Not Bond, But Not Bad - 007: Road To A Million, Reviewed

Honestly, the premise sounds pretty cringey: take 9 pairs of ordinary people, and put them in contrived but legitimately challenging situations, hunting for questions in a variety of exotic locales akin to a James Bond movie, all while an unseen antagonist leads them and taunts them by phone and taped messages from (presumably) some sort of lair, all in pursuit of one million pounds. There is very little reason for this to work, but for our money, it really did.

We are all home sick with dreadful colds this weekend, so last night the three of us powered through the last three episodes of 007: Road To a Million on Amazon Prime. I am not really a fan of reality TV, but I am a fan of the Bond films, and since this show was actually co-produced by EON Productions, I hoped it would be a worthwhile view.

Smartly, they removed the competitive aspect right away, and none of the nine teams ever meet (although I might have liked to see them comparing notes once all was said and done). And all nine pairs of Brits seemed like decent and likable folks - no strong overbearing personalities, no manufactured drama, no smack talk. 

No doubt there will be folks who find the tremendous support and encouragement offered by these teams to be dull or saccharine. But one of the best moments for me was when one pair finds out they have to traverse between a group of restrained but ferocious-sounding dogs in a darkened warehouse to reach their objective, and you discover one of them is dog-phobic. The matter-of-fact way the other tells his best friend, "Right, hand on my shoulder, you follow me, yeah? If I turn and run, you follow," and they carry-on was a stand-out moment for me.

The general knowledge-type questions they have to answer (in a high-tech briefcase with a video-display and labeled smoke grenades to reveal the correct answer) are not the most challenging, because the challenge is often in finding the case to begin with. In the first episode, it involves marching for hours across the Scottish highlands before entering waist-deep water to retrieve it. In almost every case, the contestants talk about the role fatigue plays in their deduction, half the suspense comes from watching people talk themselves out of what may well be the correct answer.

So yes, the challenge is there, but what makes it Bond?  Three things, in my estimation:

THE LOCALES - From the Scottish Highlands to Chile's Atacama Desert to St. Mark's Square in Venice, the settings are always amazing. There are no car chases and few explosions but the backdrops (like an enormous solar farm, a Formula 1 raceway and a pass through the Swiss Alps) look like they would be right at home for Bond set-piece. Much of the filming of the contestants is hand-held of course, but the amazing aerial shots and panoramic views mark this every bit an EON Production.

THE MUSIC - The showrunners make full use of the Bond soundtracks here, from the remixed 007 theme in the titles to Hans Zimmer's "Square Escape" that closes out each episode. Every new locale is treated to an appropriate bit of score and they make great use of some familiar Bond songs too, playing "We Have All The Time In The World" to console one couple who failed to complete a challenge in time.

THE VOICE - Brian Cox as the mysterious "Controller" is really in his element here, doling out clues, clucking his tongue as he strikes a line through a team's name, and welcoming the players over a hidden P.A. system in later episodes. Apparently, he thought he was signing on for an actual Bond film, but he is either having the time of his life playing a villain to the hilt ("That's a lot of money...are you sure that's the right answer?") or treating this as his audition for the real thing. Either way, we viewers are the winners.

Best of all, the Bond references are by and large subtle ones - no garish voice-over or subtitles telling you which move was shot where, just an appearance of a classic setting or the occasional classic vehicle. The whole presentation is much more about the style than direct callbacks.

And my compliments to the casters; I would have liked to see any of these teams go the distance, but some flame out tragically early while others go quite a bit further on. Watching them overcome their challenges is a real treat, and a welcome bit of positivity for a TV genre that doesn't seem to appreciate that a lot.

I won't say it scratches the Bond itch per se, but with a new movie still years away, it salves it a bit, and has a few genuine surprises along the way.

Official Trailer

Boon Companions

Five of the six of us playing in my Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign got together last night for the first time in a long time; work demands kept the other away, tragically.

It turns out that a few of us had very rough weeks leading up to Saturday. I found out that a co-worker and friend from Games Workshop had passed away suddenly at 49. Another friend discovered he has a six-week window to move his aging mother to a different facility due to nursing changes where she is. And a third discovered a long-time friend had been diagnosed with prostate cancer which had metastasized into their lymph nodes, and did not have long to live.

