Stylistically, it shares some of the pacing and mood of Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films, but amped up another notch and with cleaner, not-so-confusingly-choreographed action set-pieces.

Most interesting though, are the ways in which Daniel Craig’s Bond differs from earlier iterations of the character, and I think these differences make him the best Bond yet — if not the most faithful to Ian Fleming’s secret agent.

Gerry Canavan linked to two QoS reviews that talk about the new era of Bond from a couple of interesting angles. Here is Zunguzungu on Craig’s Bond and his relationships with women…

Bond’s character arc within the film is therefore a progression from a position of hatred towards the woman he loved and who betrayed him towards a position of what the movie narrates as understanding, catharsis, and transcendence. At the start of the movie, he is a homicidal maniac who has displaced his rage onto the a series of similarly different bad guys — making every kill an expression of sexualized rage. By the end of the film, however, his choice not to kill the man who is most directly responsible, at the same time as he “forgives” the woman that this bad guy is in the act of seducing out of her duty, is an indication of narrative closure. Perhaps more importantly, a classic Bond movie ending involves having sex with the good Bond girl while headquarters tries (in vain) to locate him, yet this movie ends with Craig and Kurylenko having parted ways, and with (something like) this exchange between M and Bond:

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Dench as M: “I need you back”

Craig as Bond: “I never left”

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If the classic Bond ending emphasizes the simultaneity of sexual power and duty — and even subordinateds the latter to the former — then Quantum explicitly places sex in opposition to duty, and Craig sacrifices the former for the latter. And while so much of the Bond movie is a touristic fantasy of never-ending summer vacation in exotica, Quantum’s Bond chooses to “come home,” and go back to work.

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It’s worth noting, then, that the ending is made possible by this willingness to be brought home, by M’s decision to trust him, and finally by his proving to be worthy of that trust. M is a mother figure — it even sounds like “mum” — and while his earlier response a threat on her life had been psychotic homicidal rage, the ending is a “happy” one only because his response has changed: instead of expressing the problem of attachment to a female by displacing it onto an object of violence, he embraces her. In this sense, M is by far the most important Bond girl in this film, or she would be if it were possible to call Dame Judi Dench a “girl,” which it is not. And this is the thing I dig most about the film: the most important female character in the film, occupying the space where the Bond girl usually goes, is a person who really explodes the series’ most cherished fantasy. While the Bond girl represents guilt-free sex, power, the fantasy of freedom from attachment, and an infantilizing femininity, Judi Dench’s de-sexualized M voices his guilty conscience as a powerful (and deeply respected) maternal figure he cannot disavow, and he denies ever trying to do so. What makes the Bond franchise most questionable, in my mind, is the thing this movie works the hardest to stand on its head. Yet, all that said, where is home? Who is M really?

I wanted to quote more from the review but you can just go read it for yourself here.

Now here is Juan Cole talking about the decidedly anti-imperialist politics in QoS…

Forster presents us with a new phenomenon in the James Bond films, a Bond at odds with the United States, who risks his career to save Evo Morales’s leftist regime in Bolivia from being overthrown by a General Medrano, who is helped by the CIA and a private mercenary organization called Quantum. In short, this Bond is more Michael Moore than Roger Moore.

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The plot of the film was developed by producer Michael G. Wilson during the filming of “Casino Royale.” New York-born Wilson is from a show-business family (his father, Lewis Wilson, was the first actor to play Batman on screen, and his step-father, Albert Broccoli, was long the producer of the Bond films). But Wilson did a law degree at Stanford in the 1960s and worked for a while at a firm specializing in international law. Outrage at offenses against international law are as much at the heart of this film as the more personal vendettas of Bond and Camille (Olga Kurylenko).

via Dear S

Also…

• NASA tests “deep space internet“
• The future of Pushing Daisies doesn’t look good
• I’ve heard of being caught red handed, but this is too much
• First visible extra-solar planet?

via Dear S

I’m also enamored with this video for their tribute to the late, great David Foster Wallace, “Living With David Foster Wallace…”

Emily and I saw Quantum of Solace Saturday night and the much-ballyhooed second Star Trek trailer ran before the film. I couldn’t let the event pass without comment since my childhood was seriously imbued with Trek canon. Before the Next Generation was ever born, I was deeply into classic Trek — I had all the books and technical manuals and blueprints and episode guides and Mego action figures (I sold my Romulan-with-gold-helmet figure for $300 about 10 or 15 years ago). I’m just saying my nerd cred is pretty large with this particular SF franchise.

