-The Hound Of The Baskervilles
-Dracula
-The Gorgon
just literally bloody great all three, Peter Cushing is simply fantastic as Sherlock Holmes and it's the most unique interpretation I have seen of Baskervilles.
Christopher Lee is in all three of them too together with Cushing.
Saw all three fairly recently. To be honest I struggled with The Gorgon. The main house set has a very nice feel of gothic dilapidation, but it seemed rather cold and slow compared to the other Terence Fisher collaborations with Lee and Cushing.
I *love* Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles - it gets nothing like the credit it deserves.
Mini-Non Spoiler-ish Reviews on Ghost in the Shell and Atomic Blonde.
Ghost in the Shell (with the Bond-like Esprit) was a film that I enjoyed quite thoroughly, makes me wish that I'd gone to the cinema to see it as I don't have much of a sound-system.
Beautiful visual, better story.
I think that it did steal/borrow (or homage as people are calling it these days) a bit from the Matrix and the like (the ones that stuck out for me was Miami Vice with the bulletproof briefcase and Dirty Harry with the .44) but it was incorporated in such a way that it made it its own.
Personally, I would love to be able to be transferred to a new body after I died...just not in the way it was presented in the movie.
An early Blade Runner, for me. If I get the chance, I might even do a video on it.
Atomic Blonde was a film that I just watched (and I'm sure that some of you might've noticed that I was extremely interested to see it).
It delivered, just not as much as I would've like it to.
Charlize, after I had seen The Italian Job, has aged a bit since then but she's still got it.
The market isn't exactly as open for a Bond competitor as the late 90s and 60s were, as the role of the action man/woman (Wick/Wonderwoman) or specifically British agent (Kingsman, per se) has been filled out but it's done with a big twist and an edge over it's competitors. It takes place during the end of an era, the lead-up and the fall of the Berlin wall back in '89.
Certainly an interesting time frame...for the end of a series but not for one to start-up, unless next missions are going to be flashbacks from the past. It didn't do that bad at the box office, a 50.9 million dollar profit but I don't know if it will be enough for it to warrant a sequel.
At the cinema, you could practically invent a drinking game out of every time a bottle of Stoli is popped or when someone lights up and smokes a cigarette on screen.
The action scenes and story work well together but I got the feeling that there was an abundance and a bit of overuse of good music.
Sure it fits-well with the story but we just had a song playing 3 minutes ago!
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and I will probably buy it on Blu-Ray when it comes out.
re Atomic Blonde, yes I also found the all-80s soundtrack a distraction after a few songs in. I don't like soundtracks that rely on our familiarity with wellknown poptunes to tell the story, it seems a cheat.
The graphic ultraviolence was impressive, but if it wasn't a female lead doing all that damage, I probably would have just been disgusted.
just watched: Hitchcock - Blackmail (1929)
a concise and prototypical bit of sordidity, paranoia, black humour and moral ambiguity from the Master
a silly young lady (in fine flapper fashions) accepts an invitation upstairs to an artists garrett and gets herself raped. Things go downhill from there.
This was Hitchcock's first talkie. The actors overdo the bodylanguage and mug the camera to express emotion as was required in the silent era, so technically this is interesting as a transitional film.
wikipedia tells me Anny Ondra had an inappropriate Czech accent in real life, so a second actress actually spoke her lines offcamera while Ondra mouthed the words, as overdubbing was not a thing yet.
typical Hitchcockian technical innovation: a soundcollage looping the word "knife" as our young murderess has a panic attack over her morning meal.
about that rape scene: this was before the Hayes code, but there wasnt a Hayes code in England anyway, was there? still, I don't remember any rape scenes in any of Hitchcock's 1930s spy films. I'm not sure there was another til Frenzy, in the early 70s, though Psycho did tease us with the threat. This was pretty Spicy stuff, as the pulp magazines of the day used to promise
re Atomic Blonde, yes I also found the all-80s soundtrack a distraction after a few songs in. I don't like soundtracks that rely on our familiarity with wellknown poptunes to tell the story, it seems a cheat.
The graphic ultraviolence was impressive, but if it wasn't a female lead doing all that damage, I probably would have just been disgusted.
The stairwell fight for example, just brilliant. I love the way that she uses empty or unusable to weapons against enemies. Or the rope sequence, referencing the Bilbao escape from The World Is Not Enough.
