Tag Archives: CIA

The Enforcer [1976)

Damn.  It takes a lot to laugh.  It takes a train to cry.  Bob Dylan said that.

I just said damn.

This film was released the year I was born.  Yeah, I’m an old son of a bitch.

Figure of speech (you understand)…

It’s hard to talk about this film without talking about Tyne Daly.  How beautiful she looked in this film!  What great acting!

But let’s start at the beginning…

Jocelyn Jones.  Any fish bite if you got good bait.  Henry “Ragtime” Thomas said that.

Numb nuts.  Jocelyn said that.

I know the type.  Bait.  Numb nuts.

Think Lana Turner.  That first appearance she makes in The Postman Always Rings Twice.

Or Sue Lyon in Lolita.  Kubrick.  The hard stuff.

Those little heart-shaped sunglasses.  Her eyes replaced by your mind.

It’s not “Pleasant Valley Sunday”…rather, Mill Valley.

No Monkees.  Just a bunch of bloodthirsty punks after some money.  A rag-tag group of Vietnam vets and ideological dupes.

Director James Fargo goes for the kill early on.  The tight shot of those blue-grey eyes.  A little awkward.  But DeVeren Bookwalter more or less delivers.  Not quite as terrifying as Andy Robinson in the original Dirty Harry…ok, actually a straight rip of that character minus the fascinating Zodiac Killer angle.  But Fargo turns in a pretty convincing film.  No small feat.  While the James Bond franchise was busy dicking around with numerous directors, the Dirty Harry series showed them how to strike an emotional blow with an economy of means.

Of course we get another shite superior…Captain McKay…played pretty well by Bradford Dillman.  Not as convincing as Hal Holbrook in Magnum Force, but hey…  And again, a straight rip of the Lt. Briggs character.

All of this would seem to indicate that this is a watery domestic facsimile with a lack of imagination.  Not quite.  This is a damn good film.

Tyne Daly really provides the foil to Eastwood that was needed to make this picture transcend.

Fargo’s silhouette version of Stan Brakhage’s The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (1971) is frankly brilliant.

Albert Popwell makes powerful use of his limited screen time.  Swahili for freedom:  uhuru.

It brings us to a Hitchcock moment and reminds us of the ultimate case of the wrong man:  Osama bin Laden.  As Ralph Nader described George W. Bush:  a corporation disguised as a human being.  Osama.  THE Company.

Not even the head of the snake.  Not even the tip of the iceberg.  More like a figurehead asset.  A fall guy.  A bogus bogeyman.

And so the real terrorists run free.  Suits and ties.  Top Secret security clearances.

It’s as hollow a feeling as that famous “mission accomplished” pronouncement.  On the USS Abraham Lincoln no less.  Yeah…it’s time to open up some crusty old prisons for the real terrorists.  Places that’ll make Guantanamo Bay look like a goddamned Sandals resort.

-PD

2 Comments

To Write Love on Her Arms [2012)

This film goes beyond film.  Which is not to say it doesn’t have its problems.  Like the protagonist, it does.  But let me tell you why this film is worth it.  No…you know what?  This is fucking bullshit!  That’s not the way to review a film.  This is.

It’s gotta come from the heart and mind.  Depend too much on the mind and you miss the beauty.  Secrets make you sick.  Must be a whole lot of sick people in Langley, Virginia and Fort Meade, Maryland.  Go on, look it up.  It’ll do you good.  But for you lazy bums, that’s the CIA and NSA.

I read about the CIA all the time.  Why?  I’m only answering limited questions today.  But suffice it to say that both of these spy agencies are pretty interesting.  Don’t you think?

Well, so that’s one of my secrets.  It’s not really a secret.  It’s pretty transparent.  But maybe not.  So, there.  Like Robert Creeley said.  There you have it.

It’s very hard to not drop into John Berryman testimonial mode when talking about this film (oh yeah, this is a film review…duh!).

First things first:  you gotta love a film that premieres at the Omaha Film Festival (!)  Just knowing that Omaha has a film festival makes me feel a little less depressed about my life and the shitty town I live in (San Antonio).

And so…our setting:  Orlando.  It’s like an outtake from Mister Lonely–Cinderella smoking a cigarette at the bus stop.  Headed to the theme park presumably…  It’s certainly begging for a Harmony Korine touch, though director Nathan Frankowski does a nice job handling this priceless aside in more of a Terry Zwigoff way.

Wow.  Somebody needs to give the Wikipedia page for TWLOHA (the movie) some love.  I mean, Jesus!  A three-sentence plot summary???  There’s lost silent films which have more detailed synopses on Wiki than this!

So I guess my first inclination was correct:  speak from the heart.

Well God damnit!  There are some priceless moments in this film.  The secret weapon is Rupert Friend.  I’ll be damned if he doesn’t strike a stake right to my heart…fondling that pocket watch…  It’s no jive-ass MC5 John Sinclair rave-up testifyin’ going on.  This is some real shit.

For all of the snobs (like me) in the audience:  you gotta give this film time.  Clear from your mind the unpleasant parallels to the CGI of What Dreams May Come and The Lovely Bones.  IT GETS BETTER.

