Aretha at the Inauguration

Here she is. It was good all the way through, but the first verse just sent me. That's what you call godly sorrow.

James Bond review: Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

CUT TO THE CHASE: A very Vegas Bond.

BOND, JAMES BOND: Lazenby leaves. Poor schmuck. The producers lure Connery back for one last fling.

The pre-title sequence makes much of this, but in a puzzling way. It’s sort of a montage of Bond chasing Blofeld through a number of exotic locales and luckless informants. The first of these encounters is in Japan, which immediately puts us in mind of You Only Live Twice – are we meant to assume OHMSS never happened? Possibly, although the fury with which Bond is chasing Blofeld now seems to imply that Bond harbors a personal grudge stemming from the events in OHMSS. Regardless, we’re not given enough to establish any real continuity, which is probably a good thing. In any case, the point here is that we don’t see Bond’s face during the first couple of these encounters – it’s all point-of-view shots until we reach the third informant, Marie. She’s lounging in the sun in a bikini. She looks up at the camera approaching, says, “Who are you?” And then we see Connery walking toward us, saying, “My name is Bond – James Bond.” They’re reintroducing him, as if he were a new actor in the role, but of course he’s not, so this becomes a big applause line.

Hell, I’ll bite. As much as I love George, I can’t argue with the chance to see Connery once again display his inimitable charm.

He looks considerably older here than he did his last time out – older than four years should be able to explain. And some of the details of his look are wacky. Sideburns? A great look, but not for Bond. Brown suits and pink ties? Not a great look, but Connery pulls it off. Some of the other looks, the leisure suits and open-necked shirts? Not so much.

But it doesn’t matter. ‘Cause it’s Vegas, baby. This should be a problem. I’ll have more to say about when Bond movies adopt other idioms: I think they get mixed results at best. And I also tend not to like it when Bond goes to America – see my review of Goldfinger. This film is the exception that proves the rule, and it’s because they figured out how Bond deals with Vegas and all its crassness. He saunters through it, in the full knowledge that he’s above it. It’s the Bond equivalent of a Sinatra show at the Sands, where the singer’s aesthetic is to make it look like he’s not trying to hard. Casual, loose, ‘cause what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, baby. And ‘cause all that charm is even more charming when you see, or think you see, that he doesn’t have to work for it. It’s all natural. Baby.

This looseness makes this one of the less coherent Bonds, but at the same time it allows Connery’s performance to be one of his most enjoyable. Again, Sinatra at the Sands: you’ve won a big wad, you’ve got a sexy dame on your arm and a martini in your hand, and Old Blue Eyes is on stage. Does it really matter what he’s singing?

What Makes Bond Bond: He’s an expert craps player, but he doesn’t mind letting the lady roll for him. And doesn’t seem to care when she loses. But he takes the rest of the rolls himself. And wins.

What Makes Sean Connery Sean Connery: When he finally decides he’s tired of waiting for an appointment to see Willard Whyte, Bond, in a tuxedo, strolls out onto his balcony and steps onto the roof of the outdoor elevator, riding it up to the penthouse. The camera slowly pulls back to show us Bond standing on this elevator hundred of feet above the ground. He looks utterly casual about it. But what makes the moment is the way he sniffs the flower in his lapel as he steps onto the elevator.

BAD GUYS: Charles Gray plays Blofeld this time, and he’s utterly bad. He has no dignity – gone is the sense that Blofeld must be classy enough and together enough to make a worthy enemy for Bond. He has no menace either. And of course no neck.

He is fun to watch, however. He’s nothing but a big neckless trapezoid in a Nehru jacket, but he struts around like he owns the joint. And when he appears in drag – well, I defy you to find a more sublimely ridiculous moment this side of Monty Python.

His Nefarious Scheme is to make a killer satellite and use it to hold the world to ransom; it must have been a great idea, because they recycled it for Goldeneye. Here, though, it has holes you could drive a truck through, or at least a moon buggy. Like, I suppose I can buy the conceit that he needs diamonds to construct it, but if he’s trying to keep it secret, why kill everybody who comes in contact with the diamonds? ‘Cause nothing throws the authorities off the scent like a string of murders across three continents.

