February 5 movie: The Ipcress File. This was a nice counterpoint to Bond: Michael Caine plays a spy, and a good one, but one who doesn't really want to do it, and who lives and works in a much grittier world. The movie is super cool, even without the glamorous settings of the Bond movies. There's a great scene where Caine runs into his boss at the grocery store, and then lectures the boss on the value of the finer things (i.e. the champignon really are worth the extra money over the plain old button mushrooms). I think Bond would be down with the sentiment, but I can't see Bond cooking his own meals, much less doing his own shopping, not to mention arguing with M in the supermarket while their carts keep banging into the aisles.
As Lisa mentioned, the movie featured some very silly mind control. Which did not detract from my enjoyment. You just have to accept that anything high-tech in a 40 year old movie is going to look dated, and move on. And besides, while the technology itself was dated, the way the characters dealt with it wasn't at all. No cheap gimmicks like making a computer blow up by asking it "why?" (a low to which which my favorite show of the era, The Prisoner, did stoop).
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