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Summer is vacation season. This year, let’s presume you’ve set your sights on going abroad. First you take a deep breath and buy the plane tickets. Ouch — they’re pretty steep, an unpleasant fact explained by two little words: “peak season.”

Here’s a bold statement: Giving your children the chance to watch classic films can be just as vital as anything they learn in school. 

It boggles the mind that only a couple of generations back, women were sometimes referred to as “the weaker sex.” That’s not only sexist, but misleading.  Plenty of tough, cunning, even deadly female characters have graced the screen over the past six decades that prove this idiotic saying wrong.   Here are an even dozen.

Though we live in the era of the multi-hyphenate and multi-tasker, we still get a boot out of personalities we know for one function, showing up in a totally unexpected context, and in doing so revealing an otherwise hidden side—and hidden talents.  When a non-actor appears on-screen there is a moment of held breath. Will he or she be…good? After all, acting is hard. Acting takes sweat and years of training, whether in techniques by Stella Adler, Lee Strasberg, or doing improv on weeknights for decades, with no break in sight. And yet, from out of the blue, a soccer star, jazz musician, or gossip columnist will cruise onto the set and turn in the performance of a seasoned vet.

We don’t usually think of them this way, but movies are made in pieces. Little bits of footage are cut and assembled into something that hangs together, and ideally, makes sense. Editing is a complicated, delicate skill, practiced by professionals who’ve spent years refining their craft.

Where yesterday’s list highlighted the beauties of yesteryear (Most Dazzling Bond Girls from the '60s and '70s), today’s list covers the recent past, present, and near future of Bond Girls. If there’s one common thread through all five of these choices – other than awe-inspiring beauty, shapely legs, and handiness with handguns – it’s the more modern trend towards depicting women with the self-respect, ingenuity, and smarts to match James Bond himself.    Though filmmakers aren’t likely to give up the “Damsel in Distress” plot device anytime soon, it’s nice to see “well-rounded” (sorry!) women featured in this series – women who can go toe-to-toe (so to speak) with 007 any day. With that said, on to the list!  

Two gunslingers stand toe-to-toe in a dusty crossroads… on the left, a powerfully built man donning a cowboy hat and wearing a leather vest and bandanna; on the right, a tall, cool customer in a serape, with a rope burn ‘round his throat.     You duck down inside an old barrel and hold your breath… a tumbleweed rolls by… and the church bells chime…. bong… bong…bong... (Cue the “Waah Waah Waah Waah Waah” of Ennio Morricone’s signature soundtrack theme).     As far as I’m concerned, the only man thick-skinned enough to stand up in a town square to the cool, rattler squint of Clinton “Clint” Eastwood, would be the Duke himself (better known as John Wayne). But on which would you stake your claim when facing a hail of bullets?