Anyway, I have a few thoughts about this trailer and the new film I’d like to share, so snort loudly, push your glasses firmly up on your nose, recall a time before you had ever had sex or done bong hits, and come with me, deep into the geek…

CASTING
Okay, the casting is actually pretty inspired for the most part. For the record, I had called the Zach Quinto choice months before he was ever actually cast as Mr. Spock. Unfortunately, my choice for Kirk — Liev Schreiber — was not the direction J.J. Abrams was going. Chris Pine has the right coloring for Kirk, but he looks too young, too contemporary, too Tiger Beat, too something for James T. Kirk. But once you get past the man child Kirk thing, the rest of the cast is looking pretty solid, with the always excellent Simon Pegg as Scotty and Harold from Harold and Kumar playing Sulu (sorry John Cho, that bit of casting is with you forever). The guy they got to play McCoy I’ve only seen in a few action movies but he looks right for the part.

STORY
It’s hard to really tell the whole story from the trailer (which is a good thing) but it obviously involves Romulans, the planet Vulcan, and what I’m guessing is Kirk before he becomes captain of the Enterprise. Bruce Greenwood plays Capt. Pike (Kirk’s predecessor in the captain’s chair) and we hear his VO at the beginning of the trailer and we see him on the bridge in command with Kirk behind him in one scene. There are several shots of a space battle involving a ship called the U.S.S. Kelvin and some sort of (surprisingly emotional) conflict between Kirk and Spock on the bridge of the Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy makes an appearance in the trailer (and he’s listed as “Old Spock” on IMDb), suggesting flash forwards or a time travel element.

PRODUCTION DESIGN
Here is where the excited 12-year old Bill gives way to the critical 39-year old Bill. The production designers on this film missed a great opportunity. When re-imagining a TV show and updating it for modern audiences, designers have a few options. They can do a complete overhaul of the look and largely ignore or totally update historical design elements (Lost in Space), they can be very faithful to the source material but update realism of the sets, f/x and props using CGI and other modern technologies (Thunderbirds, The Addams Family), or they can split the difference and update the look while clinging to the old stylistic elements and flourishes. This film, like the ten Trek films before it and every iteration of the TV franchise, has opted for door number three, which IMHO is the least interesting route by far.

Take the new (old) Enterprise, for example. Rather than being very faithful to the 1960s ship design or completely throwing out the old design and boldly going in a new direction (snicker), they opted to revamp the old design… again. Matt Jefferies’ original Enterprise design has been re-imagined dozens of times over the last thirty years — sometimes with the name “Enterprise” and sometimes with other names (Reliant, Excelsior, Voyager, Enterprise A, B, C, D, etc.). This new ship is just one more version for the list — and it’s not even the prettiest of them (I particularly liked the Enterprise C from the TNG episode Yesterday’s Enterprise). A bolder approach would have been to recreate the ships, sets and props from the 1960s show to an insanely faithful degree, but to make them look and feel completely real and not like the cardboard walls and salt shaker props of TOS.

I understand, however, that directors and production design teams need to feel like they have left their particular stamps on the franchise, so going back and being all Zach Snyder with the source material is not usually an option. It’s too bad though, because I’d love to have seen that film.

