The Screengrab : george lazenby

Thursday Poll for November 27, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Last week, we continued our Bond-fest with the eternal question, “who was the best 007?” But much like the Vesper martinis that Daniel Craig’s Bond enjoys so much, this quiz came with a twist- Sean Connery wasn’t one of the candidates, a choice we made with the goal of keeping the poll competitive. However, you had other plans, with Craig (if nothing else, the first Bond since Connery who could convincingly kick some serious villain ass) bringing home a cool 56% of the vote. Trailing him by a wide margin was the #2 choice, Roger Moore, with 19%, followed by Pierce Brosnan with 13%. As usual, the unloved Messrs. Lazenby and Dalton brought up the rear with a mere 6% apiece. And while we received a number of write-in votes for unofficial Bonds ranging from Corey Burton to Operation Kid Brother’s Neil Connery, I was a little disappointed that nobody chose my favorite fake Bond, the diminutive Weng Weng in For Your Height Only.

This week, we move from high-octane action to high-caffeine spectacle by spotlighting the one and only Baz Luhrmann, whose latest film, Australia, was released yesterday. Whether his films leave you dumb with wonderment or simply dumbfounded, it’s hard to find a movie lover who doesn’t have an opinion on the guy. So, what’s your favorite Luhrmann film?

What is your favorite Baz Luhrmann film? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is opening. Have a spectacular spectacular Thanksgiving, and we’ll see you next week!

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Nov. 8-14, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Lazenby. George Lazenby. You know, I like to think I’m a good sport. I played James Bond once forty years ago, and I’ve never heard the end of it. How would you like to wake up at 3 a.m. to answer a ringing phone and hear “You suck, Lazenby!” Not just once, but many, many times. And just this week, the Screengrab abounds with Bond material. James Bond’s Top 007 Cocktails. Quantum of Solace review. Bondage Bloggage. And the Best and Worst James Bond Movies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five). And in all of that, I get only one mention – where I’m referred to as “an Australian underwear model.”

I’ll have you know I have a distinguished acting resume that extends far beyond Bond. I played Jor-El in the short-lived 1990 Superboy series, and a burglar on an episode of BJ and the Bear. I starred in The Man from Hong Kong, coming soon to Ozsploitation! And I’ll almost certainly appear in one of The Top 50 Movies of 2009.

Ah well, no sour grapes on my part. Just to show what a good sport I am, let me direct you to a few of my favorite Screengrab posts of the week:

John Belushi’s Screen Test

John Cusack: Political Poet

Unwatchable #62: “Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie”

Take 5: Character Actors Who Take The Lead

Russell Crowe Will Not Wear Tights

Yesterday's Hits, Veteran's Day Edition: The Best Years of Our Lives

Star Trek Showdown III: The Search for Shatner’s Sanity

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films of All Time! (Part Five)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

THE BEST:

4. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969)

Okay, stop laughing. Yes, we realize this is the one with George Lazenby. But have you actually watched this lately? It holds up a whole hell of a lot better than most Bond movies, including some of Connery’s classics. But while Lazenby doesn’t have the same 007 magic as Connery did, fortunately the movie realizes this and makes it work to its advantage. By the time he hung up the tux for the first time, Connery was beginning to look a little too superhuman, so OHMSS begins with the new Bond getting a serious beatdown and quipping, “this never would’ve happened to the other guy.” From there, the movie gets really interesting, as the more vulnerable 007 is sent on one of the character’s best-written adventures to date, leading him to a remote Alpine clinic that could have been inspired by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain if not for the bevy of nubile patients found therein. Likewise, the film contains its share of spectacular stunts, with special mention going to an impressive ski chase. But while Bond’s lustiness and flair for action are fully intact, OHMSS sees him do something he hadn’t done onscreen before -- fall in love. But then, with the object of his affections played by Diana Rigg, who could blame him? This revelation of Bond’s romantic side makes this installment more human than most, giving its hero a greater emotional stake in his mission, capped by a shocker of an ending that the series has yet to top. It’s tempting to wonder whether the film would’ve worked even better with Connery, but no matter -- even with a former Australian underwear model, it’s still bloody great.

3. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

For a long time, From Russia with Love – the second 007 movie – was considered the best. It later fell into a long battle with Goldfinger, and nowadays it’s often surpassed even for second place by some critics. It’s hard to see why: From Russia with Love is a roaring, energetic success from first frame to last. It cranks up everything from the first movie – the action scenes are wilder, the sexy scenes are sexier, the dialogue is wittier, and most of all the villains are top-shelf foes worthy of Bond. The opening scene is a killer, a fake-out that still packs a punch even after you know what’s coming, and it introduces all of the bad guys that make From Russia so juicy: the chess grandmaster Alexi Kronsteen, who hatches the movie’s plot; the vicious torturer Rosa Klebb (played by opera singer Lotte Lenya, slumming divinely); the brutal defector/assassin Red Grant, played by a stone-faced Robert Shaw; and, as the bait, Tatiana Romanova – played by Daniela Bianchi, one of the most gorgeous Bond girls. There’s also the usual dynamite set-pieces (including a raucous fight at a gypsy camp) and memorable weapons (Klebb’s poisoned shoe-blades), and one of the most enjoyable endings of any Bond movie. And it was JFK’s favorite!

2. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)

This begins with a terrific sequence showing Bond on the warpath, tracking down Blofeld so that he can pay him back for having killed Tracy (Diana Rigg), who Bond wooed and wed in the previous installment, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It also marked Connery's okay-but-just-this-once return to the series after sitting out OHMSS, and he plays this pre-title section with the controlled fury of a man who just missed out on his chance to get paid nine figures to make out with Diana Rigg. This is also the movie that proved that, no matter how many gadgets and goils are in place, it matters who plays the lead role. In a lot of ways, Diamonds is subpar Bond: it was the first film in the series made without the participation of Peter R. Hunt, who as editor and second unit director was integral to the look and feel of the action sequences on the earlier films, and who left after taking over as director on OHMSS, and the car chases and beatings lack the fluid aesthetic charge they once had. (At some points, they rival the Las Vegas setting itself for sheer tackiness.) But Connery, at forty-one, was just hitting his stride as an actor after almost ten years as a movie star, and he endows Bond with an ironic awareness and some vulnerability that are beautiful to see. It's probably the best performance he, or anyone else, ever gave in the part.

1. GOLDFINGER (1964)

The third James Bond film is close to being a consensus pick as the favorite. It was the first one to be considered a blockbuster success, making back its then-hefty $3 million budget in record time, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s really the first 007 adventure that has every single element of Bond greatness in place. It begins with the unforgettable theme song, performed by Shirley Bassey; it features a memorable villain in Gert Fröbe’s meaty precious metals enthusiast Auric Goldfinger, and one of the best henchmen of all time in Harold Sakata’s Oddjob, whose razor-brimmed fedora set the tone for future gimmick weapons. It had a clever plot, a solid script, lots of great action set-pieces, and a memorable deathtrap for Sean Connery’s 007, who must bluff his way out of being castrated by an industrial laser. Honor Blackman, fresh off The Avengers, plays Pussy Galore, one of the few Bond girls who aren’t total pushovers, and there’s lots of fun action from M and Q, as well as the full introduction of Bond’s tricked-out Aston Martin. Why is Goldfinger the best? Simple: it’s the quintessential Bond movie, containing everything a Bond movie should have in perfect order.

HONORABLE MENTION:

And finally...three Bond films that were disqualified from Best and Worst consideration for being close but not exactly actual Bond films at all...

OK CONNERY (1967); FFOLKES (1980); THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (2001)

Any association with a role like James Bond can result in an actor being typecast, but sometimes it's up to the actor to decide what to do with that. By 1980, Roger Moore was all but hermetically sealed in the role of 007, so much so that his only way to take a paid vacation was to accept the lead in a lame action-adventure movie, ffolkes, that was marketed to theaters with an ad campaign that tried to sell it as a Bond movie in all but name. The funny thing is that Moore latched onto the movie as a chance to escape Bond; the title character, a nautical-rescue-mission specialist who is prevailed upon by the British government to prevent Anthony Perkins from blowing up an oil rig, is an "eccentric" brainiac more in the Sherlock Holmes mode of antisocial superheroes, with a full beard and a pathological distaste for the fairer sex. The film didn't get much play, but Moore is said to prefer it to any of his Bond films.

The Tailor of Panama, directed by John Boorman and based on a John le Carre novel, provided Pierce Brosnan with a more direct route to giving his most iconic role an extended middle finger. Brosnan plays a horny total cynic of a secret agent whose compulsive womanizing inspires his bosses to ship him off to Panama to get him out of their hair. Incapable of behaving myself, Brosnan hires a tailor (Geoffrey Rush) to slip him information about his powerful clients; Rush, who can't find out anything but needs the money Brosnan is offering him, begins cooking up wild tales that Brosnan, who couldn't care less if they were true, is happy to send back to the home office. Between the two of them, they almost create an international crisis that is narrowly averted when the moviemakers had their budget slashed.

