Why Idris Elba Won't Be Playing James Bond

Let's talk James Bond. Daniel Craig, who theoretically is signed on for a fifth Bond film, has stated that he never wants to play the character again. Spectre may or may not be his last film as Bond. Assuming he is out, we will once again get a new OO7, a fact that has caused some degree of speculation on the internet. The internet has told us that a fan favorite for OO7 is Idris Elba. I personally know nobody who wants to see Idris Elba as Bond, but the internet says it so it must be true, right?


Actually, there are people who want Elba to play Bond. You see them in the comments section of almost any article decrying the fact that he won't be Bond. Apparently, the rumored front runner is Damien Lewis of Homeland. I personally remember a time when the rumored front-runner to replace Roger Moore was Tristan Rogers and we got Timothy Dalton instead. So I suspect that none of the rumored front runners--Elba and Lewis included--will be OO7 and it will once again be the person we least suspect. Literally there are only two times a Bond actor was played by someone we expected and it took both of them years to get the part. I refer to Roger Moore (who was supposed to do it in 1962) and Pierce Brosnan (who was also supposed to suceed Moore).


Bond is an industry. He's been on the screen for 53 years now, played by six different actors. While each actor brought a little touch here or there to differentiate their version of the character, they all played the same basic character. None of the Bonds are really all that different. Quick: which Bond had a wetsuit with a duck decoy on his head? That was Sean Connery in Goldfinger, not Roger Moore which is what most people might assume. Which Bond threatened to break a woman's arm in order to get information from her? Roger Moore in The Man With the Golden Gun. Sure, Craig is a little angrier than the others and Moore was funnier than the others, but all in all, it's the same character.


The battle cry is that the producers don't want to do something different with the character by hiring Elba. "Bland, James Bland" is the snark going around. Yes, the producers probably don't want to radically change the character. Because if they did, he would cease to be James Bond. All of the major Bond characters to be played by mulitple actors have simply been variations on those characters. There have been four versions of Moneypenny in the series. Outside of giving her a gun and making her black in Skyfall, there isn't a whole lot that is different about Naomie Harris as Moneypenny. She was given more to do in the previous film than Lois Maxwell or Samantha Bond, I'll give you that, but the function of the character is pretty much the same.


The only one to be that radically different is Ben Whislaw's version of Q, and even he does much of the same sort of thing that Desmond Llewelyn did. Spectre isn't the first time Q went into the field to help OO7 out. Whislaw's arguably has more of a sense of humor than his predecessors and is a lot younger, but otherwise, he's Q.


So, outside of skin color, what about Idris Elba's Bond would end up being that different from Sean Connery's? Answer: not much. The times they've tried changing Bond up haven't worked out too well. Remember Timothy Dalton, the safe sex Bond who stuck to one girl per film and whose second movie could have been any action hero? Yes, he quit after the second, but he was unpopular enough that the studio didn't want him to do a third film anyway. Proof of how well a one woman Bond went over was Goldeneye, when he went back to being the James Bond we all knew and had sex with three different women. Even Craig has had more than one girl per film. That may sound crude, but it's true.


There are things about Bond that have become familiar over the last 53 years, things about the character people enjoy. The one-liners (even the bad ones), the gadgets, the promiscuity, and the fact that he's not just any action hero. He's fairly unique among action heroes, actually. The espionage is one of the things that sets him apart. That's the thing people disliked about License to Kill. It's not that it's a bad movie, it's that it's a standard issue revenge flick and that's not James Bond. License to Kill could have starred Arnold Schwarzennegar, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone or any other action hero of the 80s and been basically the same movie.


I'm not saying Idris Elba couldn't play Bond. I'm saying that his Bond isn't going to rock the boat as much as people are expecting. Rocking the boat is not what the producers of the series are looking to do. Even the Craig reboots follow much of the formula the series has established. Why do you think there are so many scenes in them copying earlier Bond films? That's why Gemma Artertron's character in Quantum of Solace meets a fate similar to Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger and the DB-5 keeps showing up. It's called fan service.


Familiarity may breed contempt but it also breeds comfort. People go to these movies knowing what to expect and so long as they get that, the films will continue to suceed. The producers are not going to hire someone who is going to take the character in a wildly different trajectory than he's already been. It's also why you won't see Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino direct a Bond movie. Their movies have a particular stamp on them that is separate from what the franchise has been. Seriously, how many people picture a Tarantino Bond movie as having the main characters dropping F-bomb after F-Bomb? "Pay F-----g attention, OO7" may sound funny to say among friends, but it's not a line anyone would actually want to hear in a Bond movie.


