudonymity). Steven says, By posting under a pseudonym, Demosthenes in his person is accountable to no-one. He can lie, cheat, distort, deliberately deceive, or libel with impunity, because there are no potential consequences for him in doing so. But all of this is true of people who use their own real names; witness some of the invective spouted by such shoddy thinkers as Jerry Falwell or Ann Coulter. A real name no more implies "truth" than a false one suggests the possibility of "falsehood". In fact, this is something that Steven once even admitted in this post, in which he writes in part: You don't know me. You don't know anything about me. You can't tell what kind of person I am from what I write here. I only show you what I want to show you, and some of what I show you is deliberately faked. You can't judge my behavior by what you see here, because you don't know what I do in real life. Steven, it appears, wishes to have it both ways: when convenient, he can claim, "You know nothing about me because I make some it up"; and when convenient, he can ignore an opponent on the exact same grounds.

And finally: I myself post under a pseudonym, which I assume is OK with Steven because I rarely if ever delve into the political world. But even so, I feel I should perhaps say why I do so. It's not out of embarrassment, shame, or anything else. I use this journal to explore my own ideas about art -- mainly books, music and film. Just about all of my close friends know about the blog, and they know who I am. My pseudonym is taken from a comic book from the 1980s called Six From Sirius; I started using it as an AOL screenname and I've grown used to it. I don't conceal my background, but I don't include a bio, either; perhaps I should. Suffice it to say, though, a casual reader of my blog knows that I write fantasy and horror (although I am as yet unpublished) stories and am working on a novel; that I live in Buffalo, NY; that I am a fan of the Buffalo Bills an the Pittsburgh Pirates; that I love figure skating; that Berlioz is my favorite classical composer; that I adore film music; that my favorite author is Guy Gavriel Kay; that my favorite movie is Star Wars (and that I consider The Phantom Menace a good movie); that I attended college in Iowa (specifically, at Wartburg College; that I majored in Philosophy and minored in Music; and that I am married with a daughter who is three. I've probably revealed even more than that about myself, and I'm sure I will reveal more as time goes on. I'm not "concealing" my name; I just don't find it terribly relevant to what I have to say here. Of course, that will change when I finally break into print, because I plan to publish under my real name -- at least to start with, because there are vagaries of the publishing world that make pseudonyms necessary for business. (To assume that writers use pseudonyms as a means of "avoiding the pressures of fame" is, quite frankly, an example of ignorance of realities in the publishing world. Many authors use pseudonyms because their early works, published under their own names, didn't sell and therefore publishers won't take the chance on publishing more under that name. It's an effect of the "blockbusterization" of publishing, where the backlist is nearly dead and the midlist is shrinking ever faster, and where authors used to be given six or seven books to get into best-seller territory, now they have to do it in two or three.) When that happens I will, of course, plaster a gigantic announcement to that effect here. And now, on with The Show.

A hearty "Welcome!" to people arriving by way of Demosthenes's link. As he points out, mine is not a political blog. I've outlined my reasons for avoiding politics in the past; although I am a fairly solid liberal, I choose to leave the political discussions in the hands of people like Demosthenes (and, from a different standpoint, Steven Den Beste) in favor of other pursuits. Mainly, I talk about books, music, films, sports, and the culture and future of my city (Buffalo, NY). I only dabble in political discussion on a very sporadic basis, and even then mainly when I read something that strikes me as particularly wrongheaded.

(Thanks to Demosthenes for the plug!)

I am attempting to add a commenting system to Byzantium's Shores. This is the test post; hence its complete lack of content.

Every ten years, a British magazine called Sight & Sound (the official magazine of the British film institute) polls a number of directors and critics to determine the greatest films of all time. Two lists are generated for each group, and it is interesting to compare the lists, note where the directors and the critics diverged, and realize that neither group lists a film made since 1980. Both lists name Citizen Kane as the top film of all time. For the complete lists, plus additional commentary and some samples of the lists given by the critics and directors polled, read Roger Ebert's column on the subject.

It's always a bit surprising to find an idea that one has had also occurring to someone else. It's particularly surprising to encounter it somewhere in the Blogosphere -- well, maybe not "surprising" per se, but rather "interesting" or "eerie". I'm tempted to ascribe it to the old canard that "Great minds think alike", but I've only discovered Terminus's blog today, and thus any such statement would be premature. Anyway, Terminus has started his own cycle of James Bond reviews. He's doing it one film at a time though, leading up to Die Another Day, as opposed to plowing through them all at once, as I did. He is also discovering, as I did in college when some friends and I decided to try watching the entire series in order, that it's hard to actually find them all at the video store.

(And apparently someone named Ed is doing a Bond retrospective. Hmmmm....)

Ah, the wonderful world of Buffalo politics. Current Mayor Anthony Masiello, who is in the first year of his third term as Mayor, has a new problem to deal with: his predecessor, James Griffin (who held the office of Mayor for four terms and was at the helm during the implosion of the Buffalo economy starting in the late 1970s) has produced a petition calling for Mayor Masiello's removal from office and the holding of a new election. Presumably this is because Masiello has, for the most part, been unable to stimulate any real economic development in the city. While Masiello's performance is far from admirable (and is barely adequate, if even that), it's laughable to see the former Mayor, a man whose administration was marked by all manner of cronyism and corruption, shilling for his ouster. It's yet another distraction that the city doesn't need.

James Bond Redux, conclusion.

Parts I, II, III, and IV.

:: The Living Daylights. After Roger Moore's departure from the role of James Bond, a casting search was begun for the next film in the series. Pierce Brosnan almost won the role at that point, but he was unable to escape his contractual obligation to NBC for the Remington Steele television series (which, incidentally, was cancelled soon afterwards). The role went to Timothy Dalton, who decided to base his portrayal of Bond more on the character as described in Ian Fleming's novels than as portrayed by Connery, Lazenby, and Moore. Dalton's Bond smirks less, and is a much more serious person in general. I greatly enjoyed his concept of Bond, and it would have been nice had he been able to do it in more than two films. In any event, once again the producers of the series decided to "dial it down a bit" after a pretty excessive installment. A View To A Kill had been roundly panned by critics and fans alike, and thus The Living Daylights was written to be a more streamlined espionage thriller, which it succeeds in being. This film is another high point in the series, presenting a story in which there is no villain bent on world domination but rather a trio of villains who are involved in a scheme involving diamond smuggling, gunrunning to Afghanistan, and disinforming British intelligence. The plot twists and turns more than is typical in a Bond film, which is rather refreshing. Bond is kept guessing throughout, and at times he has to trust his own instincts to get him through a certain tough spot. The heroine here is a lovely blonde cellist from Bratislava named Kara, who just happens to be the girlfriend of a Russian official who wishes to defect (or so he says). Bond is actually supposed to kill her early in the film, but he refuses to do so, and eventually she is drawn into his efforts to find out what is going on. (In a particularly charming scene, Bond and Kara are about to flee the KGB, when she realizes that she has forgotten her cello and insists on getting it. No real musician would ever leave their instrument behind -- especially when it later turns out that the instrument is a Stradivarius. This, of course, is revealed only after Bond has managed to put a bullet hole in the cello.) Her character is quite strong, as evidenced when she talks back to a Mujaheddin commander. Instead of a single villain, here there is a team of three: an American arms dealer named Whitaker, the defectee named Koskov, and an assassin named Necros. All are interesting and menacing characters -- particularly Whitaker, with his encyclopedic knowledge of war and weaponry and his hallway filled with statues of folks like Hitler and Genghis Khan. There is also a Russian general, played by the wonderful John Rhys Davies (Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Gimli in Lord of the Rings) who is caught in something of a crossfire. The action sequences are first-rate, including a teaser sequence featuring a trio of agents parachuting onto the Rock of Gibraltar and some amazing stuntwork involving a cargo-plane during the climax. John Barry's music score is one of the best in the series. The Living Daylights is one of the very best Bonds. (The Gadgets: Bond drives the Aston-Martin again, although its weapons have been upgraded. Instead of whirling tire-spikes, the wheelhubs fire lasers which cut through the chassis of a car alongside Bond. The car also fires missiles and carries outboard skis for snow-driving. Bond's other gadget is a key-ring finder equipped with lockpicks, an explosive charge that detonates at the sound of a wolf-whistle, and a stun-gas pellet that discharges if he whistles the opening notes of "Rule Brittania". This is everything a Bond gadget should be: simple, elegant, and when used cleverly, totally lethal.)

