Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 09: The Man With the Golden Gun

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the eigth entry, with a full review of one of the very worst films in the franchise, The Man With the Golden Gun. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

The Man With The Golden Gun

1974

Director:  Guy Hamilton

Starring:  Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Maud Adams, Britt Ekland, Herve Villechaize

Rated PG

A duel between titans…my golden gun against your Walther PPK.

                                ~Francisco Scaramanga

It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the force, but by our skills with a lightsaber.

                                ~Count Dooku

STATS

Kills: 1!

Bond Girls:  Mary Goodnight, Andrea Anders

Car:  AMC Hornet

Locales:  Hong Kong, Bangkok

Odd Villain Trait:  Scaramanga has a 3^rd nipple, Nick Nack is a dwarf

Song:  “The Man with the Golden Gun” performed by LuLu

Right on the heels of Live and Let Die and a year later, James Bond returned in The Man With The Golden Gun (MWTGG).   This is the film almost killed the 007 franchise.  I’m sure down the road a reboot or additional film(s) would have eventually been made, but this one almost stopped it dead in its tracks.  A lot of the film’s plot feels very tired and the movie isn’t very colorful regarding its performers and action.  There’s not very much fun to have in this one.

Review: Lawless (2012) is a generic and often dull macho crime drama that works only as right-wing propaganda.

Lawless

2012
115 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Twenty years ago, a film as formulaic and frankly contrived as John Hillcoat's Lawless would be considered nothing more than a pretty lousy B-movie that happened to have a few decent actors in the mix.  And today that is the best I can say about the film, even if its pedigree might have originally positioned it as some kind of Oscar bait.  The film can either be read as straight-ahead manly action drama or it can be viewed as a piece of political propaganda, positioning the noble 'regular Americans' against openly corrupt federal government forces who threaten their freedom to uh... bootleg.  I frankly hope the film is indeed intended to be read as such, as I'll take a bad film that's at least about 'something' over a pointless exercise in he-man violence.  At the very least, it stands as John Hillcoat's happiest film yet.  Unlike The Proposition or The Road, you won't exit theaters in a soul-crushing funk.  But unlike those two films, it's not a very good movie at all.  I suppose that's the trade-off, no?  Still, either way, Lawless is depressing all the same.

Review: Premium Rush (2012) peaks too early and struggles to fill its feature-length running time.

Premium Rush

2012
90 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

The first thirty minutes and last twenty minutes of David Koepp's Premium Rush have the makings of a pretty great B-movie.  It has all the ingredients of a solid piece of genre, with engaging heroes, a terrific villain, and some genuinely entertaining and fresh action sequences.  For its first third, it powers along with an uncommon confidence, establishing its central conflict while dazzling the viewer with stunts that are all the more impressive for being real.  But at around the thirty minute mark, the film slams on the brakes and spends an unholy amount of time with expository flashbacks and needless exposition, testing the viewer's patience and leaving us waiting to get back to the chase.  The film eventually kicks back into gear in time for the relatively successful climax, which both satisfies and makes us realize that the proceeding half-hour or so was all the more needless.  Premium Rush would have made an excellent hour-long short film, but as a feature-length motion picture, it frankly doesn't have enough meat on its bones.

John Gosling previews the week's new film releases (08/31/2)

It's another mixed bag at the box office this weekend, with serious drama and horror tussling with a brand new family film. With last weekend being the lowest grossing of the year so far, studios will be looking for something, anything to turn things around.  The widest opening release this weekend is the Sam Raimi produced, The Possession. It stars Jeffery Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick as a divorced couple whose daughter, Em, becomes obsessed with opening a Hebrew-inscribed box she bought at a garage sale. When her behaviour becomes erratic, the parents blame it on the recent trauma of their divorce. However, things quickly escalate, leaving them forced to scramble for an explanation and a solution, scientific or supernatural, for whatever is attempting to destroy their daughter before its too late. Raimi acts as producer, via his Ghost House Pictures company, with Ole Bornedal directing. Bornedal shot to fame with the 1994 Danish film, Nightwatch (he also directed the 1997 English-language remake) and won acclaim with I Am Dina in 2002. Raimi and Bornedal are no strangers, the former having acted as distributor on the laters 2007 comedy/horror flick, Vikaren (aka The Substitute) via his Ghost Pictures subsidiary, Underground. The director was drawn to The Possession from the initial script, seeing it as an allegory for divorce, rather than a straight scare flick. The core device in the film, the Dibbuk box, is actually based on a real life item, said to be haunted by a spirit from Jewish folklore. 

2012 Summer Movie wrap-up: The Avengers and the art house save an otherwise mediocre summer movie season.

This is actually a pretty simple summer movie season to analyze and/or dissect.  In short, the expected mega-blockbusters were indeed mostly mega-blockbusters, the expected middle-of-the-road hits were just that, while the films pegged most likely to flop or at least financially disappoint did just that.   If you had polled pundits at the beginning of the summer over the top four films of summer 2012, you they probably would have told you some combination of The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Brave.  And three of those films did pretty much what should have been realistically expected of them.  The core artistic pattern of summer 2012 was pretty simple: Most of the mainstream entries, even the ones expected to soar, ended up being artistically disappointing while the indie scene was on fire all season long.  Speaking financially, audiences embraced most of the major art-house films while being just a little pickier when it came to mainstream fare.  But the biggest news of summer 2012 was the general success of old-school movies, as a number of original properties and/or star vehicles proved quite profitable.  I've written extensively elsewhere about the slow and steady return of the 'movie' so I won't dwell on that here (essay and essay).  But when Magic Mike is a smash hit while a Total Recall remake is a money loser, one hopes that the studios will take note and perhaps learn a lesson different than "Let's make a sequel to Magic Mike!".

