The Best of BOND; Let's get this over with - Page 175

  I was watching QOS last night and I still enjoy it. Its not in the upper echelon, but its a very good movie. There are a few flaws: the action scenes are shot in the Bourne jerky style, Bond escaping from the opera is arty just to be arty. Its not as good as Casino Royale, but what Bond flick is?

 

  They are plenty of pros: seeing Bond develop as a spy, doing the detective work himself, and seeing Bond really go rouge. It had been done before, but in DAD its only for a short part of the movie and in LTK MI6 still sends Q to help him.

 

I agree for the most part, Chaz. I think that Daniel Craig himself found ways to grow the character and project growth and confidence, even if the script didn't really give him an ideal guide to do so.

 

It's definitely not in the upper tier, but I find enough of QoS to enjoy that I don't get too hung up on the stuff that doesn't work for me. Namely the limp villains and the poorly realized "resolution" to Casino Royale's remaining story threads. As one of my friends put it recently, it really feels like the cinematic equivalent of downloadable content.

 

But that being said, I also really enjoy the increased focus on "detective" spywork and 007 constantly evading M's meddlesome ways.

Goddamn you   Mr Stockslivenan

I really loved Pryce's Elliot Carver.

He's sort of like Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor to me. Fun and entertaining to watch, but I never feel that he's a force to be reckoned with. At least he's not boring like Renard.

This paparazzi pic succeeds with me where last week's official pic failed. Bond is back & he looks perfect!

I like that they're continuing to have his suits made by Tom Ford. No more Brioni suits, which always looked too expensive.

No belt? This isn't Bond. This film will fail. blah blah blah...

There's a moment in TND where Bond has a gun on one of Carver's men, trying to get Carver to stand down or Bond will shoot him, and Carver and Bond are trading quips and monologuing. It went on long enough that I looked at my roommate and said: "Craig would've just shot him by now."

 

It's a shame, because Pryce was far and away the best actor they got for a villain in the Bronsan era. After Goldeneye, that is.

Ford's dressing of Bond in QoS is one of the best parts of that movie for me. Craig can rock a shawl collar like nobody's business.

 

I agree about Pierce's Carver. In fact, I'd say he was the best villian that they pitted against Brosnon's Bond,  yes even better than the trio of villians from GE.

The thing about Elliot Carver that stands out in my mind is that he was a villian that actually made sense. A villian that wasn't looking for world domination, poisoning a continent's water supply, or stealing the world's gold reserve. He was simply a megalomaniac ala Rupert Murdoch looking to control the presses and start a series of wars. Not to mention that Pierce himself gives a great performance.

 

Yeah, I think of all the Brosnan era villains he fit more of the classic Bond villain type too. Pryce seemed to aim for a larger than life Goldfinger type of villain but he should have played it more subtly and sinster. He hams it a little too much to feel like a threat. He should have been more like Largo. There are few moments of it like when he finds out his wife was protecting a spy and he says "I think my wife needs an appointment with the doctor". You can see the rage in eyes while he's keeping himself well composed. That's the Carver I wish we got. And less lame generic quips.

Bond: "I told you Wai Lin, we're gonna do this together."
Carver: "How romantic!"

Actually I've been getting into custom fitted pants, where you don't have to use the belt. I have one, it's a pair of khakis, and they're pretty comfortable.

Elliot Carver was an interesting villain, with bits of ham. The second he did the fake kung-fu gag at the end of the film was when I had enough. As mentioned before, his silent, rage behind the eyes moments were the best. Also, we never really got to see what his company could do per say in being a threat. It was about to start WW3, but having a reputation of doing something bad might also increase his threat level. Even Casino Royale & QOS hinted that Quantum had been around for a while, and they possibly made some money off 9/11.

Carver was a fucking awful antagonist. I'm not against the idea of some Rupert Murdoch-clone attempting to kickstart WW3* to drum up his newspaper business. I am against yet another Bond villian who's a preening upper-class European backed up by his GQ enforcer, and his odd little torture doctor.

 

I don't really like License to Kill that much as a movie, but at least I can fundamentally understand these guys as a threat. It's a fucking DRUG CARTEL have you seen what they do on a slow day? The entire organization in Tomorrow Never Dies on the other hand looks like a bunch of idiots Michelle Yeoh could murderize in her sleep.

 

 

*I do find it adorable that Britain gets to be involved in WW3's opening salvo though.

Agreed, the potential for Carver was wasted. He controls a large part of the media and only a small part of that is actually shown with the video tape of a per-recorded news broadcast of Bond's death. Would have been interesting if he used it against Bond, paint him and Wai Lin as loose cannons/terrorists. Instead it's just the typical goons-with-machine guns organization. Carver only manipulates he news concerning the British/Chinese confrontation. Lots of opportunities were missed, just like the rest of the Brosnan era villains.

Fixed.

 

I mean honestly, the only well executed Brosnan film was Goldeneye and even that one could use some small tweaking. The other 3 had good premises but ultimately failed (in some cases on epic levels) when all was said and done.

 

 

I stand corrected.

To me it seems like Michael G. Wilson wanted to continue the route they took in the 1980s, especially the Dalton films, the emphasis on character and unique premises. But I guess LTK's low performance really scared the shit out of EON so they were not willing to take any more risks after that and just sort of gave it lip service. They didn't seem to be confident on doing anything new until Bourne proved to be a huge success. Gave Wilson enough confidence to reboot it, an idea he had in mind as far back as Dalton's debut.

The beauty, it burns!

Shit!  I could have watched another 10 minutes of that, at least.  I'd love to see all the title sequences run together.  

I'd love to see that redone with how the films actually opened in theaters. The lion never roared for Bond until OCTOPUSSY, and there was never a UNITED ARTISTS opening logo until YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, before that the films would begin with the gunbarrel straight ahead.

What a treat!

 

But seeing the openings for CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE right next to each other is not pretty. I'm in the crowd where QUANTUM has grown on me over time, but that opening remains nigh-on incomprehensible and seeing it next to the film that came immediately before with composed, intriguing shots for its first scenes does it no favours.

 

Of course, on the other side of CASINO is the DIE ANOTHER DAY intro! 

50 years!

 

Would be stoked if they decided to hire him for the next title song. The man still has it.

Still love the reaction the Union Jack parachute jump gets.

Right there with you. That gave me chills. The "Thunderball" title song does not get enough love, in my opinion... But how about this: The next film gives us a Sir Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey duet. She's still kicking too, I believe. 

That would be sweet. What better way to celebrate the 50th anniversary? Plus that would kinda make up not just for the last failed duet but also for the rejecting the original song Shirley Bassey recorded. However, I have a dreadful feeling Sony will be cornering EON into choosing someone under their label instead just like last time.

I'd like a clean version of the montage that was playing on the screen above him. I'm a sucker for a good Bond montage.

 

The chorus of openings up above that post is a nightmare.

 

Sir Tom's most recent album is pretty fine:

 

 

 

 

Dame Shirley's most recent has the requisite melodrama and cheese:

 

 

 

When it comes to cheese, nobody does it better (to coin a phrase-- but not her song, I know). My wife and I put her version of the theme to "Love Story" on our wedding reception playlist, and I fucking hate that song. That's how great Bassey is.
 

See, now I feel like a bad Bond fan. I was completely unaware she had recorded a theme for QOS. Yet another mark in my book against that picture...

 

It wasn't known until the release of her last album. David Arnold and Don Black (who wrote many Bond lyrics in the past) originally collaborated with her for the song "No Good About Goodbye". Once it turned out that Sony was going to go with someone under their own label, Arnold abandoned the song as they were still in the process. Afterwards Bassey would ask Arnold and Black to return to finish the song and work on a album together which wasn't released until one year after QOS.

If you listen carefully you can hear the tune to this song several times in the QOS soundtrack.


You can see they even had "solace" in the lyrics, White and Keys did something similar like that too.



This is one example of the notes appearing on the score, there's plenty more.

Very cool. Thanks. With the Craig films taking so many departures from the formula, it would have been nice to throw in a little bit of Bond classicism like that.

 

And to think my Jones/Bassey duet suggestion was idle fan-wanking. Now that I know something like that could be in the realm of possibility... Stupid Sony.

What about Scott Walker's discarded song from The World is Not Enough? Holy Matt Monro.

 

 

I've always been partial to Johnny Cash's "Thunderball."

