Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups

What I've Been Into...

"Casino Royale," by Ian Fleming (1953). Meet James Bond, a British secret agent assigned to use his gambling prowess to bankrupt a sinister Soviet agent at the baccarat tables of an exclusive casino in northern French.

It all starts here, with many of the classic elements in place: M; SMERSH; preposterously named women; pretentiously delivered descriptions of food, drink and smokes; sadomasochistic torture; a car chase; misogyny... You know the drill, and it'd be silly to complain about it. Just enjoy it for what it is/was: Our first look at a now-classic pop culture character.

Fleming's writing, aside from all his snooty snob-splaining and his failed attempts to make baccarat seem interesting, is pretty decent. He deftly outlines Bond's central character and traits so that we know right off that this guy only presents as a gentleman. On the inside he's a stone-cold, self-centered killing machine, and he's not that smart, either. He grows a little bit, waking up to the fact that there are no good guys in this Cold War. And the obvious femme fatale plays him like a cheap fiddle. Yet he calls her a bitch.

And, despite the fact that I could only see Sean Connery, I love that Fleming's visual descriptor for Bond is Hoagy Carmichael.

Bill Frisell w/ Luke Bergman and Tim Angulo at the Aladdin Theater, Portland, March 12, 2026. I enjoy Frisell's compositions and his work with variously instrumented ensembles, but it's always a treat to hear him in a trio, particularly live. He allows himself more space to play and, seeing as how he's one of the greatest and most influential guitarists in history, that's a very, very good thing.

This was my second time seeing Frisell in a trio context and it was as exciting and rewarding as the first. Even as a player/improviser, Frisell is a composer. Watching him, you can see him thinking, considering and executing — all at once. Every note he plays is deliberate. There's no noodling, no showing off of the chops we all know he holds in vast reserve. And it's all beautiful, because the sound is considered, caring, thoughtful.

Starting with sonic abstractions — snippets of rhythm, stabs of notes and chords manipulated via looper, delay and other effects — and transitioning into more familiar, yet just as mysterious and evocative, territory, his set was captivating. Tunes ranged from a nod to Sonny Rollins with "I'm an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande)" and Billy Strayhorn ("Lush Life") to a grooving/surprising take on the Del-Fonics "La-La Means I Love You" and John Barry's (hey, more Bond!) exotic, gorgeous "You Only Live Twice."

Bergman on bass and Angulo on drums played as equal partners in creating the sound, not as sidemen merely supporting Frisell's explorations. Even when he's been provided the spotlight, Frisell can't seem to help sharing it. He's an exceedingly generous performer, to the point of acknowledging some of the sorrow, pain and stress we've all been feeling lately by concluding his performance with a lovely, uplifting and hopeful rendition of "We Shall Overcome."

Sunday Reads:

Variety has details on director Chloé Zhao’s failed Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ pilot:

The show is called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” but Buffy Anne Summers is barely in it. Rather than revolving around Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy, the shooting draft for the show’s pilot episode — written by sisters Nora and Lilla Zuckerman, and obtained by Variety — introduces an entirely new set of characters, and, crucially, a new Slayer, a 16-year-old high-schooler named Nova (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). In the Zuckermans’ original draft of the pilot, Buffy appears only at the end, in a tag.

...Over the course of the script for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale,” Nova, described as a “brainy introvert,” discovers that she’s the Slayer — and people in Sunnydale do know the mythology of what Slayers are because of what happened to the town back in Buffy’s day. Set during a “Vampire Weekend,” a Renaissance Faire-like celebration of the town’s dubious history, Nova takes down two actual vampires after coming into her powers. By the episode’s end, the formerly friendless Nova has a new Scooby Gang flanking her, to use “Buffy”‘s terminology. The script drops hints about what’s to come: Her dad, a photojournalist, is overly protective, and has moved them around a lot after Nova was kidnapped as a young child. And all the vampires that Buffy buried in the show’s 2003 series finale, when the Hellmouth collapsed in on itself, taking Sunnydale down with it, have been awakened. Nova would have her work cut out for her.

Cartoon Research celebrates Hanna-Barbera composer/arranger Ted Nichols:

Nichols was the H-B equivalent of Milt Franklyn at Warner Bros., composing music that continued the flippant, spot-on comedy of Carl Stalling. Nichols (along with de Mello) created cues for The Magilla Gorilla Show that became staples of H-B cartoons, as well as record albums, along with earlier Curtin music. In 1966, Curtin’s score for Alice in Wonderland, or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? and Nichols’ music for The Man Called Flintstone each yielded dozens of new cues, promptly added to the studio library (Alice cues can be heard as early as 1964.)

Ted Nichols’ music dominated such series as The Atom Ant Show, The Secret Squirrel Show, Space Ghost and Dino Boy, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, Herculoids, Shazzan, The Fantastic Four, Cattanooga Cats, Wacky Races and its spinoffs, Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.

Nichols occasionally post-scored Hanna-Barbera films and records. The assignment for The Man Called Flintstone was certainly a vote of confidence, as his experience, while considerable, was not as high profile in the industry as that of Marty Paich, a veteran of superstar recordings and television. Paich composed the background music for H-B’s first feature, Hey There It’s Yogi Bear (1964). However, his work for Alice and The Man Called Flintstone was limited to the songs, and those songs were not contracted for commercial records. Al Capps created simpler arrangements for Alice’s Hanna-Barbera record album based on the Paich charts.