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By Lee Pfeiffer

I have seen virtually every James Bond clone released by major studios during the 1960s but "Assignment K" had eluded me until it was released as a burn-to-order title by the Sony Choice Collection. I was expecting another low-brow effort done on a small budget and perhaps affording some guilty pleasures throughout. However, "Assignment K" was a pleasant surprise. It's an intelligently written, well-acted espionage yarn that goes to some lengths to avoid Bondisms in favor of a realistic scenario populated by realistic characters. The film was directed by the woefully under-rated Val Guest, whose talents were generally dismissed at the time as workmanlike competence but which today seem much more impressive. (Guest had some spy movie experience, having previously directed key segments of the multi-director farce "Casino Royale".) 

Stephen Boyd stars as Philip Scott, a high-powered executive of a London-based toy company. When we first meet him,...

To mark the 50th Anniversary of one of the most successful movie franchises of all time and as James Bond prepares for his 23rd official outing in Skyfall later this year, I have been tasked with taking a retrospective look at the films that turned author Ian Fleming’s creation into one of the most recognised and iconic characters in film history.

After the phenomenal box-office success of Thunderball in 1965 the Bond series producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were left looking for an out of this world adventure for Bond’s fifth outing, You Only Live Twice. When Richard Maibaum the screenwriter of all the previous films became unavailable the producers hired popular short story and children’s writer Roald Dahl to pen the screenplay. Dahl had been a close friend of Fleming but described the original novel as “Fleming’s worst book”. Taking only a handful of ideas from the story,...

Montral has another film festival, and I am willing to bet that our city has more film festivals than any other city in the world. Welcome the first annual Animaze Animation Film Festival, celebrating animation in all of its form. In thier inaugreal year, the festival is focusing on bringing the best animated films released worldwide that never made it to a North American audience in thier International Animated Film contest.

The festival is celebrating the 30th anniversary release of one of the greatest fantasy films (animated or otherwise) of all time, Heavy Metal with famed director Gerald Potterton in attendance

Here is the press release from the festival’s founder Michael Dahan

The Animaze Festival is also about contributing to the community on a local level with a Saturday Morning Cartoon show for charity and a rare documentary about legendary Looney Tunes director Friz Freleng with a special presentation...