From Argentina with Love

The emotional content of the first 20 Bond films was deliberately shallow, so as not to be a buzzkill. When Jill Masterson is goldplated to death in “Goldfinger,” Connery seems genuinely upset … for about two minutes. The paint barely has time to dry before he resumes wisecracking mode. (The notable exception to this is “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” where by the end it’s even possible to get a little weepy.) Forster races through a similar, clearly deliberately referential scene in “Casino Royale” so quickly that it barely has time to register as a plot development, let alone as an emotional grace note.

Andy Klein 11/20/2008

Woody Allen as evil Bondian mastermind

This guy is the film reviewer for The Pasadena Weekly (kind of a big deal right?) and his scathing critique was thought worthy of a plug on google’s news homepage today. What the hell was he on about? “Emotional grace notes”? It’s a James Bond film. As all the critics said, there were rather too many fast jump-cuts to close-ups. Someone, maybe one of the Broccolis, should have reigned Swiss director Marc Forster in a bit. But then the Broccolis have always had less taste then their vegetative namesake. There was actually plenty of humour in Quantam of Solace, but all of it dark and dry as a bone. Quantam of Solace is being rubbished because it lacks sweetness and light and drollery when that was the thing reviewers loved most about Casino Royale. Mr. Craig continues to fill out the role very nicely I think. It is as if the same critics who heaped praise on the last Bond are now embarrassed by their little outburst and now can’t wait to trash what is an almost perfectly satisfactory addition to the canon. On the next Bond outing however, I do think they can afford to camp it up a bit. Have Bond blow up a deformed but brilliant villain’s secret mountain locale, and let’s see him have sex in a Lear jet with a beautiful assassin from Shanghai.  That sort of thing anyway.

Bond in a 60s era Playboy story

As usual my own life continues to essentially mirror James Bond’s. Next week or two the Jet Set HoBo will spend several nights in some of Buenos Aires finest hotels, “writing” reviews for a well-known city guide.  He will be operating on an a higher plane of schmoozing and freeloading, of that you can be sure.

It will make a change from the already sweltering pre-summer heat in this apartment on the border of BA’s so-called Palermo Hollywood, with the trains rattling by, a dog named after a soccer player that’s always barking and someone down the street playing cumbia. So you can see, the author has the hobo part of the Jet Set HoBo equation taken care of as well.