This is one of the coolest shows on TV. I even picked up a legit copy (think its a Japanese import) with subtitles, so I may show it to my classes. They love drama, and it's actiony enough that they won't be missing a lot if they miss some of the dialogue (it goes pretty fast).
This is a good example of how to do TV correctly. Even though I think the series Peters out a bit after the first season (I mean, how long can you maintain 24 hours as a theme? It gets old), and it is a clear propoganda bit for Homeland Security, but even so it is a really fun ride. The action is evenly spaced in the first three episodes, and the plot has lots of twists and turns, but it keeps them simple enough so you don't get too lost. The first time I watched this season, back with Matt in the States, I came in on about episode 5, so I didn't have a clue what was going on. Still, the plot was engaging and the acting good enough it didn't really matter.
Overall summary of the first three episodes: Jack Bauer, head of CTU-LA (Counter-Terrorism Unit) gets a call that an assassination attempt is going to be made the next day on the first potentially successful African-American presidential canidate. Throw in a subplot about his daughter sneaking out for the night and that he and his wife have just recently gotten back together after being seperated, and that Jack had an affair while seperated with his 2nd in command, Nina; and that Nina and Tony (another coworker) are seeing each other, and that there is a conspiracy inside CTU about the assassination, and that there is another corrupt guy in CTU Interal Affairs that dislikes Jack, and that Jack's daughter is kidnapped as part of the conspiracy... you get the idea.
Good, suspenseful spy vs. spy gig. Lots of American bravado (Jack is a bad business man, working for the good guys, and takes no shit from anyone. He also is a Patriot with a serious captial--if the rest of the word was in 12 point font, the "P" is in like 72 point), and a wonderful job of telling a story in a new and interesting way.
The one problem I saw was that in one of the scenes, Jack and Marshall (Jack's soon to be dead boss) are sneaking through a hallway with bad guys gunning for them, and you see a couple of the camera crew for a brief second at the edge of the screen. For shame, 24 production people. For shame.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Thunderball (1965) -- Bond 4
The movie makers of the Bond franchise hit the peak of their profession with Thunderball, and they knew it. Long considered to be the best Bond film, it has all the essential qualities of the franchise and a care for cinematography that the previous Bond films lacked. The quality of the film color is high, and the camera shots actually seem to be looking for something interesting to do, rather than the typical lack of concern that you see with filming in most early action movies. The underwater scenes in particular are one of the most beautifully filmed, and the final climatic fight scene between the US Coast Guard and the minions of Largo underwater near Miami is a very long, pretty scene with good choreography, no dialogue, with light, mood-appropriate music in the background accompanied by water noises and a few sound effects. It is brilliant. The opening scene is great too--we leap right into action as Bond slays a man with his own initials, a SPECTRE agent named Jaques Bouver. Bouver fakes his own death and then dresses as his widow, leading to Bond fighting a man in drag and killing him with a fire poker (and not by stabbing, but by using it to break Bouver's neck). The Bond escapes on a jetpack.
Bond is witty but not silly, the gadgets still don't get too carried away (although the jetpack is a little borderline), and the plot is pretty solid (with one glaring exception). Best of all, the villain, Emilio Largo, SPECTRE's number 2 man (later parodied in Austin Powers) is a cool enemy and a good foil for Bond. I thought it was particularly cool that the theme song of the movie could refer to either Bond or Largo, and Bond makes several comparisons to between the two men during the movie. Unlike the normal, "We are alike," speech that the villain gives in these sorts of movies, the hero gives it--or at least implies it--Bond knows he is sort of a bad man, even though he works for the good guys.
The basic plot (copied in the knock-off Never Say Never Again) is that SPECTRE steals two nuclear bombs from NATO and then blackmails the alliance for 100 million pounds or they'll nuke a British or American city. Ouch. Pretty solid scheme, except that there is one problem: no matter what you think of the warmongers in the US or among the other NATO old guard, they are paranoid and uptight about the security of atomic weapons. No one takes them on training flights, least of two of them. This was actually something that the remake addressed (although they went too far the other way; no matter how paranoid, the President of the USA does not directly command NATO, so his retina scan would not be required... I mean come on, that would be really clumsy, even for the military).
As I mentioned, the gadgets aren't too crazy. We see a jetpack, the car with bullet shield and rear-mounted pressurized water spray (although we see that Bond's car has a ton of switches, most of them are not used in this movie). SPECTRE has a "gamma gas" they use a couple of times and a motorcycle with super speed and a grenade launcher. There is a breathing appartus that strains water to make air for a few minutes, a mini flare gun, a radioactive pill that acts as a homing device, a wristwatch geiger counter, a camera geiger counter, an underwater camera with infrared film (heh--it holds only 8 shots), and a super scuba kit that has jet propulsion and harpoon guns attached. Largo's crew also have a bunch of underwater equipment, minisubs, and the like.
There are a lot of things to like about this movie. I like that SPECTRE's HQ is in Paris, hidden behind a philanthropic organization that helps refugees find citizenship in other countries. I also like the fact that SPECTRE plays all sides: they scheme against NATO, the Soviety Block, the Chinese, everyone. It is all about money and power, and they aim to control as much of both as possible. A lot of the spoofs from Austin Powers come from Thunderball, from #2 to the execution meeting table in SPECTRE HQ. I also like that SPECTRE may be evil and ruthless, but they value integrity and honor as much or more than "the good guys" do. The ransom they want is also cool: 100 million (at least) in small carat diamonds of the most common variety, to be air dropped in a sealed container into the South Asian seas. And Largo as the granddaddy of all evil things: sharks in a swimming pool. Sharks!