Also, the scene in the river reminded me much of that Bourne flick where his girlfriend also dies in a car crash. And for the way they got into the river, I think that it was Wick that started the whole...car-out-of-nowhere-startling-the-hero cliché.
I will admit about the soundtrack though, the songs were very good, just not incorporated all that well.
A missed opportunity was that they never used Blondie's Atomic. When I first saw the title, I thought it was going to be Debbie Harry's bio-flick but it turned out to be something much more interesting than that (no offence to Debbie).
Logan Lucky
don't know if Craig's hillbilly drawl convinced West Virginians, but he was almost completely unrecognisable as Bond and much funnier than I've ever seen him before, a performance memorable in and of itself regardless of where we already know him from
whenever I've seen Connery, Moore, or Brosnan in another film I cannot stop thinking "that's James Bond", so major props to Craig for demonstrating range
Good stuff, and yes Craig is fine in it, at times channelling (and looking like) Red Grant when he gets agitated with Bond and leans forward to make a point, but it's a hermetically sealed performance, it doesn't stay with you like that of the leading man in it. That said, his is an enjoyable turn, you're not meant to relate to it or anything, so that's not a mark against Craig.
The conclusion is quite implausible and it doesn't really work for you the next day imo, but it works as you watch it unfold and it has its surprises. Not a sumptuous film to look at really though. It doesn't feel like an A movie but then again it's nice to see something that isn't out to wow you and get exhibited on a 4K OLED screen in the future.
It's one of those odd films that is a) quirky, comic and implausible but b) has serious themes and aims to tug at the heartstrings a bit.
Logan
the X-Men films always skewed more adult than the regular Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this one is some particularly dark and nasty stuff
the violence Wolverine and his sidekick dole out make Charlize Theron look like Roger Moore
Patrick Stewart's back for this one too, he puts in a very touching performance. Those of us who've experienced a parent with Alzheimer's should appreciate what he's doing here. I'm not being ironic about this part, he drew a tear.
I think we all know this one ends with Wolverine's death. Sorry about spoilers if you didn't, but that was kind of hyped when it came out. This film is probably why we're debating what should happen to CraigBond at the end of Bond25. But the real surprise is...
there's a Li'l Wolverine out there!
Makes me wonder how they filmed this with a child actor. At first I was thinking both Jackman and Stewart are cussin' up a storm in front of this innocent young child actor. But then by the end both Wolverine and his kid sidekick have...
graphically decapitated and disembowelled a couple hundred bad guys
...what does that experience do to an impressionable young person's developing psyche? On the plus side, she probably will never get teased in the schoolyard like the childactor who played Li'l Annakin supposedly did.
Also theres a few scenes from cowboy classic Shane near the middle, which I think are meant to map to the relationship between the father figure and child. Good detail for us filmhistory geeks.
It's a tough film to 'like', but I really appreciated Logan's qualities, especially bearing in mind how epically bored I am with Superhero movies. I didn't even bother seeing the last X-Men movie.
Just watched the film version of Dad's Army. Great cast--Toby Jones, Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy, the always-beautiful Catherine Zeta Jones--but the results were pretty meh. BTW, I've only seen the original show a couple of times. For some reason, it hasn't been very well known in the U.S. of A. I thought perhaps it's because we're not all that interested in a British comedy about World War II. . .but to this day Allo Allo is a hit. Go figure.
Vox clamantis in deserto
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,652MI6 Agent
Just watched Alien Covenant on DVD, might need to watch it again because an old fart like me tends to have spells of falling asleep in 5-10 minute blocks. It's okay, a stand-out performance by Michael Fassbender, though it reminded me of the recent movie "Life." Before that, I watched "Their Finest" starring Gemma Arterton and Bill Nighy about a war office propaganda team producing a film about the Dunkirk evacuation; it's pretty entertaining.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Just watched the film version of Dad's Army. Great cast--Toby Jones, Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy, the always-beautiful Catherine Zeta Jones--but the results were pretty meh. BTW, I've only seen the original show a couple of times. For some reason, it hasn't been very well known in the U.S. of A. I thought perhaps it's because we're not all that interested in a British comedy about World War II. . .but to this day Allo Allo is a hit. Go figure.
