Bond #24: SPECTRE

Whenever it comes together. Current hoo-hah:

Sam Mendes has reportedly been seriously considering helming the 24th James Bond installment now it will be a stand-alone film.
Sam Mendes is ''75 per cent'' sure he will direct the next James Bond film.
The 'Skyfall' filmmaker has allegedly revoked his decision not to direct the 24th instalment of the popular spy franchise now screenwriter John Logan has scrapped plans to write a two-part story.
The next two chapters were initially rumoured to form one continuous storyline, which would have been a big commitment and needed to be shot back-to-back over a four year period.
According to a report by the MailOnline, the director is reluctant to commit until he sees John's finished script, but is likely to sign on for the job.
Sources claim the plot for the next 007 adventure is currently in the form of two treatment papers outlining the basic details. Only producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are said to have seen the blueprint so far.

Direction was solid enough, photo was great. What Skyfall lacked was in the script, and while the same guy is writing this movie that doesn't really mean anything at all and there's a solid chance Bond #24 will take what was good in Skyfall and wrap a better story around it.

Because most of it can basically be fixed by having another villain. And Broccoli and her brother will do their thang regardless of who's working on the movie so it's only as good as they say it'll be.

One director doing more Bond films in a row is something I've wanted, and while I'd rather see Martin Campbell do it Mendes seems to work smoothly as a Broccoli henchman, not interferring too much.

Let's only hope Logan has written in a female character that's not useless, now Moneypenny is back and M gone.

There's more chance it's shit again, really. Not like they had to introduce characters or anything last time, so why assume anything will be better this time round?

writer mither

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=41415

Christoph Waltz for the baddie! http://www.slashfilm.com/christoph-waltz-bond-24/

Spectre!

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=42910

live feed from the announcement: http://youtu.be/2khljj3VKAw

So, the return of SPECTRE, the gender roles at MI5 reversed to their "proper" order (male boss, female secretary), a German bad guy, a huge, muscly henchman... Looks like they really want to go back to the good ol' days of the franchise, no?

Looking forward to this, Waltz pretty much born to play a Bond baddie.

Looks like they really want to go back to the good ol' days of the franchise, no?

As oppossed to the politically nuanced post-feminist leanings of recent outings?

Well they killed off the series' main female character and made the film's main female character, originally an active spy, a one-note-joke secretary so yes, I think it's fair to say Skyfall represented a big step down or backwards or whatever. At least some interesting female characters is all I ask for from SPECTRE. That and a much better film of course.

http://content.worldcarfans.co/2014/12/4/big/4028897421960358833.jpg

Aston Martin DB10 revealed for 24th James Bond movie called SPECTRE

Also: James Bond Will Drive A Fiat 500 And Everyone Is Freaking Out

James Bond Spectre: Lea Seydoux and Monica Bellucci to play leading ladies

(did not know Bellucci lost to Teri Hatcher in Tomorrow Never Dies. Also, WTF?))

Presumably Bellucci will be playing an antagonist, because she's too old to be a "proper" Bond girl? Though it would be cool if the movie had a romantic interest older than Bond for change (even though the age difference between her and Craig is only 4 years.)

girl in the last one didn't have much to do except get shot and then quipped at by our Jim.

as long as Waltz strokes a cat, right?

tasty

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3875712537/

I remember there was a thread about the longest film series but can't find it : surely it's Bond, yes ?

well if the "same" production unit has to be involved (ie the Broccolis) i suppose so

So!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTDaET-JweU

I remember there was a thread about the longest film series but can't find it : surely it's Bond, yes ?

7 UP has been going 49 years with the same director and cast!

the secret key to longevity is michael apted

"It was me, James. The author of all your pain." That's a p good line.

you want Skyfall remake? we got Skyfall remake!

None of the Craig Bonds are very memorable, are they? Exciting in the theater, but then kind of a blur afterward, too many locales packed in, too many femme fatales per movie.

casino royale is vv memorable imo. I barely remember a thing about quantum of solace except that moment where bond makes all the bad guys feel awkward about using their cell phones or whatever during a theater performance. skyfall is super impressive dumb garbage.

xxpost -- yeah my girlfriend (a stone cold Bond fan in general, loves the Craig Bonds thoroughly) said similar. In that the series has never had quite this specific an arc, though, it's been interesting to see it play out over four films now, Skyfall itself being the most tangential.

Is this the last Craig Bond?

In that the series has never had quite this specific an arc

closest thing was probably you only live twice/ohmss/diamonds, shame about the bookends there

Casino Royale is the one I remember the most about, though not much, and it's been the one I haven't seen for the longest. QoS and Skyfall were exciting in the theater, but I remember almost nothing.

casino royale might as well be 'bullitt' considering how relatively stripped down it is, though the final act has a fair chunk of padding to say the least. Good padding imo but still...

is it worth seeing '.. Solace' if you loved the 2 slices of Bond-bread either side? it got such a kicking that i never bothered.

CR is still easily the best Bond i've ever seen.

QoS is the least essential of the Craig Bond films.

Is this the last Craig Bond?

I think he signed up for two more, so next to last. (Unless it's extended after that -- could be, Roger Moore's run remains the longest at 8 films/12 years and Craig's currently at 4 films/9 years with one more to come, so who knows?)

QoS is the least essential of the Craig Bond films.

