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Spring Season: Final Week
Had a lovely Thanksgiving with the family; got takeout and ate it in the library of the care facility, played a game of Tribond, decided to bring all of our old, neglected board games over to help stock the shelves for future visits.
Back to work tomorrow, but that's fine, it's just for one day and then I am FREE AND CLEAR for my week off proper after this lovely little holiday taster.
To the Movie Spoiler Zone, where I will talk about No Time to Die a lot, and also a couple of other things, but mostly just No Time to Die. SPOILERS AHOY.
TELEVISION
Queer Eye 5x08-5x10: I am all out of wholesome Netflix schlock. :( Operation Marvel Catchup resumes next week!
Rhodes to the Top 1x03/1x04: In my defense, they stuck a Hangman promo in the middle this week.
Riverdale 5x19: lol fuck I actually really enjoyed it, this fuckin show got me again SEE YOU IN SEASON 6, I GUESS
Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x09: Why have we never had a show set entirely on a Klingon Bird of Prey?? It is all I want now!!
What If...? 1x09: WELL THAT KICKED ASS. Shame they couldn't get the Gamora episode in in time, her inclusion definitely felt a little awkward, but it gives me something to look forward to well in advance of season 2, so that's something. Other than more BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEG anyway. Gosh, what a bittersweet, unexpected extra farewell to Chadwick this all was, though.
Wrestling
AEW Dark 3x42
AEW Dark: Elevation 1x31
AEW Dynamite 3x40
AEW Rampage 1x09
DDT Get Alive 2021 Tour in Yamagata
Before the IMPACT 1x34
IMPACT! Wrestling 18x40
IMPACT Knockouts Knockdown 2021
New Japan Pro-Wrestling 1x44
NJPW Strong 2x40
NOAH Grand Square 2021 in Osaka
NWA Powerrr 6x05
ROH Week By Week 2x40
ROH Women's Division Wednesday 1x24
ROH Wrestling 13x40
TJPW Wrestle Princess II
We are STARDOM!! 2x02/2x03
SHORTS
Khtobtogone (2021): I don't know how I feel about calling this a movie! I mean, I guess it's animation of a sort! Or maybe found footage? Whatever, what it does with the format is interesting and striking at times, but the actual material is pretty uuuuugh. This guy just ain't that interesting!
Nona (2021): The new SparkShort is really about a grandma who just wants her shitty grandkid to leave her alone so she can watch wrestling. They did that for me.
Twenty Something (2021): And then there was this one! I have long been a big proponent of the worldview that, just because you have a birthday, you don't magically stop being the age you were before. You're just a new one, as well. Just because you're thirty doesn't mean you're not ALSO sixteen, or twenty-five, or five years old, that's all still true, those people still exist within you, and that's just how numbers WORK, and growing up doesn't mean leaving them behind just 'cause. And Pixar went and made a movie explicitly about this phenomenon! And it's lovely!
FILMS
The Many Saints of Newark (2021): The script is a whole lot of bland mob whatever, but this cast is so fucking killer that I'm kinda cool with just watching them do whatever?? Nivola fucking KILLS it, I have loved him for forever and this felt like a reward for all those years of service. Baby Gandolfini is good too; I don't think he's capable of too much just yet, but the script doesn't really call for him to, so it's cool. The kid who played even younger Tony before him was legit great, though, and of all the existing Sopranos characters, Corey Stoll in particular was some inspired fucking casting. Anyway, I enjoyed this quite a bit considering I haven't actually seen the show since high school!
No Time to Die (2021): Okay, here we go. Strap in.
