In case you didn't know, James Bond is a sexist prick. You probably knew that already, though. But what you might not have known is that in Casino RoyIn case you didn't know, James Bond is a sexist prick. You probably knew that already, though. But what you might not have known is that in Casino Royale, his first adventure (if you can call what he does adventuring), he is a useless prat.
Bond fails at pretty much everything he does in this novel. He makes mistake after mistake. He only defeats the baddie (in the mission proper) because the baddie defeats himself, which, come to think of it, is pretty much how every Bond villain loses (maybe Bond always sucks at his job and he's just the luckiest agent in MI-6). His shit judgment leads to his near death. He lets emotion get in the way of the job, and it costs lives. Meanwhile, Ian Fleming keeps popping us into Bond's thoughts, and Bond's opinion of everyone he comes in contact with has something to do with their incompetence, all while Bond is thoroughly incompetent himself.
Still, there is a seriously cool torture sequence, the very real SMERSH makes their first fictional appearance in the Bond books, and despite being a tosser, an asshole, and a giant slut, Bond still manages to pull off a level of coolness, although that is probably just forty years of filmgoing indoctrination I can't shake.
All in all a disappointing book, even with Simon Vance's decent performance as Bond.
One final thought: the British propaganda made me cringe this time around....more
WARNING: This is not a review of the books. I plan to write those separately someday. This is, rather, a review of the original Star Wars Trilogy cataWARNING: This is not a review of the books. I plan to write those separately someday. This is, rather, a review of the original Star Wars Trilogy catalyzed by the final episode of Lost. Please don't bother reading this if you're looking for a book review. Thanks.
About twenty years ago, I found myself in a debate about the merits of the Star Wars Trilogy with a guy named Bill (at least I think that was his name. Let’s call him Bill) and my friend Dave. Bill was trying to convince us that the Trilogy was garbage, and Dave and I, proud bearers of nearly matching Star Wars tattoos – his signifying his love for Luke Skywalker and mine signifying my love for Han Solo (more on the tattoo later) – were fighting to defend its excellence. We had a serious reason for our impassioned defence.
But Bill was determined to make us see the error of our ways. He attacked the series’ kindergarten plotting, its crappy dialogue, its special effects obfuscation, its dearth of character development, its terribly pacing, and its general glorification of style over substance. He made a number of valid points, and I was willing to listen (much more willing than Dave who has always had far too much emotion invested in the series to have its greatness assailed) until Bill engaged in this fatal rhetorical device: “It’s because you’re young guys. You watched this when you were kids and you’re nostalgic. Some day you’ll grow up and see that you’re wrong.”
The willingness to listen shut right down, and I carried on debating with a particular focus on character development. Back then there was no Special Edition (and no Prequel to make my defence impossible). Han Solo hadn’t lost the beginning of his arc. He had killed Greedo in cold blood. There was no first shot/self-defence reimagining of the scene from Lucas. So Han Solo showed a clear development from criminal drug smuggler to uncomfortable rebel to passionate lover to loyal friend to self-sacrificing hero. That’s some pretty fair character growth, and even Bill had to concede my point, admitting that he’d missed some of those subtleties, mostly because he’d only seen each movie once, but he stood by his assessment of the Trilogy; it was crap and one good character arc wasn’t going to change that.
The years passed and that debate with Bill became a file locked in my personal databanks. I never had any reason to reopen it. The Special Editions came along and I hated them. It didn’t matter, though, because I still had copies of the original movies, and I could ignore Lucas’ tampering without any difficulty. Then the Prequels came along and I hated them more. But I still had my perceived greatness of the Trilogy to fall back on, so I could simply shake my head at Prequel fans and enjoy my love of the originals.
Then I watched the final episode of Lost, and suddenly my Bill file downloaded into my consciousness. And you know what? He was right. My love for the Star Wars Trilogy was nostalgia.