And yet oddly Spectre is clearly playing on the fact that the escape of the Mr. White character in QoS is a key part of the whole thing; it's been an element of both trailers now. I wonder how much if any direct flashback/explanation they're going to put into the film.

QoS I just thought was bad in kind of a boring way, but Skyfall I really hated. My reflexive disgust for the Mendesian pomposity of it was a major contributing factor though I'll admit

i'd said it elsewhere but i think skyfall, for all its really impressive staging, really diminishes the more you think about it. not just for the gross sexual politics and the half-hearted winks at bond tropes but for the actual stupidity of the characters, and of course the blandness and unoriginality of silva as a villain (in terms of persona, motivation, and execution of his goals) that is only masked by bardem being an incredible actor.

I didn't mind QoS - it is pretty humourless and brutal, though, and not the traditional kind of crowd-pleasing Bond film. It's Craig's Licence to Kill or For Your Eyes Only, if you like - both of which I have a soft spot for, so. Personally, I thought it looked better than the over-praised Skyfall, too.

you want Skyfall remake? we got Skyfall remake!

pretty blatantly On Her Majesty's Secret Service remake, down to the quotes from the original score in this one

I've said it before, but the plot of Skyfall is completely nonsensical once you think about it, it's all just an excuse to show pretty locales and cool pictures. Which of course makes it the best Bond in a loooong time. QoS is pretty forgettable, but the scene at the opera is great as mentioned upthread. Especially because Mr White is the only one with the cool to simply stay and slip away with the rest of the audience. Mr White is so amazing, and I only partly say that because I'm such a big fan of Jesper Christensen.

I think I love the fact that nothing in Skyfall makes sense. Most action films just have plotholes. Skyfall really is one of those rare films that just don't care.

I bet you're a Prometheus fan

I've actually just dvr'ed it. But from what I've seen of it, clips and trailers and such, I think it's ugly. I mean, the point of Skyfall is that it discards plot to focus on imagery.

Well Sam Smith's done the theme tune and it's bloody awful.

I don't care for Sam Smith but a Bond 'I Will Survive' kinda works.

Really doesn't imo.

I'm not really into Sam Smith, but this seems very dull.

It's crap.

was lana del rey in a tunnel when they called

annoying to have this a spotify only release (for what, like a week?) end these stupid streaming service wars

shit song

I know Smith's voice is held in high regard but on this one it's plain annoying, maybe song could have been salvaged if George Michael sang it

i like this, i expected it to be awful after everyone's griping.

was lana del rey in a tunnel when they called

yeah seriously. using someone else for a bond song in a world where ldr exists is like shaving with a spoon.

can't believe they never used Goldfrapp at her peak either.

The answer for "What is the worst Bond theme?" will always be the Jack White and Alicia Keys one.

can't believe they never used Goldfrapp at her peak either.

^^^^^^ on this.

Listening to it again, the main hook ("how do i live, how do i etc.") is pretty good. Shame about the rest.

"can't believe they never used Goldfrapp at her peak either."

Only 3 movies released during that era, and they went with the charts on 2 of them.

I don't mind the White/Keys one but didn't it follow one by Chris Cornell of all people? Even if it was tolerable, why the hell would you call him?

for a gritty reboot.... of the theme song

UK tabloids running that Damian Lewis is likely next in line, which I reaaaalllly hope isn't the case.

I think he should die in this new one.

I never used to like the Cornell theme but I think it was bc I wasnt into the movie at first

I've warmed up to it now that I enjoy the movie more

I like the movie quite a bit and that theme is ok, but why is Chris Cornell singing it

I will always give a partial pass if the band/singer is from the UK, at least.

"And with your newest Bond theme song, Mumford and Sons."

you know my naaaaaaaaaaaaaame

special place in hell for you on that one, Ned

Given that the greatest heights to which the theme songs have ever risen is Indelible Kitsch, perhaps never an occasion for gnashing of teeth.

like really, how high was Anthony Newley when he wrote those "Goldfinger" lyrics?

have we polled best Bond theme on ILM? probably a shitshow like all song polls, but maybe an entertaining one

the man with the midas touch, the spider's touch? xp

:)

ok now I'm listening to the "A View to a Kill" theme

can't believe they never used Goldfrapp at her peak either.

She could totally still do it!

Cornell makes sense to me, a classic rock bellower and the song is pretty good. I'm a Soundgarden fan, mind you.

such a COLDfinger

always wakes me right up

omg I forgot that line

It'll be interesting to see how much SPECTRE sticks to the semi-plausible villain schemes of the Craig films.

So far we've had:
Casino Royale: off-screen puppetmasters implied, but the main plot is about the money man for international criminal enterprise (plausible), it's personal for Bond in that he falls in love
Quantum of Solace: leads in from last film, group of villains is introduced and main plot is about manipulating the water market in south america for profit (semi-plausible, maybe boring?). Ties up Bond's love dying.
Skyfall: detours from vast conspiracy to have a one-off villain that is a magical global hacker type (very of the moment, much less plausible). Personal for Bond in that it ruminates too long on his "family" (dead parents, surrogate mother in M).
SPECTRE: who even knows the real plot yet, trailers seem to be all about secret group behind all villain groups who are VERY PERSONAL to Bond. Maybe a plausible threat to counter that?

