Valkyrie of Ultimate Dinosaur Franchise

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Esquire‘s Kate Storey has written an admiring profile of Eon Productions’ Barbara Broccoli. To the manor born in 1960, Broccoli has been the prime mover and shaker behind the 007 James Bond franchise since 1995, or roughly a year before her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who had launched the Bond series with partner Harry Saltzman in 1962, passed away.

I’m no Cubby biographer, but I did meet and briefly chat with the guy 37 years ago on the Pinewood set of For Your Eyes Only. Like all hotshot producers Cubby was a slick operator and almost certainly tough as nails, but his natural social default was to play the amiable panda bear, an unassuming roly-poly with a disarming sense of humor.

Everyone acknowledges Barbara Broccoli but no one takes her very seriously because she and half-brother Michael Wilson are caretakers. They’re looking to keep the pistons pumping so they can continue to reap the flush-lifestyle benefits and so she can produce the occasional play — that’s it, the whole raison d’etre.

If I were Broccoli I’d do the same thing, I suppose, but the Bond films have been aggressively soul-less, less-than-meaningless exercises in aggressive macho-comic bullshit for so long it looks like up to me.

When was the last time a Bond film really connected with the culture in a viral, explosive, slam-bang way that hit a projected-values recognition button and resulted in waves of primal excitement and a double-urgent “drop what you’re doing and see this film right now”? I’ll tell you when that time was. It was 53 and 1/2 years ago when Goldfinger opened in the fall of ’64.

Posted on 10.2.15: In my humble view the best James Bond films are the first two — Terence Young‘s Dr. No (’62) and From Russia With Love (’63). These are the only ones featuring a lean and rugged Sean Connery without an obvious toupee and before he began to pack on a couple of pounds, and facing semi-believable combatants in a half-credible, real-world milieu.

After these two a sense of technological swagger and more than a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor started to penetrate the franchise with Guy Hamilton‘s Goldfinger (’64) — the last Bond film you could accept as an occasionally semi-realistic fantasy. These are the only three I re-watch on Bluray, although I don’t like Goldfinger as much as the first two.

I have a certain affection for Lewis Gilbert‘s The Spy Who Loved Me (’77) — the beginning of a brief ’70s period when the 007 series descended into light comedy. There was an effort to use a bit less gadgetry in John Glen‘s For Your Eyes Only (’81 — the only Bond film I ever paid a visit to at Pinewood) and I didn’t mind Glen’s The Living Daylights (’87). And I was amused by the return of Connery is Irvin Kershner‘s Never Say Never Again (’83). And I admit to feeling a surge of excitement when I first saw Martin Campbell‘s Casino Royale (’06)

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Time To Back Away From “Affable Fuck-Up”

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“Joe Biden is the Democrats’ answer to the hunger to ‘make America great again,’ dressed up in liberal clothes.

“For his whole career, Biden’s role has been to comfort the lost, prized, and most fondly imagined Democratic voter, the one who’s like him: that guy in the diner, that guy in Ohio, that guy who’s white and so put off by the changed terms of gendered and racial power in this country that decades ago he fled for the party that was working to roll back the social advancements that had robbed him of his easy hold on power. That guy who believed that the system worked best when it worked for him.

“The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie has in fact argued that Biden’s racial politics have offered a form of Trumpism on the left, a “liberal cover to white backlash.” To that I would add, he has provided liberal cover to anti-feminist backlash, the kind of old-fashioned paternalism of powerful men who don’t take women’s claims to their reproductive, professional, or political autonomy particularly seriously, who walk through the world with a casual assurance that men’s access to and authority over women’s bodies is natural. In an attempt to win back That Guy, Joe Biden has himself, so very often, been That Guy.

“Now it seems, That Guy is widely viewed as the best and safest candidate to get us out of this perilous and scary political period. But the irony is that so much of what is terrifying and dangerous about this time — the Trump administration, the ever more aggressive erosion of voting and reproductive rights, the crisis in criminal justice and yawning economic chasm between the rich and everyone else — are in fact problems that can in part be laid at the feet of Joe Biden himself, and the guys we’ve regularly been assured are Democrats’ only answer.

“Biden is the gaffe-master, the affable fuck-up, and also, oddly, the politician who’s supposed to make us feel safe. He is the amiable, easygoing, handsy-but-harmless guy who’s never going to give you a hard time about your own handsiness or prejudice, who’s gonna make a folksy argument about enacting fundamentally restrictive policies.” — from “Joe Biden Isn’t the Answer” by Rebecca Traister, posted on 3.29.19.

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Stinks To High Heaven

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Robert Mueller‘s decision to punt on the Trump-Russia investigation (“Lots of indications but no smoking gun, can’t really prove anything, read the full report and draw your own conclusions”) was underwhelming at best, and misleading at worst.

The expectation all along was that Mueller’s extensive probe was going to deliver hard indictable truths about Trump and his sociopathic finaglings. His report may well do that when the completely un-redacted version finally slips out, but right now it’s deeply infuriating that so many journalists and editors decided to offer a semblance of immediate acceptance and respect to Attorney General William Barr‘s semi-exonerating four-page summary.

