Elvis streaming channel débuting on multiple platforms

82 views
Skip to first unread message

Bob Jersey

unread,
Jun 28, 2022, 5:48:56 PM6/28/22
to TVorNotTV
Cinedigm told Variety (f'rinstance) about a year ago it was going to do this.

Amazon's Freevee and Byron Allen's company's Local Now are among the participants.


B

Kevin M.

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 1:53:10 PM6/30/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
Question for the group: Has anyone tried to watch any of the Elvis movies recently? I have… they are bad. They aren’t even kitschy bad or nostalgic bad or so bad they are good… they are just bad. 

Semi-related: I recently rewatched the James Bond movie “Goldfinger”… it did not age well. Even if you could set aside the sexism and racism, the parts of the story intended to be dramatic seem comical, and the intended comedy falls flat. And the story: the villain is a biggish man who cheats at golf… I’m quaking in my boots. 

I will always be a fan of Bond, just as I will always be a fan of Elvis, but sometimes it is best to leave the past in the past. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/05cce134-b5be-4216-baf1-665168a09e4bn%40googlegroups.com.
--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 7:36:54 PM6/30/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
The Elvis movies have not aged badly; they have always been horrible.

Bond films age unevenly. I agree Goldfinger is not nearly as good as I once thought it was. OTOH, Dr. No is still pretty damn good.

--
Sent from Gmail Mobile

Kevin M.

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 7:49:44 PM6/30/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 4:36 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
The Elvis movies have not aged badly; they have always been horrible.

Agreed. Any attempts to televise or broadcast or stream those films is only going to lower the reputation of Elvis to future generations. 


Bond films age unevenly. I agree Goldfinger is not nearly as good as I once thought it was. OTOH, Dr. No is still pretty damn good.

Also agreed. To me, the stories that stay closest to the original novels seem to be better than the ones that kept the title and changed everything else. Aside from being set in Japan, You Only Live Twice bears little resemblance to the Fleming novel… the novel was one of my favorites. The Casino Royale starring Daniel Craig worked because it remained true to Fleming’s characters and story. 

--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

Tom Wolper

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 8:08:39 PM6/30/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
I didn’t reply because I thought Kevin was referring to recent movies coming out about Elvis. The Hollywood Elvis movies were terrible because Hollywood in that era was terrible. Elvis didn’t have any acting chops and trying to pair him with a visionary director or really make anything that wasn’t visual chewing gum would have alienated the Elvis fan base and his management. Sinatra was a teen idol just as much as Elvis would later become but try and picture Elvis in The Man With the Golden Arm, From Here to Eternity, or The Manchurian Candidate.

The Fleming Bond novels were pulp fiction. They functioned well as mens’ adventure stories when they were written though they have comic book characters and plotting. The Goldfinger story in the book is exceptionally stupid. Getting a good movie out of it is always going to be difficult and they built the franchise by concentrating on gadgets and special effects.

Whatever you think of Dr. No, at the end of the movie (spoiler alert) Bond takes out the stronghold by turning off the coolant to the nuclear reactor core, causing a meltdown. Of course in the movie it just causes a conventional explosion and not the apocalyptic effect of a molten reactor core entering the Caribbean Sea.

Kevin M.

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 8:23:13 PM6/30/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 5:08 PM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:
I didn’t reply because I thought Kevin was referring to recent movies coming out about Elvis. The Hollywood Elvis movies were terrible because Hollywood in that era was terrible. Elvis didn’t have any acting chops and trying to pair him with a visionary director or really make anything that wasn’t visual chewing gum would have alienated the Elvis fan base and his management. Sinatra was a teen idol just as much as Elvis would later become but try and picture Elvis in The Man With the Golden Arm, From Here to Eternity, or The Manchurian Candidate

The Beatles movies were on par with the Elvis movies, but the Beatles wisely seem disinclined to recirculate those theatrical train wrecks. Sinatra had some bad movies, too, but as the examples you referenced illustrate, either he or his handlers tried to put him in films with some gravitas. That said, “4 for Texas” starring Sinatra, Dean Martin, a Bond girl, AND the Three Stooges is, in this writer’s humble opinion, so bad it is good.