When you do try to radically change an iconic character like Bond, you end up with a disaster of epic proportions. Don't believe me? I submit the case of the 1998 version of Godzilla. It may seem pretty silly to compare Godzilla to Bond, but not really since the two have been in popular culture for roughly the same amount of time. The first Bond adaption, a TV version of Casino Royale, came out the same year the first Godzilla movie was released. That said, the 98 version of the character of Godzilla radically changed practically everything audiences knew about him. Not only did he look totally different from the Toho version (sort of like an over-sized Iguana really), he acted differently. He perched on buildings, had baby Raptors, and was killed by missiles while perching on a bridge. Godzilla does not perch on buildings. He towers over them. He laughs at missiles. And he does not have baby Raptors in Madison Square Garden. Had that movie not been called Godzilla, it may not have drawn the ire that it has. Godzilla fans have a special amount of contempt for that movie. But I submit that had it been called anything else and the monster in it been called anything else, it might have been considered a harmlessly stupid but fun monster on the loose movie. Why do you think Gareth Edwards version strongly resembles the Toho version, right down to the atomic breath, and battles other monsters?


I could also use the New Coke argument where Coca-Cola decided to listen to people who said they should change the formula so they discontinued Coke and introduced New Coke in 1985. New Coke was so poorly received they brought back old Coke as Classic Coke before finally dropping New Coke entirely.


Are the producers wrong? The box office figures would suggest not. Pretty much every Bond movie since Goldeneye has made more money than the one prior to it. People are flocking to see Spectre not because it's radically different but because it's just like classic Bond. Critics are saying that you could swap out Craig for Moore in Spectre and have the same movie. Of course you could. You could also swap out Craig for any of the others and have the same basic movie. But you can do that with most of the Bond movies, at least from Goldfinger on. Seriously, You Only Live Twice has been made three times already in the series, each time with a different Bond: Connery in You Only Live Twice, Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, and Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies. But look at them: they're the same basic story.


That's why you won't see Idris Elba as Bond. There's no need to make that radical a change to the character. Even if they did give it to Elba, they wouldn't make huge changes to the character. I'm quite certain the producers have an awareness of things like New Coke and the 98 Godzilla and see what happens when you go that far against the grain and have no desire to run that risk. Nor should they. At the end of the day, nobody really wants a New Coke James Bond, even if they say they do. Because if they got that, they'd complain it wasn't the James Bond they grew to know and love over the past 53 years. Didn't think of it in those terms, did you?

Serial Saturday: The Invisible Monster (1950)

The Invisible Monster is Olive Films' first Republic serial release on Blu Ray and it looks absolutely spectacular. Unfortunately, it's still The Invisible Monster and that's not really a good thing.


I get why Olive chose to lead off with The Invisible Monster. It's goofy 50s sci-fi with an exploitation title. However, there are plenty of Repulbic serials with exploitation type titles, some of them quite good such as Haunted Harbor. And while it is true that there are worse serials than The Invisible Monster--it never reaches the depressing depths of Man with the Steel Whip or Panther Girl of the Kongo--it's not an especially good serial either.

The serial concerns the machinations of a mad scientist who refers to himself as The Phantom Ruler (not The Invisible Monster, it should be noted). He brings several illegal aliens into the country--a timely theme I suppose--and threatens them with arrest and deportation if they refuse to help him in his criminal enterprises. He's attempting to raise funds for an invisible army with which he plans to conquer the world.

"You clean the office while I raid the hideout, OK?"

Opposing him is Insurance Investigator Lane Carson (Richard Webb, TV's Captain Midnight) and his gal Friday Carol (Aline Towne). Well, Carol is sort of Lane's gal Friday. Despite proving her competency again and again, he tends to tell her in so may words not to come along because it's man's work. I do tend to place movies into the context of their time frame, but the casual sexism exhibited is a bit of a bother since it was just a few years earlier that Republic gave the heroines backbone and skill. Six years prior to The Invisible Monster, Linda Stirling was kicking ass as the titular lead of Zorro's Black Whip and Kay Alrdidge was saving Kane Richmond as often as he saved her in Haunted Harbor. However, by the 1950s, Republic's view of it's leading ladies was as bad as it was in 1936 and that's a shame.


Anyhow, back to the serial.