The movies always veered away from any realism to give giant secret bases (esp in late Connery/Moore films) but the scope of things probably hit the top ridiculous point in "A View to a Kill" when a _single_ evil capitalist was going to sink part of California... to corner the microchip market!

which probably means the new film is going to jump all sharks and have Bond's long-lost cousin/brother/bff nuke scotland off the map to kill one man (Bond, naturally)

will there be cat stroking?

I think Waltz could definitely pull that off

"Franz Oberhauser"?

There's going to be a scene where he sez "Mein name is ECKtually...!" Right?

Interesting angle would be Bond peeling back the curtain and finding out about this powerful conspiracy only to be convinced to help them defeat some second group

...which is a group of American industrialists that were founded post-WW2 after infiltrating the rebuilding of Europe. They're known as "the basterds"

it's the old innkeeper & he would have gotten away with it too if it werent for you kids

have we polled best Bond theme on ILM? probably a shitshow like all song polls, but maybe an entertaining one

― μpright mammal (mh), Monday, September 28, 2015 2:57 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

can't believe you forgot Chris Cornell beating Carly Simon on this poll:

What's the best Bond theme?

Unfortunate, but the real scandal here is All Time High scoring 0.

that's the least scandalous scandal ever

we really need a ranking-style poll instead of pick one :/

yeah I mean the real travesty of that poll is For Your Eyes Only getting goose-egged

I get confused when seeing results as what _should_ be a ranking and then I realize, no, some people really think they chose the best one

lame

first ever Bond theme to go UK number 1. baffling stat that.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34425299

they didn't count streaming before 2014.

Just watched the trailer for this. Still interested in seeing what they do with it but mannnnn is the digital coloring on this ugly to look at. I'm sure in the theater my eyes will adjust but I don't remember Skyfall being nearly this bad.

god i hated skyfall

i hated the pretty lights too

I liked Skyfall in the theater but it didnt hold up to rewatches, it's not great

It suffers from a lack of exposition (action, not dialogue -- plenty of dialogue) with the main villain, while the subplot that is supposed to pull us into Bond's character has a lack of development.

Or maybe too much development, when it comes to dragging Judi Dench around the countryside

Skyfall was awesomely colored! The fire and dusk in final sequence was one of the best uses of teal and orange in last few years. Spectre trailer doesn't have anything like that, but it could still very well be the same good mixture of beautiful feverish nonsense.

Skyfall is beautiful to look at, esp the Scotland stuff

DP this time is Hoyte Van Hoytema (Let the Right One In, Her, Interstellar)

haven't rewatched quantum or skyfall since seeing them in the theater but iirc they were both a letdown after casino royale, even if bardem was way better a villian than that dude with the asthma inhaler in casino

idk casino royale was way more fun than either quantum or skyfall. those tried to be too serious. i hope spectre is fun

casino royale is so good

hoyte van hoytema is a v fun name to say out loud

let the right one in is gorgeous, havent seen the other two

i hated skyfall in the theatre than watched it again and liked it, i really don't think bond films need to be veering off into his backstory as a person or whatever. the parts of that movie that are just bond doing bond things rule.

i hope spectre is fun

no chance. Looks like it's doubling down on the unnecessary Bond backstory

some speculation suggests it may loosely follow the On Her Majesty's Secret Service storyline

Telly Savalas > Christoph Waltz

mikkelsen>>>>>bardem

altho i tried to watch OHMSS on TV a few years ago and whenever Diana Rigg wasnt on i was bored out of my skull

trailers have all had me wondering re OHMSS

i don't gaf anyway, Bond is awesome, Bond is emo, Bond is po-faced, the only way to fuck up a Bond film is to have him played by that gurning clown Roger Moore and turn it into a fucking Cannonball Run spin-off

scrotal torture > i kidnapped Mommy

xp

not even close imo. le chiffre was a great charming villain w/the right amount of sadism and desperation at the end. bardem was a cartoon and not in the great bond villain way, but in a generic way that was ripped off from countless recent movie villains. that said bardem was "good".

i've said it elsewhere but the sooner we move away from potentially great movie villains whose sole goal is "chaos" the better

i should say RUINED because their sole goal seems to be chaos

altho i tried to watch OHMSS on TV a few years ago and whenever Diana Rigg wasnt on i was bored out of my skull

I saw it in the cinema two months ago and it is definitely the best Bond film, so well-edited that the Moore films should be embarrassed to have ever existed

but the script and Lazenby, ye gods

Batbale has a lot to answer for

xp

i didn't mind it when it was the joker so much, primarily because it fit the character to a degree. but that motivation was such bullshit for khan and silva, and using it to mask true motives was so lazy imo.

villains intent on mere chaos a symptom of a timid post-Cold War industry trying to maximize markets?

surely somebody wants to step up with the Islamophobes' Red Dawn?

