I'm only watching them in the cinema now, plus a few blu ray viewings of each new one when they're first made available for home entetainment. I do like to take advantage of opportunities to see old ones on the big screen.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
As did I, catching the last showing of Goldfinger at the Prince Charles cinema today, at noon.
Some Pearl & Dean trailers beforehand - they do that thing of having the director and writer being interviewed about it, talking it up. It's a bit cringey. The one promoted today was a comedy, something like "Nasty Little Letters' with Timothy Spall and Olivia Coleman. It's probably okay but it looks like one of those awful early 80s Handmade films by George Harrison's company, I know he did Life of Brian and Withnail & I and that redeems all but he did some low-key rubbish to deter you from entering your local cinema.
A few minutes before the film began a classic - a trio came and sat in the row behind me, a bloke flanked by two women, said bloke noisily appreciative of the comic moments. We had a warning from the cinema with a clip from Cape Fear with DeNiro's Max Cady guffawing in a movie theatre and puffing on a cigar - all seemed lost on this cinema goer. Now, it's a bit like being kept awake by a neighbour's party - you get irritated they didn't tip you off about it, irritated that someone is having a good time while you relatively speaking are not, irritated that the reason you are not is due to their having a good time and last but in no way least, irritated at being irritated.
Everyone knows the code of seeing a Bond film in the cinema. One must watch in sullen silence, ticking off the ways the film is different to watching it on telly, and silently drafting your ajb review in your head. A laugh can occur at some outmoded sexist sexual byplay by Bond, but that is all.
Every piddling bit of light pleasantness provoked a guffaw from my new friend. Colonel Smithers' comment on the 'rather disappointing brandy' - a guffaw. You start wishing you were watching a miserable serious film with Timothy 'Chuckles' Dalton instead, if it offers less chance for bely laughs. You start to think ahead on the script, wondering when the next joke will come. Then get irritated when he doesn't laugh - why does Oddjob's cheating with the golf ball provoke a guffaw when Connery's brilliant comic timing response when the henchman crushes it in his hand not?
Eventually, I moved to the seat in front of me - and got annoyed as he seemed to realise the reason and quietened down a bit, but too late for me to move back to my favourite seat in the cinema. I risked a cricked neck.
Anyway! It's the whole experience of Goldfinger... Some things better... you notice on TV Bond's pal talking about how he shouldn't go back to his hotel room that the vocal is dubbed, on the big screen you don't, being distracted by the atmosphere of it all. Also, that room where he plants the bomb... what is the structure he enters, it looks like a tubular concrete thing, what's it meant to be? The inside decor is more noticeable on the big screen - objets d'Art and house plants, and a recurring Ken Adam motif - the ceiling window vent, from Dr No's interrogation room, and later Bond's cell in this film.
What else? Well, Connery's skin didn't look so good in the Miami scenes he even has a spot or a blemish when he's first chatting up Jill Masterton. A bit open-pored. Girls eyeing up even Leiter by the pool. Then, as Connnery never set foot in the US for this, you realise it must be a set, and the blue sky is a mock-up. It's very neatly slotted in with the shots of actual Miami.
This was the third time I've seen this in the cinema and probably the best, the first was Studio Canal or something over 10 years ago, a reprint but the sound was not crash bang wallop enough, you had to sit still to hear it. The second was at the BFI Imax but it was just too large - being a squarer print it was too much, too huge, whereas OHMSS looked great on that, being more widescreen. That said, I do think the picture on the first showing was better, if a bit too pure or ersatz. I know this is 4k but near the front they always look a bit grainy, I can't believe they looked like that back in the day. Is there a mint-type film print available?