No idea why you or any American would watch this Hardy' even us lot gave it a miss. The TV series is always on here so why go for a remake. It may be that Allo Allo is on in the US because Yanks can relate to the whole French Resistance thing having liberated France whereas of course Britain's home guard has nothing to do with Americans and mostly preceded their entry into the war (I don't know if the series follows an actual timeline in that regard.)
The Stud
Originally intended by Cubby Broccoli as a Bond espionage spin-off starring the head of the KGB Walter Gotell as he visits 1970s London to oversee an espionage sting with sexy surveillance camera nods to From Russia With Love. Working title was The Stud Who Loved Me, and Joan Collins was pencilled in as a femme fetale love interest, with Sue Lloyd there as a nod to the grit of The Ipcress File. However, it all fell through, not least because it became clear that The Spy Who Loved Me was going to be a monster hit and this side-line would instead be a distraction. So with all the cast in place and the crew booked, it underwent a last-minute rewrite to become a sexploitation movie, with a larger role for Joan Collins and a miffed Gotell relegated to an extended cameo. Rumours persist to this day that Oliver Tobias was cast for his Bond audition, or at least to reduce Moore's asking price for Bond 4, now that he was out of contract. In the original script, the KGB head disposed of his wife Collins for bonking in a lift in time-honoured Bond villain - the press of a button and they both descend into the shark pool, while still in congress.
I do enjoy coming on this site to talk absolute rubbish.
No idea why you or any American would watch this Hardy' even us lot gave it a miss. The TV series is always on here so why go for a remake. It may be that Allo Allo is on in the US because Yanks can relate to the whole French Resistance thing having liberated France whereas of course Britain's home guard has nothing to do with Americans and mostly preceded their entry into the war (I don't know if the series follows an actual timeline in that regard.)
Can't quite buy your argument, NP. Don't forget that us "Yanks" (a term that applies only to the northeast U.S., but nevermind) have a long history of embracing VERY British shows--Dr. Who is the most famous example, but it was us who bought all the tapes of Monty Python's Flying Circus right before the Beeb was about to have them wiped--and we don't need to see ourselves in a show to like it. In fact, wasn't that what some critics said about Dunkirk?--that it would fail in America because it has nothing to do with the U.S.--yet it was as successful as a film could be in an otherwise lackluster summer. Ah, well, as to why some shows are hits and others aren't. . .who can explain it, who can tell you why?
Well, my point is that even us lot in the UK wouldn't bother with Dad's Army the movie (and we didn't, it was a well-deserved flop over here) so I don't know why an American would put it on, esp as I was never aware that DA had a following in the States, as you say in your post, unlike Monty Python. Besides, surely the imdb tells you the story on what it was like.
It would be like someone in the UK hearing about how good Sgt Bilko the series was, and then opting to see Steve Martin's version.
A true classic with plenty of connections to the world of Bond. I liked it a lot, but I wonder if an unsusual and downbeat over like The Third Man could do well in cinemas today?
Anway, here's a classic Hardyboy can put on this DVD player: Dick Emery's Ooh, You Are Awful!
Though to really benefit you need to get the BluRay...
It was on last night, as a warm-up for The Bitch.
Actually, Dick Emery is a good TV presence and in terms of its sheer trashiness I enjoyed it to some of Ealing's superior fare. There are even nods to FRWL in it.
Then we had La Collins... it's funny, what it lacks in sexual daring by today's standards it makes up for in being wholly unPC. When you press i for info on the remote, Collins' character is described as a 'nympho'... er, why? Because she is a woman who likes sex presumably and is unashamed about it. I mean, it's such an anachronistic word nowadays, you hardly ever hear it, even in louche society.
the Name of the Rose
Sean Connery doesn't need a toupee in this one one cuz he's rockin' a tonsure
he's William of Baskerville, Fransiscan monk investigating a murder mystery in the 1300s
there's heretics, conspiracies, apocalyptic prophecies, apocryphal texts, homoeroticism, and the inquisition!
also features Michael Lonsdale (Hugo Drax) as the abbot
he and Connery kiss on the lips in their first scene
Roger Moore never got that sort of attention, maybe Drax knew Connery was the first and best Bond?
also features Ron Perlman as a one-toothed hunchback, who steals every scene he's in
theres also many supporting actors even uglier than Perlman, those middle ages were ugly times
I get confused with all these factions of monks, The only ones I know are the Trappists, they who revere the ways of The Beverage
remember how in SPECTRE, Craig talks to a mouse and everybody said that was a reference to Diamonds Are Forever? well, in this one Connery follows a mouse to find a hidden room, just like Craig did
except its a much better hidden room than Mr White's boring cubbyhole
this is the labyrinthine library of suppressed texts to end all labyrinthine libraries of suppressed texts!