It’s simply not permissible to ignore the fact that Trump nominated Barr for Attorney General because of Barr’s unsolicited 20-page memo to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, sent in June ’18, which argued that the Mueller’s approach to potential obstruction of justice by Trump was “fatally misconceived” and that, based on his knowledge, Trump’s actions were within his presidential authority.

Gruff, Crusty, Steady-Eyed

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After a brief theatrical window, John Lee Hancock‘s The Highwaymen is now playing on Netflix. A couple of weeks ago I posted a paywalled HE-plus review. As a special one-time-only Saturday morning allowance, here it is gratis. What the hell, right?

“The Highwaymen is a decent enough thing — a flavorful period procedural about how the notorious Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and cut into shreds and pieces by ex-Texas Rangers Frank Hamer (Kevin Costner) and Maney Gault (Woody Harrelson)…oh, Maney! On a quiet woodsy Louisiana road on 5.23.34, way down in Bienville Parish.

The killers were actually Hamer and Gault and four other guys. They unloaded big-time and put between 25 and 50 bullets into each criminal. And nobody gave a damn if one was a woman who liked to read movie magazines.

Arthur Penn and Warren Beatty’s Bonnie and Clyde (’67) didn’t exactly sympathize with the infamous pair, but portrayed them as crazy none-too-brights on an impulsive, violent romp across the dust-bowl states. Or, if you will, spirited working-class outlaws pushing back against a rigged Depression-era system that made things tough on poor working folks.

The Highwaymen is the flip side of the coin. The basic view is that Bonnie and Clyde were diseased and inhuman and that somebody had to put them down like rabid dogs, and that it took a couple of tough old coots like Hamer and Gault to get the job done.

On top of which the aging Hamer and Gault are portrayed as the last of a dying breed, wondering at times if they “have it” any more, whether or not their instincts have gone to seed, whether they’re respected. All is well by the finale.

Born in 1884, Gault was 50 at the time of Bonnie and Clyde’s killing, and far from what anyone would call “old.” Costner, born in January ’55, was 63 or thereabouts when they filmed, or 13 years creasier than the Real McCoy.

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Which Nefarious Schemers?

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I’m not saying that “handsy” Joe Biden isn’t fated to face some kind of #MeToo or #TimesUp inquiry along the lines of what Al Franken went through, or that in a fair and just world Biden isn’t culpable in having brought this about by his own past behavior. Maybe. But there’s an emerging suspicion, at least in some quarters, that this anti-Joe site, which I discovered last night, is the creation of pro-Trump forces. Because it’s widely believed that Team Trump is more worried about Biden than anyone else. Thoughts?

If Only The Fallen Would Stay That Way

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I don’t know how Avengers: Endgame (Disney, 4.26) will unfold over its three-hour running time, but we all have a sneaking suspicion that the disintegrated will somehow reconstitute by the end. Right? Don’t we? If this doesn’t happen I’ll be amazed. As in genuinely impressed.

All I wanted from Avengers: Infinity War was to see Robert Downey‘s insufferably smug Tony Stark die and stay dead forever. But nope.

HE boilerplate: “You can’t trust a Marvel film to deliver death with any finality because Kevin Feige doesn’t respect death any more than comic-book creators respect it, which is not at all. Or woundings, for that matter. The MCU mostly regards death and serious physical injury as a tease, a plot toy, something to fiddle or fuck with until an apparently dead character comes back to life.”

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Jagger IIlness Halts Imminent Stones Tour

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Mick Jagger‘s health is in such a highly uncertain, precarious or threatened condition that his doctors, out of the blue, have told him he can’t perform in the next phase of the Rolling Stones’ “No Filter” tour, which would’ve launched only three weeks from now in Miami. Or at least not until Mick receives “medical treatment.”

And so the tour has been deep-sixed until further notice.

An official statement, quoted by Variety, says that “doctors have advised Mick that he is expected to make a complete recovery so that he can get back on stage as soon as possible.”

Medical prudence is always a good idea, but in terms of the enormous physical and financial demands of a major Rolling Stones tour, cancelling only three weeks before kickoff suggests a certain urgency. One presumes that Jagger’s unspecified health concern is outside the realm of the usual transitional ailments.

Arguably the the leanest, spry-est and healthiest-seeming 20th Century rocker around, at least as far as appearances have been concerned over the last half-century and beyond, Jagger is 75 and 2/3. He’ll hit the big seven-six on 7.26.19.

Jagger statement: “I hate letting our [North American] fans down and I’m hugely disappointed to have to postpone the tour but am looking forward to getting back on stage as soon as I can.”

Uncle Joe Is Being Franken-ed

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A single inappropriate kissing accusation won’t be much of a problem for Joe Biden, but a few more accusations could amount to a serious problem. Stories like this reenforce the default “dirty old sexist dinosaur” thing — notions that Biden may be cut from the same rogue cloth as Bill Clinton and the late George H.W. Bush, who got hit with two or three such accusations a year or so before he passed. We all know how this goes.

What say ye, Sasha Stone? Is Lucy Flores, the former Democratic nominee for Nevada lieutenant governor, doing this on behalf of one of Joe’s rivals? What maneuverings led to her decision to speak out?