HEY, SO, REMEMBER LIKE SIX YEARS AGO WHEN SPECTRE USED A PIECE OF THE OHMSS SCORE IN ONE OF ITS TRAILERS AND I LOST MY GODDAMN MIND OVER IT?? AND THE FILM ITSELF, WHILE FLAWED, CONTAINED PLENTY OF PARALLELS TO THAT MOVIE (MY FAVOURITE BOND FILM BY A COUNTRY MILE), TO THE POINT WHERE I WAS GENUINELY DISAPPOINTED WHEN I HEARD CRAIG WAS COMING BACK FOR ONE MORE BECAUSE I THOUGHT THERE WAS NO WAY THEY'D BE ABLE TO SEE THOSE THEMES THROUGH IN A REMOTELY SATISFACTORY FASHION AND DIDN'T WANT THEM TO BE STEPPED ON THE WAY ANY ACTUAL ARC FOR THIS CHARACTER INEVITABLY ENDS UP BEING BECAUSE OF THE VERY NATURE OF THE FRANCHISE??
AND THEN EON SAID 'LOL BITCH YOU THOUGHT' AND MADE AN ENTIRE 160-MINUTE MOVIE EXPLICITLY BUILT AROUND THOSE VERY PARALLELS IN A WAY PRECISION TOOLED TO DESTROY ME PERSONALLY????
Because, uuuuuuuuhhhh, that happened! I was very much not prepared for THAT!
For the record, it's very easy to make me cry when I'm watching something that I'm into, I am very squishy in that respect, but I can very much turn it off and on like a faucet, and I do NOT cry in public, no matter how affected I am by something. The first time Bond said The Line and then the OHMSS love theme cut into the score, I felt a twinge and immediately knew that oh, when I rewatch this at home, I'm gonna be crying right off the bat, then, good to know. The second time he said The Line (slightly changed this time due to circumstance) and then the love theme came back right at the end, I was already a little raw emotionally from the whole climax, and I knew again that this was gonna be a messy one to watch alone. And then the actual fucking song started to play and I said 'oh fuck' and JUST made it to the start of the credits before I had to physically remove myself from the theater to avoid bursting into tears right then and there, Louis Armstrong's trumpet following me right out into the hallway. Not even Toy Story 3 could do that to me.
The fundamental truth about James Bond, the one that Spectre managed to subvert somewhat simply by ending before the actual end of the story, is that he's not allowed to have a happy ending. It's comic book rules, the serialized nature of the character doesn't allow for it. James Bond with a happy ending instantly ceases to be James Bond. And I liked that Spectre ended the way it did just because it WAS a subversion of so many things, the stagnation and toxicity baked into the franchise as something of a necessary evil, and while this DID end up going back on that somewhat, it did so in a way that was so perfect, I would not have even dared dream it in my little fannish heart, so I AIN'T MAD.
There wasn't much in the way of subversion here, admittedly, aside from the one obvious one, an actual, concrete ending for Bond that only feels appropriate because Craig is also the only Bond that we got to see straight on from his origins. We got to see how he started, we got to see how he ended, and while he got his moments of peace with Vesper and Madeleine accompanying those beats, ultimately they can never be allowed to last; you don't have a franchise if they do. The fridge must always win out in the end. Unless...?
I will be alright if I don't see any of these actors in these roles again with the lone exception of Ben Whishaw. I want him to play Q until the day he dies an old, old man. Everyone else can come and go, Q should always be an institution, a familiar center to anchor the ever-shifting, never-stopping passage of time around him. Just 14 more movies until he ties Llewellyn's record!
I only just realized it, but this movie really molds the up-and-down nature of the Craig films into a shockingly cohesive three-act structure. Quantum of Solace was a big disappointment when it came out because it couldn't hold a candle to Casino Royale; once Skyfall came out, it worked a lot better because it became easier to see it for what it actually was: less a movie of its more and more of an extended Casino Royale epilogue. Similarly, all of a sudden, the hot mess that was Spectre works a lot better; it was the prologue to this movie all along. CR, SF, and NTTD are the pillars of the run, QoS and S are the connective tissue propping up the beginning and end, because you gotta nail those hardest of all. FURTHERMORE, those three pillar films are each built around the conceit of Bond losing the most important woman in his life, so like, of COURSE they had to build the finale around On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the end of the day, it was the only other movie in half a century of this shit to go to that well.