The Phantom Ruler wears special robes treated with a particular chemical which, when exposed to a particular spotlight, allow him to become invisible. Digest that bit of information for a moment. A spotlight is necessary for the invisibility and he wants to outfit an army to conquer the world like that. Yeah, that's not gonna work. Small wonder he eventually downgrades from conquering the world to conquering the community. God help us, not even the entire city--the community. One tends to get the feeling that had the serial gone much past 12 chapters, he would have downgraded to conquering a broom closet.

Some of you may have read the above paragraph and decided that this thing is too daffy to pass up. While it definitely has it's moments, such as the Phantom growling at one of his henchmen to move the spotlight slowly so he can stay in it or his delusional belieft that he only needs $200,000 (the only sucessful heist he has in all 12 chapters) to fund his worldwide army, it becomes too paint by numbers after a while. Republic serials followed a fairly strict formula and as such they lived and died by their cast. The Invisible Monster is no exception.

The whole community will be wearing them

Webb and Towne are okay as their heroes, but they're both pretty bland. Webb is certainly no Clayton Moore and Towne is no Linda Stirling. There's no particualr spark to their characters except for one amusing scene in chapter one where Webb is attempting to dismiss the idea of receiving help from a woman and Towne is nonchalantly pointing out all the detective work she already did that he didn't get to yet. By this point, Republic was picking their leads based more on their resemblance to stuntman than on acting ability, so we're lucky we got these two. At least Webb sort of tries, unlike later heroes like Myron Healey. The henchman, played by Lane Bradford and John Crawford, fair a little better, but even they aren't up to the standards of mean set by such forties henchmen as George J. Lewis and Anthony Warde. As for the Phantom Ruler himself, well, he's the serial's single biggest liability.


The Phantom Ruler is played by Stanley Price, today best remembered as the frizzy haired henchman to Phil Van Zandt in the 3 Stooges short Dopey Dicks. Stanley Price made for a pretty good henchman, not only in that short but in numerous serials. He was short, frizzy haired, and fairly creepy/bug-eyed. However, like Anthony Warde and George J. Lewis before him*, he mighta been a good henchman but he was a rotten head villain. He has no sense of menace except for when he's threatening the illegal aliens he's brought in. It doesn't help that he looks like a bug-eyed psycho like usual but is trying to play a suave villain. The part really called out for a Charles Middleton or Roy Barcroft, but by 1950 Middleton was dead and Barcroft wasn't doing many serials. Add to that the absurdity of the villain's entire scheme--which in the later chapters even he seems to recognize might not have been as well thought out as he would have liked--and yeah, this comes off as a let down.

 Clayton Moore could drive and shoot at the same time

The action is directed by Fred C. Brannon in his typical fashion. The fights are almost all done from long shot and lack the inventiveness of one of the fights William Witney or Spencer Gordon Bennett directed. It's mostly people punching each other and occasionally breaking a chair or table. I suppose Brannon was efficient enough for the Republic bosses to keep him directing the serials and most of his are at least a little better than the few that followed in the wake of his death but that's like saying Plan Nine From Outer Space is better than The Sinister Urge. Yes, that's true, but what does it really say?


All that said, if you're a serial fan you absolutely should get this Blu Ray, even if only because it's a serial on Blu Ray and that's something in pretty short supply. It looks fantastic and hopefully Olive Films decides to continue to release serials on Blu Ray. And yes, if you like goofy sci-fi from the 50s, you could find worse ways to spend a couple of hours than this. There is a workmanlike professionalism to the enterprise and still some semblance of energy. The chapters are short enough (13 minutes) to be digestable in small doses and get from point A to point B with economy. There's only a couple of times that the stock footage (which is most of the chapter endings) sticks out and that's what happens when you're using stock footage from the 1930s in the 1950s. At the end of the day, The Invisible Monster is a passable if unmemorable serial.


*Anthony Warde took his turn as the head villain of Buck Rogers, Killer Kane. It is universally agreed that he is the biggest knock against that serial. George J. Lewis did it all--hero (The Wolf Dog, Zorro's Black Whip), sidekick (Radar Patrol Vs. Spy King), henchman in too many serials to name, but his two turns as the head bad guy--Federal Operator 99 and Cody of the Pony Express--leave a lot to be desired.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: 3-D Rarities

Someone give the 3D Film Archive an Oscar. Seriously. Bob Furmanek, Greg Kintz, and Jack Theakston need to be given an Oscar and the right to restore any vintage 3D movie they want. Their work in the restoration and preservation of our 3D heritage is as important as it is astounding. 3-D Rarities, now out from Flicker Alley, is as good an example as any I can think of.