The Fleming Bond novels were pulp fiction. They functioned well as mens’ adventure stories when they were written though they have comic book characters and plotting. The Goldfinger story in the book is exceptionally stupid. Getting a good movie out of it is always going to be difficult and they built the franchise by concentrating on gadgets and special effects.

Whatever you think of Dr. No, at the end of the movie (spoiler alert) Bond takes out the stronghold by turning off the coolant to the nuclear reactor core, causing a meltdown. Of course in the movie it just causes a conventional explosion and not the apocalyptic effect of a molten reactor core entering the Caribbean Sea.

Considering how little money was spent on those early Bond films, we should be grateful any explosion was featured at all. Sean Connery had to pay for his own hairpieces back then. 

--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

Jim Ellwanger

unread,
Jun 30, 2022, 8:26:52 PM6/30/22
to 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV
"A Hard Day's Night" is available on HBO Max. I think that one is a long way from being a train wreck.


Tom Wolper

unread,
Jul 1, 2022, 12:57:05 PM7/1/22
to TV or not TV
On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:23 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Beatles movies were on par with the Elvis movies, but the Beatles wisely seem disinclined to recirculate those theatrical train wrecks. Sinatra had some bad movies, too, but as the examples you referenced illustrate, either he or his handlers tried to put him in films with some gravitas. That said, “4 for Texas” starring Sinatra, Dean Martin, a Bond girl, AND the Three Stooges is, in this writer’s humble opinion, so bad it is good.

A Hard Day's Night is exactly the type of movie one would want Elvis to make. The producers got Dick Lester to direct and he wasn't beholden to any Hollywood tropes. He put together a documentary style movie that got to show The Beatles having fun and being cheeky and self-deprecating. And he got the requisite amount of musical numbers in. Help didn't reach those heights. I'm trying to imagine an Elvis version of Yellow Submarine and um...

As a mental exercise I've been trying to think of what would have happened if a good director of the Elvis era movies had made a movie with him. Someone like Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, or John Frankenheimer. First, I think Tom Parker, or whoever handled these things in Elvis's management, would have sent back the script and said "no way." If they did manage to get it to the shooting stage the director would probably get rid of Elvis within a week for not being up to the material. Hollywood wanted cheap and easy Elvis movies and that's what they put together for him.


The Fleming Bond novels were pulp fiction. They functioned well as mens’ adventure stories when they were written though they have comic book characters and plotting. The Goldfinger story in the book is exceptionally stupid. Getting a good movie out of it is always going to be difficult and they built the franchise by concentrating on gadgets and special effects.

Whatever you think of Dr. No, at the end of the movie (spoiler alert) Bond takes out the stronghold by turning off the coolant to the nuclear reactor core, causing a meltdown. Of course in the movie it just causes a conventional explosion and not the apocalyptic effect of a molten reactor core entering the Caribbean Sea.

Considering how little money was spent on those early Bond films, we should be grateful any explosion was featured at all. Sean Connery had to pay for his own hairpieces back then.

The more I think of Bond, both in the novels and the movies, the less I like him. I'll grant there's a limit to how much we can judge characters from another era by today's standards but Bond is drawn to appeal to adolescent boys. He embodies the worst of white attitudes at the end of the colonial era and he is an out-and-out misogynist.

PGage

unread,
Jul 1, 2022, 9:23:08 PM7/1/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 9:57 AM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:
The more I think of Bond, both in the novels and the movies, the less I like him. I'll grant there's a limit to how much we can judge characters from another era by today's standards but Bond is drawn to appeal to adolescent boys. He embodies the worst of white attitudes at the end of the colonial era and he is an out-and-out misogynist.
I now I am supposed to agree with you about this, but I don’t. The western world was racist, misogynist and imperialistic in the 1960s. That sucked. I was a kid in that decade, and even I knew that’s how it was, and how much it sucked - I didn’t need Twitter in the second decade of the 21st century to enlightenment me. But I don’t expect the cultural products from the mid century to be censored or bowdlerized, not just because that would mar the product, but because  it would also cover up the fact of the transgressive customs. See recent thread on the Julia Child mini series.

 I am a huge fan of Le Carre’, who is positioned as the anti Bond, but I find I can enjoy both. I am not a fan of the Roger Moore era, but the Bonds that followed were increasingly less chauvinistic, and even somewhat less ethnocentric. 