We’re back to the formula with a vengeance in the Evil Henchman department. Messrs. Wint and Kidd, the assassins who just happen to be gay, are among the most memorable baddies ever to grace a Bond film. Their droll banter, their odd look (Kidd’s hair!), their impeccable timing. All hail Putter Smith and Bruce Glover.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Jill St. John as Tiffany Case knows what it means to be a Bond girl. It means prancing around your apartment in your almost-altogether, and sneering that you don’t dress for the hired help. It means engaging in some very skeevy double entendres (and she gets almost as many good lines as Bond).

Lana Wood knows what it means to be a Bond girl, too. It means leaning precariously over the craps table while wearing an expression that just couldn’t be any more unassuming. And setting Bond up for undoubtedly the skeeviest double entendre of the series so far. Drum roll, please… “Named after your father, perhaps?”

Both are sexy in an overripe way that sets them apart from both the International Supermodel look of the Thunderball girls and the Natural Look that would prevail for the rest of the decade’s Bond girls. Hey, this is Vegas: hubba-hubba, and all that. Between St. John and Wood we have almost more lusciousness than we know what to do with.

Or than Bond knows what to do with, evidently, because for all that, the film ends up with a GS quotient of only 1. Frustrating – but that’s Vegas for you.

AND VIOLENCE: The fight on the elevator in Amsterdam is one of the best action sequences in the series so far. It was evidently quite a trick to film it in such a close space, which makes it a technical innovation, but with uncharacteristic subtlety: onscreen it just looks like two guys throwing punches at each other. But it’s taut, visceral, exciting.

BOYS WITH TOYS: Another Q field trip, to Vegas this time. The gadgets themselves in this film are fairly understated – some prosthetic fingertips here, a belt-rigged climbing cable there. But Q’s slot-machine joy buzzer is memorable.

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: After brief stops in Japan, Cairo, and elsewhere, the movie takes us (but not Bond) to South Africa before settling in Amsterdam, then Las Vegas. See above.

ETC.: Again, not a great title sequence; gauzy, glittery, but not especially sexy. Bringing Shirley Bassey back for the theme song, more than anything, was begging the audience to forgive any of the previous film’s indiscretions. But who’s complaining? It’s another sultry vocal performance on a great song given a surprisingly forward-looking, almost dance-floor ready, arrangement… Casting country star Jimmy Dean in this film could have been overwhelmingly kitschy, but strangely enough it works; he brings a confidence and energy to the role that stands in sharp contrast to Charles Gray’s odd Blofeld. Plus, they had the wisdom not to let him sing the theme song. If only they’d shown the same restraint when they cast Madonna in Die Another Day… Okay, so far in the series Bond has driven cars (assorted Aston Martins, Bentleys, and other makes), boats, a rocket backpack, a miniature helicopter, skis, a bobsled, jet-propelled scuba gear, and now a moon buggy. We’ve barely scratched the surface… In the next couple of films we’ll slam head-on into the phenomenon of Bond imitating other genres of action film; here it’s not quite doing that, but look at the movie’s depiction of American gangsters and then imagine a parody version of, say, The Godfather (“I got a bruddah”). That film wouldn’t be released until 1972, but it was shooting at more or less the same time as Diamonds, and of course the novel had been a bestseller since 1969. A connection? Maybe not, but the gangsters are definitely a little more wiseguyish here than they were in Goldfinger…

RATING: 005.

Heather Havrilesky!!

I don't watch Battlestar Galactica, so I didn't pay much attention to anything past the third paragraph of this column. But Heather Havrilesky is one of those Salon columnists (King Kaufman is the other) who are worth reading regularly even if you don't give a damn about the subject, because they're good, funny, insightful writers.

