On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Several of my friends told me that this particular Bond film is excellent. I don't agree. There are just two many things that bothered me.

First of all, George Lazenby. I understand that he was the most sought after male model for several years in the 1960s and has some martial arts skills. He certainly looks the part. My issue? I don't like his voice. Stupid, I know, but there you are.

Then, there are a few things about the setting, and some bits and pieces.

James Bond frequently speaks to himself - in the most arrogant and pompous manner imaginable. Also, we are led to believe that he is very much in love with Tracy (Diana Riggs, soon to be Queen of Thorns in Game of Thrones). Yet, he will sleep with every woman that crosses his path (see: Angels of Death).

The Angels of Death are a group of brainwashed beauties that über-culprit Blofeld experiments on to find a way to eliminate any species (plant, animal, whatever) if he so choses. This is what he intends to dangle over NATO's head, as he so conveniently explains in details to James Bond. Yes, and why do James Bond villains do that, explain their plans to the opponent?

But let's return to the Angels of Death for a minute. There is a scene with all of them - and an undercover James Bond - having dinner, each one only one type of food, all meat, all potatoes, all corn. So far, so weird. The Chinese woman in the group eats, yes, rice. The Indian eats naan. And the Jamaican eats...wait for it...bananas. WTF? You try putting that in a film nowadays.

Later, after an exciting escape from a hilltop, the inevitable car chase. Tracy and Bond get followed by a group of baddies. Both cars end up in the middle of a stock car competition (you know, like you do) and they go faster than all the other cars (like you do). The bad guys shoot out of the window at the Tracy/Bond vehicle - that is, the right window. Never mind that the car they are trying to hit is to their left.

When leaving the race, Bond says, "I told you that crowd will discourage them." What? How were they discouraged? They fucking shot at you with hundreds of people around!

Redeeming features?

Telly Savalas is my favorite Blofeld yet. And one of the Angels of Death is Joanna Lumley.

3/10



Forbrydelsen (The Killing) - Season 1

This is an excellent, excellent show.

It starts with the discovery of some bloody bits and pieces in an open field. Sarah Lund, on her very last on the Copenhagen police force (she is about to move to Sweden with her fiance) gets the seemingly minor case. She has to work along with her successor, Jan Meyer.

Quickly, it becomes clear that the case involves the disappearance of Nanna Birk Larsen, a 19 year old college student. After the discovery of her body in a car dumped in some lake. The car is part of a fleet belonging to the campaign office of local politician Troels Harmann.

The investigation starts at Nanna's school, with her friends and former boyfriend acting suspiciously. When nothing much comes of investigating them, the focus turns to one of Nanna's teachers, who saw her the night she disappeared and has been seen to remove something that could have been a body into a friends car. The secret he hides, however, turns out to be something entirely different, but not before Nanna's father takes the law into his own hands and is stoped just in time before killing him.

All the while, circumstential evidence (the car, the party flat, surveillance tapes) mounts against Hartmann, who is running for mayor. He is in and out of police custody, his alibi crumbles, and the political vultures circle over his head. He does get cleared, eventually, but the focus stays at town hall. As a consequence, a civil servant is killed in a hit-and-run, presumably because he knew to much about a moderate politician, who had an affair with Nanna until half a year previously. After he gets shot by police, the evidence against him is deemed enough to shut the case.

Doubts about his guilt arise when similar cases get connected to Nanna's, that go back some 15 years. We are now looking for a serial killer. While Lund's life falls apart around her and she seems to be out of her depth, the investigation moves closer to home, and now men working for Nanna's father become suspects. Lund cuts a lot of corners, and one of her unauthorized investigations costs her partner his life.

Her persistence and instinct are what cracks the case eventually, but it is a costly victory.

The US version has nothing on the Danish original, least of all a lead actress that awesome.

7/10



Oscar Nominees

You know the feeling when one of your fellow country(wo)men achieves something astonishing and you regard it as an achievement by the entire population (the "we" feeling)? That is sort of what I feel right now about the Oscar nominations.

Coming from a small, ultimately insignificant, country (never mind that we were very much involved in kicking off two world wars) that feeling is normally limited to successes in winter sports. That's what 'we' are good at. (I am a flatlander myself and never cared much for skiing, but I totally cheer our boys and girls [but really, mostly the boys] on from my comfy chair.)

But today's Oscar nominations are - for a film aficionado from tiny Austria - something else entirely. Amour by Austrian director Michael Haneke (who was not actually born in Austria and the film is in French) was nominated for a total of five Academy Awards. Five! Four of them in the heavy weight categories.