So I guess it's time to unpack all that! Obviously, I'm basing all of this off of one viewing, I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the matter as I continue to revisit it over the years, but when the opening credits happened, running through iconic imagery from all of the Craig years' intros and beyond, when the clockworks gave way to an hourglass, I figured I was MAYBE reading a bit too much into it being an OHMSS reference as opposed to simply representing/leading into the QoS desert sandscapes, but the rest of the movie sure proved me right in the end on that front, SO. The Dr. No dots should have been a giveaway that they weren't JUST gonna be pulling imagery from the Craig movies, but I will scream about OHMSS and symbolism and shit for HOURS at the slightest provocation, so I don't wanna risk projecting TOO much, you know? BUT THEN THIS MOVIE WAS FOR ME EXPLICITLY, SO.
I keep struggling with how to phrase my thoughts on how the characters of Tracy, Vesper, and Madeleine are all so intertwined with each other, I'm really having a tough time of it. Obviously, there's no Madeleine without Tracy, just as Tracy's story plays out so very differently without Vesper. But to reduce Madeleine to a stand-in for Tracy doesn't do justice to either of the stories involved, especially because movie!Tracy never GOT a Vesper to bounce off of like Madeleine DID. So is Madeleine just book!Tracy, blonde hair and all? Well, no, because she's in an entirely different story, two of them in fact, and that informs everything about her, her arc, and her relationship to Bond (not to mention him being much older than either Lazenby or the perpetually thirty-something book!Bond) in ways that make her unique. Bond would never have dumped Tracy, for one thing, no matter how badly Vesper burned him (this being a moot point in the movie, though THANKS PETER SELLERS LIKE THIS WASN'T COMPLICATED ENOUGH).
Agh, I don't know where I'm going with this. This movie fucking wrecked me! They didn't quite burn everything down and salt the earth, but there was still a lot of narrative clear-cutting because that truly is the only way to give Bond any sort of a proper conclusion. Just as Dr. No wasn't any sort of real beginning (since they couldn't yet adapt Casino Royale the way they needed to), OHMSS couldn't be the end of anything, either, and so Tracy had to die. This time around, they had the luxury of an origin, which meant they were finally in a position to go for a proper ending, which means, JUST THIS ONCE, the fridge doesn't have to get fed (well, Felix kinda fills that role here, which broke my damn heart, but was very much part of that necessary clear-cutting and served to give him a role beyond a glorified cameo after we waited fifteen damn years to see him again, so). A happy ending would be disingenuous and not true to the character, but an ending where the Bond girl is the one who gets to walk away? That'll damn well do.
I think what makes the leaning on OHMSS work so well for me, ultimately, is that for all the 'I love you's, they never really undermine the fact that Tracy always was the one true love of Bond's life. Vesper got in because she came FIRST, she was the one who ruined him for other women, Tracy was the only one capable of overcoming that, and while Madeleine comes CLOSE... she was still poised to be just another broken heart whose life Bond briefly swept through. He still dumped her! Vesper's betrayal still ran too deep, and this timeline doesn't have a Tracy able to cut through that pain to become the (still) one and only Mrs. Bond! Spectre ended with hope that he could TRY to be better than his hurt, but I never got the impression that they truly meant for Madeleine to be THE ONE and this one finally confirmed that for me. I'm sure he would have made another go of things to be with her and Mathilde had things gone better and nanobots ACTUALLY been just for Christmas, but like... c'mon. He's James Bond. And the second he gets a happy ending, that ceases to be the case. And James Bond WILL return. He must. Until then... RIP.
Fifteen years after my initial reaction of 'ugh who is this ugly blond guy', Craig goes down, officially, as my favourite Bond, and I believe this movie, after eighteen goddamn months of miserable pandemic waiting, will likely go down as my favourite of the year (I will be genuinely stunned if anything manages to supplant it). Time to cry a lot, I guess!