Christensen > Mikkelsen

xp's

the parts of that movie that are just bond doing bond things rule.

the sooner we move away from potentially great movie villains whose sole goal is "chaos" the better

OTM to both of these points. my complaints in sub-par bond movies are almost always that bond is not doing sufficiently bond-ish stuff. (roger moore is of course the worst offender here, movie after movie. brosnan could be smug but he almost always seemed to be doing, like, spy stuff or action stuff, not jsut shuffling around and talking to people.) and yeah bardem's villain had this awesome creepiness/bond-villain-vibe face to face, but his actual plan was just a huge ripoff of the dark knight and not really much to get excited about. pretty sure you could cut a quarter of that movie's running time by axing the "he got captured on purpose! now he's heading for M's big hearing! they've got to stop him!" sequence and it would be a stronger film. would keep the showdown at the old house because it was badass, but would not have it be bond's actual old house - did not need that one bit.

i didn't see casino royale til after skyfall so was pleasantly surprised (i did like a lot of things about skyfall) to find it a leaner, pacier-feeling film despite actually being one minute longer. so there's still some dragging parts and again there's a tacked-on feeling to the way the last sequences (the venice stuff) play out. but i thought the key set pieces - the opener, the airport, the car chase - were spectacularly thrilling in a way very few entries in the series actually have been despite the fact that seemingly each and every movie when it came out was praised for supposedly signature thrill-packed excitement. (reading the box of for your eyes only had me lolling the other night, after watching this incredible tepid and hokey affair to hear it described as "A Terrific, Non-Stop Romp!" with "non-stop action" and "unforgettable characters.") thought le chiffre was fantastic - just the kind of menacing, well-connected guy that Bond would take on as antagonist. my favorite line in the film was bond's stubborn i can beat this man. he was the right size villain for Bond to think that about and possibly be wrong.

the only way to fuck up a Bond film is to have him played by that gurning clown Roger Moore and turn it into a fucking Cannonball Run spin-off

OTM

worst character in any bond film is that hillbilly sheriff, it's like putting larry the cable guy in one of chow yun fat's '90s HK action movies

would love to sit down and think for a while about worse bond characters but yeah that guy is so awful it's sort of a foregone conclusion. there are some dull dull villains and forehead-slappingly dopey bond girls, but nothing like sheriff guy where every second he's on screen you want to throw something at the TV. and he's in two movies! thank god he didn't keep coming back.

yea i think my fond memory of bardem is due to bardem and not to any specific details of his character, i don't even remember what his plan as a villian was

that said "dude with the inhaler" mikkelsen was actually pretty good, there is just something kind of "stereotypical eastern european criminal" about that character that was fine enough but not particularly exciting. but i guess that was totally okay bc the showcase was really craig's debut as bond

lol also i have asthma and it was a little hokey seeing the inhaler as symbolism for le chiffre's vulnerability and weakness

i think i really liked that le chiffre was a seemingly low level criminal, like a perfect match for an up and coming secret agent. not sure how bond actually got dumber with each subsequent movie, i hope spectre halts that trend.

like in CR his dealings with le chiffre were pretty smart, in skyfall his big plan in the third act was worthy of a sitcom parody

Mr White, the obvious winner is Mr White.

i just thought he projected menace well while playing cards. did he in fact have a plan? kind of an unusual bond story in that they're there to basically crash a party and execute a spy plan just to like, take down this criminal organization, not because the criminal himself is actively undertaking some world-domination scheme or stealing some crucial piece of technology. looking it up on wikipedia i guess he was known for engineering terrorist attacks in order to facilitate favorable stock transactions, but it wasn't like he was about to do a specifically big one and had to be stopped. which is for the best IMO because otherwise we're going down the road of jonathan pryce in tomorrow never dies who was not exactly the most exciting villain in the series.

actually that reminds me of another least-favorite character - the henchman assassin dude in the world is not enough whose gimmick is that he has a bullet lodged in his brain and can't feel pain. which is like, okay, sure, i guess that's scary. but then they made it a degenerative thing so that over time he's gradually more and more injured, losing his senses, bond can set him on fire and he won't notice, etc. wow, how terrifying. anyone with any sense would just avoid the guy until he dropped dead on his own. not exactly the last of that movie's many horrible problems (i rank it worst of the brosnans and near the bottom of the series overall) but it really stuck out to me as a failure to think things through from what appears to have been a fairly early point in drafting the plot.

agreed totally about le chiffre as low(er)-level criminal being a good match for bond. the movie in general had a good handle on 'scale' and the kinds of challenges to throw at bond where it could feel (as everyone said) more 'grounded' and 'realistic' but still over-the-top in a way that feels totally in the spirit of the series/character. skyfall loses sight of this in a few ways, worst of which being the whole hacker thing, home base being infiltrated... kinda like dark knight rises where we're following minor characters around as they look for a truck with a bomb on it. i don't really need to see Q trying to out-hack the bad guys. if you think the movie needs more elements in it, give bardem some henchmen that james bond can detect trying to break into his hotel room or whatever.

imo, though i am not an aficionado, bond works best when he is a SPY doing SPY SHIT. i.e. pretending to be someone else, the tension of not being discovered, etc. - and the moments when that tension is shattered, and bond has to house some clown and throw him under the stairs a split second before the corrupt dictator's daughter arrives. ya feel me

The henchman assassin is the main villain! Played by Robert Carlyle, I remember him fondly - compared with Denise Richards as nuclear physicist Christmas Jones, Robbie Coltrane being given an arc and heroic death (!) for his returning Fat Russian Mobster, and Goldie as his henchman, I don't think Renard is even on the podium.

(Yes, I looked all of this stuff up - but I do remember him fondly.)

i.e. pretending to be someone else

Er, he does this so rarely throughout the series, and usually gives up the pretense the minute the baddie throws some henchmen at him.

I believe there are even a few instances of him pretending to be someone with a job other than spy who is also called James Bond, but I can't think of any specific ones.

World is Not Enough is clearly the second best Brosnan by the way, which says more about the quality of his run than the quality of the film.

He didn't always get the scripts, but Craig has never topped (and sounds like he never will) Goldeneye.

