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: 2,785MI6 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: 2,785MI6 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.
Saw snippets of Casino Royale on ITV4 last night, it really is a film that's all dressed up with nowhere to go, isn't it.
Star Woody Allen was one of the writers on the film and he later complained that they would keep the build-up but not the pay off or punchline and that does seem to be the case here. So you have a cool scene with handsome Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress in a modish London apartment and The Look of Love on the soundtrack, what's not to like? Well, the dialogue for a start, it never quite gets going, just teeters on the edge of something funny. Sellers walks past a fish tank in slow motion as the song plays and looks at the fish... is that funny, that he's distracted from the lush temptress before him? What's going on there? They don't seem to know.
One problem is that Sellers wants to be the handsome leading man in this, rather than a comedy character, so the scenes work best with other comedy characters around him, and he's reacting to them. The scene at Q branch with the two 'suits you sir' tailors - possibly nicked by The Kingsman many years later perhaps - works well and is funny, because of this. Another problem is that Sellers went nuts and AWOL on the film for weeks, as depicted briefly in the excellent The Life and Death of Peter Sellers with Geoffrey Rush. Thirdly, Sellers didn't want to share a scene with Orson Welles, so they had to be filmed separately, That said, he doesn't seem to share a scene with his main co-star David Niven if I recall, or with Woody Allen, so the overall impression is that he gets to be in his own, different film where he swans around with Ursula Andress and Jacqueline Bisset.
If so, he has the better of it, because the film with David Niven is ruddy awful. There are some fun parts in this, the one with Ronnie Corbett and that distinctive woman who briefly quizzes Lennon on the stairs in A Hard Day's Night and pops up in stuff like The Avengers, or our mate Kronsteen firing his pistol near the Berlin Wall and so on... But the film is sunk by the early scenes with Niven in the Scottish highlands for some reason, and while Deborah Kerr looks sexy in this (not sure she does in her other films much) for two decades there was this idea in British comedy - and US comedy to some extent - that the Scots are intrinsically funny and a great source of humour, you got this in that Clouseau film starring Alan Arkin, too. (Mike Myers paid dubious tribute to his too in his Austin Powers sequel, via the character Fat B*stard, also not funny.) It goes on and on, is not funny, the whole shotputting scene, it's rubbish. You have Niven in his nightshirt and Wee Willie Winkie nightcap - is that meant to be funny? Is it that the great James Bond is on a gradual upwards curve and is yet to come back to life as the great besuited, suave spy hero of yore? I don't know.
It's the sort of film where you wonder if it might be improved with some musical numbers - indeed, there is a dance routine with Mata Bond, daughter of Mata Hari and supposedly Bond himself, so having Niven (Bond) look charmed and erotically impressed with her dance flirts with incest. The idea of Casino Royale being a musical sounds awful but it has the dead quality of so many musicals of that era (not the classic ones) where the whole afternoon's entertainment in your local cinema is that it's boring, yes, but at least it's not homework, and at least it's in colour.
That not withstanding, with Bond spoofs and derivatives you get the impression the EON team are standing by with their notebooks. The fish tank sort of got used in a love scene in Diamonds are Forever ('If the kids don't want to watch the sex, they can watch the fish instead' one of the producers said), the reference by Andress to buying up Nelson's Column and relocating it to Mayfair is a bit like Drax trying to buy up the Eiffel Tower ('But they refused him an export permit'), Mata Bond's slide down the banister while firing a machine gun got used in Octopussy and the Q branch scene I think also got pilfered to some extent, or am I thinking of the one in the Arkin Clouseau film?
I don't blame EON for this - when a film is dead on the battlefield it's only right the living get to forage off it.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,401Chief of Staff
I’ve always enjoyed Casino Royale ‘67….yes, it drags in a couple of places but on the whole I quite like it…I just treat it as a series of sketches rather than one film….a bit like the directors did 👀🤣
I think Sellers wanted to play James Bond straight rather than than the Evelyn Tremble character…but when Feldman realised making a straight adaptation wasn’t possible, he changed tack…
I don't watch Bond films very much anymore - that's sacrilige isn't it? But after the washout I considered NTTD, my enthusiasm has waned. I simply haven't had the heart, other than some of the anniversary cinema screenings.
