Enough with the empty virtue signaling

So John Boyega, who I think is a pretty talented actor, went off on a tear about George Floyd and the protests/riots (delete according to whether your hometown has been torched yet) gripping this country.

And before I go any further, I want to make clear that I think Boyega's a talented actor. I called his character Token Black Dude for all of about ten minutes of my The Farce Awakens review because that's clearly (even more so with hindsight) all that Disney treated him as. Which frankly makes him overqualified for the role, given what they did with him.

Well now he's hot stuff and everybody in Hollywood wants to prove how Woke they are by getting to work with him. End of his career? Hardly.

Sorry, John. Where were you when this conviction might have actually hurt you? When Disney kowtowed to the racist-as-all-fuck ChiComs and all but edited you off their posters? You took your paycheck and shut your mouth. When Disney turned your character, the most prominent black character Star Wars ever had, into a walking punchline? You took your paycheck and shut your mouth. 

But when it's time to flex on Bad Orange Man, like motherfucking everybody else in Hollywood? Oh. Then you're Stunning and Brave.

Come on, dude. I see you.

My definitive ranking of the Bond films to date

Haha, I'm going to cop out a little bit. Rather than give a strict "this one is better than this one" thing all the way through, I'm going to group the films in to clusters of five (for the most part). Tiers, rather than a straight ranking, if only because I don't particularly care to quibble whether Quantum of Solace is worse than Live and Let Die. Within each tier, the films will be ordered chronologically.

The Top Three (cinematic art)

From Russia With Love (Connery, Terence Young, 1963)
The best Connery film by a mile is also one of the closest adaptations of a Fleming novel. Some people say Connery hadn't yet found his footing, but Robert Shaw and Lotte Lenya (yes, the one name-checked in the Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin versions of "Mack the Knife") are positively brilliant as the villains. They say Goldfinger's the one they keep trying to remake, but they always do the hotel room scene from this one when they're casting a new Bond, hmm...

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Lazenby, Peter Hunt, 1969)
I stand by everything I said here and here. I really don't think there's anything more that needs to be said. They use the hotel room scene in this one when casting new Bonds, too.

The Spy Who Loved Me (Moore, Lewis Gilbert, 1977)
People routinely put this around number eight on their lists. Those people are wrong. With the possible exception of the lead actor (and Moore was given far more to do than Connery was), this is superior in every way to Goldfinger, and people who disagree should have a word with Jaws.

Four and Five (A-)

The Living Daylights (Dalton, John Glen, 1987)
This is the only non-sixties Bond film that Ian Fleming might plausibly have written. I don't think I need to say anything else, but I will: Timothy Dalton is a brilliant James Bond, and it's too bad if you can't see that.

Casino Royale (Craig, Martin Campbell, 2006)
Fact: Casino Royale is the most overrated Bond Film that isn't Goldfinger. Fact: It's still very, very good.

Six through Ten (watch these to understand what a Bond Film is)

Dr. No (Connery, Terence Young, 1962)
It is a film that exists. Better films followed.

Goldfinger (Connery, Guy Hamilton, 1964)
A film that far too many of its successors tried to emulate.

Thunderball (Connery, Terence Young, 1965)
A film that blubbers, boggles, and bemuses.

GoldenEye (Brosnan, Martin Campbell, 1995)
It is a film that exists. Worse films followed.

Quantum of Solace (Craig, Marc Forster, 2008)
If Licence to Kill, the second film featuring a more serious actor playing Bond Out For Revenge, was a Lethal Weapon knockoff, then Quantum of Solace, the second film featuring a more serious actor playing Bond Out For Revenge, is a Bourne Tepidity knockoff, right down to the shakycam. It's better than it's given credit for being.

Eleven through Sixteen (either "so bad it's good" or "they tried something different and it didn't quite work")

You Only Live Twice (Connery, Lewis Gilbert, 1967)
Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so. Famous for giving us Dr. Evil and the only one where Bond never learns the name of the girl he ends up with.

Live and Let Die (Moore, Guy Hamilton, 1973)
A Blaxploitation flick dressed up as a Bond film nevertheless delivers one of the best villains in the entire series. Roger Moore's introduction ably proves that they can throw him up against just about anything and he'll make it work.

Moonraker (Moore, Lewis Gilbert, 1979)
Star Wars ruined everything. Great music, though.

For Your Eyes Only (Moore, John Glen, 1981)
The "average" Moore film is average. Quelle surprise.

