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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 11:58 am:   

Here ya go, Craig, hours of fun await...

Ranked by order of entertainment value, by which I mean the mixture of thrills, sex & humour that has always been the mark of a great Bond movie, and that was at its peak in the gloriously hedonistic 1960s. And I've thrown in the two unofficial Bond movies just for fun. Connery is Bond, all other actors have merely been keeping the part warm for him...

1. 'You Only Live Twice' (1967) - Sean Connery, Bond's finest hour, with the most epic scale and best gadgets and set-pieces and Blofeld, in Donald Pleasence, of the series. I stand corrected re Charles Gray.
2. 'Diamonds Are Forever' (1971) - Sean Connery, and the only one of the series that captured the new grit and violence of the 1970s, with Charles Gray, as Blofeld, in his most menacing form.
3. 'Goldfinger' (1964) - Sean Connery, and the coolest car of the series and a cast of villains that is perfection itself, like the entire movie.
4. 'From Russia With Love' (1963) - Sean Connery, with the most believable villain, the magnificent Robert Shaw, and most beautiful Bond girl, Daniela Bianchi.
5. 'Dr No' (1962) - Sean Connery, still stands up as a stunning debut.
6. 'Thunderball' (1965) - Sean Connery, only "weak" by comparison to the other official Connery films, and knocks spots off the 1983 remake, with Connery actually getting to show his acting chops as Bond.
7. 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' (1969) - George Lazenby, this movie is fantastic, and fantastically underrated, everything about it is spectacular and Lazenby was actually damn good in the part!!
8. 'Live And Let Die' (1973) - Roger Moore, his finest post-Saint hour and a far stronger debut than Brosnan's, which a lot of people forget, and it has the best chase sequence and theme song of the entire series imo.
9. 'Casino Royale' (2006) - Daniel Craig, a brilliant reinvention, that promised big things, and Bond hasn't been this tough since 'Diamonds Are Forever'.
10. 'Tomorrow Never Dies' (1997) - Pierce Brosnan, a super-slick and polished thriller that entertains in spades, and is Brosnan's finest hour, particularly the motor-bike chase.
11. 'Goldeneye' (1995) - Pierce Brosnan, a sterling debut that marked a new level of slickness and maturity for Bond, Brosnan finally got the part he was born to play.
12. 'The World Is Not Enough' (1999) - Pierce Brosnan, as above.
13. 'The Spy Who Loved Me' (1977) - Roger Moore, loveably OTT tongue-in-cheek mayhem with Moore at his most cheesily likeable.
14. 'For Your Eyes Only' (1981) - Roger Moore, as above.
15. 'Die Another Day' (2002) - Pierce Brosnan, great entertainment but the series was starting to get a bit tired and samey again, something fresh was called for...
16. 'Never Say Never Again' (1983) - Sean Connery, entertaining and tough but rather pointless remake of a brilliant original, still was nice to see him back.
17. 'Licence To Kill' (1989) - Timothy Dalton, solid entertainment rather than memorable, a holding action for the series.
18. 'The Living Daylights' (1987) - Timothy Dalton, as above.
19. 'Casino Royale' (1967) - David Niven, ramshackle mess of an all-star comedy that is fascinating for its sheer monstrous cackhandedness, so bad it's actually quite remarkable, and Woody Allen is the best thing in it!
20. 'The Man With The Golden Gun' (1974) - Roger Moore, the first misfiring Bond of the official series, after 12 years, is some going.
21. 'Moonraker' (1979) - Roger Moore, mindlessly entertaining Bond by numbers.
22. 'Octopussy' (1983) - Roger Moore, as above.
23. 'A View To A Kill' (1985) - Roger Moore, as above.
24. 'Quantum Of Solace' (2008) - Daniel Craig, a complete balls-up after his stunning debut and the worst directed and edited film in the entire series, headache inducing nonsense.

Let's see your ranking, Craig.
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Paul_finch (Paul_finch)
Username: Paul_finch

Registered: 11-2009
Posted From: 92.5.38.35
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 12:15 pm:   

I can't possibly rank all the Bond films. If I'm honest, when it comes to 'serious viewing' I deserted the series quite some time ago, but I concur with quite a few of these points.

Robert Shaw was easily the scariest Bond villain - totally convincing as an ice-cold hitman who even Bond would have struggled to overcome.

I also agree that the series's heyday was back in the 60s. I'd vote for YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE as the best if it wasn't for Connery's excruciating turn as a Japanese fisherman (given that it was the biggest budget the franchise had ever seen at the time, it's difficult to understand how such a lame and unconvincing plot-device was allowed to get through). For that reason I opt for GOLDFINGER and FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE as my top two. It was so fresh and non-derivative back then, and the secret devices and evil conspiracies fed perfectly into Cold War paranoia.

After 1970, I have few favourites. I liked LIVE AND LET DIE, as again that seemed to tap into the new jive-talking culture coming over from the States, but I hated the mid/late 70s Bonds, which I think were verging on deliberate comedy.

I preferred Brosnan to Dalton, but only just. I agree about Daniel Craig. A great debut, let down by an horrendous nothing of a sequel.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 12:25 pm:   

For me, this would be like ranking my favourite frozen meals. Not a wholly unpleasant task, but also completely pointless.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 12:26 pm:   

Let's call it a light hearted distraction, shall we?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.214.49
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 12:48 pm:   

I haven't seen all of A VIEW TO A KILL, but doesn't an ageing Roger Moore sleep with Grace Jones? That alone has to be worth seeing.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.28.147
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:23 pm:   

I wouldn't take any of them in preference to any of Hitchcock's espionage thrillers (even Torn Curtain) or Fritz Lang's. I did like some individual performances - Connery's, for instance - and enjoyed the two Daniel Craig films. But forgive me, let me not derail the discussion!
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:25 pm:   

I'll be more provocative: they're tawdry fantasies of excessively delusional masculinity.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:39 pm:   

But they're fun tawdry fantasies of excessively delusional masculinity.
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:48 pm:   

I really like the one where he does a smart quip, shoots some random foreigner, has a go in a jetpack/car/jet/helicopter and then gets to sleep with a sexy lady. You know the one...
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 01:52 pm:   

Is that the one where he nearly dies several times but gets out of danger in an unfeasably silly way?
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:00 pm:   

"I'll be more provocative: they're tawdry fantasies of excessively delusional masculinity."

And that's exactly what's so fantastic about them. Unfettered male fantasies. Driving, aggresive, brutal. They are that sharp part of the male psyche that must remain sheathed for modern society to function, but can be harnessed to aspire and achieve.

I haven't seen most of these films, mind you. But then, who needs to?
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.28.147
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:28 pm:   

I've seen them all - I had to review all those made after 1969 - and remember virtually nothing to distinguish them from one another except the casting of some of the villains - not even who played Bond in which ones (the last two films excepted).
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Jonathan (Jonathan)
Username: Jonathan

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.143.178.131
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:32 pm:   

Yeah, I'm not a mahoosive fan. When I once complained to someone that they're all the bloody same, they said "But that's what makes them so great!" Somehow this didn't persuade me.

I'm not sure I'd call that the sharp end of the male psyche Proto. More like the not very well disguised thuggish cudgel of misogyny.

But then I'm not in the best of moods this week.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:34 pm:   

Bond films are the male equivalent of Sex in the City. Utter drivel, but occasionally affording some cruel fun.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:43 pm:   

>>>And that's exactly what's so fantastic about them. Unfettered male fantasies. Driving, aggresive, brutal. They are that sharp part of the male psyche that must remain sheathed for modern society to function, but can be harnessed to aspire and achieve.