And the first three paragraphs of the column I just linked to - well, I want to carve them in stone and set them into the wall of my own personal Shrine To People Who Hate Hipsters As Much As I Do. Brilliant stuff.

P.S. If you get addicted to King Kaufman, you might like his buddy Paul Lukas, who runs Uni Watch. Again, fascinating even if you don't have the slightest interest in sports. You can read Lukas entirely as a history of popular design in the U.S.

Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in Paris When It Sizzles

Wikipedia says this was filmed back-to-back with Charade, and the two movies share more than some sets. Both of them worship at the altar of snappy dialogue and head-spinning switcheroos.

But in Charade, as befits its aspiration to be the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made, the dazzling repartee and narrative reverses are all placed in service of a plot and two sharply realized characters. Here the snappy dialogue and switcheroos are quite explicitly ends in themselves.

In short, Charade, for all its chaos, was really about order, as any good thriller is. Paris When It Sizzles is anarchic in spirit.

It's also metafictional enough to please Donald Kaufman, and almost shockingly cynical about the whole idea of film, balancing vicious swipes at French New Wave directors and method actors with wicked commentary on traditional Hollywood moviemaking. Delicious, and it's amazing to realize that this was made in 1964. It feels quite contemporary.

But of course the movie's chief pleasure, in age-old Hollywood fashion, is watching two actors with great chemistry. Never mind the rumors, Holden and Hepburn really sparkle here. Holden hits every mark as the washed-up screenwriter in love with his own charm (and also as the international jewel thief, the spy, the monster, etc.): he does an excellent job of showing us a character who's primarily acting to himself, to his reflection in a glass of whiskey, and only intermittently connecting with the other person in the room.

Hepburn, meanwhile, turns in one of her best comic performances. She's so charming that you tend to forget how gifted a comedienne she was - she sneaks up on you. Then she'll employ that gangly body in a bit of slapstick - the way she leaps when Holden surprises her on the balcony at the movie studio, a perfect cartoon leap, kicking her heels up behind her. Or she'll modify her timing so that she's transformed herself into a hard-bitten French jailbird, insisting on her "professionalism." And she'll have you squealing with delight. She's good. And she's great here.

James Bond review: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

CUT TO THE CHASE: “This never happened to the other fellow.”

BOND, JAMES BOND: Sean Connery leaves, and after a worldwide search, Australian George Lazenby is given the keys to the Aston-Martin. This raised the question: could the series survive without Connery? The movie did reasonable business, but then Lazenby’s manager convinced him he’d be better off as the answer to a trivia question than as Bond for the ‘70s, and he quit after this film. Rather than settle on another actor right away the producers prevailed on Connery to return, thus delaying the definitive answer to that question.

Quite simply, I really like Lazenby’s Bond. I like how he pulls off the self-deprecating, metacinematic moment when, at the end of the pretitle sequence, when the girl he’s just saved tears off in her Cougar leaving him alone on the beach, he looked into the camera and says the line quoted above.

I like how he approaches the role with enthusiasm and a bonhomie that never cancels out the harder edges of the character: note how quickly he shifts from charm to menace and back again in his hotel-room scene with Tracy. I like how his Bond is game enough to dress in a kilt when the mission requires it, and rugged enough to make you think it looks fabulous. I like how he toasts the Queen when he resigns her secret service.

It helps that the script packs into this one film all the character development they’d been denying the character in the first five films. Bond is personally obsessed with Blofeld! Bond is discontented with his job! Bond falls in love! Bond gets married! Bond is bereaved! There’s actually acting to do here. Part of me wants to see what Connery would have done with it.

But in a way it’s perfect that all of this gets shunted into Lazenby’s one and only outing. The vulnerability and – let’s call it a spade: sweetness – that Bond displays here is wonderful and welcome, but at the same time one realizes that it, like Bond’s marriage, never could have lasted. And if Lazenby had, we’d all be asking what went wrong with his second film. Since he left, we’re forced to think of this as a golden interlude in the series, splendid but isolated. No matter how dark or how farcical the series would get in the future, it wouldn’t matter: we’ll always have OHMSS.