Back to work tomorrow, but that's fine, it's just for one day and then I am FREE AND CLEAR for my week off proper after this lovely little holiday taster.
To the Movie Spoiler Zone, where I will talk about No Time to Die a lot, and also a couple of other things, but mostly just No Time to Die. SPOILERS AHOY.
TELEVISION
Queer Eye 5x08-5x10: I am all out of wholesome Netflix schlock. :( Operation Marvel Catchup resumes next week!
Rhodes to the Top 1x03/1x04: In my defense, they stuck a Hangman promo in the middle this week.
Riverdale 5x19: lol fuck I actually really enjoyed it, this fuckin show got me again SEE YOU IN SEASON 6, I GUESS
Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x09: Why have we never had a show set entirely on a Klingon Bird of Prey?? It is all I want now!!
What If...? 1x09: WELL THAT KICKED ASS. Shame they couldn't get the Gamora episode in in time, her inclusion definitely felt a little awkward, but it gives me something to look forward to well in advance of season 2, so that's something. Other than more BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEG BIG PEG anyway. Gosh, what a bittersweet, unexpected extra farewell to Chadwick this all was, though.
Wrestling
AEW Dark 3x42
AEW Dark: Elevation 1x31
AEW Dynamite 3x40
AEW Rampage 1x09
DDT Get Alive 2021 Tour in Yamagata
Before the IMPACT 1x34
IMPACT! Wrestling 18x40
IMPACT Knockouts Knockdown 2021
New Japan Pro-Wrestling 1x44
NJPW Strong 2x40
NOAH Grand Square 2021 in Osaka
NWA Powerrr 6x05
ROH Week By Week 2x40
ROH Women's Division Wednesday 1x24
ROH Wrestling 13x40
TJPW Wrestle Princess II
We are STARDOM!! 2x02/2x03
SHORTS
Khtobtogone (2021): I don't know how I feel about calling this a movie! I mean, I guess it's animation of a sort! Or maybe found footage? Whatever, what it does with the format is interesting and striking at times, but the actual material is pretty uuuuugh. This guy just ain't that interesting!
Nona (2021): The new SparkShort is really about a grandma who just wants her shitty grandkid to leave her alone so she can watch wrestling. They did that for me.
Twenty Something (2021): And then there was this one! I have long been a big proponent of the worldview that, just because you have a birthday, you don't magically stop being the age you were before. You're just a new one, as well. Just because you're thirty doesn't mean you're not ALSO sixteen, or twenty-five, or five years old, that's all still true, those people still exist within you, and that's just how numbers WORK, and growing up doesn't mean leaving them behind just 'cause. And Pixar went and made a movie explicitly about this phenomenon! And it's lovely!
FILMS
The Many Saints of Newark (2021): The script is a whole lot of bland mob whatever, but this cast is so fucking killer that I'm kinda cool with just watching them do whatever?? Nivola fucking KILLS it, I have loved him for forever and this felt like a reward for all those years of service. Baby Gandolfini is good too; I don't think he's capable of too much just yet, but the script doesn't really call for him to, so it's cool. The kid who played even younger Tony before him was legit great, though, and of all the existing Sopranos characters, Corey Stoll in particular was some inspired fucking casting. Anyway, I enjoyed this quite a bit considering I haven't actually seen the show since high school!
No Time to Die (2021): Okay, here we go. Strap in.