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 08: Live and Let Die.

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the eigth entry, with a full review at one of Roger Moore's debut entry, Live and Let Die. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

Live and Let Die

1973

Director: Guy Hamilton

Starring: Roger Moore, Yaphet Kotto, Jane Seymour, David Hedison

Rated PG

Names is for tombstones, baby! Y'all take this honkey out and WASTE HIM! NOW!

                                ~Mr. Big (Dr. Kananga)

STATS

Kills: 8 + 1 snake (I’ve always LOVED this.  While smoking a cigar in the bathroom, Bond takes a hair spray bottle and sprays it at the cigar creating a flame thrower to kill the snake)

Bond Girls:  Solitaire, Rosie Carver, Miss Caruso

Car:  Bond drives a double decker bus and a speed boat in this one, no car

Locales:  Harlem, New Orleans, San Monique (fictional)          

Odd Villain Trait:  Tee Hee has a mechanical arm, Whisper is obese and speaks in…yes a whisper, Baron Samedi involved in the voodoo occult

Song:  “Live and Let Die” performed by Wings (that’s Paul McCartney’s ‘other’ band for those who don’t know)

Live and Let Die starts the seven-film run of Roger Moore as 007.  Moore’s first adventure, and Eon’s eighth,   attempts to showcase Moore as a different Bond.  This film takes the franchise and alters the stakes by playing in another genre’s sandbox.  Guy Hamilton returns for his third outing, yet the film is quite different from his previous work in the 007 series until close to the finale.  The film packs plenty of action sequences, but frankly feels a little long.  Three MI:6 agents monitoring the operations of a small island dictator (Dr. Kananga played by Yaphet Kotto)  are mysteriously killed in a 24-hour period.   James Bond is sent to New York to contact with Felix Leiter (David Hedison) and investigate the first murder.  The investigation leads to a connection between a drug dealer, Mr. Big (also Yaphet Kotto), and Kananga.  Bond’s investigations team him up with Quarrel’s (from Dr. No) son taking him from the streets of New Orleans to the island of San Monique where Bond is immersed in a world of voodoo, bayous, tarot and drugs.

Weekend Box Office (08-26-12): Obama's America not withstanding, summer ends with an epic whimper.

Oh my, another film explicitly targeting an under-served niche did exceptional business almost exclusively with that niche.  In a sane industry that would be called smart business, but the studios tend to treat it as a *shock* and write it off as a fluke.  It was no shock to anyone paying attention during the week, especially when the film was announced to be expanding on over 1,000 screens this weekend.  With the weak slate of new releases and little holdover interest, the market was primed for a solid debut for something preaching to a very devoted choir.  First as foremost, 2016: Obama's America earned about 1/4 as much this weekend as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did over its opening weekend on about as many screens eight years ago.  As not-president John Kerry can attest, even the most obscenely successful political documentary of all time ($23 million opening weekend, $119 million domestic total) didn't help John Kerry defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 election (even if we can dispute the results in Ohio, Bush won the popular vote by three million).  So no, the fact that a directly-targeted group of anti-Obama moviegoers gave 2016: Obama's America $6.2 million doesn't mean anything more than the piss-poor box office of last year's The Undefeated (essay) in terms of predicting an upcoming presidential election.  

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 07: Diamonds Are Forever

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the seventh entry, with at look at not only the worst Sean Connery 007 adventure, but one of the worst films in the whole series, Diamonds Are Forever. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

Diamonds Are Forever

1971

Director: Guy Hamilton

Starring: Sean Connery, Jill St. John, Charles Gray, Bruce Glover, Putter Smith, Norman Burton

Rated PG

Go blow up your pants!

                        ~Tiffany Case

STATS

Kills: 8

Bond Girls: Tiffany Case, Plenty O’Toole

Car: 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1 "Fastback"

Locales: Amesterdam, Las Vegas

Odd Villain Trait:  Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint are the original Ambiguously Gay Duo.  Peter Franks fits the Red Grant mold.

Song:  “Diamonds Are Forever” performed by Shirley Bassey. 

Everyone breathe a sigh of relief.  Sean Connery is back.  The director of Goldfinger has returned.  Shirley Bassey is singing the theme song again.  We’re going to recapture that old magic that was “apparently” lost with the previous film.  Following On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,  the 007 brass felt that there was a drop off (especially in America, hence why this is set in Las Vegas) with the Bond series and were willing to do anything they could to get it back on track.  Diamonds Are Forever may have been the financial success the studio was looking for, but is a failure as a quality picture.  In short, it's the first James Bond film that outright stinks.

Untapped goldmine: Disney Princesses 'to the rescue'.

