Major League Baseball announced on Wednesday some changes that are going to be in place for future All-Star games. Once again, they have missed an opportunity to make baseball better by focusing on this single game rather than the season as a whole.

What I think of the changes:

• The game will always have a Designated Hitter — historically, the DH has only been used in American League parks.  Not a good move.  Not being a big fan of the DH, I would like to see it being used nowhere rather than anywhere.  What?  That means no Big Papi? Unemotionally, I say yes, that means no Big Papi.  In the mid-2000s, he has undeniably contributed (though much less so recently) to the game insofar as he provides that offensive weapon late in the game.  But, one of my main criticisms of American Football is that there is only a small handful of players who have ever played both offense and defense; so to be consistent I can’t count a Major League Baseball player All-Star worthy who doesn’t play the field in a game where his defense is supposed to be one of his key strengths.  If the always-a-DH idea is good enough for the All-Star game, why isn’t it good enough for both leagues, including for the World Series?  It’s not – that’s why both leagues don’t have the DH.  The best way to compromise is to alternate.
  [I can see one merit of the always-a-DH rule, though.  If you're going to concede that pitchers just can't hit and that's OK because they're paid to pitch, then there's some merit to getting him out of the lineup in favor of a star hitter; this also lessens the likelihood of an injury.]
• “No pitcher who competes for his team on the previous Sunday will be allowed to pitch in the game.”  As I read the entire article, it becomes apparent to me that this is a misquote.  It only applies to starting pitchers — good thing.  Even so, this should not be a rule imposed, but rather left up to the players and managers.  If the pitcher himself and his manager and the All-Start team manager all agree that it’s best for him not to play, fine; but if all want to give him an inning or so, that should be fine too.  I hope that team managers and pitching coaches will plan ahead and make sure that their All-Stars have a day off that previous Sunday — shouldn’t be that difficult.
• Each team now has 34 players, up from 33.  Sure, OK, no problem.  At some point it will be too many, but 34 seems fine.
• A player can re-enter the game if he was pulled out earlier, but only if another player’s injury necessitates it.  No problem.  I think it would suck if Albert Pujols played 3 innings and was pulled, then got to go back in to pinch hit in the 9th with a man on 2nd for strategy reasons… but in case of injury or maybe even for other reasons, OK by me.

But the most significant change is absent.  That stupid, ridiculous business about the winning league’s team getting home field advantage in the World Series is just a farce, should never have been put in place, and should be revoked immediately.  Let the game end in a tie.  It’s an exhibition.  There doesn’t have to be a winner.  Sure, it’s exciting to have the prospect of a game-saving catch or a walk-off in the 12th inning, but at some point if the rosters are spent and it’s been a good game, it can just end.  I wasn’t upset in 2002 when the umpires, commissioner, and both managers agreed it was time to be done.

But even if you make them play the game out till one team wins, that victory should have no bearing on who gets home field advantage in the World Series.  If a Diamondbacks pitcher has a bad 7th inning in July and gives up 3 runs on the way to a 6-5 AL victory, that shouldn’t mean that a team with the 4th best record in the AL gets home field advantage over the best team in the NL in October — that’s just stupid.  I usually try to see both sides and refrain from just calling something stupid outright… but in this case, this is just stupid because there’s no way to see the merit of other side’s position.

So, I kind of turn my nose up at Wednesday’s announcement.  A couple changes are OK, a couple aren’t, and the one that would make all the difference was skipped over again this year.

If I had to pick my least favorite of all the Bond films, 1967′s You Only Live Twice would have to be a serious contender. Why so bad?  Let me count the ways:

• It follows on the heels of one of the best: Thunderball.  It had to be good to keep up with From Russia With Love and Thunderball — any shortcoming would be magnified, especially if you watch them all one after another without a 2-year break in between.
• The cheesy special effects (rocket descent, rockets capturing other spacecraft, volcano explosion) make it more like a 60s sci-fi movie than a spy movie.  I know that special effects in the 60s weren’t what they are today, but, ugh.
• The fight scenes are sub-par.  Contrast the greatness of the fight with Red Grant in the train in From Russia With Love with the comical video-game-style fight with Osato’s dozens of goons at the ship yard in YOLT.
• The way they treat the Bond Girl, Aki, is downright ridiculous.  With Bond, she takes all day to cross the bay, climb the mountain and descend into the volcano crater, clad only in a bikini and tennis shoes.  It takes her a matter of (what, an hour?) to travel all the way back to Tanaka’s place, swimming across the bay along the way, to get him and his ninjas and return to the crater.  Inside the crater, she’s along for the fight, but does nothing but cower behind people who know how to use weapons.  She really shouldn’t have come, as she’s nothing but a burden.
• The filmmakers had Bond go under cover by having some sort of operation to turn him into “a Japanese”, as Tanaka says.  The results are horrendous – he just looks and sounds like a Scottish guy with a bad haircut and eyebrows.

