First Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG 171

It's a goodie. Those of you who are only happy when we cover MONSTERS will find plenty to enjoy in this issue! Here's our usual link to a free preview. This issue has already shipped to subscribers and retailers.

SKYFALL Reaction

SKYFALL is very entertaining indeed, with some instant classic scenes (such as the one pictured above), but I need to absorb it and see it again; I feel it's too soon to place it above this or that. Also, after 50 years of mystery and present tense heroism, I don't take a ready shine to suddenly being told more about Bond's past, especially by a franchise newcomer like Sam Mendes, and particularly when it makes him seem less like Bond and more like a Bruce Wayne raised in the WOMAN IN BLACK house. But the film is at least right about this: the man who drove that Aston Martin was a Scot.

Thomson's THE BIG SCREEN

Started reading David Thomson's THE BIG SCREEN today and I swear I must have experienced six or seven shocks of perception in just the first equal number of pages. The perception does not have to do with what he sees, but how he understands what he sees, how different yet complementary that understanding is to mine, and how he shades it in the sharing of it. It's a rare pleasure to read about film and not feel you are being counseled or advised or worked-up but that you are following, with amusement and deepening appreciation, of your own free will, someone who is at least one step ahead of you and has a spring in that step.