The idea of a small group of intelligence service officers who are allowed to make crucial life and death decisions affecting international relations with potentially catastrophic consequences is I think an inherently interesting set-up, and while Bond may not be as cynical and world weary as George Smiley, he often knows enough to be almost as distrustful of his own side, and of careerist conformity and ass kissing, as he is of the other side. That’s not bad. 

Bob Jersey

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 9:30:30 AM7/3/22
to TVorNotTV
Until well after the star died, and his own health failed, the Colonel, and a modest staff, were it as far as Elvis' organization (which likely makes those who wished, f'rinstance, that the current movie had been built more around Parker, even more wishful thereof)   B

Tom Wolper, to Kevin M, in part, July 1st:

Tom Wolper

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 1:22:47 PM7/3/22
to TV or not TV
I'm not going to tell people what they should and should not enjoy. I have been developing these thoughts about the Bond franchise but I haven't shared them and I see my argument needs work so I'll be less of a scold.

The thing I have become aware of, mostly watching European movies in the time of lockdown, is that there were films being made that went against Bond's world. Maybe they never made it beyond art theaters and college towns. If I'm sensitive to anything in this, it's not the existence of Bond movies, it's the idea that the movies are good clean fun and shouldn't be evaluated.

Le Carré seems to me for adults in a way Bond is for teenage boys.

Kevin M.

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 1:45:16 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
This year I showed my middle school students The Maltese Falcon, because it is a favorite of mine and because it exposes them to something completely outside what they know and enjoy. And in a classroom setting, a halfway decent teacher has to prepare students to watch something, and let them know that what was acceptable at one point in time is not necessarily acceptable now. Like James Bond, Sam Spade is a flawed hero, mistreats and uses every woman he meets, smokes too much, drinks too much, and yet he IS the hero, in spite of his flaws. Getting my students to accept that is difficult but not impossible. And I suspect if I were to show an early Bond movie to them, I’d first have to do quite a bit of preparation as well. 

In larger terms, history forces us to deconstruct every person and every major event. The founding fathers were slave owners. The puritans who set up the first colonies were right wing fundamentalists who make the MAGA cult seem liberal by comparison. And Christopher Columbus…! The less said about his personality the better. But being able to understand their flaws yet appreciate individual achievements done by otherwise contemptible people is at the core of how we critically examine the past, whether in terms of history or media. 

I fully understand those who reject the Bond character, because he is of a different time with very different sensibilities. As I said, rewatching some of the earlier films is problematic to me, but not enough to reject the entire franchise, and not enough that I want the character totally rewritten into something he isn’t. 




--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

PGage

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 3:23:38 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
I wasn’t pushing back against your tone, which I did not find too preachy, but more against the tone taken by my children and their friends, with whom I have a (mostly) friendly running debate about this.

But I also have a running (and far less friendly) debate with acquaintances who love the Bond from the 60’s and 70’s (Connery and Moore), and are outraged by suggestions of a non-white or non-male Bond. Not only am I in favor of diverse Bond portrayals for lots of obvious reasons, but one reason the outrage about it disturbs me is that it suggests a reification and a seriousness about the classic era films and original novels that is not justified. Roger Moore himself criticized Bond diversity, saying that James Bond was white, deal with it (in the same tone that Fox News anchors used to argue for white Jesus and white Santa Claus). 

But of course, not only is James Bond not a real guy, but he is not even a realistic portrayal of an MI-6 agent, nor is he really intended to be. And the contemporary Bond is not fighting The Cold War (though he may still be fighting Russians), and is no longer a creature of the 1960s, so there is no reason 007 can’t be of West Indian, or Asian descent, or be a cis-woman or a trans-man. 



--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.

Kevin M.

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 4:08:16 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 12:23 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
I wasn’t pushing back against your tone, which I did not find too preachy, but more against the tone taken by my children and their friends, with whom I have a (mostly) friendly running debate about this.

But I also have a running (and far less friendly) debate with acquaintances who love the Bond from the 60’s and 70’s (Connery and Moore), and are outraged by suggestions of a non-white or non-male Bond. Not only am I in favor of diverse Bond portrayals for lots of obvious reasons, but one reason the outrage about it disturbs me is that it suggests a reification and a seriousness about the classic era films and original novels that is not justified.

I’m not outraged by the idea, but they already made a successful franchise where Bond was an American woman… it was called “Alias” and I enjoyed it, too.