HEY, SO, REMEMBER LIKE SIX YEARS AGO WHEN SPECTRE USED A PIECE OF THE OHMSS SCORE IN ONE OF ITS TRAILERS AND I LOST MY GODDAMN MIND OVER IT?? AND THE FILM ITSELF, WHILE FLAWED, CONTAINED PLENTY OF PARALLELS TO THAT MOVIE (MY FAVOURITE BOND FILM BY A COUNTRY MILE), TO THE POINT WHERE I WAS GENUINELY DISAPPOINTED WHEN I HEARD CRAIG WAS COMING BACK FOR ONE MORE BECAUSE I THOUGHT THERE WAS NO WAY THEY'D BE ABLE TO SEE THOSE THEMES THROUGH IN A REMOTELY SATISFACTORY FASHION AND DIDN'T WANT THEM TO BE STEPPED ON THE WAY ANY ACTUAL ARC FOR THIS CHARACTER INEVITABLY ENDS UP BEING BECAUSE OF THE VERY NATURE OF THE FRANCHISE??
AND THEN EON SAID 'LOL BITCH YOU THOUGHT' AND MADE AN ENTIRE 160-MINUTE MOVIE EXPLICITLY BUILT AROUND THOSE VERY PARALLELS IN A WAY PRECISION TOOLED TO DESTROY ME PERSONALLY????
Because, uuuuuuuuhhhh, that happened! I was very much not prepared for THAT!
For the record, it's very easy to make me cry when I'm watching something that I'm into, I am very squishy in that respect, but I can very much turn it off and on like a faucet, and I do NOT cry in public, no matter how affected I am by something. The first time Bond said The Line and then the OHMSS love theme cut into the score, I felt a twinge and immediately knew that oh, when I rewatch this at home, I'm gonna be crying right off the bat, then, good to know. The second time he said The Line (slightly changed this time due to circumstance) and then the love theme came back right at the end, I was already a little raw emotionally from the whole climax, and I knew again that this was gonna be a messy one to watch alone. And then the actual fucking song started to play and I said 'oh fuck' and JUST made it to the start of the credits before I had to physically remove myself from the theater to avoid bursting into tears right then and there, Louis Armstrong's trumpet following me right out into the hallway. Not even Toy Story 3 could do that to me.
The fundamental truth about James Bond, the one that Spectre managed to subvert somewhat simply by ending before the actual end of the story, is that he's not allowed to have a happy ending. It's comic book rules, the serialized nature of the character doesn't allow for it. James Bond with a happy ending instantly ceases to be James Bond. And I liked that Spectre ended the way it did just because it WAS a subversion of so many things, the stagnation and toxicity baked into the franchise as something of a necessary evil, and while this DID end up going back on that somewhat, it did so in a way that was so perfect, I would not have even dared dream it in my little fannish heart, so I AIN'T MAD.
There wasn't much in the way of subversion here, admittedly, aside from the one obvious one, an actual, concrete ending for Bond that only feels appropriate because Craig is also the only Bond that we got to see straight on from his origins. We got to see how he started, we got to see how he ended, and while he got his moments of peace with Vesper and Madeleine accompanying those beats, ultimately they can never be allowed to last; you don't have a franchise if they do. The fridge must always win out in the end. Unless...?
I will be alright if I don't see any of these actors in these roles again with the lone exception of Ben Whishaw. I want him to play Q until the day he dies an old, old man. Everyone else can come and go, Q should always be an institution, a familiar center to anchor the ever-shifting, never-stopping passage of time around him. Just 14 more movies until he ties Llewellyn's record!
I only just realized it, but this movie really molds the up-and-down nature of the Craig films into a shockingly cohesive three-act structure. Quantum of Solace was a big disappointment when it came out because it couldn't hold a candle to Casino Royale; once Skyfall came out, it worked a lot better because it became easier to see it for what it actually was: less a movie of its more and more of an extended Casino Royale epilogue. Similarly, all of a sudden, the hot mess that was Spectre works a lot better; it was the prologue to this movie all along. CR, SF, and NTTD are the pillars of the run, QoS and S are the connective tissue propping up the beginning and end, because you gotta nail those hardest of all. FURTHERMORE, those three pillar films are each built around the conceit of Bond losing the most important woman in his life, so like, of COURSE they had to build the finale around On Her Majesty's Secret Service at the end of the day, it was the only other movie in half a century of this shit to go to that well.
