Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Casino Royale (2006) -vs- On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

The Smackdown.  Nobody ever forgets their first time.  And get your mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about James Bond and what it takes for an actor to play him on an initial outing.

James Bond has a long franchise of adaptations, interpretations, and revitalizations spanning nearly fifty years.  With such a lineage, it's only natural that there'll be some intra-family rivalry.  Today we put up two highly-touted revampings designed to help Bond fans overcome two of the most popular actors to depict James Bond: Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan. 

On Her Majesty's Secret Service attempted to co-opt the loyalty of Bond fans by paying respect to Ian Fleming's original stories beyond just their titles, and of course sliding in newcomer George Lazenby as Bond... James Bond.  Casino Royale did much the same, using an orthodox choice in Daniel Craig to return to source material while retooling Bond for Jason Bourne-style audiences.  While Daniel Craig's Bond is certainly meaner and tougher, can this blond-haired Bond match up against the man better known as the post-Connery Bond?  Which one makes good on their promise to decrypt Double-O Seven and break territory ignored by previous Bond formulas?

The Challenger.  Fans felt there'd be no dying another day for the Bond franchise after Pierce Brosnan's last Bond outing in the overwrought and cheesy Die Another Day.  Faced with serious spy thrillers like Alias and The Bourne Identity, producers scrambled back to Ian Fleming and his first Bond novel, "Casino Royale." Daniel Craig, "the new guy," sparked hell among fans for his demeanor, blond-hair, and overall scruffy appearance.  Introducing the legendary spy at the beginning of his career, Casino Royale pits a cocky and inexperienced Bond against the poker-playing banker of the world's terrorists, Le Chiffre.  Although adding entire sequences and ideas absent in Fleming's novel, the film stays loyal to the novel in that Bond learns a harsh lesson from too easily trusting, and loving, a beautiful colleague in this high-stakes thriller.

The Women (2008) -vs- Sex And The City (2008)

Women with Shoes

The Smackdown. After fifteen years in development, TV comedy queen Diane English ("Murphy Brown") has finally completed her Magnum Opus: a star-spangled remake of 1939’s "The Women."  Sixty-nine years after that classic film’s original release, the remake of "The Women" follows in the high-heeled footsteps and huge box office wake of this summer’s earlier "Sex And The City."  The two movies are remarkably similar, sharing an unapologetic chickflick sensibility and Ladies Only appeal. 

Both films claim to reflect a kind of reality and instead mirror an uppercrust New York City where money is never an issue, a New York City where walking a mile even in your own shoes is unthinkable.  Shoes aren’t for walking; they’re for collecting, and they render their owners hobbled Geisha girls suited only to taking tiny baby steps on pristine boulevards, linking arms for balance, in search of more shoes and more men.  Freud suggests that shoes are a symbol for female genitalia.  Movies suggest they are no longer symbolic at all, but replacements.

So it’s a catfight to the finish.  Or wait.  Could "The Women" be just a pale imitation of an imitation arriving a little too late to cash in to the zeitgeist?  Timing (and those shoes) are everything.

The Challenger.  Everyone in "The Women" goes to Saks! Everyone in the movie is a woman! Society woman Mary Haines discovers her husband is having an illicit affair. Her group of friends stick their noses in her business. Somebody has a baby. Nobody worries about money. They live in New York City and Connecticut, but most of the people are white and rich. We learn early on that several characters are very witty, but we never actually hear anything that convinces us of this. They change clothes a lot.

Mamma Mia! (2008) -vs- Hairspray (2007)

Dancing Queens

The Smackdown.  If you want to face a little music besides the superhero and comic-based releases that dominate the summer hoopla like "The Dark Knight," "Iron Man," "Hancock" and "Hell Boy II," we've got a couple that just might sing to you. Hitting some high notes of its own among these summer blockbusters has been the musical "Mamma Mia!" still showing surprising strength. This homage to the music of the pop group ABBA earned $175 million in its first two weeks. No musical has ever opened this strongly.

"Chicago," "Dreamgirls," "Sweeney Todd," and even "The Producers" gave new vitality to the form. "Mamma Mia!" offers the most recent evidence of resurgent strength. Perhaps most amazing, I heard the audience singing along with several of the tunes. It sets up a melodic Smackdown!: How does the sight of Meryl Streep singing and dancing stack up against last year's bona fide musical hit, "Hairspray?" 

