First of all, J.J. Abrams should direct everything.
Not just STAR TREK and the new STAR WARS: EPISODE XVIII-whatever, but every film for one entire year. You’ll say, “That’s not possible — J.J. can’t direct every film made during a calendar year.”
Sure he can. We can clone ourselves an army of J. J. Abrams, or download his brain into that Big Blue supercomputer thing IBM built just to beat Ken Jennings in a game of Jeopardy. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.
And here’s a brilliant take on how the first new STAR WARS film should go. Now that Disney owns Marvel and Star Wars, I hope studio executives take notes.
At least the original does. It’s not clear of Chris Pine likes to pick up the microphone, but William Shatner DOES NOT HESITATE, not even for a nanosecond, and the results are often epic.
Shatner singing ROCKET MAN in 1978
Shatner doing BOHEMIAM RHAPSODY
Shatner singing MY WAY to George Lucas with stormtrooperbackup dancers
DR. NO is the first 007 movie, the world’s introduction to Sean Connery and an instant classic packed chock full of win — right?
Well, the first two things are true.
The last part isn’t. This film is imperfect.
It’s a rough draft of a rough draft, with big pleasures and big flaws and a lot of cheesy nonsense that you’ll recognize as the first fumbling gestures to what will become glorious 007 movie staples that will change movies FOREVER.
So DR. NO isn’t a perfect film or the amazing classic we all think it is.
You should watch it anyway.
I just did. As part of a 007 movie marathon — we bought the boxed set of Every 007 Movie Known to Man — I’m watching each movie, in order, with our 11-year-old son who has never seen a Bond movie before.
DR. NO was our first. It will not be our last, nor will it be our favorite Bond movie of all time. Yet there’s something about the first that’s always worthwhile and interesting and magical, even in the bits that are a bit undercooked.
Sean Connery, the Best Bond Ever?
Not in this movie.
Sure, he’s got charm and a sense of menace. He’s instantly credible as Bond and fun to watch.
Best ever? Nope.
Connery in DR. NO beats the pants off Roger Moore any day of the week. Daniel Craig crushes Connery’s first whack at Bond, and I’d even give Remington Steele the win in GOLDENEYE versus Connery in this one.
The later Pierce Brosnan Bonds get a bit cheesy, and he gets massive demerits for all the invisible car nonsense in his last 007 film and singing ABBA songs in that movie with Meryl Streep, so Connery edges Brosnan overall.
Also: Timothy Dalton is under-rated, and gets mondo bonus points for appearing as a glorious bad guy in HOT FUZZ.
Also-also: George Lazenby just doesn’t count.
So here we go, ranking the 007s in order:
Daniel Craig > Sean Connery > Pierce Brosnan > Timothy Dalton > Roger Moore > George Lazenwhatever
The Bad Guy
DR. NO’s villain is a mysterious mad scientist named who lost his hands to radiation experiments or some such thing and belongs to SPECTRE, which he carefully explains to Bond stands for something like Some People Who Are Really Smart and Choose Crime Because It’s Way More Fun to Have Secret Lairs in Volcanos and Such, except he makes it spell SPECTRE.
Dr. No lives on an island with a ton of henchmen, a sweet underground lair and all kinds of fancy prison cells connected by the most awesome airduct system ever.
Basically, Dr. No is a trendsetter for supervillains to come: a rich, disfigured foreigner with some kind of nuclear / doomsday device in his underground lair and all kinds of henchmen who wear matching jumpsuits.
There’s a random dark-haired girl in the beginning who Bond meets at a card game. She breaks into Bond’s apartment, which somehow endears him to her instead of making him fill her full of lead as a possible KGB assassin.
There’s a bad girl photographer working for Dr. No and another bad Bond girl at the British consulate who’s a double-agent for Dr. No and flirts with Bond before eavesdropping on him. So naturally he asks her out and winds up going to her place, which is an ambush. Ugh.
At this point, I’m yelling at the screen, “If you see any pretty girl, Sean the Connery, turn around and RUN FAR AWAY.”
Finally, we’ve got a blonde he meets on Dr. No’s mysterious and forbidden island: Honey Rider, the main Bond girl, who’s on the beach hunting for shells. Beautiful girl? Yes. Good actress? Nah. But it works alright.
The Gadgets
None, really. M makes Bond swap out his original gun for a Walther PPK because it has more stopping power.
Bond does have a neat little shoulder holster and displays some tradecraft when he plucks a hair and sticks it over his hotel closet door as a way to check if anybody comes looking around his room.
The Story
The opening sequence is a bit lame compared to later 007 movies. There’s a long bit with British men in a club, talking a lot, before anything really happens. Sean the Connery doesn’t really appear on screen until FOREVER.
What DR. NO does right is set up the basics of a 007 story: a suave secret agent traveling to interesting places around the world to sneak around and uncover plots by intriguing villains.
Dr. No himself gets a great build-up. You don’t see his face for a long time. The first scene with Dr. No, you only hear his voice. The second scene, his body and metal hands. Great stuff. My only quibble is when you finally do see his face when Dr. No dines with Bond and Honey Rider, it’s a let-down. The actor is pretty wooden. I wanted to be even more impressed, to keep up the momentum and menace.
