O
This was the most belittled of the Bond films, and to be quite honest,
it is one of my favorites. It had three strikes against it - a new actor
playing the part of Bond, a true love story, and a tragically sad
ending. No one wanted a new Bond after Connery and poor Lazenby just
didn't have a chance. What was worse, no one wanted a Bond that was
going to break the rules of Bond-dom by falling in love, losing, showing
emotion, and crying. Bond? Lose? Never!! But he does, and perhaps that
is what endears the film to me - it makes Bond more human and tangible,
as he is depicted in Ian Flemings original novels. And he does
fall in love with Diana Rigg - I mean, come on, who wouldn't?? There
are of course other detractors - Telly Savalas as Blofeld for
one. Lazenby acting like a foppish genealogist and wearing a goofy
looking kilt is another. But the music is fantastic, the chase scene
skiing down the mountain at night is thrilling, and overall the film
does hold together and hold it's own. Alas so many changes in the genre
in combination with a new actor killed the film before anyone even got
the chance to see it, or gave it a chance.
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This was cute, but nothing to write home about. First thing I'll say is
this; Spain shouldn't make musical
films. They just don't seem to know how to do it. The music was for
the most part neither catchy nor interesting and in general just didn't
seem
to fit the rest of the film. The choreography was also fairly pendantic.
Some of the lyrics were funny and entertaining, and I did like a few
numbers where the song moved from person to person to person in totally
different situations and settings, so I guess they have a few clues. Or
maybe I'm just not used to Spanish musicals. Perhaps this is the style?
The general story and film was cute
though - basically one of those girl A breaks up with boy B. Boy B goes
to tell his friends girl C and boy D who are dating. But of course it
turns out that boy D and girl A are having an affair. So pretty much
it's one of those bed-swapping stories where everyone is fooling around
with everyone else. There were some very funny moments and I
definitely laughed fairly often, but overall it was just pretty good.
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I can't honestly say that this is a "good" movie. It has a very
predictable storyline, some very clumsy time shifts between the past,
near-present, and present, and some rather standard plots. However, I
can say that I enjoyed it immensely. Why? Because it's about a
traditional Thai musician who is a brilliant ranard-ek (a sort of
xylophone) instrumentalist. So of course the movie sports beautiful Thai
settings and costumes and characters and a great deal of beautiful, and
visually and aurally astonishing music.
If you've ever seen a master
playing the tabla, then you understand the speed and strength required
to play the ranard-ek. So while the film was not much to talk about, the
music and performances were breathtaking, and there was that wonderful
excitement that you always (okay, I always) get when a young brilliant
person manages to do things that everyone else thought were impossible.
It also had some elegant and creative cinematography (though alas
infrequently) and told the tragic story about how Thailand, in an effort
to be more modern and "civilized" in support of Japan during WWII felt
that they had to sacrifice their culture and their music to do so,
persecuting people in their own homes for simply playing the music that
they loved and being Thai.
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