Covering material from 1922-1962, 3-D Rarities literally has something for everyone. The disc is broken into two parts: Dawn of the Stereoscopic Cinema, covering from 1922-mid-1952, and Hollywood Enters the Third Dimension, covering from November 1952 -1955, with bonus material giving us a peek at some 1960s footage. This Blu Ray is the motherlode, a 3D fan's dream come true. Test footage, trailers, cartoons, industrial shorts--it's all here. Every short and clip perfectly aligned and looking better than ever.


Part One starts with the oldest existing 3D footage from 1922. Some of it is test footage while a bulk of it is a fascinating glimpse at Washington, D.C. from that time frame, shot through the trees. Part one chugs along through the 20s with more test footage, mostly fun gimmick shots. Those shots were used in a variety of 3D shorts back then, all of which are lost. Some 1930s test footage, used for the Pete Smith Metroscopix shorts from 1936-1941 (all three of which do exist) updates a few of the gags from the 20s while adding to their own. You could literally stop the disc right there and have seen more 3D gimmick shots than in almost any ten modern 3D films you can name. But then you would miss the real highlights of Part One: Thrills for You and New Dimensions.

These two shorts were done for the 1940s World's Fair. Thrills for You played in San Francisco while New Dimensions played in New York. The former short is a wonderful snapshot at a time gone by: the era of traveling by locomotive. It was produced by the Pennsylvania Rail Road and not only shots the trains being built, but gives a glimpse into what riding on those trains was like. It was a lost short until 2006 when it popped up at the World 3-D Film Expo II. If you are any sort of train enthusiast, this is a must see short.


New Dimensions will appeal to car lovers. It's a color re-do of the previous year's black & white In Tune With Tomorrow, a stop motion animation short of a full size Plymouth being built, set to music. For years, fans of the short could only see the edited version RKO released in 1953 called Motor Rhythm. This disc restores the complete short as seen by audiences in 1940.


If animation is your thing, there's four Canadian 3D shorts from 1951-1952. Two of them were by Norman McLaren. They're interesting examples of 3D animation. An industrial short for the Bolex 3-D camera rounds out part one.


Part Two kicks off, appropriately enough with the short that opened Arch Oboler's Bwana Devil, M.L. Gunzberg Presents Naturalvision 3-Dimension or as it came to be referred to in later sources, Time For Beany since it features Beany and Cecil the Seasick Serpent. Oh, Lloyd Nolan is in it, too, along with Shirley Tegge, Miss 3-D. It's a humorous explanation of the Naturalvision camera system.


Other highlights for Part Two include four trailers, a Casper Cartoon (Boo Moon),a short about Atom Bomb testing (Doom Town), a Burlesque short (I'll Sell My Shirt), the Rocky Marciano-Joe Walcott fight film, and the short that opened for Robot Monster with comedian Slick Slavin (Stardust in Your Eyes). The bonus material includes two minutes from the 3D footage Francis Ford Coppola directed for the 1962 3D nudie film The Playgirls and the Bellboy. Mr. Furmanek has threatened to unleash the rest of that film on us in the near future.

Personally, I most enjoyed the Time For Beany short and another puppet cartoon on the disc called The Adventures of Sam Space. But the truth is, there isn't a bad piece of footage on this disc. The product of five years work, it's a great celebration of all things 3D and a perfect showcase for the diversity the process once had before settling into cartoons and comic book movies. Not only should any 3D fan get this disc, but anyone who wants to make 3D movies should get it, watch it, and learn from it.


So yeah, get the 3D Film Archive an Oscar for this one. This is hands down the Best 3-D Blu Ray you'll ever own.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: Kiss Me Kate (1953)

Let me say precisely what I mean to say: Kiss Me Kate is one of the greatest 3D movies ever made. Ever. The list of 3D movies as good or better than it is practically non-existent. Maybe you can make an argument for Hugo or Dial M For Murder or House of Wax but that's about it. This is it, baby--The 3D movie of all time.

What makes KMK so great? How about everything. Start off with a terrific score by Cole Porter, toss in two of the best musical stars of the 50s (Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson), mix in incredible dance routines by the likes of Ann Miller, Tommy Rall, and Bob Fosse, add some great comedy by Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore and top it all off with one of the best uses of the process you'll ever see.