That said.  How?  Well, once again Ms. Kat Dennings hits a home run. This is no easy role.  It’s a tough, tough, TAXING role to embody with anything even approaching Method Acting.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that Dennings felt this role naturally (to a certain extent).

How does this film go beyond film?  Because.  Ghost World was a masterpiece.  Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist was perfection for its genre (young adult comedy romance).  Charlie Bartlett was a mini-masterpiece…a damn good film.  Hell!  Daydream Nation was pretty fucking good too.  But TWLOHA moves into the social realm…because it touches on depression and substance abuse (not to mention the cutting words of the haiku title) in a real, sobering way.  No pun intended.  At least not the sober one.

Yeah.  What does this mean for you, dear WordPress blogger…or for someone who stumbled across this article?  It means you are powerful beyond your wildest belief.

Every time you commit your precious thoughts to the page and share them with people (comma) you are saying the only stuff that people believe anymore.

It doesn’t mean you can talk about reptilians and be taken seriously (no offence to my reptilian theorist brothers…and sisters).  No, it means that the only people who have CAPITAL in SINCERITY are everyday people like me…and YOU.

We don’t believe the lies anymore.  We’ve swallowed so many damned secrets that we’re sick to death.  We can’t sleep.  But we are fucking powerful!  Hillary Clinton knows it.  Zbigniew Brzezinski knows it.  I’m not sure if David Rockefeller knows it.  Nor George H.W. Bush.

That’s ok.  They came from a different generation.  Hell…I’m not even a “digital native”…  Not a Millennial.  I guess I am part of that lamentable flannel fuzzed Generation X.  I hyphenate when I damn well please.

I make inside jokes that only I get.  I don’t have any friends.  Not anymore.  But I have family.  I have cats.  Some days I think my best friend is an extraterrestrial in Turkey.  Or a classmate from Iran.  But most days my best friend is an actor or an actress.

So to Kat Dennings (and Renee Yohe)…wherever you are.  Thank you.  It makes a big fucking difference.  That you exist.  My sentence fragments and idiosyncratic punctuation are yours.  Mi casa es su casa.

-PD

4 Comments

Magnum Force [1973)

It begins like Vertigo…like Vivre sa vie…that barely noticed, unnecessary action of a person more or less staying still.  Blinking perhaps.  It is not quite corpsing.  More subtle.  It is a bold statement from director Ted Post.  By the end of the credits we feel like those early audiences of The Great Train Robbery:  staring down the barrel of a gun.

Post does a remarkable job of continuing the suspense of the previous film in this series (Dirty Harry) while working with an even more complex (and germane to our present times) plot.  Inside job.

Over the course of the film we are made to suspect several different people…all of these essentially variations on the inside job trope.  Almost like a continuum of LIHOP and MIHOP.

It begins with the strange rookie cops…taking some target practice in the middle of the night.  Traffic cops.  Kinda like those strange power-downs and repairs at the WTC leading up to 9/11/01.  Something weird going on…

Eastwood smells it like the late John O’Neill of the FBI.  But let’s back up to Briggs:  Hal Holbrook.  Reminds us of another “Lieutenant”…Richard Holbrooke.  Should we be surprised that Richard’s original name was Goldbrajch?  Of course not.  Should we be surprised that he attended Brown University?  Of course not.  [see:  Victoria Nuland, Roberta Jacobson, etc.]

Holbrooke served with “diplomats” like John Negroponte and Frank Wisner.  Negroponte attended Yale…specifically Davenport College.  Ah, Davenport…the alumni of this residential college include both Bush presidents, William F. Buckley Jr. (we’re really racking up the CIA/Skull & Bones points so far), Samantha Power, etc.  It should be noted the physical proximity of the Skull & Bones “Tomb” to this residential college:  literally a stone’s throw (right around the corner).

Wisner established the Operation Mockingbird propaganda program on behalf of the CIA.  He also established “stay-behind” networks in Europe post-WWII.  One can’t help wonder if these were the same (the Italian one at least) which were (was) activated for the false-flag terror in Italy as part of the “strategy of tension” (Operation Gladio).  We won’t even get into Mossadegh and Árbenz.  We will, however, point out the very interesting word found within the Iranian PM’s name depending on transliteration:  Mossadegh vs. Mosaddegh.  It seems Wikipedia is going with the latter spelling (interesting considering the recent admission [finally!] by the CIA that they overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran in 1953).

Back to Holbrooke…managing editor of Foreign Affairs (the official CFR publication) from 1972-1976.  Holbrooke, like all good spooks, eventually ended up on Wall Street (Lehman Bros.)  Ugh…  Did you know the American Academy in Berlin has a Henry Kissinger Award???  …and that it was awarded to George H.W. Bush in 2008?!?  Talk about a double whammy!!  This “cultural exchange” was the brainchild of Holbrooke.

Chalk up for Holbrooke membership in the Trilateral Commission.  He was also on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group (I refuse to capitalize).  All of this is a long set up to say that Hal Holbrook’s character Briggs couldn’t be more like Richard Holbrooke in terms of apparent philosophy.

When people like Briggs and Holbrooke have former Airborne Rangers and Special Forces at their disposal, things will end very badly for all involved.  Unfortunately, the four rookie cops are some sick fucks!  They’ve bought into the twisted philosophy of their ringleader Briggs.  The Lieutenant must have been an early pioneer in the militarization of American police.