So the other day when Jannick Sinner was involved in a war of tennis attrition, I tuned into FYEO on ITV4, planning to pass an hour or so as I prepped dinner. I ended up watching the whole thing. Adverts are a distraction. Other than that, I quite enjoyed this entry into the series. Roger Moore is clearly showing his age a little - more than I remembered - and it would be fair to say that likewise the supporting cast generally seems to groan a little - Topol, Lois Maxwell, James Villiers, Geoffrey Keen, Jill Bennet, Julian Glover, John Morena, Walter Gotell, even Janet Brown and John Wells are all appearing long in the tooth. Now I can argue that some of them (the MI6 superiors for instance) need to be, but it gives the whole enterprise something of a "grey" feel to the proceedings which I never noted before. Bibi throwing herself with undisguised and frankly unexplained abandon on Bond doesn't help. During that whole sequence I kept wishing for Sean Connery c.1965 to trip up and kiss her and teach her a lesson in scholarly love - at least it would make her later motivations more acceptable.
The film doesn't rest on its haunches and fairly pants along with some gusto, right from that inconsequential PTS to its dour ending atop a Greek mountain monastry. Carole Bouquet looks lovely but never recovers out of Melina's vacant vengeful expression she picks up following her parent's death. Cassandra Harris' role is supremely underwritten - she learns nothing from Bond, and he nought from her - Sir Sean in his prime would have at least discovered more than her Liverpudlian accent. The villains are a decent lot; the best one [Locque] doesn't have a single line of dialogue which makes him very sinister. The KGB dude could be anybody, frankly, as long as they wear tight shorts [!] yikes !
Action is good too. The ski stuff is fun. The multitude of setpieces makes for an impressive list of stunts and fights and chases. I was never bored. There are some minor points of contention I could hark on about [Q suddenly appearing in Corfu when Colombo possesses all the info Bond needs is one of them, so too the horrible romantic / comic coda].
Having just read all Fleming's short stories, I was struck firstly by how well integrated all the scenes of Risico are into the movie, while For Your Eyes Only is hacked to pieces. In fairness, this is done with the benefit of the film in view, so I understand, but it is a trifle disappointing, considering the film's title. The dialogues lifted from Fleming have some OO7 authenticity to them, not just Maibaum's idea of Bond authenticity. The film also features a moment of Bondian / Fleming magic from Roger Moore as he kicks a villain's car off a cliff top. Good music which succeeds by not trying to be John Barry. I only detected the Bond Theme once [Norman's, I know, but Barry used it frequently]. Good song and titles.
FYEO is the first truly Cold War Bond film, as Russian agents backed by the USSR are the enemies. This short-lived period of literary / Fleming / contemporary methodology only lasted 4 films and in 3 of them the KGB was seem as the purveyor of detente as much as OO7 is here. The low key story and simmering background make the adventure feel like a small cog in a big wheel, despite the chaos and death Bond and his antagonists wield, which is more appropraite to the spy genre than any of those crazy Blofeld schemes.
NTTD dented my interest, too, so I get what you mean. Still, FYEO is as good a place as any to start watching again.
The grey cast is at least in part owing to the plot structure chosen - both Kristatos and Columbo are supposed to be WW2 veterans - but it could have been worse since both actors are too young to have been involved the way they are said to have been! Another reason might have been (and I'm guessing) not wanting to emphasize Sir Rog's age too strongly by surrounding him with a young cast (the ladies aside, as would become increasingly obvious).
Of all the Bonds I saw at the Prince Charles cinema two years ago, FYEO is the one I'd see again there though I missed it this time round anyway. Odd, as it was the first of those kinds of Bonds I didn't like - the ones that try to take things seriously but don't quite manage it, you can't quite suspend disbelief, it's not light or arch in its direction and there are still slapstick moments that are too much - Never Say Never Again was like this, so was The Living Daylights generally as was GoldenEye and so many really; OP was generally an OTT film so I was okay with that. This time of late watching it, I felt it had more traction, more detail than some of the others. A bit saltier.
