Craig and Bardem in Skyfall.

The big question the pessimists are asking about Skyfall, the 23rd entry in the James Bond franchise: Does 007 still have a license to keep an audience alert? The answer: And how! Some of the exhilaration faded when Sean Connery lost his hair and took a powder, but 50 years after Ian Fleming’s super-cool agent from Her Majesty’s Secret Service was shot from a cannon into movie history, Bond is back, and so is high-octane entertainment.

Skyfall may not reach the sophisticated heights of Casino Royale, but it’s better than the lollygagging Quantum of Solace.With buff, camera-ready Daniel Craig lending fresh fisticuffs to the role, and acclaimed director Sam Mendes adding more realism and fewer jokes than in most Bond pictures, it’s a satisfying entertainment that delivers a kangaroo kick from start to finish. Despite the less showy Saul Bass-inspired titles and a stupid theme song behind the credits screeched by Adele (“We will stand tall and face it all/You may have my number but you’ll never have my heart”) that reminds us all how much we owe to Shirley Bassey, Skyfall signifies a new 007 style. The series is beyond gimmickry now. You just look at the toys, try to follow the plot and count the bikinis. But the best thing about Skyfall is the way it maximizes the great Judi Dench as M. It’s her best outing in the series to date, and she chews it like taffy. With six you get eggroll, but with vibrant, chromatic cinematography by Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption), anda distinguished assembly of supersonic talents headed by Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Albert Finney—you get box office platinum.

The film opens with the obligatory chase—007 wrecking an entire bazaar in Istanbul, scaling rooftops on a motorcycle and destroying as many civilians, buildings and moving vehicles as possible, cars that never run out of gasoline, on roads that never end, posing no threat to maintenance. Bond is knocked off the top of a speeding train into roaring rapids and plunges over a waterfall. When the dust settles, a plot emerges; M loses her computer hard-drive, and on it, a file containing the name of every NATO agent in the world’s terrorist zones. Hackers then unleash cyber attacks on secret service headquarters in London. Bond is believed dead, M is threatened with dismissal and the series seems in danger of grinding to a halt. When Bond resurfaces, M snarls through clenched teeth, “You know the rules of the game. You’ve been playing it long enough.” Which means no loyalty, no apologies and anything goes. While he was enjoying some badly needed R and R and taking a shower with sexy Bérénice Marlohe, the bombed-out secret service relocated its headquarters to an underground bunker used by Churchill during the Blitz. Bond’s unlikely new quartermaster is a wimpy fop named Q (Ben Whishaw) who dispatches him to Shanghai to locate and liquidate the thief who is using M’s files to destroy the world. The mega-villain is an epicene bottle-blond fiend played with exotic pansexual delight by Javier Bardem. A renegade agent who used to work for M, he’s droll, cynical and seductive. In the film’s funniest scene, he straps Bond to a chair, runs his hands lasciviously across his crotch and hisses “There’s a first time for everything.” Good ol’ 007, unfazed, counters with “How do you know it’s the first time?”

The movie moves from a casino in Macao, approachable only by boat and surrounded by giant man-eating Komodo dragons, to an endangered London tube station at rush hour, to a hunting lodge in Scotland where M gets a chance to show off some of her own operative training. Mr. Bardem munches a lot of whatever scenery is still standing and Dame Judi employs her icy blue eyes and matching steel reserve with terrifying authority. Bond is floppier and less buttoned-down than usual; he’s given up smoking, and the psychology of his traumatic background is explored for the first time. Bond relies less on naked girls and state-of-the-art gadgets than before, but as played by Daniel Craig, he’s both a teddy bear and as rugged as ever. So much so, in fact, that when his trusty old Aston Martin makes an appearance at last, the audience bursts into applause. Like the pieces of an elaborate jigsaw, everything falls perfectly into place, and there is overwhelming evidence that James Bond will rise again. Is there life after Skyfall? Stay tuned.

rreed@observer.com

Skyfall

Running Time 143 minutes

Written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan

Directed by Sam Mendes

Starring Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem and Naomie Harris

3/4

The Tempest unfolds on the island to which Prospero, the rightful duke of Milan, has been banished with his daughter, Miranda, by his usurping brother, Antonio. At the center of Tom Piper’s set is a lonely swath of sand, closed in at the far side by a very shallow pool of water—the vast ocean that keeps Prospero captive on the island. Sometimes Paul Pyant’s moody lights hit that water just so, leaving a shimmering reflection on the horizonlike concrete wall at the back. The whole thing is breathtaking—as is the first entrance of Caliban, the play’s half-monster slave, arising through the stage floor, climbing out from the sand.