There is a spot near the beginning of Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture that details the origins of the Disney Princess brand that originated around 2000.  Long-story short, the compromise for allowing all of the various Disney princess characters to appear on the same merchandise was that they not actually interact with each other in any way.  You may not realize it, but you've never actually seen a Disney Princess t-shirt or storybook with Jasmine and Belle playing tennis together or Aurora and Cinderella picking out party gowns.  They are always staring either at us or off into the distance, but never at each other.  I bring this up because in the midst of all the 'who should be in Expendables 3' or 'who should be in that female Expendables spin-off', I realized that Disney was in fact practicing a remarkable bit of restraint when it came to financially mining their properties.  Imagine: Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Cinderella, Aurora, Pocahontas, Snow White, Ariel, Tiana, Rapunzel all in one spectacular adventure to do some kind of derring-do and/or saving the proverbial day.  Of course since most of their arch villains are suffering from a slight case of death, the already-established antagonists would be pretty limited (although Jafar and Dr. Facilier would be the easiest to resurrect since they both perished via magic).  But putting aside the whole 'art' argument, can you imagine how such a film wouldn't gross hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters?  Can you imagine how many untold millions of DVDs or Blu-Rays such a thing would sell? Say what you will about the alleged greed of the Walt Disney studios, but it says something that they haven't leaped at such a seemingly obvious opportunity to rake in untold amounts of money.

Scott Mendelson        

Review: The Tall Man (2012) subverts genre expectations.

The Tall Man

2012
105 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

At its best, writer/director Pascal Laugier's The Tall Man is an examination of our expectations when it comes to the horror genre.  It almost playfully plays with our knowledge of the cliches and the templates, telling what seems to be a conventional story while  slowly pulling the rug out from under us.  While the picture is not a complete success, and while it intrigues and unnerves more than it explicitly frightens, it earns points for telling a story right up to its climax.  This is not a film that runs out of narrative by the 2/3 mark and descends into an action sequence or a violent spectacle, but rather a slow-burn drama that holds some of its cards as long as possible.  It's a cliche/generic pull-quote to say that a movie 'keeps you guessing to the end', but it applies in this case (as an objective fact more so than an exclamation).

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 06: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the sixth entry, with an extra-detailed look at one of the more controversial films in the James Bond series, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

1969

Director: Peter Hunt

Starring: George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Ilse Steppat, Bernard Lee

Rated PG

You’ve got sharp eyes and beautiful…earlobes.

                                ~James Bond

STATS

Kills: 14

Bond Girls:  Tracy di Vicenzo, Ruby Bartlett, Nancy (no last name given)

Car:  1969 Aston Martin DBS

Locales: Portugal, Switzerland

Odd Villain Trait: Blofeld has no earlobes

Song: “We Have All the Time in the World” performed by Louis Armstrong

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS from here out) delivers the first 007 film to fuel  long conversations regarding its worth and where it stands in the pantheon of the series.  George Lazenby makes his sole appearance as the first Eon James Bond not played by Sean Connery.  For the longest time, this entry was regarded as one of the worst.  In the last 10 years or so it’s grown in esteem to the point where there are a good number of 007 devotees going so far as to claim it as the best film in the series.

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln gets a poster and a synopsis...

I still wish Spielberg was willing to actually release this film prior to the election, and the fact that he won't points to a certain apolitcal tone to the film which would be unfortunate, if not outright gutless.  Still, Spielberg is on a roll of late and this is clearly one of the must-see films of the season.  I presume a trailer will follow pretty soon. The synopsis is after the jump.

Scott Mendelson

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (08/24/12).

A relatively low key weekend with just three releases, one of which is it at less than 1,000 locations. We're now in the tail end of August, where studios will often off-load movies that they're not quite sure what to do with.

Hit & Run is a romantic action comedy starring Dax Shephard, Kirsten Bell and Bradley Cooper. It follows ex-con, Charlie Bronson, who breaks out of witness protection to help his girlfriend get to Los Angeles for a once in a lifetime job opportunity. But they won't be making the journey alone as they quickly find themselves pursued by his former partners in crime and a Marshall tasked with keeping the 'witness' protected. Bell and Shephard play the couple, while Cooper plays one of the ex-partners, who ended up enduring prison as a result of Bronson's apparent betrayal. Shephard not only stars in the picture but also wrote, produced and co-directed, alongside David Palmer. The two worked together on the 2010 film, Brother Justice, a mockumentary that followed Shephard's attempts to become the next Chuck Norris style martial artist-movie star (That flick also starred Cooper and Tom Arnold, who plays Randy in this new movie). Prior to that, the actor/director had worked on Punk'd and appeared in Mike Judge's Idiocracy, amongst other films and TV appearances. 

Make war, not love. Why do we mock actors who romance while lionizing those who do violence?

It's worth noting the deluge of praise that has greeted Matthew McConaughy over the last 18 months as he's basically cast off the high-profile romantic comedies of the last decade in favor of theoretically more serious work.  When Matthew McConaughy appeared in mainstream romantic comedies, he was a sell-out movie star, not a real actor.  Regardless of whether he was actually effective in said films (Yes - How to Lose A Guy In Ten Days and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past; No - The Wedding Planner, Failure To Launch, and  Fool's Gold), the idea that McConaughy was headlining relatively popular and often profitable entertainments was considered a net loss because he was using his talents in a disreputable genre.  But now that he's appearing in legal thrillers (The Lincoln Lawyer), male-centric dramas (Magic Mike), and ultra-violent crime pictures (Killer Joe), *now* he's being proclaimed as a real actor worthy of discussion. In short, McConaughy made films that were embraced by mostly female audiences and was derided for it.  Yet when he moved into male-centric genres, he's suddenly a respectable actor turning over a new leaf.

