This week Bobby Politte returns to The White Rocket Podcast to discuss the MOVIES OF 2012 with host, Van Allen Plexico.
Episode 9 of The White Rocket Podcast is now available on Podbean, iTunes, via the Podcast app on iPhone/iPad, or you can use the mini-player at the White Rocket site.
The White Rocket Podcast is part of the Earth Station One Network.
So today we finish up my rankings of all 23 of the Eon Productions JAMES BOND films, with the TOP THREE overall.
We looked at numbers 23-14 here and at numbers 13-4 here.
Remember, folks–stuff like this is entirely subjective. We’re (mostly) talking my favorites, not the “greatest” or “highest grossing” or whatever. This represents my views.
Without further ado, then, here are my three favorite Bond films, in order:
3. Goldfinger
So there you have my entire list–all 23 Bond films from Eon, in the order I like them (or don’t like them).
Here I present Part 2 of my rankings of all the Eon-produced James Bond films. Last time we ranked and examined 23-14. This time we count down from number 13 to number 4. Next time we’ll do the top 3.
On with the rankings:
Having read through Peter Travers’ travesty of a ranking of all the James Bond films, I decided the only thing to do was to create my own, much more accurate list in response. That’s a little joke, of course, because it’s all subjective–few topics get fans more fired up than ranking any series of anything, and especially Bond movies. But I’ve been watching Bond movies for four-plus decades; I grew up on them, as is my little daughter even now. (Yesterday we finished her first viewing of “Dr. No” and she loudly demanded that we continue on into “Goldfinger!”) So here is how I see them, beginning with what I view as the TEN WORST BOND MOVIES OF ALL:
I wanted to see The Dark Knight Rises as much as I’d wanted to see any movie. When the film opened, I decided not to see it: the mass shooting that occurred during an opening night screening of the movie screwed me up but good.
I was not being noble trying to make a stand for the victims or against the gunman. As much as I’d like to see the gunman gutted like a fish and left to die a painful slow death on national television and my heart did and does go out to the victims and their families, my refusal to see the film was because of personal events in my life which in my head I link to the mass shootings and then link that to The Dark Knight Rises.
Watching that movie after the shooting would have been much too painful it would had been near impossible for me to separate the incident from personal recollections of a tragic event. There is just something about the way my mind works and how I connect incidences to each other that seldom even makes sense to me so I know some people think my thought process is just bizarre.
Those people can kiss my ass, it’s my head, stay the hell out of it.
As the months went by I felt more and more confidant that I was ready to see it. Waiting for it to be available on home video soon became as unbearable as waiting for the movie to open.
The day the Blu-Ray went on sale I was at my neighborhood Target when they opened at 8:00 am just so I could have it in my greedy little hands, even though I was not going to watch the movie that day.
No, I was planning a decadent movie night. Bad food, tequila, 80 inch big screen, Bose sound system cranked up so loud my neighbors call the police and when they show up I wouldn’t hear them.
Friday night December 14th was my big night with the Bat.
Friday morning December 14th a crazed gunman killed 20 kids and six adults at an elementary school in Connecticut.
Once again my heart goes out to the victims and their families. Once again I will have to wait for The Dark Knight to rise.
WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold
Author Mark Finn (“Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E Howard”) joins New Pulp Author Van Allen Plexico to indulge in their passion for Richard Stark’s PARKER, the hard-boiled master thief from the typewriter of Donald E Westlake, star of more than twenty novels, and as seen in “Payback” and other films. And just in time for the new movie starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez.
Episode 8 of The White Rocket Podcast is now available on Podbean, iTunes, via the Podcast app on iPhone/iPad, or you can use the mini-player at the White Rocket site.
The White Rocket Podcast is part of the Earth Station One Network.
I’m sure it will shock no one to learn that I went to see the midnight showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey last Thursday. And despite being a tad bit (okay a lot bit) tired at work the next day, it was great fun. I don’t do that many midnight showings (seeing as how many of them land on weekdays) but when I do, I definitely experience that extra little thrill of being amongst the first to see something new, and of sitting in a movie theater with a bunch of friends in the wee small hours when by all rights, we should all be in bed.