:: Licence to Kill. In my view, this is the most underrated of all the Bond films. It performed poorly at the box office when it was released in 1989, backed by a lackadaisical advertising campaign and tough competition from films like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon II, and even Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The film takes place entirely in the Caribbean and in Latin America, and it marks a stark deviation from the standard Bond formula. He is on no sanctioned mission for Her Majesty's Secret Service this time; in fact, he is acting totally on his own, at one point running from a meeting with M who has personally come to chew him out for his vigilante behavior. The reason for his actions is a druglord named Franz Sanchez, who has escaped US custody (Bond had helped put him there in the teaser sequence), killed Felix Leiter's young newlywed wife, and seriously maimed Felix himself. (The manner of Felix's maiming is actually taken from Ian Fleming's novel of Live and Let Die.) Bond goes after Sanchez, destroying parts of his operation before ultimately infiltrating it with the help of the beautiful CIA agent Pam Bouvier, played with terrific sass by Carey Lowell. ("Are you armed?" she asks Bond at one point. He shows her his Walther PPK, at which she shakes her head sadly and shows him her sawed-off shotgun.) Miss Bouvier is the strongest of all the Bond heroines; she is tough, fearless, and she gets to save Bond a number of times. There is palpable chemistry between her and Dalton; there is also great chemisty between Dalton and Robert Davi, who plays the evil Sanchez to the hilt. Davi's Sanchez isn't merely evil; there is a sense of honor behind the things he does. "This isn't personal; it's just business," he says to Felix Leiter before having him horribly injured. The film's closing action sequence, a gonzo chase scene down a series of dusty mountain roads involving a series of tanker trucks, is one the most exhilarating action set-pieces in any Bond film. The music is provided by Michael Kamen, and it's a surprisingly effective mix of Latin elements and Kamenesque action writing. (Kamen also did the music for the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard films.) Licence To Kill should be more popular than it is. (The Gadgets: Here Bond works with a rifle that responds to his palmprint alone, a tube of toothpaste that actually dispenses plastic explosive, and a lighter that is really a flamethrower. Q has his beefiest role in the series in this film; he comes to equip Bond after a worried Moneypenny begs him to, and he actually helps out in the field. He has two especially nice moments: one where he tries to console Pam Bouvier when Bond has gone off with Sanchez's stunning concubine, and one where he dresses as a farmer along the road as Sanchez drives by on the way to his hideout. In this latter scene, Q speaks into the broom he's holding, which is really a microphone, alerting Pam that Sanchez is on his way. Then, that accomplished, he tosses the broom aside and walks away -- a wonderfully funny character moment after all the times that Q has chided Bond over the years for never returning his equipment. Of course, I've always wondered: if he always wants it back, why does he almost always set it up so it explodes?)

:: GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough. (Given that these films are the most recent, I'm lumping them together into a single capsule.) Due to legal wrangling there was a six-year gap between Licence To Kill and the next Bond film, GoldenEye. In that time Timothy Dalton decided to move on, and thus Pierce Brosnan finally took over the role, and he's had it ever since. As far as I am concerned, he's welcome to it until he's too old or he simply doesn't want it anymore. He brings to the part a blend of Dalton's seriousness, Moore's playfulness, Lazenby's emotion, and Connery's toughness. Some feel that Brosnan doesn't have the physical gravitas to really be convincing as Bond, but I don't agree. In fact, I think he's getting better -- his performance in TWINE was his best Bond yet. We'll know more in a few months, when Die Another Day is released.

As for the films themselves, I've enjoyed all three, although each has its faults. GoldenEye is quite good, although its setup takes too long, its music (by Eric Serra) alternates between merely functional and utterly horrid, and at several points it meditates on deeper aspects of Bond's character in a way that reminds me of the psychological baggage that has been pumped into the Batman character ever since Frank Miller's Dark Knight series came out. The heroine, a Russian computer operator played by Izabella Scorupco, is lovely and strong; Sean Bean's villain is excellent. His scheme, though, is a bit hard to swallow.

Tomorrow Never Dies is one of the most relentlessly paced Bond films; its emphasis is most definitely on action over plot. Bond is less a spy here than an action hero, and although the film works I'm not sure if that change is a good one. I'm of the opinion that James Bond should do more spying than heroics, but TND is chock-full of action set-pieces and the effect is generally overwhelming. Nevertheless, there is a lot to like in the film; Michelle Yeoh's heroine could be an action-star in her own right; Jonathan Pryce's media-mogul villain is in the best tradition of Bond-baddie-megalomania; David Arnold's score is a tremendously fun listen. TND is not a bad film, but pedal-to-the-metal really isn't the proper pace of a Bond film.

The World Is Not Enough. The title is an allusion to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Part of that film's plot deals with heraldry, and "The world is not enough" turns out to be the ancestral motto of the Bond family. I found this film a mixed bag. Robert Carlyle's villain, a terrorist who is dying from a bullet in his skull that also has rendered him impervious to pain, is one of the creepiest of Bond baddies. Sophie Marceau may be the best femme fatale of the entire series. In this film, M actually figures in the action, giving Judi Dench something to do other than tell Pierce Brosnan what to do. Desmond Llewelyn plays Q for the last time, before his role is taken over by John Cleese, a perfect bit of casting if ever I've seen one. "Ah, there's the famed 007 wit," Cleese says. "Half of it, at any rate." (Tragically, Llewelyn himself died in a car crash shortly after the film's release. He was 85 at the time.) The film involves more espionage than Tomorrow Never Dies, but there are also some incredibly loud and over-the-top action sequences -- particularly a boat-chase on the Thames and the climax on a submarine that looks strangely like the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The plot's twists and turns are sometimes hard to follow, and at times Bond's actions are unexplainable. The worst thing in the film, though, is its heroine: Denise Richards has less charisma than any other leading lady in any other Bond film, by far. From the first moment she appears -- when the film tells us that she is a nuclear scientist, and her name is "Christmas Jones" -- her character is completely unbelievable. The World Is Not Enough gives me the impression of a film that needed one more draft of screenplay done, and one key role re-cast entirely. (Special note: this film would be an excellent instructive example for people who don't believe that letterboxing for home video is desirable. In the fullscreen video release, some of TWINE's action sequences -- most notably a fight and chase in a nuclear missile silo -- are all but impossible to follow. I don't know if the film is out on Widescreen DVD, but that would be the way to see it.)