What Makes Bond Bond: When leaving his hotel room after a brawl with a bad guy, he stops by the door to sample the caviar he’d had sent up earlier. It’s not just the fact that he pauses for pleasure; it’s not even the fact that he walks out muttering, “Hmm. Royal Beluga – north of the Caspian.” It’s the insouciant way he plops the caviar on the toast, cavalierly scattering eggs on the tray, and the way the toast so magnificently bends, but doesn’t break, under the weight of the delicacy. It’s a totally accidental moment, but memorable, and very Bond.

What Makes George Lazenby George Lazenby: Not only does he peruse Gumboldt’s Playboy – a winningly Everyman touch – he swipes the centerfold.

BAD GUYS: SPECTRE again, again. A direct encounter with Blofeld, again. This time it’s Telly Savalas. As casting choices go, this was completely insane. Blofeld is really Kojak? Absolutely not.

The thing is, though, it works. Savalas is so perfectly unctuous, in his own gruff way, that you soon enough forget about what Blofeld is supposed to be and start enjoying what this Blofeld is. Which is: nuts, of course, but in a way that’s completely gonzo, and utterly sui generis, right down to the way he holds his cigarette.

His scheme? Something about causing a worldwide epidemic of infertility through poisoned chicken. Who cares? The important point is that in order to carry out this scheme he’s ensconced himself on his own private Alp with a multicultural bevy of nubiles, a psychedelic light show, and a hypnosis-inducing eight-track tape deck. Awesome.

They innovate a bit here by making the evil henchman a woman: Irma Bunt, Blofeld’s stolid second-in-command at Piz Gloria. She doesn’t have the physical menace that, say, Oddjob had, but she is fun to dislike, with her unbending propriety. A suitable obstacle for Bond. She’s less an enforcer than a den mother to Blofeld’s angels, and it’s this authority of hers that's her most interesting trait. The first real female authority figure Bond’s had to face in the films. The dynamic is tense, to say the least.

GRATUITOUS SEX: Diana Rigg just may be the best of the Bond girls. Certainly she’s the first one to match Bond in strength and panache. Watch the way she comes to his rescue as he’s trying to escape from Blofeld’s cronies in the ice rink. It’s beautifully staged and shot: Bond huddling on a bench, turning up the collar on his stolen coat, then he glances down at the ice just in time to see a pair of skates skid into view. He looks up at legs that just won’t quit, and there she is, his salvation. And then he lets her drive.

The seriousness of the Tracy character, and Bond’s relationship with her, is balanced by the deliciously gratuitous sex he has on the mountaintop. He infiltrates Blofeld’s harem, and in the most ironic way possible, by pretending not to like girls. He gives them the pleasure of thinking they’ve turned him. Nice risqué touch, and the international smorgasbord of beauties is a classic Bond phenomenon (although a couple of the cultural stereotypes are downright offensive).

GS: 3 that we know of, although things are a bit hazy up on Piz Gloria.

AND VIOLENCE: This Bond is more of a lover than a fighter. Only occasionally does he start breaking things. That said, when he does, the sequences are quite exciting. The film is slightly sped up when the fists start flying, and the editing is ridiculously fast. It’s more of a b-movie approach to filmmaking than we usually see in the series, but it works in spades.

The best violent bits come on the ski slopes, the first time we see alpine sports in a Bond movie, though certainly not the last. We get a whole series of thrilling variations on the ski chase, including a nighttime duel with Bond on one ski, a daytime chase with Bond and Tracy as the quarry, and a vicious bobsled race. All of this was innovative, the successor to Thunderball’s underwater brawls, and a lot more interesting to watch.

BOYS WITH TOYS: Unusually enough, the film starts with the Q scene, as Q and M engage in some banter about 007’s whereabouts being unknown. This serves to set up the pretitle sequence and the unveiling of the New Bond, but it also happens to be Q’s only appearance in the film. He doesn’t get to brief Bond on any gadgets.