At their first meeting, Judi Dench’s M referred to Pierce Brosnan’s Bond as a “sexist, misogynistic dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War,” and that’s the conceit of the character. I welcome a series about a secret agent who isn’t that, but I’d ask that he (or she) not be named James Bond. I would further make a motion that the next reboot of Bond be set back in the Cold War, because the farther you remove the character from his original setting, the harder it is to make it work. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed the Daniel Craig era, but Bond doesn’t really belong in the present day. 


Roger Moore himself criticized Bond diversity, saying that James Bond was white, deal with it (in the same tone that Fox News anchors used to argue for white Jesus and white Santa Claus). 

But of course, not only is James Bond not a real guy, but he is not even a realistic portrayal of an MI-6 agent, nor is he really intended to be. And the contemporary Bond is not fighting The Cold War (though he may still be fighting Russians), and is no longer a creature of the 1960s, so there is no reason 007 can’t be of West Indian, or Asian descent, or be a cis-woman or a trans-man. 



On Sun, 3 Jul 2022 at 10:22 AM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 9:23 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 1 Jul 2022 at 9:57 AM Tom Wolper <two...@gmail.com> wrote:
The more I think of Bond, both in the novels and the movies, the less I like him. I'll grant there's a limit to how much we can judge characters from another era by today's standards but Bond is drawn to appeal to adolescent boys. He embodies the worst of white attitudes at the end of the colonial era and he is an out-and-out misogynist.
I now I am supposed to agree with you about this, but I don’t. The western world was racist, misogynist and imperialistic in the 1960s. That sucked. I was a kid in that decade, and even I knew that’s how it was, and how much it sucked - I didn’t need Twitter in the second decade of the 21st century to enlightenment me. But I don’t expect the cultural products from the mid century to be censored or bowdlerized, not just because that would mar the product, but because  it would also cover up the fact of the transgressive customs. See recent thread on the Julia Child mini series.

 I am a huge fan of Le Carre’, who is positioned as the anti Bond, but I find I can enjoy both. I am not a fan of the Roger Moore era, but the Bonds that followed were increasingly less chauvinistic, and even somewhat less ethnocentric. 

The idea of a small group of intelligence service officers who are allowed to make crucial life and death decisions affecting international relations with potentially catastrophic consequences is I think an inherently interesting set-up, and while Bond may not be as cynical and world weary as George Smiley, he often knows enough to be almost as distrustful of his own side, and of careerist conformity and ass kissing, as he is of the other side. That’s not bad.

I'm not going to tell people what they should and should not enjoy. I have been developing these thoughts about the Bond franchise but I haven't shared them and I see my argument needs work so I'll be less of a scold.

The thing I have become aware of, mostly watching European movies in the time of lockdown, is that there were films being made that went against Bond's world. Maybe they never made it beyond art theaters and college towns. If I'm sensitive to anything in this, it's not the existence of Bond movies, it's the idea that the movies are good clean fun and shouldn't be evaluated.

Le Carré seems to me for adults in a way Bond is for teenage boys.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiHgxB8gisr6_t7175zM1r3dkazS04c7SGOxth2oTLH4ZA%40mail.gmail.com.
--
Sent from Gmail Mobile

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

b.b...@suddenlink.net

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 5:08:21 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com, PGage

---- PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But I also have a running (and far less friendly) debate with acquaintances
> who love the Bond from the 60’s and 70’s (Connery and Moore), and are
> outraged by suggestions of a non-white or non-male Bond.

Such was the argument when Jodie Whittaker was named the Doctor several years back - and she was playing a character who, back in the '60s, once had his female companion fetch coffee while the menfolk solved the problem du jour.

It will only get more interesting when Afro-Scot Ncuti Gatwa takes over next year.

PGage

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 6:12:26 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
I would say if the argument is that what makes the series unique is the specific identity of James Bond, then it would also be true that there should be no more films in the series outside of his active timeline as an agent.

But I don’t buy that argument, I think the series is about Double-Oh-Seven. That is one of 9 very special MI-6 Officers, who not only have a license to kill, but very wide leeway to make decisions in the field that have national and international security implications. Among that elite group, Bond is even more unique, in terms of style, cool, charisma and cynicism. I am satisfied that such a formula can be meaningfully and interestingly translated into different eras, with different kinds of identities. 