Caught this last night. The Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony was running over and I had twenty-five minutes to kill before the delayed final episode of A Good GIrl's Guide to Murder, so I watched the opening of Moonraker, switched back to the BBC, then when my show concluded, switched back on plus-one and rejoined where I had left off - the pheasant shoot. Moonraker is a Bond film I enjoy for the hell of it. My first Bond in the cinema. Good memories. Time hasn't aged it for me and although I see its deficiencies as clearly as I see those in Octopussy and The World Is Not Enough, it never bothers me that much. Sometimes I do wish they had toned it down a little, but overall I find the film thoroughly worthwhile. It looks grand and it never bores me. One of Barry's best soundtracks. Moore manages to stay just the right side of caricature. Action replaces explanation which doesn't always succeed, but at least we don't have to suffer characters psychoanalysing themselves or justifying their actions. Drax wants to play God - fine - one speech for ninety seconds - done! Holly Goodhead wants to be taken seriously as an astronaut - one sentence tells us that - so stuff it up your smug smile OO7. M is pissed off with Bond - one withering glance and "Oh thank you, OO7!". Everything is convenient, cheerful and explosively combustible. Plenty of fights, chases and love. It's just good fun, isn't it? Cheered up my Friday night and I would rather have watched two hours of this kind of wit than all the Olympic Ceremonies in the world.
Saw a bit of that, with the left-hand part of my brain (critical, joyless) I do occasionally notice that Moore seems really quite old in that, certainly in the first bit of the movie, in a way he never did at the time, I think he had some work done during the film as he looks younger in other scenes. The mood is set the moment the hijackers sleekly move into gear and Barry's music kicks in.
I do wonder what happened to the decrepit old butler Cavendish, I mean I can't see him part of the great master race somehow.
Well, who needs a Hitchcock classic like Strangers On A Train showing in a mint print with no ads on BBC2 when you've got the Bond classic Never Say Never Again later in the day on ITV?
I tuned in to give the latter the benefit of the doubt but there isn't any doubt sadly - that said, with the subtitles on the song is a bit more interesting than usual, It might have worked with a stronger vocal. One line of it got cut to accommodate the mid-afternoon censors (probably an unBondian headbut) and you don't really notice, but then it moves on to M's office and my goodness Connery looks old, far older than is necessary, was there ever a reason for that? In later promo work for the film, sans toupee, he seems younger and vital - you could bung a toupe on him and he'd pass for how he was in Diamonds are Forever, save being leaner. How did they mess that up? Then also Connery has his slight speech impediment, his lisp, did he have dentures? It's not so noticeable in his other films but here it gums up the works, then you have Edward Fox against him sounding like he's Eliza Doolittle trying to speak through marbles. What a start!
Okay, so we're off to Shrublands and things move along quikcly and comedically but you can't really have a Bond film where some 20 minutes in nothing really sinister has happened, it's all just laughs and funny secondary characters all the way. At least in Thunderball, well you have a genuine fight scene, you have the shocking death of a Spectre agent, in FRWL it's clear Spectre are up to no good and Klebb is horrible to that young Tanya... The first death here takes a long time to arrive.
Blush gets the same instant deference from an official in her first scene that Largo got from a gendarme in his first scene. Shame we didn't get a glimpse of Paris in this one though, stuff like that would have livened it up.
Funny, I had the same thought about Cavendish when I saw the film recently. I guess Drax's smarmy contempt of Englishness, hinted at here and there, extends to an indifference about the fate of his quintessentially English butler in the grand scheme of his apocalyptic plans.
Not to mention most of his other employees in California, his mob associates in Venice or the ground crew at his shuttle launch base in the jungle - indeed, anyone in his employ who doesn't match 'Summertime Special' dance troupe fashions and physical standards while also being a trained astrotechnician (or look like a stunt guy space heavy)!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,401Chief of Staff
While having learned to read will be considered an advantage in applications for the role of helicopter pilot, this will not be essential where applicants display other desirable assets. Applicants are advised to read (if they can) the terms and conditions in our termination of employment clause.
Applicants for all roles other those relocating to our city in space site are required to sign an NDA (necklace of death acceptance agreement) removing any liability from the Drax Corporation in the event of plague-related fatality. Applicants for city in space roles are advised to read our person specification and procreation terms and conditions.
Applications from former employees of Stromberg Shipping or SPECTRE are strongly encouraged.
The Drax Corporation is, um, an equal opportunities employer. (Bond: "Interesting..." Drax: "Jaws... you obey ME!")
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
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.
Saw snippets of Casino Royale on ITV4 last night, it really is a film that's all dressed up with nowhere to go, isn't it.