CR>Goldeneye IMO. Better action, better acting.

The Script Is Not Enough

Er, he does this so rarely throughout the series

MAYBE HE SHOULD START

he produces business cards from "universal exports" a lot.

Genuinely curious whether anyone under 30 cares about James Bond movies anymore.

The last one took in a billion dollars - someone's watching.

Growing up my experiences were with the blowzy, elephantine Roger Moore movies, so this series' dotage is coming on thirty years (and I liked Casino Royale). At the time I thought why waste time on this mythology when Indiana Jones exists?

I watched Goldeneye for the first time a week ago. It's a dumb action movie. The only Brosbond I rate is the extended opening sequence in TWINE. CR has the poor and unnecessary "first kill" scene and some tiresome psychological exposition, but otherwise I like it.

I agree with morbz that waltz is probably blofeld. note that all the craig movies have villains with colors in their names. blofeld means blue field.

xpost to alfred

For UK audiences of all ages, there are few other mythologies that unite our perennial obsessions with class, empire, post-war decline etc so meaningfully - see Simon Winder's The Man Who Saved Britain

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/08/film

GoldenEye is as silly and dumb as the Moore movies. It's a lot of fun, the ludicrous action scenes and villains are entertaining, it's paced a lot better than almost all Moore movies - but people who grew up with it don't seem to realize that it's as much goofy cartoon Bond as Moore was.

After Quantum of Solace disappointed some people the producers have gone back to more convoluted plots with tons of story and dialogue and side characters, but as pointed out above - Bond is better without lots of backstory, Bond is better without Batman villains. Except for a few isolated cases of shakey cam I can't understand, let alone accept, the hate QoS got: It stuck with Craig's hard ass style of Bond (every Bond actor's movie should respect his character) yet featured lots of neat Bond work, gorgeous locations, supremely tight editing, a villain that wasn't just there for Bond to awkwardly ruminate on his life and a gorgeous Opera set piece. Also a female character who isn't a joke, unlike with Skyfall.

"imo, though i am not an aficionado, bond works best when he is a SPY doing SPY SHIT. i.e. pretending to be someone else, the tension of not being discovered, etc. - and the moments when that tension is shattered, and bond has to house some clown and throw him under the stairs a split second before the corrupt dictator's daughter arrives. ya feel me"

Yes and no. That aspect is a bit of a joke in a great number of earlier Bond films - and I actually do like that, it adds to the comedy of the formula. Especially with Moore, of course, you have to enjoy it for its self parody, intended or not. And Moore enjoying a bit of cucumber sandwich with the villain, eating big dinners, being locked into his room - enormously optimistic in his disguise schpiel - is often very funny. Thus the joke-y refusal of Craig's Bond to hide his identity.

This is not true, as it has Pierce Brosnan rather than Roger Moore, and as such is automatically better.

Waltz has said he is not Blofeld - the going idea is that he is Franz Oberhauser

Vin Diesel as Blofeld iirc.

Meryl Streep as Javier Bardem.

Miley Cyrus is the new M.

^^ would watch

billy ray cyrus as the next bond imo

He's got a license to kill, and you know he's going straight for your achey breaky heart.

i was only 12 when goldeneye came out and even then i knew it was garbage

casino royale is way better

also i am definitely not a bond aficionado, i havent seen anything pre-brosnan and idgaf really if i ever do

Except for a few isolated cases of shakey cam I can't understand, let alone accept, the hate QoS got: It stuck with Craig's hard ass style of Bond (every Bond actor's movie should respect his character) yet featured lots of neat Bond work, gorgeous locations, supremely tight editing, a villain that wasn't just there for Bond to awkwardly ruminate on his life and a gorgeous Opera set piece. Also a female character who isn't a joke, unlike with Skyfall.

QoS is a potentially OK movie marred by noted hack Marc Forster's incompetent action directing and the fact that the writers' strike left them with a partial script that had to be figured out during production, in part by Craig himself(!). Olga Kurylenko kicks ass, Mathieu Amalric is amusing to watch squaring off against Craig, and there are some great locations, but it doesn't really work overall.

kinda wish there was a way to split the franchise so that there one set of films for the fans of sadface bollock-tortured 'realistic' bond and another parallel series focusing on the international man of mystery, sexually-incontinent, hollow-volcano-explorer bond

Waltz has said he is not Blofeld - the going idea is that he is Franz Oberhauser

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, October 15, 2015 9:03 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all the leaked Sony email notes with the producers referring to "Blofeld" are kind of telling -- they're just not going to have a Blofeld character in the Daniel Craig Bond films, and this dude is kind of in charge of SPECTRE, so for all intents and purposes...

bizarro gazzara is on to something -- I definitely have a specific idea of "this is how James Bond should be," but I also enjoy some of the goofiness that the movie series has brought to the screen.

I think one of the main problems is consistency in characterization. Some of the Roger Moore films are practically played as farce, but it's more (Moore?) jarring to see characters swing between caricature and intense seriousness in the course of a film.

Bardem's villain swinging from methodical planner with a hint of a truly violent nature to a guy who is yelling over a bullhorn and commanding a gunship to blast a house in the middle of nowhere made him seem like there was no consistency. If they shoehorned in some dialogue between Bond and his character about how he'd had to resort to this, with some sort of breakdown taking place, there'd be some sort of emotional resolution but it fell flat.