Well, the Western way, which Bond works hard to defend, can surely be characterised by this masculine drive. Hardly sheathed. More like subliminated.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:56 pm:   

Bond had a wobble in the 80s, when the cultural climate was probably ripest for his headstrong approach. AIDS made him less promiscuous, I heard. Maybe he killed more villains to compensate. :-)
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:56 pm:   

Yes, sublimated is a more accurate word, but it didn't fit with my metaphor, so I didn't use it. That's poor writing, isn't it? Tony said a while back that the John Barry theme is a prowling blend of sex and danger. (I added the "prowling". Is that poor writing?)

What to do with the male drive, eh? Surely there are better answers than sport and war?

The Bond films barely qualify as art, the older films' endless exposure on ITV making them feel as inevitable and dreary as Songs of Praise.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 02:57 pm:   

"AIDS made him less promiscuous, I heard. Maybe he killed more villains to compensate."

As Grant Morrison said of Bond, every scene is a sex scene.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:00 pm:   

Well, sheathed suggests Freudian repressive in an unhealthy way, leading to neurosis. Whereas sublimation is a more positive form of coping with basic drives. But as you say, it depends on the form of sublimation.

Sport is good, but business has subsumed it, and now it's bad.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:05 pm:   

I love the films AND the books - Gary, if they aren't classics then neither is surrealism a great art form. The Bond books are fantastic - they are as good a fantasy type as any you are likely to read. Great, chewy prose, plots like purring engines, and weirdness as high as it gets. Susan Hill loves them, Stephen Fry does, and so did Capote. They're stunning - I'd shove a few Amis's or Greene's out to make room for them. :-)
In the films it always seemed like Bond was nice watching them as a kid, a proper goody who was only happy when he was doing something important. I used to find that admirable. It's just a shame it got me into just watching films instead of trying to emulate him. :-(
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:31 pm:   

Bond as shameless male escapism only really felt right in the 60s - when all that opulent sex and violence chimed with the zeitgeist of the most youthful and hedonistic of decades.

When sex and violence as gritty reality, unfettered by censorship, became the norm in the 70s Bond was forced into self-parody, for which Roger Moore was a natural. Only 'Diamonds Are Forever' tried to capture this mood, while 'Live And Let Die' was a triumphant last hurrah of already old-fashioned entertainment.

The 80s was when Bond became most anachronistic, resulting in the sorry spectacle of the last few Moore movies and the forced restraint, in the face of AIDS, that hamstrung Dalton's two efforts.

The 90s, as with so much else in popular culture, brought slick, streamlined, conveyor belt Bond as pure product, cherry-picking all the best elements from the classic years and updating, by thinktank, all the tired clichés. Knowing entertainment expertly delivered but ultimately lacking in soul.

Then the new millennium dawned and Bond was left floundering, a cardboard cut-out without an identity. Which only left a return to the source novels and much heralded faithful reboot of Fleming's superman. As 'Casino Royale' is reckoned to be the definitive novel, from all I've heard, they were almost guaranteed a hit with a bit of inspired casting (which they pulled off, giving us the most convincing Bond since Connery) and close attention paid to the strengths of the story. But after that one-off sensation... disaster, and quite possibly the death knell of the entire franchise.

Watch this space...
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:34 pm:   

Stevie - Casino Royale is all set in one building. There's no action at all as far as I can remember. And yet it's a stunning book, written in one night, apparently (and a wedding night at that).
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John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert)
Username: John_l_probert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.253.174.81
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:37 pm:   

James Bond is one of those phenomena which I should hate, but which in fact I love. I think it's coloured very much by my parents' excitement at the films being shown on TV when I was little, and although they've been shown to death now, when Dr No was first on the box these were big events - I remember the TV Times doing a three page full colour article on the gadgets for From Russia With Love when it had its TV premier.

The first one I saw at the cinema was The Spy Who Loved Me and although the script is Christopher Wood's Confession of a Naughty Spy (the novelisation is even worse) I remember the movie being the most spectacular thing I'd ever seen. It blew me away & I loved it.

When I was a little bit older and starting to get properly studious / geeky about movie music there was John Barry writing all these fabulous scores that I listened to over and over again. I remember being very surprised to learn that George Martin did Live & Let Die as that's a classic as well.

Ramble ramble. It does look, however, as if I'm the only one here who really liked Quantum of Solace!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:44 pm:   

John - remember, I used to hate it? I love it now, given a rewatch. Humble pie for tea and I'll eat it happily.
I used to think the bonds were a kind of SF and lumped them into the same area of my mind as the Planet of the Apes films. God, telly was so exciting back then. And so was playing out, finding a quarry or whatever to be an Ape or Bond or Dr Who in. Sigh, some of those games were incredible; I still remember the drama of them.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:50 pm:   

You've just described my own childhood to a tee, Tony.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 03:53 pm:   

Kids don't do it now. They don't even play with figures. I'm sure those times led to my relative creativity in life. My kids just sit at the pc all day, or go playing pool up at the dog track. They have no active interests outside (for one of them) footy. :-(
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 04:34 pm:   

I think Proto put it brilliantly: "They are that sharp part of the male psyche that must remain sheathed for modern society to function, but can be harnessed to aspire and achieve."

It was the Bond films that inspired a thousand copies, correct? And yet they're all forgotten now (even the what must surely be bizarre Bond spin-off OPERATION KID BROTHER [1967], starring Sean Connery's brother Jason as another 00 agent, featuring Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny... I'd love to see this one, if it's available!). But like the Catholic Church, or certain comic book characters, the Bond franchise must have done something right, or tapped into something profound, to persist so very long....

To me, the Bond films are as I've said, keepers of secret knowledge, for men and women; "tawdry fantasies of excessively delusional masculinity" is exactly to, as Jesus might say, miss the very parable intended to mislead.

Bond films are fantasies, and that's how to enjoy them. Generalizing in what follows, and especially as the films were perfected over time: Bond is an angel of light, a demi-god; an agent not so much of good triumphing over evil, as in maintaining the balance - he's an agent of the status quo. He exists in Heaven, somewhere beyond (notice how we never really see where Bond lives, what his life is like? the films always start with Bond on a mission, and being diverted to a new one), and when he comes down to Earth, he doesn't ever battle "humans" -his enemies, his contacts, are all other supra-human angels or demons or devils and whatnot.

There are no human beings as such in Bond films, they are all the innocent pawns around which these "invisibles" battle for apocalyptic world domination (note the grand nature of the plots: these aren't bank heists, these are to control the fate of man itself). No, no human beings interact with Bond & co., except usually one: the good Bond girl. She is the key to Bond's sole weakness, and potential downfall. Bond can never be harmed, like an angel, unless he battles those in the hierarchy above him, or he's been wounded by human love; Bond avoids human love, sublunary Earthly love, because it dazzles him, weakens him, and inevitably brings harm and destruction to the Earthly being involved - but falling prey to human love (the highest ideal in Bond films, for all its supposed flagrancy in this arena) is Bond's weakness; he will ofttimes falter here, the only times he ever falters.

Because Bond makes no mistakes: every action is a success, every shot hits its mark, every decision is perfect (given the facts he has). When a more powerful adversary is before him, a Devil of higher rank, he can only be bested.

But these Devils have their own failing, and it is: human emotion. The Bond villains are almost uniformly cool, calm, zen-like in their patience and meticulousness, mellifluously tongued, cultured and refined - the best villains (Dr. No, Hugo Drax, Francisco Scaramanga, etc.) are the very models of civility, precision and control. As such, they cannot be killed by Bond, until they lose control and fall prey to human emotions - once they give in to hellish anger, they slip, the chink is revealed, and they can now be felled.

