aramis-112-804880
Joined Jul 2011
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A defector promises to bring a secret decoder device with her if James Bond, the world's most famous secret agent, comes to collect it (and her) personally. Is this too good to be true? What do you think?
"Doctor No" tentatively, with its low budget, established the series: luscious scenery, beautiful women, off-their-head megalomaniacs for villains, and new face Sean Connery inhabiting Ian Fleming's Bond.
This time around the megalomaniac is diluted between tough little Lotte Lenya and the ice-cold murderer played by Robert Shaw. Istanbul is not quite as luscious as Jamaica. And, though touted as a great new find, the "Bond girl" didn't have what Ursula Andress had in "No." Andress was irreplaceable. After dozens of "Bond girls," she still is.
What drives "From Russia, With Love" is its superior superior story. It's full of treachery. Robert Shaw passes back and forth in a menacing way the viewer recognizes but Bond doesn't. The deceptions work in many ways: the defector isn't working for the Soviets, as she thinks, but an Illuminati sort of organization called SPECTRE.
On the good side, Connery's Bond (who was raw but not bad in "No") keeps getting better in the role. His fight in the train with Robert Shaw is one of the great Bond scraps. And then there's the incredibly lovely theme song. Sure, musical tastes have changed over the decades, but it was a big hit at the time and to the open-minded it's still dreamy. It's another in the line of great Bond hit songs.
"Doctor No" and "From Russia With Love" were good movies. No one knew "Goldfinger," one of the most influential movies ever (especially on Bond(, was waiting around the corner. Taken for what it is (and compared to nothing that came later) "FRWL" is one of the great Bond movies.
"Doctor No" tentatively, with its low budget, established the series: luscious scenery, beautiful women, off-their-head megalomaniacs for villains, and new face Sean Connery inhabiting Ian Fleming's Bond.
This time around the megalomaniac is diluted between tough little Lotte Lenya and the ice-cold murderer played by Robert Shaw. Istanbul is not quite as luscious as Jamaica. And, though touted as a great new find, the "Bond girl" didn't have what Ursula Andress had in "No." Andress was irreplaceable. After dozens of "Bond girls," she still is.
What drives "From Russia, With Love" is its superior superior story. It's full of treachery. Robert Shaw passes back and forth in a menacing way the viewer recognizes but Bond doesn't. The deceptions work in many ways: the defector isn't working for the Soviets, as she thinks, but an Illuminati sort of organization called SPECTRE.
On the good side, Connery's Bond (who was raw but not bad in "No") keeps getting better in the role. His fight in the train with Robert Shaw is one of the great Bond scraps. And then there's the incredibly lovely theme song. Sure, musical tastes have changed over the decades, but it was a big hit at the time and to the open-minded it's still dreamy. It's another in the line of great Bond hit songs.
"Doctor No" and "From Russia With Love" were good movies. No one knew "Goldfinger," one of the most influential movies ever (especially on Bond(, was waiting around the corner. Taken for what it is (and compared to nothing that came later) "FRWL" is one of the great Bond movies.
Marshall Matt Dillon keeps the law in Dodge City along with his companions Chester, Festus and Newly; girlfriend Kitty; and cantankerous Doc. Doctors, whether in the old west or outer space have to be cantankerous.
"Gunsmoke" was an "adult" western, which meant at the end of each episode someone would be taken away slung across the back of a horse in a gunny sack.
It was a serious show, with comic highlights brought in by Dillon's companions, though more so when the show expanded from a half-hour to an hour, when they had more elbow room to play around. Was Dodge ever really like that? No. But a show must be doing something right to run for twenty years.
"Gunsmoke" was an "adult" western, which meant at the end of each episode someone would be taken away slung across the back of a horse in a gunny sack.
It was a serious show, with comic highlights brought in by Dillon's companions, though more so when the show expanded from a half-hour to an hour, when they had more elbow room to play around. Was Dodge ever really like that? No. But a show must be doing something right to run for twenty years.
King Arthur and his knights try to find the Holy Grail in the midst of very peculiar circumstances.
Forget (if you ever knew) the Holy Grail was invented by a fiction writer named Cretien de Troyes in the 1190s, that the word "grail" comes from a word known locally on Troyes, and it wasn't originally a cup (that attribution came from Cistercian monks in the next century trying to draw parallels to the recently invented Grail to the Eucharist). In fact, the second person ever to write a Grail book (again in the 1190s) called it a stone.
I'd never heard the word Grail when this movie came out. I only knew, in early high school, I and a close group of friends were maniacs for the brand new (in America) "Monty Python's Flying Circus."
It was ages before I knew what a Grail was, but I howled all through the movie (as did everyone else in the theatre) and still do, though then the Grail was to me then no more than a "McGuffin," like secret papers, etc.
I have watched this movie sparingly during the intervening half-century because I don't want to dilute it. But every time I return to it I'm reaffirmed in my belief it's among the top dozen (perhaps half-dozen) comedies ever.
Monty Python humor is a specialized admixture of college-boy showing-off (most of the group went to Oxford or Cambridge) and pure, unadulterated silliness. If you don't like or understand either, you might do well to stay away.
It's called "dated" by some critics, but utter goofiness can't be dated. What they probably mean is that subsequent lesser humorists have robbed Monty Python blind (Kenneth Branagh even had the audacity to steal the coconut shell bit for a Shakespeare movie!)
If you don't like or can't comprehend the lopsided Monty Python universe, stick with something more straightforward. Watch a few Monty Python shows to see if their wackiness suits you. If it does, try this masterpiece on for size.
Forget (if you ever knew) the Holy Grail was invented by a fiction writer named Cretien de Troyes in the 1190s, that the word "grail" comes from a word known locally on Troyes, and it wasn't originally a cup (that attribution came from Cistercian monks in the next century trying to draw parallels to the recently invented Grail to the Eucharist). In fact, the second person ever to write a Grail book (again in the 1190s) called it a stone.
I'd never heard the word Grail when this movie came out. I only knew, in early high school, I and a close group of friends were maniacs for the brand new (in America) "Monty Python's Flying Circus."
It was ages before I knew what a Grail was, but I howled all through the movie (as did everyone else in the theatre) and still do, though then the Grail was to me then no more than a "McGuffin," like secret papers, etc.
I have watched this movie sparingly during the intervening half-century because I don't want to dilute it. But every time I return to it I'm reaffirmed in my belief it's among the top dozen (perhaps half-dozen) comedies ever.
Monty Python humor is a specialized admixture of college-boy showing-off (most of the group went to Oxford or Cambridge) and pure, unadulterated silliness. If you don't like or understand either, you might do well to stay away.
It's called "dated" by some critics, but utter goofiness can't be dated. What they probably mean is that subsequent lesser humorists have robbed Monty Python blind (Kenneth Branagh even had the audacity to steal the coconut shell bit for a Shakespeare movie!)
If you don't like or can't comprehend the lopsided Monty Python universe, stick with something more straightforward. Watch a few Monty Python shows to see if their wackiness suits you. If it does, try this masterpiece on for size.