But the fuckers in charge forgot to check the titty bank (and the snatch bank).  Enter Clint Eastwood.

The super-death in Technicolor and Panavision is not enough to shake the monk Harry Callahan from his herringbone duty.  A can of Schlitz and a cold burger:  Harry gets the job done.

Yeah, Davis is a little too prompt to the crime scene…kinda like FEMA on 9/11 with their Tripod II drill which so serendipitously helped Rudy Giuliani establish a new base after his bunker was brought down by controlled demolition (WTC 7).  It’s splitting hairs to fixate on the date (September 10th, 12th, either way).  They were there at Pier 29.  Strange, don’t you think?

Bless you Ted Post, John Milius, and Michael Cimino for bringing us this death squad wake up in 1973.  Rogue elements.  It’s what people like Alex Jones have been saying all along.  It’s not the whole police force.  It’s not the whole CIA.  It’s not the whole military.  The criminal segments are elements (with high-level moles).

Enter Jade Helm.  We hope Steve Quayle is wrong, but the idea is not outlandish (knowing what we do about our government).

May God make me misjudged.  Like Callahan.  The death squads can’t persuade him.  Not like this.

Ruppert’s ghost lives on in cached posts.
It’s who you least suspect.  No, not quite.  Open your eyes.

We hate the goddamn system, but rough justice works both ways.  Abide by nothing, expect the same.  Dirty Harry is the cleanest of the bunch.

May God help us to survive the outgunned moment.  Maybe it’s the USS Forrestal.  James was right about Palestine.  And now Wayne Madsen has strangely dispensed with the Drew Pearson citation.

Here be monsters!

-PD

5 Comments

Quantum of Solace [2008)

Early.  “Dame” Judi Dench.  Threat of extraordinary rendition.  Not cool.

Doesn’t seem to bode well.  Are we about to be served a helping of steaming-shit propaganda?

No.  Not quite.  Thank heavens!

Earlier.  Another fucking car chase.  God damn it, if I wanted to watch Top Gear I’d have stayed home with a cup of PG Tips!

But by the grace of all that’s good and right in the world (hyperbole watch), Marc Forster has done the impossible:  a good (not great) follow-up to the best Bond film of all-time.

As of 2006.

Tagged banknotes.  D. B. Cooper.  An alias.  It was 1973 when this bizarre skyjacking took place in the Pacific Northwest.  The FBI had the forethought to make a microfilm photograph of all of the ransom money turned over to Mr. Cooper.  That’s a lot of photographs in a short amount of time, don’t you think?  10,000 unmarked 20-dollar bills. L.  Federal Reserve.  San Francisco.  Series 1969-C.  In a matter of hours…10,000 individual photographs?

By 2008, we doubt such modes of tracking considerably less.  And so, by hook and crook, we end up in Haiti.  This is where we first meet Olga Kurylenko.  Bolivian Intelligence.

And then the subtle subplots come in waves.  We are shown the duplicity of the CIA.  To wit, a CIA which is deceiving its partners the MI6.

It is all so very applicable to the adventures of one Ms. Victoria Nuland.  But it goes all the way back (at least) to the ouster of one Mr. Mosaddegh in 1953.  Particularly, it extends to the present allegations of U.S. military (and contractors) raping children in Colombia.  It goes to the adventures of one Mr. George Soros.  It leads right up to the ridiculous pronouncement of Venezuela as a threat to American national security.

Nisman.  Nemtsov.  Shady activities to undermine democracy in Argentina and Brazil.  Warnings from Ecuador that American intelligence is attempting to overthrow any government which does not declare fealty to the United Corporations of America.

We will eventually get to Russia…or they will get to us.

São Paulo.  Veolia Environnement.  Suez Environnement.  Water.  Drought.

We tend to view very few world events as accidents anymore (knowing what we know about history).  It was 9/11 which taught us that things aren’t always what they seem.  And as we dug deeper into declassified documents, we realized how long this charade has been going on.  And now, with immensely powerful technology at their fingertips, the most unscrupulous world leaders are in a position to stage just about anything (with a little help from the military component of their industrial complex).

I must hand it to director Forster:  though the earpieces were brilliant, it was the strains of Tosca which made the mute shootout so artful.

Another soft undercurrent:  a Special Branch bodyguard protecting a member of an international crime syndicate.  No wonder the work of intelligence agencies is so difficult!  Politicians make deals with unsavory characters and thereby endanger the safety and futures of their citizens.  Oh, sure…we are made to believe that this is all in the process of pursuing the lesser of evils, but as Mary Parker Follett said, “Authority should go with knowledge…whether it is up the line or down.”  That means that in many cases, politicians should get out of the way of the NSA, CIA, MI6, etc.

It’s a shame Strawberry Fields couldn’t remain with us longer.  At least she gets a good trip in! Her death, however, is a rather unimaginative twist on Goldfinger.  Nice try, gents.

But all is forgiven because of the Mathis death which precedes this.  When seeing the old agent dead in a dumpster from a high, circumspect vantage point, we think of Bill Buckley in Beirut and even the strange death of John P. Wheeler III.  We think of the MITRE Corporation.  We wonder about all those filthy neocon roaches that have managed to keep their clawed positions in government (Nuland). But mostly we realize that death in a dumpster is the true romanticism of being a secret agent.  This is the disconnect between reality and fiction:  James Bond will never end up dead in a dumpster.  He is, actor by actor, immortal.  Or rather, his lifespan depends on the British-American power which persists.

