James Bond review: From Russia With Love (1963)

(For my other Bond reviews, and my apologia for the project, see the tags on the right.)

CUT TO THE CHASE: The best of the Connery Bonds. If that makes it, by definition, the best of the Bonds, so be it. You’ll get no argument from me.

BOND, JAMES BOND: The first movie was such a hit that the second one decides to get a little meta on us. They kill Bond off in the pre-title sequence. They don’t bring him back for another ten minutes. When they do, they play with the idea of Bond’s celebrity - SPECTRE’s ruse is of a Russian intelligence clerk who has fallen in love with the glamorous British agent. MI6 and Bond don’t believe it, and of course we know it’s a trap - but in the end of course that’s exactly what happens, the girl does fall in love with Bond. The point being: who wouldn’t?

“Suppose when she meets me in the flesh, I don’t come up to her expectations?” he says, when M shows him the girl’s picture. As if.

And that’s Bond all over: women want to be with him, men want to be him. Connery showed us why in the first movie, but the movie itself was not a perfect success; here he has a movie worthy of his Bond. And it only adds luster to his Bond.

We might note, however, that already we have one definitive change in Bond’s character. The brief hints of loneliness we got in Dr. No are snuffed out here, replaced by the bonhomie he shares with Kerim Bey. For the moment, though, that dark side is not missed: we’re too busy enjoying Bond’s luster, and his lust for life.

What Makes Bond Bond: “Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something.”

BAD GUYS: An embarrassment of riches here, deployed in interesting ways, before the Bond baddie became a formula. First and foremost we’ve got Robert Shaw as Grant, formidable and fun to watch; not as colorful as many later Bond villains, but the more believable because of it, and it makes the movie work.

He’s just the henchman, though; the real villain is the immortal Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb, ex-KGB, now working for SPECTRE. She’s suitably iron-clad and scary, but with a delicious hint of the sensuality and energy that must have filled her work with Kurt Weill. She’s one of the Bond series’ crowning glories, really - note the barest hint of sapphic interest she injects into Klebb’s appraisal of Tatiana.

But even Klebb is only a henchman. She works for SPECTRE, and for the first time we meet the head of that august organization. Or at least, we meet his hands. And his cat. A brilliant visual signature for the films, by the way, as evidenced by its ubiquity in Bond parodies. Later, of course, we’ll see a lot more of Blofeld, but he’ll never have the impact he does here.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Sylvia Trench is back (luv that name), the only time a Bond girl has made an encore appearance, although she’s really a minor Bond girl, and at least two other actresses have appeared twice, although as different characters.

We’ll pause to take note of the two gypsy girls Bond meets outside of Istanbul; the implied threesome is not only incredibly daring for 1963, it helps raise the gratuitous sex quotient of this film to a respectable four, among the highest of the series.

Of course the indelible Daniela Bianchi is the main Bond girl here, as Tatiana Romanova, the Russian spy who succumbs to Bond’s charms. Like Ursula Andress, Bianchi’s English was insufficient for the part, so her lines were looped by another actress. And looped well: that sultry voice is a big part of the character’s appeal. Another big part is quite small: that velvet choker. Vavavoom. Bianchi, with her Italian sophistication lurking just behind her character’s Russian sex-kitten veneer, is one of my favorite Bond girls.

AND VIOLENCE: Lots of memorable action sequences. Bond’s fistfight with Grant is a classic, the two of them thrashing around in the dark in the train, weird reflections in the shattered window and all. The assassination of Krilencu, as he crawls out between Anita Ekberg’s lips. Klebb’s shoes. The shoot-out in the gypsy camp. This movie is packed; it’s only here you realize how tentative Dr. No really was.

BOYS WITH TOYS: Q! For Quartermaster, of course. Only one real gadget, a tricky attache case. Naturally it comes in handy. But that’s hardly the point. The point is Bond’s attitude toward the whole thing: the politely concealed bemusement with which he listens to Q’s explanation of the gadgets, his game attempt to look relieved at having correctly followed the simple instructions. Bond uses the gadgets - he needs them - but he never welcomes them. He’s above them. Bond is not his gadgets.

Bond is a response to the late 20th-century crisis in masculinity, every bit as much as Fight Club was. But Bond doesn’t need Fight Club: as much as he loves his martinis, his suits, and later his cigars, he is not them.

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: The Orient Express: can’t get much more exotic a locale than that. Istanbul, Yugoslavia before it became the former Yugoslavia, and then Venice.

