22 Worst James Bond Movies

Like srsly, this week erry time I turn on the teev I swear theres a Bond Movie on. And an off the cuff remark to Amy about The World is Not Enough only being the 16th worst Bond flick made me actually flesh out my list. I figure I'm gonna have to do this in a few parts, because I'm working on a film this week and my schedule's all effed up. Here's the first seven though, more to come in a few days! (Ed, I expect feedback)

22. Goldfinger

Sean Connery really hits his stride in Goldfinger, which is packed with iconic scenes, witty repartee and lots and lots of Pussy Galore. Also, this is the first Bond film to use the convention of the non-plot cold open (From Russian with Love's teaser ties in with the plot, so I discount that as a technicality). By far the least sucky Bond film.

21. Live and Let Die

The first vehicle for the star turn of Roger Moore as 007 takes James Bond across the pond in this voodoo-tastic, Jane Seymour-packed exemplary 70s Bond flick. Sucks way less than the 20 others.

20. Casino Royale

Daniel Craig inherently doesn't suck. And rebooting a faltering franchise is always a good idea and it serves James Bond well here. With most of the decadence and ridiculousness of the latter Brosnan films stripped away, Bond is humanized without any proselytizing about female empowerment screwing up the action set pieces, which is another welcome relief.

19. Dr. No

Firsties=Besties, right? Not necessarily, but Dr. No is certainly good. Sets the tone of flamboyant action mixed with the right amount of humor, gravity and scantily clad women. Everything Bond should be. Superior to its also Caribbean counterpart, Thunderball.

18. Thunderball

Ends up losing control of itself because of how fucking long it is. The plot meanders around for a bit, there a sharks and few sexy 60s chicks, but by the time the 20 minute underwater battle royale ensues you're definitely checking ur watch. Still, a lot less to complain about than almost anything lower on the list. And lots of Sean Connery in semi-bikini briefs.

17. Goldeneye

Following suit with the post-Connery Bonds, Pierce Brosnan's first outing is by far the most memorable, if only for the countless hours of my life I wasted playing the eponymous videogame. One of the best plot related cold opens of the series.

16. Moonraker

Ok, I know what you're saying. "Moonraker sucks. There are way better Bond films." And this statement is quite true. The Bond movies that are better than Moonraker are listed above. Keep in mind that there a lot of the eff-ing things, and that at least Moonraker keeps its sense of humor. Not at any given point is the plot or anything that happens is meant to be taken seriously. There's a lot more suck to come, trust me.

15. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

This is the least interesting Bond film from the standpoint of what would normally classify a Bond film as being good (see: Moonraker). But every now and then, Jimmy needs to remind his audience that there's more to being a super-spy than hot bitches, little guns and quippy sexual innuendo--there are wives and kilts and shit too.

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LHC is fucking awesome

So on the top of Digg today was an article from Cracked that did some serious LHC bashing. If you don't know what the LHC is, its the Large Hadron Collider the largest and most expensive science experiment ever created. Its a particle accelerator, the largest of which ever created and is already in the early stages of firing up, finally shooting off for realz sometime in October.

Its sad and kinda pathetic to see an article whose main purpose is to fear monger and spread misinformation. I guess thats what plays after 8 years of george bush.

But the LHC isn't going to create a black hole, re-recreate the big bang or otherwise destroy the universe, and some editor at cracked chicken-shitting around about it isn't gonna change a thing.

And its big and cool.



On a technical note, exactly what the LHC is going to pretty fucking cool. Essentially, it fires off particles at incredible speeds, causing them to break apart. By shattering these fundamental particles which compose atoms, scientists can ascertain properties hitherto unknown, like the mechanics of the strong and weak nuclear forces. This all applies to the Standard Model, of course.

Crucial to the LHC's creation is the search for the mysterious Higgs Boson. Its difficult to explain. Just read the wiki.

Here's a neat video showing a time lapse of the construction of ATLAS, pictured above. This is where a lot of the coolest experiments are going down.

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The Venture Bros. Season 3 Finale

I got around to watching the season finale of Venture Bros. last night, and there were loads of surprises. Another season ending cliff-hanger and a two part episode capped of the third season of Cartoon Network's flagship Adult Swim program. It featured all the usual players (as opposed to some of the episodes from this season which left some of my favorite characters), including the Moppets, 21 & 24, and the OSI Guys.