Along with the general excitement of it all, I’ve been looking forward to seeing The Hobbit movie for seemingly forever now, ever since it was first announced (and even after they announced that it would now be three movies (!!)). I first read the novel in fourth grade English, where it was one of our assigned reading books. Looking back, I’m pretty impressed that our teacher managed to inject it into the curriculum. At the time, I vaguely recall having the feeling, in that childhood my-spider-sense-is-tingling way of feeling adult tension in the air, that this was some sort of tiny act of rebellion on her part against the mostly very sensible curriculum of books we were reading (many of which were also great, although whoever decided to include Dear Mr. Henshaw will not be getting my thanks anytime soon. Yawn). But my English teacher, bless her, decided that reading a fantasy adventure story, and a probably challenging one for that age group, was an important part of our childhood development; and so it was.
Many moons later, the story – in which the hobbit Bilbo Baggins joins the wizard Gandalf and thirteen dwarves in a quest to reclaim the dwarves’ homeland – is just as fun and full of adventure as it was then; but how does it translate to the big screen? Lucky for us, Peter Jackson has endeavored to find out. Jackson is, if you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, the mastermind behind The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, one of the most amazing and epic motion picture trilogies of all time (as well as the highest grossing worldwide). That trilogy, especially in the extended edition, is both a spectacular adaptation of Tolkien’s story, and a moving and cohesive collection in its own right. It’s also a serious and dark story, and despite the warmth and occasional humor of the character interactions, pretty intense from start to finish. The Hobbit is a slightly different kettle of fish.
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit first, and as more of a children’s story; whereas by the time he penned The Lord of the Rings, he had developed both his world and his style into something more epic and cohesive than his original idea (and, in fact, as he wrote LoTR he went back and added bits to The Hobbit that tied the two together more closely). The story does get darker as it progresses (about when the dwarves arrive in Laketown), but overall, it is still lighter, and smaller in scope, than the trilogy.
(Warning: Possible Movie Spoilers Ahead, although it’s not like most of you don’t know the story already.)
The movie follows the book in that sense. While there is plenty of action and danger, I found myself smiling or laughing a surprising number of times throughout the first act of The Hobbit (i.e. An Unexpected Journey, which is all we shall see of the story until December of next year, when part two of three comes out). In part, that’s thanks to Martin Freeman, who has wonderful comic timing and does an excellent job as the younger Bilbo, who is by times amusingly befuddled or subtly, wryly humorous. There is also a fair bit of humor in some of the dwarf characters and in Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, who is a slightly more whimsical and mischievous wizard than the one we see in Lord of the Rings.
Some of the humor, however, comes from very enjoyable scenes that would not fit snugly in Lord of the Rings but seem perfectly at home here – scenes such as the dwarves “cleaning up” after their party at Bilbo’s house, haphazardly flinging and bouncing Bilbo’s mother’s best china hither and yon throughout the hobbit-hole while Bilbo looks on in distracted despair before walking into the next room and discovering it’s all now neatly stacked away. This scene also gives viewers an important sense of the personality imbued by the dwarves of The Hobbit, which is pretty helpful considering it’s a bit hard to remember which dwarf is which: thirteen is a fair number of small bearded main characters to keep track of.
Another humorous scene I still remember as one of my favorites from my first childhood reading is the one in which Bilbo endeavors to trick a trio of mountain trolls out of eating the whole company; and a fair bit of time and humor is devoted to that scene in the movie, much to my delight. These scenes work wonderfully within the whole. And yet, as my friends and I left the theater, a few of them complained that in places the movie is a bit hokey… and I didn’t disagree. From the best fun scenes, through the more obvious gags that are still funny (such as Bilbo insisting the whole company must go all the way back to Bag End because he forgot his handkerchief, and then one of the dwarves helpfully flinging him a dirty old piece of cloth to use instead), the movie does arrive at a few scenes that are wince-worthy.
The most notable of these is the one with Goblin King. He is fascinatingly grotesque in appearance, and his appearance comes at a dire time for the dwarves, who have been captured and are being held deep underground by what seems like thousands of goblins. The Goblin King is threatening to (and then does) alert the Dwarf King Thorin’s mightiest living enemy, the orc leader Azog, who is on the hunt for Thorin, that the goblins now have him. Logically, it should be a serious moment in the movie. And yet the Goblin King’s demeanor is comical (and not in a good way) and his threats, issued with laughter, are anticlimactically not very menacing at all. (Threats issued with laughter can be super menacing. A good evil laugh can actually make threats more menacing. In the case of the Goblin King, this…is not the case.) Even the bit where he tells another goblin to send word to Azog is off-kilter, with the secretary goblin being a weirdly stunted specimen who apparently gets around the goblin caverns on a zip-line.