The overall impact worked better on the big screen, the incongruities easier to overlook. The henchmen all being Korean had a nice uniform look, as did Pussy Galore's blondes. Generally, the surreal horror of Goldfinger's plan carries more weight, it would work well as a double-bill with JFK and it would have made a big impact only a year after the President's assassination. The tense countdown is almost unmatched by any other Bond. Unfortunately the movie starts to look a bit cheaper as it moves supposedly to Fort Knox, and the weather is cloudy and overcast. Thunderball in many ways is the more impressive looking film, the cinematography more advanced. Later films may be more longwinded in their climax, but look better, aside, it must be said, from most of Guy Hamilton's other Bonds, which tend to look slightly cheap for the final reel. In this, Connnery always I thought looked his best - but he looks like he's beginning to put on weight a bit, you notice it on his face and around his midriff, not in every scene but enough, he seemed to loose it by the next one, perhaps as he was in a bathing suit more, he had to.
Technically, the women aren't too great looking in this, this being more noticeable on the big screen - they're better in Thunderball. They do have more personality - which comes through more impressively on the TV. Bond doesn't get his kit off much, does he? Not with Dink, nor Tilly, nor Pussy and not much with Jill - he's in Jim jams and bathrobe.
Edit: As for the 'incongruities' - well, all that stuff about Bond slipping a note in Solo's pocket and getting thwarted. Once he's 'turned' Galore, well, all she has to do is pick up the phone and alert the authorities. Which, of course, I suppose she does given they all know to play along and play dead during the nerve attack. So why let it happen in the first place, save Adam has built a lovely Fort Knox set that needs using? Why let the US personnel get wiped out for real, and the 'atomic device' very nearly going off? This doesn't figure on first viewing because we don't know what's going on, we're not clued up, but it does on TV repeat viewing. Still, at the cinema the experience is overwhelming enough that on an emotional level, it doesn't matter, or at least, it doesn't occur to us. It is nonetheless sadly the stupidest climax of a good many Bond films because of this - some say the film is re-run with AVTAK and that's true, not least because in Moore's film there's simply nothing to stop him alerting the authorities after the half-successful murder attempt by Max Zorin on him and Tibbett - Zorin is a killer. There's a Rolls in the lake with a dead body in it as proof. There's simply no need to continue to tail Zorin to the US, same after the City Hall murder and subsequent blaze - Bond can just phone it in once he survives, game over. Admittedly 'telling on them' is not a bona fide action movie climax!
Edit 2: Connery's Bond does seem a bit, well, not charmless but v much the travelling salesman with an expense account at times, living a consequence-free existence in particular in relation to the Masterton sisters who would both still be alive had he not encountered them. This is mitigated by three looks of genuine alarm by the star - in the pre-credits, facing the laser, and in the final scene when Goldfinger emerges from behind the curtain.
The theme song is over and in very quickly, as if to say, right let's get on with the movie then. In contrast to the recent wallowing ballads which go on forever. Same with the exit music. No hanging around.
Though the film has nothing of Russia in it, Goldfinger feels like a Putin villain, getting rid of whoever he wants, when he wants, and jovial and vindictive about it. The dubbing for Gert Frobe's voice never fails to impress. The voice actor occupies the character and leads it, but that's not to decry Frobe's performance, which is excellent and directs the voice actor exactly what to do.
Another nail in the coffin of my love-hate relationship with the Prince Charles - dare I risk it for TMWTGG ?
Thunderbird 2East of Cardiff, Wales.Posts: 2,777MI6 Agent
Guys,
thr last Bond film I saw at the Cinema was No Time To Die. I think I blee a fuse at how middling it was, because with a singular exception of Moonraker on my last Birthday, I havr not popped out the DvDs! (Those of you laughing that I did not say 'Blueray, I'm a child of the 20th Century.)
Would now be a good time to request we start a new run of watchalongs? As well as the produce of The House Of Eon, I can recommend a secondary category - classic Sci Fi?
This is Thunderbird 2, how can I be of assistance?
Is now a good time for a Bond re-run? They're being re-shown on ITV4 every evening these days, and London's Prince Charles is also re-running them. There's no drought on Bond stuff but many won't want to get to London of course and many don't want to watch them on telly with ad breaks and edits and so on.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thunderbird 2East of Cardiff, Wales.Posts: 2,777MI6 Agent
This is the YouTube review by the famed reviewer who has a thread to himself on this board. Now, I love Spectre, it's in my Top 5 but others detest it and Dyson is more in the latter camp. It is both dismaying and entertaining to learn why, but it's from the off - he hates the gun barrel, I love it because I think Craig walks it the best in this one.