...and Sean Connery of all people lectures his young protégé on the sinfulness of fornicating with women!
is this Connery's strangest film? his characters usually have a Bond-like machismo no matter what they're called, and are more typically mainstream action/suspense type films
I don't know where William of Baskerville is supposed to be from, but he still has a shibilant Shcottish accent
whereas Perlman speaks in the the most amazing melange of various languages, all with only one tooth
the Name of the Rose
Sean Connery doesn't need a toupee in this one one cuz he's rockin' a tonsure
he's William of Baskerville, Fransiscan monk investigating a murder mystery in the 1300s
there's heretics, conspiracies, apocalyptic prophecies, apocryphal texts, homoeroticism, and the inquisition!
also features Michael Lonsdale (Hugo Drax) as the abbot
he and Connery kiss on the lips in their first scene
Roger Moore never got that sort of attention, maybe Drax knew Connery was the first and best Bond?
also features Ron Perlman as a one-toothed hunchback, who steals every scene he's in
theres also many supporting actors even uglier than Perlman, those middle ages were ugly times
I get confused with all these factions of monks, The only ones I know are the Trappists, they who revere the ways of The Beverage
Loved the movie and the book, which became for me a reading assignment years later. Christian Slater had almost girl-like features because of his age then. There were very obvious allusions to Sherlock Holmes starting with of course, William of Baskerville's name, having a Watson like assistant and the Greek Interpreter; there were others but I can't remember them anymore.
The Abbey was Benedictine, an order known to be extremely prayerful and cloistered, separated from the world, whereas William was Franciscan, the same order of the present Pope for which its founder, Saint Francis of Assisi instituted a more "outward" expression of faith toward nature and the tangible needs of poor people. This made William more pragmatic and scientific along the lines of Sherlock Holmes. The name William also refers to William of Ockham, known for the principle of "Occam's Razor" that goes on to say if you cut out all the extraneous elements of a theory, one will have the most likely conclusion, which is pretty much like Sherlock Holmes' "once the impossible is eliminated, whatever is left, however improbable, is the truth" ...or something like that.
Umberto Eco's name comes up often when reading about the early days of the Bond phenomenon, particularly for his scholarly essays (non of which I've read, btw) about the literary Bond.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
I've read all Eco's novels, at least up to The Prague Cemetery, but never read his philosophy/ academic books. What does he say about Bond?
In all his novels, he does amazing world-building based on bad logic, one of his books has Marco Polo style explorers travelling to all the long-disproven fictional place-names from mediaeval maps, but we know from the first sentence the narrator is a professional liar anyway
Connery may not be playing a Bond-like character, but this is essentially Connery playing Sherlock Holmes. Even his impatient putdowns to Adso, whenever he fails to keep up, are exactly like typical Sherlock Holmes dialog.
Umberto Eco's name comes up often when reading about the early days of the Bond phenomenon, particularly for his scholarly essays (non of which I've read, btw) about the literary Bond.
I've read all Eco's novels, at least up to The Prague Cemetery, but never read his philosophy/ academic books. What does he say about Bond?
The book “The Bond Affair”, edited by Oreste del Buono and Umberto Eco, contains eight essays (plus an introduction and index) by various authors including Eco.
Eco’s essay is entitled “The Narrative Structure in Fleming”.
After an introduction, his headings are
1. The juxtaposition of the characters and of values. He discusses firstly the Bond-M relationship, then that between Bond and the villain comparing their qualities whilst giving examples. Next, he analyses the relationship between the villain and the woman and finally that between Bond and the woman.
2. Play situations and the plot as a “game”. Here Eco treats the various character relationships established above as pairs of opposites with a prearranged pattern, saying that in the course of a Fleming plot the characters engage in various “play situations”. He breaks down the plot of DAF as an example.
