Skyfall

Skyfall
2012
#29

I was occupied with another movie and its premiere back in November when this originally released and while I was away the weekend it came out, my parents, who I'm not ashamed to admit are my regular movie going partners, saw this without me. I had thought about seeing it while I was away, but the plan that was loosely had with my friends didn't workout thanks to some...logistical issues...with our sleeping arrangements. I wanted to see it, of course, but it was destined to have to wait until the dvd released. Somewhere along the line in the months that followed, I added it to an Amazon order as a pre-order to arrive on the day it was released to the public.

So I've had the dvd since sometime in February. Heck I even opened the thing and have been carrying it between my room and the pc with my stitching just in case I found the time to watch it between being on Facebook and reading emails and chatting on Twitter and watching Star Trek shows on Netflix. Don't have any real reason to have waited so long to watch it, I just never got around to it. *shrugs*

Anyways...

So as a Bond film, this is one of the better ones that have been made. Oddly though, it seems rather, I'm not sure what to call it, light? on the Bond-ness scale. You're used to a Bond film with lots of new gadgets from Q, lots of one liners from Bond (along with that famous shaken, not stirred line), Bond falling into bed with so many women you stop counting, and more then a few twists with the familar "dan na dan naaaa" music over them. Those are minimal in this film, some on purpose - one of the running themes is going back to the old school methods and simple, not always super high tech but still very effective weapons and gadgets, right down to Bond's personal DB5 Aston Martin. Like stepping back in time to the Bond days of Connery.

Here I pause to pay tribute to that beautiful old car automobile. She died an honorable death in the line of duty. So sad. Car go BOOM!

But I guess to say that it is one of the better films quite possibly because there isn't that same, sometimes to the point of silly, techno weaponry and nifty gadgets is more than a bit of a contradiction. No exploding pens here. Nice touch with the Bond's palm print only Walther though. The problem with those gadgets, though that are fun, is that they add a level of camp and impossibility to the Bond films. This time around, we've gone back to the basics. No games and toys to play with. Just ordinary badassery.

The film centers on Bond once again defying death, this time to try and protect our dear M from what turns out to be a former agent that she had no choice but to burn to save lives. The good of the many vs the good of the few or the one and all that. How Vulcan. Also to try and keep said baddie from exposing the rest of the MI6 crew around the world, lest they be tortured and/or killed.

Bardem plays our freakishly blond eyebrowed baddie fairly well, though I get the feeling he could've been even more sinister feeling if he tried a little harder. On that scale, he doesn't hold up against Bond villains of the past. He ain't no Goldfinger.

What makes this film stand out is that it is well, simple. It is Bond doing what he does best - taking out the bad guys. 007 isn't "licensed to kill" just for fun. It's what he excels at. Finding and stopping people.

Along with the scaled back, old school tech, we dive a little deeper in the past of the man that is Bond, and not just with the DB5. We go back to where this man grew up, even meeting the man who taught him how to shoot a gun. We take M out of her office and back out into the field (very literally at one point) and we see that time is creeping up on Bond just a bit. He isn't the young man he was. All those gun shots and jumps from places no normal person would ever make are catching up to him. He isn't down for the count of course - his hobby is resurrection after all. As one character says, "Old dog. New tricks."

This film definitely comes across as what feels like a turning point. 2012 was the 50th anniversary of James Bond. You get the sense that they know these films still have an audience but that they need a bit of a dusting off. The push of bringing Craig into the role is staring to lose it's effect. As I recall, there was even some doubt originally if they were going to bring him back for this film. My guess is that he's got a few more in them, if they decided to continue.

Nice to see they've decided to bring back Miss Moneypenny. And that she gets to have some time as a badass field agent, not just a secretary personal assistant for M. I'm hoping they use her more in future films like they've done here. I think she's too valuable a character to be always confined to some flirty banter from behind a desk.

Here's to more martinis - shaken. Not stirred.

My Year Of Movies

I am a movie fan. Or better yet a fan of all forms of movies, tv, music, books - a big chunk of what's out there in popular culture. I've got movie lines and references, song lyrics that get triggered in my thoughts in sometimes the strangest of ways, book characters I love and wish existed outside the pages of their stories, all floating around up there in my brain. A lot of it isn't necessarily going to ever get me a job or help me save the world, but it's what makes me, well, me. I come from someone who is also a fan of pop culture, though he leans more toward the old silent films and TV westerns that he grew up on. It is most definitely from him that I get my love of film. The love of reading comes from the other side - a mom and grandmother who read to me and gave me books at an early age and never limited me in what I wanted to explore, even if it was done so cautiously. 

This idea was born somewhere around the end of 2011 - a few friends and I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting and fun to watch movies long distance?" Thanks to the magic of the internet and texting, we would all choose movies and then they'd be put into a planned list of dates to watch - we chose Fridays and Sundays as days we all (usually) had free and chose a time that would suit everyone as we are spread across the country. 

(Now I have to stop here and mention that if it weren't for a certain former band of Monkeys (and heck even the certain movies one of those Monkeys starred in) and the great friend they'd lost and his amazing family, we all might never have known each other. How else would people from across the country, who have not much else in common, ever have met? www.spencerbelllegacy.com Go. Now. I'll wait.)

(Did you go? Ok. Now I'll continue...)

And somewhere once this all got started, I thought it would be a good idea to try and keep track of all the movies I watched throughout the year, even setting the goal of one movie a day - 366 (it was a leap year) and seeing if I could even achieve that - or break it. 

Now I'm not usually good at keeping up with that sort of thing. Or at least I used to be. I even decided along the way to track the books I'd read through the year as well. Incentive to keep both lists going. This is where it was handy to have access to Facebook and programs like Evernote and my phone's own document writing software. I'm not sure this would have been possible for me to accomplish if it weren't for such great mobile technology. 

And sure enough, to my surprise, I kept the lists up, even tracking my progress to that 366/one-a-day goal. Needless to say that was a rather lofty goal - and I didn't even come close to making it, though I don't think I did too badly. My final total for 2012 - 210 movies in 366 days, about 0.57 movies per day, so about half a movie per day. (My book goal - 52 in 52 weeks. My final - 37 books in 52 weeks. Something like 0.716 per week - so a little more than one book every 2 weeks. Also not bad, though not as good as I'd have liked it to be.) I tried my best to not watch things more than once, though there were apparently 7 movies that I just couldn't stop myself from watching - or didn't realize I'd seen them already that year. 

Along the way there were all time favorites, introducing the others to some of those classics that everyone should see at least once in their lives, plenty of movies I'd never seen - some to the complete shock of my friends, some I'll watch any time I find them on TV, movies I wonder why I even bothered to watch, and some moments in my life I will never forget, times spent with people that will forever mean a great deal to me, whether the years eventually part us or not. 

Given the success of the first list, I've decided to keep it again this year. For one, to see if I can manage to actually keep it up again, and for another because it's an interesting way to look back on my year that was. (I'm keeping the book list too.)

This blog - I've started watching a certain list of movies - more on that in another post - feels like the natural continuation and extension of the movie list. Here I can try to review what I watch, though I don't write the best reviews, and just in general get the thoughts I have about what I've seen out of my head. 

It will leave more room for those quotes and song lyrics.