In an era of franchises & tentpoles, Tony Scott made "movies"

As is the case with unexpected 'obituaries', you find yourself writing or saying things that you wish you had said when the person in question was still around to hear it or read it.  I wish I had written this in November 2010.  Tony Scott's film legacy is two-fold.  For the first fifteen years of his career, Tony Scott was among those most responsible for the modern-day macho blockbuster.  His second film, Top Gun, basically paved the way for the modern big-budget big-scale action picture that happened to be set on planet Earth.  I'm no fan of the film, but it was, along with Rambo: First Blood Part II, easily the biggest-scale action picture of its day that didn't involve Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or James Bond. It turned Tom Cruise into an icon and was almost as much of a cinematic game-changer as Star Wars or Batman.  But it was the second half of his career, spanning from 2001 to 2010, that made me a fan.  While we can argue over whether the first fifteen years were superior or inferior to his final nine, his last decade of work cast Mr. Scott in a new, arguably more important light.  In an era dominated by mega-budget fantasy spectacles, Tony Scott was often the last refuge for the old-school 'movie'.  

Weekend Box Office (08/19/12) - The Expendables 2 tops while ParaNorman and Sparkle mostly shine.

It's no real surprise that The Expendables 2 (review/trailer) opened with about 18% less this weekend ($28.75 million) than the first Expendables on this weekend in 2010 ($34 million).  The Expendables (review) was a culmination of a good twenty years of 'what-if' anticipation.  And while the final result was a little lacking, in that it was barely a good movie and most of the biggest action icons were either absent or had cameos, it was still enough of a wish-fulfillment fantasy to be a massive worldwide hit ($274 million on a $80 million budget).  Two years later, the sequel delivers on both the action front (lots more of it) and the A-level casting arena (Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger have expanded roles while Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme came to play) but that initial high is somewhat gone.  Still, a $28 million debut, especially from Lionsgate, is nothing to sneeze at. This will still be their largest non-Saw/Tyler Perry opening outside of The Expendables and The Hunger Games and their tenth-biggest debut ever.  Not only have we seen a pattern of lower opening weekends and domestic totals for sequels, but this is easily the kind of property that could have elicited a giant 'no one cares anymore' reaction after the somewhat underwhelming first film (I seem to be among the few who likes it).

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part BONUS!: Casino Royale

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is a *BONUS* entry, with Mr. Peters delving into the 1967 all-star James Bond spoof Casino Royale. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

BONUS – A Few Words About Casino Royale (1967)

By Brandon Peters

I was originally just going to cruise on by this film when doing this retrospective.  It’s not a part of the official 007 canon.  I had only seen it once (sophomore year of college) and I didn’t like it.  However, after the positive response this series has received, I decided to return to Casino Royale (1967) for a viewing and talk a small bit about it as an appreciation bonus.  I also thought, maybe I was too young the first time I saw it.  Maybe I was in bad company that rendered it unenjoyable.  Maybe I’ll appreciate it more being in the thick of the 007 films this was to parody.

Review: The Expendables 2 (2012) - tastes great, less filling.

The Expendables 2

2012
103 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

The good news is that The Expendables 2 is that it gives you more of what you wanted the first time around.  There is a greater volume of action and the film has even more A-list action stars offering their services this time around.  The picture is rarely dull and often amusing, but at what cost?  The film barely tries to pretend that it exists as an actual motion picture, with the various onscreen tough guys openly referencing their iconic roles or real-life biographies in a manner that takes you out of the movie each time.  The first picture may have been light on the A-level firepower, but it attempted to be a real film with an actual story and token attempts at depth.  The original Expendables (barely) worked as a metaphor for a modern America that could still do the right thing for the right reasons in a manner honoring its alleged superior morality.  This new film has 'more of what you came to see' but is paper thin without a hint of substance or even dramatic credibility.  Comparing the two films is a classic example of 'trying and (perhaps) failing' versus 'failing to try'.  

Review: Bachlerorette (2012) successfully mixes vulgar comedy and low-key pathos.

Bachlerorette

2012
87 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

There is going to come a point, hopefully in the very near future, where we'll see enough female-centric comedies that each one doesn't feel like some kind of major moment in cinema.  We're not quite there yet, so one could arguably discuss Leslye Headland's Bachlerorette in terms of what it does or does not represent in the ever-quickening trail to gender parity in big-screen comedy. For the record, the film is based on Headland's own play, so anyone accusing the film of being a rip-off of Bridesmaids and/or The Hangover should be smacked on the head right here and now.  If the film serves as any kind of benchmark, it will be as a big-screen that will test the ever-present double-standard in terms of how we respond to female characters.  The film's star trio (Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher) are notable in that they are presented as every bit as vulgar, cruel, and socially-clueless as any number of male comedy trios over the last many years.  Will audiences hold them to a higher standard of sympathy and moral purity, or will audiences realize that they are no better or worse than any given Wolfpack? 

Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Last Stand) vs. Sylvester Stallone (Bullet To the Head): Whose new movie has the worse trailer?

Let's be honest.  Both of these films look pretty terrible.  Both feature over-the-hill action icons who can barely walk at a quick pace let alone engage in all-out fight scenes.  The films look just a big better than substandard direct-to-DVD action fare, and that's not even counting the *good* DTV stuff like Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Undisputed 3.   Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger seem to be acting as badly as possible.  Schwarzenegger is obviously out of practice, but Stallone has little excuse, having delivered perfectly fine turns in Rocky Balboa, Rambo, and The Expendables (I'm hopefully seeing The Expendables 2 tomorrow night).  So, The Last Stand (from Jee-woon Kim, helmer of I Saw the Devil) opens from Lionsgate on January 13th, 2013. Walter Hill's Bullet To the Head (following oodles of reshoots) debuts via Warner Bros. on February 1st, 2013.  They both look pretty terrible.  But as a longtime fan of Homicide: Life on the Street, Bullet To the Head gets bonus points for viciously murdering Jon Seda (who very nearly killed the show during season six) in the opening reel.  Which one looks less awful to you?  Are you surprised that 20th Century Fox didn't have a A Good Day To Die Hard trailer ready for this weekend?  Please share below...