But while the design is restrained and lovely, the performance can seem just restrained. Stephen Dillane plays Prospero not as a commanding, entitled duke—the sort who, in seeking vengeance against his enemies 12 years after his exile, creates a violent storm, a tempest, as they sail past his island, to force them ashore—but rather as a thoughtful, reluctant leader and doting father. And Mr. Mendes’ directorial flourishes can sometimes be distracting: As Prospero circles the spot of sand early in the play—and circles, and circles, and circles—it becomes challenging to follow what he’s saying.

This Tempest is a thrill to look at, but it’s a bit less impressive to see.

Meanwhile, in midtown, the Manhattan Theatre Club is offering a glimpse at an imagined behind-the-scenes Will Shakespeare in Bill Cain’s fascinating and very funny Equivocation, which opened last night at MTC’s Off Broadway space in City Center.

Shakespeare—here called Shagspeare, perhaps to avoid four-century-old trademark infringement—has been summoned by Sir Robert Cecil, a top adviser to King James I, and ordered to write “a true history of the present,” an account of the just-foiled Gunpowder Plot to kill the king and his court. He’s reluctant to take the job—how can you be an artist and pursue the truth when you’re obligated to tell the king’s version of the story?—but also has no choice. As the play proceeds, Shag and his troupe, the King’s Men, wrestle with the commission, with truth and art and language and politics, before finally giving up on the Gunpowder Plot and instead debuting Macbeth—the Scottish play for the Scottish King.

Garry Hynes directs a very strong ensemble, with most of the actors playing multiple roles and often moving amusingly among them. John Pankow, the nebbishy sitcom star who even onstage tends to play sitcommy roles, is an unexpectedly excellent Shagspeare, intelligent and thoughtful and affecting.

The play is a history lesson, and a comedy, full of theater jokes and Shakespeare jokes, but more than anything, it is an intriguing and powerful meditation on language and the uses and misuses of it. Shagspeare visits a convicted Gunpowder conspirator, the Jesuit priest Henry Garnet, in the Tower of London, where Garnet speaks of the doctrine of equivocation he espouses—“how to speak the truth in difficult times.” It is, essentially, to be clever. “I want to tell the truth,” Shag tells Garnet. “I just don’t want to get caught at it.”

Equivocation is a warning about people in power who insist on their own truths—and it’s a passionate argument for telling the real truth, even in difficult times.
joxfeld@observer.com

It’s not like anyone ever accused the Academy Awards of having good timing, but even by their standards, putting out a major press release on a Friday—following the death of Michael Jackson—has to rank as a poor decision. Since you, like the rest of the developed world, probably missed it: The Music Branch Executive Committee stated that, going forward, songs must get higher than 8.25 on a scale of 6-to-10 to even be considered for a nomination in the Best Original Song category. If no song gets to 8.25, then no songs will be nominated that year; if one song makes it, then the runner-up also gets nominated, regardless of its total score. Still with us? In layman’s terms, this is just a convenient way of getting rid of the Best Original Song category altogether—voters now have an out that allows them to ignore all songs in a given year if they so choose (previously, three songs had to be nominated no matter what). Between this switch and the banishing of lifetime achievement awards to their own separate night, the Oscars will have plenty of room in the telecast for those 10 Best Picture nominees. But why stop with these changes? Here are three other fixes we’d love to see come March 7, 2010.

Add a Best Music Cue Category!

With respect to songwriters and composers, is there anything more important to a movie than a well-placed music cue? We say absolutely not! Movies can be made or broken by the songs they chose for their soundtrack. Greg Mottola’s underrated Adventureland used awesome musical selections throughout, and they helped make a good movie all the more better; on the flipside, Sam Mendes ruined Away We Go with suffocating indie folk. Something so important to the fabric of movies should get recognition at the highest level, no?

Subtract All the Short Film Categories! And the Best Animated Feature, Too!