I was really looking forward to season 3 earlier this year, and now that its over I'm excited for season 4! Its nice to see a good show actually stay on the air long enough for things to get interesting, especially on Adult Swim, who's known for unexpectedly short runs of good shows and frequent programming changes.

That said, most shows on Adult Swim don't usually make it past a fourth season, but hopefully Venture Bros. will buck this trend, or at least have a badass final season.

This week's episode introduced a few new elements that I really enjoyed. First, "The Cleaner" comes to rescue Brock, Rusty and the boys is like a murderous Mr. Clean, and supposedly leaves "a lemon-y fresh scent."

Oh, and he melts peoples faces off with acid-based cleaning supplies.

Also making its debut in the season finale was the Monarch's new super weapon, the "Death's Head Panoply," which is essentially golden armor the monarch wears (which he can't really move in) that releases a deadly shower of clone-killing lasers. Unfortunately, the Monarch hasn't successfully tested it yet.



I was pretty impressed with this season on the whole, and will definitely purchase the DVD (or BluRay?) when it's released later this year.

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Music Video Madness

Music videos are what all the kids are talking about these days...like 20 years ago something that was this cool would've gotten a chance to be played on the tv, rather than insipid crap thats popular with the < 18 crowd these days.

I hate sounding like a codger, but its really sad that MTV has now gone more years without even attempting to show block video programming than it did in its original format, which I can't even remember.

But not that we have teh internets, music videos are free to watch and enjoy from the privacy of anywhere that has wifi. Preferably sexually graphic videos, in a public place.

This is a video by one of my dearest, oldest friends, Mr. Shawn Kyle's band The Beauvilles. He tipped me off to it the other day, and I've been meaning to call him back.

Check it:


Links:
The Beauvilles myspace.
Pitchfork.tv has lots of rad, high quality videos

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Tattoos at ComicCon

From BoingBoing:

A photo essay over at Wired shows off some really nerdy / really cool tattoos that some nerd dudes were showing off at Comic-Con.

I think that comic books can be great source material for tattoos, but its a pretty serious commitment to something so specific. One of my friends is planning a sleeve based on Garth Ennis' fantastic comic book series Preacher. It's super gory and has a number of fantastic artist throughout the run of the series.

A Preacher tatt would be way more rad than anything in the Wired photo essay.

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Crazy Shit in Denver

So the DNC is kicking off this weekend, and just as expected protests are already starting. Not too surprising, but let's just hope this doesn't reflect poorly on Obama.

Caught in the midst of all this today was a lowly reporter from Fox News, who didn't do such a great job of making friends with a crowd of masked protesters!



Bottom line is that I'm glad that I made the choice to stay out of Denver this upcoming week. I turned down a lot of good work because I didn't feel 100% comfortable with the whole not being able to get out of Denver for over a week thing. And its gonna be a zoo with all the security, and Denver hasn't been ramping up its police spending for the past six months with no intention to use it. Live work is usually boring and stressful anyway.

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Bowie Records

So another phone call from Jon at Bart's CD Cellar on Friday yielded another addition to my collection of David Bowie records. 1977's Low (bottom left), the first album of the Berlin Trilogy recorded with Brian Eno.

The other albums pictured are (left to right, top to bottom) The Man Who Sold the World, Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station, Young Americans, and "Heroes".

Suffice it to say, I'm quite pleased at the little record collection I have going. I haven't done a count in a few months, but its got to be over a hundred by now. It's also great that Jon has been keeping an eye out for things I'm looking for, like Bowie albums from the 70s. It funny too because he doesn't have my phone number so he has to call me at work--which usually catches me off guard but its always a pleasant surprise.

So for the record (I'm punny!), I'm only looking for four more Bowie albums now: Diamond Dogs, Hunky Dory, Aladin Sane, and Pin Ups.

I can't stress enough how awesome it is listening to these albums in their original format on vintage equipment. Another good find this week was New Edition's eponymous 1984 album at Goldmine! Bobby Brown rules!

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How do you steal 2,865 bicycles?