:: Die Another Day. See you this winter. View the trailer here.

This week I read a nifty murder mystery/police thriller by Barbara Paul called Kill Fee. (It's out-of-print, hence the Alibris link instead of my usual Amazon link.) The story presents a neat twist on the idea of "murder for hire": a killer only known as Pluto identifies a person who would greatly benefit by the untimely death of another person. Pluto then waits until the "client" has an undeniable alibi, at which point he kills the victim. Then, once the client has benefitted by the unexpected slaying of their nemesis, Pluto sends them a bill: "For Services Rendered: One Murder, timed to your trip to ______. Balance Due: $100,000." And Pluto always collects his fee. This is an exciting page-turner, a fascinating game of cat-and-mouse with sharply drawn characters and a brisk pace. I did find the novel's ending too rushed and a bit of a let-down, but the trip to that point is amazingly enjoyable.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds, who hit his 600th home run yesterday and became only the fourth player to ever reach that milestone. He isn't only the greatest player of his generation; he is one of the greatest players of all time. (And, most importantly, a former Pittsburgh Pirate.)

James Bond Redux, part IV.

...the ongoing summary of my opinions on the Bond films. Parts I, II, and III covered the series's first two decades, the 1960s and the 1970s. The 60s Bond films are most definitely stronger than the 70s ones, although I do not share the generally held view that this is because of the "Sean Connery versus Roger Moore" debate. With the possible exception of Diamonds Are Forever, Connery had no outright bad scripts to work from, whereas Moore started out with the four most troublesome scripts in the series (and one, Live and Let Die, that is an out-and-out stinker). So on I go into the Bond films of the 1980s. And, wouldn't you know it? The 80s turned out to be, at least in my view, the best decade for Bond yet.

:: For Your Eyes Only. After the over-the-top outer-space excesses in Moonraker that nearly turned the Bond series fully into self-parody, a return to smaller-scale stories concentrating on the espionage aspects of the Bond mythos was called for. This was delivered, in spades, with For Your Eyes Only, which is not only Roger Moore's best Bond film but one of the best in the series. It's a stylish and slick espionage thriller, the first genuine espionage thriller in the Bond films since From Russia With Love. The film trades on the cold-war dynamic, cleverly showing how the East vs. West antagonisms of the Cold War rarely played out directly but instead were delegated to smaller, allied forces. Bond does a lot of investigating in this film, following one trail and then another as he attempts to learn who is behind the brutal murder of a British agent who was looking for the sunken British spy ship and outrun the Eastern Bloc agents who also want very much to find that ship. The film's action sequences are superb (with the exception of the teaser sequence, a bizarre thing involving a helicopter and the apparent reincarnation of Ernst Blofeld), including the second-best ski chase in the entire series and a mountain-climbing sequence toward the end of the film that features some eye-popping stunt work. For Your Eyes Only is also notable in that the villain's identity is actually unknown to us for much of the film; we don't know who to trust, which heightens the tension. There is no "bad guy sitting in his impregnable fortress surrounded by lackeys" scene here (well, there is, but it's at the very end of the film and it's only a handful of lackeys). Bond does not know who he is really up against, a pleasing development in a Bond film. The other great strength is the film's heroine, Melina Havelock, a strong-willed Greek woman who is out for revenge. (Her father is the British agent killed early in the film.) She is an intelligent and utterly beautiful woman who never is reduced to a mere damsel-in-distress. The score is provided by Bill Conti, who uses some disco and early 80s rock stylings in the music; nevertheless, this actually works (whereas the Marvin Hamlisch efforts on The Spy Who Loved Me are disastrous). There are some wonderfully infectious action cues in the score, and the song is one of the better ones. And Roger Moore's performance, as far as I am concerned, gives the lie to the idea that Moore was only about playing Bond for laughs. He maintains a fairly serious tone throughout, and there is one scene -- where he confronts an assassin who has ended up in a poor position -- in which Moore's Bond is as ruthless as Connery's Bond ever was. For Your Eyes Only is one of the series's best efforts. (The Gadgets: the emphasis here, like in OHMSS, is on human abilities. The only real gadget in the film is a computer called the IdentiGraph that collates the characteristics of a physical description and uses the information to identify the person described. In fact, the early-80s computer technology in this scene is the only part of the film that seems dated. Q appears in the film, but mostly in an advisory funtion.)

:: Octopussy. This is one of my favorites. It goes for a bit more of an epic feel than For Your Eyes Only, while retaining that film's emphasis on character and espionage. This story also plays on the Cold War dynamic, pitting Bond against a fiendish plot concocted by a rather renegade Soviet general. (I find it interesting that the Bond series didn't really employ the Russians in any kind of villain capacity until the films of the 1980s. True, in From Russia With Love Bond initially believes himself to be working against the Russians, but it turns out that he's really up against SPECTRE. Russians don't really figure much at all in the Bond mythos until For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy.) The story involves jewelry smuggling, fake Faberge eggs, a traveling circus, and finally a secretly planted atomic bomb; and all this transpires in India and in Germany (which was still divided at the time). The Indian locations are gorgeous, and a highpoint is the scene where Bond has to elude an elephant-hunt staged by the villain. The film actually boasts more memorable action sequences than most Bond films: the teaser sequence, in which Bond flies a one-man jet and avoids a heat-seeking missile, is excellent; there is a fun chase through the streets of New Delhi; and the film's entire last act -- involving Bond's race against time to stop the atomic bomb from exploding -- is riveting. Louis Jourdan is excellent as Kamal Khan, the villain, who has one of the better henchmen in the series, a giant named Gobinda. (Gobinda is not just brainless muscle: during the film's climax, when Bond is clinging to the outside of Khan's airplane, the look on Gobinda's face when Khan orders him to "Go out and get him" is priceless.) Maud Adams stars as Octopussy, the film's heroine and title character. She is another strong woman; if at the end of the film she does turn into a damsel-in-distress, it's not for lack of effort on her part. The only blemish on the film's acting is Steven Burkoff, who plays General Orlov in over-the-top fashion that is at times very hard to swallow. John Barry returns to do the score, and turns in another fine effort. Octopussy is excellent. (The Gadgets: There is the afore-mentioned one-man jet plane of Bond's, used in the teaser sequence. He also has an assortment of useful wristwatches: one that tracks a homing device he is able to plant in the faberge egg, and one that is a tiny television that provides him with some very timely information toward the end of the film. And given my love of fountain pens, I loved the one in this film that actually dispenses acid that "dissolves all metals". You never know when that may come in handy. Q actually gets something of an action sequence as he pilots a hot-air balloon.)