Hammy actor Fred Graham (Keel) plans to win back ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Grayson) by starring opposite her in a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. But she's engaged to be married to a cattle baron. Adding to his troubles are free-spirited and flirtatious actress Lois Lane (Miller) whose boyfriend (Rall) forged Graham's signature on an IOU to a gangster. Two of his thugs (Wynn and Whitmore) show up to collect on the "debt of honor". The onstage battles mirror the backstage chaos, all set to one of the best scores in a musical.

Porter's score is quite possibly the best non-songbook score of the decade in terms of movies. Starting with the wonderful So in Love and ending pretty much with the hilarious Brush Up Your Shakespeare, every song is fantastic. Some say KMK was Porter's crowning achievement and that doesn't seem to be an understatement. In fact, if there is a complaint against the movie, its the fact that 50s sensibilities forced so many of the songs to be cleaned up. That said, there are a few raunchy lines that slipped past the censors. I dare you to not take the line "a Dick, a Dick" in Tom, Dick, and Harry dirty.

Then there's From This Moment On. While Hermes Pan choreographed the rest of the numbers, he gave the dancers free reign to do whatever they wanted. The result is pure movie magic with a 66 second steamy routine from Bob Fosse and Carol Haney. It's that routine that made critics take notice of Fosse.

It helps that the cast is one of the best assembled for a 50s musical. Keel and Grayson have great voices for the numbers, even if they weren't dancers. This was their second movie together, after Show Boat (1951). But it's Wynn, Whitmore, and Miller that own this movie. Miller was one of the top female tap dancers and even if she seems a little old for the part of Lane/Bianca, she sells it. Her tap routine during Too Darn Hot is exactly that. As for Wynn and Whitmore, they knew they weren't song and dance men so they didn't even bother to rehearse their big number. As such, they tend to bumble through it in a way that actually works to the movie's advantage. They steal every scene they're in. Oh, and serial fans will get a kick out of Dave O'Brien as Keel's stage manager.

KMK is a great example on how to do a gimmicky 3D movie, too. There's over 20 gimmick shots in it. But, unlike the 80s films that lost their mind with gimmick shots, it's not as obvious. The majority of the gimmick shots are incorporated into the musical numbers (Those Redheads From Seattle does the same trick). This makes them less blatant than the yo-yos and popcorn in Friday the 13th Part 3. There's only one 40 second segment at the beginning of the play within the movie with a bunch of gimmicks there just for the sake of being there and that's only in the 3D version. But even more than the gimmick shots is the other ways the movie uses 3D. There's lots of shots from various parts of the theater that gives the illusion that one is actually watching these antics live. It is hands down the most brilliant use of the process you'll ever see. Especially look for one shot at the end of Where is the Life That Late I Led that means nothing in 2D but is one of the craziest shots in 3D.

Warner Home Video has released Kiss Me Kate in an amazing 3D Blu Ray that is a must own. This is the first time KMK has been released in its original 3D widescreen format with the added bonus of having the original stereo soundtrack. KMK is one of only two 3D movies from the 50s to still have its stereo soundtrack and its a treat to not only see but hear the movie as it was intended. I may have said this before about other movies, but you really do need this 3D Blu Ray. If you only ever see one 3D movie in your life, make it Kiss Me Kate.

3D Classics on Blu Ray: The Bubble (1966)

Poor Arch Oboler. The man absolutely loved 3D movies and was a pioneer in their production, but just couldn't make a truly great one. He did three over the course of 20 years, each one worse than the one that preceded it. The Bubble, from 1966, is the second of his trio and appropriately falls directly in the middle in terms of quality. Not as goofily entertaining as Bwana Devil, the film that kicked off the short-lived 50s craze, nor as mind-numbingly boring as Domo Arigato, The Bubble tries hard but falls short.

The film starts with a plane trapped in a freak storm. The pilot (crooner Johnny Desmond) is forced to land when the couple he's flying (Michael Cole and Deborah Walley) need to get to a hospital. Seems Walley is expecting and in answer to husband Cole's question, no, she can't "just hold it in". Right away something is off: they land on a road and the cab driver who shows up just keeps saying "Cab mister?". After they get to town and the baby is born, things get noticeably weirder. The town itself looks off: an old west style saloon is down the street from the hospital, the street lights look like they're from the early 20th century, and then there's the Roman columns. To add to the weirdness, everybody keeps doing and saying the same things over and over. When Cole, Walley, and Desmond try to leave, they discover that a malignant alien is keeping the town trapped in a giant plastic bubble.

