Having now finished with the first Bond era (Sean + George), it’s time to recap the “Best Of.”  The only problem is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to rank the Bond films in the aggregate.  They are all so disparate that it’s like trying to compare seven different types of fruit.  Perhaps, by the time I finish the series, it will be easier.  However, through the first seven flicks, there is just no clear ranking to me.

So instead, I’ve created The Bond Oscars, in which I acknowledge the standouts in various categories.  I’m eager to hear your thoughts as well, so please comment early and often, and offer up some categories of your own.

Best Bond Girl: Of course I start with the most subjective category.  It’s not an easy pick.   For me, Honor Blackman is all woman.  Voluptuous, fiery, delicious.  However, I’m going to go with Diana Rigg.  Although not your classic sexpot, she does it all.  A totally capable, untamed, attractive, sexy woman who gives Bond a run for his money.

Best Villain: No question here.  Although Dr. No is a very intriguing character, I feel Auric Goldfinger had more depth of character, and remains the most complete of the Bond villains, possibly of all time.

Best Nemesis: I identify a nemesis as the secondary villain – Rosa Klebb, Oddjob, et al.  There is such a rich array to choose from here that it’s again a difficult choice.  I am very fond of Robert Shaw’s Red Grant in From Russia With Love.  Oddjob is certainly an iconic character.  But I’m going with Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd from Diamonds Are Forever. These guys are just so bizarre, their performances so odd, and the gay psychopathic angle is too great not to love. (more…)

Diamonds Are Forever is a strange, quirky film in the Bond series.  I found it satisfying in some ways, and annoyed by it in others.  It’s frustrating because, as my old high school math teacher used to say, “If you’re going to do something, Mr. Meyers, do it first-class”.  Nevertheless, there are enough good elements to have provided an enjoyable but not compelling viewing — some twenty or more years since I last saw it in its entirety.

Connery.  Sean Connery.  Again

We begin as we always do, with 007 himself. After George Lazenby allegedly took the bad advice of his agent following a totally satisfying outing as 007, Mr. Connery was persuaded to return. The script was a significant improvement over You Only Live Twice, and perhaps that (and the equivalent of $16 million in today’s dollars) is why Mr. Connery jumped back in.

Mr. Connery’s re-emergence is, not surprisingly, engaging.  He appears to have filled out a bit, and feels to be just the right age (40 at the time) for the role. Of course, we associate Mr. Connery with James Bond’s most masculine features — a brawler, womanizer, a powerful man with tremendous physical presence and confidence.  None of that has changed at this point, and in many ways, Mr. Connery feels like he’s reached a peak as Bond in this film in those aspects.  We are treated, for example, to some terrific fisticuffs in the combined space of an elevator in Tiffany Case’s building.  This is a great fight scene that is wonderfully inventive, well-choreographed, and Bond really has his hands full with his opponent.

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Nothing like a Hollywood film to brush up my days as a Jesuit schoolboy. 

Clash of The Titans is a film that has been made twice. Once with Laurence Olivier as Zeus (1981) and the second (2010) with Liam Neeson as the God of Gods.

In all deference to Liam Neeson and his brilliant performance in Schindler’s List,  I have seen the Great Olivier on stage and … well … no single actor in the world has so terrified me in a live theater performance.

Zeus’ trump card was terror.

Olivier’s vocal lightening?!

You “had to be there,” of course, but trust me. On stage, in 1963? At the Old Vic Theater? The mere human beings standing next to Olivier as Othello?

The entire acting roster of England’s National Theater were Piper Cubs when seen beside this mighty F117 Stealth Fighter Jet of demonic size, Sir Laurence Olivier.

Olivier as Othello was a lethal weapon on stage, always ahead of his time and his fellow actors when it came to erupting in unpredictably atomic vocal power!

With sound men and editors of film as The Great Leveler, however?

Olivier’s loss, Hollywood’s gain.

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My memory of Thunderball, which I hadn’t seen in over fifteen years, was hazy.  I remember it being confusing, boring in places, with lots of people underwater cutting each other’s air hoses.  It wasn’t a great film, and it wasn’t terrible, but somewhere in the middle.  Regrettably, that’s how I experienced it in my recent DVD viewing.  While the film is entertaining, it suffers from all of the above, not to mention the waste of a great potential villain in Emilio Largo.