Now, we are not the kind of group that ever worries about ticking enough boxes on the societal manliness checklist, but some of those stereotypes exist for a reason. One of them is "men are reluctant to talk about how they feel," and sometimes, maybe even a lot of times, that applies to us. We do not typically indulge in a lot of gnashing of teeth and rending of garments and the like, but last night, we all felt compelled to unburden ourselves a little.

We talked about how ill-equipped we feel in dealing with peer mortality. About the guilt and shame of finding an unsent email wishing a departed friend a happy birthday. Looking at the challenges our aging parents face (or that we face on their behalf) and wondering what it will be like for us. As one of us opined, "the time of gathering on the regular for weddings is largely past us now; gathering for funerals is probably more likely."

One of us had brought a luxurious bottle of whiskey (thank you!), saying that it, like us, was Very Rare, and improving with age, as we hope to. And the three of us who partake of liquor did so, several times, toasting the importance of friends, present, absent, and departed. 

The term boon companion refers to a close friend one enjoys spending time with. Boon derives from the French "bon" which in turn comes to us from the Latin "bonus," all of which means "good", but originally refers to drinking companions. I have long supported the wisdom of "in vino veritas" so this makes all the sense in the world to me, and if it is offputting at all to our teetotalling brethren, they give no indication of it.

So we drank, and we remembered and we lamented and we encouraged each other that we are all doing the best that we can. Eventually, our group of real friends got back to the business of using dice and imagination and fake newspaper articles from the mid-1920s to tell a collective story about a group of imaginary friends trying to avenge a dead colleague by combatting the death cults who had assassinated him. And it was good. Maybe even great.

Yes, I suppose it is kind of silly thing for a group of grown-ass men to do, but we don't care. It scratches a lot of itches like our need for creativity, imagination, deductive reasoning, and tactical thinking. But most importantly, it puts us in the same space, with an opportunity to share food and drink as well as fun, and to simply relate to one another as humans who care for each other, but who may not always find that easy to articulate. 

Earlier this same, terrible week, I had read on CNN about "why most men don't have enough close friends." The challenges of finding people you can relate to in a fast-paced and ever-changing world, and how this turns out to be critical for our long-term survival.

“What (men) are at risk of losing is this sense of not being alone in the world or not being alone in their experience,” Sileo said. Research has shown “disclosure of emotional distress improved (men’s) emotional well-being, increased feelings of being understood and resulted in less reported loneliness,” he added.

Some of those Saturday night conversations were not easy, but in the end, I can't help but feel we fought off something even more dangerous than the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, and perhaps more insidious than the Brotherhood of the Black Pharoah.

If you are reading this, there is a very good chance that I already or at least would likely call you a friend. And if we have not been in contact for longer than you might like, I am sorry for that, and hope that we reconnect before too long.

But for the friends in my most immediate circles, the ones I see around the gaming table or at church or on my monitor as we explore the jungles of Chult from three different time zones, I hope I have made it clear how much I appreciate our relationship, and how grateful I am for our friendship.

May none of our friends ever have to speculate as to whether or not they are valued- please know that you are.

Trio and Error? - The Marvels, Reviewed

As the weekend winds up, it has become clear that the MCU's latest venture, The Marvels, has not been a commercial success. I guess an ad hoc team featuring an underappreciated and possibly underutilized film character as well as two who made their debuts on Disney+ streaming shows just didn't have the draw that people were looking for?

Everywhere you look, people are ringing alarm bells on behalf of Marvel Studios. A recent Variety article entitled "Crisis At Marvel" outlined a number of concerns including lackluster responses to many of the recent Disney+ shows, visual FX challenges, and the possibility of recasting or pivoting away from their current Big Bad, Kang the Conqueror due to possible criminal charges against actor Jonathon Majors. And Stephen King, despite not being a fan of the MCU, called out the gloating of many at The Marvels' box office collapse.

But you know what? Fans of comic book movies are pretty likely to have a good time at this film.

That is not to say I don't have problems with this movie; to be honest, I didn't really start enjoying it until maybe a third of the way into it, and both the plot and the villain left me pretty cold. 

