James-Bonding with Kempenaar & Larsen on Filmspotting No. 563

1963's From Russia with Love is still my favorite 007 flick on most days.

It's been a few years since I sat in on an episode of Filmspotting, the great Chicago-based radio show and podcast devoted to dissection of movies new and old, famous and obscure, foreign and domestic. But now I can reveal that earlier in the week, founding host Adam Kempenaar sent me a highly classified diplomatic cable inviting me to join him an regular co-host Josh Larsen for the Top Five segment of this week's SPECTRE-themed show, devoted to Favorite Bond Things. I regret only that I did not refer to Diana Rigg's character from On Her Majesty's Secret Service by her full name, Contessa Teresa Di Vincenzo.

I supposed I might also have expounded more insightfully on how the big parkour chase at the top of Casino Royale (v. 2006) isn't just one of the most fluidly choreographed, masterfully shot-and-edited action set pieces of the 21st century; it shows us plenty about the brutal, clumsy nature of this film's younger, less seasoned 007, too. Or how my favorite "Bond girl," from that same film — Eva Green's British Treasury official Vesper Lynd — is Bond's equal not only in resolve and intelligence, but ultimately in cunning. She's playing him, the same way Bond uses sexuality to manipulate women in just about every Bond adventure to follow. (And they all follow this one.) Had I mentioned the marvelous cold-open car chase from Quantum of Solace, that would've been another chance to stick up for that oft-maligned sequel. But I already did that in my S.P.E.C.T.R.E. essay in The Atlantic last week.

Listen to the episode here.

Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 255: Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation

Jeremy Renner, Tom Cruise, and Ving Rhames in Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation.

It was my honor to spend, for the second consecutive year, my birthday — well, the eve of my birthday — at NPR with Team PCHH. Here're my notes and omissions on this thrilling episode.

• I can't believe I did not ask ace PCHH producer Jessica Reedy to play a few bars of Lalo Schifrin's "Theme from Mission: Impossible" to set up that segment. Sure, we all know what it sounds like, but any excuse to play it is a good one. What the hell is wrong with me?

• My friend and editor Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voice is a noted Tom Cruise-hater. We've debated the relative merits of Cruise's (terrific) Mission: Impossible films and (demonstrably inferior) Fast & the Furious series at a length that I feel is entirely age-appropriate for both of us. I wanted to quote Alan's line about how Cruise is less an actor than a running-man GIF file. The difference is that he considers that at insult and I think it's a compliment, at least when we're discussing an action picture. Vin Diesel looks intimidating standing still but doesn't move especially well. Cruise looks great in motion.
• Had I known on Monday evening when we taped this episode that the podcast U Talkin' U2 2 Me? would post an episode on Wednesday that features a long-form interview with U2, recorded in New York City the night before I saw the band play Madison Square Garden, that would've been What's Making Me Happy this week. Apparently this interview happened just prior to when The Edge and Adam Clayton crashed a 20th anniversary party for the best U2 fansite, @u2.com, where a U2 cover band was performing. For U2 to actually show up on a show that is at least 45 percent devoted to making (affectionate) fun of them is surreal. It won't stop all y'all from continuing to claim they are humorless, but it should.

• The Thing that I did say was Making Me Happy, and still is, Hamilton, now has a release date for its Black Thought and Questlove-produced cast album. 

Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small Batch Ed. — Terminator: Genisys (sic)

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a long-serving T-800. (Paramount/Skydance)

 Skyped in from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in beautiful New London, CT to dissect Terminator: Genisys (sic) — the underwhelming reboot of/fourth sequel to one of my favorite movies — with Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon. While I was taking in this movie in the “Luxury Seating” equipped Waterford 9 Cinemas, several of my fellow Critic Fellows, all ladies, were next door enjoying Magic Mike XXL. My proposal for a double feature was summarily rejected.

Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small-Batch Edition: Mad Max: Fury Road

Hugh Keays-Byrne (chalk white, center) as Immortan Joe in Fury Road (Jasin Bolland).

I was under the mojo-sapping influence of a stomach bug when I joined Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon in the studio for a Small Batch dissection of Mad Max: Fury Road, a film I love.

Readers of my Twitter feed know that matters of hydration are foremost in my mind during DC's April-to-November summers, what with 2015 being my 24th consecutive year as a runner and all. So while I accepted most of Fury Road's fantastical elements without question, the matter of how everyone in the movie didn't pass out from heat exhaustion after 30 seconds of combat was one I would be disposed to fixate upon even if I hadn't spent the night prior to the taping on my couch, curled up in the fetal position around a bottle of Gatorade.

And yet it never comes up in our discussion.

How? Professionalism.

I hope I did an okay job of explaining that while Fury Road is essentially one long chase involving dozens of what look to be astonishingly gas-guzzling (but also astonishing, full-stop) vehicles, the film is a marvel of narrative efficiency.

Hear us prattle on here.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Pop-Culture Pariahs

Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth are 40 percent of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. (Marvel)

On this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, I join host Linda Holmes and regular panelists Stephen Thompson and Glen Weldon to dissect Joss Whedon's super-packed super-sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Then we talk about what makes a pop culture pariah, or Why I Will Always Stick Up for James Cameron and U2 no matter what you or, more to the point, they say. This wasn't the place for me to go into about how U2 brilliantly satirized their own inflated post-The Joshua Tree celebrity while promoting their best album, 1991's Achtung Baby, and in the subsequent 1992-3 ZOO TV Tour, the stadium-rock spectacle so dazzlingly smart and subversive that no one has yet surpassed it – not even U2, though they have tried.

You can get a little taste of all that in the 1992 video below, if you dare.

And here they are 23 years later, having some fun with the Central Park bike accident last fall that landed Bono in the hospital for months and forced their planned weeklong, Songs of Innocence-promoting Tonight Show residency to be scrubbed. Also check out their performance of "Angel of Harlem" with The Roots, holy cow.