Movies and TV

BATMAN: Under the Red Hood (2010) retells the resurrection of Robin #2, Jason Todd (whose history I synopsize here), following the original comics plotline fairly closely as the reborn Jason manages to antagonize the Joker and crimelord Black Mask while forcing both Batman and Jason to deal with issues from his death. Not up to the handling of Jason and Joker in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, but better than I expected. “The day doesn’t go buy that I don’t think about subjecting the Joker to the same horrendous tortures he’s inflicted on others—but if I go down into that place, I never come back.”
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1990) is a stage-play-on-video starring Timothy Dalton and Lynn Redgrave as the titular lovers engaging in war, scheming and politics against Anthony Geary’s Octavian (better than I’d have expected) and Walter Koenig’s Pompey, with John Carradine as a seer and Nichelle Nichols as Cleopatra’s chief handmaiden. Heavy on the stunt casting, as you can tell; Dalton is good, but Redgrave unsatisfactory, and overall this production didn’t hold me. “The next time I have a fight, I’ll make death love me—for I’ll contend even with his pestilent scythe!”
When Climax! adapted Casino Royale for TV, the movie rights came with it, which is how we wound up with
CASINO ROYALE (1967), the first Bond film outside the regular series. I love the premise——David Niven is the original Bond who despises the man now operating under his name (i.e. Connery) for his sexcapades and gadgets——but the execution is an insane, campy mess that doesn’t exploit the concept (once Niven takes over for the murdered M, why doesn’t he ban all the fancy gadgets we see in the Q sequence). The original baccarat plot is in there somewhere, with Peter Sellers squaring off against Orson Welles and Ursula Andress as an odd variation of Vesper Lynd; this also wastes the talents of John Huston, Wolf Mankiewicz, Joanna Pettet, Jacqueline Bisset, George Raft, Derek Nimo and Woody Allen (interesting to see how his screen persona was in place well before Take the Money and Run). Makes the worst of the official series look like North By Northwest. “We have chosen a new name for you——James Bond.”

TENSPEED AND BROWNSHOE was a delightful 1980 TV series that, unfortunately, didn’t even last a full season. Jeff Goldblum plays a stockbroker finally rebelling against his family to become a hardboiled (he wishes) PI, with Ben Vereen as “Tenspeed” Turner, a master conman who winds up as Goldblum’s partner. A funny detective parody (particularly the “Mark Savage” hardboiled novels we frequently hear Goldblum reading in voice-over) with two great leads, but it didn’t make the cut (it’s very obvious some reference, such as to Goldblum’s troublemaking sister, were seeding for the future).