Thankfully Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel was there to carry me through until I realized that the villain and plot were secondary to the actual story, which was about three female characters coming to grips with their powers, roles and legacy (all while the 'quantum entanglement' of their powers have them swapping places from across the universe.

Vellani is just straight-up adorable, and her precociousness, combined with her character's fangirly exuberance, is a perfect antidote to cynicism. When Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) asks Khan how many chapters of Captain Marvel fanfic she is getting from one memorable interaction on an alien planet, the look of pure rapture on Vellani's face is not even acting, as far as I can determine. 

Rambeau is still getting used to the powers she gained in WandaVision (and I loved how they glazed over her origin story as "you got your powers walking through a witch hex?") and is not really interested in heroics or even having a code name - but has unsettled business with her Auntie Carol from Captain Marvel.

Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), on the other hand, has added another nickname to her repertoire as the alien Kree now call her "the Annihilator." This eventually makes sense in context, but the fallout from the Kree civil war might have had more significance to us if a) we had heard about it before this movie and b) Captain Marvel's significant actions in precipitating this event weren't revealed to us solely through an underwhelming flashback. 

Once the three principals get together though, the film really started to click for me. Khan's apprehension and excitement about meeting her namesake, Rambeau's resentment at reuniting with Danvers, combined with Captain Marvel's own compulsion to clean up the mess she feels responsible for as the Annihilator makes for a decent game of rock, paper, scissors, hero, artifact.

Zawe Ashton as Kree Accuser Dar-Benn is not given a whole lot to do. She is primarily there as a plot focus - a talking MacGuffin and resolute heavy - which feels like a real missed opportunity. And I don't think they even use her cool title even once in the film or do any sort of callback to Lee Pace's Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy.

On the plus side, for me at least, they lean into the comic book weirdness, bringing Khan's delightful family (along with Carol's not-cat, Goose) up to Nick Fury's S.A.B.R.E. space station from Secret Invasion. And this is before introducing an alien culture who communicate through song and who may have inadvertently cemented Captain Marvel as the newest Disney princess...

In the end, despite its imperfections, you have a perfectly reasonable and moderately entertaining little film that not only carries the MCU flag forward a little bit (or more? stay for the mid-credits scene!) but also gives us our first superhero flick with three female leads, two of which are persons of colour and one of whom represents Hollywood's first Muslim superhero. And it isn't like you need to be a feminist or woke or whatever to have a good time at this movie, but maybe being open-minded helps?`

So in some ways, the barely concealed glee manifested by many of the same trolls who review-bombed Captain Marvel and are bellyaching about the lack of white male representation in these films (give me strength...) because this film is underperforming is not so much surprising as it is disappointing.

The sad truth is though, as the Variety article suggests, on top of needing to use less-recognizable heroes than the lunchbox stalwarts of The Avengers, Marvel has also put quantity over quality since the end of Phase Three, and people are beginning to notice. Some of this was a pivot to online entertainment during the pandemic lockdowns, but as a result, the MCU is building on a less sturdy foundation now, and the moviegoing public can be fickle.

Superhero fatigue is not a concept that resonates with me personally - as long as Marvel keeps faithfully adapting or even homaging the source material that I am a fan of, I am likely to keep showing up. Which I suppose kind of undermines the credibility of my MCU reviews a bit...but whatever. Reasonable people can agree to disagree.

The MCU can't really be all things to all people, and the bigoted mouth-breathers trying to chalk up an 'I told you so' can go pound sand as far as I am concerned. 

I saw The Marvels with seven other people ranging in age from eight to 50+, and we all had a wonderful time. Most of us agreed that the movie was at its best when it pushed the plot and villain to the back burner and focused on our trio of heroines, and for the first time in a while, I am also excited about what Marvel Studios are trying to build to, despite the challenges they face.

Neon Style and Surprising Substance - Unicorn by Gunship, Reviewed

It’s funny - when I was a teen in the 1980s, watching people evoke the ‘50s and ‘60s in their clothes and music, I remember wondering aloud if people in the future would do the same for the decade we were in at the time.

“I doubt it,” my friend Dave gamely assured me. “It’s just too conservative a period; there’s not much to latch onto.”