I could go on. Bond's secret, so useful to us lesser humans, was revealed in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, when Q's (Desmond Llewellyn) mantle was handed over to R (John Cleese). "I've always tried to teach you two things [James]. First, never let them see you bleed," and "Always have an escape plan." No matter how close to death Bond comes, right up to the point where there's no escape - he's defiant, he's steadfast, he's unyielding, he doesn't bend. And release is always at hand - somewhere, somehow, something around you, is the means to your release - or, will come out of the blue.

Remain calm. Don't bend. Don't give up - in fact, jump into danger when that's what's needed, with both feet, and with no regards for your own safety. WWJBD.

It is indeed a male fantasy. I wish I were James Bond.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 04:40 pm:   

Me too, Craig. I'm constantly playing the Bond theme in my mind as I'm walking along the street, keeping a wary eye open for ambushes.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.229
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 05:40 pm:   

Craig, that passage reminds me of the scene in which Christian Bale extols the virtues of Phil Collins' albums in American Psycho. :-)

Personally, I think you're dignifying a glass of orange juice with all the status of Champagne.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, June 14, 2011 - 05:42 pm:   

Anyone remember the simpsons episode where Homer gets a job working for a Bond Villain? IIRC Homer actually kills Bond accidentally while walking through the office...
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:11 am:   

Oh, come on, Gary! Don't lie. Admit you love the Bond movies as much as everyone else. The only people who don't, have no heart, or are puritans. I'm sure you're not a puritan, so.... :-) Besides, OJ is good for you!

I'm still mystified, utterly mystified, that you Stevie (and others) don't like QUANTUM OF SOLACE! How?! I compare it with THE DARK KNIGHT, because both are oddly parallel: released the same year, both were sequels to reboots, both were "darker" and re-imagined from whole cloth, both involved new casts, etc.... but to me, TDK was waaaaay overrated, whereas QoS was waaaaay underrated.

I mean, Stevie! An incredibly deep and intelligent script, by Paul Haggis, complex and funny and engaging and action-packed. It brings back S.P.E.C.T.R.E., in a new form (that was also verboten after the Blofeld court case, something I never knew)—I mean, geez, the return alone of this evil organization (oh so much more sinister and deadly and Lovecraftian-ly nefarious) into the Bond universe, for the first time since FOR YOUR EYES ONLY—we're talking about 30 years! Action sequences that can't be beat, actors bringing everything to their roles... goodness gracious, give it another chance. Maybe you smoked some sour dope the first time you saw it.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.16.31
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 08:30 am:   

Bond does nothing for me, I'm afraid. I can ascribe his popularity only to a latter-day male crisis of identity.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.181.16.31
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 08:32 am:   

>>>I love the films AND the books - Gary, if they aren't classics then neither is surrealism a great art form.

Sorry, Tony, I don't understand the connection here.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.30.150
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:16 am:   

The books are clever, cynical, sadistic, quite sexy (for their time) and very, very right-wing. The films are the same without the sadism or the overt politics and with some nice double entendres. They're enjoyable at a purely adolescent level – not in any sense good cinema but value for money if you're in regression mode.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 2.24.30.150
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:19 am:   

P.S. And yes, I read all the books when I was 13 or so. Saw some of the films on TV but haven't kept up with them since I left school. Life's too short.
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:55 am:   

Gary - it's a nostalgia thing. Most people who like Bond used to sit and watch the films as children on ITV on an overcast Sunday teatime in the 1970s.

They're enjoyable at a purely adolescent level – not in any sense good cinema but value for money if you're in regression mode.

Nail hit firmly on head, Joel.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:28 am:   

Yep, I'd mostly agree with that. Apart from the fact that the first nine films on my list (see above) work as very good cinema indeed. They tick all the boxes of what constitutes great popular art, for me anyway.

The rest range from fine switch-your-brain-off testosterone fuelled entertainment to oddly loveable cheesy nonsense, with one exception (sorry, Craig).

I will make a point of rewatching 'Quantum Of Solace' when it comes on the telly but as it was one of the worst structured and irritating cinema experiences I had that year, flying by in a confused whirl that made even the action sequences incomprehensible, I don't hold out much hope I was that wrong.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.216
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:32 am:   

>>>Gary - it's a nostalgia thing. Most people who like Bond used to sit and watch the films as children on ITV on an overcast Sunday teatime in the 1970s.

So did I, mate. But I still think they're naff. I did go and see the first Dalton film with a girlfriend, tho, and feel a little nostalgic about that one.
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Mark West (Mark_west)
Username: Mark_west

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.39.177.173
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:28 am:   

It is a nostalgia thing (he says, rating Roger Moore as his favourite Bond) and Joel's right.

I was very disappointed with "Quantum Of Solace", both for the whipcrack editing and the fact that a huge chunk of the denouement (in the desert) was ignored, as if we wouldn't notice it.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:42 am:   

There was a scene deleted from Dr No that's worth watching, as it helps to give the film some extra depth (in my view):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puFeCHzpvPM
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Simon Bestwick (Simon_b)
Username: Simon_b

Registered: 10-2008
Posted From: 86.24.209.217
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:43 am:   

For what it's worth:

Joel's fairly on the money, I think. However-

1) Lord P, you're not alone; I too loved Quantum of Solace. Not as good as Casino Royale but it completes Bond's metamorphosis into Bond.

2) Timothy Dalton was a better Bond than he's often given credit for. Certainly a relief after Roger Moore. The problem with Dalton's Bond was that the writers had kind of cottoned onto the idea that the things Bond does aren't really very nice. So they tried to make Bond more PC.

By the time Daniel Craig took over, they'd decided yes, what Bond does isn't nice- so let's not flinch from it. Craig's Bond is possibly my favourite, purely because he's not only a bastard, but an emotional cripple. He may be a great secret agent (although in real life he probably would be about as much use as a pork pie at a bar mitzvah- you're supposed to be unobtrusive, surely?) but he's not much of a human being.

I hadn't bothered with any of the Bond films for years- I watched Casino Royale purely because Craig is such a brilliant actor, and loved it. But it's adolescent stuff. Currently I'm reading John Le Carre at long, long last- and am really blown away by what a first-class writer he is. Now that's 'spy fiction' for grown-ups.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:49 am:   

Try Graham Greene's spy fiction, Simon. 'The Human Factor' is the finest espionage thriller I have read. Packed with intrigue and almost unbearable emotional insights into what spying actually entails.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:55 am:   

Gary - I consider the Bonds as surrealism, as dreams. And I love dreams - even if they are badly made.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:57 am:   

I try and be like the creatures who don't become extinct - avoid selectivity.

I hated the film Ratatouille. What a sucky message.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:58 am:   

I saw an elephant last week.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:59 am:   

> Craig's Bond is possibly my favourite, purely because he's not only a bastard, but an emotional cripple.

No offence, Simon, but I've always found the phrase "emotional cripple" to be a bit glib, a second-hand pop-psychology tag.

When talking about physical disability, the word "cripple" is very non-PC; so why is it fine when used to denigrate men who don't openly empathise or weep in public or do any of the other things Cosmopolitan declare that men ought to do? There's a lack of symmetry there.

Secondly, a hired killer is a worker: the job is to kill people, so obviously there are certain qualifications needed for such a job. Callousness, lack of empathy, ruthlessness are some of the requirements needed when applying for such a position. It's the same with any job. A manual labourer requires a muscular physique and an ability to whistle. A factory worker in a bakery needs the ability to stand still and wear a hairnet while gossiping about Eastenders. These are the necessary qualifications. To regard such people as emotional cripples seems a bit unfair. They are merely fulfilling the terms of their job descriptions. But by your logic, we would have to tag such people with that label.