The booby prize in the Almost-Bond Sweepstakes goes to a 1967 movie that is alternately known as OK Connery, Operation Kid Brother, and Operation Double 007 -- that last being the title under which it was shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Made at a time when Sean Connery was already inching away from the role that had made him a star, this semi-spoof stars Connery's non-actor brother Neil as the little brother of an unidentified master secret agent who is unavailable for an important assignment. For the benefit of those very slow to get the point, any point, producer Dario Sabatello hired Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, the "M" and Miss Moneypenny of the regular Bond series, as well as Daniela Bianchi, of From Russia with Love, Adolfo Celi (who basically reprises his villainous role from Thunderball), and Anthony Dawson, who played a minor baddie in Dr. No and whose hands played the hands of Blofeld in a couple of later films. The role didn't led to much, though in 1984, Neil did contribute a cameo to a Hong Kong 007 spoof, directed by Tsui Hark, whose cast also included Richard ("Jaws") Kiel and Harold ("Oddjob") Sakata.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

Joanna Lumley Remembers: When Edina Met James Bond

Phil Nugent — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It turns out that Joanna Lumley has a peculiar habit of dropping in on long-running spy-adventure franchises at strange moments in their histories. She stood in for Diana Rigg/Honor Blackman/Linda Thorson in the mid-1970s TV series The New Avengers, a retread of the classic 1960s show that also featured an extra, young male cast member (Gareth Hunt) so that he could handle any chores that might tax Patrick McNee's delicate heart rate. And in 1969, when she was 22, she appeared in the first James Bond film not starring Sean Connery, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. For those of you who may have trouble keeping one movie's world-domination plot straight from another's, that's the one where Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas with his earlobes pinned back, takes over a clinic in the Swiss alps and "cures" a bunch of girls of their allergies by hypnosis. In the process, he also turns them into unwitting time-release bombs in a biological-terrorism scheme as part of his plot to force the world's powers to grant him amnesty for all his past crimes and the right to be addressed as "Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp" by anyone who can get the words out with a straight face. Lumley played one of these girls. "I was sent to meet Harry Saltzman, the American who co-produced the Bond films with Cubby Broccoli, in South Audley Street," she recalls. "It was a very hot day. The lift had broken. He arrived in his Rolls-Royce, after lunch, and since his office was on the top floor, I had to follow him up the stairs. At the top, he was so out of breath he was almost speechless. He just managed to say, 'Ya have da part'. I said thank you, and went away again. I often wondered why he hadn’t told me in the lobby downstairs."

Lumley's role was not large; her character is called simply "The English Girl", and she only has a couple of lines, one of them being the immortal "Oh goody, egg nog on Christmas Eve, just like we have at home.” ("I said quietly that we don’t have an eggnog tradition in Britain, but it was an American film so I had to say the line anyway. I felt like a traitor.") She didn't even get to go to bed with Bond, which is just as well, since the actress who did had to deliver a breathless post-coital monologue on the bother of having an allegery to chickens when your family operates a chicken farm. (Has it never occurred to you, Elspeth dear, that your allergy is your body's way of telling you something? Damn it, you're a beautiful girl, now kick the dust of that chicken farm off your penny loafers and get out into the big wide world and enjoy life! Sorry, where was I?) Still, Lumley is proud to be associated with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, because "the Bond film aficionados put it in the top three ever made, if not at the very top." Just because Lumley knows some off-the-wall Bond aficionados does not make their judgement incorrect. On Her Majesty's has most of the elements of a superior Bond movie, including thrilling wintry chase scenes (the film was directed by Peter R. Hunt, whose whiplash action editing was an essential part of the first wave of Bond films), an unusually classy romantic soundtrack number performed by Louis Armstrong, and a top-flight supporting cast that includes Diana Rigg as the woman who would (briefly) be Mrs. Bond, Gabriele Ferzetti as her way-cool gangster dad (who gets to punch her out before delivering the line, "Hey, you spare-a da rod and you spoil-a da child!"), and Ilse Steppat as Blofeld's female-tank sidekick. If the movie is actually underrated a bit, it's because of the presence, or rather the lack of same, of George Lazenby, the colorless Australian male model who got to stand in for Connery while he was in the bathroom for four years. According to Lumley, there were also "grim garlic-related stories" of the difficulties between Rigg and Lazenby, and I'd love to know whether this is supposed to be a veiled accusation that one of the leads is a vampire or just an indirect way of hinting that somebody's breath was not ideally suited to the kissing scenes. There's also an adorable recollection of how producer "Cubby Broccoli would come on set and say 'Is everybody happy? Is anything going wrong?' He often had his little daughter with him, who used to talk during filming but no one was allowed to say 'shush'. That was Barbara Broccoli, who now runs the film franchise." My guess is that today she could strip and do interpretive dance just out of camera range and nobody would say shit, either.