Best Picture (!)
Best Director (!)
Best Actress (for Emanuelle Riva)
Best Original Screenplay
Best Foreign Language Film (we expected that one)

And to top it all off, 'our' Christoph Waltz was again nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Django Unchained.

Now starts my yearly task of trying to watch all Best Picture nominees before the award ceremony. The only one of the nine I have already watched is Argo, which is great BTW. Next up for me will be Life of Pi with friends on Sunday. That leaves me with a few weeks to get in the rest of the bunch. *phew*

A Masterpiece You Might Not Want to See

I have not yet seen Michael Haneke's widely praised latest film Amour but I absolutely plan to. Whereas I don't claim to have liked all his films, I think that Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon), Caché (Hidden) and Funny Games (the original, despite my favorite actor Tim Roth being in the remake) are excellent.

Here (on The New York Review of Books for some reason) is the best review I've read on Amour so far and increased my interest in watching it (and sooner rather than later).

Nineteen Eighty-Four

I have recently read - and loved - the book Nineteen Eighty-Four. With the book fresh in my mind it is always risky to watch the translation onto the screen. In the past, I have been bitterly disappointed many times, especially when not allowing some time to go by between book and film.

Thankfully, here the adaption of George Orwell's dark vision of the future is very close to the source material and wonderfully acted. The biggest burden of the film is on John Hurt's shoulders and he is nothing short of brilliant. Young Julia is played by one Suzanna Hamilton, who has remained obscure as an actress (before and after). The deceitful and turtoring O'Brien is portrayed by the great Richard Burton in his last film role. The film is dedicated to him.

I have already detailed the story in my book review and therefore will not do it again here, since I already mentioned the film's respect of the original text.

A bleak vision of a future, that has not quite arrived yet.

Brilliant.

10/10



Babycall (The Monitor)

Noomi Rapace as Anna, an overprotective mother gone off the rails. She has a restraining order against her ex-husband, who tried to throw their son Anders out the window. Or so she claims.

Anna and Anders live in a non-descript apartment complex in a non-descript town and the mother is in a state of constant panic. She only befriends Helge, who works in an electronics store where Anna purchases a baby monitor to always keep track of her 8-year-old son.

In the end, everything was totally different from what we thought - and from what Helge thought happened.

It's a strange one. Set up as a thriller/horror film, it is not really all that horrifying (for someone like me, who watches a lot of horror films). There is some element of tension, especially before we learn what was really going on.

Unfortunately, the idea is much better than the execution. Even with Noomi Rapace carrying the film.

3/10

Tángshān Dàdìzhèn (Aftershock)

The film Tángshān Dàdìzhèn tells the story of one family torn apart by what was the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century.

It starts with the Great Tangshan Earthquake of July 28, 1976. The twins Fang Deng (a girl) and Fang Da (a boy) are trapped underneath a large concrete slab, that is settled in such an unfortunate way that lifting one side to save one of the children will almost certainly kill the other. The mother, Yuan Ni, who has already lost her husband in the disaster, is pressured by the rescue team to make a decision on which child to save. When she refuses and the rescue team is about to move on to help someone else, she asks them to save the boy. She takes her injured son to a military base to get medical help, thinking her daughter dead. Fang Deng wakes up beside her father's body and in the chaos of the aftermath, gets placed in a childrens' home, from which she gets adopted by her foster parents.

The biggest part of the film follows the parallel story of mother and daughter. One refusing to leave the town and repeatedly telling her deceased husband and thought-dead daughter the directions to her new house in Tanshan, the other pretending not to remember anything about the earthquake and her family, when in reality she cannot forget (or forgive) hearing her mother chose her twin brother's life over hers.

What follows are the ups and downs of everyday life lived in different towns and different cicumstances. Over the course of the next 32 years, both twins have children - giving them the same name, Dian Dian. Fang Deng eventually marries a 'foreigner' and moves to Vancouver. She only returns in 2008 when another devastating earthquake hits China and she works on what is called the Tangshan Rescue Team, where she meets her long lost brother again. Mother and daughter get reunited and the film ends with the family visiting the (empty) graves of father and daughter.

A very sad film, dedicated to the survivers of the Great Earthquake. For all the devastation depicted, it carries itself with dignity and never gorges on the blood and bodies of the victims.

The only irritating thing is that the actor playing the Canadian husband is very bad and stands out among a cast delivering stellar performances.

8/10