Mister Bond

We begin as we always do, with Mr. Connery’s portrayal of the iconic MI6 agent.  In this case, however, it’s difficult to separate Mr. Connery from the rest of the movie because I believe the script’s inherent flaws affect Mr. Connery’s performance.  There’s nothing wrong with his work this time around, but I couldn’t help but feel that he’d almost become too comfortable in the role.  The first three films were so well-scripted that any actor would still find discoveries to be made in Bond’s character.   Both Mr. Connery, and the audience, are still becoming accustomed to who this man is in the earlier films.  With Goldfinger, the series pushed the boundaries of reality that it took Mr. Connery to keep the whole thing grounded. (more…)

The politically correct chickens are coming home to roost in the Orwellian world of the organized left’s free-expression-stifling speech codes.

To paraphrase Martin Niemöller’s famous admonition about complacency with totalitarian fascists:  “First they came for Rush Limbaugh and called his satire racist, and I didn’t speak out because Rush Limbaugh is a conservative.  Then they came for Dr. Laura and called her commentary racist, and I didn’t speak out because Dr. Laura is a conservative…”

Well, this time they came after a high school drama program in far-from conservative Westbury, CT.  The Arts Magnet School in that city planned a production of August Wilson’s 20th century classic “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” until the district’s Superintendent, David Snead, tried to pull the plug because the play’s characters use the word “nigger”. (more…)

Recap: Radical funder George Soros’s $1 million gift to Media Matters, a left-wing character assassination machine, underwrites its campaign to stigmatize conservative ideas. For weeks Eric Boehlert of Media Matters attacked Glenn Beck because a disturbed viewer plotted to shoot up the offices of the left-wing Tides Foundation. The shooter, Byron Williams, failed, but in December when a fan of Media Matters, the late Florida school board shooter Clay Duke, wreaked havoc, Boehlert and Media Matters remained silent.

Soros is also bankrolling a documentary that celebrates left-wing terrorists who plotted to napalm Republicans at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota. Even worse, you too are bankrolling the film through your taxes.

A trailer for the left-wing film Better This World suggests that it depicts David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder as idealistic activists who, according to the official blurb, “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.” In fact McKay and Crowder are convicted domestic terrorists who manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with.

You can be sure that if it was right-wing terrorists who were plotting to attack the Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled the conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” said Brandon Darby, who helped the FBI thwart the planned attack. (Darby’s essay on political violence appeared on Big Government over the past weekend. Read it here.) (more…)

Radical philanthropist George Soros is bankrolling a documentary that celebrates left-wing terrorists who plotted to napalm Republicans at the 2008 GOP convention in Minnesota. Even worse, you too are bankrolling the film through your taxes.

You can be sure that if right-wing terrorists were plotting to attack the Democratic National Convention, whoever foiled that conspiracy would be immortalized in film, literature and song as a savior of democracy.

“If you flip the equation around and it had been a group of conservatives threatening to use force to prevent those on the Left from meeting, everyone would expect the government to infiltrate them and they would also expect the FBI to stop them and charge them with crimes,” said Brandon Darby, who helped the FBI thwart the planned attack.

A trailer for the left-wing film Better This World suggests that it depicts David Guy McKay and Bradley Neil Crowder as idealistic activists who, according to the official blurb, “set out to prove the strength of their political convictions to themselves and their mentor.” (Note: There was a functioning trailer when I wrote this post a few days ago, but it no longer appears to be working. -MV) In fact McKay and Crowder are convicted domestic terrorists who manufactured instruments of death calculated to inflict maximum pain and bodily harm on people whose political views they disagreed with. (more…)

Perhaps one of the most established venues for the medium of documentary filmmaking is the renowned Sundance Film Festival.  For decades, Robert Redford had already been calling Americans apathetic to political propaganda and to issues such as global warming.  Once George W. Bush got into office, Redford ratcheted up his rhetoric, and, like Soros, he even starting taking foreign relations into his own hands in some cases.

And so it was no surprise when in 2002, Soros turned over stewardship of his documentary fund to Robert Redford and the Sundance Institute.

