• A Look Back,  Inside Entertainment,  Media Rants

    A Look Back: James Bond

    Ian Fleming’s James Bond was a burned out, hard drinking, womanizing secret agent who was a spy for MI6, had a license to kill, and fought the independent organization known as SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion). He lived in this cool (from a creative standpoint) Cold War era when the threat of nuclear between the US and Russia seemed imminent, and everybody was paranoid about spying. Being British, Bond was also the gentleman’s spy – knowledgeable, seductive, and always charming. He always felt more cultured than those he was investigating. The first Bond movie, Dr. No, screened in 1962 and starred Sean Connery as Bond. Connery…

  • Inside Entertainment,  Reviews

    My 10 Best Movies from 2019

    I love stories. It doesn’t matter what form they come in: novels, movies, television, autobiographies, or whatever. And I always love when I know – and usually I will know pretty quickly – that I’ve connected to a story. Then it’s just a case of sitting back and enjoying the adventure. Growing up in the 1980s, it was the blockbusters that did that for me. They were story-based, and the action complemented what was going on. Now it seems the opposite. Blockbusters are action-based, and the stories complement what’s going on. Well, they try. Too often, they feel like some loose thread woven around the action to link it together.…