OK, so it’s bad.  But there are some redeeming qualities:

• Osato and his henchman (woman – Helga Brandt) are great Bond villains.
• Blofeld’s lair hidden inside a hollowed-out volcano — kinda cheesy, I know, but classic nonetheless.  At the time, it was an extravagant set that really sold the movie, and has set the standard for spy-movie supervillains (and their parodies) ever since.
• Little Nellie is pure brilliance.  So is the helecopter picking up Osata’s goons’ car with a huge magnet and dumping it into the bay.

Quotables:

James Bond: Is this the only room there is?
Kissy Suzuki: Yes. That is your bed,
Kissy Suzuki: I shall sleep over there.
James Bond: But we’re supposed to be married.
Kissy Suzuki: Think again, please. You gave false name to priest.
James Bond: Yes, but we must keep up appearances. We’re on our honeymoon.
Kissy Suzuki: No honeymoon. This is business.

Blofeld: James Bond. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Ernst Stavro Blofeld. They told me you were assassinated in Hong Kong.
James Bond: Yes, this is my second life.
Blofeld: You only live twice, Mr. Bond.

Mr. Osato: You should give up smoking. Cigarettes are very bad for your chest.
Helga Brandt: Mr. Osato believes in healthy chest.

Another odd miscellaneous thing: in this movie, Henderson gives Bond a martini, “stirred, not shaken”, and he accepts.  Usually, of course, it’s “shaken, not stirred”.

So You Only Live twice is worth watching, if only because it’s one of the classic 1960s Bond films, and if you keep in mind that this is the last of the string of the first of the series starring Sean Connery (yeah he made his return in Diamonds are Forever four years later, but George Lazenby’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was in between).

Thunderball is one of my favorite Bond movies.  It’s slow and drags on in some places; and some of the special effects, including the boat chase scene at the end, are cheesy looking back at it 40+ years later, but those are the only marks against it in my book.

SPECTRE makes its return in Thunderball — we get an insight into the breadth and depth of this terrorist organization right after the opening credits, several agents in a hidden conference room reporting on the status of various criminal activities around the world.  To advance their scheme of stealing nuclear bombs and holding the NATO countries hostage with them, they’ll stop at nothing, including killing their own and their hired help (by electrocution, piranha pit, drowning, shark attack). Not that I’m a fan of evil, but in a Bond film the villians are of the utmost importance — Emilio Largo is brilliantly cold and ruthless, and Luciana Paluzzi makes Fiona Volpe one of the best femmes fatales in the series.

The budget for Thunderball was more than the budget for all three of the first films combined.  My guess is that a lot of the reason has to do with all the underwater scenes — the photography equipment and setup and such.

Quotables:

Pat Fearing: Funny-looking bruise. A fall?
James Bond: A poker, in the hands of a widow.
Pat Fearing: Really? I’d have thought you were just the type for a widow.
James Bond: Not this one. He didn’t care for me at all.

Bond: Will I see you again?
Domino: It’s a small island.
Bond: Perhaps we can have dinner together?
Domino: No.
Bond: My dear uncooperative Domino.
Domino: How do you know that? How do you know my friends call me Domino?
Bond: It’s on the bracelet on your ankle.
Domino: So, what sharp little eyes you’ve got.
Bond: Wait till you get to my teeth.

Bond: My dear girl, don’t flatter yourself. What I did this evening was for Queen and country. You don’t think it gave me any pleasure, do you?
Fiona: But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, the one where he has to make love to a woman, and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and turns to the side of right and virtue… but not this one!

I haven’t made up my mind yet about Goldfinger.  At one time I thought it was one of the best; more recently I’ve thought it one of the worst.  Right now, I’d have to divide it into two movies and call one half one of the best and the other half one of the worst.