Scott Mendelson    

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 05: You Only Live Twice

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the fifth entry, covering the 007 film that inspired a thousand parodies, You Only Live Twice. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

You Only Live Twice 
1967

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Starring:  Sean Connery, Donald Pleasance, Tetsuro Tamba, Karin Dor, Teru Shimada, Akiko Wakabayashi

Rated PG

It won't be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.

                                ~Ernst Stavro Blofeld

STATS

Kills: 14

Bond Girls: Helga Brandt, Aki, Kissy Suzuki

Car: Toyota 2000GT (Bond never drives in this film, however)

Locales:  Japan

Odd Henchman Trait: Blofeld has a scar on his face over his eye.  Hans is Donald Grant-light.  Tall big and blonde, but with no substance.

Song:  “You Only Live Twice” performed by Nancy Sinatra

Sean Connery returns for the first of three “final” appearances as James Bond-007.  You Only Live Twice is the Bond film that would become the subject of much parody in the years following.  The second half the film takes the franchise to some of its most campy, over the top and outrageous moments in the series history.  It wouldn’t be the only film to do so, but it’s only fair to blame it for laying the groundwork.  SPECTRE is trying to forge a war between the US & Russia by stealing their spacecrafts mid orbit.  The sides are growing testy and on the brink.  The UK believes something else to be afoot when intelligence arrives about the mystery spacecraft, that has swallowed the US and Soviet crafts, landing in Japan.  MI:6 sends James Bond (who has recently faked his death) to Tokyo to discover the real source of this crisis.  In Japan, Bond becomes Japanese, trains and becomes a ninja, leads full on attack of SPECTRE’s volcanic launching station, and finally comes face to face with SPECTRE Agent #1.

John Gosling previews the weekend's new releases (08-17-12).

Something for everyone this week, with four major releases and a potentially interesting limited one. 

The first Expendables movie was like an action-fanboy's dream, with a special nod to the 1980s. From a story by David Callaham, Sylvester Stallone wrote, directed and starred in the feature, with action stars Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li and Jason Statham, being joined by MMA fighter Randy Couture, former wrestler Steve Austin and Mickey Rourke. The film also managed the scoop of featuring a short scene with Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The ensemble flick followed Stallone's team of expendables on a mission to take out a military leader and a corrupt CIA official (played by another 80s veteran, Eric Roberts). While not quite delivering on the wall to wall action some were hoping for, it was a global smash, making $107M domestically, with a further $174M overseas, on a budget pegged at $80M. Before the film was even in theatres, Stallone was already talking a sequel, and his plan to bring back even more action icons next time around. The follow-up was greenlit a few months later with the star adapting a story by Ken Kaufman, David Agosto and Richard Wenk. By April 2011 things were shaping up but Stallone announced he would not return to direct, instead, Con-Air's Simon West, who had worked with Statham on the remake of The Mechanic, would be at the helm. He hired story co-creator Richard Wenk to pen a new draft of the script, after which casting commenced. 

"Your movie stinks, see ours instead!" Question of the day: Should movie marketing campaigns bait each other?

It was my first thought walking out of The Bourne Legacy last Monday.  "I bet Sony and MGM wishes they could somehow attach a Skyfall trailer to *the end* of every Bourne Legacy print, purely out of spite."  Obviously that really isn't possible in today's theatrical distribution model, but why wouldn't Sony do the next best thing?  Why wouldn't they cut a new Skyfall trailer explicitly commenting on how mediocre the latest entry in the would-be heir-to-Bond franchise is?  Cue: various underwhelming clips from The Bourne Legacy.  "Wow... that bloody sucked!  That Aaron Cross sure is a wanker!  Let a real professional show you how its done... (cue Bond theme and fade in accordingly)."  Or whatever, you get the idea.  For reasons that may involve actual regulations or may just be a kind of mutual gentlemen's agreement, rival film studios don't generally call each other out like that.  But maybe, just maybe they should.  It may not be polite, but it would make modern film marketing that much more fun.

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 04: Thunderball

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the fourth entry, of course dissecting the most financially successful entry of all time (adjusted for inflation, natch), Thunderball. I hope you enjoy what is a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

Thunderball
1965
Director: Terrence Young
Starring: Sean Connery, Adolfo Celi, Claudine Auger, Luciana Paluzzi
Rated PG


Try to be a little less than your frivolous self, 007
~Q

STATS
Kills: 17 (might not be accurate, end battle was confusing)
Bond Girls: Domino Derval, Fiona Volpe, Patricia Fearing
Car: Aston Martin DB5 (same as Goldfinger)
Locale: Paris, Bahamas
Odd Villain Trait: Largo wears an eye patch
Song: “Thunderball” performed by Tom Jones

Thunderball finally makes it to the big screen for the fouth James Bond adventure. The film builds upon the successes and acknowledges some missteps in the beloved Goldfinger. While being the most successful Bond film of all time, the legal troubles behind the scenes would be its most lasting legacy.

Review: Despite solid chuckles and insightful commentary, The Campaign (2012) fails to respect the reality of its story.