This is an easy fix that will both shorten the length of the show and simultaneously make it more watchable. People barely see the nominated films and yet the Academy expects us to get excited for shorts that no one has heard of? It’s not happening! Get rid of them all, be they documentaries, animated or narrative. As for Best Animated Feature, it was basically only installed so that Pixar could win Oscars for its lauded work. However, now that the Best Picture field has jumped to ten, logic seems to dictate that the animation house will always be in the mix. Call us traditionalists, but we don’t need to see Monsters Vs. Aliens on the Oscar stage.

Add a Best Action Sequence Category!

Think about it: The Academy Awards already give out awards for makeup and special effects … so why not action scenes? We can’t be the only ones amped to see a competition between the first act of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the second act of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and the last act of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Frankly, we expected a bit more from Mr. Mendes than aping Zach Braff—Mr. Murdoch’s music was also used in Garden State—but we can’t say we really blame him. His musical choices in Away We Go just follow the herd: If you’re doing a movie involving 30-something hipsters, you better have the proper corresponding soundtrack. But what used to seem hip and edgy has now become staid and predictable. As much as we’re looking forward to July’s (500) Days of Summer, we can’t help but feel that the soundtrack (which highlights great music from The Smiths, Regina Spektor and Belle and Sebastian) will impede our enjoyment thanks to its obvious twee-ness. Indie rock is great, but directors have to be careful with its use.

Thank goodness then for Todd Phillips. As if The Hangover didn’t already get enough effusive praise for being a raucous comedy juggernaut, here’s some more: From minute one, the musical choices were an eclectic mix of recognizable gems, from a wide scope of genres, that constantly surprised and delighted. Whether it was music from Danzig or Phil Collins or Flo Rida—whose hit “Right Round” officially became the song of the summer with its use over the closing credits—the soundtrack gave this party film the sense of a real party; it’s like Mr. Phillips put his iPod on shuffle and left to make some onion dip. By being wildly unpredictable with its choices, The Hangover proves that, when done right, nothing is better than simplicity. You don't need to find the coolest indie band in the world when a song by The Donnas will suffice. Here’s hoping Mr. Mendes is taking some notes.

Land of the Lost

What’s the story: Based on the cult ‘70s kid series from Sid and Marty Krofft, Land of the Lost finds Will Ferrell, Danny McBride and former Pushing Daisies star Anna Friel traveling back through time and space for an adventure involving giant spiders, slow-footed monsters called Sleestak’s, and, the worst CGI T-Rex this side of the year 2000. If Land of the Lost isn’t the most publicized movie of the summer, then it’s darn close; at this point, we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see Mr. Ferrell handing out fliers to promote this thing in Union Square. Call us conspiracy theorists, but that is never a good sign: The movie doth protest too much.

Who should see it: H.R. Pufnstuf.

My Life in Ruins

What’s the story: Now seven years removed from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos finally gets to Greece in My Life in Ruins, a romantic comedy from director Donald Petrie (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days). Everything about this film looks poisonous, from the premise (Ms. Vardalos is an unlucky-in-love tour guide who finds Mr. Right we’re she least expects him) to the title (we’re not sure if you noticed, but it has a double meaning!) Do yourself a favor: Skip it.

Who should see it: Only those with an incredibly high threshold for pain.

Away We Go

What’s the story: Fresh off the martial discord of Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes returns with Away We Go, a twee comedy about an unmarried-but-pregnant couple (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) traveling the country and looking for that ethereal feeling of “home.” The reviews have hedged to the good side of mixed, but as long as Mr. Mendes delivers something better than Garden State, everything should be okay. McSweeney’s fans take note: Away We Go is co-written by Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida.

Who should see it: Zach Braff.

The Hangover

What’s the story: Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zack Galifianakis star as three mismatched buddies tasked with finding the lost groom after a bachelor party gone awry in Las Vegas. We don’t want to put too much pressure on director Todd Phillips (Old School), but if The Hangover is anything less than the funniest movie of the year, we’re going to be disappointed. Thankfully, according to The Observer’s Sara Vilkomerson, it sounds like we don’t have too much to worry about.

Who should see it: Frank the Tank.

Kate Winslet is actually the lead!