Star Woody Allen was one of the writers on the film and he later complained that they would keep the build-up but not the pay off or punchline and that does seem to be the case here. So you have a cool scene with handsome Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress in a modish London apartment and The Look of Love on the soundtrack, what's not to like? Well, the dialogue for a start, it never quite gets going, just teeters on the edge of something funny. Sellers walks past a fish tank in slow motion as the song plays and looks at the fish... is that funny, that he's distracted from the lush temptress before him? What's going on there? They don't seem to know.
One problem is that Sellers wants to be the handsome leading man in this, rather than a comedy character, so the scenes work best with other comedy characters around him, and he's reacting to them. The scene at Q branch with the two 'suits you sir' tailors - possibly nicked by The Kingsman many years later perhaps - works well and is funny, because of this. Another problem is that Sellers went nuts and AWOL on the film for weeks, as depicted briefly in the excellent The Life and Death of Peter Sellers with Geoffrey Rush. Thirdly, Sellers didn't want to share a scene with Orson Welles, so they had to be filmed separately, That said, he doesn't seem to share a scene with his main co-star David Niven if I recall, or with Woody Allen, so the overall impression is that he gets to be in his own, different film where he swans around with Ursula Andress and Jacqueline Bisset.
If so, he has the better of it, because the film with David Niven is ruddy awful. There are some fun parts in this, the one with Ronnie Corbett and that distinctive woman who briefly quizzes Lennon on the stairs in A Hard Day's Night and pops up in stuff like The Avengers, or our mate Kronsteen firing his pistol near the Berlin Wall and so on... But the film is sunk by the early scenes with Niven in the Scottish highlands for some reason, and while Deborah Kerr looks sexy in this (not sure she does in her other films much) for two decades there was this idea in British comedy - and US comedy to some extent - that the Scots are intrinsically funny and a great source of humour, you got this in that Clouseau film starring Alan Arkin, too. (Mike Myers paid dubious tribute to his too in his Austin Powers sequel, via the character Fat B*stard, also not funny.) It goes on and on, is not funny, the whole shotputting scene, it's rubbish. You have Niven in his nightshirt and Wee Willie Winkie nightcap - is that meant to be funny? Is it that the great James Bond is on a gradual upwards curve and is yet to come back to life as the great besuited, suave spy hero of yore? I don't know.
It's the sort of film where you wonder if it might be improved with some musical numbers - indeed, there is a dance routine with Mata Bond, daughter of Mata Hari and supposedly Bond himself, so having Niven (Bond) look charmed and erotically impressed with her dance flirts with incest. The idea of Casino Royale being a musical sounds awful but it has the dead quality of so many musicals of that era (not the classic ones) where the whole afternoon's entertainment in your local cinema is that it's boring, yes, but at least it's not homework, and at least it's in colour.
That not withstanding, with Bond spoofs and derivatives you get the impression the EON team are standing by with their notebooks. The fish tank sort of got used in a love scene in Diamonds are Forever ('If the kids don't want to watch the sex, they can watch the fish instead' one of the producers said), the reference by Andress to buying up Nelson's Column and relocating it to Mayfair is a bit like Drax trying to buy up the Eiffel Tower ('But they refused him an export permit'), Mata Bond's slide down the banister while firing a machine gun got used in Octopussy and the Q branch scene I think also got pilfered to some extent, or am I thinking of the one in the Arkin Clouseau film?
I don't blame EON for this - when a film is dead on the battlefield it's only right the living get to forage off it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I’ve always enjoyed Casino Royale ‘67….yes, it drags in a couple of places but on the whole I quite like it…I just treat it as a series of sketches rather than one film….a bit like the directors did 👀🤣
I think Sellers wanted to play James Bond straight rather than than the Evelyn Tremble character…but when Feldman realised making a straight adaptation wasn’t possible, he changed tack…
I don't watch Bond films very much anymore - that's sacrilige isn't it? But after the washout I considered NTTD, my enthusiasm has waned. I simply haven't had the heart, other than some of the anniversary cinema screenings.