Some of the sidekicks are simply bad story. There’s a boat captain who’s almost — not quite, but close enough — the Jar Jar Binks of Dr. No. The ominous man following Bond from the airport isn’t a bad guy, but a friendly CIA agent, which was a little too cute.
Overall, though, the first Bond story sets up a nice template for all the other movies. Big hero, big villain, big stakes.
The Verdict
This movie won’t blow you away. You’re not going to see the credits roll and shout “Again again!” like a crazed Teletubby.
Despite the rough edges, for any real fan of 007, this is required viewing. You’ll see the seeds of future bits, the origin of characters and tropes that will show up in film after film.
Grade: B+. There’s tension, action and excitement, and at the time, this was ground-breaking stuff.
###
Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
A little known cinematic gem is perhaps GODZILLA’S REVENGE (1969).
I say perhaps, because I’ve only seen the trailer…and what a trailer it is! This was the golden age of men in rubber suits.
Tragically, the new Godzilla (2014) will not feature men in rubber suits. No, that time has past. CGI is the future…Motion capture…3D…
However, through the power of the Series of Tubes, you can relive the glory days of cheap “practical effects” (as in practical for the movie’s budget).
Nothing beats the raw physicality of a trained thespian (or a willing intern) in a rubber suit, acting out the complex emotions of a scaled beast that terrorizes for sport.
Poster for Godzilla’s Revenge (1969)
The tagline for this film when it was released in 69′:
SEE: PREHISTORIC MONSTERS CRAWL OUT OF THE HIDDEN DEPTHS OF THE EARTH AND TAKE REVENGE AGAINST THE LIVING!
MY TAGLINE:
SEE GODZILLA THROW AN INSECT MAN LIKE IT’S A TOY (it might be) AND THEN TOSS AN UGLY GREEN BEAST OVER HIS SHOULDER WITH NO REGARD FOR SAFETY!
Alex Corey
Alex Corey is a writer studying journalism at California State University-Northridge and an intern for Latino-Review.com He can be reached on Twitter @MrAlexCorey and on the Series of Tubes at Motionpictureplanet.wordpress.com
Not just any old scientists playing with beakers in the lab or whatever.
No.
Brilliant boffins who work at the world’s greatest superconducting super-collider made this zombie movie, using the creepy tunnel parts of their fancy machine as movie sets.
I would actually watch this thing.
Not too shabby, scientist peoples of CERN — keep on making these things.
Before yesterday, I thought Honey Boo Boo was just another TLC exploit of little girls forced into the cutthroat world of glamour pageants. Naturally, TLC does not shadow some cute little girl who wins all the time—because that would be Boring.
TLC follows the poorest, heaviest and least dignified darling to continue the network’s support of the “underdogs” in this world: ENTER HONEY BOO BOO.
On the episode I watched, Honey Boo Boo’s seventeen year-old sister gave birth to her first baby, Kaitlyn. The baby has not one, not two, but three thumbs.
I initially thought, “What the hell, as if this baby doesn’t have enough going on—she’s got to have an extra finger?” I can see the next TLC spin-off, Thumbelina of the South.
Cue the sappy music. The family’s reaction to the extra appendage shamed me for being such a self-righteous brat. Most other families would be horrified, some even devastated, but not Honey Boo Boo’s family. They playfully joked about her little phalange.
The matriarch of the family said of the deformity, “It makes her more unique and special to us.”
Don’t know about you, but I can’t see anything wrong with a family that accepts one another just the way they are.
I retract all prior judgments and give Honey Boo Boo and her family three thumbs up.
Lauren Palazzo: Write words for the right people. Recent #PR grad (Summa Cum + 4 internships). Public speaking coach and #SocialMedia ballerina. Will work for peanut butter.
That’s the acid test for every writer: four words.
If somebody in line with you for the Largest Latte Known to Man asks what you’re working on, can you explain it in four words?
How about eight words?
Because if you can’t, you’re not really done.
And I don’t care that you’ve spent the last seven years locked away in a French monastery, slaving away 25 hours a day, eight days a week to perfect (a) The Great American Novel, Even Though It Was Written in France, (b) the movie script that will turn Hollywood on its ear and stop it from spending $250 million apiece on Michael Bay explosion-fests involving robots that transform into cars or whatever or (c) a punk-rock masterpiece with song after song with lyrics so beautiful, and rebelliously ugly, that anyone who listens to it quits working for The Man and buys an electric Fender so they can learn the only three chords you need to know to become AN INSANE ROCK GOD.
So let’s get down to it. If you haven’t already, read these posts to get all educated and such, even though it is technically cheating — because today, there is a quiz.
"In my insomniacal Twitter meanderings I find the miracle of @speechwriterguy. Follow him. He makes energetic sense about words. And life."
@CharlesCrawford / Oxford area, England / Former British Ambassador turned speechwriter, writer, mediator, trainer, blogger. Founder member of ADRg Ambassadors LLP
"Informative, funny, blunt & quirky, @speechwriterguy 's blog is a must if you really give a damn about language & communication."
@DavidWeedmark / Ottawa, Canada / Acclaimed poet & novelist with a penchant for dark roast coffee; passionately curious.
