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.)