Related Stories: The Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs

Ten Movies for a Snow Day

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT

It’s that time of the year when Screengrab readers in certain parts of the country can pretty much count on an unexpected day off or two thanks to Mother Nature’s fury. In my part of the country (Austin, TX), said fury usually comes in the form of about a half-inch of freezing drizzle, but having grown up in the Northeast, I am certainly well acquainted with the concept of the Snow Day. And what could be better on a day when you can’t leave the house than a pile of movies featuring a veritable blizzard’s worth of snow?

Herewith, then, the Screengrab’s list of the ten snowiest movies. Please note that we have not included the Chevy Chase/Chris Elliott movie Snow Day. We wouldn’t do that to you.

Ice Station Zebra

Sure, for much of its running time, this much-maligned Rock Hudson vehicle is a submarine movie, but the climactic scenes are set at the Arctic Circle, where the crew has been sent to track down some important Cold War whatsis. In his 1969 review, Roger Ebert describes the action thusly: “Hudson and his men start out with parkas, mufflers, goggles and the whole works. But by the time of the confrontation with the Russian commander, all the leading actors are shown bareheaded and barefaced. At Arctic temperatures, their noses would freeze, crack and fall off before they got their argument well launched. Another funny thing: When the actors talk, their breath doesn't freeze.”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

There are several Bond movies that explore the action-packed possibilities of snow, notably For Your Eyes Only, but when in doubt we always opt for the golden age of Lazenby. Here 007 puts his skis to work both on the slopes (dig that nighttime rear-screen projection) and as weapons of strangulation and defenestration. Always a multi-tasker, our man Bond.

Quintet

I’ve written about Robert Altman’s frostbitten foray into post-apocalyptic sci-fi before, so to quote myself: “Set in a future Ice Age, Quintet is so white with snow and glare, you will notice streaks of dust on your television screen that were hitherto imperceptible. To give it that extra ‘futuristic’ edge, Altman has smeared his camera lens with enough lube to fuel a three-day orgy at Elliott Gould’s place.” Stare at it long enough and you will go blind, one way or another.

The Shining

Sure, a snow day sounds like all fun and games. But then you realize you’re trapped in the house with your family for who knows how long, and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a bad case of cabin fever and starts chasing you around with an axe. Our advice? Lead them outside into the hedge maze. This works best if they’re drunk and/or completely insane.

Fargo

Forget the compelling argument about whether or not the Coens have contempt for their heroine Marge Gunderson. What we really want to know is – what do they think of this guy?

Alive

This is an especially good one to watch from the safety of your couch on your unplanned day off. See what leaving the house gets you? Before you know it, you’ve crash-landed in the snow-capped Andes and the seatmate you bummed a magazine from early in the flight is now gnawing on your elbow. Better take an extra day off tomorrow just to be on the safe side.

A Simple Plan

From the golden age of snow noir (approx. Feburary 1996 to December 1998) comes Sam Raimi’s adaptation of the Scott Smith novel about earflapped yokels squabbling over a sack o’ cash rescued from another crashed plane. If you’re only familiar with the recent work of Billy Bob Thornton, it might surprise you to learn he once played characters who weren’t hard-assed authority figures. To wit:

Dreamcatcher

It shouldn’t be a surprise that this list contains two movies based on Stephen King books, since the horrormeister is a native of Maine and therefore no stranger to the perils of wintry weather. Of course, in Dreamcatcher those perils include ass-weasels from outer space and Morgan Freeman’s equally extraterrestrial eyebrows, so this one doesn’t qualify as the most naturalistic look at snowbound life on this list.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Honestly, you can skip Quintet if you want. McCabe is the Altman masterpiece you must move to the head of your Netflix queue immediately. And if you’ve never seen it, do not – repeat DO NOT – watch the clip below.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow

It’s been a while, but as best we can recall, this movie did not make a lick of sense. Julia Ormond is a scientist investigating a conspiracy using her unique, uh, sense of snow. Save this one for last, when you’re really tired.