The main flaw is the Blofeld reveal and the retcon issue, Dyson feels. Okay, though I was sold on the film by that point so I didn't mind it. In fact, I hated all the other Craig films really (and still do with the last one) so Spectre cast those movies in a more flattering light, I felt. It never quite works though, harking back to previous characters and plot lines, because inevitably the films change over the decade or more so it doesn't ring true. I know for the most part Spectre was a part of the 60s films but that was all, aside from a brief reference to Dr No in FRWL, it pays no heed to this so each film's internal universe holds up (aside from some awkward stuff over the credits of OHMSS when they hark back to previous films).
I mean, how could the Vesper of Casino Royale really fit with a movie like No Time To Die, they're just not the same world. Similarly, I wouldn't want Honey Ryder name checked in Diamonds are Forever. Keep them separate - there's also the theory that one can only be happy in the present, so referencing the past detracts from that, then again I suppose Craig's Bond isn't happy.
Dyson lavishes praise on the return of Mr White, which I agree with. He isn't bothered with the pre-credits, saying it's not as good as a similar one in FYEO - well, in mood maybe but surely the action can't be compared, one is full-throttle and modern, the other isn't. But do all old films suffer from that, while you have some classics that maintain that status - Casablanca, The Third Man, Disney's Peter Pan and so on - others are classics at the time but later superseded by progress, new special effects or just done better.
As expected, Calvin has some hilarious observations to make - for instance, he jibes at the pettiness of Blofeld sticking up pictures of Bond's enemies and allies in the old MI6 building, pointing out that the nemesis doesn't bother to put up a picture of Dominic Greene because he's so forgettable and it was kind of a rubbish film! And that - though only a mega fan like Calvin would spot this - some of the pictures seem extracted from the films themselves, leading to a very ominous, actually chilling joke where Calvin inserts Christoph Waltz hovering behind Le Chiffrre, snapping a picture of Vesper.
He also points out that the whole countdown to Spectre's surveillance going on air and having to be shut down beforehand is bogus because it's not like a bomb going off - if they are a bit late in shutting it down, it doesn't matter as all Spectre is going to get is 10 or 20 mins of footage of people doing not very much, and besides, as Bond's blown up their HQ in the previous scene, who is there to annotate it anyway?
The main reason I do like Spectre is that for me, it's an old-school Bond where he seems to enjoy himself a bit. Other films tend to produce something jarring at almost every turn. For instance, the opener of Skyfall has Bond walk away from a dying agent in the first two minutes - it's a downer, and the whole movie has stuff like that in it. Even Eyes Only junks the menace of the opener with a silly bit where Blofeld gets dropped down a chimney. Many of the films do this - even watching GoldenEye the other day for two minutes, we get 'Ah, James Bond, what an unpleasant surprise' from Bean, and Brosnan replies 'We aim to please.' Now, how is that funny? It doesn't even make sense. If Bean has said sarcastically, 'Ah, James Bond, what a pleasant surprise' then Bond's response would not be hugely funny but would at least make sense. I feel Spectre has the least of that kind of grim, baffling dialogue and rarely for 'recent' films, some really fine moments in it - Bond gatecrashing the truly terrifying Spectre meeting in Rome, preceded by his first encounter with the group's new widow, then later saving her life at her Roman abode. None of if feels stupid, like the scene in Skyfall where Bond sneaks up to the sex worker in the shower and then later just strolls out on top deck and is surprised to be captured.
I enjoyed You Only Live Twice on ITV4 last night, more than I have in a long time. I think they do edit it a bit for telly so it doesn't go on for so long. It has two Diamonds alumni - if they can be called that seeing as Diamonds hadn't been filmed yet - David Bauer, who is the irritated US ambassador in the pre-credits; has a typically 1960s look, you could see him popping up in The Graduate, he reappeared as the suave and oily Morton Slumber. Also of course Charles Grey, though you could make a case that in Usual Suspects-style, he was Blofeld in this too, and that Donald Pleasance was the phone stand-in, perhaps Blofled hit up on the idea of faking his death in front of Bond to put him off the scent?