If the Russians were to win, we might be seeing more Stierlitz films.  Though Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Georgiy Zhzhonov are gone, that spirit would procede.

In James Bond we have the remnants of the British Empire (and the American spoils of WWII known as Hollywood).

In Quantum of Solace we again find the trend which started at least as early as the excellent License to Kill (1989):  divine insubordination.  You do not have to obey an unjust order.  An unjust law is no law at all.  St. Thomas Aquinas (from St. Augustine).  Natural law.

Jeffrey Wright displays this admirably in his portrayal of CIA agent Felix Leiter.  And of course Daniel Craig as Bond…the epitome of insubordination.  Bond can get away with it because he is that talented.  Few are these mythical supermen.

Forster manages a touchingly real moment when Craig shields and comforts Kurylenko amid the flashback flames.  It reminds us of Bond’s humanity in the egg-shell poignant scene of Casino Royale when Craig joins Eva Green beneath the interminably therapeutic cascade of a distraught shower…sitting down, fully clothed…that distant, vacant look of fear in her eyes as she shivers.

And with this we congratulate the James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli for stringing together these two films in such a genius manner.

We end in Kazan.  Not Elia Kazan.  May God spare us the dick-measuring contest of Minuteman III and Topol-M.

-PD

13 Comments

The 39 Steps [1935)

Oh, to be a spy.  At once the dream of the adventurous and the curse of the actualized.  Why?  Why does Robert Donat let Annabella Smith come home with him from the music hall???  Perhaps it is her allure…  Her strange foreign accent.  Once you take the first step, the case collapses to become a chute…a slide.

Perhaps Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) was simply curious.  We know how the cat ended behaving thusly…

Perhaps Hannay was horny?  It was, after all, 1935…things were lightening up a bit.  No Tinder, but still…one might luck out at the music hall.

Well, Hannay has the misfortune of true cloak and dagger.  Annabella Smith…Hannay asks if she’s ever heard of persecution mania?  Yes, a good question until she comes stumbling from the kitchen with a knife in her back.

And so Hannay sees her fears materialize before his very eyes.  Sure, she could have stabbed herself in the back, but it’s not bloody likely!  And what’s this?

Her last words…cryptic…and a map of Scotland clutched in her hand.

Hanney has become a believer.  It is that moment when hypothetical (suppose she’s right?) becomes, to a certain extent, proven.

No time to split hairs quibbling…she makes it clear with her last breath:  they killed me and you’re next.

Why trust?  Perhaps the spy becomes tired.  She is, after all, a mercenary in a foreign country.  Yes, she is protecting the Kingdom, but for a price…  Her homeland is elsewhere.

And so an act of transference occurs.  Robert Donat now bears the burden of a secret…a hint of a secret…a trail.

He has a couple of choices.  The decision he makes ends up saving his life, yet it is completely counterintuitive.

He decides to get the hell out of there.  Annabella Smith is dead on the bed.  Hanney makes a deal with the milkman (1935) and creeps off towards the train station.

To Scotland.

Things begin to go very hard for Mr. Hanney.  He is pursued relentlessly.  A daring escape from a train stopped on a bridge brings him eventually to the Scottish moors and the village circled on Annabella’s map.

On the way he must overnight with a farm couple…  The man of the house is an overbearing null…the woman, an angel trapped in an unhappy provincial cage.

This is really the beginning of the James Bond idea.  In 1935, they shared but a kiss.

Now, if you have made it this far you will be spared further spoilers…because that is not the purpose of my site.  This isn’t Cliff’s Notes.

We must talk of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.  Perhaps you have noticed the news element of my homepage?  It is really not fair to criticize our CIA…it is too easy.  There can be no doubt as to the difficulty of their work.

As a citizen of the USA I have dreamed of being a secret agent…just as many people do.  It would be a treasonous dream for me to wish employment by the MI6.  I am not British.  So my thoughts have turned now and again to my own country’s external intelligence organization.

Oh, I am too old to be a covert agent…too out of shape to have a fistfight with a Daniel Craig type.

But we remember certain things from our readings.  Wall Street = CIA.  This was Michael Ruppert’s assertion in his excellent book Crossing the Rubicon.  May Mr. Ruppert rest in peace.  No doubt he tried to do the right things during his time on this earth.  It was not until recently that I learned of his death.

Perhaps I began studying business as a roundabout way to court adventure.  There is no doubt that my future is not on Wall Street.  In fact, I don’t see much future at all.

Why?  Because I am like Robert Donat’s character in this film.  I can’t leave well-enough alone.  Killing in self-defense or in the defense of others can be honorable, but stretched to its limits by tenuous connection it eventually becomes murder.  When I read about the leading intelligence agencies of the world, I get the whiff of murder.  I get the scent of those who are “just following orders”…just like those good little Nazi soldiers.

It is this thirst for justice which makes me unemployable.  I know it.

And so I soldier on.  I do my cardio.  I lift my weights.  I study my texts.  I enrich my mind.