As Dr. David Yeagley, an American Indian author and political commentator wrote,

“On September 16, 2002, Robert Redford proudly announced at a press conference that he was launching a Sundance International Documentary Fund with $4.6 million in seed money from George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI). The new fund would underwrite films aimed at “promoting social justice and social change.” (more…)

George Soros, celebrity hedge fund billionaire and darling of the left, has been a busy man the last fifteen years.  While his capitalistic business ventures that began in the 1970s may have brought him his fortune and international financial fame, it’s his activities in the 1990’s that are having the most impact here in America today, on our television and Hollywood movie screens.

We’re especially reminded of this in recent times, as we see the overabundance of falsely portrayed stories on film and video, and at the same time the complete absence of other stories from the mainstream view. 

That’s no accident.

Soros gained his political reputation this last decade largely by staunchly opposing the Iraq war and publicly comparing former President George W. Bush to the Nazi Regime.  Drawing on his proclaimed expertise on Orwellian propaganda techniques and modern day mind-control marketing, George Soros once vowed to dismantle the conservative infrastructure, a pledge that hoisted him to the mantel of hero to the far-left wing of the Democratic Party.  By 2004,dozens and dozens of Soros’ political advocacy organizations had been erected and pumped full of millions of dollars aimed at evicting George W. Bush from the White House.  (more…)

Seeing that George Soros and Sting are working together to “end the drug war” puts me in mind of a story an Army buddy who works in the DEA told me about busting in the door of a drug house only to find three occupants – the oldest four years old, having been left in charge while his “parents” went out to score meth.  Yeah, drug use is a victimless crime – if you ignore the victims.

Apparently not content to subsidize the whining of the nonentities at Media Matters, Soros is taking a break from his adventures in currency manipulation and general scuzziness to enlist entertainment celebrities like Sting in his newest quest.  The Drug Policy Alliance is the result, a group whose members, as its founder puts it, “come from across the drug use spectrum.”  Yes, the junkies, stoners, hopheads, dope fiends, pill-poppers, and Lindsay Lohan are unanimous:  Drug laws are bad, and it’s probably BusHitler’s fault.

The threshold problem with comments by Sting such as, “The war on drugs represents an extraordinary violation of human rights,” is that Sting presumably not only believes this piffle, but further believes that he can put down his bass and offer meaningful input into the discussion.  This assumption of competence is a common delusion among celebrities, and here it has more potential for damage than most mindless celebribabble.

Now, Sting is not alone – no one in that clip says anything worthwhile.  One woman, who is bald for no apparent reason, states that “The War on Drugs is a war on people of color,” as if Americans decided they would outlaw crack because they fear that black people might enjoy themselves.  Montel Williams shows up to explain that drug laws prevent him from making choices about his own body, but the awful tie and ridiculous earring he chose to wear make a powerful argument against allowing him to make any kind of choices at all. (more…)

Despite the darkening clouds of increasingly Marxist/Islamic sympathies in the White House (“This is no longer just a Christian nation …”, said the President) and regardless of the Obama Nation’s success at “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” into the Obama Nation … Americans are still celebrating both Christmas and Hanukkah.

Such a time of profoundly important Judeo-Christian sacredness, with our pride in its significance increasingly muzzled by “Progressively political correctness”, should and, I believe, will be honored more deeply because of the inferential shame our New World Order leadership would like to immerse it in.

Apparently, and for the entire history of America, its Judeo-Christian roots have been, in the eyes of Progressives, one of our nation’s incessant problems, and the main reason the United States has found it impossible to join the … uh … “community of nations”.

“Is this another diatribe, another imbecilic slap at the United Nations, Mr. Moriarty?!”

Yes … among other shots at the Progressive certainty over the apparently incontestable New World Order. (more…)

So Valerie Jarrett was interviewed by CNN’s delightful Campbell Brown at something called “the Women’s Conference.” There Jarrett rags on Fox News for distortions, which is her word for “bringing up stuff that we wish you wouldn’t bring up.”

Now VJ could have listed some of these false statements, but instead she barked a lazy “of course they’re biased”– a statement you’d expect from a pierced Greenpeace volunteer, not a White House adviser.