Hire the mentally unstable and have them steal them for you, duh. Well apparently that sounded like a good idea to Toronto resident Igor Kenk, who's being charged with a few dozen counts of bicycle theft as well as some drug possession charges. There's an article about his plight at The New York Times. He had ten rented garages, a used bike shop and a house in an upscale neighborhood--all exploding with stolen bikes.

"That was just the beginning. An additional 200 bikes were seized in Mr. Kenk’s home. Ten landlords around the city reported that their garages had been rented by Mr. Kenk and were bulging with bicycles. As the police gathered the mounds of bikes, they also found cocaine, crack cocaine, about 15 pounds of marijuana and a stolen bronze sculpture of a centaur and a snake in battle."

This guy sounds like a hell of a good time, if your idea of a good time is getting loaded, high and stealing lots of bikes!

Having your bike stolen sucks. Especially if its ur only means of transportation. So I can't really feel badly for this guy, but its still really impressive that he was able to steal that many bikes.

The article speculates that he was holding on to them to potentially melt them down to play the commodities market, or possibly to unload them when gasoline reaches unreasonable prices. Also, Kenk claims to be a former member of the KGB, which is just icing on the cake. It'll be interesting to see this play out in the Canadian justice system. Via NyTimes

And check out my sweet ride on velospace!

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Out of the Box DVD reviews: Lost Boys: The Tribe

Wow, I actually stooped to watching the sequel to one of the most laughable movies to come out of the zeitgeist set of mtv inspired that dominate the mid and late 80s. Can't say that I'm not a fan of the original Lost Boys, but it lends itself well to producing a crap sequel, especially nearly 20 years later when putting reality tv staple Cory 'Feld-dog' Feldman is an insult to the audience. Add of bunch of goth-sufer-biker-jock-douchey vampire dudes and it doesn't really get any better.

It meanders around a premise similar to the original, but updated with modern, frivolous profanity laden dialog and unnecessary action set-pieces. And blood drinking, lots of blood drinking.

In other words, try and avoid this sequel at all costs. And don't steal this movie.

Later this week: Starship Troopers 3!

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lolcat iz

Another picture of the iz acting weird, and posing long enough to be lolcatted.

I really kinda wish there was an application for my iphone that would let me type on photos (in impact, of course).

I'm just full of good ideas.

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Breaking News

From instant messeneger:

"Sam, I crunched the numbers: 225 out of 608 photos were of food and/or restaurants for a ratio of 37%. That, combined with Europe photos, comes to 341 photos of food/restaurants out of 1211 total photos for a 29-album rating of 28%.

Thats a lot of pictures of food. Like a lot, a lot. My fellow blogger and tweeter, the Mysterious E to the K, lover of all things gastro-intestinal, Chief Admiral of teh Xbox Live Nation, and not least of all my friend.

Good luck on your future postings of exotic food!

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Magazine Day

Amy subscribes to 7 magazines. I only subscribe to one. This isn't so much because because I only like a single magazine, but because it was cheap and easy when I changed my address online, and I really hate magazine subscriptions piling up. My mom still has about 8 years worth of Mad Magazines (before they were bought-out in the late 90s and changed paperstock and format) and a too-tall stack of Maxim's that I only hope was thrown away when I moved out.

So when I opened this month's Wired, I was a bit aghast to not only find a 2,000 word article about perez hilton, but also his name on the cover. Not that I necessarily have a problem with this, but it just seemed a bit ridiculous to me.

That's it.

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NyTimes Gushes About What We Already Know: Jon Stewart Rocks

At The New York Times the most emailed article for the past few days is a profile about Jon Stewart, The Daily Show and how the two have their finger on the pulse of larger and larger chunk of thinking Americans. I really can't agree more with their portrayal of Stewart as a smart, shrewd and funny, funny man who really does care about the edification of his audience.

And apparently, the rest of America thinks so, too:

"Though this spot is the program’s mocking sendup of itself and the news media’s mania for self-promotion, it inadvertently gets at one very real truth: the emergence of “The Daily Show” as a genuine cultural and political force. When Americans were asked in a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press to name the journalist they most admired, Mr. Stewart, the fake news anchor, came in at No. 4, tied with the real news anchors Brian Williams and Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Anderson Cooper of CNN. And a study this year from the center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism concluded that '‘The Daily Show’ is clearly impacting American dialogue' and 'getting people to think critically about the public square.'"

via NyTimes

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B-Moive Marathon: Stone Cold

Stone Cold has to be on of my favorite movies of all time. I was introduced to it a few years ago by a friend in film school at University of Colorado and have sworn by it since the first time I saw it.