Reading all of that, some of you are no doubt saying either "huh, sounds like a pretty good movie to me" or "hey, that sounds just like Under the Dome!". I won't comment on the latter, but don't fool yourselves, either. This is not a pretty good movie. It is a movie that has been compared to an overlong Twilight Zone episode and that's one of it's main drawbacks. Had it just been a 30 minute TV episode, it would likely be a fairly intense and disturbing tale. But at 90 minutes--and it used to run 112 minutes until it was cut by Oboler in 1967--it goes on too long. It also doesn't help that Cole (and Oboler) feel the necessity to explain every little thing that goes on. It seems like half of Cole's dialogue starts with "I have a theory about that...". This is the type of movie that works better the less you know and it's unfortunate that Oboler chooses to tell instead of show. A little less theorizing and this would be a pretty creepy movie.

It's not that it's a completely rotten movie. It tries to be a pretty cerebral experience, much like a third season episode of Star Trek. The problem is that like a season three Trek episode, the movie starts with a terrific premise then runs out of ways to explore it fairly quickly. It becomes something along the lines of The Great Escape in it's third act with Cole desperately digging away to escape from the bubble. Certainly the actors try their best. Cole was just starting The Mod Squad, so this was a way to show he could carry a movie. But seriously, all the guy does is throw one theory out after another. Walley probably signed on to show she could do more than look good in a bikini, but after a while all she seems to do is fret and fuss. The only truly amusing one of the trio is Desmond, who hams it up, but also disappears for a good chunk of screen time.

The Bubble is the first of the single-strip 3D movies. Prior to this, unless a movie was released in anaglyphic (red/blue) 3D, it was released in a dual strip format with two projectors running in synchronization (theoretically). However, the 50s films were often plagued with awful projection problems, including running the films out of sync. It was those projection problems that caused the various headaches audiences complained of and the subsequent death of the process. Oboler and Col. Robert Brenier, the inventor of the single strip system used here (Spacevision), believed that their system could fix the mis-projection issues the 50s films had. I can tell you that while the idea was good, single-strip 3D movies could and were just as poorly projected as the dual strip variety. I saw single strip showings of House of Wax, Dial M For Murder, and Silent Madness that were so incorrectly shown, they made me want to cry.

It's also worth noting that when released in 1966, The Bubble really was a harbinger of the 3D films to come. There's a ton of gimmick shots in the movie, some of which are pretty silly. Some even look pretty obviously just tossed in there. In other words, the very thing that people scoff at 3D for pretty well start with this film. Having said that, some of the gimmick shots are outright spectacular. The floating tray of beer is one of the top twenty gimmick shots of all time.

If you're curious to know what this film looks like, Kino has it on 3D Blu Ray courtesy of the geniuses of the 3D Film Archive. The Archive, the same people behind the restoration of Dragonfly Squadron, has done an astonishing job of restoring The Bubble. I've seen it twice before this Blu Ray and I can tell you it never looked this good. Not only are all alignment issues corrected, but the image is cleaned up and color corrected in a way that makes the film look possibly even better than it did in 1966! Seriously, the restoration on The Bubble makes it look like millions of dollars was spent on it. That's not the case, but it sure looks it.


I suppose your mileage may vary when watching this. I've seen the movie three times now. The first time was on VHS (look it up, youngsters) in a horrible anaglyphic version released by Rhino Home Video in 1999. I spent nearly a year looking for the tape and then was bored out of my brain by it when I finally saw it. It played a little better when I saw it next on the big screen during the World 3-D Film Expo II in 2006 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, but I still wasn't crazy about it. This Blu Ray has nearly made me a true believer. The movie still has storytelling flaws--some of them nearly deadly--but since it looks better and plays so wickedly with 3D gimmick shots, it's a lot more fun to watch. And any vintage 3D movie released on 3D Blu Ray is worth seeking out (he said having not yet gotten up the courage to watch The Flesh and Blood Show). I'd never watch it in 2D myself, but there's not many 3D movies I'd want to watch in 2D anyhow. But if you want to have a 3D party, you could do worse than The Bubble, that's for sure.

Spectre (2015)

There's two things keeping the 24th James Bond movie from being a total classic: the worst theme song since The Man With the Golden Gun and a plot twist that is so unnecessary as to be pointless. That said, not only is OO7 back, his greatest nemesis is back, too. And it's about time.

Long time fans of the series will remember the terrorist organization SPECTRE and their leader Ernst Stravo Blofeld as the big bads that bedeviled OO7 throughout the 1960s. Due to a complex legal situation, the last audiences saw of them was 1983's disappointing remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again. Spectre updates the terrorist group for the 21st Century. Instead of trading on 55ththe 1960s fear of nuclear war, this time Blofeld and his cronies are out to conquer the world Big Brother style.