Unlike her overrated and Oscar-winning performance in The Reader, where she is barely onscreen for half the film, Ms. Winslet is the full-fledged lead in Revolutionary Road. In fact, part of us imagines she actually won her coveted Academy Award for Revolutionary Road anyway, if only because the work is so strong. As April Wheeler, Ms. Winslet is towering; this performance is the female equivalent of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. At turns manic, infuriating, sympathetic and downright crazy, Ms. Winslet has never been better. And like any truly great performance, she lifts her co-stars—notably Leonardo DiCaprio—to places that outweigh their talent.

Michael Shannon is the future of creepy!

It was fitting that Christopher Walken was the actor to honor Michael Shannon during the Supporting Actor nominee roll call at the Oscars; in the next 10 years, Mr. Shannon will end up getting all the roles that Mr. Walken used to get when he was younger. His performance in Revolutionary Road is vintage Walken—we’re talking Deer Hunter-level subtly and wild-eyed menace. Frankly, it’s hard to even see this as a performance—we simply believe some part of Michael Shannon was the deranged truth teller that he portrays. As crazy as that sounds, we don't think a higher compliment could be given.

The movie treads where Richard Yates fears!

We’re not going to sit here and tell you that the movie was better than the book, but ... we kinda dug the ending to Mr. Mendes’ film a bit more than what was on the page. Spoilers if you haven’t read the book in the last, oh, 40 years: Thanks to April’s suicide note (“Dear Frank, Whatever happens, please don’t blame yourself”), we always felt Mr. Yates let Frank off the hook a tad too easily. Mr. Mendes, on the other hand, has none of this: April never leaves a note, so Frank is never absolved of responsibility for her death. The bleakness of the ending surprised us then and it still sits with us now. We never thought Mr. Mendes had a movie like this in him, but he’s clearly turned a corner as an artist; suffice it to say, we can't wait to see what he does with the admittedly more happy-looking Away We Go.

Ms. Rudolph needs the energy. At 36, she is not only a soon-to-be mother of two (daughter Pearl is 3 and a half), but for the first time playing the lead female role in a movie: Away We Go, directed by Sam Mendes, from a screenplay written by the married novelists Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, arriving in theaters on June 5. “Nobody prepares you for how much of a brain fuck it all is,” she said of the consequent media attention. “This one journalist outed me”—meaning the pregnancy, which accidentally became breaking news in early May. “I should have just told her I was fat and she would have felt terrible. Hindsight really is 20-20. … But it is weird when someone is like, ‘I don’t know you … but I’m going to change your life!’”

Away We Go may also change Ms. Rudolph’s life, from that of rubber-faced, musical ensemble player to legitimate star. Funny and poignant, it features her and The Office’s John Krasinksi as a couple expecting their first baby but with no idea of where to call home. They embark on a road trip across America; Catherine O’Hara, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney and Maggie Gyllenhaal all pop up in supporting roles. But it is Ms. Rudolph who stands out: quieter, more still and self-contained than she ever was parodying Donatella Versace, Beyoncé or Christina Aguilera on the Studio 8H stage. “She’s kind of magical, really,” Mr. Mendes said on the phone. “People think, ‘Oh, she’s funny’, and they know her from sketch comedy. But she grounds the film. She’s so much the heart of the movie.”

“Did he really say that?” Ms. Rudolph said, pantomiming tears. “Did he tell you that I said the dumbest thing in my audition? I was all, ‘I really love this movie and I hope that if I can’t do it that you’ll get someone really great.’ It was one of those things where it’s like … really? That’s what you want to say at your job interview?”

She had fallen hard for the script. “I appreciated the description of Verona”—her character—“that she had what she considered problem hair and would sometimes stick things in it to keep it up. I know that person. I’ve lived with that person for 30-something years.”

But seriously … “I just thought, ‘I have to be a part of this,’” Ms. Rudolph said. “There was a part of me somewhere in the back of my brain that really truly always imagined getting a chance to do something like this, as crazy as that sounds. I never really knew what that was but I knew I wanted to do something special.”

“Special” was probably Ms. Rudolph’s genetic destiny. Her mother was the late, great soul singer Minnie Riperton; her father the songwriter Richard Rudolph. Just before Maya’s seventh birthday, Riperton died of breast cancer, only 31. Her most famous ballad, “Lovin’ You,” written by her husband, contains a “la-la” chorus she used to sing to soothe Maya to sleep, and high notes Mariah Carey only wishes she could hit. Ever see an American Idol contestant try and perform that song? Instant failure and a spot on the loser reel.