This scene and a very few others in the movie are jarring; however, as a whole, the movie is thoroughly enjoyable. Despite the weirdness of the Goblin King, almost without exception the rest of the characters (and actors) are wonderful; and the visuals are just as stunning as those in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And there are some fantastic scenes as well. These include the delightful opening of the movie, which ties The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings by having the elderly Bilbo, in the midst of preparations for his 111th birthday party, writing the narrative and chatting with Frodo (hooray, Elijah Wood cameo!). They also include the scene in which Bilbo and Gollum are having a contest of riddles, all alone in the darkest tunnels of the goblin realm, which was one of the darkest and most ominous scenes, and wouldn’t have been out of place with the tone of The Lord of the Rings.
Overall, despite the dwarves’ very serious quest, this movie feels less serious of purpose than The Lord of the Rings; but that is something I attribute to the original book, rather than the movie’s production. Just as Jackson tried to be faithful to the tone and sense of the trilogy, here he has been faithful to the source material, and I think remembering that as you go in to see the movie (or in thinking of it afterwards) contributes to the enjoyment of it. Going in with the expectation of seeing another Lord of the Rings might leave you feeling surprised, as I was, at the differing tone of this movie; but going in with the mindset that this is an adventure, a romp, and a fun journey will leave you feeling satisfied with the end result. And, of course, it’s important to remember that this is only part one. I suspect that through the second movie and by the end of part three, the tone will shift, as the book’s did, until it arrives in the territory of Lord of the Rings and leaves us with a fairly consistent six movie collection. I personally can’t wait to see what comes next.
Until next time, Servo Lectio!
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold
Now that The Amazing Spider-Man is out on DVD and Blu-Ray, there is now a short video, “Everything Wrong With The Amazing Spider-Man In 2 Minutes Or Less”, that gives us 53 different Movie Crimes crimes throughout the film, like Peter Parker’s Comics-Code safe usage of the phrase “Mother Hubbard” and his magic skateboard. (Warning: There are spoilers in this video.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy-v4c4is-w[/youtube]
And we also have a take on how it should have ended:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiV7Xs2cvqg[/youtube]
I do have to admit that we glossed over a lot of these in our review when the movie first came out in July. What about you? What do you think was missed?
Agent Pendergast, the creation of Authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child returns in a brand new novel, TWO GRAVES, arriving in bookstores today, December 11.
About Two Graves:
After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world.
But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels–perpetrated by a boy who seems to have an almost psychic ability to elude capture–NYPD Lieutenant D’Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help. Reluctant at first, Pendergast soon discovers that the killings are a message from his wife’s kidnappers. But why a message? And what does it mean?
When the kidnappers strike again at those closest to Pendergast, the FBI agent, filled anew with vengeful fury, sets out to track down and destroy those responsible. His journey takes him deep into the trackless forests of South America, where he ultimately finds himself face to face with an old evil that-rather than having been eradicated-is stirring anew… and with potentially world-altering consequences.
Confucius once said: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves.”
Pendergast is about to learn the hard way just how true those words still ring..
Now available at Amazon and wherever your favorite books are sold.
Learn more about Two Graves here.
About the authors:
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the coauthors of the famed Pendergast series, including the first two books in the Helen Trilogy, Fever Dream and Cold Vengeance. Preston and Child are also the authors of the Gideon Crew series. Preston and Child’s Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities were chosen by readers in a National Public Radio poll as being among the one hundred greatest thrillers ever written, and Relic was made into a number-one box office hit movie. Doug Preston’s acclaimed nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, is being made into a movie starring George Clooney. Lincoln Child is a former book editor who has published five novels of his own, including the huge bestsellers Deep Storm and The Third Gate. Readers can sign up for The Pendergast File, a monthly “strangely entertaining note” from the authors, at their website, www.PrestonChild.com. The authors also welcome visitors to their alarmingly active Facebook page, where they post regularly.
This week on the White Rocket Podcast, a part of the Earth Station One Network, New Pulp Author Van Allen Plexico is joined by writer/publisher/director Jim Yelton for part 2 of their exploration of Marvel’s movies, past-present-future. Van and Jim also look at what DC is doing (and should be doing). It’s a fun show.
This and all previous episodes are available on iTunes (Search “White Rocket Podcast”) or at http://www.whiterocketbooks.com
Next week, Van is joined by Mark Finn (author of BLOOD AND THUNDER: THE LIFE AND ART OF ROBERT E HOWARD) to talk about Richard Stark’s violent world of PARKER!
Episode 7 of The White Rocket Podcast is now available on Podbean, iTunes, via the Podcast app on iPhone/iPad, or you can use the mini-player at the White Rocket site.
Listen to Part 1 of this conversation here.
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