The movie starts off with a thrilling and humorous sequence with Bond tracking a terrorist in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead festival. After blowing up a building and getting involved in a fight in a helicopter that sends panicked revellers running for their lives, Bond gets chewed ot by M (Ralph Fiennes). Seems his mission was unsanctioned and touched off an international incident. Oops.

We come to find out that Bond went after the terrorist on the orders of his late boss. His major clue involves a ring with an octopus insignia on it. Guess where the ring ultimately leads to?

What follows is most of the ingredients of vintage, Bond: gorgeous women, a big silent henchman who gives Bond a hard time, wild chase scenes, impossible escapes, and some much missed humor and gadgets. The latter is highlighted in a crackerjack chase through the streets of Rome. There's also a wonderfully destructive fight on a train between Bond and the aforementioned henchman (Dave Bautista) that recalls a similar slugfest between Bond and Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me.

All things considered, SPECTRE is a return to form for the series. By that I mean its a return to the sense of fun the movies once had. Some critics have griped that this is a Roger Moore Bond film starring Daniel Craig. That's not a bad thing, however. Bond has always about escapist fantasy and works best that way. Even the more grounded entries have a sense of humor about them. So it's great to see the series lighten up again.

In fact, except for the rotten theme song, the only thing really wrong with Spectre is the completely pointless attempt to make it personal for Bond again. The twist is a slap in the face of both Fleming and the series in general. Take it out and you have the best SPECTRE on film story yet.

Despite that, the OO7 of the 60s is back and man, is it great to see him again.

About Jar Jar Binks...

Over the summer, I happened to go to the opening night showing of a little movie you may have heard of called Avengers: Age of Ultron. The last of the 20 minutes of previews before the movie was for the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The audience absolutely lost their minds seeing that preview, especially cheering when a particularly geriatric Han Solo showed up in the last shot of the trailer. Make no mistake, I'll be sucker enough to go on opening day as I did for every movie in the prequel trilogy. But it struck me as a strange case of deja vu. After all, wasn't it just 17 years ago that people lined up for Meet Joe Black to see the trailer for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and then walked out of the theater? Wasn't there a strong sense of kid-like excitement, adults playing with their action figures and dressing up in costume for the movie on opening day? And when it came out, what was the reaction?


Sheer, unbridled, near unreasonable anger, hatred, and fury--much of it directed at two people in particular: the very real George Lucas and the very CGI Jar Jar Binks.

I'll save the debate over Lucas and the merits or lack of same of Phantom Menace for another post. I plan on rewatching the six films, quite possibly in episode order again, in the run up to Episode 7. But for now, I want to specifically address the much maligned Jar Jar Binks character.


I come not to defend him per se, nor to praise him nor to bury him. But to provide a little insight into just what went wrong with him and why in the grand scheme of things, he's not as worthless as you may think.


First, let's understand something about movies in general. A movie made in 1999 is not actually made for an audience that was around in 1977. A movie made in 1999 is made for the all-important 18-35 crowd, with a special emphasis on the lower end of that scale. If you were a teenager in 1977, Episode 1 wasn't made for you. I was six when the original Star Wars came out, so I can barely say it was made for my age group. More to the point, Star Wars in general always skewed young. It effectively is made for children. Hence the toys. Forty year olds presumably don't play with action figures (maybe they do?). So the first point in understanding Jar Jar is the fact that he wasn't made for adults; he was made for children. Guess what? Know who likes Jar Jar? Children.


And that's the way Star Wars has always been. There were characters in the original trilogy simply created for action figures. Seriously, did almost any characters in the cantina scene actually do anything? No, but they all had their own action figures. I know because I had (have) those action figures.

The second thing to realize about Jar Jar is what exactly he is and what Star Wars in general is. Star Wars is, in fact, a serial. Rumor has it that Lucas's original idea was to remake Flash Gordon. He settled on an original property, instead, and at one point planned to make 12 episodes. In other words, an actual 12 chapter serial. What serial fans know about but the average movie fan doesn't is that the serials had a habit, especially in the 1930s, of tossing comic relief into the action. Republic serials, generally considered the best serials in the business, were also uniformly the worst at comic relief. From 1936-1938, they tried again and again, mostly with Smiley Burnette or a pair of yokels called Oscar and Elmer. Time and again, the problem with these characters came to the foreground. The serial would be moving along at a nice clip and then it would come screeching to a halt for the so called comedy act to do their shtick for two minutes, then things would continue. The comedy bits would nearly ruin otherwise great serials like The Painted Stallion. Certain B Westerns (Durango Kid) would have a similar problem with the film stopping dead for bad Country tunes to be sung.


