Silly Thinking

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Today: I Spy With My Little Eye.

The first spy film of the post war era set a trend and created a template that all would follow and still steal from today.

1) “Doctor No” (1962) MGM/UA.
The first James Bond adventure set the standard for adventure films and has two of the all time greatest entrances in film history.

The first is, of course, the first time we see Sean Connery as James Bond at the gambling casino and hear “Bond, James Bond” for the first time. It’s a line that is synonymous not only with the Bond films but also with film over all. It enters the world of classic film lines: “Frankly My Dear I don’t give a damn” from “Gone With The Wind”, “we’ll always have Paris” and “You played it for her you can play it for me..” from “Casablanca”, and of course “Hello nice lady… person.. nice” from “The Patsy”.

Ursula Andress’s entrance in a skimpy bikini coming out of the sea is also a scene that has been duplicated and rearranged many times but you can’t beat the original.

Every time I watch this film I marvel at it’s simplicity and production values, it was shot for very little money and producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman didn’t know what they had yet. What they had, more than anything else, was Connery, who was, and is, the only James Bond.

The DVD has great extras featuring an all-star commentary and wonderful trailers plus get a load of the radio ads.

The most recent spy film, from 2003, shows just how much you can bend staple and mutilate this genre but even here they owe Bond a lot.

2. “Spy Kids 3-D’ (2003) Dimension (Miramax- Disney).
Robert Rodriguez’s amazing and amusing spy pictures trilogy for kids concludes with this eye popping 3-D treat.

I like these pictures. The first “Spy Kids” was a phenomena and delivered the goods with fast and funny shtick and a warm ‘from the heart’ message about family.

The second one featured Ricardo Montalban as the kids Grandpa and quietly took a stand by not flinching from the illness that has left this suave class act wheel chair bound.

In this video game of a movie Rodriguez throws so much at us in so little time (and in digital 3-D even on TV, glasses come with the DVD, cool!) that it kind of gives one a headache. Everybody from the first two films, Antonio Bandares, Cheech, Ricardo, Alan Cummins, Steve Buschemi, and everybody else is in this plus Sylvester Stallone in a hilarious comedy turn as five people, plus about a dozen cameo guest stars from some of the biggest hit movies.

And it’s 82 minutes long. That’s a lot of stuff! The two DVD set isn’t as thorough as “2” was but Robert Rodrigues takes time to show kids how to make movies at home and encourages them to “be creative”.
I like that.

See ya next time on “Home Theatre”. Now here’s Roy Neary with a preview of what’s coming up on “Silly Thinking”.

RN: Join us all week for some great bloggy features. Tomorrow is yet to be announced. And on Wednesday, it’s yet to be announced. Thursday is “The Marlon Brando Show” and on Friday join us for “Movielog” .

Jim Farris presents Silly Thinking with Douglas Lain. Have you Silly Thinking lately?