Category: Blog Post

Casino Royale, 2006. Directed by Martin Campbell, written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and the ubiquitous Paul Haggis. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Giancaro Giannini, Jeffrey Wright, Isaach De Bankole, and Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, who seems obliged to poke his ugly mug into all the big-budget movies.

There’s a moment in the opening of Casino Royale, when our hero, James Bond, is shown dispatching his very first victim in the sink of a public lavatory. Shot in black and white, the blacks as rich as India ink and the whites as glaring as a flash bulb, the scene is notable for its wretchedness, and an early signal that this isn’t Pierce Brosnan’s world anymore. Apparently, a double-0 agent must waste two enemies before reaching such exalted status. The aforementioned kill is shown in flashback, and now our hero, played by Daniel Craig, sits patiently in the office of his next victim, who assures him that the second kill is easier. Actually, he tries to assure Bond, but is blown through his chair by a single bullet before he can finish that sentence.

Of course, if Martin Campbell had any wit about him, this opening scene wouldn’t have been in monochrome, but in the sun-drenched technicolor of the 60s, taking us back to the real beginning. But no one has ever accused a Bond film of excessive imagination.

Casino Royale is supposedly a return to the old-style Bond, the “literate” Bond from Ian Fleming’s potboilers. As it stands, it is not a stretch to say it’s the best Bond in ages, though context is everything: there has literally not been a decent bond since Sean Connery flexed his golden torso in Thunderball, which itself was nothing but fluff. But the comparisons should end there, for Connery’s Bond was at least a product of its time, its politics somewhat reassuring to the zeitgeist of the 60s. The new Bond seems content to give us creaky imperialism, the usual idiotic women, gadgets that, in this world, now seem like nothing any third world country with a few bucks doesn’t own. Worse, Casino Royale has an overlong plot, ham-handed direction, and makes the especially tragic mistake of being, quite simply, in its second half, the most dull big-budget film of the year.

After the hideous credit sequence has run its course, we open with the usual gangbusters: Bond is sweating away his afternoon in some tropical locale, this time Uganda, watching a mongoose and a cobra fight to the death while a fire-scarred villain waits for his opportunity to make some shady deal. Soon, their cover is blown, and Bond races after the bad guy in a spectacular chase through a construction area… killing scores of innocent Ugandans, whose lives, considering their lack of close up, seem to be less worthwhile than the mongoose or snake. The bad guy is an amazing creature, possessed of the dexterity of a flying squirrel and Jackie Chan, leaping and pirouetting off girders, elevators, cranes, you name it. Finally, Bond chases him down, waltzes into an Embassy (from who knows where), shoots the villain down and razes the building.

What justifies such wanton behavior on the part of the British government? Apparently, this Scarface was a terrorist, which is enough for us. The new Bond tosses the ‘t’ word around with more aplomb than the Republicans before election day. Who the hell is this Ugandan guy? Instead of the story of a man who undoubtedly grew up living in abject poverty, who turned into a terrorist and somehow managed to morph into this gravity-defying creature, we get… James Bond. And how he learned to love martinis and lose his soul.

The story is the usual silliness: an uber-villain named Le Chiffre, who weeps blood, makes tons of money by arming the world’s terrorists. Somehow, it is suggested, he made a figurative killing off 9/11, apparently by unloading boxcutters at a low rate. Anyway, Le Chiffre’s latest plot was thwarted by Bond, in a chase scene whose best moments were stolen from The Road Warrior. Having lost his shirt, Le Chiffre must win back his money in a high-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in Montenegro. Bond is the best card player, so naturally he’s called upon to prevail. Along the way he meets the supposedly intelligent though regally daft Vesper Lynd, played by a beautiful woman named Eva Green, who is slathered under some of the worst makeup since Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? Worse, Green is an actress with the range of a sock puppet, draining what little life there is from this film in every scene. Eventually, Bond beats Le Chiffre, is abducted and has his testicles whacked (literally), and finds a traitor in his midst.

The film is being called ‘dark’, in that Craig’s Bond can be seen brooding, is testy, then falls in love with Ms. Lynd, and has a supposedly grim ending that references Titanic, of all films. Of course, a decent filmmaker can use lighting and camera angles, set design and editing to suggest despair, so it’s difficult to feel the angst in a film so harshly lit and pedantically shot. The film takes its sweet time going anywhere, and then just when you begin to get bored, screenwriter Paul Haggis steps in to pour syrup on the audience. Bond falls in love, Bond loses girl, Bond becomes jaded. Two and a half hours later the film comes to a close, and you wander out stunned, wondering just when you’ll stop being fooled by the hype and watch something original for a change.