On the other hand, I have a soft spot for Goldeneye, which carried on a hint of the comedic beats the Moore films tried for in the earlier days and the Connery films exhibited in a series of ridiculous henchmen. It had the hint of backstory (a colleague who was left behind as villain) and balanced it with two henchmen -- ridiculous Russian hacker Boris (Alan Cumming!) and sexual sadist Xenia Onatopp (up there with the most ridiculous Bond series names) who are comedic but completely consistent throughout the plot, and in a way that doesn't deviate from the progression of the story. There's a point that capitalizes on Boris being a fidgety nerd that leads him to detonate a pen grenade that moves the plot forward while being completely in character.

(I was 14 when Goldeneye came out and feel the Brosnan films were victim to the worst parts of the Bond series -- uneven tone, product/gadget and music placement that seems emphasized more than the actual plot, shoehorned in villains/sidekicks that have no real reason to be there) but they did start with a movie that, while flawed, was probably the best of his run.

Re: Onatopp, I forgot to mention that one of the other characters in TWINE is Dr. Molly Warmflash.

Obviously I recognise the division that bizarro gazzara identifies, while not particularly having much time for the other part of it (which is better done by other less inherently ridiculous franchises). Some of the Moore films mine the hollow volcano quite effectively (so to speak), but Moore himself is awful, is the problem.

"Except for a few isolated cases of shakey cam I can't understand, let alone accept, the hate QoS got"
Agreed on this. It's far superior to Skyfall. I'm convinced QOS negative rep has to be solely due to its awkward sounding title.

QoS falls over because the main villain scheme doesn't have a connected action scene or denouement act. There's no part where they blow up a huge underground reservoir and return water to the people or w/e. It's down to assuming with the CEO of the speculation company and the military dictator dead, things will somehow get better? It fits with the tone of the movie and the series overall, but the big payoff after Bond loses two of his compatriots and the big payoff is a moderately-sized building in the middle of nowhere blows up and a guy drinks a can of oil offscreen

That said, yeah, more cohesive than Skyfall

threads for unseen movies = what a blast of rehashing

so Jez Butterworth, the Brit playwright turned screenwriter, has a credit on this along with the 3 guys who did Skyfall (incl John Logan and the other guy who've been on all the Craigs). Weird filmography -- Black Mass presumably cuz he's done gangster stuff, but the James Brown biopic and Edge of Tomorrow too.

What's your opinion re: Black Mass?

mine? doubt i'll ever see it

one set of films for the fans of sadface bollock-tortured 'realistic' bond and another parallel series focusing on the international man of mystery, sexually-incontinent, hollow-volcano-explorer bond

in the best Bond movies these things all gel together and i pity the fool who can only deal with one flavour at a time

Connery's brutish aura made the fantasy digestible

agreed 100% about "spy shit," disagree that he doesn't do very much of it - feel like there is at least some of it in almost every movie. quite a bit in the first few connery flicks seems very much in the spirit of fleming and a more grounded "spy" as opposed to "superspy" - taping a hair across the doorframe to see if the room's been disturbed, all that stuff. of course (nearly) every movie involves some spy-style detective work... talking to people, turning up false leads, realizing the bigger scheme that's going on. sometimes the 'spy stuff' is really the best thing in the film, as in say diamonds are forever where basically the only thing I can remember, besides the two assassins and blofeld looking like brack from this island earth, is Bond killing the guy sent to assassinate him, planting his ID on him, and letting Jill St. John conclude "You've just killed James Bond!" "Was that who that was?"

i only grow fonder of the brosnan era the more i see of moore's films. virtually the only thing he does convincingly is eat the cucumber sandwiches and get hoodwinked by the villains. he really seems deeply incompetent a lot of the time. constantly getting snuck up on and falling for obvious traps. also by far THE worst at convincing us that the actor and the stuntman are the same person from shot to shot. there's stuff that's goofy in goldeneye, lots more in tied-for-seconds TND and DAD, but i'd rate all of those above all the moore that i've seen (note, i have not seen 'the spy who loved me' which i understand is supposed to be his best). brosnan manages the tuxedo and the jokes without ever seeming quite like moore's ultra-posh dowdy clown, even if he can become a cartoon surrounded by effects. goldeneye attempts to dress the setup up with "contemporary" themes (fall of cold war, bond as sexist dinosaur) but hasn't actually got anything to say about them; its feeling of being more substantial comes mainly from a grittier visual feel, the spectacular opening stunt, the tank chase, and sean bean's villain. but it's a fun movie to watch IMO.

i might be one of those people for whom dalton is, if not the favorite bond, the only i'd want to have seen more movies from. he didn't nail it in either of his films but i feel like he was getting close to something, and he was at least distinctive. the scripts he had maybe didn't mesh well enough with where he was taking the character - the odd fatherly quality of his relationship with the cellist in living daylights (some kind of holdover plot idea for a moore movie, surely - - - see also the SUPER awkward relationship with the teenage gymnastics trainee in 'for your eyes only') is interesting but a weak fit for this lean, mean bond. no shortage of spy stuff, though.

Agree Dalton is definitely overrated, and TLD is in my top five Bonds. Remember not being too impressed with LTK, but I don't think I've seen it since I was quite young, and I know it has its defenders.

Sorry, UNDERrated.

I think a better question would be to determine what Bond film is the least cohesive. Not least enjoyable, but most nonsensical.

