Bond Marathon

We have an extensive film collection here at the Casa de Styx, and I have enjoyed showing them to my wife who was rightfully ignorant of much of the pop-culture ditchwater that I had immersed in for years.

She's a trained classical musician and successful academic acolyte, so how would she have encountered "Ghost Busters" or "Big Trouble in Little China" (especially since she was a wee child when these movies came out, if that). Alas, we have covered every movie in my collection that she would enjoy without my making a hard hard sell. "The French Connection" and "Chinatown," for example, are great films but they are also violent and shocking and who really wants to see that stuff when you want to relax; a logical point - even if I don't follow it. I mean, I often force myself to watch films that I "should" see - just to increase my education. My free time to watch is quite limited, and my desire to be entertained is such, that I am now failing in my education and feeling more like my wife's point of view.

For example, I rented The Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir because it was the top rated foreign film of all time by nearly every film critic. It's unwatchable muck. Oh, I tried - black and white doesn't bother me and normally subtitles are fine - except that I usually sort piles of my papers while watching films and I can't do that in a heavy dialogue film. But here's the thing - it's not entertaining, interesting, or broadening. Compare it with other films from that year: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights and Gunga Din.

I tried to watch the second highest rated foreign film: The Battleship Potemkin". For this stinkeroo there's not much year comparison (1925 was not a banner year) except for "The Gold Rush," by Chaplin (which I own). For those who don't know about the "Battleship" thingy - it's a communist propaganda film that has the intellectual and emotional depth of a political smear.

All that is to explain that I am not so high and mighty (much). But we still need to find something to watch while we're half-dead on the couch, watching our son tear his way through the furniture. That's when I decided to initiate the Bond Marathon.

As an earlier post explained, I have pain-stakingly sought and individually accumulated all 22 Bond special-edition DVDs. Twenty Bond films, plus Never Say Never Again, and Casino Royale. I have showed them all to my wife, but out of order. Now we get to see them from the beginning. Considering our pace, we should finish by the time the next Bond comes out.

P.S. The best thing about the marathon is that we recognize how much of a debonair superman my son is becoming. I have begun calling him "Doodle-O 7"

{2009 update: image from here}