Calvin Dyson's review points out that the cat has a bad time of it in this, particularly in one shot where he's trying to tear himself off Blofeld - it's odd though because while it's noisy at that point, the noise is off set, in the main volcano bit, not the control room, so there's no need to have subjected the cat to any of that. They are different shots.
Connery has been accused of looking bored - that's true, though I think he's also playing it languid. He's required to go up a gear and be a superman in this - but that was better suited to Moore than Connery, that sense of being coolly invincible and insouciant. Connery was better at being the underdog fighting through.
YOLT. It must be at least twenty-five years since I've watched it. All I could remember was the fight scene at the docks. It was always one of my least favourite of the whole franchise. I must say, for me, time hasn't changed my opinion.
One thing which did jog a long forgotten memory was Little Nellie. I saw her being flown at an airshow sometime in the mid to late 1970s. I was at the front of the crowd so had a great view as she took off (flown by the chap who'd piloted her during filming) and did a short but entertaining few circuits of the field.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Possibly the one at Leyont Solent, which I went to on a birthday outing. Long journey, all specifically to see the Little Nellie. I got a few photographs. I think I got an autograph. Took one of Ken Wallis posing by his autogyro but annoyingly a kid who'd I'd invited to go along helpfully offered to get in the picture, so it's him in it rather than me.
No, not there. It was probably RAF Finningley as I visited the airshow there a few times. My guess is Little Nellie toured the airshow circuits here, on the continent and across the USA. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
@Marker I am interested to know how you avoided YOLT for 25 years - I catch at least ten minutes of it almost every year on telly ! You must have tremendous powers of self-control.
@chrisno1 I Saw it advertised on countless occasions but never bothered watching. It was always down at the very bottom of my rankings and, as I said earlier, time hasn't changed my mind. I doubt very much if I'll ever watch it again.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Comments
I'm only watching them in the cinema now, plus a few blu ray viewings of each new one when they're first made available for home entetainment. I do like to take advantage of opportunities to see old ones on the big screen.
As did I, catching the last showing of Goldfinger at the Prince Charles cinema today, at noon.
Some Pearl & Dean trailers beforehand - they do that thing of having the director and writer being interviewed about it, talking it up. It's a bit cringey. The one promoted today was a comedy, something like "Nasty Little Letters' with Timothy Spall and Olivia Coleman. It's probably okay but it looks like one of those awful early 80s Handmade films by George Harrison's company, I know he did Life of Brian and Withnail & I and that redeems all but he did some low-key rubbish to deter you from entering your local cinema.
A few minutes before the film began a classic - a trio came and sat in the row behind me, a bloke flanked by two women, said bloke noisily appreciative of the comic moments. We had a warning from the cinema with a clip from Cape Fear with DeNiro's Max Cady guffawing in a movie theatre and puffing on a cigar - all seemed lost on this cinema goer. Now, it's a bit like being kept awake by a neighbour's party - you get irritated they didn't tip you off about it, irritated that someone is having a good time while you relatively speaking are not, irritated that the reason you are not is due to their having a good time and last but in no way least, irritated at being irritated.
Everyone knows the code of seeing a Bond film in the cinema. One must watch in sullen silence, ticking off the ways the film is different to watching it on telly, and silently drafting your ajb review in your head. A laugh can occur at some outmoded sexist sexual byplay by Bond, but that is all.
Every piddling bit of light pleasantness provoked a guffaw from my new friend. Colonel Smithers' comment on the 'rather disappointing brandy' - a guffaw. You start wishing you were watching a miserable serious film with Timothy 'Chuckles' Dalton instead, if it offers less chance for bely laughs. You start to think ahead on the script, wondering when the next joke will come. Then get irritated when he doesn't laugh - why does Oddjob's cheating with the golf ball provoke a guffaw when Connery's brilliant comic timing response when the henchman crushes it in his hand not?