I am just a loner with my films.  I would like to contribute, but I was born of no prestigious family.  I don’t speak Dari or Pashto.

There are two camps of which I wish to be part of neither.  Camp one holds that everything America does is just and good. Camp two holds that nothing America does is just nor good.

I do not wish for a clean slate.  It is not possible.  Those who wish for the collapse of society are fools.  They are wishing for their own death and are far too optimistic about the practicality of starting over.

Now, dear film lover…you must be asking what this has to do with The 39 Steps.

Mr. Memory.

Office of Strategic Services.

Office of the Coordinator of Information.

Robert Sherwood.  movie critic.  Vanity Fair.  Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley.  Algonquin Round Table. Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent.  Hitchcock.  Yes, it is a tenuous link.

Continuing…

Admiral John Godfrey.  “M”

Centre for Spastic Children, Chelsea.

…and finally

William Stephenson (c’est-à-dire) James Bond

the Icelandic orphan

alluded to in Casino Royale (2006)

to wit

British Security Coordination

Camp X (Whitby, Ontario) [the original Farm]

Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl

Rockefeller Center (35th and 36th floors of the International Building)

under the cover of British Passport Control Office

For better or worse, CIA is MI6.  Where does one stop and the other begin?  To what extent is this a private army for the corporate members of the Council on Foreign Relations (Royal Institute of International Affairs)?

Surely we’re all playing by the Chatham House rules here, aren’t we, gents?

-PD

5 Comments

Casino Royale [2006)

This is the best Bond film.  As of 2006.  On my site, you will find reviews of the 20 preceding Bond movies.  The reviews were not written to lead up to this conclusion.  They were written to assess the series as a whole.  While I realize that said series has continued since 2006, I will address that extended life at a later time.  My previous reviews slowly culled the catalog down to three (and now four) films of unmatched greatness (in terms of this series):  The Man with the Golden Gun, A View to a Kill, License to Kill, and now the one which far exceeds even those three::  Casino Royale.

Why?  Because…Martin Campbell.  His effort on GoldenEye was just that…a good try.  His work here is timeless:  an auteur.

Why?  Because…the first time Bond and Vesper Lynd meet.  The best dialog in the entire history of Bond films.

Because…Eva Green is the most beautiful Bond girl in 44 years (which is to say, as of 2006, ever).

Because Bond falls in love…really.  Like no time since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

That speaks to the feminine ideal of Eva Green.

But let us delve deeper…into why “the bitch is dead”…

Yes, those are the words.

It is one of those rare times when I can refer back to the book with knowing alacrity.

By George W. Bush’s second term in office, the bitch was beginning to die.  The bitch in question?  Propaganda.

People are becoming too informed.

And so a film such as this only gains credibility by mentioning the 9/11 put options.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/9-11-attacks-criminal-foreknowledge-and-insider-trading-lead-directly-to-the-cia-s-highest-ranks/32323

Sure, there is propaganda…such as the child soldiers in Uganda, but it is tentative.  The sweeping generalizations of past Bond films had mercifully vanished.

Sure, there’s a lot of pish about terrorism, but it is at least somewhat tempered by reality.

This is all the nations of the world are asking of intelligence agencies as their first order of business:  just admit that you are a bunch of fucking scumbag assholes.

And so:  a concept even Donald Rumsfeld could probably appreciate.

A little concoction of my own:  may it live long and serve humanity as a judo virus.

To wit:  there is good evil and evil evil.

Even Dostoyevsky might get a kick out of this game.

Don’t get me wrong:  I am not playing your garden variety of “the end justifies the means”…

No, no…far from it.

With Daniel Craig’s first Bond appearance we see the most brilliant portrayal of good evil.

Evil is active.  Good is passive.

If my entire mission was to confuse you, I would do well to mention such in the course of my exegesis.

The drone strikes are extrajudicial.  Good evil is extra-Jesus.

Ah, my Venetian history crumbles into the canal.  Dear Henry VIII…

Let me pull myself from the stake…like John of Arc.

The first code is ELLIPSIS.  It is the fire in the guts of Louis-Ferdinand Céline…the splitting of the literary atom.  Professor Y.

Good evil.

Fortunately there is no sportscaster to reveal just how ludicrous the plot devolution is…a Texas hold ’em tournament in Montenegro.

No.  It had to be, Beethoven.  No one plays baccarat anymore.  We need to put asses in seats.

Sure, it becomes complex.  Mathis is tased.  Bond is dazed.  Even perfect films have bad cuts…perhaps this game is making you perspire?

I noticed you changed your shirt…

They finally got it right.  Just the right combination of Titanic (1997) and Lars von Trier.

Good enough for a blockbuster.  It would never hold water at the arthouse.

And Martin Campbell’s great contribution?  Restraint.  Knowing when to yell “cut!”///

-PD

6 Comments

Die Another Day [2002)

CGI, like fake boobs, does not age well.  But let us back up to all of the ridiculous indoctrination which precedes the failed geekery of late in the film.  This James Bond movie has many reeducation moments, but they emanate not from the North Korean characters but rather the film’s shadow auteurs.  Let me demonstrate.