I think Goldfinger is great for the first hour-plus.  I’m going to be controversial here and go against everything I hear: when Miss Galore arrives on the scene, the movie takes a nose dive.  She really doesn’t do anything for me, her ‘flying circus’ of pilot minions is just ridiculous, and for such a strong-willed person she all of a sudden melts at Bond’s advances after they’ve physically fought and he forces himself on her.  Puh-lease.  The scenes of the planes gassing everyone (who unconvincingly “fall down”) around Fort Knox before the raid are embarrassing.  In typical movie-countdown fashion, the nuclear device Bond is trying to disarm takes way too long to count down between cuts alternately showing it and the surrounding action.

So, the bad stuff out of the way… on to observations and such:

Firsts and onlies:

• The classic and quintessential Bond car shows up for the first time, the Aston Martin DB5.
• This is the only one of the first 7 (Connery-era) films where nothing to do with SPECTRE is even mentioned (either SPECTRE or its presence implied via its leader Blofeld makes an appearance in the other 6 of the first 7)
• With the death of Jill Masterson, the theme of a ‘leading’ lady being killed is introduced to the series, a theme which has stuck throughout, recurring in almost every Bond film since.
• Bond visits the United States for the first time in the series, starting out in Miami and eventually being kidnapped and transported to Goldfinger’s estate in Kentucky near Fort Knox. (Although all the filming for the U.S. scenes were actually filmed in the U.K.)

All in all, a good Bond flick in many regards, but the ridiculousness mentioned above ruins its chances of being a great one. A great plot, and this movie elevates the element of World Travel the movies have been known for.  In the previous two, one location was primary.  Q becomes really a famous character here, and the Aston Martin with e revolving license plates, bulletproof glass, machine guns, oil slick, and ejector seat is pure genius.

Quotables:

James Bond: Auric Goldfinger. Sounds like a French nail varnish.

Q: Now this one I’m particularly keen about. You see the gear lever here? Now, if you take the top off, you will find a little red button. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.
James Bond: Yeah, why not?
Q: Because you’ll release this section of the roof, and engage and then fire the passenger ejector seat. Whish!
James Bond: Ejector seat? You’re joking!
Q: I never joke about my work, 007.

James Bond: My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs!

James Bond: Do you expect me to talk?
Auric Goldfinger: No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!

Goldfinger: Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor… except crime!

The second installment in the series From Russia With Love, is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best, Bond film of all time.  To be one of the best you have to do the good things well and steer clear of the bad things.  Let’s take a look:

The villains: classic and well done.  Ernst Stavro Blofeld shows up for the first time in the series as the head of SPECTRE, and the suspense of not seeing his face will continue for 4 years (somewhat lost when you view several in a week’s time).  Rosa Klebb and Red Grant are diabolical, but believable unlike a few later Bond Villains.

The good guys: His main ally, Kerim, isn’t squeaky-clean himself, making the line between good and evil a little fuzzy, just like in the real world.  Desmond Llewellen makes his Bond debut as Q, but the Q element here is much less about the guy and much more about the gadgets: the trick suitcase with the hidden throwing knife and the exploding talcum powder canister set the standard for coming decades of gegetry.  The Bond Girl Tatiana is right-on for this movie: the story doesn’t try to do too much with her — many later movies go overboard with the female leads.  I don’t think there’s a “ugh, why did they have to have her do that?” moment in the whole film.

Minimizing the bad stuff: The whole gypsy farm thing was, um, almost pointless (well, it did serve to solidify the friendship between Bond and Kerim), and my least favorite part of the movie.  The gypsy farm gun battle was just too early-sixties-ish.  A worthy criticism of later Bond films is that the effects are just over-the-top, especially relying on explosions to create intense action.  The boat chase near the end of Russia is one scene that got dangerously close, but thankfully didn’t go too far.

Quotables:

Number One: “Kronsteen, you’re sure this plan is fool proof?”
Kronsteen: “Yes, it is, because I have anticipated every variation of counter move.”
We all know how that worked out for him.

Tatiana: “The mechanism is… Oh James, James… Will you make love to me all the time in England?”
Bond: “Day and night. Go on about the mechanism.”

Bond: “Pardon me, do you have a match?”
Agent: “I use a lighter.”
Bond: “Better still.”
Agent: “Until they go wrong.”
Bond: “Exactly.”
Classic coded spy dialogue so that each knows that who he’s dealing with is on his side.  Except for some reason SPECTRE agent Grant knows of the pass phrases later in the movie.

Bond: “Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something.”
Grant: “I might not know my wines, but you are the one on your knees.”