The Campaign

2012
85 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Jay Roach's The Campaign is both painfully stupid and pointedly smart at the same time.  As a film, it's a chaotic and implausible mess, going from one major event to another with no real connective tissue.  It has outrageous events occur onscreen and mostly ignores the real-world implications of said event.  Yes, it is technically 'funny' in that its major characters do and say things that elicit laughs.  But those laughs come at a high cost, as the film often sacrifices its inherent drama and potential realism for the sake of extended improv riffs.  But in terms of what the film has to say about modern politics, it is both insightful and painfully cynical.  Jay Roach has played in the sandbox of real political drama, having helmed the superb Recount and Game Change for HBO.  Like Ferrell's last big-scale vehicle, The Other Guys, it has whip-smart social and political commentary trapped inside a genuinely bad film.

Weekend Box Office: Bourne Legacy tops while The Campaign and Hope Springs debut well and The Dark Knight Rises presses upward.

To the surprise of no one, the top film of the weekend was The Bourne Legacy.  With $38 million, the fourth entry in the ten-year old franchise opened well above the $27 million debut of The Bourne Identity during June 2002, but that's mostly due to ten years of inflation as The Bourne Identity's opening would equal $38 million today.  It's below the $52 million debut of The Bourne Supremacy back in July 2004, and understandably well below the $69 million opening weekend of The Bourne Ultimatum back in August 2007.  This spin-off/reboot of the Matt Damon-led Bourne series showcased Jeremy Renner as a totally different government assassin in the same world as the three prior Bourne films.  Helmed by Tony Gilroy (who had a hand in writing all three prior adaptations), Universal sadly spent $125 million on this quasi-sequel.  So if the film 'merely' approaches the $121 million gross of the first film and earns about that much overseas ($92 million for a $214 million total), it won't be profitable.  The endless loop on USA starting in 2015 won't hurt. The second and third films grossed $176 million and $227 million in the US respectively while earning $288 million and $422 million worldwide respectively (Bourne Ultimatum basically doubled Bourne Supremacy's overseas take).  If the film excels overseas, which it now must, matching the $288 million gross of Bourne Supremacy isn't out of the question (it opened in a few markets this weekend and earned $7.8 million overseas).

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 03: Goldfinger.

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Today is the third entry, of course dissecting the series's true breakout entry of the series, Goldfinger. I hope you enjoy what will be the start of a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

Goldfinger
1964

Director: Guy Hamilton
Starring: Sean Connery, Gert Frobe, Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, Harold Sakata, Cec Linder


That’s as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

~James Bond (proving he’s old and grumpy just like your dad)


STATS

Bond Girls: Jill Masterson, Pussy Galore
Kills: 6
Car: Aston Martin DB5
Locales: Latin America, Miami, Switzerland, Kentucky
Odd Villain Trait: Oddjob – super strong Korean manservant wearing a deadly steel-rimmed bowler
Song: “Goldfinger” performed by Shirley Bassey

“The pinnacle 007 film.” “The ultimate Bond adventure.” You’ll hear many a James Bond enthusiast declare Goldfinger as the best of all the 007 films. The film certainly lives up to most of its reputation, but it certainly isn’t without its demerits. It’s without a question, the biggest and largest scale adventure of the three we’ve covered so far. But is it the best? Does it hold up? How will it fair once this retrospective has finished?

Why Ben Affleck doesn't need to direct Justice League...

I don't generally report on rumors, and there is a good chance that this 'news' in question won't come to pass. But the trades took turns attempting to out-scoop each other on Wednesday with reports stating that Ben Affleck would possibly/hopefully/maybe/theoretically direct the Justice League movie for Warner Bros  (Variety got the ball rolling).  The one bit of news is that while it would seem that Warner Bros. instantly raced into Justice League following the success of The Avengers, they've actually had a script penned by Will Beall sitting in an office for a year.  But regardless of whether I think Affleck can handle a film like Justice League (without question, my narrative issues with The Town aside) and however logical it may seem for Warner Bros. to court arguably the biggest director in their stable outside of Chris Nolan or David Yates, I sincerely hope Affleck turns the project down.  He doesn't need Justice League.  More importantly, Ben Affleck is already making the kind of movies that a mega blockbuster like Justice League would allow him to indulge in.  He's already won.  And we are benefiting from that preemptive victory.

Who cares and why bother? How national apathy and the 'death of outrage' killed the modern political thriller.

Besides being a terrific thriller, Enemy of the State serves as a touchtone of sorts. No, it wasn't the last adult-skewing, star-driven R-rated thriller released by a major studio, although it seemed that way up until a few years ago. No, the whip-smart Will Smith/Gene Hackman high-tech chase picture was the last time that the classic 'man on the run' template made sense. It was a classic conspiracy thriller, based in the idea that forces in the American government were up to no good, and people who had stumbled upon this information had to be silenced. It was also rooted in the idea that the halls of Congress and the American people would be horrified by the idea that covert forces were up to devious doings, which in turn necessitated murderous cover-ups. I would argue that this now innocently naive idea is yet another victim of a post-9/11 mindset. So as Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) raced around the world with darker factions of the US government on his tail during The Bourne Legacy (review), I couldn't help but wonder "Why bother?". What exactly would be the consequences if America found out that the government had been playing around with science in order to make super-awesome covert killing machines for black-ops missions? Recent evidence suggests that few would do more than feign outrage, share the story on Facebook, and click on the next article.

Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012) not only fails to reboot the franchise but retroactively poisons what came before.