ETC.: If anything, the James Bond Theme is a bit overused here - people liked it in the first one, so they made sure we got enough of it this time. They still haven’t quite arrived at the full music formula, however: the opening title music is an instrumental, although a vocal version appears over the closing credits. There it’s sung, quite authoritatively, by Matt Monro… The title sequence itself is the first of the truly classic title sequences; it’s not Maurice Binder, but it’s a masterpiece of simplicity, logos projected onto belly dancers… No room for Felix Leiter, but Pedro Armendariz is the most memorable of all the Bond liaisons anyway… If you watch it right after Dr. No, and try to forget about the rest of the series, you realize this movie is, first and foremost, a sequel. From the way they overuse the music, to the way they take care to bring back even a throwaway character from the first film like Sylvia, to the way everything is bigger! and better! (more girls, more fights, more locations, more gunplay), it’s clear they’re doing what a sequel does, which is try to give the audience more of what they liked, with enough twists to keep it from feeling like the same thing. The marvel is that the sequel so far exceeded the original that more and more sequels became inevitable. This film was the pivotal one: Dr. No’s success ensured that this film got made, but if this film had failed, I wouldn’t be writing a series of James Bond reviews.

RATING: 007

Baltimore Basilica

Me and Mrs. Sgt. Tanuki were in Baltimore for the Thanksgiving holiday. While there spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the Mt. Vernon area, and we ended up at the Baltimore Basilica.

Like the city it graces, the Basilica is off the beaten path for most tourists, but it's one of the great buildings the Tanuki has seen in this country. Take a look here, and read up on its history here.

In brief, it was designed in 1805 by Benjamin Latrobe, who also designed the U.S. Capitol. The Basilica uses a lot of the same ideas: classical columns and a dome inspired by the Pantheon. All of this gives the exterior an unexpected look for a cathedral.

The interior is just as surprising. The ornamentation is not exactly minimalist, but definitely understated. Most remarkable is the color scheme, which has recently been restored to Latrobe's original vision: lots of white, with delicate pink and blue accents. In all, it's entirely different from, say, the shadowy, suggestive depths of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, or the dizzying detail on every interior surface of the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis, or the colorful Southwestern primitivism of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City (which happen to be the other important U.S. cathedrals the Tanuki has visited).

The windows complete the vision. Evidently the Basilica had stained glass windows until a recent restoration, but that wasn't what Latrobe had originally intended, and in the renovation they went back to the clear glass windows he had called for. As a result, the interior is flooded with calm white light which interacts with Latrobe's airy color scheme to create an atmosphere of lightness and glory. It uplifts you, gently, rather than overwhelming you. The Old Cathedral in St. Louis has something of the same feel, with its clear windows and delicately modulated colors, but architecturally, that building feels little different than a normal church. The Baltimore Basilica is unmistakably monumental.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it feels closest to some of the monuments and early government buildings in D.C. It shares the same vision of rationality and spirituality supporting each other, and finding expression in an aesthetic that is at once direct and elegant.

It's one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been in.

Jethro Tull Mk. 1.5 / Mk. 2

So Mick Abrahams departed after the first album was recorded, and Jethro Tull Mk. 1 was no more. Jethro Tull Mk. 2 would happen when they found a long-term replacement, but in the meantime, as, let's call it Jethro Tull Mk. 1.5, they did two things.

They recorded one song without a lead guitarist: "A Christmas Song," released as the b-side of the Abrahams-led "Love Story." (See our comments on this song in our discussion of Jethro Tull Mk. 1, here.) "A Christmas Song" in fact doesn't seem to include any Tulls but Ian Anderson: the flute in the fade-in (carolers wandering up to the door, so to speak) must be him, and he's probably playing the stringed instrument (mandolin?) that backs up his vocal throughout the song. The other instrumentation is orchestral, no doubt courtesy of David Palmer, whose work with the band had begun with the horns on "Move On Alone" and would continue for many years thereafter. The drums may be Clive Bunker, but they don't sound like him. The song is a pithy, moralistic take on Christmas revelry, beginning with an ironic quote of the first verse of the carol "Once In Royal David's City" and proceeding to rake merrymakers over the coals. A Christmas classic, and a long way from the blueswailing - well, blueswhimpering - of the first album.

The second thing Tull one-and-a-half did was to experiment, for about five minutes, with adding guitarist Tony Iommi. Yes, mister Black Sabbath his own abaddonic self. They never recorded together, but Iommi did appear with Tull in the tapings for the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. They're only miming to the studio version, unfortunately, but the video's worth watching anyway, to get a sense of how weird, yet cool, Tull were at this point. Later they'd be weird and geeky.