3. A Manichean ideology. In this section, Eco discusses Fleming’s attitudes to race, capitalism, fascism and mythology.
4. Literary Techniques. Self explanatory.
5. Literature as Montage. Which expands upon [4] above.
Comments
Saw all three fairly recently. To be honest I struggled with The Gorgon. The main house set has a very nice feel of gothic dilapidation, but it seemed rather cold and slow compared to the other Terence Fisher collaborations with Lee and Cushing.
I *love* Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles - it gets nothing like the credit it deserves.
Ghost in the Shell (with the Bond-like Esprit) was a film that I enjoyed quite thoroughly, makes me wish that I'd gone to the cinema to see it as I don't have much of a sound-system.
Beautiful visual, better story.
I think that it did steal/borrow (or homage as people are calling it these days) a bit from the Matrix and the like (the ones that stuck out for me was Miami Vice with the bulletproof briefcase and Dirty Harry with the .44) but it was incorporated in such a way that it made it its own.
Personally, I would love to be able to be transferred to a new body after I died...just not in the way it was presented in the movie.
An early Blade Runner, for me. If I get the chance, I might even do a video on it.
Atomic Blonde was a film that I just watched (and I'm sure that some of you might've noticed that I was extremely interested to see it).
It delivered, just not as much as I would've like it to.
Charlize, after I had seen The Italian Job, has aged a bit since then but she's still got it.
The market isn't exactly as open for a Bond competitor as the late 90s and 60s were, as the role of the action man/woman (Wick/Wonderwoman) or specifically British agent (Kingsman, per se) has been filled out but it's done with a big twist and an edge over it's competitors. It takes place during the end of an era, the lead-up and the fall of the Berlin wall back in '89.
Certainly an interesting time frame...for the end of a series but not for one to start-up, unless next missions are going to be flashbacks from the past. It didn't do that bad at the box office, a 50.9 million dollar profit but I don't know if it will be enough for it to warrant a sequel.
At the cinema, you could practically invent a drinking game out of every time a bottle of Stoli is popped or when someone lights up and smokes a cigarette on screen.
The action scenes and story work well together but I got the feeling that there was an abundance and a bit of overuse of good music.
Sure it fits-well with the story but we just had a song playing 3 minutes ago!
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and I will probably buy it on Blu-Ray when it comes out.
The graphic ultraviolence was impressive, but if it wasn't a female lead doing all that damage, I probably would have just been disgusted.
just watched: Hitchcock - Blackmail (1929)
a concise and prototypical bit of sordidity, paranoia, black humour and moral ambiguity from the Master
a silly young lady (in fine flapper fashions) accepts an invitation upstairs to an artists garrett and gets herself raped. Things go downhill from there.
This was Hitchcock's first talkie. The actors overdo the bodylanguage and mug the camera to express emotion as was required in the silent era, so technically this is interesting as a transitional film.
wikipedia tells me Anny Ondra had an inappropriate Czech accent in real life, so a second actress actually spoke her lines offcamera while Ondra mouthed the words, as overdubbing was not a thing yet.
typical Hitchcockian technical innovation: a soundcollage looping the word "knife" as our young murderess has a panic attack over her morning meal.
about that rape scene: this was before the Hayes code, but there wasnt a Hayes code in England anyway, was there? still, I don't remember any rape scenes in any of Hitchcock's 1930s spy films. I'm not sure there was another til Frenzy, in the early 70s, though Psycho did tease us with the threat. This was pretty Spicy stuff, as the pulp magazines of the day used to promise
Also, the scene in the river reminded me much of that Bourne flick where his girlfriend also dies in a car crash. And for the way they got into the river, I think that it was Wick that started the whole...car-out-of-nowhere-startling-the-hero cliché.
I will admit about the soundtrack though, the songs were very good, just not incorporated all that well.
A missed opportunity was that they never used Blondie's Atomic. When I first saw the title, I thought it was going to be Debbie Harry's bio-flick but it turned out to be something much more interesting than that (no offence to Debbie).
A by the numbers Horror film, which is basically The Thing but set on a large Alaskan fishing boat.
don't know if Craig's hillbilly drawl convinced West Virginians, but he was almost completely unrecognisable as Bond and much funnier than I've ever seen him before, a performance memorable in and of itself regardless of where we already know him from
whenever I've seen Connery, Moore, or Brosnan in another film I cannot stop thinking "that's James Bond", so major props to Craig for demonstrating range
Good stuff, and yes Craig is fine in it, at times channelling (and looking like) Red Grant when he gets agitated with Bond and leans forward to make a point, but it's a hermetically sealed performance, it doesn't stay with you like that of the leading man in it. That said, his is an enjoyable turn, you're not meant to relate to it or anything, so that's not a mark against Craig.
