the groundhog day project

It occurs to me, sitting her with For Your Eyes Only playing once again, that I do not have much else to say about it. I think I've covered whatever my 5-year-old self got out of it. The hidden curriculum of James Bond, anyway. On the surface, I enjoyed it. If, watching this film, you have not seen too many thrillers or spy films just yet (which, me at five--I hadn't seen too many), it's well crafted enough to keep you paying attention. (Though, to be fair, there's no mystery to it, so there's no room for guessing. But anyway, I guess there is just this: Bond could have saved himself a lot of time by not going to Spain at all, just heading straight to Greece, finding the wrecked ship (or finding Havelock's notes without the aid of Melina, then finding the wrecked ship-- or better yet, he could have stayed home while a professional diving team working for MI6 goes to find it --and retrieving the ATAC device, and heading back to London... with maybe one...

Had a good day so far. Ran a Dungeons & Dragons game then came home to watch the Golden Globes. Now For Your Eyes Only is playing and I almost want to be brief, after livetweeting the Globes. So, there is this: James Bond, regardless of the version (though, to be fair, I have only read one of the novels, and it wasn't one of Ian Fleming's originals; it was John Gardner's novelization of Licence to Kill ), is a horrible role model for young boys. He's a womanizer who far too easily gets every woman he meets to fall for him. He's an expert at everything (so much so that it amuses me when he checks his map early in this film, as if James Bond does not have every street of, well, all of Spain already memorized), and there is never any actual chance that he might die. (Sharks won't even try to kill him when he is openly bleeding.) No one should ever try to be James Bond. But, so many boys--me included--looked (and look) up to him. It wasn't just an 80s t...

For Your Eyes Only today. (Though, I also saw In the Fade in the theater and watched The Wizard of Lies at home.) I've written about this film before . I wrote: Plotwise, like any Bond film, it is all over the place. But, that is what Bond films do. And, as a kid, sitting down for more than an hour and a half [correction, this movie is just over two hours], that's kind of what you need. Star Wars works because it jumps from location to location, setpiece to setpiece, introduces characters, kills them, introduces more. Throw in a session or two of offscreen sex with different partners, some complex Cold War politics and spy machinations, and you've got a Bond film. I wrote further about how parts of the plot (like Bond going to Spain) end up being pointless. But, the best part, when I was talking about how much more of a man James Bond (here, Roger Moore) is than any other man (cinematically, anyway), was this: And, he kicks a car down a cliff. Rambo never kicked a c...

I saw All the Money in the World today but I have nothing really to say about it. Performances were fine, but it was a bit too plot-driven to really offer any insight into the characters. Solid but nothing special. So, the next movie on my "movie life" childhood deconstruction list is For Your Eyes Only . I watched that once before for this blog when Roger Moore died. I will likely get to it tomorrow. Instead, I am watching Dave Made a Maze . I will save you the jump over to IMDb--though why anyone wouldn't want an excuse to jump over to IMDb, I don't know--and say it is about Dave (Nick Thune), who builds a cardboard box fort in his living room that turns out to be bigger on the inside. His friends go in after him, along with a documentary crew.           Rick Overton (Ralph from Groundhog Day ) plays a hobo that Dave's friend Gordon (Adam Busch) brings in because he says he knows cardboard.           There's a Minotaur...

Still 1981, but no James Bond today. Instead, we return to King Arthur. Excalibur . Now, I saw For Your Eyes Only in the theater, I'm fairly sure, and many times after on video. I do not actually remember the first time I watched Excalibur . I imagine it was on some Sunday afternoon on television, maybe a few years later. By the time I saw, it already knew about Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Sometime in the mid to late eighties (I think I lost my old collection of theater programs in one move or another, so I cannot check the exact date) I also saw the musical Camelot on stage several times. I'd read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and, presumably, other books about Arthur. I'd seen The Sword in the Stone on video (or would soon). So much of my knowledge about Arthuriana comes from vague memories that blend together over a few decades. Movies are like that, too. I forget what some movies are sometimes, or imagine movies that never existed....

Roger Moore died today. Last night, a bunch of people died in Manchester. I'd rather think about the former than the latter. So, I'm watching For Your Eyes Only . I grew up on this movie. Roger Moore was my James Bond. This one, Octopussy , A View to a Kill --I've seen these movies far too many times considering I never made a deliberate effort to watch them repeatedly (as I obviously have with other films). For Your Eyes Only , especially. It was on one of those first VHS tapes my family had. It was one of the movies we watched regularly. It has been a while since I last watched it, though. This very 80s (or really, 70s) music as Bond goes after Blofeld (who I never really had much context for when I was a kid and we'd watch this; he was just some bald guy who randomly tried to kill Bond and then Bond murdered him, and that alone is also so very 80s. Then the music video opening credits with vaguely naked women dancing in silhouette. (Visuals that meant very differen...