The Bourne Legacy

2012
130 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson
While Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy is being touted as a spin-off from the Matt Damon-starring spy franchise, it actually functions more as a retroactive prequel.  Rather than expanding the story or going off in a different direction, it spends an unholy amount of its screen time explicitly explaining the history and science behind a completely different 'super assassin' program from the one that once bred Jason Bourne (imagine if The Phantom Menace was primarily *about* midichlorians).  Instead of telling a story of relevance or creating interesting characters that happen to exist in the world established by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (and of course stemming from Robert Ludlam's original novels), Tony Gilroy takes a proverbial pick-axe to the series, undoing much of the prior narrative while retroactively turning Jason Bourne (of course played by Matt Damon and occasionally seen here in still photographs) into not a conflicted anti-hero but a force of chaos.  All of this would be forgivable and possibly intriguing if the resulting film weren't so bloody dull and unengaging.  But The Bourne Legacy makes me want to apologize for every mean thing I ever said about The Bourne Ultimatum.  The third film may have been a dumbed-down and amped-up remake of the superb Bourne Supremacy, but it at least had a pulse and sheer entertainment value.  The Bourne Legacy makes one yearn for the comparatively high-quality thrills and chills of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. 

Preferential Patriotism: The strange "politics" of Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.

There isn't too much to say about this brief teaser. The title is guaranteed to confuse a good 90% of general moviegoers and I'll be shocked if Sony doesn't add a "The Hunt For Bin Laden" subtitle in there before the film comes out in December.  I may be the only one, but I laughed out loud at Jason Clarke repeatedly screaming "When was the last time you saw Bin Laden!?"  It's the kind of "make sure the dumbest moviegoer sitting in the theater gets what this movie is about" moment that sticks out like a sore thumb.  But what's worth noting more than the actual tease itself is the way the film will surely be judged by differing political factions. Obviously I haven't seen the film, but its pre-release vilification, best personified by Rep Peter King's hearings alleging that the film received classified materials during pre-production, is yet another example of how 9/11 changed the political conversation by basically making everything partisan.

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (08/10/12)

This week brings us three major releases, one opening Wednesday, the other two on Friday.

The character of Jason Bourne made his debut in the 1980 Robert Ludlum book, The Bourne Identity. The story opens with Bourne being found with bullet wounds and no memory of who he is or why he has been shot. As the tale unfolds he soon discovers that he is a highly trained individual, possibly a spy or assassin, and begins to piece together the reasons why he was left for dead. Since his debut, Jason Bourne has gone on to feature in two further Ludlum penned stories, along with six written by Eric Van Lustbader (a seventh is due at the end of 2012). The character actually made his screen debut in an extended TV movie in 1988, which featured Richard Chamberlain as Bourne, and Charlie's Angels's Jaclyn Smith as Marie. While there were differences between this version and the novel, it would be a closer adaptation than the next version to reach the screen. Director Doug Liman, a fan of the book since reading it in high school, decided he wanted to adapt it for the screen while finishing up work on his breakthrough movie, Swingers. It would take two years before he could wrangle the rights from Warner Brothers and a further year of writing with Tony Gilroy before a workable script emerged. Liman discarded all but the central premise for his version, contemporising the themes and politics in the process. He also added elements garnered from his father's memoirs, a former NSA operative, who had had dealings with Oliver North - traits of whom would be the basis for the character of Alexander Conklin.

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 02: From Russia With Love

From Russia With Love1963
Director: Terrence Young
Starring: Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Pedro Armendariz, Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya
Rated PG

Welcome to SPECTRE Island!  ~Morzeny

STATS:

Bond Girls: Sylvia Trench, Gypsy Twins, Tatiana Romanova
Kills: 18
Car: None
Locales: Istanbul, SPECTRE Island
Odd Villain Trait: Red Grant is super strong, super stealthy, super blonde goon henchman
Song: “From Russia with Love” performed by Matt Monro

The success of Dr. No allowed Eon productions to stay on course with their five film plan for bringing the 007 novels to the big screen. The next would be From Russia with Love, due in part JFK’s mention of it as one of his favorite novels in Time magazine. With twice the budget this time around, From Russia With Love would build on the successes of the first film, amp up the new franchise, introduce some new ideas, and actually create the rare sequel that clearly tops the original.

Review: Red Hook Summer (2012) is Spike Lee's flawed-but-powerful return to highly personal film-making.

Red Hook Summer

2012
120 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Red Hook Summer, Spike Lee's first theatrical feature since The Miracle at St. Anna in late 2008, arguably intends to be a return trip to the world of Do the Right Thing, which put Spike Lee on the mainstream map twenty-three summers ago (and still remains among his best films).  While this is just one of several trips to Brooklyn (along with She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Crooklyn, Clockers, and He Got Game). the appearance of Spike Lee's Mookie still delivering pizzas two decades later is surely meant to inspire a certain connection to that 1989 classic.  The new picture operates less on a mediation on racial tension and class resentment and more on the damage the African American community has allowed to do to itself in the post-Reagan era.  The film barely qualifies as a feature, existing more as a series of speeches and/or literal sermons than any kind of traditional narrative. But as a personal statement, it marks Spike Lee's return to openly provocative cinema after a decade of (often superb) documentaries and (occasionally terrific) mainstream studio fare.  The use of digital video, with bright colors so rich they threaten to bleed out of the screen, signifies an elder statesman giving up on the idea of becoming truly mainstream and just saying everything he has to say come hell or high water.

Weekend Box Office: Dark Knight Rises tops, Total Recall flounders, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 3 opens ok.