But let’s focus on what she really said:

She claims America doesn’t have time for such “distortions.” Replace “distortions” with “debate,” and you’ve got the real truth. The administration wanted to push health care reform like a hot knife through butter, but the public wised up and said, “hold on there, pal.” Jarrett also said Americans should be allowed to reach their own judgment – which is odd since it was the Dems, not Fox News, who were trying to preempt the conversation. I mean, let’s not also forget their take on the global warming debate: the debate is over! But you can bet when the debate does start over the climate change bill –VJ will blame Fox News for preventing the debate!

By starting it!

You follow?

Cuz I sure don’t! (more…)

Heather Graham’s latest starring role is playing “Public Option” in Obama’s health care epic (uh-oh, time to reconsider your agent).  You may remember Graham as Felicity Shagwell from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me… or perhaps Roller Girl in Boogie Nights.  Here, she gets physical in “Track Meet,” a new ad produced by leftist group MoveOn.org.  The philosophy: if you can’t pass the public option on its’ merits in policy and debate, why not try selling it through sex and cheap laughs?

–

So, what’s a nice Catholic girl from Milwaukee doing in an ad like this? Graham admits, “My friends really wanted Obama to be elected so we all did a spell and then he got elected.”  Thanks for sharing.  Graham is a long way from that seemingly squeaky upbringing, having joined a coven of witches. But she becomes just the latest conjurer in a string of celebrity activists pushing ObamaCare. (more…)

Polish American Walt Kowalski, played to anti-hero perfection by Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, stands against corruption and lawlessness and wins. But not before sacrificing his life. Kowalski is a Korean War veteran and retired auto worker living outside of Detroit. He is old and tired, and just wants to be left alone after the death of his wife. But fate and duty had other ideas. He carries a long held guilt over killing a surrendering soldier in the Korean War. His death redeems, not just his soul, but the soul of his town.

Events lead Kowalski to resist a local takeover by a Hmong youth gang. The Hmong are an ethnic Southeast Asian people, primarily from Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. In real life Michigan, they are among the fastest growing immigrants. Many Hmong people emigrated from South Vietnam after Democrats shamelessly withdrew monetary support from South Vietnam in 1974. The Paris Peace Agreements thus became toothless and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam. “Boat people” fled Vietnam and the insane, murderous Pol Pot created the Cambodian Killing Fields. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Democrats invest – with taxpayer money, mind you – in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the “education system” have done the rest, making “D” the default choice on Election Day.

Democrats brazenly take policy positions – think government services and even amnesty for illegal immigrants – not because they are the right thing to do, but because they are time-tested demographic bribes. Forget cigarettes and beer, Democrats would distribute needles, methadone, medical marijuana and biscotti in voter goodie bags if they could get away with it.

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Whenever I have suggested that left-wingers aren’t normal human beings, and have wondered if perhaps they’re some weird interplanetary life form like the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the liberals accuse me of indulging in ad hominem attacks, and I suppose I am.  But I am honestly bewildered.  It just doesn’t seem plausible that Americans could find good things to say about tyrants like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, while at the same time reviling the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and General Petraeus.

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby. (more…)

This week’s Washington Times column:

On Tuesday night I was bestowed the honor of being ridiculed on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. The segment in which I was featured had Mr. Stewart mocking those of us who dare criticize the new president. In the era of Obama, mainstream American political humor is now officially on the defensive.

Stewart lumped me with Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican — a cross section of people you might expect to be critical of an administration implementing very liberal policies in a very short time.

The “joke” was that these right-wing zealots weren’t giving the new president enough time, that the previous president did worse things, and that I, in particular, was ridiculous for blaming the president for “St. Patrick’s Day” becoming “Potato Day” at my kids’ public school. (Yes, the name change took place. No, I did not blame President Obama — specifically.) (more…)

I have always contended that anybody who seeks the presidency is an egomaniac, every bit as certifiably crackers as those poor souls wandering around the grounds of the asylum insisting they’re Napoleon. 

Still, I’m generally willing to cut people a reasonable amount of slack.  But it’s quite another thing to pretend that a community organizer with just four years in the Senate, two of which he spent on the hustings, is qualified to be the leader of the free world.  Even if I approved of his left-wing agenda, I’d find it impossible to make a case for him.  Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d send this Napoleon wannabe to Elba.  (more…)