Was Genghis Khan an emotional cripple because he boiled his enemies alive in a pot? That was part of his job. If he wasn't able to do it, he wouldn't have deserved to be who he was.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:00 pm:   

The Bond's remind me, that mere 'entertaining' stories can really touch a nerve, the characters live in the imagination like archetypes, even tools.
Craig - I loved your description of the films. To pull things to pieces like that means you are also able to assemble things.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:03 pm:   

Rhys - Bond in the books seems more frail emotionally. His hardness comes across as a mask. It's never described but we really feel it, something we do with all the best writing.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:04 pm:   

We're getting back to Jedward - how deep can we go with a subject, and why should we? I think we can get very deep with anything, and should.
But I don't want to kick off another scrap!
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.156.210.82
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:05 pm:   

Tony - you've convinced me to re-read some of the Bond books...I recall very little of them, but do remember enjoying them.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:06 pm:   

> Bond in the books seems more frail emotionally. His hardness comes across as a mask.

I've never read any of the Bond novels, Tony, so thanks for that... I just wanted to disagree with Simon Bestwick on something (or anything, everything). If my above approach fails I'll find a different angle of attack in due course.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:06 pm:   

Weber - where?
Ah - reference to my random Ratatouille remark! It was sort of connected - the Rat was striving for quality in all things. I sort of agree but don't - I think pleasure and lessons can be found anywhere. (And that kind of debate really doesn't belong in a cartoon, at least not so much it squeezes out any fun.)
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.156.233.176
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:08 pm:   

That's ok Rhys - to be honest, as we're talking about the films alone I probably shouldn't have brought it up.
Zed - I read OHMSS a year or two ago and it was some of the most fun I've had reading in bloody ages. Fantastic book, so bloody exciting.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:17 pm:   

I don't know much about espionage fiction (though I do have an Eric Ambler in a box waiting to be read: The Mask of Dimitrios).

Nor do I know much about crime fiction, or that crossover genre where crime and espionage meet... And yet I received through the letterbox today an old Picador edition of The Novels of Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It contains five novels that apparently are crime/espionage influenced, but with a Kafkaesque bent. I bought it on Amazon for the princely sum of £0.01.
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Gary Fry (Gary_fry)
Username: Gary_fry

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 129.11.76.216
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:26 pm:   

I could have got you it cheaper.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:27 pm:   

I picked that volume up last year, Rhys, mainly on the strength of the Jack Nicholson movie 'The Pledge'. They're considered clever reinventions of the classic noir crime thriller. Must get round to reading them...
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:28 pm:   

The postage was £2, but I prefer to disregard that and just strut with the words "one pence" on my miserly lips...

Seriously though, wasn't the halfpence a great coin?
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 12:29 pm:   

Stevie: let me know what you think of them when you've read them, as they seem intriguing... Because I'm currently reading 10 books at the same time, I doubt I'll get round to tackling this volume anytime this year...
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.37.199.45
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 01:31 pm:   

Derek Marlowe's Echoes of Celandine is narrated by a professional assassin. There's no doubt that his sadism, objectification of women ("For me, it's small-bummed girls or nothing"), cynicism and general lack of humanity assist his professional capability. But the book is not a how-to guide for killers, it's a novel, and the reader is quite appropriately guided through the sick, festering mess of apathy and dysfunction that is the narrator's inner life.

Heydrich was quite good at genocide, professionally speaking – do we have to suspend any perception of the corruption of his values in order to stress how capable he was? Surely in the description of psychopaths it's necessary to recognise that their competence at being psychopaths is predicated on ther incapability of functioning as people.

Another great crime-writing Derek (though it wasn't his real name), Derek Raymond, observed that psychopaths are empty shells, dead men walking around, and are the most boring people in the world. But then, he was writing in the days before the internet.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.55.41
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:04 pm:   

doesn't an ageing Roger Moore sleep with Grace Jones?

Better still - he's more or less raped by her. Oh, how I envy Roger Moore

I read all the books when I was 10 or 11 and mostly enjoyed them. Much to my chagrin, I couldn't go and see the films - apart from Goldfinger - until I was 16, because of the occasional nudity. So I had the Toyota 2000 GT from "You Only Live Twice" in miniature form, but wasn't allowed to see what Bond did with it. Same with Thunderball. Oddly enough, people are killed in off-hand and often cruel ways ways in every Bond film, but a naked thigh was unpardonnable. Ah, the free and liberated sixties.

Curiously enough I prefer "Quantum of Solace" to its predecessor. It has a special atmosphere and I am beginning to see something in Craig, too.

Favourite Bond girls: Gemma Anderton, Lynn-Holly Johnson (in the only sufferable Moore Bond - "For Your eyes Only"), Rosamund Pike and Jill "Tiffany dear, aren't we showing more cheek than ususal?" St John. Such lovely cheeks, too.

With hindsight Brosnan is as much a joke as Moore.

All-time favourite: "Goldfinger" for the great plot, the great villain, and THAT car. Whenever I see a real Aston Martin DB5 I nearly faint with excitement
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.55.41
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:14 pm:   

Aah, how could I forget Denise Richards and her Lara Croft outfit in "The World is Not Enough"? To die for.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.21.246
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:24 pm:   

"Was Genghis Khan an emotional cripple because he boiled his enemies alive in a pot?"

Yes. Indeed, I would say all torturers are.

As for cripples generally - well, I'm crippled by bad eyesight. If they were casting Mr Magoo I could be typecast. And as a cripple I don't object to the term.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.21.246
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:26 pm:   

Not to hijack the thread, I hope, but my books have always presented killers as emotionally crippled, from John Horridge onwards, and the occultists such as John Strong too.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.19.205
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:46 pm:   

I think cripples can be emotional cripples, too.
I wonder why the word cripple is so frowned on?
Funny how some quite functional words are so treated.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 81.157.19.205
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:47 pm:   

It's now sad to me how 'black' can't now be applied to negative or scary things. It really is just a word.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 03:51 pm:   

OHMSS is a hugely over-rated film. That dreary Louis Armstrong song feels like a dead-end Sunday. And George Lazenby looks like he's drawn by the Beano.
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 80.4.12.3
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 05:43 pm:   

Two of the biggest killers of the 20th Century were Lenin and Trotsky. I've never thought of them as "emotionally crippled" before; but I certainly will now.

Not sure about Genghis Khan, to be honest. I imagine that the context of his existence (12th Century Mongolian society) makes it difficult to judge his actions in modern terms.

As for Bond: I've always thought of him as "smug" rather than "psychopathic". I can't be the only one who dearly wanted to see him lose a fight in his films?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 212.183.140.20
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 06:38 pm:   

He frequently did lose fights - remember the famous and ultimately vainglorious car chase in 'Goldfinger' - but he never lost the war.
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John Forth (John)
Username: John

Registered: 05-2008
Posted From: 82.24.1.217
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 06:39 pm:   

I'm afraid I don't think I've ever been able to make it all the way through a Bond film. They've just never engaged me, even as a kid. Even the recent Casino Royale put me to sleep.

