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‘Casino Royale’
By Cole Smithey
Movie Trailer
All fears surrounding the future
of cinema’s longest running franchise
are put to rest with Daniel Craig
(“Layer Cake”) more than capably
filling 007’s shoes in a Bond
film that shatters formula constraints
and delivers nail-biting action
in a considerably darker mode.
Screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert
Wade, and Paul Haggis (“Crash”)
relay Ian Flemming’s inaugural
1953 James Bond novel with a more
serious pitch that compliments
their depiction of the author’s
budding international spy as an
arrogant, if capable, renegade
with a sizable ego to match his
muscled physique.
With a $10 million dollar bankroll,
Bond travels to Montenegro to
play a high- stakes game of poker
opposite terrorism-financier Le
Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) to deplete
the over-leveraged villain whose
impatient investors wait with
loaded guns and baited breath.
This younger, meaner Bond exerts
calm acrobatic athleticism while
in Africa attempting to capture
alive Mollaka (played by Sebastien
Foucan), a potential suicide bomber,
with the unnecessary aid of another
secret agent incapable of concealing
his radio transmissions about
Mollaka’s location at a cobra-and-mongoose
competition. The perp flees and
Bond gives hot chase through a
high-rise construction site that
serves as a gauntlet of mind-bending
obstacles for the two men to exhibit
their “Parkour” skills while jumping
long distances from rooftops,
cranes and skeletal elevators.
[Parkour is the French extreme
sport of jumping, vaulting and
climbing obstacles in the fastest
and most direct manner possible.]
Director Martin Campbell (“Goldeneye”)
pushes the high-energy segment
to establish Bond’s unprecedented
physical discipline and encyclopedic
knowledge that he uses to manipulate
the site’s imposing machinery.
To his chagrin, the chase ends
badly in a bloody standoff with
Nambutu Embassy guards, and Bond’s
explosive miscalculation is soon
posted on the Internet to the
embarrassment of M16 and Bond’s
boss M (played by Judi Dench in
her fifth Bond film).
“Casino Royale” is about the flaws
and strengths of an ideal secret
agent. After foiling a terrorist
bomber at a Miami airport in a
lengthy pursuit that nearly kills
him, Bond inadvertently effects
the death of a woman (Caterina
Murino) that he seduces in the
Bahamas.
An obvious break from the franchise’s
signature formula comes in the
form of anti-Bond girl Vesper
Lynd (Eva Green — “The Dreamers”).
Vesper appears mid-flight as a
Treasury agent sent to approve
and supply the millions of dollars
in cash that Bond will bet with
against Le Chiffre, a man who
weeps blood due to a rare medical
condition.
“I’m the money,” Vesper tells
Bond. To which he replies, “Every
penny of it.” It’s a moment that
rings like a platinum bell in
announcing the yin and yang tension
between Bond and the ravishing
woman who is his intellectual
and sexual equal. Vesper goes
on to read his personality just
as precisely as he scans hers.
These are not the cardboard cutouts
of previous Bond films, but rather
genuinely intriguing people who
communicate in a shorthand code
of mixed messages.
Everything about “Casino Royale”
is big, without overreaching.
Daniel Craig epitomizes the ethic
with a fluid performance that
fills every scene like mercury
seeping into a grooved floor.
He has a feline quickness and
an innate understanding of Flemming’s
character that would make the
author proud. Most importantly,
Craig’s Bond is a modern self-made
man with a strong sense of immediacy
who understands sacrifice, pain
and pleasure. There is a new James
Bond, and for once the comparison
to Sean Connery’s heretofore-unrivaled
interpretation is valid. Daniel
Craig is better. CV
‘American Hardcore’
By Tricia Olszewski
Movie Trailer
The boys in American Hardcore
had a grubbiness made for radio
even if their songs weren’t. Paul
Rachman’s documentary chronicles
the evolution and demise of hardcore
punk in the early ’80s, a movement
that was fueled by the British
and homegrown scenes, the election
of Ronald Reagan, and the need
of an outlet for kids who “were
pissed off but didn’t know why.”
Hardcore was always a response
to the snooze of mainstream rock.
“Journey, the Eagles, Fleetwood
Mac they were all great bands
for what they do,” says Keith
Morris, formerly of Circle Jerks
and Black Flag. “But when you
hear it over and over and over
again, you’re going to just want
to... vomit. Or jump off the nearest
cliff.”
Not that vomiting, most likely,
wasn’t a factor in hardcore. Rachman,
long a filmmaker of the underground
scene and video director for bands
such as Gang Green and erstwhile
Washingtonians Bad Brains, captures
the fast-as-Flash pace of the
genre, opening with the Brains’
“Pay to Cum” while a mostly black-and-white
montage shows split-second glimpses
of chaotic-show stills and crudely
decorated band posters and logos.
The birth of hardcore took the
’70s punk of such bands as the
Ramones and the Avengers and put
it on crack: Songs were short,
loud and usually indecipherable,
with an emphasis instead on pushed-to-the-limit
speed. As Impact Unit’s Dicky
Barrett says, “The less it was
a song, the more we loved it.”
Solos were forbidden, being associated
with the pop rock they were rebelling
against.
Rachman was inspired to make this
movie by credited writer Steven
Blush’s book, “American Hardcore:
A Tribal History.” It covers,
albeit a bit disjointedly, the
timeline of how the scene spread
across the country: first appearing
in Southern California and later
catching on in cities like D.C.,
Chicago, Boston and, naturally,
New York. In between grainy, 20-plus-year-old
footage of shows performed in
church basements and friends’
homes, there’s a who’s-who parade
of commentators, including Henry
Rollins, Ian MacKaye and Bad Brains’
Paul “H.R.” Hudson, as well as
Gwar’s Dave Brockie and Moby (yes,
that Moby). Each recalls the craziness
of the shows, heavy on moshing
and general violence. The first
time Brockie experienced hardcore
live, he says, his panicked impression
was, “Oh my god! People are killing
each other!” Because the performers
contributing here made it out
alive, their stories and glimpses
of the chaotic shows are pretty
entertaining — as are the shots
of the parallel ’80s universe,
all Members Only jackets and feathered
hair.
Hardcore was also rather self-inclusive,
and the film emphasizes its DIY
approach. The bands put out their
own records — MacKaye talks of
reproducing album covers by hand
— and booked their own shows,
often squatting in abandoned buildings
for out-of-town gigs. There were
no illusions about getting on
the radio. It was a male-dominated
world, but a few girls were part
of the scene, too, though mostly
as fans or handlers of bookkeeping
and such.
Most everyone here agrees that
hardcore punk died in the mid-’80s.
MacKaye, for one, felt that the
violence associated with the movement
had become unacceptable. Hair
metal was moving in, and audiences
were losing interest. Perhaps
what’s most amusing about Rachman’s
doc is the “kids-these-days!”
attitude of now-adult, former
rebels, ranting against unnamed
artists implied to be, say, Good
Charlotte or blink-182: “None
of this shit, none of these little
fucking spoiled little fucking
brats on MTV now with their buses
and all that bullshit, and they’re
calling that shit punk,” rails
the Cro-Mags’ John Joseph. “That
ain’t fucking punk.” CV
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