Skyfall-In: The Education of Sam Mendes

Thunderball (1965)

I wrote about Skyfall, the new James Bond movie, over at NPR Monkey See. The piece is basically my apology to director Sam Mendes for having expected him to screw this thing up. Gently Mendes-dissing line I wish I'd written: In his Skyfall review at Grantland, Zach Baron described Mendes as "taking a break from plastic-bagging the American Dream in Revolutionary Road and American Beauty to shred the enduring illusions of his native country instead."

Skyfall was partially shot in Istanbul, as was my favorite entry in the half-century-old 007 film series, 1963's From Russia with Love. I contributed some thoughts on why 007 No. 002 is still No. 001 in my book to critics' polls at Criticwire and DCist last week.