Abrahams's real replacement would be Martin Barre, who plays with Tull to this day. As a guitarist I've never been able to quite put my finger on him. He's played some really deathless rock leads over the course of his career, some solos that can stand up to any amount of air guitar, and yet I've never felt compelled to rank him among the Great Guitarists. Maybe I underrate him out of a sense that he was only playing what Ian told him to. Maybe it's just his Friar Tuck Goes to the Riviera look. Anyway, that underratability in 1969, with Tull Mk. 2.

They made their bow with a non-album single: "Living In The Past" backed by "Driving Song." "Driving" is forgettable, but "Living In The Past" was a real achievement. A catchy groove that just happened to be in five, probably in homage to Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." Cool jazzy flute, and Barre on effective rhythm guitar. The whole thing is quite understated, and incredibly listenable. The lyrics aren't quite a statement of purpose, but may have been a reiteration of the aesthetic behind the cover of the first album: they were never quite a retro band, but neither were they ever really fashionable. Aware of the past, or rather determined not to be dictated to by the present.

Tull Mk. 2, then, was Ian Anderson on flute, acoustic guitar and such, and vocals; Martin Barre on guitar (and occasional flute, at first); Glenn Cornick on bass; and Clive Bunker on drums. They made one album together, and manage to avoid the sophomore slump by dint of the fact that this was in more ways than one a different band than had been heard before. Not only did they have a new guitarist: Anderson was now running the show. He'd stolen the handle, and the train wouldn't slow down.

Stand Up sounds like Ian Anderson's own personal version of the White Album. That is, if you hear the White Album as each Beatle staking a claim to his own style, or styles, his own metier; Stand Up is Ian doing that for himself. And, like the White Album, it sounds less like an album than a collection of songs in widely disparate styles. Look, ma, no rules.

It seems to have two of everything. You've got two electric bluesy things, featuring Barre's take on the blooz. They're not up to the mark of the blues things on the first album; they sound very British, very much like a second rate Cream. Still, they're catchy tunes, well performed, and they tend to show up on Tull compilations. "A New Day Yesterday" is the slow one; "Nothing Is Easy" is the fast one.

You've got two dreamy acoustic ballads, "Reasons For Waiting" and "Look Into The Sun." They're pretty interchangeable; "Look" has some tasteful electric guitar accents, while "Reasons" has a nice Hammond organ part and strings. If you dig Anderson's acoustic side (and I do), these are about as perfect a pair of specimens as you could ask for.

You've got two turbocharged fusiony rockers. "For A Thousand Mothers" never did all that much for me, but "Back To The Family" does; it introduces the light/heavy alternation that Anerson would exploit so effectively in the future. Here it trades between a gentle, seductive mid-tempo groove and a frenetic up-tempo passage; they're meant to illustrate the singer's successive frustration with living alone and living with his family. He gets stressed out either way, but hey, we can always jam... This is Barre's finest moment on the record. He gets a real nice sound in both the quiet and the loud sections, and the fact that he lacks Mick's blues credibility serves him well here, leading him into something a little more original. Straight rock, a hardness that would come, in time, to cast him as Anderson's main foil.

Other songs of note. Jeffrey makes a reappearance in "Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square," a
skipping little number that does indeed sound like "A Song For Jeffrey" revisited. It's arranged, rather than played, though, with very carefully chosen percussion notes and guitar lines. One imagines it would have been hard to pull off onstage. Its spiritual twin is "Fat Man," another acoustic number, but this one very fast. When I was younger and thinner I thought it a rather cruel lyric, and imagined Anderson was using obesity as a metaphor for wealth and property (the rich man and the eye of the needle, and all that); now I'm inclined to think fat represents fat.

What's left? Ah, yes, "Bourée." Jethro Tull does Bach. Here's an account of what a bourée is and where in Bach's ouevre this one can be found. Tull's take starts out fairly straight, then jazzes it up, with a superb Anderson solo followed by a great Cornick solo. As an idea (classical meets jazz), Bill Evans and others got there first, but not necessarily better.

This was probably the first indication that Tull's road would lead them to be classified as prog. But we must remember that there really wasn't any such thing in 1969. The idea was there: combine the freedom and new possibilities of rock with art musics such as classical or jazz as a way of furthering one's aesthetic horizons. Experiment, and see where it takes you. And really, how can you argue with that? Later there would be excess, and more significantly there would be ossification into a genre, with all the predictability that implies. But that hadn't happened yet in 1969. Instead, you had all sorts of groups, on both sides of the Atlantic, reacting to each other and, of course, to the ever-expanding Beatles, by trying new things. That's all Tull was doing.

So what else did Tull Mk. 2 do? One live track has been released, the Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee "To Be Sad Is A Mad Way To Be." It appeared in 1993 on the 25th Anniversary Collection box, but it's nothing to really write home about.

They also left one more non-album single: "Sweet Dream" backed by "17." "Sweet Dream" is Tull with horns (back to the John Evans Band idea?). A bombastic rocker, and I mean that as a compliment. But the b-side is, I believe, Tull 2's finest moment. A fairly simple melody, a mid-tempo groove, but played as loudly and raucously as Tull ever managed to be. The first and only time you could really imagine them as a party band. Cornick and Bunker pull this Stax-ish groove seemingly out of nowhere, Barre matches them with some Steve Cropper unleashed licks, and even Ian manages to sound soulful. Fantastic. You'd hardly guess it was Jethro Tull.

James Bond review: Quantum of Solace (2008)

CUT TO THE CHASE: Daniel Craig is still not James Bond. Uh-oh.

BOND, JAMES BOND: As I’d expected, the filmmakers do show Bond picking up some of the character traits that define him as Bond – they’re sticking with the Bond and How He Got That Way idea. It’s nice to see him obsessing over his newly-discovered favorite drink, for example, and insisting on staying in the nicest hotel in La Paz.

But they’ve elected to present Bond as still something of a work in progress here. No surprise, since this movie picks up right where the last one left off: the character hasn’t had more than about ten minutes to grow. But it means that yet again we’re stuck watching a Bond film about a guy who’s only intermittently Bondian. That could be almost forgiven for one film; two and we begin to suspect the producers simply don’t like James Bond anymore.

Craig hasn’t grown on me. He still makes suits look good, but he still looks too tough-guy for the role. And we begin to suspect, in this film, that the reason this Bond gets so little action is because Craig has so little sexual magnetism. His one sack scene here (see below) is quite forced. Rupert Everett once said he wanted to be the first gay James Bond; I’d be fine with that. But a sexless one?

On the other hand, Craig’s good at the darkness and seriousness this script demands of him. It requires that he play the bereaved lover on a tear of vengeance – recall Sean Connery doing this in the beginning of Diamonds Are Forever. But there it was a five-minute montage meant to transition into the new story, and when it was done Bond regained his old poise, not to mention his libido. Here Craig’s asked to keep up the brooding for the whole film. And it gets a bit old.

The main problem is that Quantum of Solace really wants to be The Bourne Supremacy. Now, I rather enjoyed The Bourne Supremacy, but in a way it was the antithesis of Bond. For the Bond franchise to want to be the Bourne franchise is for the Bond franchise to forget why people fell in love with Bond in the first place. We want Bond to be poised, not clenched; sardonic, not grim. Quantum’s Bond is Jason Bourne with a better wardrobe.

In fact, we’re back in License to Kill territory here. Bond seeks revenge; Bond goes rogue; Bond gets far too serious for anybody’s good.

VILLAIN AND VILLAINY: Mathieu Amalric as Dominic Greene. He works for a group called Quantum, about which little has yet been revealed, although they essentially seem to be an updating of SPECTRE. A welcome development, but like everything else here they’re pretty colorless. Greene’s plot is basically to corner the market on water in Bolivia. We’re in Syriana territory here, striving for a realistic take on contemporary geo-ecopolitics. Might have even worked, except…it’s in Bolivia.

Amalric is serviceable, although the script doesn’t give him much of a character to play – just another generic Eurotrash villain. A little too handsome and breezy, but no menace. And he doesn’t have any memorable henchmen.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Two Bond girls here. Our Girl in Bolivia, Fields (supposedly her first name is Strawberry, which is cool, except it never happens in the actual film), has antecedents in Tomorrow Never Dies and The Man with the Golden Gun: MI6 agent sent to control Bond, ends up succumbing to his charms. Gemma Atherton is attractive, wicked cute in that flasher coat, and Bond dutifully beds her. Dutifully is the word: clearly he’s seducing her so she’ll go along with his plans. Fair enough: but he doesn't seem to enjoy it.

The other Bond girl here is Olga Kurylenko as Camille. Kurylenko is sexy enough, but she’s underutilized, so to speak. We could have used a bit of Prince’s Camille here, but instead we get a Bond girl who’s just as focused on her revenge as Bond is on his. Result: they’re basically just fellow-travelers. No sparks, no moves put on anybody by anybody – not even after the deeds are all done. Doesn’t have to be that way: Tilly Masterson, anyone? But it is.

Another dismal outing in the Bond babe department.

AND VIOLENCE: The action sequences were the best part of Casino Royale. They’re the worst part of Quantum of Solace. They’re overedited. Too much shaky handheld camera work taking too many tight shots which are sliced up into too many one-second cuts. You simply can’t figure out what the hell’s going on most of the time.

