(Book #38) Ian Fleming - Moonraker

Next in the line of James Bond Novels, is Ian Fleming's 'Moonraker'. This spy novel is another outing for the legendary 007, and while it shares the name with one of the campy Bond movies of the 70's, that was about all it had in common with it. Fleming's novels prove time and time again to be more subtle and gentlemanly spy stories and this one was in that same light, starting out with a rousing game of Bridge with suspected villain Drax and culminating with the launching of the titular Moonraker rocket. Surprisingly, the plot had absolutely nothing to do with the Moon, and it certainly made for a better story because of it. Why they had to change that and add a hulking metal mouth to the movie is beyond me. I have a few more of these Bond novels lined up to read and look forward to doing so.

(Book #9) Architecture and Film

As I am already a couple days late in putting together a write-up for this past book, I feel that I should try to keep it on the shorter side. Alas, I'm afraid that it might not be possible, given the amount of content that was in the book 'Architecture and Film'. At the risk of sounding obvious, I will say that the book was a compilation of essays on the various aspects of Architecture and how it relates to or is depicted in films and movies. Having been trained in design and currently working in the architectural profession, I felt like this subject and a book exploring it has the potential to be a great blend between one of the great passions and one of the great joys in my life. I had read a few of these pieces before, but it was interesting to revisit them, having new experiences and perceptions about these subjects.

I had initially picked up this book a few years ago to provide some insight and get some varied takes on the depiction of architecture and architects in movies. This has been a subject that has long interested, amused and baffled me. As it turned out the first essay was on this very subject, touching on some obvious architect films like The Fountainhead and the Brian Dennehy "classic" The Belly of an Architect. It also reflected on movies where the role of the architect played a more secondary role to other actions in the movie, such as The Towering Inferno (Paul Newman as hot-shot 70's architect), Indecent Proposal (Woody Harrelson as desperate for cash architect), and Three Men and a Baby (Tom Selleck as architect with a moustache). The essay gave a brief description of each architect movie, then discussed the various themes and how each was depicted and related to each other. It also gave me a little context and further movies to watch in my own Architects in Film project.

Another essay talked about architecture and film in the World War 2 era (before, during and after) and how the two subjects engaged what was happening in the world historically and culturally through the lens of the Cary Grant film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home. Like these, some of the essays were more successful at exploring the unification of these two notions, while others fell flat. For instance, one piece about "The Beatles and Architecture" couldn't have been less about architecture. Just because the Fab Four filmed their iconic final performance together on the roof of a building, doesn't make it about architecture! Another writer felt compelled to crap on George Lucas for ten pages while making inaccurate Star Wars references. If you are going to write a compelling essay about some of the most widely popular movies ever made, you best know your source material.

I actually don't have too many complaints about the book, there were an abundance of fascinating pieces on classic modernist heavy films, such as Jacques Tati's Playtime, which made up for the lackluster pieces (or ones heavily based on films I hadn't seen!). There were also a few on the architectural design behind and influencing the making of some great movies. I particularly liked one on art director/set designer Ken Adams, who worked on an abundance of highly visual, modern and architectural films, such as many of the earlier James Bond movies and Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

A book like this acts as a good resource for me, pointing in the direction of other architecturally related films either directly about architects or even secondarily about the spaces a film's character may inhabit. As I have long contemplated writing on some of these subjects myself, it provides some reference on ways of presenting ideas that are similar in vain, but also how not to write about them! It also offers a variety of perspectives on how to watch these genres and on some of the underlying themes of similar films. The best way of grasping a lot of these themes, however, is not by merely reading about them, but by experiencing the films as they were meant to be experienced… by watching them.

(Book #4) Ian Fleming - Live and Let Die

Next up in the year long Read-a-Thon was a timeless masterpiece called 'Live and Let Die', by Ian Fleming. I must clarify, this is not based on the Wings song by the same name, this is the second novel in a series of spy stories following some British guy named "James Bond". Perhaps you've heard of him.

Having only read a couple of these novels so far, I must warn that I may be making some untrue generalizations, but for the moment, I'll go by what I know from those that I have read. I read the first one, 'Casino Royale', last year when I was stuck on jury duty for a day and so I decided to continue on with the series. Live and Let Die followed Bond as he was pitted against his first real "Supervillain" and started to introduce some of the more elaborate methods of destruction that the movies are so keen on reflecting. what I found most interesting in all of that though was the way the story elaborated on the 'why' behind some of those plot points. Why would someone devise some sort of complicated sequence of events in order to kill someone? Why do we consider the villain Evil, while the protagonist is Good?

It has been quite a while since I have seen the movie adaptation of this book, if you can even call it that, as while many of the characters were the same, the plot seemed a bit different. Rather than being a story about an enormous drug ring, it was about a gold smuggling operation that funded none other than the Soviets (per usual). The other big difference was that the movie's memorable voodoo baddie, Baron Samedi, was only present by image and reference only. It is always difficult at first to read a book from which a movie was created, for the very reason that once is constantly visualizing THOSE characters and comparing to THAT story rather than simply going along with the one you are reading. Luckily I hadn't remembered much of the movie to distract me from the novel which, again, was rather entertaining.

One other thing I should mention is that the book, having been written in the mid 50's certainly showed its age with a lot of phrases and terms for various black people throughout the book. The other thing was a lot of talking in Ebonics by most of the black characters, there being a lot in the book. Now I wasn't really uncomfortable by this, as it was mostly a device used to enunciate a particular dialect of speaking, but I couldn’t help but be aware of it all as I read. Referring to a someone as a negro instead of a man in EVERY sentence of a paragraph got to be a little much. But then again, maybe that's how a well-to-do British white guy would have been thinking about it. I was somewhat vindicated in the end by the villain himself making that very point about the demeaning language. I guess Mr. Fleming was conscious of it in the end after all.

Overall, though, I would say it was a good read and that I'll probably continue to pick up the 007 Novels and read about the wacky adventures of Bond, James Bond if I were in need of a more subtle action story with a hint of mid-century cheese.

Until next week...