Also, I can’t sign on to the argument that Sydney Bristow can in any meaningful way be seen as a female or American version of James Bond.

Kevin M.

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 6:25:49 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
Because it was written into the character early on that The Doctor can regenerate and turn into any human form, I applaud all the possible permutations that have (and will) occur. As for The Doctor’s earlier misogyny, that was (sadly) very much in keeping with that era of television. At least later series of DW featured companions who often did the rescuing as opposed to needing to be rescued. Clara Oswald was hands down the most vital crew member on the TARDIS for at least two of The Doctor’s regenerations. 






--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

Kevin M.

unread,
Jul 3, 2022, 6:46:00 PM7/3/22
to tvor...@googlegroups.com
On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 3:12 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
I would say if the argument is that what makes the series unique is the specific identity of James Bond, then it would also be true that there should be no more films in the series outside of his active timeline as an agent.

But I don’t buy that argument, I think the series is about Double-Oh-Seven. That is one of 9 very special MI-6 Officers, who not only have a license to kill, but very wide leeway to make decisions in the field that have national and international security implications. Among that elite group, Bond is even more unique, in terms of style, cool, charisma and cynicism. I am satisfied that such a formula can be meaningfully and interestingly translated into different eras, with different kinds of identities.

If the producers wanted to do a series akin to “Mission: Impossible” where different movies followed different Double-Oh agents and operatives, each with varying backgrounds, genders, personalities, and attributes, I’d be on board with that. And every couple films the various agents could assemble as a team to handle a superbig supervillain. Marvel certainly has found success along those lines. 

But 007 is James Bond, and James Bond is who he is. To state that James Bond is not a woman is not the same thing as saying there should be no movies about female secret agents. I’m not enough of a novel purest that I believe Bond must have thick dark hair and a dueling scar, because (and I say this as a ginger) hair color isn’t a defining character trait, but Bond’s misogyny is. Bond believing that this is a man’s world is central to the plot of every traditional Bond story. I suppose one could write a character who is both a lesbian and a misogynist, and it might be a great character, but it wouldn’t be James Bond. 

 

Also, I can’t sign on to the argument that Sydney Bristow can in any meaningful way be seen as a female or American version of James Bond.

OK, she’s not, but if you were to take away everything that is James Bond, but keep the elite secret agent solving big world problems and fighting big supervillains (which you essentially claim is the heart of Bond more so than his character/personality), well, then she is. 


--
Kevin M. (RPCV)

Tom Wolper

unread,
Jul 4, 2022, 1:23:16 PM7/4/22
to TV or not TV
On Sun, Jul 3, 2022 at 6:46 PM Kevin M. <drunkba...@gmail.com> wrote:

If the producers wanted to do a series akin to “Mission: Impossible” where different movies followed different Double-Oh agents and operatives, each with varying backgrounds, genders, personalities, and attributes, I’d be on board with that. And every couple films the various agents could assemble as a team to handle a superbig supervillain. Marvel certainly has found success along those lines. 

But 007 is James Bond, and James Bond is who he is. To state that James Bond is not a woman is not the same thing as saying there should be no movies about female secret agents. I’m not enough of a novel purest that I believe Bond must have thick dark hair and a dueling scar, because (and I say this as a ginger) hair color isn’t a defining character trait, but Bond’s misogyny is. Bond believing that this is a man’s world is central to the plot of every traditional Bond story. I suppose one could write a character who is both a lesbian and a misogynist, and it might be a great character, but it wouldn’t be James Bond.

The thing that got me reconsidering Bond years ago was a clickbait headline saying, "Should Idris Elba be the next James Bond?" In technical terms I'd think why not? He's got the right charisma and certainly knows how to act. But how should the character be written? If there's no acknowledgement of Bond being a Black secret agent then the wrong actor has been cast in the role. But then I thought about the scenes in the Caribbean in the books and the early movies where people of color were treated as happy natives and atmosphere and I wonder if a Black Bond should identify with them or ignore them like the white Bond does? And that led me to the question: should Bond accept his place as an agent of British colonialism? In the movies from the sixties, I get it. But if you're continuing the same character over the decades a new actor has to have some continuity. A Bond with different sensibilities (no matter how diverse you want to go with the actor) is a different Bond.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages