Observations on Bond, James Bond

[private joker]

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You're slumming and don't care for the character or the franchise.

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Um, yeah. That's what I just said.

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You're not a good judge for this kind of thing.

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Obviously. Here's another news flash: the sky is blue.

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Sorry, I'm not a good judge for some others; that's how it goes.

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Stop the presses.

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If the character being old and pathetic and the fight scene being cheesy is what draws you to pick your favorite film in the franchise, there's obviously no love lost between you and the franchise.

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Ya think so, doctor? Hey, did you hear Britney and K-Fed split up? No, seriously.

[Blarg]

Was any of that supposed to be clever?

I like you, PJ, but you're overly excitable.

[private joker]

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Was any of that supposed to be clever?

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No.

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I like you, PJ, but you're overly excitable.

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That was an excited post to you? Yikes. Anyway, I was just saying that you were stating the obvious. You basically repeated my post (and the first paragraph of my review) back to me as if it were a new thought.

[Blarg]

Oh yes it was. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

And oh yes it was. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Yikes indeed!

Anyway, yes, I was stating the obvious. Not that it's bad you have your opinions, because everyone has theirs and is entitled to it. The obvious thing to me was that your opinion was a particularly bad one here that most people wouldn't find at all valuable, because of your imbalanced viewpoint/bias against the franchise. It was fun to read, but ultimately though full of sound and fury ...

I know that sounds bad, but I don't mean it to sound as bad as it does. I just think you're very excitable and unbalanced about things you don't like -- you don't take either your passions or your dislikes lightly. That seems to make, unfortunately, a smart and interesting guy sometimes come up with the occasional opinion that's probably far less interesting than he is himself or than he's really capable of giving.

I guess in a way I think you're being somehow unfair or dishonest sometimes with the things you dislike, and giving them short shrift. You fall a bit in love with your dislikes, perhaps, and when you do, your opinions on movies become far more about you than the movies or anything interesting about them.

I'm sure you feel the same way about some of my movie and/or other thoughts. If I recall correctly, you almost called a jihad down against me for liking Bend it Like Beckham and might as well have stated that liking it proved my moral and emotional bankruptcy or something.

You are extremely, er...spikey or something when it comes to movies. Tetchy? Volatile? Anyways ...

[RunDownHouse]

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The best opening sequence during the credits was in Die Another Day.

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Opening credit sequences in general suck. What a complete waste of time. What a masturbatory exercise. In the director's commentary for Braveheart, Gibson says he doesn't have them because they take the audience right out of the film, and he's right.

However, I actually liked the one from Casino Royale more than any other Bond movie I can remember. I also noted that there were no females and the theme was by Chris Cornell, a dude. Has there been a Bond movie with those two characteristics?

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My gaydar is firing.

[diebitter]

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But I have never read a Bond novel, so how does the timeline of these films work?

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Here's a review of the first one, which was Casino Royale.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...e=0#Post5705982

[RunDownHouse]

Yeah, I figured it might come off like that, but I also doubt even gay dudes would be attracted to black shadows.

[kyro]

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1. One thing I loved about Connery is that he got hurt, and sometimes got scared. That pulled me so much more into the movies. The glib ease -- and endless gadgets -- that Roger Moore used made his movies lifeless and silly to me. He cut the heart and balls right out of and off James Bond.

4. Ursula Andress was very awesome, but that weird thing about sucking her stomach in can get a little disconcerting. (Her hubbie, John Derek, had all his wives do that. It can look very hot until it just looks weird.) I go back and forth on which was the hottest bond girl, but I think the one in Thunderball is seriously underrated. She was astounding beautiful. Another one, named Caroline Bouquet, I think, was also fairly staggering even in comparison to other Bond girls. And I've always been a huge Halle Berry fan. One of my least favorites was Maud Adams, in Octopussy. I also wanted to pound Bond's make-believe wife in You Only Live Twice like a hammer.

9. From Russia with Love was awesome. The fight scene was incredible, especially for a western movie. (Martial arts movies have spoiled me pretty bad.) You really feel the tension before the fight and during it, and know that it's an incredibly serious business.

11. Moore did as much as any guy could to run the franchise into the ground. But I suppose one has to blame the writers and producers, too. I think Live and Let Die is Moore's best, and Moonraker his worst, and probably the worst Bond film simply because it is so bad by any reasonable standard -- I haven't even seen all the Bond films, but I'll gamble here.