The conclusion is quite implausible and it doesn't really work for you the next day imo, but it works as you watch it unfold and it has its surprises. Not a sumptuous film to look at really though. It doesn't feel like an A movie but then again it's nice to see something that isn't out to wow you and get exhibited on a 4K OLED screen in the future.
It's one of those odd films that is a) quirky, comic and implausible but b) has serious themes and aims to tug at the heartstrings a bit.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
the X-Men films always skewed more adult than the regular Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this one is some particularly dark and nasty stuff
the violence Wolverine and his sidekick dole out make Charlize Theron look like Roger Moore
Patrick Stewart's back for this one too, he puts in a very touching performance. Those of us who've experienced a parent with Alzheimer's should appreciate what he's doing here. I'm not being ironic about this part, he drew a tear.
I think we all know this one ends with Wolverine's death. Sorry about spoilers if you didn't, but that was kind of hyped when it came out. This film is probably why we're debating what should happen to CraigBond at the end of Bond25. But the real surprise is...
Also theres a few scenes from cowboy classic Shane near the middle, which I think are meant to map to the relationship between the father figure and child. Good detail for us filmhistory geeks.
In my book, I don't deem it worthy enough to be expanded upon why. (points to the little boys and girls in the room)
Top Secret. Still a crazy funny movie. -{
Why hadn't I seen it sooner?
Classic.
Loved it.
Easy 10/10, ludicrous how it got negative reviews from some people.
No idea why you or any American would watch this Hardy' even us lot gave it a miss. The TV series is always on here so why go for a remake. It may be that Allo Allo is on in the US because Yanks can relate to the whole French Resistance thing having liberated France whereas of course Britain's home guard has nothing to do with Americans and mostly preceded their entry into the war (I don't know if the series follows an actual timeline in that regard.)
The Stud
Originally intended by Cubby Broccoli as a Bond espionage spin-off starring the head of the KGB Walter Gotell as he visits 1970s London to oversee an espionage sting with sexy surveillance camera nods to From Russia With Love. Working title was The Stud Who Loved Me, and Joan Collins was pencilled in as a femme fetale love interest, with Sue Lloyd there as a nod to the grit of The Ipcress File. However, it all fell through, not least because it became clear that The Spy Who Loved Me was going to be a monster hit and this side-line would instead be a distraction. So with all the cast in place and the crew booked, it underwent a last-minute rewrite to become a sexploitation movie, with a larger role for Joan Collins and a miffed Gotell relegated to an extended cameo. Rumours persist to this day that Oliver Tobias was cast for his Bond audition, or at least to reduce Moore's asking price for Bond 4, now that he was out of contract. In the original script, the KGB head disposed of his wife Collins for bonking in a lift in time-honoured Bond villain - the press of a button and they both descend into the shark pool, while still in congress.
I do enjoy coming on this site to talk absolute rubbish.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Oddly enough, I've never seen either The Bitch or The Stud ..... except when passing a mirror ... Obviously
Can't quite buy your argument, NP. Don't forget that us "Yanks" (a term that applies only to the northeast U.S., but nevermind) have a long history of embracing VERY British shows--Dr. Who is the most famous example, but it was us who bought all the tapes of Monty Python's Flying Circus right before the Beeb was about to have them wiped--and we don't need to see ourselves in a show to like it. In fact, wasn't that what some critics said about Dunkirk?--that it would fail in America because it has nothing to do with the U.S.--yet it was as successful as a film could be in an otherwise lackluster summer. Ah, well, as to why some shows are hits and others aren't. . .who can explain it, who can tell you why?
It would be like someone in the UK hearing about how good Sgt Bilko the series was, and then opting to see Steve Martin's version.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
A true classic with plenty of connections to the world of Bond. I liked it a lot, but I wonder if an unsusual and downbeat over like The Third Man could do well in cinemas today?
Though to really benefit you need to get the BluRay...
It was on last night, as a warm-up for The Bitch.
Actually, Dick Emery is a good TV presence and in terms of its sheer trashiness I enjoyed it to some of Ealing's superior fare. There are even nods to FRWL in it.