:: Never Say Never Again. This film exists because of the court decisions that gave the rights to the Thunderball story to producer Kevin McClory. This is not an "official" Bond film (it was not made by Eon Productions, the company responsible for all the others), so it lacks such standard Bond touches as the gun-barrel opening sequence and the James Bond Theme. That said, though, it's an excellent film which gave audiences in 1983 the chance to directly compare Sean Connery's Bond with Roger Moore's. (Octopussy had opened earlier that year.) Connery returns, looking twelve years older but still quite fit, and he play Bond one more time with amazing gusto. In truth, this film tells the Thunderball story much more effectively than Thunderball. The pacing is excellent, moving along at a zippy pace thanks to the directorial hand of Irvin Kershner (whose most notable film is an underrated flick called The Empire Strikes Back). There is also some wonderful dialogue in this film: when Largo asks Bond if he loses as gracefully as he wins, Bond says, "I wouldn't know. I've never lost." Bond's contact in Nassau, played by Rowan Atkinson, is very nervous about Bond's arrival: "Your reputation has preceded you, and you're going to jeopardize the tourist trade if you start going around killing people!" And the film's Q-figure, a strange man named Algernon, tells Bond: "Now that you're on this, I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence." Kim Basinger, in an early role, plays Domino fairly well; she's not very convincing at first but as Bond -- and we -- get to know the character, she loosens up. Klaus Maria Brandauer is a wonderful villain, and Barbara Carerra as assassin Fatima Blush nearly steals the show. The film's only real blemishes are the climax, which is a bit of a letdown, and the music score by Michel LeGrande, which is a disaster. Never Say Never Again may not be an official Bond film, but "a rose by any other name...." (The Gadgets: Bond has a motorcycle that is equipped with guns and a rocket-thruster, a wristwatch that is really a laser, and -- my favorite -- a pen-pistol that fires very explosive bullets. There is also a gonzo bit of transportation, used by Bond and Felix Leiter toward the end of the film, that I can't even describe.)

:: A View To A Kill. This, Roger Moore's last appearance as 007, is generally held to be the series's worst film. I actually like it, though it's not without faults. The biggest one by far is the Tanya Roberts character, who is simply the worst Bond heroine to date. This is the best example I've ever seen of blaming an actor or actress for faults in the screenplay; while no one would ever claim that Tanya Roberts is a particularly skilled thespian, I seriously doubt that even Meryl Streep channeling the spirit of Ingrid Bergman could have done much with this role. It's not Roberts's fault that the script has her character not showing up until halfway through the film, and then standing around screaming "James! James! James!" And I suspect that it's not Roberts's fault that at one point her character fails to notice a certain object behind her. (If you haven't seen the film, wait. It's not to be believed when it happens.) And the other big fault is, sadly, Roger Moore, who tries but can't really overcome the fact that he really looks too old this time out. He was starting to age in Octopussy, but it's far more noticeable here. The film also plays a couple of its action set-pieces for laughs, most notably the fire-engine chase through San Francisco. But there are actually good things in A View To A Kill, starting with the villain. If ever an actor was born to play a Bond villain, surely it is Christopher Walken. He perfectly captures the sense of ego and psychosis that is at the heart of any good Bond baddie, and he is actually chilling during the climactic scenes when he is overcome by laughter at key points in the action. His henchwoman is played by Grace Jones, and although her character is interesting, the film does too much with her going around killing people. (Also, an early action sequence severely tests the suspension of disbelief: would it really take that long for her to reach the ground after parachuting off the Eiffel Tower?) And fans of The Pretender, take note: Walken's associate, Scarpine, is played by Patrick Bauchau, who played Jarod's father-figure Sydney on the television series. I suppose that I consider A View To A Kill to be something of a guilty pleasure. It's definitely off-the-mark, a dangerous retread of the Bond excesses of the 1970s -- but I can't bring myself to actually dislike it. Oh well. (The Gadgets: While there is never a scene where Q sits Bond down and explains all his new gizmos, Bond has a ton of them. It starts in the teaser sequence, with a boat disguised as an iceberg. He has a Norelco shaver that detects listening devices; a credit card that pops open window locks; sunglasses that allow him to see through draperies; and a pocket-gizmo that he can press to a blank check and, using the imprint on it, generate a copy of the last check written. Q seems to spend his time working with a goofy robotic dog-thing. for some reason.)

...to be continued (only five more films to go)...

IMAGE OF THE WEEK





The orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle, whose debris trail Earth is now entering, causing the yearly Perseid meteor shower. This is one of the finest of the yearly meteor showers, and is beginning now. The peak night will be August 12. If you have clear skies at night between now and then, get out after dark and watch. (The picture links to a more informative MSN article about the phenomenon.)

POETICAL EXCURSION #6

"Uphill", by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894).

Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you waiting at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

:: This poem, seemingly a series of questions by a traveler and the answers by one who has traveled, is a lovely and moving meditation on death and its relation to life. Each answer given by the secondary speaker builds on the sense of inevitability that the young traveler must reach this particular destination -- in fact, he cannot avoid it: You cannot miss that inn. More interesting, though, than this sense of the inevitability of death is the sense that death is not to be feared; we are instead to find comfort and solace in death. Rossetti employs imagery throughout the poem implying that death is a welcome refuge after a long, hard journey. It is the world that is to be feared and turned from, in the end. Death will provide a roof and an inn, and there will be comradery in the welcome we find by Those who have gone before. Life, Rossetti tells us, is a long journey, lasting From morn to night, and death is not an end to be feared but a rest to be earned and welcomed. The juxtaposition of fatalism and optimism fascinates.

Another interesting question about this work is: Who is the second speaker, the person giving the answers? At first glance, we suspect someone old and weary at life, precisely the kind of person who would welcome death. But there are another possibilities: that the Answerer is actually himself one of the dead, who is telling someone soon to die not to be fearful. Or perhaps it is even God, seeking to reassure a fearful worshipper.

(NOTE: I've added permalinks at left to the other Poetical Excursions, and I am planning to do these more than once per month. The composer Robert Schumann once wrote that young musicians should "read industriously from the poets"; this is something that I am trying to do. Reading poetry shows us what wonders are possible in language.)

James Bond Redux, part III.

...continuing my capsule reviews of the James Bond films, in order of release. (Parts One and Two.)