Earnestness is the raison d’etre of Casino Royale, which is a real shame, because there’s so much you could do to tweak this ridiculous scenario–from Britain’s always failed attempts at outdoing its American counterparts on the foreign policy front, to the fact that nowadays your average teenage hacker has better gadgets than Bond and Company. Not to mention the fact that maybe they could give Bond a woman who is a real foil. Perhaps a lesbian. Or perhaps Bond could be black.

God forbid this franchise should acknowledge the 21st century.

The old Bonds reassured us and gave us some needed confidence during a cold war that had everyone on the edge. We often forget that the first three Bonds were testaments to ingenuity–they were big moneymakers made on virtually no budget whatsoever. From Russia With Love could be considered the most literate, and even it had a sense of camp that was evident in its day. We can look now at the dopey blondes and brunettes that hung on Connery’s every smirk, but what do these silly women and their swinging bustline do for us today? Vesper Lynd isn’t fun or funny, and her barbs lack bite (and she certainly isn’t brainy). Above all, why should we give a rat’s ass about James Bond, about his development as a killer and a man, his learning not to trust people, or even about his dispatching villains, most of whom are from third-world countries? If Uganda’s the worst you can throw at us, you might as well resurrect S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

Judging from its box-office take last weekend, this series will be around for a long time, the machine pumping out these witless packages every two years. But if it’s nostalgia you want, rent the originals. If it’s action you want… I guess you could still rent the originals. See Casino Royale if you’re a Bond addict, if your DVD player is broken, or you’re stuck in a small town and it’s a choice between this and, say, Happy Feet. Or read the book. Your own imagination can certainly do no worse.

Fast Food Nation and For Your Consideration.

Fast Food Nation, 2006. Directed by Richard Linklater, written by Linklater and Eric Schlosser. Starring Catalina Sandino Moreno, Wilmer Valderrama, Ana Claudia Talancon, Greg Kinnear, Ashley Johnson, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Dano, Esai Morales, and, in small roles: Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Luis Guzman, Avril Lavigne, Lou Taylor Pucci, and Bruce Willis.

Now showing in theaters around town.

By now you’d have to be an utter fool not to know that fast food is a truly awful substance. For years we’ve heard the warnings, seen films like Super Size Me, watched 60 Minutes, read health reports and warnings that the burgers we consume are filled with toxins, deadly fats, and perhaps even traces of shit.

Filmgoers looking for a righteous tirade against the fast food industry are going to be sorely disappointed by Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation. Never has such a cynical, pessimistic film on such a charged subject been made with less urgency. Fast Food Nation has been compared (favorably) to Fahrenheit 9/11, which is absurd–where Michael Moore sought to condemn the Bush administration for every random sneeze (and attempt to create the image of himself as a hero of the masses), Linklater’s film simply and patiently reveals the inner workings of a machine that devours people and cattle with equal indifference. And in doing so he creates a picture of surprising strength and durability.

Fast Food Nation is splintered into three distinct stories: that of a fast food executive, sent to Texas to find out why the “fecal colorform is off the charts” in the burgers (shit in the meat), and in the process discovers his soul; of a young woman trying to put her way through school while working at the local burger joint; and, most poignantly, a group of Mexican immigrants trying to keep their heads above water while working at the meat processing plant.

Greg Kinnear plays the executive, a happy-go-lucky guy whose eyes are slowly opened to the horrors that surround him. He’s the kind of a fellow who gets a real thrill over having invented the Calypso Chicken Tenders, and who laughs with his wife that lesson one in the corporate world is “don’t kill your customer”. Ashley Johnson is the young woman whose job at Mickey’s (the stand in for McDonald’s) begins to weigh on her soul. Eventually she will abandon her job to join forces with a ragtag group of campus radicals, whose work borders on the futile. Finally, Wilmer Valderrama (of That 70s Show fame), Catalina Sandino Moreno (from Maria Full of Grace), and Ana Claudia Talancon (a star in Mexico) play a family that escapes the crushing poverty of their home country to work in the states. They are a resilient bunch, happy to have the modest dough from their jobs, giving them the possibility of the American dream–pizza for dinner, a new truck in the driveway. While their paths never cross, these characters’ struggles encapsulate our own desperate attempts to find meaning in our jobs, and in our attempts to make the world a better place.