Jar Jar was obviously built around those type of comics. That seems to be a primary reason why the story seems to stop for him to do some schtick or another. I will give Lucas this, however. Jar Jar's routines are infinitely shorter than Oscar and Elmer and there's at least an attempt to integrate his routines into what's going on.


Finally, there's the fact that he's not as totally useless as you may think. He does do some stuff in the trilogy beyond be a goof. He leads the heroes to the Gungans in Phantom Menace, which helps set up the battle of Naboo. He also ends up making Palpatine the Emperor by giving him Emergency Powers in Attack of the Clones. No, that wasn't a good thing for the heroes, but it does help explain how Palpatine becomes Emperor. Compare that to the character of Alfrid in The Hobbit trilogy: here's a character who does absolutely nothing but snivel and act cowardly and greedy. He has no redeeming moment saving Bard's kids nor does he end up dying like we pretty actively hope he does. Compared to that, Jar Jar is the greatest sidekick in movie history.

Interestingly, going back to point two for a moment, there were comic relief sidekicks in serials who did occassionally do something smart. Smiley Burnette fumbles his way through the first Dick Tracy serial, but does save Tracy on at least one occassion. So yeah, Jar Jar is clearly based off that type of character.


So lighten up. Besides, Phantom Menace has worse problems than just Jar Jar. But like I said, that's for another post.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: Inferno (1953)

There is a very odd thing about the existence of Roy Ward Baker's 3D color noir Inferno, and that is the fact that it was made by 20th Century Fox. When 3D movies went big in 1953, most studios eagerly jumped on the bandwagon. Fox, however, was putting their money on CinemaScope, a widescreen process where the image was roughly 2 1/2 times as wide as it was high. Fox did a ton of press for the new process and even snarkily referred to it as "The Modern Miracle You See Without Glasses". And then they turned around and made a movie that is not only one of the top 10 3D movies of the 1950s, it's a top 10 3D movie for all time.

Robert Ryan is Donald Carson III, an arrogant and not particularly likeable businessman. He goes on a trip to the desert with wife Geraldine (Rhonda Fleming) and speculator Joe Duncan (William Lundigan). What he doesn't know is that Geraldine and Duncan are lovers, so when he breaks his leg at the top of a cliff, they take the opportunity to make it look like he got drunk and ran off, effectively abandoning him to die in the desert. Carson realizes that if he's going to get back to civilization, it's going to be on his own.

The performances in this movie are great. Ryan does a lot with just a voice over and his facial expressions. The look of increasing desperation turns him into a more sympathetic character. While he starts the movie as fairly hateful, by halfway through we're completely on his side. In contrast are Fleming and Lundigan. While Lundigan is straight unapologetically evil, Fleming is far more sinister. She seems to be uncomfortable with what they've done, but is totally willing to abandon her lover in the desert the same as her husband. It's equally interesting since this isn't the type of role I'm used to seeing Fleming in. Those three are the majority of the film, but TV fans will get a kick out of seeing Larry Keating (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) as Carson's concerned business manager. Universal monster fans will equally enjoy seeing Henry Hull (Werewolf of London) as the desert old timer who ends up helping save Ryan in the end.

Inferno features one of the most stunning uses of 3D ever. Like several great 3D westerns of the era (Hondo, Gun Fury), the movie makes the most of its desert setting. The screen seems to stretch on forever, letting us know just how isolated Carson really is. There's one absolutely dizzying shot from the top of the cliff looking down that gives us a very good idea of just how precarious Ryan's position is. On top of that, the movie employs a trick that most 3D movies of the era did: concentrating on depth, but having gimmick shots during big movies. In fact, most of the gimmick shots in the movie show up during the climactic fight between Ryan and Lundigan. The only knock on the gimmick shots is when Ryan throws a lantern at the camera towards the end, it comes off a bit as a 3 Stooges style 3D effect.

U.K. company Panamint released Inferno on 3D Blu Ray last year, initially only Region B but later making it Region Free. The Blu Ray comes from a restoration done by the late Dan Symmes in which all the misalignments in the film were corrected. The result is a beautiful looking and practically perfect 3D Blu Ray of one of the all time great 3D movies. Only the credits are in reverse 3D and that's the way they were in the original film. Any true 3D fan needs this movie in their collection.