Quantum of Solace

Daniel Craig returns as agent 007 in Quantum of Solace (Sony)

Listen to my KPBS Film Chat about Quantum of Solace (opening November 14 throughout San Digeo) and listen to a montage of clips from the previous Bond films at the end. Bottom line on the new Bond: Casino Royale set the bar very high and this one doesn't reach those heights. Quantum offers more action, less character and plot. Craig is still hot, and the film's still worth seeing. More on the film Monday after I present my student film festival.

Trailer Tuesday: Defiance

The new James Bond film opens on Friday and features Daniel Craig in his second outing as the British 00 agent. But in what seems to be an effort to not be solely associated with that iconic role, Craig can also be seen this fall in a World War II drama based on true events, Defiance. The story concerns three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest. There they hook up with Russian resistance fighters and try to help local villagers. The role looks to be more conventionally heroic than Bond and Craig takes on an accent as well. So if you are a fan of Daniel Craig's, you'll have two opportunities to see him this holiday season. Trailer is courtesy of Paramount Vantage. The film is directed by Edward Zwick.

Trailer Tuesday Bonus: Quantum of Solace 2

The new trailer for Bond 22, Quantum of Solace recently came out so I had to put it up. This new trailer reveals more plot and lets us see a little more of the characters that will be in play in this latest James Bond outing. This trailer promotes the new release date of November 14. Can't wait to see how Daniel Craig handles his second outing as 007.

Trailer Tuesday: Quantum of Solace

In case you haven't heard, the latest Harry Potter film (The Half-Blood Prince) has been postponed until 2009. Since Harry vacated the highly coveted just-before-Thanksgiving November 21 open date, the eagerly anticipated vampire film Twilight moved up and so too has Bond 22. The latest Bond film will now bow on November 14. So with the change of release dates, I thought that was a perfect excuse to post up the trailer for Quantum of Solace. I can't tell you how excited I am about Quantum of Solace. I have been a Bond fan since I was a little kid. I played the Goldfinger soundtrack so many times that I drove my parents insane! But after Sean Connery left the franchise I have been sorely disappointed with the actors playing Bond -- until Daniel Craig. The 2006 Casino Royale kicked ass and Craig was a hot, sexy new Bond. Quantum of Solace supposedly picks up right where Casino Royale left off, and based on the trailer it looks to maintain the same high level of gritty action and intensity.  It's so great to once again eagerly look forward to 007's next adventure, something I couldn't do for the four decades when Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan were playing the role. So here's to Bond 22, may it be as good as it's predeccessor... or maybe even better. The only bummer is that I now have to wait an extra week to see it. The release date change also means they can't do the clever trick with the O's and 7 in the title at the end of the trailer for the release daye. Trailer is courtesy of Sony Pictures.

Sex and the City

The girls are back in Sex and the City -The Movie! (New Line Cinema)

All right, I need to be clear upfront that I am probably not the best person to be reviewing Sex and the City. I was never fond of Sarah Jessica Parker and every time I saw footage from the HBO show it made me cringe. Plus as someone who brought Rue Morgue magazine (with an article on a French horror film about a woman trying to cut the child out of another pregnant woman's body) as reading material to the press screening of Sex and the City, I simply may not have overlapping interests with the show's fan base. So in the interest of fair play I will be inviting my KPBS colleague and Jacobs Fellow Nicole Lozare to contribute a fan's perspective next week. But since not everyone out there is a fan of the show, I do feel it's just as fair to convey the non-fan perspective as well so here goes...

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

The name's Bond... um, I mean Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath. (Music Box Films)

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (opening May 16 at Landmark's Ken Cinema) is one mouthful of a title. But it does exactly what a good title should do - it conveys something about the film. In this case, it signals that you are in for a spoof on spy movies. Most Americans will assume that it's simply poking fun at James Bond but that's only part of the joke. OSS 117 also refers to a famous French spy who appeared in nearly a 100 novels beginning in 1949, and a handful of movies in the 50s and 60s. So that may explain why the film's been such a hit in France where it plays on their own pop culture. It's been such a homegrown hit that there's already talk of sequels.

Cairo, 1955. Everyone suspects everyone of something; everyone is plotting against or double crossing everyone else; nobody trusts anybody; and the British, the French, the Soviets, the family of the deposed King Farouk, and the insurgent religious sect Eagles of Kheops are all engaged in some sort of covert activity in Egypt. Into this nest of spies, the President of the French Republic, Monsieur René Coty, sends his best weapon: Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, agent OSS 117 (Jean Dujardin). Or as one of the femme fatales he meets says, "numbered like a cow for slaughter." Any way, OSS 117 must discover who killed a fellow spy and restore order to Cairo and the world. Along the way he encounters a bevy of beauties, some with lethal intentions. (You can also listen to my Film Chat about OSS 117 and Son of Rambow.)

The Best and Worst of 2006

South Korea's A Bitter Sweet Life

As 2006 comes to an end, it's time to reflect back on the films that came out during the year to sort out the best from the worst. First of all, in determining the best of the year there are always a few films that have quirky releases, and I never know whether it's fair to include them or not. But two films that played for only a day each at the San Diego Asian Film Festival deserve mention even if they never received a theatrical release here.

Hou Hsiao Hsien is quite simply one of the world's premier filmmakers. For Three Times, the Taiwanese director serves up three segments involving a romance and each set in a different time period but with the same pair of actors (the lovely Shu Qi and Chang Chen) performing the leads. Hou's film explores how the culture and social limitations of each era affect the relationships of the characters. The film is ravishing to look at, with Hou crafting a dazzling and deceptively complex work. A film of a very different nature but equally worth checking out is Kim Ji Woon's A Bittersweet Life from South Korea. With A Bittersweet Life Kim delivers an action film with a dark soul and aching vulnerability buried at its heart. If you can find either of these on DVD, check them out. They would make my Ten Best in any year.

Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale

Daniel Craig ushers in a grittier Bond in Casino Royale (MGM/Columbia)

The name's Bond. James Bond. This month Daniel Craig becomes the sixth actor to take on the role of the famous MI6 British agent. The latest Bond adventure is Casino Royale (opening November 17 throughout San Diego) based on the 1953 novel in which Ian Fleming introduced 007 to readers.

Technically, this is the third adaptation of Casino Royale. There was an Americanized TV version with Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond in the 50s, and a spoof starring Woody Allen in the 60s. But this is the first time the official Bond franchise (the one overseen by the late Albert Broccoli's Eon Productions) has actually filmed the novel. So for their 22nd Bond film, the producers have decided to go back to the beginning to in essence re-launch what has become one of the longest running and most successful film franchises of all time. One of the reasons for this success has been the franchise's ability to reinvent itself during its 40-year plus history. It began by sticking close to Ian Fleming's books with its films Dr. No and From Russia With Love in the early 60s. By the mid 60s it began a move toward gadgetry, special effects and spectacle (Thunderball, You Only Live Twice). That trend peaked in the 70s and 80s when Roger Moore took over the Bond role and the series became more and more over the top (the best of these being For Your Eyes Only and The Spy Who Loved Me). In the late '80s there was a swing back toward grit and realism with Timothy Dalton's brief outing as Bond. And most recently, Pierce Brosnan's Bond announced the franchise's move toward slick productions loaded with clever quips and prone to poke fun at Bond for being a misogynistic dinosaur.