Bid On A Bunch Of Stuff From SPECTRE
This might come as a shock to some of you, but I’m still thinking about Spectre. “Why?” and “Jesus, God, WHY?” are questions you might be asking your screen right now. Well, I know some of y’all treat your franchises like Philly treats its losing sports teams, but “fan” is originally derived from “fanatic,” and fanatics don’t know when to quit. Facts are facts, and this is the Bond movie we’ve got for now. This is MAYBE the note Daniel Craig goes out on. We Bond nerds only get a new flick every few years, and I figure the sooner I make peace with this underwhelming entry, the easier the next four-year-wait will be.
In revisiting Spectre at home in 1080p, the problems become more glaring. For one thing, it’s color-graded all to hell, and too often in a yellow ochre haze that I believe is the actual color of sadness. The blu contains a behind-the-scenes featurette of the film’s opening sequence, and the colors are STAGGERING. But then the film hoses the whole thing down in a drunkard’s cloudy piss. Even the gunbarrel shot gets some on it. Look at this shit:
Additionally, the absence of editor Stuart Baird and DP Roger Deakins just...kind of lessens the whole thing. The action sequences do not sing, the colors do not pop, Spectre never looks or feels like the “fun” epic it seems to want to be.
The return of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (Or even just Spectre, I guess) should have been huge and ominous and intriguing as hell. We’re talking about a secret society of super-criminals that is quietly using its position of privilege to profit off the misery of the world. Credit to the screenwriters for trying: the group’s plot to control surveillance intel harkens back to Blofeld’s literary origin, in which the character began his criminal empire behind a desk at the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs in the 1930s. As Ian Fleming told it, “Blofeld had come to an interesting conclusion about the future of the world. He had decided that fast and accurate communication lay, in a contracting world, at the very heart of power.” A touch dry, maybe, but it could have been honed into something worthwhile. Instead, backing the whole thing into the foster brother story distracts and muddles rather than sharpens. The BIG narrative error was in not tipping C (Andrew Scott) immediately. Rather than follow Bond out of M’s office, they should have followed C to a Spectre meeting. This would be a callback to Professor Dent in Dr. No, or Largo in Thunderball. Why hide him from us? He could have been Hitchcock’s bomb under the table, the threat we know about before the characters do. Sigh.
But I’m not here to hate; Spectre had moments of greatness! That Touch Of Evil/I Am Cuba sequence at the beginning? Aces. The Roger Moore-esque fall from a collapsing building onto a sofa, or the equally Moore-ish parachute landing? Absolute highlights. Mr. Hinx? If he doesn’t come back, fire everyone. The ending? Listen, you can stick your Millie head in the sand and say “OMG 007 quit!”, but find me a Connery 007 film that didn’t end with Bond fucking off into the sunset with a lovely lady. That’s what Bond always does; we’ve just forgotten. The movie is a disappointment, but three months and change after the film’s premiere, it occurs to me that lost inside the middling entry that is Spectre are some iconic elements - franchise staples that, in the fullness of time, will jar themselves loose from their celluloid prison and be celebrated as 007 all-timers.
And you can buy them! This week, Christie’s is putting many of the film’s props and costumes on the auction block, with proceeds going to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) and other charitable organizations. Among these items: the Aston Martin DB10! Bond’s “Day Of The Dead” disguise! Oberhauser’s ring! Bond’s exploding watch! M’s non-exploding watch! Mr. Hinx’s silver fingernails! The auctions - one live and one online - are lots of random stuff mixed with some new pieces of 007 lore that will, I think, be remembered fondly when the dust settles on Spectre.
I’m not gonna lie, I’d love those silver fingernails, and how nice that those weapons of death are now being sold to help the peaceful charities listed above. The auction at Christie’s in London is scheduled for February 18th, and is invite only. The rest of us slobs can partake in the online lot, which goes live tomorrow.