We we're in a group production class together and spending an intense amount of time on writing and shooting a short film for nothing. Literally less than $100 was spend on what we ended up making, which didn't turn out to be very good, but it was a good experience at the time. To blow off steam that semester, in addition to drinking copious amounts of beer, we would watch this movie.

From the opening scene the madness ensues. Large and cheap-looking-but-you-know-they-were-expensive set pieces dominate most of the action in this movie; a grocery store, a motorcyle chase, the seige of the capital of Alabama, a biker rally complete with beer can-handgun William Tell, a Viking Funeral pyre with a motorcycle (and dead biker) on it and a fucking pet gila monster make this the greatest fucking movie of all time. Period. Point blank.

Oh, and it stars Lance Hendricksen. Yeah, Bishop from Aliens. Not to mention the stunningly homo-erotic yet obtusely sexless performance from former NFL burnout Brian Bosworth. At the helm of this monstrously ridiculous spectacle is former stunt coordinator and seasoned B-movie director Craig R. Baxley (who presumably was only able to get Hendricksen to do this because of their Aliens connection).

Suffice it to say, the practical special effects in this movie are so gaudy and over-the-top that you lose track of how many stunt dummies they blow up, throw from helicopters or hit with cars (both of the latter also involve explosions).

And then there's The Boz. Not only did he ride his custom made motorcycle with his own skull with flaming mullet emblem airbrushed on the gas tank (the same patch is found on his biker jacket), but he stoops to deadpanning some of the most ridiculously ill-concieved b-movie dialog, like explaining to his straight-laced partner that (in a strip club) "truckers get their rocks off watchin' the girls dance."



There are other great lines too: "Tell Chains to keep his castles out of my sandbox," "He's either gonna be my bulldozer, or the biggest steak I ever ate."

Great homo-eroticisms like "Is that a piece in your pants?" and later in the same scene, refer to the Boz's time in the pen: "Pretty boy like you must've done some real hard time."

To balance that out, there's copious amounts of R-rated nudity. Who knew biker gangs insisted on public showers for their old ladies? Coupled with all the ridiculous violence, Stone Cold is one of the most amazing cultural documents to emerge from this country in the last two decades.

Srsly, do yourself a favor and go watch this movie. Previously only available on video tape and bootleg DVD (Thanks Thomas for letting me steal that from you), Stone Cold got its very own fancy DVD release last summer. Its on Netflix, too.

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In the news today...

• Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal. Seems like people are really into the Olympics this time around (Guess that's what happens when the economy sucks). via nytimes


• Second Death Star invades San Franscarcity! via the giz


• Some nerds are petitioning Warner Bros. to 'let' Watchmen be "as long as it needs to be." Fanboys kill me. The film industry could really care less about people on the internet petitioning them about anything. The thing is apparently already cut anyway. via iO9

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B-Movie Marathon: Westworld

James Brolin stars in 1973's Westworld in my second entry in this weekends B-Movie Marathon. Again, thanks to my Roku Player this little gem is a great piece of 70s scifi.

I had never seen this before today, probably because it came out 13 years before I was born, but it is definitely one of my favorites from the era. Its filled with lots of suspense inducing clichés, with lots foreshadowing of all the bad shit that goes down.

Like most things I like from the 70s, Westworld was parodied by The Simpsons. The Simpsons have a habit of doing this; familiarizing me with pieces of culture years before I otherwise would have heard/seen them. Examples include Soylent Green, The Omega Man, All the President's Men and the list really could go on a lot further (I'd of course, have to consult my local library).

So, another movie in set in the future, this time with customized vacations complete with robots! These vacations are set in a variety of themes including, you got it, Western World! James Brolin, et al., go to western world and interact with the cast of robotic western staples like the man without a name gunslinger, western bartender in bowler hat and bodiced and corseted robot hookers.

But behind the scenes the guys in the white coats who keep things running start noticing that things are starting to be a little glitchy in their theme parks. When your robot snakes start attacking guests, you should really considering closing up for a few weeks to figure things out. If you ignore my advice, you get a robots-against-James Brolin scenario. Typical for scientists to eff things up like this. No wonder why people think that the LHC is going to create a black hole.