“Do they really try and sing that? That’s a really bad idea,” Ms. Rudolph said. “I think we should send a message to anyone who auditions for that show that it’s safer to go with a different song because technically, nobody has that register. Just to make them feel better, I can’t sing it! So they shouldn’t even try.”

After the end of her Saturday Night Live run, Ms. Rudolph, Mr. Anderson and Pearl moved back to Los Angeles, where Ms. Rudolph grew up (she attended St. Augustine by the Sea School with Gwyneth Paltrow, still a close friend). “It’s my hometown,” she said. “And it’s nice when you are starting your family to be near family.” 

Meanwhile, she’s about to rejoin the SNL family (including David Spade, Rob Schneider and Colin Quinn) as Chris Rock’s wife in an Adam Sandler–scripted comedy tentatively titled Grown Ups. “I feel like we’re from the same school and I’m JV and they’re from varsity,” Ms. Rudolph said modestly. She initially refused to watch the dailies of Away We Go, but then forced herself to sit down and watch the film. Told that The Observer had cried (audibly) at certain scenes, she said: “That makes me weirdly happy. And, I’ll tell you, I cried too. And that then made me laugh at myself, ’cause I’m a crazy person. I mean, I’m watching myself. I knew what was coming!” She laughed. “It’s so stupid. But it moved me.”

svilkomerson@observer.com

Of course with the limited June release date (it hits theaters on June 5th, up against The Hangover) and indie rock music cue (Alexi Murdoch’s "All My Days", for collectors), Away We Go is being positioned as more like a sequel to Garden State than Kicking and Screaming. We guess that's fine for marketing purposes, but considering Dave Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida wrote this new film, we assume the script has a little more meat on its bones than something written by Zach Braff—in a race for which movie has aged worse during the last ten years, Garden State narrowly beats out American Beauty. Speaking of which, there is also the matter of Mr. Mendes. We'd venture to guess the director has never even seen Garden State, but what he's obviously studied endlessly are Mike Nichols' The Graduate, Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-drunk Love and the aforementioned Noah Baumbach oeuvre—the two-minute trailer features homage's and outright lifts from all of those movies and directors. Hey, if you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best.

While their show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg isn’t until January 30, we have a feeling this thing will sell out soon. It’s the only show the Apes have scheduled at the moment. [Tickets on sale now]

With roles opposite Jack Black in Be Kind Rewind and as Chuck Berry in Cadillac Records, Mos Def’s recent film career has overshadowed his musical prowess—a talent which, according to some fans and critics, has been in decline ever since 1999’s Black on Both Sides. Still, our man Dante Smith is not about to pass the mic anytime soon. He’s got a new single, “Life in Marvelous Times,” and a new record, The Ecstatic, due out “soon” on Downtown Records. Until then, you can catch him at the Highline Ballroom on Friday, January 9. [Tickets on sale now]

In other hip-hop news, Afrika Bambaataa is coming to Le Poisson Rouge this Saturday with Low B and Million Dollar Mano. Bam—who many believe first coined the term “hip-hop”—is one of the genre’s godfathers. But he's also credited with jump-starting everything from Miami bass to Latin freestyle to house music. His most famous track, 1982’s “Planet Rock,” marked the first time a synthesizer landed on a hip-hop track, and single-handedly gave birth to electro-funk. Head to the West Village to pay your respects to a Bronx-born legend. [Tickets on sale now]

THEATER

The idea behind the Bridge Project—a classic repertory theater company created by a British director (Sam Mendes), an American actor (Kevin Spacey), and the executive director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Joseph Melillo)—is to create a truly international theater, a place where British and American actors can settle in for intensive, long-term collaborations. The Project pairs three Brits—Simon Russell Beale, Sinéad Cusack, and Rebecca Hall—with three Americans—Richard Easton, Josh Hamilton, and Ethan Hawke. The cross-cultural experiment kicks off tomorrow night with the opening of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at BAM’s Harvey Theater. The same cast takes on The Winter’s Tale beginning February 10, also at BAM, before heading to Singapore on March 8. [Tickets on sale now]