 

My favorite is still Alice Coopers "The Man With the Golden Gun"

 

Picked up one of the Gardener novels today. Looks like they've been re-issued. Decided to give it a try even though I've never really been interested in the non-Fleming stuff.

Judi Dench is going blind

 

Hope something can be done. And she'll get better.

That's terribly sad news about Judi Dench. I wish her all the best.

Drew McWeeney reviews DR NO

 

I think he'll be going through all the Bond installments and the book counterparts as well.

Looks promising.

I went and saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy last night(and enjoyed it) afterwards I went to bed and had a dream I was in in the theatre watching Skyfall and it was really fucking boring! James Bond was just talking to people, then sitting down by a lake in a silver sharkskin suit that was torn and muddy. I yelled at the screen "come on, he hasn't killed or fought anybody in an hour!"

 

I'm embarrassed at how relieved I was in the morning to realize it was just a dream. (looks down at shoes)This is the only place I could think to share this.

5 chapters into "License Renewed" and not too impressed so far. Dude is trying way too hard to copy Flemings style, all the way down to the travel log type descriptions of places and food.

 

 

Is Bond really supposed to be in his 60s or 70s? I know Gardner tried making them a continuation of Flemings and setting it in the then present 1980s.

I think they (Amis, Gardner, Benson) always tried to remain vague about the exact timeline of the novels in reference to the Fleming ones, similar to how the original series of films operated.  I don't recall exact years ever being mentioned, just events.  I could be wrong about that though.

Bond, like Batman, is always the same age he was the first time you read about him, and the last time you read about him; history quietly slips aside to compensate.

 

Imagine, though, if instead of NSNA ,we had got an aging Connery in the Bond version of "The Dark Knight Returns." The Rock occasionally nods in that direction, but it's hardly the same thing.

They don't give his age, but there is mention of the "00" section being inactive for 13 years although Bond has been kept on as a assistant of sorts to M. It also mentions Bond having greying temples.

Yeah, he is using more current events/tech stuff to show the passage of time. Like Bond's Volvo (that's right) having a digital speedometer. That and "Q'ute" refering to her holographic thing as a study in 60's era seduction.

I dunno Connery in the Rock is pretty much exactly how I'd picture an old James Bond....well the movie version James Bond anyway.

 

 

Yeah, I mostly meant that the film (if one can dignify a Michael Bay joint with that term) never goes further than a nod or two in that direction, but Connery's got it down.

 

Right on. The publication of Colonel Sun was close enough to the Fleming era that I don't think chronology is too much of an issue there, but yeah-- starting with Gardner, the books seem to be in a sort of "floating timeline", as in the films, or comic book superhero continuity. Time has passed for Bond, but the specifics of his history (roots in WWII, for instance) are ignored or left vague.

 

And then the events and tech within the novels nail them down to the time they were published. I recall that one of Benson's revolved around the British handover of Hong Kong, which places in firmly in '97. Yet I believe this is supposed to be the same character and continuity that Fleming established...

 

Speaking of Colonel Sun, the only post-Fleming Bond book I've genuinely liked-- maybe EON ought to take a look at adapting it. It's got turmoil in Greece, and a Chinese adversary. Timely!

"Q'ute". Jesus Christ, I'd forgotten. Say what you will about Benson's novels-- he never pulled some bullshit like that.  

 

Thankfully Q'ute isnt in the book for long. And they just mentioned the Carter Administration in the past tense o they are definatly putting a time frame. I remember Dulles and JFK (although not by name) getting mentions in the later Fleming novels.

Anyone have an "Quantum" innovations they'd like to see carry over into Skyfall? QoS was by no means perfect, but I can think of 3 positives that I hope mystically carry over:

 

1. The stylized fonts for the location cards. So slick, it's amazing it took them until QoS to try it:

 

 

2. The pacing - QoS really moves, even though it's kinda directionless. But still, it feels like we're moving along at a good clip compared to Casino Royale, which has 2 long stretches that really bog down for me: The Miami airport sequence and the much-discussed card game.

 

3. A risky title song. I initially hated "Another Way to Die," but it's really snuck up on me as one of my favorite Bond title songs. Love the swagger, love the horns, love the verses. Most of all? I love that it's worlds away from another huge-sounding Shirley Bassey retread.