BONDage: a 007 Thread in Anticipation of SKYFALL

Kinclaid's 'Scottish' accent was crap!

I don't think the victim of the assassination was entirely related, it looked like just a meaningless mob hit by the gang that runs the casino and a reason to get Bond there.

That's what I thought.

On another note, SyFy is running another Bond marathon starting on Wednesday, showing most of the films over three days, though totally out of order. I shall be madly clearing space off the TiVo for that!

Nah, its just bad acting by an English cunt!

A cut scene would have established that the bad guys were selling stolen art to people and instead of selling it, killing the buyer, and taking the money - giving some of the money to the assassin (Patrice).

I think I read somewhere that they actually did consider bringing Connery in for this movie, but they didn't want him to become a distraction.

I think it would have been a fun cameo and a nice nod to the 50th anniversary.

I read that too...

Just FYI to those who are interested...

Amazon currently has the entire Bond Blu-Ray collection on sale for $129. That's about $6/movie!!!

Amazon.com: Bond 50

This film seems to put to rest the notion that "James Bond" is a code name, by giving us what seems to be the Bond family estate, by introducing a character from James Bond's past who recognizes him as James Bond, and by showing us the tombstone of James Bond's parents as Andrew and Monique (I think) Bond.

Given all that, it's clear that CraigBond's actual given name was James Bond.

If Bond were real, he probably would be ill-advised to go around introducing himself as "Bond, James Bond." Once Bond's enemies know his real name, I don't see what would stop them from sending their henchmen to his flat in London to kill him.

However, I did notice in Quantum of Solace that, when Bond handed someone his Universal Exports business card, the name on it was "R. Stirling." So, Bond must use a cover name part of the time.

Yes

Still, this is a reboot from the original Bond. It's possible that everyone after Connery just used James Bond as a code name to honor the original Connery-Bond (and because of the reputation associated with it in the spy community). With the reboot, we could see the next Bond using it as a code name to honor the original Craig-Bond.

Well, even if the name "James Bond" had ever been NOC*, it would've been unwise to KEEP using it over and over again.




*

Watched THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN over the weekend. It's actually nowhere near as bad as its reputation, at least for the first hour. Bond chasing Scaramanga is really well done and exciting. But once the Solex Agitator is introduced and it turns into "Bond vs. the energy crisis" it totally falls apart. The last third of the film is just a disaster. Nothing happens for any organic reason, and Scaramanga goes from the world's greatest assassin to bumbling solar power thief who doesn't understand how shit works. The shootout at the end is terrible, as well. But it's fun, sleazy (a little too sleazy at times) and for while, genuinely good.

Pluses: Everything about Christopher Lee as Scaramanga. The hair, the sideburns, the tracksuits, the sneer! It's all amazing.
M telling Q to shut up, twice.
The kung fu fight, even though it's clearly a Bruce Lee cash-in.
Bond getting sent the gold bullet kicks off the story really well.
"What's your name?" "Chew Mee!" "Really??
Andrea Anders' death is fucking chilling.
Bond's fight in the belly dancer's dressing room.
The sequence with Bond and the maker of the gold bullets.
Lulu's smutty theme song.
Even poor little Nick Nack is kind of amusing.
"Who'd want to put a contract on me?" "Jealous husbands! Outraged chefs! Humiliated tailors! The list is endless!"

Minuses: Sheriff Pepper returning. Seriously, why?
That horrible slide whistle noise when the car flips over.
Bond is really a dick (slapping Andrea, threatening to break her arm, then opening champagne for them both; pushing the Thai boy off the boat).
Bond having to shit the gold bullet out when he sucks it from the belly dancer's navel.
Everything about Mary Goodnight is horrible. She takes Bond's abuse with a smile, easily gets caught by Scaramanga, then seems to be semi-literate when she can't read the control panel for the laser.
The total lack of cohesion or logic in the last third of the film.
Making Macau look about as exotic as the floor of the Commerce Casino on a Tuesday afternoon.
The absurdity of Bond and Scaramanga's target walking into/out of the same place at the same time. Cheap and lazy.
The last joke drags on and on and on.
Sheriff Pepper's racism is unforgivable, even for the 70's.
Nick Nack throwing obviously empty bottles at Bond on the boat.

