One blog. Two opinions. One zillion films.

Why regret your widely-held sentiment that Quiverer of Souls was a botched opportunity? Wrong director, period.

Marc Forster is a pretty good director when it comes to tender, delicate feelings, especially Finding Neverland. (The Kite Runner was more sincere than engrossing, and suffered from a real embarrassment of amateurism. A suspenseful moment balanced on Taliban members not noticing the disguise of an obviously fake beard. Yet the “real Taliban” actors were wearing obviously fake beards. One should not giggle uncontrollably in such a movie.)

Forster is a TV caliber director who compensated for his lack of action skills by overdoing it.

I’m regretting, just a tad, my blow-down of this tortured, robotic Bond.  I like that there’s a new bit of Bond’s psychology being explored and brought to the surface.  He’s a Bond for our time, and he’s futuristic; this angle could end up engaging us.   I hope, though, that this side of his soul does not darken future Bond-ventures as “Q. of S.” is darkened.  Let there be light.  Perhaps he should take a Malibu mini-break at Iron Man’s pad.

Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist has arrived at the Teton Theater, but in the meantime…

Let there be wonderful Thanksgivings for all, filled with Love, Appreciation, Hope, Family and Pie(s)!

Tammy

The ending speaketh loud and clear: Loved her madly but ya gotta move on.

I recommend reading the denouement thusly: Daniel Craig’s innermost self, in the voice of the old man in the “bring out your dead” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, quacks, “I’m feeling better.”

David-

I agree with you on all points. Yep, I do. “Quantum of Solace” is an Odd Bond. And while I didn’t dislike the film as much as anticipated, I never warmed to it. I was in full attention mode, (did check my watch after about 45 minutes) but I just sort of rolled along. I didn’t actively engage.

I do feel sorry for you guys. ‘Tis true. You were ripped off, Bond chick-wise. And though we gals get to ogle Daniel Craig in every scene, even WE are short-changed. His shirt was on far too much; off only a few secs. No nookie to speak of, no hot romancing scenes to take home and play over and over again in our minds while slipping off to dreamland.

Men want to leave Bond films feeling a bit jealous—were you jealous? Women want to leave wishing they were a bit like the Bond girl—I didn’t leave feeling that way, though I did dig her wardrobe. She was boring; she had two looks–blank and less blank.

Bond’s revengeful psyche is echoed in this Bond Girl’s own story. Her family was decimated in front of her eyes by a brutal dictator; Bond’s love perished violently. So you’d think the energy between them would be high-voltage. It’s not. Both actors seem to have given up any efforts to connect on screen and simply go through the motions.

What was her name again?

Chase scenes, explosions…all felt sanitized, overly polished. I did bite my nails a little, but never got super caught up in the story’s arc; I am a bit vexed that I cannot remember “M’s” opinion on whether Vespa betrayed or sacrificed for James. Does Bond’s dropping the necklace in the snow meant to symbolize he’s given up her memory? Or given up romanticizing her? Or is he simply letting go?

Perhaps when Bond says to M. that she was right, he means only that he has indeed been motivated by revenge, but now that quest is a wrap.  Hope so.

Sad James Bond. More gadgets would cheer him up, return a glint to those heavy, burdened eyes. Was there even one gadget besides the Aston Martin? Bring back the gadgets, bring back that side of Bond that enjoys a good romp. He’s always in control, of course–never lets himself be vulnerable–but a ripping yarn with more gadgets and sexy, cartwheeling Bond girls are sorely missed.

Girl, here: I love watching Daniel Craig. He’s an awesome Bond. But I want more. All us girls want more. We’ll definitely be back; neither man nor woman can resist a new Bond film; it’s one of our favorite film traditions.

I accept “Quantum of Solace” as something someone needed to produce, an experiment. But now that Bond’s revenge is complete, let’s get back to the casino and blow on some new dice.

T.

OK, Tam, you’ve had a week to get the Londyplex. Here comes my Bond pronouncement, whether you’ve seen Quango of Solfège or not.

Withheld out of courtesy, mind you, because the picture is pretty painful in spots. Its high ratio of junk Hollywood action bummed me out. Tired of that, for I am old.

Daniel Craig is fine, an old-school Hollywood screen presence, big & ballsy just the way we like those movie heroes, cool and photogenic and able to move entire clothing lines off the rack. The ladies get their money’s worth to be sure. I don’t know if we guys get the same caliber fantasy object, babe variety. You see, I am old.

A week after watching it,  Quart of Salsa did not leave lasting impressions. A lot of jagged, hard-to-follow stylish sadism, meaningful exchanges of exposition and sass, and few details remain. The makers do go for broke in a new direction, launching Craig’s Bond deep into chick-flick space, aimed at those who would heal his deep emotional scars . . . if only . . . .