Licence to Kill (Dalton, John Glen, 1989)
A Lethal Weapon knockoff that goes Road Warrior at the end. Someone was really upset they didn't get Mel Gibson, I guess. It's supposed to be one of the darkest Bond films, but the mickey-mousing gunfire during the tanker chase is utterly hilarious now that the world has graced us with Baby Driver.

Tomorrow Never Dies (Brosnan, Roger Spottiswode, 1997)
If I absolutely had to rank these, this film would be the best of this batch. There is no actual reason for it to exist other than $, but it's inoffensive and entertaining, and Brosnan gives what is probably his best performance. It has one standout scene (the one with Doctor Kaufman) and the villain is simultaneously a Rupert Murdoch caricature and stunningly prescient. Really the only of the Brosnans that has aged remotely well.


Seventeen through Twenty-One (do not watch unless you're marathoning the series)

The Man With the Golden Gun (Moore, Guy Hamilton, 1974)
Christopher Lee didn't fare any better in Bond than he did in Star Wars, managing to get less interesting as this film blunders on. There are a couple of good scenes (Bond's first encounter with the baddie's girl being foremost among them) and a plethora of bad ones (anything pertaining to a fake nipple or Britt Ekland).

Octopussy (Moore, John Glen, 1983)
The best of this batch by virtue of being the most forgettable. The plot is actually pretty complex, which is a refreshing change of pace. Kristina Wayborn, who gives the the-censors-must-have-been-asleep line "That's my little octopussy" is in my opinion one of the most overlooked Bond Girls ever. Ultimately, though, it's tonally inconsistent, and its basic idea was repackaged four years later in the vastly-superior The Living Daylights.

A View to a Kill (Moore, John Glen, 1985)
Roger Moore deserved a better swan song, and his horrible facelift doesn't help at all. What keeps this film out of the bottom three is Christopher Walken in a Thatcher wig, but even he can't stop me from noticing that Tanya Roberts is the worst Bond Girl ever. I am rather fond of the firetruck chase through San Francisco, though.

The World is Not Enough (Brosnan, Michael Apted, 1999)
It's Pierce's turn to take on OHMSS. (Oh, sorry, did you not notice the Tracy/Elektra comparisons, the skiing, and the villain who cut off their own earlobes?) The helicopter assault on the caviar factory is quite good and belongs in a better movie.

Skyfall (Craig, Sam Mendes, 2012)
Sam Mendes does not understand James Bond. I'm sorry, but that just needs to be said.

Twenty-Two through Twenty-Four (watch only to prove that yes, they can make utterly terrible Bond films)

Diamonds Are Forever (Connery, Guy Hamilton, 1971)
Gay villains: the movie. Features laser satellite.

Die Another Day (Brosnan, Lee Tamahori, 2002)
Gay villains: the movie. Features laser sat... wait.

Spectre (Craig, Sam Mendes, 2015)
The only thing Mendes understands less than James Bond is Bond Villains. This film is a grotesque farce, a horrid throwback to the Hamilton Error, except it insists on playing everything straight. Pro-tip: when you take a gag from Austin Powers and make an entire film around it, you're very likely to end up with the very worst Bond Film ever on your hands.

FOR ALL MANKIND

So Ron Moore, the guy behind the Battlestar Galactica reboot from a few years back (and who also wrote a few damn good episodes of Deep Space Nine), made a new TV show where Hollywood's preferred victors in the Cold War, the Soviet Union, beats the USA to the Moon. This prompts Hollywood's favorite Democrat of yesteryear, Ted Kennedy, to not kill Mary Jo Kopechne and instead to kick off a political duel with Hollywood's favorite villain, Richard Nixon, over the future of the space program.

In so doing, we get treated to Hollywood's preferred take on Hollywood's most obnoxious issues, e.g. illegal immigration (we see a family cross the border at the same time Armstrong and Aldrin are on their way to the moon, muh symbolic) and the Equal Rights Amendment. The most hilarious upshot of all this is that the writers get their rocks off reminding everyone that Wernher Von Braun was a NAAAAAAAAAAAZI... but the people making this point are making it to sideline the now-peacenik Von Braun and establish, and I am not kidding here, a Space Force.

Oh, they don't call it that. But that's what they are. Congratulations, Hollylibs, you played yourselves.

In which Angel gets hijacked by a third-wave feminist screed

There is a legitimate complaint to be had about how the character of Cordelia Chase and her actress, Charisma Carpenter, were treated in the closing seasons of Angel, a.k.a. the greatest television show ever made. The short version is: Carpenter got pregnant, Season 4 was rewritten to make Cordelia possessed by a demon that would then give birth to itself, Carpenter was fired at the end of the season and then brought back for one episode in Season 5 just to kill her character off.