:: Live and Let Die. This is the only James Bond film that I really, genuinely dislike. There are some good things in it -- Jane Seymour is stunning and she does fairly well at portraying her character's inner conflict (ludicrous as that conflict may be), and Yaphet Kotto is a decent villain. Roger Moore does fairly well in his initial outing as Bond, despite the worst script ever written for a Bond film. I did write a more detailed review of this film a few months ago and see no need to rehash it. (The Gadgets: Adding to the list of ways in which this film falters, Q does not appear at all. Instead, M briefs Bond on how to use a wristwatch that is a buzz-saw and an incredibly powerful magnet. I actually like this gadget, and to the film's credit Bond puts it to good use later on. There is also a weird gun that shoots bullets that are filled with compressed air or something like that.)

:: The Man With the Golden Gun. Better than Live and Let Die, it has some good parts as well as some parts that are truly awful. Roger Moore brings a certain intensity to his portrayal -- witness the scene where he interrogates Miss Anders as to Scaramanga's whereabouts), so the typical accusation of Moore as playing Bond for laughs doesn't hold up. I also wrote about this one in more detail a while back. (The Gadgets: The best gadget in the film is actually Scaramanga's golden gun, which he puts together out of a pen and a cigarette lighter. Come to think of it, that's probably the film's only gadget. Q appears to provide analysis rather than equip Bond with nifty items.)

:: The Spy Who Loved Me. This one is generally held in higher regard than I would prefer; I find it a mixed bag. The plot is a rehash of You Only Live Twice, with American and Soviet submarines getting highjacked as opposed to space capsules. There are some good action sequences, especially a high-speed chase on the mountain roads of Corsica. Barbara Bach plays Major Amasova well, and the "Bond teamed with his Russian counterpart" angle is fun, although the bit where Bond turns out to have killed her lover (also a Russian agent, who had been trying to kill Bond in the film's teaser sequence) does not so much lend tension as seem contrived. And if Anya is such a good agent, why does the film just turn her into yet another trapped damsel at the end, when the villain escapes with her only to do no more than tie her to an ugly plastic chair? And speaking of the villain, Stromberg is curiously unmenacing. Maybe he just doesn't have enough screentime to develop a persona of evil; he's simply not sharply drawn at all. He is obsessed with the sea, and in one shot we can see that he has webbing between his fingers, but nothing much comes of this aspect of his character. (He also displays the same bizarre habit that Goldfinger had of killing people in highly expensive ways when there were much simpler ways to do the job. He drops a secretary who betrayed him into a shark pool -- very easy -- but then he allows two scientists who worked for him to fly off in a helicopter, which he then blows up by remote control. Why destroy a perfectly good helicopter? Why [presumably] kill a pilot? Why not just dump the scientists into the shark pool as well?) This is also the film that gave us the dentally-enhanced henchman Jaws, who is mostly played for laughs. The fight aboard Stromberg's supertanker goes on far too long. The film's teaser sequence features an ineptly-photographed ski chase, and the music -- some disco garbage by Marvin Hamlisch -- is distracting and ugly. The Spy Who Loved Me has some good parts, but I generally find it a disappointment. (The Gadgets: A bunch of them. Bond has a wristwatch that scrolls of a tickertape message from M; he uses his cigarette case to screen some microfilm; he has a Jet-ski -- this was when Jet-skis were fairly new items -- and he has the Lotus automobile that is armed in the best Bond fashion and can convert to a submarine.)

:: Moonraker. This is easily the most absurd of all the Bond films, with a villain -- Hugo Drax -- who has decided to go to a space station with a hand-picked group of "colonists", wait out his poisoning of the earth, and then return to the surface to repopulate and rule. This plot is completely over the top, and in the end a laughable space battle takes place. And we have Jaws again for the ride, this time falling in love with a short, pigtailed blond girl he finds amid the destruction that he wreaks in a cable-car station. In another fight scene, Bond and an Oriental martial artist seemingly destroy half of the artistic heritage of Venice, Italy (what is it with objets d'art always being demolished in Bond films, anyway?). There is a ludicrous chase through the canals of Venice, for no other reason than to have a chase through the canals of Venice. This entire film is over-the-top self-parody; it's films like Moonraker that gave rise to Austin Powers. And yet, I actually like the bloody thing, probably for the same reason that I like chicken wings and beer. The film has a sense of fun that is actually infectious; every actor involved seems to be enjoying what is going on. I especially like Lois Chiles as Holly Goodnight; here Bond is again teamed with a female secret agent -- this one from the CIA -- and she is never turned into a damsel-in-distress; she is a genuine equal for Bond (or as much as was possible in 1979). The script is utterly loaded with double-entendres, some of which really are funny. The teaser sequence, involving Bond being tossed out of an airplane sans parachute, is eye-popping. John Barry is thankfully back to do with the music. Moonraker is a guilty pleasure. I shouldn't like it, but I do. Ah well.... (The Gadgets: this film actually has my favorite of all of James Bond's gadgets, a dart-gun that he wears around his wrist. All Bond does is flick his wrist and out flies either an armor-piercing dart or a poison-tipped one. He also has a wristwatch that contains explosives; in the afore-mentioned Venician chase scene he drives a motorized gondola, which then converts to a hovercraft. He has another nifty safecracker, this one using X-rays to reveal the tumblers of the lock. There is also an amusing scene where Bond figures out that Holly Goodnight is a CIA agent by testing all of her gadgets and making fun of them, although one of them comes in useful later when he's engaged in a fight with a big snake.)

...to be continued...

James Bond Redux, part II.

...continuing my capsule reviews of all the James Bond films, in order of their release...

(Part one: Dr. No through Thunderball)

:: You Only Live Twice. In this film, feminist critics of the James Bond series will find some of their most potent ammunition -- this is a film where Tanaka, the head of Japanese Intelligence, tells Bond: "In Japan, men always come first. Women come second." (To which Bond replies, "I may retire here.") There is a lot of woman-as-object in this film, and Bond's thoughts never seem to be far from the bedroom. Whenever he has a free moment, he is looking for, well, some "action". That's one of my biggest complaints with this film. The other is the villain: we get our first sight of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but he is unfortunately played in spectacularly unmenacing fashion by Donald Pleasance. No Bond villain should sound whiny, as Pleasance does when he orders one of his lackeys to "Kill Bond! Now!", and certainly Blofeld -- Bond's archenemy -- should never sound thus. The film also suffers from bad special effects (probably unavoidable in a 1967 film, but there it is) and in the general unbelievability of the plot. The film's strengths are in its gorgeous photography of the Japanese locales, John Barry's sparkling score, and the film's zippy pace (a welcome change after the lugubrious Thunderball). (The Gadgets: Bond has a safe-cracking device, an area where Q-Branch seems to be constantly devoting its efforts, as Bond uses nifty safe-crackers a lot. He also has cigarettes that fire explosive darts, and most notably a collapsible one-man helicopter that is armed to the teeth.)

:: On Her Majesty's Secret Service. For years -- pretty much ever since its release in 1969 -- OHMSS has been something of an "unloved child" amongst the James Bond films, for a number of reasons. It is the longest of the films; it has the series's only downbeat ending (actually, it's a tragic ending); and it's the first film to not feature Sean Connery as Bond. Connery had left the role after You Only Live Twice, and the producers hired a complete unknown with no acting experience, George Lazenby, which would have been a risky move in any event but given the nature of the film's story was potential for unmitigated disaster. Were those fears realized? In a word, NO. On Her Majesty's Secret Service is not a disaster. Quite the opposite: this is the best James Bond film yet made. Yes, I said "best".