We also see NATO not fuck around either. When threatened with two nuclear bombs, MI6 gathers all the "00 numbers in Europe" together. I kind of wish they left out the "in Europe" part, because there are exactly 9 of them, which is a cool number (can you imagine: "I'm Smith, Roger Smith, 00230"?). Also, when the Coast Guard is chasing Largo's transforming yacht-hydrofoil at the end of the movie, they don't fritz around with talking to the bastard. He just tried to nuke Miami. They are out to blow his ass out of the water, and damn fucking right for doing so.
So far in this series of movies, Bond has been learning from movie to movie. In this one, he has a tape recorder hidden in a dictionary in his hotel room, so that he can check for people who have entered while he was away. He also has a lot of help: several people from the Bahamas office of MI6 help him out with logisitics, and Q makes a field trip to outfit 007. One of these grunt agents, a pretty woman named Paula, makes the ultimate sacrifice when she is captured by Largo, and commits suicide with a cyanide pill to avoid being tortured and questioned. CIA agent Felix Lieter is back again too, and appears particularly sloppy in this episode, although he does provide a lot of help too. M shows absolute trust in Bond as well, even when he is questioned by the Foreign Secretary and the British Air Force over Bond's opinions and hunches.
I'd have to say this is my 2nd favorite Bond film (with Casino Royale being my favorite). This was the moment of the Golden Age of James Bond in film. One interesting thing though; unlike the previous movies, Thunderball does not have a "James Bond will return in..." line at the end of the movie. They took a break from the yearly release schedule and didn't release You Only Live Twice until 1967.
Bond is witty but not silly, the gadgets still don't get too carried away (although the jetpack is a little borderline), and the plot is pretty solid (with one glaring exception). Best of all, the villain, Emilio Largo, SPECTRE's number 2 man (later parodied in Austin Powers) is a cool enemy and a good foil for Bond. I thought it was particularly cool that the theme song of the movie could refer to either Bond or Largo, and Bond makes several comparisons to between the two men during the movie. Unlike the normal, "We are alike," speech that the villain gives in these sorts of movies, the hero gives it--or at least implies it--Bond knows he is sort of a bad man, even though he works for the good guys.
The basic plot (copied in the knock-off Never Say Never Again) is that SPECTRE steals two nuclear bombs from NATO and then blackmails the alliance for 100 million pounds or they'll nuke a British or American city. Ouch. Pretty solid scheme, except that there is one problem: no matter what you think of the warmongers in the US or among the other NATO old guard, they are paranoid and uptight about the security of atomic weapons. No one takes them on training flights, least of two of them. This was actually something that the remake addressed (although they went too far the other way; no matter how paranoid, the President of the USA does not directly command NATO, so his retina scan would not be required... I mean come on, that would be really clumsy, even for the military).
As I mentioned, the gadgets aren't too crazy. We see a jetpack, the car with bullet shield and rear-mounted pressurized water spray (although we see that Bond's car has a ton of switches, most of them are not used in this movie). SPECTRE has a "gamma gas" they use a couple of times and a motorcycle with super speed and a grenade launcher. There is a breathing appartus that strains water to make air for a few minutes, a mini flare gun, a radioactive pill that acts as a homing device, a wristwatch geiger counter, a camera geiger counter, an underwater camera with infrared film (heh--it holds only 8 shots), and a super scuba kit that has jet propulsion and harpoon guns attached. Largo's crew also have a bunch of underwater equipment, minisubs, and the like.
There are a lot of things to like about this movie. I like that SPECTRE's HQ is in Paris, hidden behind a philanthropic organization that helps refugees find citizenship in other countries. I also like the fact that SPECTRE plays all sides: they scheme against NATO, the Soviety Block, the Chinese, everyone. It is all about money and power, and they aim to control as much of both as possible. A lot of the spoofs from Austin Powers come from Thunderball, from #2 to the execution meeting table in SPECTRE HQ. I also like that SPECTRE may be evil and ruthless, but they value integrity and honor as much or more than "the good guys" do. The ransom they want is also cool: 100 million (at least) in small carat diamonds of the most common variety, to be air dropped in a sealed container into the South Asian seas. And Largo as the granddaddy of all evil things: sharks in a swimming pool. Sharks!
We also see NATO not fuck around either. When threatened with two nuclear bombs, MI6 gathers all the "00 numbers in Europe" together. I kind of wish they left out the "in Europe" part, because there are exactly 9 of them, which is a cool number (can you imagine: "I'm Smith, Roger Smith, 00230"?). Also, when the Coast Guard is chasing Largo's transforming yacht-hydrofoil at the end of the movie, they don't fritz around with talking to the bastard. He just tried to nuke Miami. They are out to blow his ass out of the water, and damn fucking right for doing so.
So far in this series of movies, Bond has been learning from movie to movie. In this one, he has a tape recorder hidden in a dictionary in his hotel room, so that he can check for people who have entered while he was away. He also has a lot of help: several people from the Bahamas office of MI6 help him out with logisitics, and Q makes a field trip to outfit 007. One of these grunt agents, a pretty woman named Paula, makes the ultimate sacrifice when she is captured by Largo, and commits suicide with a cyanide pill to avoid being tortured and questioned. CIA agent Felix Lieter is back again too, and appears particularly sloppy in this episode, although he does provide a lot of help too. M shows absolute trust in Bond as well, even when he is questioned by the Foreign Secretary and the British Air Force over Bond's opinions and hunches.
I'd have to say this is my 2nd favorite Bond film (with Casino Royale being my favorite). This was the moment of the Golden Age of James Bond in film. One interesting thing though; unlike the previous movies, Thunderball does not have a "James Bond will return in..." line at the end of the movie. They took a break from the yearly release schedule and didn't release You Only Live Twice until 1967.
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