Quantum of Solace — whose name by the way may turn out to be the best thing about it — is ultimately product. Its various parts are market-focused. Action sequences for 13-year-old boys, character development by people who write these commercials.

Not a lot of laughs, an overall grim mood. Don’t all Bond flicks traditionally have top notch gags and one-liners sprinkled throughout? Casino Royale also had Craig trading nifty mots with Eva Green, a Bond girl unlike no other.

About the title. I suggest embarking on a new Bond tradition, the hitherto naming of infinite 007 sequels the same way rock climbers name routes: arbitrary, surreal, and perhaps an in-joke. Quantum of Solace (which if it means anything means “a good night’s sleep”) is a title of nerve and humor. Humour! I hope they even stick with the Q of S construct: Qualia of Solanine.

Or, I swear, Latin is coming back: Illegitimus Non Tatum Carborundum. That oughta enter the lexicon.

Ooooooooooh.  Struck a chord there!

A-minor, sustained with a lot of bass. 

Denby means “care” as in “empathy.”  Not “care” as in “outraged.” 

Doh! All that typing up the wrong alley.

Do I look outraged to you? I may sound outraged but judging from the inattention I earn everywhere I go, I must be the very picture of bland calm. Describing accurately what has happened to our country, and how we let it happen, might sound outrageous. But I’m .  .  . ommmmm-mm-m-m-m. For sheer rage-gasms, go take another look at all those videos from Sarah Palin rallies. I’m momentarily lulled into thinking it’s all behind us. I feel pretty good.

But I believe Denby was coming at the film for the way it stands up to film critique scrutiny, and that’s what I’m doing.

As a document for Martians, I think it’s fine. For teenage Martians especially. Oliver Stone throws a real arty obviousness into those dream sequences of his. By the way, Stone’s exemplary one-on-one with Stephen Colbert is one of the show’s great moments. 

My mother briefly dated George Sr.  . . . 

Wha’? Now, that’s dish.

W. is somewhat humanized in this film.   But not enough to make us CARE.

I don’t care that I don’t care about W. The historic arc that he might of started, a reborn Confederacy (all that’s left of the GOP) and a few million angry brooding gun polishers — that I care about.

D.–

Ooooooooooh.  Struck a chord there!

Denby means “care” as in “empathy.”  Not “care” as in “outraged.”  He’d no doubt agree, as do I, that the “outraged,” “violated,” “robbed by the devil” kind of “care” you express is justified.

No quarrel there.  Bush means a lot to history.   He’s systematically dismantled everything.  Now we have to put it all back together.  Now we’re ashes; how to become flesh and blood once again?

But I believe Denby was coming at the film for the way it stands up to film critique scrutiny, and that’s what I’m doing.

I know they drink in Texas.  They drink in Wyoming and Connecticut and Maine, too.   Duh!   Stone’s rendering was excessive, to make a point.

Wow, the characterizations, Swiftio!

“Batting my eyes innocently…”

My mother briefly dated George Sr.   George Sr.’s brother stalked me, because he wanted to hook me up with a nice conservative friend of his.   I literally jumped in the hedge when I saw the big blue van with the blacked out windows coming down the street.   I held my breath under water when “bro” came near the pool.

Would you like to meet them?  Come on down to our Florida place this spring.

I know the score.

W. is somewhat humanized in this film.   But not enough to make us CARE.

T.

Denby is wrong. There are reasons to care for Bush.

1. He was* President of the United States.

2. Everything turned to crapola on his watch. Government agencies crumbled or became gears in the GOP’s perpetual re-election machine. Millions of lives were shattered.

3. Bush became Messiah to these angry, differently-Earthed people, and now they are here to stay as a political force because there’s so much money in it. (It’s blockbuster TV for the low-information crowd, “politics” as Ultimate Fighting.) 

4. These poor sad people would take America to some po-mo variant of the fascist strain of government. They totally dig violence. Sarah Palin’s latter rallies, when their desperation became apparent, revealed a classic up-whipping of a mob frenzy. They won’t be happy until there’s an assassination. 

So Bush may mean more to history than we think.

The Bush style is, weirdly, based on countless Hollywood screenplays. He assumed that so long as you entered every foray and dustup with a swagger, you’d win the day, just like in movies. Alas, that happens only in movies. 

Bush was out of his league. The establishment (now there’s a hippie word!) pretended that surely he must know what he’s doing. They pretended too long. (I’m sure the parties in DC were awesome, however,  so not every moment went to waste for Beltway journalists.) Now we have a huge pile of what Hannah Arendt meant when she observed “the banality of evil.”

That’s why I care about Bush, anyhoo.

Some of your points addressed randomly:

– In Texas, they do drink.