Where so many Bond films a faux-epics, mistaking huge sets and massive battles for grandeur, OHMSS gets it right by telling an epic story. The sense of sweep in this film has never stopped amazing me; it amazes me to this day. The film opens with Bond becoming intrigued by an encounter with a beautiful heiress who is also suicidal; his concern for her leads him to an unexpected opportunity to find Ernst Stavro Blofeld, for whom he has been searching for two years. Every development in the story leads on to the next development perfectly; this film exhibits storytelling logic that is often wanting in Bond films (and, in the worst films, completely absent). Because nothing in the story is wasted, the film's lengthy running time (142 minutes) seems much shorter than it really is. Richard Maibaum's screenplay contains the best writing in the series, and it would be another six films -- not until For Your Eyes Only -- before the scripts would approach this level of quality again.

There are many to this day who don't care for George Lazenby's performance as Bond. I am not one of them. Lazenby has, to my mind, only a handful of wooden line readings; for the most part his performance is solid and in certain scenes it is almost perfect. He handles an early scene with Diana Rigg very well, conveying that he is more intrigued with this particular woman than with most "mere" beautiful girls, and there is another scene later on -- when Bond realizes that he has fallen in love, and that this is more important to him than his job as an agent for Her Majesty -- that Lazenby absolutely nails. In every scene that demands the most from Lazenby, he delivers. He is also a very athletic actor, which shows in his action sequences. He also displays good comic timing with his early line, "This never happened to the other fellow."

The other performances are wonderful. Diana Rigg is still my favorite Bond heroine; she is beautiful, intelligent, and three-dimensional. Telly Savalas is Blofeld this time, a welcome change over Donald Pleasance. (He also has the film's best line, suring a ski chase: "All right, we'll head him off at the precipice.") There isn't a single weak link in the supporting cast.

The music for OHMSS is the best in the series, with John Barry's wonderful main theme (the only time in the series that an instrumental was used for the main credits) and the love theme based on Louis Armstrong's "We Have All the Time In the World". The photography is outstanding; if you can watch this film and afterwards not want to immediately book a trip to the Swiss Alps, then you weren't looking at the screen at all. The action sequences are first-rate, most notably a ski chase that is still the best in the series. A common refrain about OHMSS is, "If only they'd made it with Connery...." Well, they didn't. They made it with George Lazenby, and they have never since made one better. (The Gadget: The focus in OHMSS is on human abilities; gadgets are not much in evidence. Q describes, in the film's opening scene, research into radioactive lint, which slipped into an opponent's pockets would make him easier to track. There is another nifty safecracker machine that is also a photocopier, and Bond has a miniature camera. That's about it.)

:: Diamonds Are Forever. For reasons passing understanding, George Lazenby quit the Bond role after his one film, and Sean Connery was convinced to return. After doing this film, Connery left for good, and Roger Moore took over the role. Moore has often been blamed for the shift into self-parody that the Bond films undertook in the 1970s, but in reality that shift began with Diamonds Are Forever. (This also ilustrates a theory of mine, that actors are often blamed for things that are really faults of writing. I'll have more to say about that in later reviews.) Diamonds Are Forever is a decent film on its own; the story -- involving a particularly nasty smuggling ring, where each link in the chain is murdered as the diamonds are moved along -- is interesting. Jill St. John is an interesting Bond heroine, playing a criminal who ends up being Bond's reluctant ally. Sadly, the film turns her into a bumbling bimbo in the third act -- and the film as a whole pretty much collapses in its climactic scenes. The final battle against Blofeld and his minions is unexciting, and we are cheated of a "final confrontation" between Bond and his archenemy. That, really, is the biggest failing of Diamonds Are Forever: it makes no reference at all to the events of OHMSS, choosing to tell a stand-alone story rather than the gripping revenge story that one might have expected. Blofeld, remember, murdered Bond's wife -- and yet this is not mentioned at all. There should be personal hatred, but the Bond-Blofeld dynamic here is firmly along the lines of "the cop versus the bad guy he's never been able to put away". Imagine if, in Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader never fight each other, and when they meet face-to-face no mention at all is made of Vader's revelation in The Empire Strikes Back. That's the feeling here. There are also a number of ludicrous moments, such as a chase scene involving Bond and seemingly the entire Las Vegas police department that goes on far too long and a scene that depicts Blofeld dressed in drag. Diamonds Are Forever is enjoyable until the climax, but it is also a missed opportunity of staggering proportions. (The Gadgets: Bond fools a fingerprinting machine by wearing false fingerprints; he has a gun which fires pitons and ropes for climbing purposes -- very useful for getting into a Las Vegas hotel's forbidden penthouse; and there is some gizmo that changes people's voices. Q also demonstrates a gadget that causes slot machines to come up Jackpot. The gadgets are fairly pedestrian.)

To be continued....

After a round of heavy revision work the last few days, I am roughly two-thirds of the way through my novel-in-progress. I'm getting a bit worried about the climax, but I may have solved a particularly thorny problem -- or at least conceived its solution -- over the weekend. Also, two short stories whose rejections arrived last week are now going out again to different markets. I keep thinking that one of these things has got to sell, one of these days....

Some of my favorite e-journals are by writers who chronicle their writing and their thoughts thereof. Here is another good one.

I've just bounced off Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. The novel's interesting premise wasn't gripping me, and about 150 pages in I was having difficulty figuring out who was who. (Part of the trouble is that, for various "real life" reasons, my reading of this book was interrupted several times. I'm something of a "daily rhythm" reader, and if that rhythm is upset I have a hard time regaining the momentum.) I'll attempt the book again at a later date. I loved its predecessor, A Fire Upon the Deep. (Deepness is actually a prequel-of-sorts to Fire, although the connections are really tenuous.)

I've switched genres entirely, and am now reading Barbara Paul's mystery novel Kill Fee.

Salon recently ran this interesting article on those Left Behind books. I'm something of a sucker for things like millennialism and Biblical prophecy and end-time thinking and all that, but I haven't summoned up the urge to read this series. It just doesn't sound like my cup of tea, really. (I also find the seriousness with which these books are taken -- the idea that this is how it's really going to be -- rather creepy.)

I've loved the James Bond films since I saw my first one: Moonraker, when I was in second grade. Someone has said that everybody's favorite Bond is the one they first saw. While this isn't true in my case -- more on that later -- I certainly don't agree with the a priori notion held by most people that there is Sean Connery and then there is everyone else. I've loved all of the Bonds, and I don't find Connery's Bond films to be any better, as a whole, than those that came after. What follows is Part One of my capsulized opinions on all of the Bond films thus far, in order of release. (The purpose of this exercise is, of course, to occupy my time while I print out several lengthy files.)