Which is not to say Bond doesn’t use any. There’s the memorable bit with the suitcase-sized safecracker/photocopier – memorable primarily because it gives Bond time to catch up with Hef’s latest. And there’s also his MacGyver moment, when he figures out how to foil the electronic lock on his door at Piz Gloria.

JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE THE WORLD: Portugal, then Switzerland. All very glamorous and romantic. Although, we must admit that some of the glamor hasn’t aged well: the Lawrence Welk color scheme in the hotel casino, for example.

ETC.: The title sequence is the second-lamest of the series, trumped only by Die Another Day’s: all the clips from previous Bond movies slipping through the hourglass betray an unseemly anxiety about Lazenby’s reception as Bond, and visually they just don’t work. The silhouettes are nice, though… They broke with (what was admittedly only a recent) formula by having no theme song, only an instrumental overture. It’s a good one, in the best traditions of Bond music, but one does miss Shirley Bassey. They make up for it, though, by including a brilliant original song as a love theme, “We Have All The Time In The World,” the great Louis Armstrong’s very last vocal. Overall this is one of composer John Barry’s finest hours. A great score… And it’s one of the series’ finest hours, too. One of the very best of Bonds.

RATING: 007.

James Bond review: Casino Royale (1967)

CUT TO THE CHASE: Well, it’s not really a Bond film, now is it?

BOND, JAMES BOND: It not really being a Bond film, there’s no point in looking for a real Bond in it. However, Peter Sellers, as Evelyn Tremble James Bond, is a joy to watch, as usual, and Woody Allen, as Jimmy Bond, provides most of the laughs in the film.

VILLAIN AND VILLAINY: The plot is impossible to follow, but that’s not really the point. Orson Welles, as Le Chiffre, is très cool, and his one scene with Peter Sellers is the best one in the film. The early motif of trying to corrupt a sexually incorruptible David Niven, is a cute concept, although it doesn’t actually result in many laughs. Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond/Dr. Noah is great. Did I already say that?

GRATUITOUS SEX: Ursula Andress is, if possible, even more stunning here than in Dr. No. There’s really a cast of thousands in the chick department, but another particularly memorable one is the Italian woman Woody Allen straps nude to the table with stainless steel clamps. More misogynistic than anything in the serious Bond films, one should note.

AND VIOLENCE: Well, that’s not what it’s really all about, is it?

BOYS WITH TOYS: Ditto. But the poofy Q and his assistant are pretty funny.

ETC.: Of course it’s really only a spoof of the Bond films, but it is officially based on the Ian Fleming book, and uses the names and the 007, so it deserves inclusion in the canon. If only to get Dusty Springfield’s ineffable “The Look of Love” on your collection of Bond theme songs. It's one of the very best… There’s nothing at all wrong with the idea of an official Bond spoof. The problem here is that it’s just not very funny. A lot of the concepts are good, like the finicky, celibate Niven Bond character, and the Evelyn Tremble baccarat expert. But the multitude of directors and confusion of cast prevent it from being, in the end, anything more than a violently disconnected series of set pieces. Which, again, wouldn’t be so bad - if only it was funny. It’s just not. It’s “madcap,” I believe the word used to be. A poor substitute for funny.

RATING: 002.

Yes: In The Present tour (2008)

I didn’t see this tour. I seldom go to rock concerts, because I love music too much to enjoy it in an environment with awful sound and in the company of annoying drunks. So there it is.

But I’ve heard a couple of bootlegs, so I can comment on the music.