Then we had La Collins... it's funny, what it lacks in sexual daring by today's standards it makes up for in being wholly unPC. When you press i for info on the remote, Collins' character is described as a 'nympho'... er, why? Because she is a woman who likes sex presumably and is unashamed about it. I mean, it's such an anachronistic word nowadays, you hardly ever hear it, even in louche society.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sean Connery doesn't need a toupee in this one one cuz he's rockin' a tonsure
he's William of Baskerville, Fransiscan monk investigating a murder mystery in the 1300s
there's heretics, conspiracies, apocalyptic prophecies, apocryphal texts, homoeroticism, and the inquisition!
also features Michael Lonsdale (Hugo Drax) as the abbot
he and Connery kiss on the lips in their first scene
Roger Moore never got that sort of attention, maybe Drax knew Connery was the first and best Bond?
also features Ron Perlman as a one-toothed hunchback, who steals every scene he's in
theres also many supporting actors even uglier than Perlman, those middle ages were ugly times
I get confused with all these factions of monks, The only ones I know are the Trappists, they who revere the ways of The Beverage
remember how in SPECTRE, Craig talks to a mouse and everybody said that was a reference to Diamonds Are Forever? well, in this one Connery follows a mouse to find a hidden room, just like Craig did
except its a much better hidden room than Mr White's boring cubbyhole
this is the labyrinthine library of suppressed texts to end all labyrinthine libraries of suppressed texts!
Line from Connery -{
is this Connery's strangest film? his characters usually have a Bond-like machismo no matter what they're called, and are more typically mainstream action/suspense type films
I don't know where William of Baskerville is supposed to be from, but he still has a shibilant Shcottish accent
whereas Perlman speaks in the the most amazing melange of various languages, all with only one tooth
Loved the movie and the book, which became for me a reading assignment years later. Christian Slater had almost girl-like features because of his age then. There were very obvious allusions to Sherlock Holmes starting with of course, William of Baskerville's name, having a Watson like assistant and the Greek Interpreter; there were others but I can't remember them anymore.
The Abbey was Benedictine, an order known to be extremely prayerful and cloistered, separated from the world, whereas William was Franciscan, the same order of the present Pope for which its founder, Saint Francis of Assisi instituted a more "outward" expression of faith toward nature and the tangible needs of poor people. This made William more pragmatic and scientific along the lines of Sherlock Holmes. The name William also refers to William of Ockham, known for the principle of "Occam's Razor" that goes on to say if you cut out all the extraneous elements of a theory, one will have the most likely conclusion, which is pretty much like Sherlock Holmes' "once the impossible is eliminated, whatever is left, however improbable, is the truth" ...or something like that.
Umberto Eco's name comes up often when reading about the early days of the Bond phenomenon, particularly for his scholarly essays (non of which I've read, btw) about the literary Bond.
In all his novels, he does amazing world-building based on bad logic, one of his books has Marco Polo style explorers travelling to all the long-disproven fictional place-names from mediaeval maps, but we know from the first sentence the narrator is a professional liar anyway
Connery may not be playing a Bond-like character, but this is essentially Connery playing Sherlock Holmes. Even his impatient putdowns to Adso, whenever he fails to keep up, are exactly like typical Sherlock Holmes dialog.
Heard it was very good, never seen it before.
The book “The Bond Affair”, edited by Oreste del Buono and Umberto Eco, contains eight essays (plus an introduction and index) by various authors including Eco.
Eco’s essay is entitled “The Narrative Structure in Fleming”.
After an introduction, his headings are
1. The juxtaposition of the characters and of values. He discusses firstly the Bond-M relationship, then that between Bond and the villain comparing their qualities whilst giving examples. Next, he analyses the relationship between the villain and the woman and finally that between Bond and the woman.
2. Play situations and the plot as a “game”. Here Eco treats the various character relationships established above as pairs of opposites with a prearranged pattern, saying that in the course of a Fleming plot the characters engage in various “play situations”. He breaks down the plot of DAF as an example.
3. A Manichean ideology. In this section, Eco discusses Fleming’s attitudes to race, capitalism, fascism and mythology.
4. Literary Techniques. Self explanatory.
5. Literature as Montage. Which expands upon [4] above.
I'd be happy to give more info if needed.