James Bond lists are all the rage these days, and although rumor has it we’ve participated, not even the mighty Screengrab can contain all the 007 listage. For your eyes only:
Hecklerspray offers the 12 Worst Bond Baddies, including Hugo Drax in Moonraker. “We cannot believe he had the Hooksexup to come up with a plan to destroy the world and set up a colony is space where only beautiful people can live. Has he looked in the mirror lately? He looks like a cross between a toad and a big, gay bear.”
Spoutblog counters with 5 Bond Girls Who Died After Wearing A Bikini, including Naomi (Caroline Munro) in The Spy Who Loved Me. “It is important for helicopter pilots to wear bikinis. Especially helicoptor pilots who flirt with James Bond while trying to shoot him. Unfortunately, this skimpily-dressed helicopter pilot/would-be 007 assassin didn’t get her man, in either a mortal sense or a sexy one, because James blew up her helicopter with a torpedo.”
Cinematical presents 007 Reasons to Love Even the Least of the James Bond Films, (including Maryam d’Abo and her cello case in The Living Daylights) as well as the 007 Best Last Lines (“I thought Christmas only comes once a year”).
It’s not all Bond this week. In celebration of the new box set of Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott Westerns, Parallax View offers a treasure trove of Boetticher material, including reviews, vintage interviews and a wish list of films not available on DVD, notably 1972’s Arruza: “The film that almost killed Budd Boetticher. Seriously. This drama of this labor-of-love documentary can never live up to the real-life story behind its production, but it is a defining film in Boetticher’s career. He left Hollywood to create the definitive bullfight film, a chronicle Mexico bullfighting legend Carlos Arruza’s return to the corrida as a rejoneador (a horseback bullfighter). By the end of filming, Boetticher had survived poverty, faced imprisonment and survived a bout of pneumonia that almost killed him. His leading man had been killed in a car accident and Boetticher still battled for final cut on the film.”
Finally, a shout-out to Roger Ebert, who gently takes on Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman for his review of Synecdoche, New York – a review for which Mr. Gleiberman deserves nothing short of a public pantsing. “I am resigned to belonging to a cadre of eggheads hailing Synecdoche, although I have praised many a film, like The Golden Compass, that Gleiberman dismissed as not Great Trash but the compacted variety. Naya, naya, naya! Who's the egghead now? But Owen is a terrific chap and we like each other, especially when we find ourselves enlisted in the same cadre.”