Sasha Sez: “He kissed the back of her head. She was made ‘uncomfortable’ and only to a mass hysteria-afflicted mob would this be a big deal. What they don’t realize is that all this shows is just how easy we are to break, how easily undone we are and that our standards are so ridiculously high no one will pass muster. Also, it turns out that the woman in this article is a major Bernie Sanders supporter – she wants to help knock Joe out. What SHE doesn’t realize is that Bernie is next to be accused. It is just too easy now and so no one will be immune.”

East River Blues

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Earlier today around noon, just outside the DUMBO-area Celestine (1 John Street). Lunch with Jett. After which I took the lumbering, drag-ass A train to JFK. When I got to the Alaska Airlines counter I realized I’d gone to the wrong airport — my flight was due to depart from Newark Airport in about 85 minutes time. I love it when this happens.

Quietly Seething

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I’ve been sitting on a San Francisco-bound flight for the last four hours. Seat 28C, aisle. I feel like I’m in American-International’s adaptation of The Premature Burial, which starred Ray Milland. Can’t relax, stretch or sleep. Gogoinflight internet used to charge $29 and then $39 for full-flight service. Now these greedy pricks are charging $49, and for shitty wifi at that. Thumbs up!

Default HE Apology For All P.C. Offenses

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What…this again? Liam Neeson apologizing again for that late ’70s racial-rage episode that he confessed to and apologized for after his remarks blew up on social media around seven weeks ago?

He’s probably been running into some serious casting shunnings over the last few weeks, hence his new re-apology.

On 2.5 I wrote that “public candor about private failings is not a wise policy in our current situation. You can’t say ‘I once succumbed to an urge to practice witchcraft back in the ’70s.’ To the Cotton Mather crowd that’s like saying you might put a hex on someone tomorrow.”

Neeson’s unfortunate recollection was part of an Independent interview that posted on 2.4.19.

Neeson said that he’d briefly succumbed to a surge of racially-focused rage after learning that a friend has been raped by a black dude. Neeson was in his mid to late 20s at the time. He maintained that his furious reaction was more generically tribal than anti-black — that he would have felt the same gut-level animosity “if she had said an Irish or a Scot or a Brit or a Lithuanian [had raped her]…[it] would have had the same effect.”

That explanation apparently didn’t cut it with the International League of Retroactive Racial-Attitude Correction, Fault-Finding and Stern Admonishment. And so Neeson is back on the p.c. carpet, kneeling and begging and weeping….”please, please, please.”

“Over the last several weeks, I have reflected on and spoken to a variety of people who were hurt by my impulsive recounting of a brutal rape of a dear female friend nearly 40 years ago and my unacceptable thoughts and actions at that time in response to this crime,” he said in a statement.

“The horror of what happened to my friend ignited irrational thoughts that do not represent the person I am. In trying to explain those feelings today, I missed the point and hurt many people at a time when language is so often weaponized and an entire community of innocent people are targeted in acts of rage.

“What I failed to realize is that this is not about justifying my anger all those years ago, it is also about the impact my words have today. I was wrong to do what I did. I recognize that, although the comments I made do not reflect, in any way, my true feelings nor me, they were hurtful and divisive. I profoundly apologize.”

I am so sick to death of hearing mature people of consequence apologize to the Cotton Mathers and Robespierre Committees for having done something wrong (i.e., behaved in a cruel manner or wrote something appalling or hair-trigger that doesn’t pass muster by current p.c. standards) when they were in their teens or 20s.

Almost everyone has one or two things in their immature past that they wish they hadn’t done. So here’s a one-size-fits-all apology that the next celebrity or politician can repeat when they get into trouble.

“Dear P.C. Commissars: I am truly sorry for having retroactively transgressed against or otherwise offended current p.c. values when I was in my teens or 20s. If I could return to that offense-giving moment via time machine, I would certainly not make the same error. I wish that my teenaged or 20something self could have summoned the wisdom and maturity that I now possess, but unfortunately it rarely works that way. Young hormonal types often do, say or write stupid things. I wish it were otherwise.

“But I also wish to say that as embarassed and mortified as I am by this decades-old error or shortcoming, the sum total of my regret and shame can’t begin to compare to the loathing and contempt that I hold for you and yours — the admonishing, politically correct, shrieking banshees of our time.

“In my humble judgment the group-think, finger-wagging, potentially-career-ruining admonishments and oppressions that you and and your fellow accusers occasionally issue about decades-old missteps are just as regrettable and perhaps even worse than the bad things that I was guilty of when young.

“I’m truly sorry for and ashamed of my youthful failings, but you guys, no offense, are hooded ogres, and if I could tie your hands and dunk you in a lake I would. Peace.”

Beto O’Rourke is hereby strongly advised to never again apologize for something bad he did in his youth. Explanations and regrets are obviously necessary and appropriate, but begging on your knees really doesn’t make it…”oh, please forgive me, I’m so very sorry, I was such a terrible flawed person before,” etc. Because people like me are SICK OF HEARING THIS SHIT.