The Challenger. "Mamma Mia!" has Sophie Sheridan getting married in the rundown hotel operated by her mother Donna (Streep) on a small Greek island. Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) wants to find the mysterious father she never met and Donna's old diary gives Sophie a chance to play detective. She finds references to three special men, and Sophie invites all three to the wedding with the idea she'll learn which one (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) is dear old dad. Mom knows nothing about this, and neither do the men. Adding to the confusion is a frisky pair of Donna's girlfriends (Christine Baranski, Julie Walters) who raise the general anxiety level. Characters advance the dramatic conflict by breaking into song. All Abba, all movie long. Eventually, the parental identities are sorted out at the alter, although the wedding ceremony plays out differently than originally planned. Phyllida Lloyd directed Catherine Johnson's script adapted from her stage play.

The Dark Knight (2008) -vs- Spider-Man 2 (2004)

DC/Batman/Nolan -vs- Marvel/Spider-Man/Raimi

The Smackdown. This may turn out to be our All-Time Heavyweight Smackdown -- the equivalent of Ali versus Frasier -- where both of the fighters are at the top of their games and both deserve to wear the champion's belt even though only one can.  The DC/Warner "The Dark Knight" in the ring against the Marvel/Columbia "Spider-Man 2" pits two comic book film sequels against each other, both of which are considered better than what preceded them, and what preceded them was considered fantastic.  Both are directed by the same men who were trusted with the franchise a second time after they had shed themselves of the responsibility of an "origin" story and could get deeper into their redefinition of what makes the character really come alive.  Because this Smackdown is bigger than life to begin with, we're handling it in a different way, too.  Each film will be represented by a separate critic who passionately advocates victory for his favorite film.  Then, at the end, you get to make the final call in our reader's poll.  Let's get the fight started...

The Challenger - The Dark Knight.   "The Dark Knight" picks up where "Batman Begins" left off.  Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne has literally gone to the dark side, prowling the streets battling crime using his new Batman alter-ego as his cover.  The way the new film tells it, he's been pretty successful:  criminals are afraid to come out at night, he's got a cozy relationship with the cops, and most people are pretty happy he's getting the job done.  With the crime lords looking for a new move to counter the Batman, they find an unstable, but powerful, ally in the Joker. 

We saw this film at a DGA (Directors Guild of America) screening at Howard Hughes Center here in LA on an IMAX theater.  Given that director Christopher Nolan was there for the Q&A afterward, I have to assume it was projected to the highest technical standards.  It was breathtaking. 

Nolan said that the thing that drove him to do this sequel was his desire, after creating such a vivid new re-imagining in "Batman Begins," was to answer the question:  "Who is the Joker in this world?"  He has done that, and more.

You'll hear that Heath Ledger is phenomenal in this role and he is.  Literally every second he is on the screen, you're simply afraid to look away because you'll something unique and special about this final performance given by Ledger before he died.

Something else that Nolan has done differently here is to give us Gotham City as it's meant to be.  He admitted that his first take was a little art-directed and that in this case he went for a "slight genre shift" by shooting a great deal more on location (mostly Chicago) and to give us a crime story that is more in the tradition of Michael Mann than Tim Burton's first time out with Batman.

Get Smart (2008) -vs- The Nude Bomb (1980)

Who's Sorry Now?

The Smackdown.  The Re-Make Express keeps rollin' its way down the box office tracks with no end in sight.  There are re-makes of classic movies.  Re-makes of classic TV shows (is “Three’s Company: The Movie” so far fetched)?  Re-makes of Re-makes!  The latest ‘re-imagining’ turns out to be the beloved "Get Smart," the show about a bumbling spy, who despite his unknowing ineptitude, thwarted comedic villains intent on world domination every week on TV.  I watched the show as a kid and so badly wanted some shoes with a secret phone in them.  I still do.  And with merchandising what it is, I'll probably get a pair that'll hold an iPhone.  Anyway, they tried to re-make the TV series almost three decades ago with Don Adams still in the role of Maxwell Smart and now it's Steve Carell exploring a brand-new kind of "Office" over at the place called "Control."  The Smack is On!

The Challenger. “Get Smart” (the 2.0 version) opens with the classic theme and Secret Agent 86 walking down a long hall past high-tech security doors to a simple telephone booth that drops him down into Control Headquarters.  But this isn’t your Grandpa’s Control Headquarters.  Nope.  This is the New and Improved Control (with a healthy budget for all the CGI). 

In a bit of inspired casting, Steve Carell assumes the Maxwell Smart role, but here he’s a Computer Analyst who dreams of becoming a Field Agent.  It seems Control is more like High School with its clicks of the "cool" spies (the Jocks) who look down on the Computer Nerds (the, uhm, Nerds).