>>As for Bond: I've always thought of him as "smug" rather than "psychopathic". I can't be the only one who dearly wanted to see him lose a fight in his films?<<

Part of me always longed for a scene where he was shot in the back and died a tawdry, coward's death. Alan Moore does a good job of skewering the character in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier comic.
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Carolinec (Carolinec)
Username: Carolinec

Registered: 06-2009
Posted From: 92.232.199.129
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 06:47 pm:   

>>I can't be the only one who dearly wanted to see him lose a fight in his films?<<

I'm not a Bond fan - as someone says above, maybe it's a male thing? - but the only film I've watched more than once right the way through is The Man With The Golden Gun. The reason? I think Christopher Lee is wonderful as Scaramanga, and I always want to see the ending changed so that he kills Roger Moore's wimpy Bond in that mirrored room.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.148
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 06:59 pm:   

Bond isn't about fighting, he's more about an attitude. Roger Ebert said that to Bond, violence is an annoyance.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 07:43 pm:   

Stevie - if you see QoS again, make sure to see CASINO ROYALE just before it - so much is directly relevant, that not to have that one fresh in your mind, is to miss much (QoS begins, for one, immediately after CR ends).

I think the attacks on Bond here are somewhat unfair. Bond is mythic - it is comic-book, if you prefer that metaphor. Comic-books too are mythic, though there is an attempt now to deconstruct the myth, arriving in film many years too late to the party. I like the dark takes, I loved the new Batman films, say; other recent superhero films (though less dark [e.g., IRONMAN, HULK, SPIDERMAN]) are still pervaded by psychological angst and hero deflation. Donner's SUPERMAN survived the 70's idealistically: Superman there is concerned about how to hide his identity, and how to love Lois Lane and still maintain his secret - but what he is, what he does, is a simple given.

To call Bond "smug" is to miss the point (though, to some degree, Connery's earliest Bonds are indeed smug, but the character in film was still being worked out: after the wonderfully strange DR. NO, we get FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE; which though fine, was a nervous fallback to classic structures, resembling familiar suspense noir more than something new, and hence Bond's noir-universe character; with GOLDFINGER, we get the template for all the films to come). Bond enjoys and relishes Earthly vices—he gambles, he drinks like a fish, he of course enjoys the ladies. But he's always laughingly, mockingly, above smugness. In OCTOPUSSY, he "smugly" delights in beating Kamal Khan at backgammon; but he's doing it to goad the supervillain, and minutes later happily throws his thousands of dollars in winnings to the crowding poor of Calcutta. In QoS, Bond disdainfully turns his back on the modest hotel that's to be his cover in South America, for a lavish five star hotel—is he above such things? No, the better hotel is what he needs to perfect his cover and draw out his enemies.

What Bond is, is childlike, playful, Puck-like. When he gets into Q's labs, he's like an ADD child playing with toys, always being rebuked by Q. In fact, he's treated like a child by all at HQ: M is forever chiding him, Moneypenny is like the sweet older cousin who adores this little boy running around the office. Like a good 70's/80's slasher-flick, Bond's sexual yearnings are always getting him into trouble—either serious trouble, the object being murdered; or light-hearted trouble, like the many times his sexual exploits are caught on camera for all to see (usually at the end of Bond films). Sex has consequences in Bond films, much against the common assumption—but LOVE, human world love (to which Bond, the warrior angel from heaven, and so the wise and wary stranger to such, as the type I see him), even greater consequences.

It is my contention that what elevates the Bond films above the welter of such films, and has ensured its survival where all others are utterly forgotten, is indeed the secret of all (contemporary) works of art: the degree to which they handle the theme of LOVE. Which seems, I know, bizarre, in the context of the seemingly light and vacuous, mindless escape-ism of such an apparently comic book world like the Bond films. But the reason why IRONMAN and SPIDERMAN and other comic book films will be forgotten soon enough (if not already), is because they are, in sum, shallow: they are nothing beyond their mindless escapism. They are not mindless escapism, AND.... Like the Bond films, are.

Here you go, Gary - more Dom Perignon for you, courtesy these empty cartons of Sunkist.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 61.216.205.245
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 07:53 pm:   

I quite like Bond, actually. My favourite (like Stevie) is probably You Only Live Twice. I remember my mum taking us to see Diamonds are Forever at the Odeon in Harlow. Good memories.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 212.183.140.29
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 08:58 pm:   

Mythic mindless entertainment with heart and humour. I agree with Craig.

I doubt we'll ever see another Bond movie that can be described as a genuine cinematic classic (as was 'Casino Royale' imo) but I, for one, think the world would be all the poorer for the death of the franchise.

I feel the same about 'Doctor Who'. Both phenomena transcend their constituent parts and have become part of the collective modern psyche.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:43 pm:   

I doubt we'll ever see another Bond movie that can be described as a genuine cinematic classic (as was 'Casino Royale' imo) but I, for one, think the world would be all the poorer for the death of the franchise.

I totally agree of course, Stevie. A bad Bond movie is better than middling others. I recently saw KNIGHT & DAY: it plays upon Bond-ish themes, lampooning them, so it already is decades too late. But more than that... utterly empty, vapid, shallow, worthless, pointless garbage. Are the action sequences better, purely technically, than many Bond movies? Oh hell yes, some were quite incredible! But so fucking what?! What a total waste of film - films like this are crimes, and contribute to the erosion of the whole. Depressing, to think of the time and effort that went into a film like this, only to create such forgettable crap.

But yes, a bad Bond film, better than whole hosts of mediocre others. Like Woody Allen's films. (Hey, Stevie, it might be time to start a Woody Allen great-debate thread! )
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.55.41
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:45 pm:   

remember the famous and ultimately vainglorious car chase in 'Goldfinger'

When I was young I couldn't understand why Goldfinger decided not to cut Bond in half after all. And something that puzzles me still: why the elaborate demonstration and then kill off the crime lords? The only possible reason I see is that Goldfinger likes to show off:
Bond: "By the way, I enjoyed your briefing."
Goldfinger (smugly): "So did I."
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 09:53 pm:   

The villains are always vainglorious. They can't help but brag about their master plans. It's convenient for storytelling purposes, but it also goes to the heart of these villains: they are vain and filled with pride/hubris, like the grand Devils they are. For those who find it absurd and unbelievable, there's films for you to - like BLOW UP.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.55.41
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:19 pm:   

That's a great film. To this day I feel uneasy about the park - a great location with a special atmosphere. And the ladies have never been more beautiful than in the London of the Swinging Sixties portrayed here.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:20 pm:   

That's my favourite bit in all the Bond movies:

"Do you expect me to talk?"

"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die."

Connery is totally at the mercy of the wonderful Gert Fröbe, who is casually leaving the room with a chuckle, without even waiting to see James have his goolies sliced in two.

No gadgets, no friends about to pop out of the woodwork, nothing but his brain and his words [forgot the gag, Gert, old boy], when, gushing sweat and with real terror in his eyes, he comes up with the perfect bluff to save his crown jewels, just in the nick of time. That's Bond at his most admirable imo.

Just one of many iconic cinematic moments from the 60s Bond movies.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:27 pm:   

Actually it was James acting vaingloriously during the famous 'Goldfinger' car chase. All those wonderful gadgets, expertly used to outwit the bad guys, and he ends up defeated by a mirror. Brilliant!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:35 pm:   

Stevie, James is more fallible in this film than the others - the mirror is a good point; his showing fear and tension as the laser approaches, not quite following Q's advice; his chagrin and being admonished for letting the girl be notoriously killed, in the opening. In some ways, GOLDFINGER is like a genesis film - Bond getting his bearings.

Another wonderful line from this film, is when he wakes up on the plane to see.... "I'm Pussy Galore." Bond, with this classic smirk on his face, as he looks away: "I must be dreaming."
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.4.19.77
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 10:58 pm:   

You want me to list and rank all of Woody Allen's films, Craig!! Now that would be a mammoth undertaking, even for me, and there are quite a few of his recent ones I've not yet seen. But I'll get back to you... and, yes, I am a fan of his early "funny" ones.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.216.8
Posted on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 - 11:14 pm:   

I found the second half of GOLDFINGER very dull. The villain tells us what he's going to do... and does it. The hero is passive for 40% of the film.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 06:47 am:   

Ah, but Proto, not really, because... well, we can't give it away, can we, for those who don't know GOLDFINGER?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 06:57 am:   

That's Bond at his most admirable imo....