Eventually, I moved to the seat in front of me - and got annoyed as he seemed to realise the reason and quietened down a bit, but too late for me to move back to my favourite seat in the cinema. I risked a cricked neck.
Anyway! It's the whole experience of Goldfinger... Some things better... you notice on TV Bond's pal talking about how he shouldn't go back to his hotel room that the vocal is dubbed, on the big screen you don't, being distracted by the atmosphere of it all. Also, that room where he plants the bomb... what is the structure he enters, it looks like a tubular concrete thing, what's it meant to be? The inside decor is more noticeable on the big screen - objets d'Art and house plants, and a recurring Ken Adam motif - the ceiling window vent, from Dr No's interrogation room, and later Bond's cell in this film.
What else? Well, Connery's skin didn't look so good in the Miami scenes he even has a spot or a blemish when he's first chatting up Jill Masterton. A bit open-pored. Girls eyeing up even Leiter by the pool. Then, as Connnery never set foot in the US for this, you realise it must be a set, and the blue sky is a mock-up. It's very neatly slotted in with the shots of actual Miami.
This was the third time I've seen this in the cinema and probably the best, the first was Studio Canal or something over 10 years ago, a reprint but the sound was not crash bang wallop enough, you had to sit still to hear it. The second was at the BFI Imax but it was just too large - being a squarer print it was too much, too huge, whereas OHMSS looked great on that, being more widescreen. That said, I do think the picture on the first showing was better, if a bit too pure or ersatz. I know this is 4k but near the front they always look a bit grainy, I can't believe they looked like that back in the day. Is there a mint-type film print available?
The overall impact worked better on the big screen, the incongruities easier to overlook. The henchmen all being Korean had a nice uniform look, as did Pussy Galore's blondes. Generally, the surreal horror of Goldfinger's plan carries more weight, it would work well as a double-bill with JFK and it would have made a big impact only a year after the President's assassination. The tense countdown is almost unmatched by any other Bond. Unfortunately the movie starts to look a bit cheaper as it moves supposedly to Fort Knox, and the weather is cloudy and overcast. Thunderball in many ways is the more impressive looking film, the cinematography more advanced. Later films may be more longwinded in their climax, but look better, aside, it must be said, from most of Guy Hamilton's other Bonds, which tend to look slightly cheap for the final reel. In this, Connnery always I thought looked his best - but he looks like he's beginning to put on weight a bit, you notice it on his face and around his midriff, not in every scene but enough, he seemed to loose it by the next one, perhaps as he was in a bathing suit more, he had to.
Technically, the women aren't too great looking in this, this being more noticeable on the big screen - they're better in Thunderball. They do have more personality - which comes through more impressively on the TV. Bond doesn't get his kit off much, does he? Not with Dink, nor Tilly, nor Pussy and not much with Jill - he's in Jim jams and bathrobe.
Edit: As for the 'incongruities' - well, all that stuff about Bond slipping a note in Solo's pocket and getting thwarted. Once he's 'turned' Galore, well, all she has to do is pick up the phone and alert the authorities. Which, of course, I suppose she does given they all know to play along and play dead during the nerve attack. So why let it happen in the first place, save Adam has built a lovely Fort Knox set that needs using? Why let the US personnel get wiped out for real, and the 'atomic device' very nearly going off? This doesn't figure on first viewing because we don't know what's going on, we're not clued up, but it does on TV repeat viewing. Still, at the cinema the experience is overwhelming enough that on an emotional level, it doesn't matter, or at least, it doesn't occur to us. It is nonetheless sadly the stupidest climax of a good many Bond films because of this - some say the film is re-run with AVTAK and that's true, not least because in Moore's film there's simply nothing to stop him alerting the authorities after the half-successful murder attempt by Max Zorin on him and Tibbett - Zorin is a killer. There's a Rolls in the lake with a dead body in it as proof. There's simply no need to continue to tail Zorin to the US, same after the City Hall murder and subsequent blaze - Bond can just phone it in once he survives, game over. Admittedly 'telling on them' is not a bona fide action movie climax!