What I saw in the final episode of Lost was what I should have seen all those years ago in the Trilogy. I saw a show that flattered us to deceive. I saw a series that aspired to be about “characters” but was so about plot (and though its plot was convoluted it wasn’t particularly deep) that the supposedly complex characters boiled down to pretty straightforward redemption stereotypes. I saw production value obfuscation with wide vistas, globe-trotting adventures, blazing guns, smoke monsters and pseudo-spiritual claptrap hiding a deeply banal Daddy-Son reconciliation tale. I saw a pop-culture event that destroyed whatever substance it had with a pandering finale. Is it any surprise that Lost was littered with references to Star Wars or that David Lindeloff grew up loving George Lucas’ mess as much as the rest of us? Seems fitting to me.
So what’s the point of all this? Well...Lost made me see that Bill had it right about me and Star Wars all those years ago. Lost is crap, and so was Star Wars. I was a boy who fell in love with vapid screen candy and my defence of Lucas’ uber-popular mess was and is all about nostalgia.
But I’ll not be defending the series any longer (okay...I may still defend Empire Strikes Back, which is an excellent film. Thanks, Irving Kirshner, for being a real director). Beyond its lack of artistic merit and Lucas’ disregard for the simplest rules of continuity, I have seen little boys indoctrinated into violence simply by watching Jedis train. I’ve seen Star Wars entrench an overly simplistic view of good and evil in our society, which is dangerous in the extreme. And I’ve watched the entire series change the face of film in the most unhealthy ways.
I know this is heresy. I know there’s going to be many of you out there, kind readers, who will disagree and that’s okay. I am finally at peace with my feelings about the Trilogy, and I feel great relief being able to say that the Trilogy is a big steaming pile of Bantha droppings.
And for those of you who are pitying me and my tattoo, don’t worry. The tattoo was always more about Harrison Ford than Han Solo. I can live with the ink in my skin despite my new found disdain for Star Wars.
p.s. Can I just add that I feel terribly sad about having lost these movies? There, I said it. Thank the gods I still have Indiana Jones. ...more
I finished reading two works of intense beauty today, and their content couldn't be more different.
They left me sad, feeling those hollow places that I finished reading two works of intense beauty today, and their content couldn't be more different.
They left me sad, feeling those hollow places that are always inside me, wondering what could have been if I hadn't experienced an unrequited relationship like Tom Hansen's love for Summer, or if the abuse I'd suffered as a boy had been coupled with a mad mother who kept me always on the edge of chaos.
500 Days of Summer and The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli are different. They are. But so much of what they are and how they do it is related. The former is a screenplay with a marvelous screen manifestation; the latter is a novel written as a pseudo-screenplay. The former offers episodes from 500 days of a romantic relationship; the latter offers episodes from 4 years of a tortured, insane family. The former offers a meditation on loving and liking, where hope only occurs in life moving on; the latter offers a meditation on abuse, where hope only occurs in life moving on. And both of them are achingly beautiful in their immediacy (a natural result of their form) and their intimacy.
I know that much of what I am saying is about how they made me feel, but that's fitting because they are both deeply about feelings. The authors of 500 Days of Summer and The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli wanted us to feel above all. I am sure they also wanted us to love their works (or like them), but I think they would also be okay with us hating them, so long as we were feeling them. Well, as I said, I felt them, but I don't know that I can say more about how they made me feel. It seems a bit to personal for now.
But there is something specific, something beyond my personal landscape that they made me feel, something that I think needs to be said. I feel, very deeply, that those who love literature must spend some time reading screenplays. I admit straight up that I am a screenwriter, and I know many screenwriters, and I can say to you that every screenwriter, produced or not, has at least ten unpublished screenplays on their shelf. And those stories are good. Sometimes even great. And they will likely NEVER be made, which means they will likely never be shared. Those stories, unless we start reading them, unless we offer a market for them, will stay on their shelves and be forgotten.
Ginnetta Coreli may have one answer with The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli. Maybe if we adapt our screenplays into screen-novels. Drop the "technical" screenplay format but keep the screenplay presentation. Maybe then the readers of the world will be interested. Maybe then they will read our stories and welcome us into their hearts without our stories having to be on screen.
Of course, the other answer is to get lucky enough to sell your screenplay, see it produced, and have your screenplay, your actual words, then sell to the big choir of fellow screenwriters. I dunno.