Again, this technique has its place, and that place, recently, has been in the Bourne films. It works there because it serves the theme: that spy work is ugly, chaotic, and dangerous. If we can’t quite follow what’s going on, that’s okay: the characters can’t, either. That’s the kind of world it is.

That’s never been the way of it with Bond. And lest we conclude I’m just too much of a conservative to accept any innovation, let me say that I could go for a Bond that elected to show a realistic view of espionage. But the action sequences in this film, if you watch closely, involve a very Bondian level of design: just as many elaborate jumps and falls and dodges as ever, over just as wide an array of improbable obstacles as ever. If the goal was to give us down-and-dirty fights, nobody let the stunt designers in on it. But if the goal was to give us classic Bond action, the editors destroyed it in the cutting room.

BOYS WITH TOYS: No Q. No gadgets at all. Nifty computers don’t count anymore, now do they?

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: Austria, yes. Bolivia…

Bolivia?

ETC.: How in the holy name of Shirley Bassey did they manage to make Alicia Keys sound unsexy? …The title sequence, however, is once again brilliant, with a stoner seventies Hipgnosis vibe. Like, cool, man. …Who’s idea was it to announce each new location with a different jokey typeface? It’s like me in 1994 playing with fonts in WordPerfect… I’ve been pretty harsh on Quantum, I know, but let me say there are things I like. Chief among them is the whole Austria sequence. This is what Bond should be: it’s stylish and tense, with Bond in control, just the right amount of violence, and it’s all presented in an innovative way, against a performance of Tosca. The camera work here is brilliant, bordering on abstract in places – it transcends the genre, in a good way. …All told, though, I miss Q. I miss Moneypenny. And I miss Bond, dammit.

RATING: 003

James Bond review: Casino Royale (2006)

(I'm not going to be posting my Bond reviews in any kind of order.)

CUT TO THE CHASE: Daniel Craig is not James Bond. Yet.

BOND, JAMES BOND: After four straight installments in which Bond was, as in the 1960s, the Aston-Martin of action films, the martini of spy flicks, we’re back to the 1970s, when 007 was imitating rather than imitated. This is a nod to Batman Begins, “rebooting” the franchise by telling the character’s origin story, with a younger actor who will hopefully bring in the kids. It’s a nice idea in theory, but it means that Daniel Craig spends most of the film actively not being Bondian—it’s only in the last scene, when he shoots Mr. White in the leg and the Monty Norman theme finally kicks in, that we’re meant to think, that guy’s James Bond!

So we have the odd experience of having to wait through two hours of a Bond film for Bond to finally make his appearance. As I say, it’s not a bad idea in theory—by all means, give us his back story, give us personal details, give us a human Bond—but give us Bond. This movie works (mostly) as a movie, but fails (mostly) as an iteration of the Myth of James Bond. And that’s what you go to see a Bond movie for, isn’t it?

No doubt it’s unfair to complain that Daniel Craig isn’t a very good Bond—he’s not supposed to be. This film is full of nods to the classic Bond persona—the way he discovers how he likes his martinis, for example, or how to dress for dinner—so it’s a cinch that the next film will try to give us more Bond as we know and love him. And that’ll be the appropriate time to judge whether or not Craig stands up. But hell, I’ll complain anyway: he’s not Bond. More to the point, I didn’t see much in this film to convince me that Craig can be Bond. I’ll admit, I was one of those who thought he was miscast from the start. I was rooting for Clive Owen, if they absolutely weren’t going to keep Brosnan. Nevertheless, I tried to go into this with an open mind, and I still came out of it feeling he was miscast. Craig is a fine actor, maybe the best to play Bond, but he’s simply wrong for the part. He’s gritty where Bond should be clean, awkward where Bond should be suave, blonde where Bond should be black-haired. He’s musclebound. As Bond he spends too much time in this film in chinos, not enough in tuxedos. And he plays poker. And he leaves the girl before he’s had her (see below).

He’s just what the producers were looking for, evidently; evidently they don’t understand Bond anymore.

VILLAIN AND VILLAINY: Le Chiffre is the main opponent, but we don’t really find this out until halfway through, and even then, we’re constantly being reminded that he’s just a middleman. It’s only at the end that we start to come into contact with some of the shadowy people who are the real bad guys. This is a big departure for the series, showing Bond engaging in some more or less plausible espionage - garden-variety terrorists, not Napoleonic madmen. This is what I always thought I wanted in a Bond—but now that we have it I’m not so sure that I like it. It’s probably a nod to the Bourne movies, but those work because their spies are supposed to be faceless characters in a faceless world. Real-life espionage is the work of bureaucrats, even the shooting. That aesthetic doesn’t transplant well into the Bond universe. This film doesn't work nearly as hard as the Bournes do to make the spywork believable—we’re still clearly in the realm of spy fantasy—and so maybe we need larger-than-life villains, after all.