A View to a Kill is up there, for sure. That Brosnan-era one that has something to do with uh, diamonds or lasers, and has a final act in an ICE HOTEL for no particular reason is also up there.

Have to shout out to the worst product placements in the Brosnan years, like peak Ford-era Jaguar

have meant to rewatch Octopussy since Louis Jourdan died. Delighted with it at original release.

http://news.doddleme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-22-at-4.00.51-PM-300x184.png
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hDNY_rlcSSo/maxresdefault.jpg

View to a Kill is almost completely nonsensical. cf: crazy Eiffel Tower butterfly show - seriously I have watched this movie many times and I *still* dont know what that was

Thunderball is boring & mostly stupid, not even bizarrely enjoyable like VTAK

it's been a very long time since i've sat thru all of Live and Let Die but i seem to recall it making very little sense

Thunderball clearly redeemed by the afternoon we liveblogged it on here

i don't really rate the Brosnan Bonds because I just can't with those movies. I can't

Feel like if Living Daylights were tightened up a bit (we get to Afghanistan right around the time it feels like the movie has to be ending soon), if they'd figured out more precisely what they wanted to do with Bond's relationship with the cellist, and they'd cast someone better than Joe Don Baker for the main villain, it'd basically be top five. Dalton's great, the Gibraltar open is great, the ski/cello case is great, the assassin milk-delivery dude is great, the airplane/net thing at the very end is great... I mean it's very much going for a Casino Royale franchise reset, shooting for grittier, tougher, more "now" than the fuddy-duddy Moore films that preceded it, and I think it mostly pulls it off. (BTW it's kind of amazing to me the same guy directed everything from For Your Eyes Only through License to Kill.)

I found For Your Eyes Only totally nonsensical but usually at the 'local' level, where just everything that was happening within a scene didn't add up whatsoever, like the big rock-climbing set piece for example. Why did Bond waste undisclosed amounts of precious time arranging an elaborate meeting with Q just to be informed that there is more than one St. Cyril's church in Greece, when he has already enlisted "The Dove" (only good character in the movie) as a guide? Why doesn't the bad guy just shoot him? If Bond can see his friends down the way, why can't the bad guys? Why does Bond give the go-ahead to let everybody up after taking out that one guy, even though it's not the same guy their binocular surveillance told them was also patrolling up there? How does Roger Moore fall seemingly a hundred feet and then climb right back to where he was in the space of seemingly a minute? Or say, the big submersible scene where they finally get the gizmo: if they're deep enough that they have to use this special breathing apparatus, why are they diving bare-skinned, and why does the 8-minute time limit never actually come into play? Why do the bad guys even bother sneaking up on them down there when clearly their plan was to let Bond figure out where the thing was and let him do the work of bringing it up for them? How did the bad guys get their ship and deep-sea diver guy into place without Bond and Melina noticing? How is it that all this is back adjacent to the "underwater temple" location, for the coral/shark scene, when clearly Bond and Melina left there after learning the correct location from the parrot (so stupid)? Why do the bad guys fuck around with the coral torture thing, when lead guy is just kind of a black market dealer of gizmos to the Russians with no personal master plan or vendetta against Bond? Some of that sounds like nitpicking I know but seriously like every two minutes watching that movie you're like "why the fuck are they doing THAT?"

Live and Let Die I enjoy, but that may be just bcz I have a soft spot for yaphet koto

Living Daylights holds up pretty well

john glen was a bond series MVP. Though I think as far as directors go martin campbell's work on goldeneye and especially casino royale is so good, mctiernan good.

it's been a long time since i've seen license to kill but iirc it's really mean and unpleasant in a way that doesn't feel very "bond." casino royale is in a lot of ways the right way to make license to kill

I want to dress like this
http://news.doddleme.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Screen-Shot-2015-07-22-at-4.00.51-PM-300x184.png

but Joe Don Baker played a villain named Whittaker!

I feel like the current Bond series has a very short window to get a Joe Don Baker cameo in, but they should try

license to kill is fun as a canon pictures bond flick

i'm just going to pretend i didn't see you fuckers dissing thunderball

Live and Let Die I enjoy, but that may be just bcz I have a soft spot for yaphet koto

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl)

Live and Let Die is fun in a batshit ignore-the-racism way, and it's the only Moore entry in which you can see why they cast him - he possesses a suavity in it which he seemed to abandon him completely in later entries.

Feel like if Living Daylights were tightened up a bit (we get to Afghanistan right around the time it feels like the movie has to be ending soon), if they'd figured out more precisely what they wanted to do with Bond's relationship with the cellist, and they'd cast someone better than Joe Don Baker for the main villain, it'd basically be top five. Dalton's great, the Gibraltar open is great, the ski/cello case is great, the assassin milk-delivery dude is great, the airplane/net thing at the very end is great... I mean it's very much going for a Casino Royale franchise reset, shooting for grittier, tougher, more "now" than the fuddy-duddy Moore films that preceded it, and I think it mostly pulls it off. (BTW it's kind of amazing to me the same guy directed everything from For Your Eyes Only through License to Kill.)

Kinda my take all around, and echoing comments above, John Glen was a pretty solid yeoman's director who worked twenty-plus years in the entire franchise. I don't think he ever directed a totally great film but Living and Eyes Only are the closest.