– How did all of this happen, you ask, batting your eyes innocently? Stone asks the same thing via the signature tune, David Byrne’s “Once in a Lifetime”: “How did I get here?”  Short answer: Money and a politics of world-class ruthlessness — and a mutually convenient early partnership. Never underestimate the power of an amoral political warrior who will settle for nothing less than total domination. Synergy!

–Yes, Stone sometimes weirdly recast the personas of people whom we’ve seen plenty of on the TV. He made Rove wormier and creepier than he probably is in real life. (No doubt Rove is charming. They’re all charming. There’s part of your problem right there.)

Richard Dreyfuss pulled his punches re: Cheney — I wonder if there are any takes where he quacks a la Jon Stewart for that would be gold — and found the man’s quiet, high-speed calculator.   

I do hope Condi Rice et al will someday answer before a war crime tribunal — but I still don’t think she deserves Thandie Newton’s cartoon-mouse voice.

Oliver actually did Bush a big favor — if drawing any attention to Bush any way whatsoever is doing him a favor — by humanizing him. Errol Morris performed the same favor for Robert McNamara in The Fog of War. 

_____________

* “Is” but happily feels like “was.” Might be a sucker hole.

I begin my comments about “W.” with a quote from the New Yorker’s David Denby: …”Stone brings us in close to the President without giving us any reason to care about him.”

This movie is fascinating because it is so disquieting. Josh Brolin’s performance is at once brilliant and “surface only.” Brolin–as Oliver Stone directed? –gives us a bronco busting portrayal. “Junior” is at once an east-coast silver spooner and a white trash hard-drinking cowboy. This George W. is a train wreck of influences, caught up in the confusion of thinking he can do whatever he wants, and screwing up endlessly because he does whatever he wants. This is a guy raised to believe his heritage affords him endless entitlement, but he publicly rejects that entitlement as he rises to the top. Such a person is impossible to be around for long; he sucks all the air out of the room. So why is everyone clinging? Because he’s WASP royalty, Poppy is all-powerful, the Bush family is at the top of the oil heap. Brolin’s “W” is wound tight as a top and insatiable. He guzzles Jack Daniels, sandwiches, and Pepsi like there’s no tomorrow.

No tomorrow.

Many of W’s life transitions are touched upon, and there’s the rub: transitions are in-depth happenings, and the big moments in W.’s life are treated with a flutter. In reality, George W.’s decision to stop drinking was a result of Laura’s growing impatience; their marriage was on the line. None of that here. In this telling, W. has an epiphany while writhing in pain beside a country road, Texas cottonwoods blowing in the breeze, a holy light shining down. Quite the mighty wind!

I doubt this occurred.

Miraculously, he’s stopped drinking and is born again. Huh? What? How did he get there?

He owns a baseball team? How did he get there? Last we saw, he’d screwed up again.

He’s running for Governor and beats an incredibly popular incumbent. Huh? How did that happen?

How the “H-E-double-hockey-sticks” did any of this happen?

Poppy Bush is behind it all, but assuming we’ll assume such does not fill the story’s big holes.

Stone wants to show how all this happened, but I’m left with more questions than answers. The H-E-double-hockey-sticks effect continues into office, continues up to the “Who the H-E-double-hockey-sticks is responsible for not taking responsibility for the non-existent WMDs?” moment.

Throughout the film, everyone–including the virtuous Laura Bush–guzzles, swills, floods themselves in booze. The amount of booze consumed is biblical, a Texas-Red Sea of liquor.

Portrayals of the Bush cabinet are stupendous. Worms, all of them. Colin Powell is barely spared; Richard Dreyfuss’ Cheney is hunch-backed and snarly, and Thandie Newton’s evil puppet portrayal of Condoleezza Rice, coldly creepy, rings true.

In “W.”, the Addams Family’s mean cousins move to the White House. I expected Thing to flip open a box and light somebody’s cigar.

T.

There’s aren’t many grandstanders as obnoxious as George W. Bush but Oliver Stone is one of them. When Oliver Stone announced a biopic re: The Current Occupant I assumed that poor Josh Brolin had taken on a hopeless-sounding role in a hopeless-sounding movie.

Boy did I guess wrong. Brolin is extraordinary. Stone’s effort to put a sock in it is downright Herculean. W strikes me as an accurate portrayal of W’s energy and drive, of his sincere desire to do well. You know how some people are “slightly gifted”? George W. Bush, history will prove, is slightly ungifted.

Brolin seems to find the source of Bush’s hard little frown: supreme confidence, utter incuriosity, and — sad to say but we all knew this a long time ago — Freudian 101 daddy issues. Twenty-four hours after watching W I’m still taken by how effortlessly Brolin settles into any moment during the nearly 40 years spanned here. It’s a great performance.

W also quite entertaining. Didn’t see that coming either. (If you saw Stone’s Alexander, Tam, you’d know what I mean. Not just bad. Phantom Menace bad.)