That's certainly the iconic moment in Bond. But to me, an even more admirable moment, is in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, when he's in the horrible medieval torture chair; and though brought right to the brink of death, he spits defiantly at his torturers, and continues to rail and goad them.

It is here that (in spirit, not actuality; in life in general) I want so to be James Bond. Maybe Gary's right, "a latter day male crisis of identity." And the base realization I'm just a pussy on many fundamental levels.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.26.33
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 09:36 am:   

The credit sequences are always hilarious, but I found the credits for DIE ANOTHER DAY interesting. How much better would that film have been had it really been about Bond being helpless and fighting impossible odds without glamour or gadgets? It's a crucible that we rarely see the character in.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 109.79.26.33
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 09:37 am:   

The BBC's TINKER, TAILOR SOLDIER, SPY is on my shelf. Might be a good time to give it a watch.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Thursday, June 16, 2011 - 10:14 am:   

Or try 'The Sandbaggers' if you can get your hands on it. The best espionage TV series ever made.

Ah, seventies TV...
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Thomasb (Thomasb)
Username: Thomasb

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.25.141.120
Posted on Friday, June 17, 2011 - 11:27 pm:   

Bond seems a fundamentally "reactionary" character to me. That's why I've never cared for the way the later films tried to make him "PC" or cuddly (the Dalton Bonds) or Bond Street preppie (Roger Moore). The world may change but *he does not*, which was what makes him a fun character for me. I like Roger Craig because he's a throwback to the Connery days.

As for my favorite Bond and Bond Things:

Favorite movies: "Thunderball"; "Dr. No."; "Casino Royale" (Craig); "From Russia With Love"; "For Your Eyes Only"

Least favorite Bonds: Most of the Moores, except maybe for "Octopussy" and "The Spy Who Loved Me; "Die Another Day" even though Brosnan was a decent Bond; and, of course, "Quantum of Solace"; a nephew of mine called it a "strobe movie."

Best composer: John Barry. Enough said.

Best villain: Gert Frobe as "Goldfinger."

Can't pick a Bond girl. They're all hot to me!
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Rhysaurus (Rhysaurus)
Username: Rhysaurus

Registered: 01-2010
Posted From: 212.219.233.223
Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2011 - 12:01 pm:   

Roger Moore gets up my nose big time. And yet I have a fondness for Live and Let Die... The circumstances, the voodoo stuff, the theme tune, the villains, etc. And the Bond girl in that movie, Jane Seymour, 'suffers' from heterechromia, the same 'condition' I do...
http://www.associatepublisher.com/e/h/he/heterochromia.htm

Hottest Bond girl ever, though?

Barbara Carrera
Sophie Marceau
Halle Berry

Personal choice, of course.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 04:57 am:   

Gotta say, I love the new Bond movie poster! Simple, but elegant....

bondposter
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Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker)
Username: Stephen_theaker

Registered: 12-2009
Posted From: 82.35.230.27
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 07:57 am:   

That looks good, but it's fan art, not the real poster.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 08:18 am:   

Hmmm... didn't know that!
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 12:47 pm:   

A puddle?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 01:01 pm:   

Looks great! When's it due out?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 01:18 pm:   

This thread is great but so confounding. It gets to the root of personal taste. Bond films are not art, people say, or high culture, are dull. But they are pleasurable to me, excite me, and to criticise such reactions and feelings seems to suggest that pleasure and excitement are lesser things. I love simple stuff.
And, is it me, or is it a British thing to pull our heroes apart, question every action? We do it in the media constantly. I don't like it. Killing people who are *bad*, who kill easily themselves, is questionable? Ridiculous. Stupid.

Another aside; I was saying recently on facebook how Americans are great at making films, how even a bad american film just feels so alive and unselfconscious compared with ours. British film often feels a bit 'dancing dad', awkward and stiff, never quite convincing. American film, it always feels lived in and alive.
Sorry - this is a bit of an aside.

Also I miss seeing Rhys on this board. I keep wanting to reply to him.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.27.246
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 02:01 pm:   

My feeling is that none of them can compare with the best action thrillers of Hitchcock or Lang or Michael Powell, or Chabrol for that matter. Most of them (perhaps not so much the Craig films) are essentially male adolescent fantasies, never more apparent than in the ridiculous sexual conversion of lesbian Pussy Galore (which I understand doesn't happen in the book).
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 02:16 pm:   

I love Hitchcock and Chabrol, too, though am less familiar with Lang. But watching Bond films for me is like being released into a huge playground, and the wonders felt in it are genuine and a huge exhilarating relief from time to time. I think what it comes down to for me is that just because a pleasure can be criticised and has faults it is not worthless. Art or literature for me is not necessarily a cerebral thing.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 03:36 pm:   

I think in their finest moments, Ramsey, the Bond films transcend "male adolescent fantasies," like say myth cycle stories do. Again, they are movies not populated by everyman bumblers like all of us, like Cary Grant in North by Northwest (a kind of Bond send-up [almost a comedy] before he properly appeared on the movie scene); rather, by myth types, angels and demons. So it's a matter of taste: you get different story structures with the directors you mention, and with the Bond films (and the Mission Impossible films; with the believe-it-or-not surprisingly fine The Expendables [2011], which is a straight-played tongue-in-cheek parody of 80's action films; and etc.).
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 03:38 pm:   

Top 10 non-Bond spy thrillers:

1. 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (2011) by Tomas Alfredson
2. 'Munich' (2005) by Steven Spielberg
3. 'North By Northwest' (1959) by Alfred Hitchcock
4. 'Foreign Correspondent' (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock
5. 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962) by John Frankenheimer
6. 'The 39 Steps' (1935) by Alfred Hitchcock
7. 'Three Days Of The Condor' (1975) by Sydney Pollack
8. 'The Deadly Affair' (1966) by Sidney Lumet
9. 'The Ipcress File' (1965) by Sidney J. Furie
10. 'Notorious' (1946) by Alfred Hitchcock

Other near misses; 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' (both versions), 'The Spy In Black', 'The Prize', 'Funeral In Berlin', 'The Quiller Memorandum', 'The Day Of The Jackal', 'Eye Of The Needle', 'The Fourth Protocol', 'Ronin', The Bourne Trilogy (big fan of those movies) & this year's 'Haywire'.

Can't think of any Fritz Lang spy thrillers off the top of my head, Ramsey, and the only Chabrol film I have seen is the psycho thriller, 'Le Boucher' (1970).
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.27.246
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 03:39 pm:   

Check out Cloak and Dagger, Stevie!
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 03:49 pm:   

Maybe, Tony, your question about British vs. American films, is because Hollywood grew up in, well... Hollywood: basically the old West they portrayed (mythically), large open expanses that bred lawlessness and gold rushes. The 1920's were a Western genre boom in film, so was the 40's-50's; and the Western is about primal story structures, pulp structures: action, good and bad, sublunary goals, tin-star heroes and mustache-twirling villains. We had Cooper, Grey, cowboys and indians... you had Dickens, Doyle, Sherlock Holmes.... But now I'm stretching. Who knows what it all is?
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 03:52 pm:   

Good lord, that's a meaty list! I admire many of the films on it, so the ones I don't know yet, can only be must-sees!