Edit 2: Connery's Bond does seem a bit, well, not charmless but v much the travelling salesman with an expense account at times, living a consequence-free existence in particular in relation to the Masterton sisters who would both still be alive had he not encountered them. This is mitigated by three looks of genuine alarm by the star - in the pre-credits, facing the laser, and in the final scene when Goldfinger emerges from behind the curtain.
The theme song is over and in very quickly, as if to say, right let's get on with the movie then. In contrast to the recent wallowing ballads which go on forever. Same with the exit music. No hanging around.
Though the film has nothing of Russia in it, Goldfinger feels like a Putin villain, getting rid of whoever he wants, when he wants, and jovial and vindictive about it. The dubbing for Gert Frobe's voice never fails to impress. The voice actor occupies the character and leads it, but that's not to decry Frobe's performance, which is excellent and directs the voice actor exactly what to do.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Another nail in the coffin of my love-hate relationship with the Prince Charles - dare I risk it for TMWTGG ?
Guys,
thr last Bond film I saw at the Cinema was No Time To Die. I think I blee a fuse at how middling it was, because with a singular exception of Moonraker on my last Birthday, I havr not popped out the DvDs! (Those of you laughing that I did not say 'Blueray, I'm a child of the 20th Century.)
Would now be a good time to request we start a new run of watchalongs? As well as the produce of The House Of Eon, I can recommend a secondary category - classic Sci Fi?
Is now a good time for a Bond re-run? They're being re-shown on ITV4 every evening these days, and London's Prince Charles is also re-running them. There's no drought on Bond stuff but many won't want to get to London of course and many don't want to watch them on telly with ad breaks and edits and so on.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That's another reason I ask Nap.
I love the Carry On films, but I stopped watching them on the Telly, as ITV cut out bits and the constant adverts are too much.
Unless its streamimg, I don't bother, and go back to my DvDs. Thats what prompted me to ask.
Spectre with Calvin Dyson.
This is the YouTube review by the famed reviewer who has a thread to himself on this board. Now, I love Spectre, it's in my Top 5 but others detest it and Dyson is more in the latter camp. It is both dismaying and entertaining to learn why, but it's from the off - he hates the gun barrel, I love it because I think Craig walks it the best in this one.
The main flaw is the Blofeld reveal and the retcon issue, Dyson feels. Okay, though I was sold on the film by that point so I didn't mind it. In fact, I hated all the other Craig films really (and still do with the last one) so Spectre cast those movies in a more flattering light, I felt. It never quite works though, harking back to previous characters and plot lines, because inevitably the films change over the decade or more so it doesn't ring true. I know for the most part Spectre was a part of the 60s films but that was all, aside from a brief reference to Dr No in FRWL, it pays no heed to this so each film's internal universe holds up (aside from some awkward stuff over the credits of OHMSS when they hark back to previous films).
I mean, how could the Vesper of Casino Royale really fit with a movie like No Time To Die, they're just not the same world. Similarly, I wouldn't want Honey Ryder name checked in Diamonds are Forever. Keep them separate - there's also the theory that one can only be happy in the present, so referencing the past detracts from that, then again I suppose Craig's Bond isn't happy.
Dyson lavishes praise on the return of Mr White, which I agree with. He isn't bothered with the pre-credits, saying it's not as good as a similar one in FYEO - well, in mood maybe but surely the action can't be compared, one is full-throttle and modern, the other isn't. But do all old films suffer from that, while you have some classics that maintain that status - Casablanca, The Third Man, Disney's Peter Pan and so on - others are classics at the time but later superseded by progress, new special effects or just done better.
As expected, Calvin has some hilarious observations to make - for instance, he jibes at the pettiness of Blofeld sticking up pictures of Bond's enemies and allies in the old MI6 building, pointing out that the nemesis doesn't bother to put up a picture of Dominic Greene because he's so forgettable and it was kind of a rubbish film! And that - though only a mega fan like Calvin would spot this - some of the pictures seem extracted from the films themselves, leading to a very ominous, actually chilling joke where Calvin inserts Christoph Waltz hovering behind Le Chiffrre, snapping a picture of Vesper.