“North Korea bad.  England good.  England also known U.K.  [ooga booga]  America friend U.K.  North Korea torture.  America and U.K. not torture.  [ooga-booga]”

Yes, dear friends…Hollywood considers you a bunch of fucking chimps.  And when it comes to films with a lot of heavy weaponry, you can bet the transnational military-industrial complex had a large role to play in the production.

North Korea hacked Sony?  Gimme a fucking break!  That was a self-inflicted publicity stunt.  The only problem is the collusion of intelligence services which are always tasked with finding the next suitable enemy.  The CIA, MI6, NSA, and every other alphabet agency in the Anglo-American “five eyes” network have become nothing more than glorified traffic cops…fulfilling their ticket quotas.

Why will the new world order fail?  Because they do not employ the best artists.  Sure, there are forgery artists on staff of these intel agencies, but not the artists needed to fool the world.  There are no Charlie Chaplins, no Orson Welles, no Pablo Picassos, no Igor Stravinskys…  And so the global elite circuitously churn out these propaganda films which age as fast as Cheez Whiz or Silly String. They count on audiences being stupid…both uneducated and willfully stupid (in combination).

Lee Tamahori actually does a worse job directing than Michael Apted did in the last half of the previous Bond film, though sadly the mise-en-scène is almost indistinguishable.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system (yay! free speech), let’s talk about what is salvageable.  Zao.  Diamond acne.  That’s pretty good.

Torture in the opening credits.  Very innovative (and true to the spirit of the first Bond novel Casino Royale).  Bond’s dereliction of duty (if it can be called that) echoes the wonderful message of License To Kill (1989), yet what follows is mostly hackneyed storytelling.

Halle Berry’s emergence from the ocean like the reincarnation of Ursula Andress circa 1962 seems to bode well, but it is simply a rare moment of excellence in a sea of shite.

Further indoctrination follows in that Berry is supposedly an NSA agent.  In all my years reading about the NSA (from James Bamford to Wayne Madsen), never have I encountered even a hint of the kind of agent she is purported to be.  This leads me to believe that the whole purpose was to make No Such Agency seem cool and acceptable knowing that the PATRIOT Act was now letting them eavesdrop the shit out of your lives.  They knew such a steamroller approach would eventually result in public backlash.  And it did.  NSA agent…  Gimme a fucking break…

And then of course there’s the nice little mention of Sierra Leone.  We’d be revisiting that country as “liberators” from a biowarfare agent called ebola before too long.

Yes, I know, dear reader:  these sound like the thoughts of a raving lunatic.  I urge you to investigate…really investigate.  Investigate to the point you are scared…and then investigate some more.  Can you afford it?  We dispossessed of the earth have nothing to lose.

I could talk about Madonna’s bad acting.  Actually, I like Madonna.  It’s just horrible fucking directing.  To the director’s credit, the scene seems pressured from above…like a goddamned product placement.

Graves ice palace looks like a cross between the Sydney Opera House and a frozen McDonald’s.  What a pathetic piece of set design.

Conversely, kudos to the thinkers behind the hypersonic wedding ring.

But these fucking car chases…it’s like Top Gear.  What a load of uncinematic crap!

It’s a pity Rosamund Pike had such a bollocks role.

This is just atrocious filmmaking.

-PD

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Tomorrow Never Dies [1997)

“We won’t be signing off until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event . . . we’ll play ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ before we sign off.”  Ted Turner.  1980.  Launch of CNN.

Ah, but let’s back up to 1973 when Rupert Murdoch bought the San Antonio Express-News.  Somehow this Aussie weaseled into the U.S. market with that acquisition (in my home town) and now his empire has spawned the most virulent threat to the world:  Fox News.

The news ticker began on 9/11/01 over at Fox and has continued till the present time.  Let me demonstrate:  fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fearfearfearfearfearfearfearfear ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISIS ISISISISISISISISISISISISIISISIS Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran Iran IranIranIranIranIranIranIranIran.

Well, one of these two men (Turner and Murdoch) said something wise back in 2006.  “They’re a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel — they’ve got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia.”  [–Ted Turner]  Now that’s a statement I can get behind.

But let’s be honest:  the perceived enemy of Fox News on the national landscape (Democrats) have had their chance.  Obama lost my confidence when he failed to truly investigate 9/11.  Not only that, he “killed” bin Laden:  thereby solidifying the false narrative which has passed by our eyes each day like that doomsday ticker at the bottom of the screen.

And so we dig deeper:

Georgia Guidestones.  1980.  “..until the world ends. We’ll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event.”  Hmmm.  1980.  Population reduction.  Let’s see:  7 billion – 500 million= 6.5 billion.  Ok, so the Georgia Guidestones would seem to be advocating the death of about 92% of humanity.  So, let’s see:  there’s the 1%…and then the 7% they decide get to come along for the ride.

Wendi Deng.  Deng Wenge.  Wenge…hmmm.  Mao!  Cultural Revolution.  1966-1976.  Purge.  Violent class struggle.  Youths of the Red Guards.  Of course Deng was born in 1968 so her name might be kinda akin to Deng Endlösung or Deng Kristallnacht had she been born in late-1930s Germany.  Back to Mao…how many were fatally purged?  30,000?  100,000?  400,000?  750,000?  1.5 million?  3 million?