I've been putting off this new Tinker, Tailor too long... I must go out and finally get it....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 04:24 pm:   

I think yes, the US has grown up next to film sets. As much time IN film as out. That's an idea rich with possibilty...
Have you seen the film Hollywoodland? I caught a little of it and was hooked, and when i tried to watch the rest it was gone. It looked excellent.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 82.145.217.17
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 04:46 pm:   

Surely the best non-bond bond film is True Lies. The films in that list are certainly good if not great films but they can't really be compared directly to bond.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 04:52 pm:   

I'm not sure he was - maybe he meant to say just 'spy thrillers'.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 05:04 pm:   

I agree with Weber - Bond films are a genre that include the films I've included. They verge on "comedy," because—in the heroes' camp at least—no one ever gets fatally hurt, for the most part (and note how fertile in comedy the genre was, especially in the 1960's). The most non-Bond film in this respect, is probably On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which has a strange feel in comparison to the series as a whole as it is....

Reminds me: a superb set of books I can't recommend enough, that featured 3-4 novellas each (i.e., they are more collections of stories than full novels), are by the sadly forgotten Frank MacAuliff; they consist of Of All The Bloody Cheek, Rather A Vicious Gentleman, and For Murder I Charge More (which won an Edgar Award in 1972); they are black comedies featuring killer-for-hire Augustus Mandrell, and in their ways parody Bond, too. All are superb, and well deserve to be revisited.

Tony, yeah, people lived on sets, since they were shooting everywhere out here... it seems every place appeared somewhere, one time or another. I've not seen Hollywoodland, never heard of it, but will be on the watch for it.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 05:15 pm:   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywoodland
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 05:27 pm:   

I hated 'True Lies'! That was the moment I fell out of love with James Cameron.

I see the Bond films as brilliantly entertaining and wilfully outrageous spoofs of the whole spy/action hero genre. The films I listed above are what I would call spy thrillers proper while surely the Bourne movies must rank as the finest "Bond done straight" action thrillers ever made. Anyone who loved that trilogy, as I did, really should check out Steven Soderbergh's latest, 'Haywire'. I thought it was exceptionally well done.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 05:42 pm:   

Tony, I'll recommend this to you, because only you I'm sure would appreciate what I'm about to say....

Go buy an old (can't be newer!) edition of Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide, say around 2003 (I mention this because it's the year I have, and it's a good one); later editions are no good, because later ones (running out of room) cut out movies they figured I guess no one cared about anymore (bastards!). But this older one basically catalogues every movie ever made in Hollywood (and many many from elsewhere); the added interesting thing, is that up to the year of its publication (here, 2003), it listed which films made it to either VHS, laserdisc, or DVD... and of course, I find most fascinating those films that never got lucky enough to make it to any of those....

Anyway, just randomly open it to pages and read entries - I think you'll be amazed to discover films you've never heard of, totally forgotten about, or can't believe anyone ever made! It's like an amazing wonder book of lost and fabulous stories... only these stories exist, somewhere out there; and in our time, we are fortunate enough to actually be able to find these, if we look hard enough....
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 06:26 pm:   

True Lies was fantastic! Jamie Lee has never been sexier, Arnie gives his best performance as a human being to date... The stunts are awesomely mid-blowing - actually building that bridge so they could blow it up... (wouldn't you have hated to be the cameraman who didn't have the focus quite right when they did that shot?)

Brilliant on every level (except intellectual)!!!
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Stu (Stu)
Username: Stu

Registered: 04-2008
Posted From: 90.246.164.247
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 07:02 pm:   

"the ridiculous sexual conversion of lesbian Pussy Galore (which I understand doesn't happen in the book)."

Ramsey, it's years since I read Goldfinger but if I recall correctly the novel ends with Bond snogging Pussy Galore. In the book she only became a lesbian 'cos her uncle raped her and Bond is able to restore her heterosexuality with some "Tender Loving Care."

"in the heroes' camp at least—no one ever gets fatally hurt, for the most part"

Craig, I don't know, Bond girls tend to snuff it fairly regularly. Mainly the secondary Bond girls but even so ...

And I'd like to go on record as being in the anti-True Lies camp. Awful film. And I normally like Cameron's stuff. I even made it all the way through Titanic.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 08:20 pm:   

Craig; you could write a story about such a book. Someone who comes to realise all these movies have gone, and tries to recreate them in some way.
I read about an awful sounding movie once. Not bad awful, just sad. It was set in the thirties, made about the same time, about an old couple being split up and put into seperate old folks homes because men and women weren't allowed to mix. Their family no longer really bothered with them and the movie dealt with their last days together, saying goodbye before going off to these separate places never to see one another again. The whole idea of the movie chilled my blood because this used to actually happen. I can't think of much that's more upsetting than that.
Dying, forgotten movies, once loved, is a big sad thing for me.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 08:27 pm:   

This is it - not forgotten at all!;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Way_for_Tomorrow
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 08:32 pm:   

Golly gosh - this Amazon review is quite affecting; 'Dear E.D.: Your reactive response seems similar to mine. Orson Welles said it could make a stone cry. Jean Renoir said that it proved that McCarey was one of the few directors who really understood people. Yet, a feeling of personal ownership has always occupied me regarding this picture. It falls into the class of Movies That Nobody Has Seen But Me, Or So It Seems. It's hard to love it so much and have it unknown. Well, not for long, any longer. Based on the list of special features and judging by Criterion's previous releases, I feel confident that promises of restoration tenderness are about to be kept. I have been waiting for this to be released on VHS for decades. Having hundreds of other mostly classic and accompanying contemporary dvds in my family's "library," I am considering symbolically to make this my final acquisition. What number constitutes enough? Enough is maturity.'
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 08:53 pm:   

Hey, I believe Ramsey's been talking about this film, Tony, for a while here! Recommending it, too!

But yes, indeed, Tony... it's hard reading some of these entries, because of exactly what you say (I knew you'd get what I meant!). I've felt this a lot, even with recent movies: going into one of those increasingly-disappearing Blockbusters, and seeing a film from a mere few months back, and thinking: Wow, I totally forgot this film even existed! Which to me is heaped with irony when one thinks of outrageous films like The Human Centipede, which stay in the public consciousness for a long long time and become cultural reference points. It's sad, or funny, or poetically justice-laden, however your perspective might be....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 09:34 pm:   

I do a thing on Facebook, post my 'fading faces' - Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reece Witherspoon, Jim Carrey etc etc. It's a sad, ever lengthening list. Someone suggested these actors won't be sad not to have to work anymore, but I don't believe a word of it.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.21.172
Posted on Monday, May 21, 2012 - 11:01 pm:   

Make Way for Tomorrow was certainly not forgotten, but hard to see for decades because it was so badly received by the public on its initial release. Surely the point is not that it was forgotten but that it has survived. Before Eureka and Criterion released it I had it in a four-disc McCarey set from France. I ought to add that I think it's a great film that improves on each viewing.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 82.18.174.156
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 12:22 am:   

Discovering lost classic movies has become one of the great joys of cinema for me. I love the process of films (and stars) fading from the public consciousness and becoming time capsules of the period they were made. I think only then can their true worth be judged and I would add that in future generations the CGI-heavy popular cinema of the last 20 years, that short sightedly put technology over quality, will appear much more dated than the organic cinema that came before. We need to get back to artistry and craft and ditch the technological short cuts but try telling that to the money men.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.25.147
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 09:26 am:   

In fact, Tony, the great merit of the DVD revolution is how many films and film-makers and stars have been rediscovered because of it. Just a few from my personal experience - Ossi Oswalda, Alice Guy, Max Davidson, Charley Chase, Raymond Bernard, Mikhail Kalatozov, Larisa Shepitko... I originally bought a DVD player because there was at last a chance to see Feuillade's Les Vampires. Good and even great art may be forgotten for a while, but it tends to be revived.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 02:09 pm:   

I only heard about it via a film book, and a still. Odd; the few paragraphs were almost enough for me, they were so evocative.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 03:34 pm:   

Alas, one great lost film mystery solved, proved to be a dud... to me. Those being the lost footage from Blue Velvet, which I saw - well, ended up scanning, at almost an hour of it. It was less than spectacular, by far; at least, again, imho. Lynch was smart to have cut all that out....
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 03:46 pm:   

Yeah but what about the lost 3 hours of footage from 'Dune', Craig. Frank Herbert is on record as saying the film was made incomprehensible without it. That's become my dream reconstruction of a movie over even John Huston's 'The Red Badge Of Courage' or, of course, 'The Magnificent Ambersons'.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 04:28 pm:   

Craig - at least it shows Lynch has good judgement. It is good that he cut what he cut, not what he filmed.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 04:35 pm:   

It is good that he cut what he cut, not what he filmed.