All of which is by way of saying that le Chiffre is fun, but he doesn’t cast a particularly long shadow. No memorable evil henchmen, either. As unBondian as Bond is here, he’s still more colorful than le Chiffre, and that throws the myth out of whack. Bond needs a worthy opponent.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Only two Bond girls here, Caterina Murino as Solange and Eva Green as Vesper Lynd. Both are extremely forgettable. This has got to be the worst lot of Bond girls yet. Murino spends most of her scenes wrapped in this ludicrous dress, and then Bond leaves her arms to chase a bad guy—before they have sex. Green, meanwhile, has a silly overbite and a strange accent—she’s French but her speech ranges wildly between Irish and Cockney and…is that Russian? Who knows. She’s supposed to be a serious romantic involvement for Bond—if we’re meant to think of any earlier film here it’s OHMSS—but Eva Green looks like a scrawny schoolgirl next to Diana Rigg.

But let’s get back to that bit about Bond interrupting coitus to do his job. What, we are forced to ask, is with that? He does eventually get some, with Vesper—but that’s only after he’s fallen in love with her. Which means that there is no gratuitous sex in this film.

Need I say more?

AND VIOLENCE: Now, the action sequences, on the other hand, really work. Instead of finding new vehicles for Bond to trash, they have him on foot for most of the movie (well, they compromise and put him in a bulldozer for a few seconds). Lots of brilliantly choreographed running and jumping, fantastic stunts on an unfinished skyscraper in Madagascar. A fight on a staircase that’s probably the best fisticuffs the series has seen since the elevator fight in Diamonds Are Forever.

BOYS WITH TOYS: No Q. No Q.

But, worst of both worlds, that doesn’t mean they lose the silly gadgets. Just that they try to be utterly serious about them. They give him a portable defibrillator that—surprise, surprise—turns out to be just what Bond needs. If we’re going to have cheese like that, why can’t we have John Cleese to give it to us?

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: Decent selection of locations. Madagascar is a first; the Bahamas isn’t. Montenegro is a first; Venice isn’t. The emphasis isn’t really on the scenery, though. Meaning none of the locales, with the exception of Montenegro for the casino sequence, are really used for much effect.

ETC.: Chris Cornell’s title song is pleasant but not very memorable. Not as stylish as it needs to be. And the choice of him as a singer is kind of out-of-touch (“Hey, let’s get somebody really young and cutting-edge for the theme song—I know, how about a grunge singer!”). The title sequence is fantastic, though—one of the best in the series, a very modish animation… I try not to compare the films to the books, but I have to note that they changed the baccarat to poker, which kind of sums up what’s wrong with this version of Bond… Not only did they lose Q, they lost Moneypenny, not to mention a few minor characters that had made recurring appearances in the Brosnan Bonds. On the other hand, they brought back Felix Leiter. On the third hand, that just makes me miss Jack Lord. …While I’m still open to the possibility that the next Bond will redeem this one, on its own terms Casino Royale is hardly a Bond at all. But it was still better than License to Kill.

RATING: 004

Jethro Tull Mk. 0 / Mk. 1

The Tanuki was a prog-rock nerd in high school. He's not proud; he's not ashamed. He just is.

Every once in a while he gets in a prog-rock mood again, and tonight it was Jethro Tull.

The thing to understand about Jethro Tull is that they weren't a band. This is true of a lot of the prog acts, but in the case of Tull, it's doubly true. In one sense they were always Ian Anderson's solo project, augmented by the musicians he employed to carry out his vision. In another sense, you could argue that those musicians were at least as important to the end product as Ian was, in which case we realize that Jethro Tull was not a band, but several in succession, all bearing the same name.

Jethro Tull Mark Zero consisted of Ian Anderson on vocals, John Evans on keyboards, Glenn Cornick on bass, Barriemore Barlow on drums, and Neil Smith (Chick Murray) on guitar. They weren't actually called Jethro Tull, but the John Evan Band (or the John Evan Smash). They were a Blackpool-based soul band, with horns. The only thing that's ever been released by this lineup is a song called "Aeroplane," which showed up on the b-side of the first Jethro Tull Mk. 1 single, and was subsequently released on CD on the 1988 box set 20 Years Of Jethro Tull (now out of print, but well worth hunting down).