14. Good call on Goldfinger's villain. "Talk? I expect you to die!" Gotta love that. Painting a girl gold to suffocate her -- now that guy has style! Robbing Fort Knox, wtf?? That guy has cojones! Executing a room full of top criminals in a picturesque way? Wow!! But I also do have as a sentimental favorite the fellow who enjoyed dropping failed Spectre agents into piranha-filled fishponds. Piranhas are awesome! He musta been diggin' on trying that collapsing bridge out for years before he ever made it. And then there's Dr. No. -- "The criminal mind is superior, Mr. Bond. It has to be." Pretty good and chilling logic, and he seemed to be one of the few who could get away with brushing Bond off as if he were not hyper-confident, dangerous, and slick, but actually of trifling intelligence and disappointingly predictable and limited.

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With the exception of you liking Goldfinger, I agree with just about everything you wrote. I was also a big fan of Corinne Cleery(sp?) from Moonraker.

[Kjell201]

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1. The best Bond was Connery, but Daniel Craig is going to be in the running when it all shakes out. Connery plays the part like a guy who enjoys all the finer things in life, but still knows how to throw down when the time comes. Craig, however, is more realistic as just an all-out badass.

2. Die Another Day is pretty bad, but still nowhere near as bad as A View to a Kill.

3. George Lazenby and OHMSS are seriously underrated. Lazenby was a black belt in karate and studied under Bruce Lee and as a result the fight scenes in this movie were top notch (for the time). He also pulled off the metamorphisis between 'Sir Hillary' and Bond very effectively. I read in the IMDB trivia that Albert Broccoli stated that Lazenby could have been the best Bond ever if he'd stuck with it, and I found myself agreeing. (Fun trivia note: Lazenby is actually the Bond actor that has become the richest after leaving the franchise. This is due to him cleverly marrying Pam Shriver, a Kennedy heiress. Also, it means that Arnold Schwartzenegger is his brother-in-law.)

4. Of all the Bond chicks, I think that the hottest one may have been the first one, Ursula Andress. I would put Britt Eklund and Denise Richards next to her in the top 3 of all time. Meanwhile, Barbara Bach gave by far the worst performance.


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1-3, agree.
4. I would switch places between Denise and Barbara in that sentence. Barbara is top3 and Denise Richards performance was pretty bad. Also Barbara Bach married Ringo Star... so... yeah... nm
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5. Walther PPK’s don’t seem to eject spent shells.

6. License to Kill is actually pretty good.

7. Pierce Brosnan was good, but his movies were not.

8. The poker scene in Casino Royale is bad, but they really should have stuck with the book and made it a baccarat game. Every other time we see Bond gambling (except once in License to Kill) he's playing baccarat and clearly is portrayed as an expert player. It would have been far more appropriate to have him playing that game rather than poker. That being said, I agree with the BBV crew that he played the AK hand fairly well.

9. From Russia with Love was excellent. The scrap at the end with Connery and Robert Shaw in the train compartment was awesome. They both made it work as a fight that could only end with one of them dead. This actually may have been the movie that I enjoyed most. Entertainment Weekly recently rated Goldfinger the best Bond, but I thought this one was better.

10. Bond is incapable of just killing someone - he always has to chat for at least a couple of seconds. For a guy with a license to kill this seems odd. Maybe it's a British thing. He would save himself a lot of aggravation if he took Tuco’s advice, “If you’re going to shoot, shoot - don’t talk.”


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Agree on all points, esp. 7. Pierce did a good job considering he got by far the worst scripts to work with. I liked GoldenEye though. By far the best out of Brosnans films.
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11. For Your Eyes Only is Roger Moore's best Bond movie. Overall, though, he made Bond too posh. The suaveness is there, but he doesn't have the rough edges that the others do. At no time in any of his movies did I feel like he could beat up anyone, even the chicks.


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Agree with everything here. I do have to admit that I probably enjoyed watching his films more than the others though. Entertaining gadgets, stories, girls, villians. Also Moore does a great job, just not a great job as the 'real' Bond. And FYEO, especially the skiing scenes, was what made me start watching Bond movies.
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12. The best song was ‘For Your Eyes Only’. The best opening sequence during the credits was in Die Another Day.

13. Q branch had a serious budget crunch in the late 70’s, downgrading Bond to a Lotus Esprit for a car (although it did turn into a submarine) and wearing a Seiko watch. Even his suits looked off the rack. They obviously lobbied for more money in the 90's and got it.

14. The best Bond villian? This is a very tough call. I’m going to vote for Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger. He seemed to have the most character. Christopher Walken nearly got my vote because he almost saved AVTAK, but, in the end, the movie was just too lousy.

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Like mentioned by others. Live and let die, Goldfinger and Diamonds are forever are best IMO. But FYEO is also very good.
The song from Casino Royale is terrible.
I kind of liked the song from The World Is Not Enough, too.

Best villian in my opinion is definitely Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger. The "I expect you to die"-quote is great.

Overall, I pretty much agree on everything.

Finally, favorite scene: Connery opening the door to Goldfingers hotel room by dragging the cleaning lady over with the keychain. "Thank you, you're very kind".
Brilliant!