A Blog of Thrones (Chapter 64) Daenerys VIII: You've Just Had Some Kind of Mushroom

Previously on A Blog of Thrones, things happened offscreen.

George is on Creepy Old Man form this time, mentioning Dany's sweaty breasts by the end of the second paragraph.

Turns out, Drogo's got a present from deal old Grandpa Nurgle. Flies are buzzing all around him and he's basically catatonic. After a page of this, he falls off his horse. It takes a special talent to stretch that out into a full page, and George has it.

FIRST MAN review

If I wanted to watch Claire Foy nag her aviator husband, I'd watch The Crown.

(SPOILERS, obviously)

Film review: CHAPPAQUIDDICK

"I could have had her out of that car in 25 minutes--if I got the call--but no one called."

While JFK's vision of landing a man on the moon was being fulfilled, his surviving family members were thrilled to have something to distract the public from their latest scandal.

At least, that's the justification Chappaquiddick presents for spending the first thirty minutes badly wishing it could be a film about Apollo 11 instead. It gets really distracting when you realize that Jason Clarke (Ted Kennedy) played Ed White* in First Man the following year (and, if you criticized his appearance in First Man, you find yourself wondering if he put on weight to play Kennedy and then had trouble shaking it off).

*So, yes, the first two things I saw Clarke in, he was playing historical Americans named Edward who were involved in fatal late-60s vehicle accidents. Talk about typecasting. 

Apollo 50: Apollo VIII, part 1

"There's no question that it was a coffin, and I'd have flown it gladly."
-Frank Borman to Congress, after the Apollo 1 fire

In spaceflight, there are "good" missions and "bad" missions. "Good" missions are the milestones: first man in space, first orbit, first spacewalk, first flight of a new vehicle, first lunar landing, first use of a lunar rover. "Bad" missions are the dull, routine ones: a two-week endurance test, for example, or a repeat flight of the previous mission.

Frank Borman began his NASA career getting bumped from a "good" mission to a "bad" one, and ended it getting bumped from a "bad" mission to a "good" one.

Apollo 7, part 3

"You've added two burns to this flight schedule, and you've added a urine water dump; and we have a new vehicle up here, and I can tell you at this point TV will be delayed without any further discussion until after the rendezvous. [...] We do not have the equipment out; we have not had an opportunity to follow setting; we have not eaten at this point. At this point, I have a cold. I refuse to foul up our time lines this way."
-CDR Wally Schirra to CAPCOMs Jack Swigert and Deke Slayton, 23 hours into Apollo 7's 11-day mission

"It was like having a ringside seat at the Wally Schirra B[****] Circus. [...] I told Deke [Slayton] straight out that this crew shouldn't fly again."
-Director of Flight Operations Chris Kraft, in his 2001 memoir Flight: My Life in Mission Control

"I hope that the recognition you received today will restore some of your faith in your fellow travelers. We gave you a hard time once but you certainly survived that and have done extremely well since. You've done well by yourself, you've done well for NASA and I am frankly, very proud to call you a friend."
-Chris Kraft to Walter Cunningham, 2008

Apollo 7, part 2

"Deke [Slayton] said that we of the original seven are done, there's a whole new crew now. That I even got that Apollo flight was unusual. The second group was brought in to go to the Moon. We were supposed to be out of there by then. It just turned out they needed me, so I stayed for the Apollo 7 flight. That was unique."
-Wally Schirra

"By 1968, I saw a bureaucracy developing - the fun days were over."
-Wally Schirra

On February 26, 1966, six months to the day before a Command Module dubbed CM-012 arrived at the Kennedy Space Center and with five Gemini missions still to go, NASA launched its very first Apollo mission. Dubbed AS-201 (A for Apollo, S for Saturn), this launch consisted of the first flight of a Saturn IB and unmanned Apollo Command and Service Modules (CM and SM, respectively; CSM together).

Apollo 50: Apollo VII, part 1

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."
-John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961

"All of us in the flights that followed were dependent on the Apollo 7 crew doing their job, so thanks Walt and Wally and Donn."
-Neil Armstrong, October 20, 2008

"23:58:03   (Music - JINGLE BELLS - from Spacecraft VI)"
-official Gemini 6 radio transcript

Righto. We've hit the fiftieth anniversary of the first manned Apollo mission, so it's time for me to nerd out at you.

Apollo 7 launched on October 11, 1968, but to tell the full story, you have to go back six years and start on October 3, 1962. That was the day that Wally Schirra, who would later command Apollo 7, orbited the Earth six times as the fifth American in space.