But I do know that both of these works touched me more than anything I've read in many months. I wish them on everyone. Including my own worst enemies. ...more
When I was a kid I would sit in our playroom and watch M*A*S*H* on my black and white TV while everyone else was busy doing their thing. I remember LiWhen I was a kid I would sit in our playroom and watch M*A*S*H* on my black and white TV while everyone else was busy doing their thing. I remember Little House on the Prairie being on at the same time, so my sister and Mom must have been watching the Ingalls. And my Dad...well he wasn't interested in M*A*S*H*. He hated Alan Alda.
According to my Dad, Hawkeye, and Alan Alda by extension, was a bleeding heart liberal, and the only things worse than bleeding heart liberals in our house were "fags" or true commies (and bleeding heart liberals were practically the latter). M*A*S*H* was too anti-war for my Dad, too anti-America, and the way Hawkeye criticized the military industrial complex, whether explicitly or implicitly, pissed my Dad off to no end.
I doubt he'd admit those feelings today, or admit that he ever said the things he did. Not because he's changed his opinions in any fundamental way, mind you, but because he wouldn't want people to think he was intolerant. It was acceptable in my childhood to badmouth "fags" and say they deserved to be put on an island and nuked, just as it was acceptable to preach the commie menace. Nobody looked at him askance back then, but they would now, so he'd never admit he'd held his intolerant line.
I loved Hawkeye's tolerance. It felt right to me despite what my father said. I loved that Hawkeye loved his father because I wanted that for myself. I loved that Hawkeye was funny and talented and fought injustice.
So I would lose myself in M*A*S*H* whenever I got the chance. When it wasn't on TV that was okay because I taped episodes on my little hand held cassette recorder and listened to them until I had them memorized. I learned comic timing watching Alan Alda. I learned my first lessons in acting from the man, and I loved, when I was old enough to notice, that he wrote many of the episodes he acted in.
I was worried when I picked up Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned that learning more about Alan Alda would disappoint me. I was expecting a lot about the M*A*S*H* years, and a William Shatner style musing on the pettiness of his cast mates. The big stars of big shows always seem to be forced to defend themselves in their memoirs, and I braced myself for the sad reality of narcissism and ego I was sure was coming. I shouldn't have been afraid.
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned barely mentions M*A*S*H*. There is one chapter and a couple of passing connections here and there but that's all. Instead, Alda's first memoir is as much about being a human as it is about being an actor. It's about his schizophrenic mother (which was particularly unsettling), his slightly distant, loving but guilt ridden father, the woman he has loved for almost fifty years, his strange obsessions with science, number systems, acting and, of course, writing (and whatever one makes of his acting, the man can write). It's about stuffed dogs and memory and bowel resections.
It made me love him more than I already did, replacing my worship with genuine respect and a little touch of awe for his ability to really submerse himself in the best of life.
Mr. Alda is another father who raised me despite my Dad's influence. I want to tell him how much he's meant to me...but I can tell y'all instead. ...more
I have seen it twelve times in the theatre. It was the first VHS tape I ownI have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark over 1,000 thousand times.
Seriously.
I have seen it twelve times in the theatre. It was the first VHS tape I owned, and I wore that tape out in my big clunky old VCR within five years. I worked as a night video store clerk for another five years and played it at least once during every shift. When I can't sleep at night, I watch the movie in my head. I know every line. I know every beat of music. When I am sad or need a pick up, I throw it in my DVD player and let it soothe me. I've used it in Composition classes to illustrate the potential for analyzing even the most unlikely texts.
Lawrence Kasdan's screenplay is a marvelous piece of screenwriting. Every line, every action, every single element is there to further the story. Kasdan makes potentially clunky exposition soar, implies the flaws of Indiana Jones (making him a truly complex hero, at least in this one installment) without beating us over the head, gives us a snazzy champagne villain in the mould of Claude Rains and seamlessly includes all the set pieces that tickled the fancy of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg without compromising quality.
It is a masterwork of screenwriting. And it is THE masterwork of action screenwriting.
My favourite line:
Belloq: I am a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me, to push you out of the light.
So true, Belloq. So true.
If you are at all interested in giving a screenplay a chance, this is the place to start. ...more
Loading...