"Aeroplane" was originally recorded with horns; they were mixed out for the release, since the band the song was credited to did not have horns, but if you listen close you can still hear them in the background. It's a groovy little record: very 1967, with its spacey, post-Sgt. Pepper feel and its harpsichord break. But it's also surprisingly - well, soulful, with a funky piano-based setting for a nice graceful melody. An essential track by this lineup - of course, it's the only track by this lineup.

Jethro Tull Mk. 1 consisted of Anderson, Cornick, Mick Abrahams on guitar, and Clive Bunker on drums. They recorded the a-side of the "Aeroplane" single, "Sunshine Day" (this single was mistakenly credited to Jethro "Toe"); a b-side called "One For John Gee;" another non-album a-side called "Love Story;" and an album, This Was, all in 1968.

At this stage Tull was not prog. There really wasn't any such thing as prog yet. What Tull were was a British r&b/blues band, in the same tradition as John Mayall, Cream, the Stones, and hordes of others. Tull were latecomers to the British blues scene; rather more country-blues oriented, with a healthy admixture of jazz, and a distinctly underground sensibility (dig the old-man cosplay on the cover of This Was: they were almost as much rebels against their generation as were The Band).

There's enough here to start to consider them as a band.

Ian Anderson wasn't yet the be-all and end-all: this really was a band. He was the lead singer, of course, but occasionally his vocals are doubled (probably by Mick Abrahams, although the tone of the second voice is so close to Ian's that it's possible Ian's doubling his own vocals); he also played flute and harmonica. But Mick Abrahams' agile guitar work is at least as much the focus here, and the Cornick/Bunker engine more than holds its own place in the spotlight.

Cornick here is a serviceable bassist; behind songs he holds down the chords adequately, only really shining when he gets a rare solo spot, or when he breaks into the walking figure he likes so much. Bunker's a bit of a basher, untidy in a way that lends the whole proceedings a refreshing looseness. Together, however, they can swing a little more authentically than I've heard any British band of the era pull off. The jazzy aspect of Tull Mk. 1 is showcased on the album in their cover of Roland Kirk's "Serenade To A Cuckoo," but I think is best heard in the b-side "One For John Gee." This concise instrumental really cooks: moves right along through a pleasant Wes Montgomery-ish theme, through solo spots for all, and back into the theme, just like a real jazz group. They're not quite that, but they're close.

The album tracks focus more on the blues aspect, although the best of their blues may be the non-album "Sunshine Day." Entirely fluteless (not a rare thing for Tull in '68), it speeds along at a breakneck pace, with a show-stopping guitar breakdown in the middle.

The whole album's good, but I rate the essential tracks to be: "My Sunday Feeling," more groovy jazz-blues, although with a slightly distracting mix, with Ian's vocals way over in the left channel, with far more echo than the rest of the instruments - you can really hear the room. "Someday The Sun Won't Shine For You," just a double-tracked vocal, a solo fingerpicked electric guitar, and a nifty harmonica part; very effective country blues. "Beggar's Farm," a tightly composed song based on a droning bass / guitar arrangement; this is the Mk. 1 song that sounds most like glory-years Tull. "Move On Alone" is a short soul number with Mick on vocals and somewhat hotel-lounge-sounding horns; it works. "Cat's Squirrel" is essentially Jethro Tull as power trio, taking on Cream and beating them (well, at least their arrangement of this tune is better than Cream's). "Round" is just that, a jazzy melody played as a round for less than a minute, but it's fun.

The non-album a-side, "Love Story," came out after the album, and shows the band moving toward the sound they'd arrive at on their next album - you can hear it in the folk-rock guitar and conga mix of the main hook. Overall, better production values, much less of an improvisational feel, much less blues focus. It's very nice, though, with good spring-loaded guitar sounds; whatever tensions caused Mick to depart before they could record a b-side aren't really apparent in the recording.

I haven't yet mentioned my favorite track from Tull Mk. 1, which is "A Song For Jeffrey." This was the first non-toe single, and it also featured on the album, but the definitive version was recorded for the BBC and released on 20 Years (it's currently available on the remastered version of Aqualung, of all places), complete with plummy BBC announcer voiceover. The sound on this recording is fantastic, much fuller than anything they got in the studio in this period, and the song has a lot more energy than the studio version. The bass here is impossibly fat in its duet sections with the flute, and then when the main groove kicks in, it has so much kick that it always makes me want to get up and pogo around the room (don't imagine that). It's a weird groove, behind a weird, old-before-his-time Anderson vocal. Weirder than I think the band realized at the time; later, they'd self-consciously strive for weird, but it wouldn't be half as truly crazy as this.