Bond: [regarding Kerim's chauffeur] He’s a rather intelligent young man.
Kerim: He should be. He’s my son. Coffee?
Bond: Medium sweet.
Kerim: [to attendant] Two, medium sweet.
Kerim: [to Bond] He also is my son. All of my key employees are my sons. Blood is the best security in this business.

Observations from Dr. No, which I just viewed for the Xth time.  Some observations are my own, and some I grabbed from various places like IMDB.

Joseph Wiseman played the title character Dr. Julius No.  I recall the news of his death recently, on Oct 19, 2009.  Although he was a very prolific TV and film actor whose career spanned five decades, I’ve never seen him in anything else.  Well, I might have seen him in small appearances in Magnum P.I. or The Equalizer or The A-Team or even MacGuyver in the 1980s, but I wouldn’t have known it.

Sean Connery wears a toupée in this and all the other Bond movies he’s in.

I knew that Gert Fröbe’s voice was dubbed for his character Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger, but what I didn’t know was that two Bond Girls’ voices were dubbed (Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder and Eunice Gayson as Sylvia Trench) by the same voice artist (Nikki Van der Zyl) in Dr. No.  In fact, many villains in the early Bond movies (Blofeld in From Russia With Love, Goldfinger in Goldfinger, Largo in Thunderball, Tanaka in You Only Live Twice) and other leading ladies (Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love and Claudine Auger as Domino in Thunderball) had their voices dubbed.  Why so much with the dubbing?  Why not find actors whose voices were more suitable, or just go with a heavier accent if they speak English well enough?

Major Boothroyd presents Bond with a Walther PPK to replace his Beretta.  This is the only time Boothroyd (You know him a “Q”) was not played by Desmond Llewellen until his death (auto accident) in 1999 after The World is Not Enough.

A noteworthy feature of the Bond movies is that in each one, there is an opening scene that plays out before the opening credits (sometimes having nothing to do with the rest of the film).  Dr. No is the only film in which there is no such pre-credits opening scene.

In Summary: Dr. No is the original.  Sean Connery is the ultimate Bond (though Daniel-Craig-Bond could no doubt beat up Sean-Connery-Bond).  The plot is classic spy fare: the larger-than-life, quirky villain is bent on world domination, and his overconfidence and underestimation of the triumph of Good over Evil becomes his downfall.  Likely because it was made in 1962 on a relatively low-budget, it’s not over-produced: dialogue and intrigue take precedence over explosions and effects.

Quotables:

Bond: I admire your courage, Miss…?
Sylvia Trench: Trench. Sylvia Trench. I admire your luck, Mr…?
Bond: Bond. James Bond.

Sylvia Trench: When did you say you had to leave?
Bond: Immediately
Sylvia Trench: [starts kissing him]
Bond: almost immediately

Honey: [startled at Bond's voice on the beach, where she thought she was alone] Who’s that?
Bond: It’s all right. I’m not supposed to be here either. I take it you’re not. Are you alone?
Honey: What are you doing here? Looking for shells?
Bond: No, I’m just looking.
Honey: Stay where you are.
Bond: I promise I won’t steal your shells.
Honey: I promise you you won’t either. Stay where you are! [she wields her knife]

I’m not one to watch movies for deep spiritual or humanitarian significance.  It takes me a long time (sometimes days, weeks) to process input, especially when it comes at me in the blitz of a two-hour motion picture zooming (relatively) by on the screen.  For example, I saw Defiance recently, which has a lot of good stuff in it to comment about, but I’m not going to take the time to crunch through it right now.

Speaking of Daniel Craig…
Once a year-span or so, sometime between the end of one baseball season in October (or, more recently, November) and the beginning of the next in April, I watch all the James Bond movies.  Yes, all of them.  In order.  It’s a way to turn off my brain for a couple hours and just be entertained every few days. I obtained a collection of VHS tapes from a friend a few years ago — every one from Dr. No through Tomorrow Never Dies, minus The Man with the Golden Gun. I have since added Golden Gun, plus the VHS version of The World Is Not Enough and the DVD versions of Die Another Day and Casino Royale.

So, since there’s a break in the UEFA Champions League season and thus there’s nothing good on TV, I’m beginning my Bond Marathon with Dr. No now.  I’m not promising (you or myself) anything, but my plans are to comment on each one as I watch them.  Not an official review, not as a film critic by any stretch because I’m too shallow and inexperienced for that, but just as a fly-by commenter.  Some of the good-bad-ugly, some trivia, some quotes, some general or specific observations.  Just for fun.