Fred and Loathing on The Internet

This Tragedy Has Left Me Shaken, But Not Stirred

2023-Nov-23

The non-metric peculiarities of our time-date system has been a puzzling thorn in my data practitioner career. Several times I think I have come up with work-arounds to the common irregularities of how we keep time. Much like the Imperial system of weights and measures that the USA was foisted with because of British colonial heritage, the way we keep time is difficult to use as a standard metric device. Datetime irregularities that I mentioned before will throw monkey wrench into your calculations if you don’t think about all the possibilities. If the days of the week matched up with the days of the ear, that would be great. I think 5 is the only option. That would give us 73 weeks. If we keep the 12 month year, that would be six weeks a month. I dunno about days of the week… Anyways, how did this not ever get addressed? I think most of the world had an accurate but different date-time scheme that remains as cultural relics. Do these cultures harbor any rancor about the ethnocentrism of how the West divides 365.25 global revolutions every solar revolution? Do any of them have a more ‘metric’ approach to dividing time so that calculation does not require so many work-arounds?

What we have today to squawk about on the blog is From Russia With Love, the second film in the James Bond series. What I can remember about From Russia With Love as a child was how boring this entry into the spy action movie series was to my childish sensibilities. This movie lacked the hi-tech gadgets and colorful villains that filled the later Bond films. Removing the sensational splash of the 007 title from this movie and you almost have a 1960s spy drama that could have Carey Grant stand in for the spy with leading man looks.

James Bond rarely has to perform any superhuman feats of agility or gunplay to accomplish his very believable Cold War mixed with international terrorism themed mission this time around. He did exhibit some cinematic quick thinking, but still within the realm of possibility for Carey Grant doing the same thing in a Hitchcock movie. I don’t think Hitchcock would have chosen to have the head of the evil organization pulling the strings behind the caper to seek vengeance on James Bond and make a profitable move as a third party intelligence agency between the USA and USSR portrayed as a sinister yet unseen leader of garish staff members.

The mother of one of the development team member’s mentioned that the actor portraying the head of the Turkish intelligence agency that Bond liaises with throughout most of the movie was Pedro Almendariz, a Mexican actor who fooled me well enough to play a Turk.

Turkey, and the train ride to Trieste on the other side of the Iron Curtain, tickles the Cold War sensibilities I developed as an adult reading political and espionage stuff. As a child I found it to be as exciting as a National Geographic article about the Bosnian War.

Seeing this Bond film as an adult is almost like watching it for the first time. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this one that do not quite elevate this movie into rarified status. I have heard it is one of the best reviewed Bond films. That is well and good. My appreciation for the series began for me at such a young age that my opinions about it are rooted in my gut rather than in any adult sensibility I developed later in life, such as my taste for John Le Carre novels. This movie was crafted together to meet my modest expectations of a film, especially of that era. I have tried to get hooked on the Hitchcock vibe to spy movies, or movies about espionage stories. My gut wants the ludicrousness of Goldfinger and my adult tastes want the challenge of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. This somewhat serious James Bond outing is stuck in the middle with most any 1960s drama I agree with but do not adore.