So the other day when Jannick Sinner was involved in a war of tennis attrition, I tuned into FYEO on ITV4, planning to pass an hour or so as I prepped dinner. I ended up watching the whole thing. Adverts are a distraction. Other than that, I quite enjoyed this entry into the series. Roger Moore is clearly showing his age a little - more than I remembered - and it would be fair to say that likewise the supporting cast generally seems to groan a little - Topol, Lois Maxwell, James Villiers, Geoffrey Keen, Jill Bennet, Julian Glover, John Morena, Walter Gotell, even Janet Brown and John Wells are all appearing long in the tooth. Now I can argue that some of them (the MI6 superiors for instance) need to be, but it gives the whole enterprise something of a "grey" feel to the proceedings which I never noted before. Bibi throwing herself with undisguised and frankly unexplained abandon on Bond doesn't help. During that whole sequence I kept wishing for Sean Connery c.1965 to trip up and kiss her and teach her a lesson in scholarly love - at least it would make her later motivations more acceptable.
The film doesn't rest on its haunches and fairly pants along with some gusto, right from that inconsequential PTS to its dour ending atop a Greek mountain monastry. Carole Bouquet looks lovely but never recovers out of Melina's vacant vengeful expression she picks up following her parent's death. Cassandra Harris' role is supremely underwritten - she learns nothing from Bond, and he nought from her - Sir Sean in his prime would have at least discovered more than her Liverpudlian accent. The villains are a decent lot; the best one [Locque] doesn't have a single line of dialogue which makes him very sinister. The KGB dude could be anybody, frankly, as long as they wear tight shorts [!] yikes !
Action is good too. The ski stuff is fun. The multitude of setpieces makes for an impressive list of stunts and fights and chases. I was never bored. There are some minor points of contention I could hark on about [Q suddenly appearing in Corfu when Colombo possesses all the info Bond needs is one of them, so too the horrible romantic / comic coda].
Having just read all Fleming's short stories, I was struck firstly by how well integrated all the scenes of Risico are into the movie, while For Your Eyes Only is hacked to pieces. In fairness, this is done with the benefit of the film in view, so I understand, but it is a trifle disappointing, considering the film's title. The dialogues lifted from Fleming have some OO7 authenticity to them, not just Maibaum's idea of Bond authenticity. The film also features a moment of Bondian / Fleming magic from Roger Moore as he kicks a villain's car off a cliff top. Good music which succeeds by not trying to be John Barry. I only detected the Bond Theme once [Norman's, I know, but Barry used it frequently]. Good song and titles.
FYEO is the first truly Cold War Bond film, as Russian agents backed by the USSR are the enemies. This short-lived period of literary / Fleming / contemporary methodology only lasted 4 films and in 3 of them the KGB was seem as the purveyor of detente as much as OO7 is here. The low key story and simmering background make the adventure feel like a small cog in a big wheel, despite the chaos and death Bond and his antagonists wield, which is more appropraite to the spy genre than any of those crazy Blofeld schemes.
One of the better Moore movies.
NTTD dented my interest, too, so I get what you mean. Still, FYEO is as good a place as any to start watching again.
The grey cast is at least in part owing to the plot structure chosen - both Kristatos and Columbo are supposed to be WW2 veterans - but it could have been worse since both actors are too young to have been involved the way they are said to have been! Another reason might have been (and I'm guessing) not wanting to emphasize Sir Rog's age too strongly by surrounding him with a young cast (the ladies aside, as would become increasingly obvious).
Octopussy the other evening on TV. Fortunately ITV4 shows Bond movies on a regular basis and it's a HD channel.
Some people may groan, but I always enjoy FYEO, OP and AVTAK.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.
Of all the Bonds I saw at the Prince Charles cinema two years ago, FYEO is the one I'd see again there though I missed it this time round anyway. Odd, as it was the first of those kinds of Bonds I didn't like - the ones that try to take things seriously but don't quite manage it, you can't quite suspend disbelief, it's not light or arch in its direction and there are still slapstick moments that are too much - Never Say Never Again was like this, so was The Living Daylights generally as was GoldenEye and so many really; OP was generally an OTT film so I was okay with that. This time of late watching it, I felt it had more traction, more detail than some of the others. A bit saltier.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
MOONRAKER (1979)
Caught this last night. The Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony was running over and I had twenty-five minutes to kill before the delayed final episode of A Good GIrl's Guide to Murder, so I watched the opening of Moonraker, switched back to the BBC, then when my show concluded, switched back on plus-one and rejoined where I had left off - the pheasant shoot. Moonraker is a Bond film I enjoy for the hell of it. My first Bond in the cinema. Good memories. Time hasn't aged it for me and although I see its deficiencies as clearly as I see those in Octopussy and The World Is Not Enough, it never bothers me that much. Sometimes I do wish they had toned it down a little, but overall I find the film thoroughly worthwhile. It looks grand and it never bores me. One of Barry's best soundtracks. Moore manages to stay just the right side of caricature. Action replaces explanation which doesn't always succeed, but at least we don't have to suffer characters psychoanalysing themselves or justifying their actions. Drax wants to play God - fine - one speech for ninety seconds - done! Holly Goodhead wants to be taken seriously as an astronaut - one sentence tells us that - so stuff it up your smug smile OO7. M is pissed off with Bond - one withering glance and "Oh thank you, OO7!". Everything is convenient, cheerful and explosively combustible. Plenty of fights, chases and love. It's just good fun, isn't it? Cheered up my Friday night and I would rather have watched two hours of this kind of wit than all the Olympic Ceremonies in the world.