:: Dr. No. As the first ever James Bond film, this one almost has to be admired; if it had been a disaster, the series likely would never have gotten off the ground. A lot of the Bond tropes are here: Bond in a tuxedo, playing baccarat; lovely ladies both in glamorous evening wear and skimpy attire; a villain with a deformity; an ally of Bond's who dies most horribly; et cetera. That said, I have never really liked Dr. No. The film has always seemed a bit bloodless to me, with uncertain pacing, a lackluster villain, and acting that is, frankly, lousy (excepting Connery and Jack Lord as Felix Leiter). The music also turns me off; by film's end I am pounding on the side of my skull in a futile attempt to drive "Under the Mango Tree" from my mind. I'm grateful to Dr. No, but I just don't like watching it. (The Gadget: none. Q does not appear in this film, although Bond is ordered by M and a guy only called "the armorer" to carry his trademark Walther PPK pistol.)

:: From Russia With Love. This is one of my favorites. It's probably the only legitimate espionage thriller in the entire Bond series, relying almost entirely on intrigue and characterization than thrills and villainy. It's much better made than Dr. No, and features some of the most memorable characters in the whole series in Bond ally Kerim Bey, villainess Rosa Klebb, and assassin Donovan Grant. Bond's confrontation with Grant on the Orient Express is a fine, fine scene, and the whole film is taut and exciting. Especially notable is the sense of locale in From Russia With Love. The locations -- Istanbul and the gypsy camps in its countryside; the Orient Express -- never seem like mere backdrops to Bondian action but actual places with real cultural differences to which Bond must adapt. At one point, Kerim Bey tells Bond, "You're in the Balkans now. The game with the Russians is played a little bit differently here." And so it is. John Barry's score for the film is excellent; the theme song is lovely. One of the best. (The Gadget: a briefcase that contains a collapsible rifle, fifty gold sovereigns hidden in the lining, and a talcum powder can that actually dispense teargas if the briefcase latches are incorrectly positioned prior to opening. The villains also have interesting gadgets: shoes that carry venom-tipped points, and Donovan Grant's wristwatch garrotte. Desmond Llewellyn appears for the first time as Q.)

:: Goldfinger. This is nearly everybody's favorite Bond film. It isn't mine, however. I don't think it is a bad film by any means; the film is slick and well-made, with an excellent sense of pacing (except in one spot toward the end: the aerial portion of Goldfinger's raid on Fort Knox goes on for far too long). The villains are wonderful: surely Goldfinger's line "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" is one of the dialogue highlights of the entire series, and Oddjob is probably the greatest of Bondian henchmen ever. My first problem with the film is with the Bond heroine, Pussy Galore. Simply put, the main heroine in any Bond film should never be the third or fourth most beautiful woman in the picture. Honor Blackman just doesn't do it for me, unfortunately. Another problem I have is unavoidable, really, given the film's plot: the locations. Try as I might, I just cannot see rural America as a likely spot for Bondian heroics; and I certainly should never see a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the background of any Bond movie. Part of the allure of a James Bond film is the sense that he really doesn't operate in the same world as the rest of us, and things like that shatter the illusion. More seriously for the film, though, are problems with the story. If you consider carefully the film's climactic scenes, you realize that Bond himself does almost nothing to thwart Goldfinger's plan. The note he tucks in the gangster's pocket to be found by Felix Leiter never gets to him (Oddjob kills the gangster instead); Bond seduces Pussy Galore and then it is she that tips off the CIA to Goldfinger's plot -- but Bond knows nothing of this at all. The fight with Oddjob, while exciting, has no bearing at all on the outcome; had Bond just sat down and twiddled his thumbs the good guys still would have arrived on time, probably shot Oddjob dead, and defused the bomb. In fact, Bond doesn't even stop the bomb; he is trying to figure out how to do so when one of Felix Leiter's friends pushes him aside and defuses it for him! The actions of James Bond are almost irrelevant to the entire last third of the movie. (And why on Earth would Goldfinger bother explaining his scheme to the collection of gangsters, when he is going to kill them anyway? and since he's already going to kill all of them, why take the other guy aside and kill him in what seems an awfully inconvenient manner?) Goldfinger pretty much loses me as soon as the story moves to the United States. That's a shame. (Although, even in the early going I have some problems: why, for instance, would there be a mirror installed at the end of an alley in Goldfinger's factory complex? Did he think at some point, "Hmmm....if ever a secret agent is involved in a high speed chase through my complex, a mirror might come in useful in stopping him....") (The Gadget: the Aston-Martin DB-V automobile, with bulletproof shield, smokescreen, front-firing machine guns, and an ejector seat. It's always bothered me that with Bond has one of the niftiest gadgets in all of the films, and even after exhausting its options he still gets captured.)

:: Thunderball. This film has an odd pedegree, coming from a story that Ian Fleming co-owned with producer Kevin McClory (which is why McClory, in a later court case, won the rights to make his own Bond film -- which turned out to be Never Say Never Again). SPECTRE makes its first grand appearance in Thunderball, with a classic plot: they conspire to steal two nuclear bombs, which they then use to blackmail the United Nations (or NATO, I can't recall) into some huge payment. It's a good hook for a Bond film, and the production is first-rate. This is the second Bond film to be set in the Caribbean (after Dr. No), and the sense of location is far more convincing -- mainly through the use of some very evocative underwater photography. The villain -- Emilio Largo -- is not quite in Auric Goldfinger's league, but he is still menacing; his femme fatale assassin, Fiona, is excellent. Sean Connery's performance gets more confident with each outing, and the Bond Heroine, Domino, is to this day one of the most stunning women in any Bond film. Thunderball, though, is a mixed bag, primarily because of its wildly inconsistent pacing. The film opens with a lengthy set-up as Bond, who is vacationing at a health spa, happens on some of SPECTRE's set-up work for their scheme. After about forty minutes, the film finally transitions to Nassau and the pace quickens a bit in keeping with the "race against time" plotline. However, it still meanders quite a bit as Bond investigates Domino and Largo. And then the film's pacing grinds to a complete stop with the beginning of thirty or forty minutes of slow underwater action sequences. Thunderball seems to have a stop-start-stop rhythm throughout its running time, which makes it a hard film to get involved in. The John Barry score is superb, though. (The Gadgets: Bond has a lot of them this time. He has a geiger counter that doubles as an underwater camera, a homing device that he swallows, and a two-minute rebreather the size of a pen. In the film's teaser sequence he uses a jet-pack to evade some thugs, before getting into the Aston-Martin which apparently now has the power to shoot water from its tailights with firehose force.)

To be continued....

Since the remarkable Calvin and Hobbes ended, the only daily comic strip that has been able to make me laugh on a consistent basis is the wicked Dilbert. (Interestingly, my parents don't like Dilbert at all, which I attribute to the fact that they are teachers -- neither has been anywhere near corporate America for more than twenty years. Not that education isn't riddled with its own share of weirdos, idiots and incompetents; but the two are really different animals.)

Well, Dilbert is still going strong, but now -- at long last -- there is another strip that makes me laugh almost every time I read it. It is Aaron MacGruder's Boondocks. The strip from last Sunday may be the funniest thing I have ever seen in a comic strip. This particular installment is subtle, witty, and also a wonderful tribute to a past master of this oft-ignored art form. Check it out.