There is a real mystery in Fast Food Nation, and the real story isn’t simply that fast food is garbage and the people are crushed who work in its production. No, the real story is how do we exist in a world that crushes the soul, and whose systems–in this case, food-production (though it could be about the auto industry, banking, government) have grown to an unmanageable size. Fast Food Nation poses an existentialist dilemma that pundits like Moore and Spurlock would never touch: Linklater understands that there are no enemies in human form, just people stuck in situations beyond their control. As usual, Linklater allows his characters the freedom to express themselves through conversation: like Slacker, Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Fast Food Nation celebrates its people, giving even Bruce Willis’ corporate hack his due, and his dignity. In my interview with Linklater, he stated that his goal was honesty–if you make one man the personification of evil, you are, as Linklater said, “giving that one guy a lot of power he doesn’t really have.” This suggests that we’re all culpable, which is, in reality, more terrifying than the killing floor of the slaughterhouse.

The movie boasts some wonderful performances (as usual with Linklater, who deserves the title “actor’s director” more than Altman ever did), and it saves its gore for the end, and even then it’s subdued. My guess is that Fast Food Nation is bound to be unpopular, and will please few people. Those who want to ignore the fast food crisis would never see it, while those who have Eric Schlosser’s book highlighted in a hundred spots will feel the film has softened its considerable message. But Linklater has taken a page from the great paranoid classics of the 70s, films that assumed we had brains and sought to make our world a better place. Watching Fast Food Nation, the impetus is on us, not necessarily to topple the great machine, but rather, to live without the machine. Then, and only then, will its gears slow, stop, and finally release us from its grip.

…

For Your Consideration, 2006. Directed by Christopher Guest, written by Guest and Eugene Levy. Starring Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Harry Shearer, Christopher Moynihan, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins, Carrie Aizley, Ed Begley Jr., Whitney Taylor Brown, Michael McKean, the great Jane Lynch, Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, and Michael Hitchcock and Don Lake as a great Ebert/Siskel pair, and Office creator Ricky Gervais.

Now showing in theaters around town.

Who would have thought that when Spinal Tap hit our screens over twenty years ago, that it would spawn a whole new genre? In fact, the mockumentary may have reached its zenith, with The Office pulling in audiences, to Tap’s Nigel Tufnel rocking out for VW (usually during the show). Christopher Guest has made a series of these films, utilizing a tight-knit crew so professional they can improvise most of the dialogue and make it seem both hilarious and painfully real.

For Your Consideration breaks slightly with this trend. While it employs the verite camera style, it is not a mockumentary, eschewing for once the onscreen interviews. It is the story of the making of a straight-to-video clunker called Home For Purim, and what happens to its idiotic crew when rumors abound that it will garner some Oscar nominations. Home For Purim is unbelievably bad, its actors kind-hearted but daft, and the movie is filled with more achingly funny moments than we’ve seen in a Christopher Guest film in ages. Then again, Hollywood is an easy target, and while For Your Consideration certainly stands as one of the better comedies of the year (if not the most hilarious, but it’s been a weak year), it could use more vitriol–or it could be more sweet. When Catherine O’Hara’s character finally flips out, it’s more depressing than funny, for we’ve come to know her as a kind lady, not some hag who needs her face carved into by a plastic surgeon. And when Home For Purim really does garner a nod or two, one can’t help but recoil–no film this bad would ever get even a trickle of consideration. And there have been lots of horrible Oscar nominees.

Nonetheless, For Your Consideration is a welcome night at the movies, an evening of almost guaranteed belly laughs and repeated moments after the show. See it for its joy in celebrating comedians of all feathers, working with a decent script, playing off one another, for the sheer fun of it. Sometimes, that’s all we need.

Its a shame that the drop-top won’t be available in the US. The S4 drop top is really a boulevard cruiser.

I recently test drove this new beast. It features 414 naturally aspirated horsepower from the proven 4.2 liter Audi V8. With twin turbochargers you could be putting 700 flywheel HP to the pavement without usurious expense (a $7000.00 upgrade).

The American magazines talk like girlie men about the harshness of the ride while the British magazines pretty much wax about the car. It is comforting to know that the man behind Audi’s recent LeMans triumphs is now the head of their in-house tuner division.

The only beef leveled at this car is the ratio of torque applied to the wheels and the streering feel — a consistent Audi beef since forever. On the other hand, I will take the rush of a naturally aspirated V8 that revs to 8250 over a touch of steeing feel any day.

Competitors include:

Mitsubishi EVO 34k
Subaru Sti 31k

These both have equally fast 0-60 times but lack a certain finesse. Is it worth the 40k real difference in price? I guess I’ll have to test them both.

Buying strategy:

Wait at least a year to have the prices come down to sub-50k (which they will.) At 50K this car is the best.