I give THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN 3 Bonds out of 007.

I was thinking 8/10. I only had one complaint. The minor characters were so minor that I hardly cared for them. The girl in the bar? Forgot her name. Useless for the most part, slap in any actress and it works. The new head of the agency? What was his name? Forgot, he got all of a minute of screentime and anyone could have played that role. They could have shot every last one of the supporting actors and I'd have felt they could just replace them with anybody else.

His name is M.

Perhaps not, but that last hour earns the film's reputation.

In all things--except maybe for characterization--Lee's Scaramanga is a pretty epic villain.

And he showed up again (in more-or-less the same role) in Superman II. That character was marginally amusing the first time; the second time was just a lazy recycling of a vaguely memorable character. Besides, don't you think that Thailand would the LAST place on Earth Sheriff Pepper and the missus would travel to on vacation?

Ugh! Still, that stunt is so awesome that even the stupidity of the sound track can't totally undermine it.

The roughing-up-Andrea part might've flown with Connery, but it just doesn't work with Moore. I think Moore himself had a problem with that; his Bond was always more of a gentleman.

Though she's a dim-witted damsel in distress, she's a hot damsel.

Sounds about right. One of my least favorites of the series.

Uh, M.

I think he played (capable) bureaucrat/politician very well. He holds up his end very well in the early exchange with Judi Densch.

In Bond films, most of the supporting characters DO wind up shot.

Gareth Mallory.

Dench's M is the only M not to have her name revealed in film.

It never made sense to me that M's real name was some kind of guarded secret during the Craig era. That makes about as much sense as Bond using his real name everywhere.

Haven't seen it yet. I'm kind of boycotting first run theaters after paying almost eleven bucks to see Batman at 4 in the afternoon. But I may succumb. I have been hearing the theme on the radio now and I like it a lot. It may well be come a classic on par with some of the Connery themes.

Thinking about it, there were some classics during the Moore era too, but they were more contemporary pop tunes.

Dench's M's name was

I'm rewatching Bond films, not in any particular order, but just as they strike my fancy. I'm trying to keep it fairly straight in terms of time frame, so I'm doing Connery/Moore films, then once those are all done, I'll go to Dalton, etc. But it's not like they follow strict continuity, and I've seen them all anyway, so without further ado...

THUNDERBALL.

Another one I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and I couldn't remember anything from the first hour. There's a reason for that. Unfortunately, THUNDERBALL hasn't held up well, and I was pretty bored during most of it. The story is compelling, but it takes so long to get going that the stakes don't seem especially high. SPECTRE steals two British atomic bombs, ransoms a city in the US and UK, and the ransom gets paid. Why was it even a big deal to get the bombs back? In any case, the script moves really, really slowly, and things that should probably take one scene (landing the plane in the water, moving the bombs, etc) take 10-15 minutes. Very little actually happens in the movie, and what does happen takes too long to unfold.

One thing I really missed was the "Fleming sweep." Bond gets his orders, goes to Nassau, and is there for almost the entire movie. I get that Nassau was a really exotic location in the mid-60's, but compared to the passport-stamping mania of later Bonds, it feels static and inert. And with the exception of the underwater shootout, the diving scenes are really hard to follow. I also felt like Bond didn't really have to do that much, just follow the trail of breadcrumbs to Largo. He's up in the air with Felix, sees the plane under the netting and figures it all out. Too easy. And the coincidence of him recognizing Domino from the picture in the dossier because he'd just seen the dead pilot at the health spa (another sequence that takes way too long to get going) was just really lazy.

THUNDERBALL isn't a bad movie, or even a bad Bond movie, it's just a letdown from GOLDFINGER.