Saw a bit of that, with the left-hand part of my brain (critical, joyless) I do occasionally notice that Moore seems really quite old in that, certainly in the first bit of the movie, in a way he never did at the time, I think he had some work done during the film as he looks younger in other scenes. The mood is set the moment the hijackers sleekly move into gear and Barry's music kicks in.
I do wonder what happened to the decrepit old butler Cavendish, I mean I can't see him part of the great master race somehow.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Well, who needs a Hitchcock classic like Strangers On A Train showing in a mint print with no ads on BBC2 when you've got the Bond classic Never Say Never Again later in the day on ITV?
I tuned in to give the latter the benefit of the doubt but there isn't any doubt sadly - that said, with the subtitles on the song is a bit more interesting than usual, It might have worked with a stronger vocal. One line of it got cut to accommodate the mid-afternoon censors (probably an unBondian headbut) and you don't really notice, but then it moves on to M's office and my goodness Connery looks old, far older than is necessary, was there ever a reason for that? In later promo work for the film, sans toupee, he seems younger and vital - you could bung a toupe on him and he'd pass for how he was in Diamonds are Forever, save being leaner. How did they mess that up? Then also Connery has his slight speech impediment, his lisp, did he have dentures? It's not so noticeable in his other films but here it gums up the works, then you have Edward Fox against him sounding like he's Eliza Doolittle trying to speak through marbles. What a start!
Okay, so we're off to Shrublands and things move along quikcly and comedically but you can't really have a Bond film where some 20 minutes in nothing really sinister has happened, it's all just laughs and funny secondary characters all the way. At least in Thunderball, well you have a genuine fight scene, you have the shocking death of a Spectre agent, in FRWL it's clear Spectre are up to no good and Klebb is horrible to that young Tanya... The first death here takes a long time to arrive.
Blush gets the same instant deference from an official in her first scene that Largo got from a gendarme in his first scene. Shame we didn't get a glimpse of Paris in this one though, stuff like that would have livened it up.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Funny, I had the same thought about Cavendish when I saw the film recently. I guess Drax's smarmy contempt of Englishness, hinted at here and there, extends to an indifference about the fate of his quintessentially English butler in the grand scheme of his apocalyptic plans.
Not to mention most of his other employees in California, his mob associates in Venice or the ground crew at his shuttle launch base in the jungle - indeed, anyone in his employ who doesn't match 'Summertime Special' dance troupe fashions and physical standards while also being a trained astrotechnician (or look like a stunt guy space heavy)!
Been interesting to see the job specs for these jobs….👀
Wanted : space shuttle launch crew, good rate of pay, overalls provided, must be prepared to travel. Generous holiday time. No pension.
🤣
:-) :-) :-)
While having learned to read will be considered an advantage in applications for the role of helicopter pilot, this will not be essential where applicants display other desirable assets. Applicants are advised to read (if they can) the terms and conditions in our termination of employment clause.
Applicants for all roles other those relocating to our city in space site are required to sign an NDA (necklace of death acceptance agreement) removing any liability from the Drax Corporation in the event of plague-related fatality. Applicants for city in space roles are advised to read our person specification and procreation terms and conditions.
Applications from former employees of Stromberg Shipping or SPECTRE are strongly encouraged.
The Drax Corporation is, um, an equal opportunities employer. (Bond: "Interesting..." Drax: "Jaws... you obey ME!")