MBA.  Yale.  Los Angeles.  News Corp.  Hong Kong.  Rupert.  Tony Blair.  Hmmm…

Well, in any case:  Happy Birthday to Mr. Murdoch who turns 84 years young tomorrow.  Hi Rupert!

Tomorrow never dies.

Spottiswoode.  48 Hrs.  Walter Hill.

Holly Palance.  Jeremy Prokosch.  I always thought it was Jeremiah.

And my jeremiads…

Divorced 1997.  Check.  The omen…

Bruce Feirstein.  He dreamt up this outlandish (hardly) plot.  Political commentator on Fox News.  Vanity Fair contributor (say hi to Tosches for me).  Film producer in China.  Hmmm…

Ah, but the kicker is changing light bulbs on Newark Airport runways:  Feirstein’s high school job.  That really takes the cake.

Flight 93.  Cell phone calls from 40,700 feet in 2001 (NPR, June 17, 2004).  I’ve always hated NPR, but they make the case that much simpler.  In the words of astute observers:  strictly impossible.

The dialog in Tomorrow Never Dies is actually pretty good, but what can compare to the anonymous writing prowess found in such phrases as, “Hey! Hey! Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me.”  I mean, really:  that is some heady scriptwriting to give to a non-SAG actor like “Ziad Jarrah” or whichever of the fictitious bogeyman was purported to be speaking at the time.

Ah, but we are supposed to think of Robert Maxwell says Feirstein.  Yet, just like in Godard’s Made in U.S.A., we run into Donald E. Westlake.  Hmmm…

Significantly, villain Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is made to utter the phrase “new world order.”  Indeed.

Opening the same day as Titanic.  Let’s see:  groundbreaking for The Pentagon?  September 11, 1941.  The CIA’s overthrow of Salvador Allende and his assassination?  September 11, 1973.

I am urged to see these as coincidences.

And Henry Gupta?  Are we to think of A.Q. Khan who was born in Bhopal?  And Enron?

Ah yes:  1974.  ISI.

“We have 28,000. Why can’t they have 10? We don’t say anything about Israel — they’ve got 100 of them approximately.”

I wish I had a Murdoch quote to balance this out.  I don’t think his 2006 fundraising for Hillary Clinton or his New York Post support for Obama would have quite the same effect, but it’s worth noting.  “Yeah. He is a rock star. It’s fantastic. I love what he is saying about education. I don’t think he will win Florida… but he will win in Ohio and the election. I am anxious to meet him. I want to see if he will walk the walk.”  [Rupert Murdoch on whether he had anything to do with the Post’s pro-Obama push in 2008]

Rothschild.  Waterloo.  Niall Ferguson makes a valiant effort to rehabilitate Nathan, but is it true?  It seems there are at least some scruples at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

We’ve heard the concept…playing both sides against one another.  Indeed, funding both sides.  Hedging.  Divide and conquer.

It’s very important that the “right” weapons be found.  High stakes.  Fighting the Soviets.  Afghanistan.  Charlie Wilson’s War.  Maybe call this guy in Israel.  Fake it till you make it.  Make it to fake it.  Make it fake.

And so the James Bond franchise presciently taught the world about false flags back in 1997, but was anyone listening?

-PD

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GoldenEye [1995)

This one starts really bad.  Bollocks bad!  But let’s face it:  there may be nothing more difficult in this world than making a great James Bond movie.  Many have tried.  Few have succeeded.  It is an unenviable task because the series is so laden with baggage.  And so this installment definitely has the feel of a “comeback” (what with the six years in between episodes).  Bringing Bond into a new age is a daunting endeavor.

I don’t know if it helps or hurts that the six-year gap is accompanied by a new 007.  Pierce Brosnan starts a little vanilla, but he heats up throughout the course of this picture.  Judy Dench is powerful in her limited screen-time as M:  head of MI6.  Overall, Martin Campbell does a fine job directing this addition to the legacy.  But it’s not all roses.

Bond’s getaway stunt in the Pilatus PC-6 Porter seems to defy the laws of physics.  To wit:  the plane is flying almost straight down and yet Brosnan catches up to it in freefall.  Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the heavier object (the plane) would fall at least as fast as Bond (the other object:  human) especially since the human has no propeller attached to his head.  I am not an expert on the law of falling bodies (if you can call it that).  What a drag!  Per second, per second.

But we suspend disbelief as a matter of course for these films (or else we don’t watch).

Mercifully, a convincing villain enters the picture after some further pointless meanderings and baccarat.  Simply put, Famke Janssen is what Grace Jones should have been in A View to a Kill.  That’s no disrespect to Jones.  Grace cut a much more iconic figure, but Janssen’s sadomasochistic character and her immersed portrayal of the same make for much more enthralled viewing in this respect.

But another problem presents itself with the helicopter theft.  Supposing that Severnaya (in the film) is the same as Severnaya Zemlya (both are Siberian/Russian arctic), then we are talking about a 3000 mile trip from Monte Carlo in a chopper.  That’s a lot of gas.  It’s just a clunky bit of storytelling.

But again Famke Janssen comes to the rescue with her wargasm reaction to machine-gunning a bunch of Russian cyber-defense workers.  Yes, it’s like something out of the poetry of Ed Sanders.  In fact, her bloodlust with an automatic weapon mirrors Christopher Walken’s in A View to a Kill.