And the movie marathon continues!

I'm probably going to take a break for a little bit, recharge with some beer and dinner and then get started watching some totally awesome flicks. Next up is Brian Bosworth's pseudo-nazi-biker-gang-of-drug-dealers ass kicking Stone Cold from 1991. One of my all time favorites!


And here's a screen grab from The Simpsons episode I mentioned.

The Simpsons vs. Westworld:

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lolcat for the iz

Izzy was inexpicably sticking her tongue out for, like, a half an hour yesterday, so she got hur picture taken a bunch and lolcat-ized

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B-Movie Marathon: Twisted Justice

Troma Entertainment's 1989 future-cop extravaganza, Twisted Justice is first up in my B-Movie Marathon this weekend. Written, directed and staring David Heavener as James Tucker, the gun-toting, onsie-wearing futurecop with a bad attitude and a five o'clock shadow. Also staring Shannon Tweed, Erik Estrada and former NFL superstar Jim Brown, Twisted Justice delivers exactly the kind of flashy excitement that is promised on the box-cover.

So, its the year 2020 in Los Angeles and guns have become so dangerous that cops can't even use them, but James Tucker doesn't care about laws that limit his ability to kick freaky-criminals to the ground before he shoots them with his homemade "hand cannon." Also, criminals in the future mostly enjoy attacking women and mutilating them with knives and shit before they kill them. This really pisses off Tucker, but he feels reigned in by Commander Erik Estrada, who lectures him about how using his gun is bad for PR. This allows Tucker to act like a standoff-ish weirdo, especially to the foxy-but-toned-down-for-effect district attorney.

Like a few other B-Movies slated to air in this weekend's marathon, the antihero protagonist displays some quirky / borderline antisocial behavior in his home life. See, Tucker is filthy, lives with a pet rat and is continually accused of smelling badly (something which probably isn't aided by the fact that he wears stained and dirty looking one-piece long underwear the entire movie. Like, under his clothes and when he's sleeping).

The plot is a bit hard to follow. Something about drugs and this creepy-looking maniac guy whose been attacking women. Then Shannon Tweed shows up, and I really had trouble keeping track of what was going on after that. The movie has a pretty-good-for-a-b-movie car chase, a few explosions and some pretty decent (read: giant squib packs) old-school f/x. Also in the future theres like softcore POV pornography on a channel opposite It's A Wonderful Life, which is fairly unsettling when you sit down and think about that.

Twisted Justice is low budget and it shows. But thats not to say that its laden with any obvious mistakes, its just campy and fun. Much higher production value than Redneck Zombies, another Troma flick, which looks like it was shot without a DP, gaffers, or any porduction staff besides a camera operator and some sort of art department pa to throw together myraid crappy and uneccessary special effects.

All in all, Twisted Justice was a worthwhile B-Movie experience--which I wouldn't have been able to view without my glorious Roku Player.

Redneck Zombies was the next movie I was going to watch today, but after about five minutes I had to bail because it was so unbearable. Quick thinking pointed me onwards 1973's Westworld staring Josh Brolin!

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Good readings

I added my Currently-Reading shelf from goodreads.com to the side panel. Goodreads is a great resource for finding interesting reading material and very useful if you have trouble keeping track of your bookshelf (especially if you're like me and its overflowing).
They have other cool widgets too:

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Inaugural Post

May this begin my second attempt at blogging.

The first was a noble idea, but it fell through due to lack of support from several levels of infrastructure. But now I'm back, and rather than pissing away my mid-twenties twittering about shit, I'm going to start publishing this blog whenever I can. I plan to include:

• fiction
  
• commentary
  
• links to what I'm reading
  
• and a general consortium of information about myself, for networking purposes

Originally, I was planning of crafting a personal website of my own design, but since time is money and I have very little of both, the task became a bit overwhelming. Also, simply having profiles on the social networking outlets didn't seem like it was enough, and those are so prone to scams and stolen profiles and advertising that I feel a bit neutered by all of them. Anyway, I don't really care about seeing pictures of people I went to high school with (except for Ed Kopp, because he's amazing).

I'm going to try and actually maintain this one :)

-Sam

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