A useful aphorism for anyone in the arts, I believe.... Creating is easy, cutting is hard.

Stevie, were those hours ever shot? Or were they planned and never executed?

Ramsey here mentioned Fritz Lang's Cloak and Dagger, which I've not seen (but want to!); I happened to notice Wikipedia mentioning a "missing final reel," concerning it. What's that all about?
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 04:45 pm:   

According to Herbert, in the intro to 'Eye' (1985), it was all shot and there were tentative plans to turn the film into a five hour plus mini-series. His untimely death and the poor reviews the released movie got seemed to put paid to the project, sadly.

I'd still love to see David Lynch adapt a Jonathan Carroll novel, as he has expressed an interest in. In theory it sounds like a perfect marriage.
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Weber (Weber_gregston)
Username: Weber_gregston

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 194.66.23.11
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 05:46 pm:   

a Marriage of Sticks even
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.21.176
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 10:40 pm:   

"A useful aphorism for anyone in the arts, I believe.... Creating is easy, cutting is hard."

Not for me! I take real delight in slicing away as much of my first drafts as I can.
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 92.8.21.176
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 10:44 pm:   

Cloak and Dagger - Lang tells Bogdanovich in the interview book that there was originally an epilogue that expressed his doubts about the atomic bomb.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - 11:06 pm:   

Editing is fun, perhaps even more so than the actual scribbling.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 11:49 am:   

I once told a poor friend to cut a whole chapter into a paragraph. He realised I was right, but couldn't bear to do it.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 03:53 pm:   

"Kill your babies," is a saying in the screenplay world. Yeah, I wish it were easier for me....
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.131.34.237
Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 04:16 pm:   

I have no trouble doing it at all. The energy from the cut things is absorbed by those that are left. It sings!
At the moment I am abandoning two or three stories of mine that strike me as just plain dead. I realise others might think them ok, but it's not enough for me.
'Kill Your Babies' has horrible connotations and leads the sensitive away from what must be done... To edit is to feel drunk and floating on helium.
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Hubert (Hubert)
Username: Hubert

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 178.116.61.103
Posted on Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - 04:18 pm:   

Reminiscent of "Kill your darlings" - i.e. stock phrases or words you are fond of for no apparent reason.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 07:50 am:   

Well, all I can say is, I'm jealous of you both, Ramsey and Tony....
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 99.126.164.88
Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 07:52 am:   

(you know, that would have been a more punchy and effective sentiment if I had cut out the whole "Well, all I can say is" part)
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Christopher Overend (Chris_overend)
Username: Chris_overend

Registered: 03-2012
Posted From: 217.33.165.66
Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 12:22 pm:   

I find it absolutely essential, although from the other direction.

My first draft always comes out as very bare; skeletal, even. I have to add, in further drafts, rather than take away. There comes a point where I realise it's too florid/detailed, then I strip it back one, and it's normally good to go. But on the whole I enjoy the process, and I think of all my writing-related skills, my editing is strongest. But that's not saying much.
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Stevie Walsh (Stephenw)
Username: Stephenw

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 194.32.31.1
Posted on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 03:35 pm:   

1. 'You Only Live Twice' (1967) - Sean Connery, Bond's finest hour, with the most epic scale and best gadgets and set-pieces and Blofeld, in Donald Pleasence, of the series. I stand corrected re Charles Gray.
2. 'Diamonds Are Forever' (1971) - Sean Connery, and the only one of the series that captured the new grit and violence of the 1970s, with Charles Gray, as Blofeld, in his most menacing form.
3. 'Goldfinger' (1964) - Sean Connery, and the coolest car of the series and a cast of villains that is perfection itself, like the entire movie.
4. 'From Russia With Love' (1963) - Sean Connery, with the most believable villain, the magnificent Robert Shaw, and most beautiful Bond girl, Daniela Bianchi.
5. 'Dr No' (1962) - Sean Connery, still stands up as a stunning debut.
6. 'Thunderball' (1965) - Sean Connery, only "weak" by comparison to the other official Connery films, and knocks spots off the 1983 remake, with Connery actually getting to show his acting chops as Bond.
7. 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' (1969) - George Lazenby, this movie is fantastic, and fantastically underrated, everything about it is spectacular and Lazenby was actually damn good in the part!!
8. 'Live And Let Die' (1973) - Roger Moore, his finest post-Saint hour and a far stronger debut than Brosnan's, which a lot of people forget, and it has the best chase sequence and theme song of the entire series imo.
9. 'Casino Royale' (2006) - Daniel Craig, a brilliant reinvention, that promised big things, and Bond hasn't been this tough since 'Diamonds Are Forever'.
10. 'Tomorrow Never Dies' (1997) - Pierce Brosnan, a super-slick and polished thriller that entertains in spades, and is Brosnan's finest hour, particularly the motor-bike chase.
11. 'Skyfall' (2012) - Daniel Craig, a sterling Bond that strides a thin line between making the character human and superhuman but gets away with it due to the charisma of the cast.
12. 'Goldeneye' (1995) - Pierce Brosnan, a sterling debut that marked a new level of slickness and maturity for Bond, Brosnan finally got the part he was born to play.
13. 'The World Is Not Enough' (1999) - Pierce Brosnan, as above.
14. 'The Spy Who Loved Me' (1977) - Roger Moore, loveably OTT tongue-in-cheek mayhem with Moore at his most cheesily likeable.
15. 'For Your Eyes Only' (1981) - Roger Moore, as above.
16. 'Die Another Day' (2002) - Pierce Brosnan, great entertainment but the series was starting to get a bit tired and samey again, something fresh was called for...
17. 'Never Say Never Again' (1983) - Sean Connery, entertaining and tough but rather pointless remake of a brilliant original, still was nice to see him back.
18. 'Licence To Kill' (1989) - Timothy Dalton, solid entertainment rather than memorable, a holding action for the series.
19. 'The Living Daylights' (1987) - Timothy Dalton, as above.
20. 'Casino Royale' (1967) - David Niven, ramshackle mess of an all-star comedy that is fascinating for its sheer monstrous cackhandedness, so bad it's actually quite remarkable, and Woody Allen is the best thing in it!
21. 'The Man With The Golden Gun' (1974) - Roger Moore, the first misfiring Bond of the official series, after 12 years, is some going.
22. 'Moonraker' (1979) - Roger Moore, mindlessly entertaining Bond by numbers.
23. 'Octopussy' (1983) - Roger Moore, as above.
24. 'A View To A Kill' (1985) - Roger Moore, as above.
25. 'Quantum Of Solace' (2008) - Daniel Craig, a complete balls-up after his stunning debut and the worst directed and edited film in the entire series, headache inducing nonsense.

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