But one young programmer escapes.  All it takes is one.  Izabella Scorupco is really fantastic in this film…especially as she tries to make her way out of the destroyed space weapons base.  Her acting throughout is very convincing.

Janus.  Films.  It’s a nice touch on the part of the writer Michael France.  Kinda like Joe Don Baker.  We remember him vaguely as Brad Whitaker (the villain) from The Living Daylights, but here we see the other face:  Jack Wade of the CIA.  Sneaky device there.  Perhaps.

But most likely it was just to reward a member of the Bond family with another role.  Who can forget Maud Adams in her two Bond series roles (nine years apart).

Robbie Coltrane is great in his tiny role.  It’s kinda like the Bond girl innuendo…Onatopp.  You have to look for it.  It’s there, but it’s no Pussy Galore.

Really, it is a shock when we find out what happened to 006.

But again, the “death by Tiger helicopter” scene is pretty preposterous.  This Janus guy certainly has a moronic streak in him…even if he is creative.

Gottfried John is pretty damned convincing in this film as well.

What’s not convincing (though it is entertaining) is Pierce Brosnan driving a tank.  Or rather, how is this tank keeping pace with a powerful sedan?  The Guinness record for a tracked vehicle (tank tread) is 51 mph.  Suffice it to say that this scene really stretches the bounds of reality.  The funniest part is that Brosnan’s hair is never messed up.  It’s perfect even though he plows through walls…kicking up concrete dust.  We never see him close the hatch, yet not a speck of white on him (though the tank be littered with bricks and other debris from the endless rampage of cavalier driving).

The armoured train is a nice touch (though it only figures into a brief portion of the film).

The EMP theme is still relevant, but the film pays a strange homage to the Star Wars franchise in the end struggle on the antenna structure (a rather tasteless bit of copying).  This is balanced out with some nice fight scenes which are some of the best in any Bond film.

I should really mention Sean Bean.  He is pretty damned good in this flick.  It’s funny that he later plays essentially the same role in National Treasure.

One brilliant bit is that with the pen grenade. This might be director Campbell’s finest moment in the film.  Brosnan plays it perfectly…reminding us that attention to detail can make all the difference.

It’s too bad Alan Cumming had to be the bad guy (though his name perfectly fits the perverted Boris character).  I guess he wasn’t inwincible after all.  Haha!  And don’t forget Minnie Driver singing “Stand by Your Man” with a Russian accent.

-PD

B

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Pierrot le Fou [1965)

Here.  Ici.  Godard=Picasso=Joyce.  It may start with an Élie Faure quote concerning Velázquez, but that is just to set the stage for this ball of colored glass which goes beyond cinema.  The politics come on stronger, but they are like that strangely succinct Butthole Surfers lyric about not giving a fuck about the FBI…or the CIA.

You must only dial M.  Two murders by scissor.  Furthermore, the only way to catch a thief might be in his fireworks.  The tears of a clown…Clyde and his Bonnie…I can’t even keep track of their casual carnage.  Two?  3?  One thing is for sure:  the excitement of Breathless returns…along with the high school musical version of Broadway…in a bare apartment…a girl and a shitload of guns.  That’s all you need for this film.  And a car.  The spirit of Gene Kelly emerges later to spiff up the surreal song moments.

Pierrot doesn’t drive off a cliff.  But he drives right into the sea.  Yes, books were Pierrot’s downfall.  He’s never gonna get that job at Standard Oil.  Especially since he skipped town with a smokin’-hot murderer.  Drive all night.  Fuck it!  I’m so sick of everyone.  I just want to do what I want.  You know, just get in your car and start driving.  Find a town somewhere and start a whole new life.

Enid Coleslaw would doubtless have a certain simpatico with our lovers Marianne and Ferdinand (Pierrot [Belmondo]).  But this paradise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  A parrot, a fox, sure…but eating out of tin cans…Marianne, like Groucho Marx, wants some hot-cha-cha!  And so the dance hall in town.  It could be L’Atalante.  It could be Casque d’Or.  Why are the police not here yet?  Because they like to let people destroy themselves.  Victor Hugo meets Dostoyevsky.

More torture à la Le Petit Soldat.  Use the whore’s dress.  Polyester.  An especially nasty asphyxiation.  And so Ferdinand ends up back in the bathtub…where he started.  Instead of reading the history of modern art to his daughter, he has just outed his lover.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.  What a terrible 5:00 pm.

Maybe I will just let the train pulverize me.  Why is it always damsels in distress?  Damoiseau?

Ah, but it all makes so much sense in the end.  Raymond Devos sums it up.  That tune that’s always been playing.  It is our comedic, pathetic love life.  Yes, she betrayed us.  And so he fails to not commit suicide.

A failed failure is a success.  I’ve always had trouble spelling that word.  I blame Bob Dylan.  There is no k in success.  And though I long embraced suckcess, I now remove the k and a c comes with it.  Sucess.  I have unsuccessfully spelled success.  As a graduate student.  In business.

Ah, but it’s really no use.  One must stay optimistic.  Realistic.  Let’s face it:  the chances are slim.  It takes a lot to laugh.  Hear that lonesome whistle blow.  Maybe tomorrow Bob Dylan.  Suckcess in all its glory.

-PD

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