Pop stuff: Live and Let Die; Miss Minoes

What I've been reading, watching, hearing etc.


Live And Let Die Many of the James Bond movies are available again via Netflix and Amazon streaming and my son and I have resumed our viewing of the whole works, in order.

We love the early Sean Connery entries, of course, and I maintain that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," with pinch-hitting George Lazenby in as 007, is one of the best films in the series (good story and stunt, great score, best Bond girl, ever, in Diana Rigg). But things took a terrible turn with "Diamonds are Forever," (1971) with Connery's brief return. It's an awful movie with a goofy, pedestrian plot, cheap production values and lackluster performances.

"Let it Be" (1973) doesn't start out much better. Like "Diamonds," it looks cheap, more like a TV cop show than a Bond film. And new Bond Roger Moore doesn't do much beyond arch an eyebrow for the first 45 minutes of the film. Plus, there's a lot of early 70s, queasy-making racial stuff to deal with as Bond takes an oh-so-funny trip to Harlem, where he gets to be the only white guy in a British film production firm's idea of a blaxploitation film (lots of uses of the word "honky," lots of floppy pimp hats).

But in the last third, things finally kick into gear with the awesome speedboat chase (the only thing apart from Paul McCartney's theme tune that I remembered from seeing this film on TV as a kid) and we're back in crazy, campy Bond territory again.

The chase is way too long, but it's funny and fun to watch, and it's followed by a nice confrontation with the film's villain (poorly written by nicely played by Yaphet Kotto, later of "Homicide" fame) in an underground lair complete with shark lagoon and monorail (that's where all the production money went).

My son and I have already watched "Man With the Golden Gun" (1974) out of sequence (it also looks pretty cheap, but Moore and the story are already a good notch or two above "Live and Let Die"), so "The Spy Who Loved Me" is next. It's the first Bond movie I saw in the movie theater. Should be fun to re-visit it. I hope...


Miss Minoes A 2001 Dutch release dubbed into English, this is a fun family film about a cat transformed by mysterious chemicals into a young woman.

In an American film, this scenario would result in all sorts of over-the-top antics and the character taking extreme measures to keep her condition a secret, here everything is refreshingly more simple and subtle. A young reporter who discovered Miss Minoes, the cat woman, doesn't try to keep her a secret.

She's just a woman who's really cat, that's why she sleeps in a box, hangs out on the roof and tends to chase mice and other moving things.

Misadventures, of course, ensue, but not in a manic way, and it's a nice change from the typical, ADHD-paced kids flick.

Along the way, Carice van Houten, in the lead role, does a nice job working cat-like behaviors into her performance -- darting under the table and chasing after moving objects and mice, nuzzling the people she likes, hissing at those she doesn't.

If you've got kids, and/or cats, it'll be a hit. Sensitive-to-language parents should be advised, however, that Dutch people, even little kids, apparently toss the "s" word around with relative abandon.

Actually, there are only three instances of this in the film, but I was a little surprised by them in such an otherwise tame film. Nothing my kids haven't heard me say before.

No comments:

Post a Comment