In the face of two relatively non-mighty openers, The Dark Knight Rises (review/spoiler-review) topped the weekend box office again with $36 million.  As has been the case throughout the film's much-debated run (which is really only 17 days old), it's doing pretty spectacular by any logical standard but must be defended from those who think it automatically should have topped The Dark Knight and/or challenged The Avengers.  The film has $354 million after three weekends, versus The Dark Knight ($393 million) and The Avengers ($457 million).  It's the third-biggest 17-day total of all-time, closely surpassing Avatar ($352 million) as the third-fastest film to reach $350 million.  It will crack $400 million in two or three weekends (surely the fourth-fastest movie to do so if it can in less than Shrek 2's 43 days) and anything after that is merely bragging rights.  It may or may not crack $1 billion worldwide, with around $700 million so far and holding up relatively well.  Despite my concerns following its Harry Potter/Twilight-esque opening weekend, it's already having a leggier run than any recent Harry Potter or Twilight Saga sequel, as well as Spider-Man 3 (2.2x its weekend) or Iron Man 2 (2.4x times its weekend).  It'll out gross Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($380 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($381 million) around next weekend.  It will probably outgross Transformers 2 ($402 million), Spider-Man ($403 million), and The Hunger Games ($405 million) by the end of the month, with Toy Story 3 ($415 million), The Lion King ($422 million), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($423 million) waiting on tap if it can keep those non-IMAX screens during the end-of-August deluge.  So relax Bat-fans, it's doing just fine.

When the title of your superhero sequel is a giant spoiler...

There is a reason why Chris Nolan didn't call his last Batman film The Dark Knight Returns in No Man's Land During Knightfall.  The Dark Knight Rises may have felt like a painfully generic title thought up during a 7am brainstorming session, but it kept a certain amount of mystery alive in regards to what the movie was about.  With the next wave of Marvel comic book sequels, we're also seeing something new and arguably interesting.  Instead of numerically-titled sequels (Spider-Man 2) or even somewhat generic subtitles (X-Men: The Last Stand), we're seeing sequels that are explicitly telling you what they are going to be about by virtue of their title.  By which I mean they are being named after specific comic book story arcs.  Now fans may be thrilled about seeing their favorite arcs adapted to the silver screen, but the very title is a giant spoiler.  If you've read the arc in question, you pretty much know exactly what's the movie is going to be about.

Trailer Analysis: Killing Them Softly gets a fine trailer. Why it's utter lack of women is a *good* thing...

This is a terrific trailer for what is allegedly a terrific little crime drama. What sticks out is the utter lack of women in the film.  I'd argue that it's a net positive in this case.  I've long argued that I'd rather see certain movies go completely without women that shoe-horn a random pretty girl (often played by an actress who should be getting better roles) in order to provide a token romantic subplot and/or an easy way to make one low-life more sympathetic than another (Ryan Gosling has a crush on Cary Mulligan in Drive, which makes him the 'hero' by default).  Obviously the best case scenario would be actually having well-written female characters that aren't love interests, even in macho crime pictures like this (why not give James Gandolfini's part to Melissa Leo?).  But barring that, I'd much prefer to see a 'strictly business' sausage fest versus something like (random example) The Killer Elite which wastes a good twenty minutes of an already overlong movie attempting to shoe-horn in Jason Statham's ultimately pointless relationship with Yvonne Strahovski (who on TV's Chuck was a lead rather than 'the girl').  Anyway, Killing Them Softly opens on October 19th, 2012.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson  

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (08/03/12).

Staring this week, Mendelson's Memos is proud and pleased to be presenting weekly new release previews from John Gosling.  Mr. Gosling is a fellow box office nerd who does a fine weekly write-up from www.boxofficevoodoo.com. He has generously agreed to give this site his obscenely detailed previews of each of the week's major new releases. The essay below will be less about box office and more about historical context for the films being released. Each weekly piece will hopefully go up sometime between Wednesday night and Thursday night, depending on our respective schedules.  Feel free to chime in below and if you feel like offering your box office predictions, this would be the place to do it.  Gosling's contact information will be at the bottom of this piece.  Enjoy...

Brandon Peters dissects the 007 series part 01: Dr. No (1962)

With Skyfall dropping in theaters in just a few months, along with the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, a close friend and fellow film nerd, Brandon Peters, has generously offered to do a comprehensive review of the entire 007 film franchise. Tonight is his first entry, of course dissecting the series's initial film, Dr. No. I hope you enjoy what will be the start of a pretty massive feature leading up the November 9th release of Skyfall. I'll do my best to leave my two-cents out of it, give or take a few items I have up my sleeve (including a guest review from my wife as she sings the praises of her favorite 007 film, you won't believe what it is). But just because I'm stepping aside doesn't mean you should, as I can only hope for robust discussions in the comments section. Without further ado...

Dr. No
1962
111 minutes
Director: Terrence Young
Starring: Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord, Joseph Wiseman
Rated: PG


by Brandon Peters

STATS

(lets keep a tally on some things, shall we?)

Bond Girls:  Sylvia Trench, Miss Taro, Honey Rider

Kills*:  3, 1 Spider

Car:  Sunbeam Alpine Series II (blue)

Locales:  Jamaica

Odd Villain Characteristic: Dr. No has strong metal prosthetic hands

by Brandon Peters

Dr. No provides a nice introduction to the character and world of James Bond without ever feeling like an origin story, yet leaving viewers with little to no question or care as to what could have preceded it.  The film provides our first look at some common tropes the series would later come to be known for whether good or silly.  Some of which work, whereas a later entry trying to create such a moment would miss the point.  The film is escalated by a star making performance for legendary actor Sean Connery as he energizes and enthralls in every frame he appears.