Jethro Tull Mk. 1 may well have been the best edition of the band. At the very least, it's the least nerdy. The version I can enjoy even when I'm not in high-school-nostalgic, prog-rock-geek mode.

James Bond review: Dr. No (1962)

CUT TO THE CHASE: Not the best Bond, but it was the first. We bow to that.

BOND, JAMES BOND: The scene in which Connery is introduced is immortal. First the back of his head at the baccarat table, then his hands, then a woman gazing at him flirtatiously; then we hear his voice, and finally, we see his face as he says, “Bond, James Bond.” Connery owns the role from this moment until whatever time he chooses to relinquish it. Hell, he could play Bond today and still make it work… In this first movie, the character has more than a few hints of darkness. Now, pay attention to the scene in which he first returns to his hotel room after the day’s activities. He checks his traps, finds that people have been in the room, starts to pour himself some vodka, realizes that bottle has probably been poisoned, then without batting an eye takes out a spare and pours from that. Then he sits down and drinks - alone. There’s a certain hint of stoic sadness here that would almost completely disappear from the series hereafter. It adds depth; does Bond need depth? We don’t profess to know, but it’s a nice touch here… Check also his utterly dispassionate dispatch of Dent. Killing an unarmed man and not flinching or weeping. Right away we realize what it means to have a license to kill. Heady stuff for 1962.

BAD GUYS: Max Wiseman does a great job at Dr. No, making of him the template for all Bond baddies to come: mysterious evil genius bent on ruling the world, but also educated, sophisticated, a lover of the finer things in life - he comes to feel that perhaps only Bond can understand him. Of course, his plot is never explained very clearly (what in the hell does he expect to gain by “toppling” things anyway?), and nothing in his lab ever matches the weird modernist menace of his interrogation room. He also lacks a henchman—that part of the pattern wouldn’t fall into place until the third movie… Dr. No, you’ll recall, works for SPECTRE - the Special Executive for Counterrevolution, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. Most of the Bond villains of the Connery era do - and none thereafter. Does anybody else miss SPECTRE?

GRATUITOUS SEX: There are Bond girls and there are girls who are in Bond films. A true Bond girl sleeps with Bond, or at least has some sort of erotic entanglement. There are also lots of pretty girls that show up in the scenery (here that would include Dr. No’s photographer spy, the hotel receptionist, and Dent’s secretary), but in my world only the ones Bond beds get to be called Bond girls. Here we have three: Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder, Zena Marshall as Miss Taro, and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench, even though she only appears in the first couple of scenes. Needless to say it’s Andress, rising out of the sea like Venus in that white bikini, who defines what it means to be a Bond girl. Details: it’s the knife belt, as much as anything, that does it. Miss Taro and Sylvia are also quite wonderful in that early-sixties voluptuous manner, but no one can touch Ursula (even if that isn’t really her voice)… We must make special mention here of Moneypenny, who is neither strictly wallpaper nor quite, ever, a Bond girl. Lois Maxwell plays the character perfectly, and it’s quite easy to believe their banter in these early movies…

AND VIOLENCE: The assassinations in this movie are well-staged - the initial one of Strangways, and Bond’s of Dent. The fistfights are nice. But the climactic scene doesn’t feel very climactic forty years later. A couple of explosions, some claxions, and that’s it. Plus, nobody seems to worry that Bond has started a nuclear meltdown there on Crab Key - aren’t those kinda dangerous?

BOYS WITH TOYS: The gadgets are not really an element of this movie. Low-tech is the byword here. However, the business with the Walther is a defining Bond moment: we must know what kind of gun the man uses… On the other hand, the “dragon” is just silly.

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: Only one Exotic Location in this film, making it feel a bit cheap in retrospect, although I'm sure it didn't feel like that at the time. For anybody like me whose image of Jamaica was formed mostly by The Harder They Come, it’s quite a shock to see it imagined like this…

ETC.: Monty Norman’s theme music is here right from the start, and my is it wonderful. Breathtaking. Pulse-pounding. Yeah, baby. There isn’t a theme song per se, although “Under the Banana Tree” does show up at key moments, and a pleasantly calypsified “Three Blind Mice” eases us out of the opening credits… The Maurice Binder visuals in the title sequence are mesmerizing, if primitive compared with what was to come… Jack Lord was the best Felix Leiter of them all: about this there can be no debate… In the end, though, this movie has always felt a little long to me. The action was undoubtedly eye-opening for the time, but hasn’t aged well. And Dr. No’s Evil Plot is so sketchily drawn that it’s hard to really find any menace in him – charm, yes; menace, no… All told, a promising beginning, but not a perfect one.

RATING: 005