In all honesty I hadn’t given the Benoit David/Oliver Wakeman edition of Yes much of a chance. I mean, after four years of trying and failing to tolerate each other long enough to squeeze a few more shillings out of an oldies tour, Messrs. Howe, Squire, White, and Anderson finally lay plans for a series of dates as Yes. Wakeman père is out, replaced by Wakeman fils, evidently in hopes of satisfying bloodthirsty Troopers. Then Anderson nearly goes to meet George Harrison, and all bets seem to be off. But evidently the lure of luchre is stronger than the demands of dignity, or in other words, the show must go on (although why this should be any more true in 2008 than it was in 2005, 2006, or 2007 is a mystery to me). And so they cast around for a substitute vocalist. They find a guy in Montreal singing in a Yes tribute band, and, presumably again hoping to fool the punters, snap him up. Then Jon goes ballistic from his sickbed, Spinal Tap asks for the movie rights, and the In The Present tour is announced: “Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White of Yes, introducing Oliver Wakeman & Benoit David.”

Is this a joke?

Surprisingly enough, it may not be. Listen to the music. It’s Yes.

Benoit David (not to be confused, of course, with David Benoit) is a phenomenal Jon Anderson impersonator. That wouldn’t necessarily be a plus, but the fact is, you listen to the tapes of these shows, and it just sounds like Yes. And that is a plus.

What’s more, and more important, David’s a good singer. He’s not just imitating Jon – I’m not sure he’s imitating Jon at all. He’s singing his parts, which is a different thing altogether. Yes, it’s disconcerting at first how closely his tone mirrors Jon’s, but when you listen closely you notice all sorts of subtle differences in timbre and expression. Differences that show that David, like Jon, is a skilled vocal musician. Example: David has to work a little harder than Jon to hit the highest notes in Jon’s vocal lines. But David at his best uses this as an excuse to draw a little more passion out of those notes, nudging them from ethereal to emotional. Not a bad trade. He’s also called upon to sing Trevor Horn’s lines, and he successfully captures their cold beauty – but from within a tonal quality that still has much of Anderson’s softness about it. The result lends his entire performance a sort of chilly melancholy that Anderson never had, coupled with an ease of expression that Horn lacked. Impressive. Effective.

Oliver isn’t quite as impressive, at least on the tapes I’ve heard. He acquits himself well, but only occasionally owns the material. I like, for example, how “Close To The Edge” now ends with some gentle piano ruminations after the Sounds of the Swamp fade away. Then again, as Yes have proved again and again, there’s not a whole lot of room in their compositions for a player to make his mark. Yes don’t allow themselves to improvise much, and all too often the embellishments they do allow themselves sound like variation merely for the sake of variation, rather than attempts at improvement. Like it or not, Yes have always been a compositional unit, not an improvisational one. Oliver plays the parts, and plays them well, and that’s enough for Yes as we know it.

The question is, so what? On their last two tours before they disintegrated in 2004, Yes had completed their degeneration into an oldies band. With no new album to promote, they resorted to digging deeper into their back catalog to make the setlists attractive to diehards. This made boots of the 2004 tour in particular interesting listening for the longtime fan, and that trend continues here. Anderson’s absence allows Squire, White, and Howe to dust off a couple of tunes from Drama, and they also play “Onward,” “Parallels,” and “Astral Traveler,” Anderson tunes that hadn’t been played in decades. But none of that makes them more than a canny oldies act – a tribute band to themselves.

The only new song is “Aliens (Are Only Us From The Future),” a Squire number that he wrote for another project and pressed into Yes service; it’s musically pleasant enough, with a welcome Squire lead vocal, and its lyrics are certainly silly enough to make it a latter-day Yes number. Time alone will tell if it’s a harbinger of the kind of new work this version of Yes could accomplish.

Just as time alone will tell if there is any answer to the so what question. Benoit and Oliver certainly have the chops; it remains to be seen if they have the compositional skills, but even if they don’t, the others may, still. If this version of Yes comes up with a new album, then it might show us that they’re a band worth caring about again. They just might bear out the hope that the In The Present tour is threatening to inspire.

If not – and there are all sorts of ways in which this could fall apart, from Jon insisting that he needs to be part of any official Yes product and then never being well enough or mollified enough to produce any, to somebody else quitting, to this lineup simply touring the oldies until the well finally dries up – then this version of the band will be remembered as a joke after all. Albeit one that made us smile.