He also points out that the whole countdown to Spectre's surveillance going on air and having to be shut down beforehand is bogus because it's not like a bomb going off - if they are a bit late in shutting it down, it doesn't matter as all Spectre is going to get is 10 or 20 mins of footage of people doing not very much, and besides, as Bond's blown up their HQ in the previous scene, who is there to annotate it anyway?
The main reason I do like Spectre is that for me, it's an old-school Bond where he seems to enjoy himself a bit. Other films tend to produce something jarring at almost every turn. For instance, the opener of Skyfall has Bond walk away from a dying agent in the first two minutes - it's a downer, and the whole movie has stuff like that in it. Even Eyes Only junks the menace of the opener with a silly bit where Blofeld gets dropped down a chimney. Many of the films do this - even watching GoldenEye the other day for two minutes, we get 'Ah, James Bond, what an unpleasant surprise' from Bean, and Brosnan replies 'We aim to please.' Now, how is that funny? It doesn't even make sense. If Bean has said sarcastically, 'Ah, James Bond, what a pleasant surprise' then Bond's response would not be hugely funny but would at least make sense. I feel Spectre has the least of that kind of grim, baffling dialogue and rarely for 'recent' films, some really fine moments in it - Bond gatecrashing the truly terrifying Spectre meeting in Rome, preceded by his first encounter with the group's new widow, then later saving her life at her Roman abode. None of if feels stupid, like the scene in Skyfall where Bond sneaks up to the sex worker in the shower and then later just strolls out on top deck and is surprised to be captured.
Anyway, Calvin's reviews are great fun.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I enjoyed You Only Live Twice on ITV4 last night, more than I have in a long time. I think they do edit it a bit for telly so it doesn't go on for so long. It has two Diamonds alumni - if they can be called that seeing as Diamonds hadn't been filmed yet - David Bauer, who is the irritated US ambassador in the pre-credits; has a typically 1960s look, you could see him popping up in The Graduate, he reappeared as the suave and oily Morton Slumber. Also of course Charles Grey, though you could make a case that in Usual Suspects-style, he was Blofeld in this too, and that Donald Pleasance was the phone stand-in, perhaps Blofled hit up on the idea of faking his death in front of Bond to put him off the scent?
Calvin Dyson's review points out that the cat has a bad time of it in this, particularly in one shot where he's trying to tear himself off Blofeld - it's odd though because while it's noisy at that point, the noise is off set, in the main volcano bit, not the control room, so there's no need to have subjected the cat to any of that. They are different shots.
Connery has been accused of looking bored - that's true, though I think he's also playing it languid. He's required to go up a gear and be a superman in this - but that was better suited to Moore than Connery, that sense of being coolly invincible and insouciant. Connery was better at being the underdog fighting through.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thunderball The other evening on ITV4.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
YOLT. It must be at least twenty-five years since I've watched it. All I could remember was the fight scene at the docks. It was always one of my least favourite of the whole franchise. I must say, for me, time hasn't changed my opinion.
One thing which did jog a long forgotten memory was Little Nellie. I saw her being flown at an airshow sometime in the mid to late 1970s. I was at the front of the crowd so had a great view as she took off (flown by the chap who'd piloted her during filming) and did a short but entertaining few circuits of the field.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Possibly the one at Leyont Solent, which I went to on a birthday outing. Long journey, all specifically to see the Little Nellie. I got a few photographs. I think I got an autograph. Took one of Ken Wallis posing by his autogyro but annoyingly a kid who'd I'd invited to go along helpfully offered to get in the picture, so it's him in it rather than me.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
No, not there. It was probably RAF Finningley as I visited the airshow there a few times. My guess is Little Nellie toured the airshow circuits here, on the continent and across the USA. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
@Marker I am interested to know how you avoided YOLT for 25 years - I catch at least ten minutes of it almost every year on telly ! You must have tremendous powers of self-control.
@chrisno1 I Saw it advertised on countless occasions but never bothered watching. It was always down at the very bottom of my rankings and, as I said earlier, time hasn't changed my mind. I doubt very much if I'll ever watch it again.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.