A very quick micro-rant about a new pet peeve: I've noticed, only in the last month or two, that e-journalists (I don't like the word "blog" or any of its suffix-derivatives) have a new modus operandi when they have a series of links they wish to share on a given topic. They will write a sentence where each word is a different hyperlink. (An example of this can be found here.) I'm not entirely sure why this bugs me, but I really have trouble seeing the word "to" as a viable word to be linked, by itself, to someplace else. I suppose this is cleaner than employing something like this: (see related links here, here, here and here), where each "here" is a link. I don't know, but it still strikes me as cumbersome. (Or maybe it's simply the amount of linking in a single post that bothers me, combined with the effect of it all being jammed together like that in one sentence.)

Ah, well....

I always wondered if the Ancient Egyptians left any cookbooks in Hieroglyphic form. Now I know. It's too bad they aren't planning to sell this stuff commercially; food-as-history is always fascinating. (As a lover of fantasy, I consider it something of a personal failing that I have yet to taste mead.)

Congratulations, No. 12.

I attended college from 1989 to 1993, when Jim Kelly was leading the Buffalo Bills into their greatest era ever. In my freshman year they lost a thrilling playoff game in the last seconds to the Cleveland Browns; each season thereafter for the next four years ended in heartbreak at the Super Bowl. Those Super Bowl years, although they ended sadly each year, were special to me precisely because I went to college nearly 900 miles away from home. The Buffalo Bills were a tangible piece of home a long way away; they were something to which I could point with pride. Whenever a Bills home game was televised (which, in Iowa, was not very often), I could point to the stadium and the aerial shots of the surrounding countryside and say, "That's home". Sports fandom can be ugly; but there are other times when sport can give us something more than just a Sunday afternoon thrill.

Someday, some quarterback will lead the Buffalo Bills to a Super Bowl championship. It may even be the new man, Drew Bledsoe. As a fan, I hope that he does. But no matter who eventually brings the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Buffalo, there will never be a greater champion than Jim Kelly.

(Except, maybe, Thurman Thomas. OK, and Bruce Smith. Yeah, and Andre Reed....can't forget Steve Tasker, Cornelius Bennett, or Darryl Talley or Kent Hull either....man, that was a hell of a football team.)

IMAGES OF THE WEEK





Side view of Buffalo City Hall, taken from the waters of Lake Erie.





Front view of Buffalo City Hall and Niagara Square.

:: The city of Buffalo is blessed with an abundance of fine architecture, much of it dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The most prominent architectural gem in Buffalo is City Hall, a 26-story structure that blends Art Deco and Classical styles to create an imposing but beautiful structure. The building can be seen most dramatically from the Canadian side of Lake Erie, where it is the foremost structure in the city skyline. It is the second tallest building in Buffalo, superseded only by the 40-story HSBC Center. That building, though, is on the southern tip of downtown and therefore does not detract from City Hall's ability to draw the eye. The building was built between 1929 and 1931.

The tall obelisk seen in the second photograph stands at the center of Niagara Square, which is one of the hubs of Buffalo's original radial street layout. (This, in turn, was based on the radial layout of Washington, DC.) That street layout has since been compromised by development -- most notably, the cutting off of arterial Genesee Street by the city's Convention Center -- and has been cited as a necessary component in any revitalization of downtown. Over the last few decades, the city has aimed business development almost exclusively at its Main Street corridor, which has concentrated most economic activity along a single street as opposed to fostering a cluster of vital streets within downtown. Alternatives to that way of thinking are now being discussed.

The images link to informative sites on Buffalo in general and the City Hall in particular, via Skyscrapers.com. This fascinating site contains architectural information on dozens of cities. (BTW, I had no idea that Tulsa, OK was that big!!)

When exploring the world of classical music, it is all too easy to stick with the safe, big names like Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Stravinsky, Bach, and all the other familiar composers. After all, there is a reason that these composers are "the Greats". However, there are many, many other composers whose music deserves hearing every bit as much, with their own unique pleasures. I'm thinking of composers like Tveitt, Finzi, Kalinnikov, Ligeti, Martinu, and Nielsen -- just to name a few. Reasons for the obscurity of these composers often has less to do with the inherent quality of their music than one might expect; it might be that they composed at a time when their particular style was out of fashion; or perhaps they composed a handful of works whose reputations are so good that they have overshadowed the rest of their output; and there is, of course, the constant reality that many composers -- being relatively poor and not in good health -- simply died before their gifts could blossom in maturity. And there is the problem of the sheer volume of music produced; not everything can be heard and preserved. It is a harsh reality that undoubtedly has cost the world some music that otherwise might be seen as masterpiece quality in its own right.

I've been looking a bit lately at the Unknown Composers Page, which contains information on a number of these nearly forgotten artists. Perhaps, if there is still life in classical music, part of it lies in breaking beyond the standard repertoire and discovering the true depth and diversity of our musical heritage.

Anyone who ever looks around at their environment and thinks, "Oh my God, what kind of life is this?" can take solace in what this guy has apparently decided to do for a living.

And speaking of online personality tests (see the post immediately below this one), here's one of my own devising. You are a classic nerd if the following terms and/or phrases are meaningful to you:

1. Plugh.
2. You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
3. XYZZY
4. You are in the bedquilt. Passages go off in all directions.

These phrases are from one of the oldest and greatest of computer games, the classic text-based adventure Colossal Cave. I started playing this game when I was in fifth grade; the program was installed on the mainframe at my father's job. A text-based adventure is precisely what it sounds like: you are basically told what you see, hear, smell, and sense in any particular setting, and then you decide what actions to take based on the descriptions. You type the actions on the screen, and the game responds accordingly. If you are told "You are in a dark room with passages to the east and west", you might type "Go east" or "Go west". Along the way you gather treasures and take them someplace for safekeeping (I won't give it away if you haven't played the game), and in order to acquire some of the treasures you have to solve puzzles. It is rather like a teletype version of Myst or Riven; the object of the game is exploration and puzzle-solving as opposed to killing beasties and gathering experience points.

Colossal Cave is the earliest of the text-based adventures; others would come later, the most famous being Infocom's classic Zork! trilogy, which was similar to Cave but had a much more sophisticated parser. (Where Cave only understands two-word commands like "Go North", "Get Coins" and "Wave Rod", Zork!'s natural-language parser allows one to type things like "Get the coins, go north, and wave the rod.") Many other text-based adventures have been written and can be found on the Web (afficionadoes use the term "interactive fiction", actually). Some of them are a lot of fun to play. Playing games like Colossal Cave is not only fun, but is also a vivid reminder that the written word, skillfully harnessed, can have more power than pictures.

(Follow the link for tons of information on Colossal Cave, including downloads and hints. You can e-mail me for hints, but I probably won't give them to you; I will instead laugh evilly as you try to vanquish the dragon or try to figure out how to circumvent the troll. Heh heh heh.)