Pluses:
The SPECTRE board room scene is high camp at its best.
Fiona is a great character, and her death scene is probably the best single moment in the film. "Can you look after my friend? She's just dead."
Love when Q shows up in Nassau. Connery's reaction of "oh, no..." is great. As is Q's blue pineapple shirt.
SPECTRE demanding 100 million pounds in "uncut white diamonds" is hilariously specific.
Love the pre-credits sequence, especially throwing flowers on the SPECTRE guy's corpse. And the jetpack, of course.
"I think he got the point."
The sequence with Bond getting the power to the island cut, then shooting his way through Largo's estate is really well done and exciting.
Bond walking into Fiona's bathroom and handing her sandals. Connery Bond to a T.
Despite dragging, the underwater shootout is still exciting.
Tom Jones! He does seem to have missed a memo about nobody in the movie being named Thunderball, though.

Minuses:
It's too long. 130 minutes is way too much for a film that doesn't have that much of a story. Trimming the fat in certain scenes and speeding everything up a bit would make it such a stronger film.
Bond on the massage torture rack...yeah, that kind of gave me motion sickness.
Everything from right after the credits to the fake pilot being killed by Largo is just way too drawn out. Any Bond movie where Bond vanishes for a decent chunk of it has a strike against it.
Largo isn't all that exciting as a villain, and his flunkies are just random puffy white guys in black turtlenecks. Vargas seems to be the prototype for the Spartan henchman who enjoys neither food nor sex nor drink, only killing. The rest make no real impact.
Sharks. We get it. A lot of sharks.
There were moments where I just felt like Bond had it too easy. Especially when Felix shows up and kind of does a lot of the work for him.
A ton of obvious syncing and dubbing mistakes. Pretty standard for films of this time, especially when so many actors had their voices dubbed. But still jarring.
The Skyhook escape at the very end is great, but why does that scene take so long? It feels like Bond spends five minutes putting the thing together. And no quip at the end?!?

THUNDERBALL is pretty to look at and has some great moments, but feels too slow and stiff to make the impact it should. I give it 3 Bonds out of 007.

Thunderball is one that seems to go lower in esteem over time. Yes, it's got some great parts (the Tom Jones theme song, the jet pack, "she's just dead") but if suffers from an uninteresting villain (Largo) and a "good" Bond Girl (Domino) who's hardly memorable compared to the "bad" one (Fiona). The underwater sequences were hugely innovative at the time, but we've seen plenty of them since (in Bond films and elsewhere) and now they come across as somewhat tedious to me.

I think the non-canonical remake, Never Say Never Again, is a much more entertaining take.

Funny, after having freshly re-watched all of the Bond films, I'm somewhat surprised that:

1. Both Dalton films get better over time, especially License to Kill which I disliked when I saw it in the theater and which I now find a decent middle-of-the-pack Bond film.

2. Roger Moore's earlier films are better than I remembered (and The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the best of the series) and Moore's next-to-last, Octopussy, which I had heretofore considered bottom of the barrel, is actually quite good.

3. Not all of the Connery films are good. Diamonds are Forever is one of my least favorite of the Bond films, right down there with Live and Let Die and Moonraker.

4. Although it's become fashionable to knock the Brosnan films, I think they're all pretty good. I'll even go so far as to call the much-maligned The World is Not Enough one of my favorites. There I said it.

5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service, is much better than its reputation would suggest, as is the performance by the George Lazenby ESPECIALLY given the huge shoes he had to fill. This film would be even better if it didn't have a really slow 30 minutes (Bond as "Hilly" in the Piz Gloria) sequence in the middle.

Unless I was imagining things, they put lots of nods to the older films in this--the setting in Istanbul ("From Russia With Love"), the "Goldfinger" Aston, the choice of villain was similar to "Goldeneye" and, IIRC, "License to Kill". There were other things.

Something that stood out that may have just been a coincidence is the one assassination scene. The book version of "You Only Live Twice" (which, of course, is set in Asia) starts with Bond shooting someone with a rifle from another high-rise. In that story there's a second sniper whose job is to shoot a split second before Bond to shatter the glass of the other building so there's no danger of Bond's bullet deflecting enough to miss.