So I guess it's time to unpack all that! Obviously, I'm basing all of this off of one viewing, I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on the matter as I continue to revisit it over the years, but when the opening credits happened, running through iconic imagery from all of the Craig years' intros and beyond, when the clockworks gave way to an hourglass, I figured I was MAYBE reading a bit too much into it being an OHMSS reference as opposed to simply representing/leading into the QoS desert sandscapes, but the rest of the movie sure proved me right in the end on that front, SO. The Dr. No dots should have been a giveaway that they weren't JUST gonna be pulling imagery from the Craig movies, but I will scream about OHMSS and symbolism and shit for HOURS at the slightest provocation, so I don't wanna risk projecting TOO much, you know? BUT THEN THIS MOVIE WAS FOR ME EXPLICITLY, SO.
I keep struggling with how to phrase my thoughts on how the characters of Tracy, Vesper, and Madeleine are all so intertwined with each other, I'm really having a tough time of it. Obviously, there's no Madeleine without Tracy, just as Tracy's story plays out so very differently without Vesper. But to reduce Madeleine to a stand-in for Tracy doesn't do justice to either of the stories involved, especially because movie!Tracy never GOT a Vesper to bounce off of like Madeleine DID. So is Madeleine just book!Tracy, blonde hair and all? Well, no, because she's in an entirely different story, two of them in fact, and that informs everything about her, her arc, and her relationship to Bond (not to mention him being much older than either Lazenby or the perpetually thirty-something book!Bond) in ways that make her unique. Bond would never have dumped Tracy, for one thing, no matter how badly Vesper burned him (this being a moot point in the movie, though THANKS PETER SELLERS LIKE THIS WASN'T COMPLICATED ENOUGH).
Agh, I don't know where I'm going with this. This movie fucking wrecked me! They didn't quite burn everything down and salt the earth, but there was still a lot of narrative clear-cutting because that truly is the only way to give Bond any sort of a proper conclusion. Just as Dr. No wasn't any sort of real beginning (since they couldn't yet adapt Casino Royale the way they needed to), OHMSS couldn't be the end of anything, either, and so Tracy had to die. This time around, they had the luxury of an origin, which meant they were finally in a position to go for a proper ending, which means, JUST THIS ONCE, the fridge doesn't have to get fed (well, Felix kinda fills that role here, which broke my damn heart, but was very much part of that necessary clear-cutting and served to give him a role beyond a glorified cameo after we waited fifteen damn years to see him again, so). A happy ending would be disingenuous and not true to the character, but an ending where the Bond girl is the one who gets to walk away? That'll damn well do.
I think what makes the leaning on OHMSS work so well for me, ultimately, is that for all the 'I love you's, they never really undermine the fact that Tracy always was the one true love of Bond's life. Vesper got in because she came FIRST, she was the one who ruined him for other women, Tracy was the only one capable of overcoming that, and while Madeleine comes CLOSE... she was still poised to be just another broken heart whose life Bond briefly swept through. He still dumped her! Vesper's betrayal still ran too deep, and this timeline doesn't have a Tracy able to cut through that pain to become the (still) one and only Mrs. Bond! Spectre ended with hope that he could TRY to be better than his hurt, but I never got the impression that they truly meant for Madeleine to be THE ONE and this one finally confirmed that for me. I'm sure he would have made another go of things to be with her and Mathilde had things gone better and nanobots ACTUALLY been just for Christmas, but like... c'mon. He's James Bond. And the second he gets a happy ending, that ceases to be the case. And James Bond WILL return. He must. Until then... RIP.
Fifteen years after my initial reaction of 'ugh who is this ugly blond guy', Craig goes down, officially, as my favourite Bond, and I believe this movie, after eighteen goddamn months of miserable pandemic waiting, will likely go down as my favourite of the year (I will be genuinely stunned if anything manages to supplant it). Time to cry a lot, I guess!