Maybe he was right about the quantity, but the 80s resonance did indeed persist. My daughters in their twenties are fully conversant in bands of the period, it showed up a surprising amount in last year's TV hit “The Last of Us”, and there is a whole musical subgenre dedicated solely to the electronica of the time which is still going strong.

One of the seminal bands of this synthwave movement, Gunship, recently released their third full-length album, Unicorn, and since their excellent previous release Dark All Day was one of the few releases I have bought on CD in the past few years, I was anxious to give it a listen.

A half-dozen or so videos were released before the album came out, and although all were catchy, none of them grabbed me the way that “Art3mis & Parzival”, “When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, and the title track did from Dark All Day. Even the first couple listens of the album left me thinking, “well, it’s no DAD, but new Gunship is always good.”

Repeated listens, however, have given this collection time to really grow on me, and if you are a fan of synthwave or any danceable keyboard music at all, I can wholeheartedly recommend Unicorn. And Gunship even pushes the envelope a little bit on this record, venturing out into broader EDM territory, as well as some metal-sounding and even pop-like tracks. Rest assured, your 808 tones and drums full of gated reverb are all still here though.

This variety is very credibly supported by a solid stable of collaborators, including Gavin Rossdale of Bush, Carpenter Brut, Lights, Health and the inimitable Tim Capello, the jacked sax man from The Lost Boys who plays "I Still Believe." In fact, Tim gets to wail on four different tracks (!) so if you are not a saxophone fan, proceed with caution, I guess?

Unicorn, an album whose tagline is "Imagination is a weapon," scratches a lot of itches for me. A lot of it is upbeat, high-tempo stuff like "Blood for the Blood God" (40K fans, represent!) that makes a great soundtrack for getting stuff done. Other tracks are more dramatic and powerful, like "Ghost" or my current favourite, "Tech Noir 2", which features legendary director and synth afficionado John Carpenter (!!) reprising his role as intro narrator from the original "Tech Noir," but updated now with some post-apocalyptic optimism.

I'm recording this because the survivors no longer envy the dead
The final war is over
Its architects forever entombed in melted glass and steel
I watched the efforts of our species dance away on the radioactive wind
Civilisation retreated by millennia
All of human history wrought to dust
Our cities, now scorched black mausoleums serve as a reminder
There can be no victory in war
Birth is the answer to the question of our mortality
With resolute defiance we choose to grasp at the delicate thread of life
My son, the gift of survival is yours
Please, may you never submit
There will be more...

Cinematic and TV references abound in Gunship tracks, another treat for yours truly. "All roads paved with crushed-up skulls" should bring anyone who's seen it back to the opening of 1984's Terminator. I know "It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven," is a quote from Paradise Lost, but I also know most of us nerds first heard it on Star Trek. And cueing in Tim Capello's first sax solo on the album right after the lyrics "surrounded now but no surrender/ the odds against the betting man/ beyond the odds but I still believe" on "Monster in Paradise" is cheeky and perfect and I will never not love it. Even their logo looks inspired by the old Golan Globus logo from so many VHS viewings.

Cyberpunk overtones abound as well, as the '80s vision of the future lives on as depicted in "Taste Like Venom" as well as in the Edgerunners Netflix series and video games. Speaking of video games, "DooM Dance" (with its significant capitalization) talks about "raising hell" while "Empress of the Damned" includes a reference to "the cake is a lie" in a song where the chorus testifies "I can't be killed with conventional weaponry."

And just to make sure my enjoyment is not solely nostalgia-driven, I calibrated with Glory, after she came through the kitchen while I had the album blaring and said, sadly, "I wish clubs played music like this." She thinks it is a great album, particularly for this time of year, with multiple candidates for various Halloween or spooky season playlists. The darkness and adventurous violence are offset by brilliantly positive nuggets like "don't cry because it's over/ smile because it was" ("Run Like Hell").

Just like cyberpunk depicts a sci-fi future through an extremely 80s lens (presumably both mirrored and louvered), Gunship's strength is club music that probably hasn't been played in too many clubs, tragically. (If I am wrong, I am begging you to let Glory and I know!). And while there probably aren't too many raves in my future, I hope the band follows through on their plans to start touring and playing their music live. 

In the meantime, anyone interested in a semi-nostalgic look at a future that never came from an '80s that never was should give Unicorn a listen - there is a lot to like.