THE GEEK

• Okay, so in the trailer, Kirk sees the Enterprise under construction on Earth. Um… how do they get it into space? In the older films, the ships are (wisely) constructed in orbit. Earth has a wicked-deep gravity well, is all I’m sayin’.
• So the Capt. Pike in this film is referred to in articles online as the first captain of the Enterprise. Um, excuse me, but according to the Star Trek animated series, which is canonical, thank you, Robert April was the first captain of the Enterprise (NCC-1701 - Jonathan Archer was the captain of the NX-01 Enterprise). So there.
• The trailer seems to imply that Kirk served under Pike on the Enterprise before taking command himself. Has Abrams never seen The Menagerie? Gawd!
• Nice to see Iowa plates on the Corvette young Kirk is driving in the trailer.

All in all, this isn’t really Star Trek from what I can see, but I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be a fun ride all the same.

DORKY UPDATE: My brother Rob points out in the comments that as per the classic Trek episode A Piece of the Action, Kirk can’t drive a stick-shift car. I doubt there will be any Fizbin-playing in the new film either. Good call, brother.

ADDITIONAL DORKITUDE: Also in the comments, noncarborundum points out the problem of there being any Romulans in the early lives of Kirk and Spock since in Balance of Terror it’s clear that humans have only ever communicated to Romulans via “subspace radio.” This level of nerdgassing must be mitigated by the fact that individual TOS episodes contradicted each other as well — like when Gary Mitchell digs a grave for Kirk (with his mind!) in Where No Man Has Gone Before and the headstone says “R.I.P. James R. Kirk.”

</geek>

Listen to Vermont.

Obama got elected, in part, by following a 50-state strategy, having campaign offices in all 50 states and aggressively fighting in traditionally red-state territory. It’s a strategy put in place by outgoing DNC chair Howard Dean.

Listen to Vermont.

Dean was the first major 2004 presidential candidate to be openly opposed to the Iraq War and succeeded in making that election a referendum on the war.

Listen to Vermont.

In pre-9/11 2001, Bush was governing like he had a conservative mandate despite having lost the popular vote (and probably the electoral vote as well) the previous November. The 51-49 majority that the GOP held made that easier for Bush… until Senator Jim Jeffords left the party to caucus with the Dems, shifting the balance of power in the other direction.

Listen to Vermont.

Vermont was the first state to outlaw slavery. The Vermont legislature declared war on Hitler’s Germany a full three months before the attack on Pearl Harbour. Vermont would not to participate in the Mexican-American War, refusing to send troops or supplies to what Vermonters saw as an illegal conflict.

I’m just sayin’: as Vermont goes, so ought to go the nation.

Been busy lately but have lots of stories to tell. Philip Baruth will be in the VCAM house tonight for our annual Producers’ Recognition Dinner. I’ll be missing DanZ and Matty the Greek, who’s table I’m usually at, but they’re not coming this year!

More soon…

First of all, VCAM has entered the social media realm more forcefully lately. Spear-headed by my co-worker Seth, VCAM now has a growing Facebook presence (and group) and a twitter account to go along with VCAM’s existing blog and MySpace page. So far, Seth has been an active tweeter, so if you want to know some of the minutia of day-to-day VCAM goings on, follow our twitter feed!

Secondly, the new Vermont Film Commission web site, which was launched at Vermont 3.0 a couple of weeks ago, is a user-friendly Drupal site where Vermont media-makers can create their own profiles and crew pages, upload video and participate in chat forums (fora?) with other VT media folks. It’s still in the wind up stages, so go there and help create some energy and content. It’s very user-driven, so go drive it!

I’m still trying to get (VT Film Commission Director) Joe to lead the way by keeping the “news page” (AKA the blog) up to date with compelling, linkable content. The site works great and everyone should go there and participate (and watch some videos — there’s a good one about Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry there), but people are drawn to a web site because of the content that’s there, not by the functionality of the site, so the best thing to do is to create content to draw people in. Start blogging, Joe!

The guy at Small Dog looked at my machine’s stats (17″ MBP, hi-res display, 7200 RPM 160 GB HD, 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM) and even though the machine is a year and a half old he was all, “whoa, what do you do with this machine?” It almost made the display breaking worth it. Almost.

The timing isn’t great. I have an article deadline in a couple of days and this loaner machine doesn’t have a word processor on it. I’ll figure something out. Hey, Obama still won, so there’s that.