I do highly recommend Glen's book from a few years back, BTW -- I don't think it's gotten as much attention as it should, but as a story of both his filmmaking life in general and the Bond work in particular, it's really enjoyable, and a particular portrait of time/place as a franchise that had established itself as a particular high level affair had to figure out how to keep adjusting.

http://www.amazon.com/For-Eyes-Only-John-Glen/dp/1422358135

Great anecdote in there about the time Roger Moore demonstrated to him how to fold your suit and pants in luggage to prevent wrinkles. Moore WOULD know how to do that, and I want to know what his method is!

LTK is great imo. enjoyed the fact that the villains were strictly b-movie dudes (except benicio del toro, who was quite memorable) and how it feels like an extended episode of Miami vice refitted for Bond. Also iirc the original title was "licence revoked" but they thought "revoked" was too big a word for american audiences. quantum of solace of course goes does easy title wise.

IIRC they were originally thinking (since practically all the original story titles from Fleming were used up at that point, though "Quantum" obv slipped through later) that they might go ahead and start looking at John Gardner's 1980s official book franchise contributions as sources for further films. The first one of those was License Renewed; License Revoked is a pretty obvious nod to that, at least.

I struggled with the Miami-Vice-episode quality as a lot of people I think do, but I think eventually it got larger-than-life enough to feel Bond-ish. Thought Davi's villain was really good, first credible threat in a while, and a great case of 'spy stuff' with Bond posing as an assassin-for-hire and infiltrating his confidences (a bit abruptly-handled but cool). Del Toro as henchman was sadly underused but fun. Big chase at the end was a blast, lots of "aahahahahah they went for it!" moments. Also Anthony Zerbe gets inflated til he pops. The love interests are both lame though IIRC. Maybe the one thing it needs is a little more change of scenery; the plot and the scope of Davi's scheme don't really allow for him to hop between continents, but maybe this is why people think it feels less Bond-ish? (Bond generally is obviously a surrogate agent of the bygone British Empire; his freedom of movement throughout the global Anglosphere and near neighbors, the magic power of the British passport blown up into the License to Kill, is his means of protecting old dowdy colonials and their iced drinks from the Threats Of The Liberated Other etc etc etc. So having him stuck the entire time in the Caribbean - Dr. No notwithstanding - just isn't "Bond" maybe.)

People have the impression that it was this underperforming dud and that Dalton was let go for it, but my understanding is that the rights fell into some kind of limbo, and it was taking so long to work it out that Dalton exercised an option to bail in his contract and they thus went back to Brosnan who they had wanted in the first place (but for Remington Steele tying him up). LTK didn't do great in the US but according to Wiki it was, worldwide, "the twelfth-biggest box office draw of the year."

Stepping back a bit to your earlier point, DC: The Living Daylights as very self-conscious reboot is a bit missed now, but it was definitely the case -- it was also the 25th anniversary of the franchise and that fact was played up as much as the 50th was for Skyfall. It's interesting to see the changes they did and didn't do -- Dalton as darker/cynical Bond is the most obvious one (him talking about having read the books directly was much mentioned), a new Moneypenny for the first time since the start, a certain sense in the air that the feel of the Cold War is juuust starting to go a bit (which four years after Octopussy is a pretty notable change -- and I think the whole nuclear bomb sequence towards the end is a bit underrated, thinking of moments like Berkoff's death scene and how Moore, playing Bond in a clown costume no less, is actually able to convey not merely urgency but angry, honest fear that it's all about to go to unavoidable hell). Then in contrast, M remains the same, Q is Q, lots of overt jokes, etc. etc.

Dalton was amazing and License.. has one of THE best theme songs.

Robert Davi was cast following a suggestion by Broccoli's daughter Tina,[4] and screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had seen Davi in the television film Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami.[18] To portray Sanchez, Davi researched on the Colombian drug cartels and how to do a Colombian accent,[8] and since he was method acting, he would stay in character off-set. After Davi read Casino Royale for preparation, he decided to turn Sanchez into a "mirror image" of James Bond, based on Ian Fleming's descriptions of Le Chiffre.[4] The actor also learned scuba diving for the scene where Sanchez is rescued from the sunken armoured car.[8]

Davi later helped out on the casting of Sanchez's mistress Lupe Lamora, by playing Bond in the audition,[6] with Talisa Soto being picked from twelve candidates because Davi expressed he "would kill for her".[4]

I feel like TLD and LTK would have worked better if there had been a film in between them. As it stands, we don't really get a handle on Dalton's version of Bond before suddenly he's quitting the secret service and going off on a revenge tear. In TLD there's the development of the relationship between Bond and Saunders, which goes from them trying to outdo each other to them eventually reaching an understanding right before Saunders gets killed. There's also Koskov using his friendship with Bond as part of his scheme. In a hypothetical 'middle' movie, Bond might have more of his allies either be killed by enemies or betray him, so that in LTK when Leiter gets maimed and his wife is murdered, Bond has no more reason to play by the rules. But movies back then weren't often written with that kind of multi film story arc built into them. CR/QOS/SF does, and for me it's one of the main draws of that trilogy of movies.

The Living Daylights was the first Bond I saw in the theater, and I dug the Aryan killer and using the cello as a sled. Saw it again three years ago and it's by far the best '80s Bond (with LTK second) but I still don't think Dalton was right for the part? He should've played a villain – as he would (and nicely) in The Rocketeer a few years later.

the a-ha theme is all time.

and when the chick in TLD asks if he likes his martini, Dalton gives the world's least convincing "Perfect" as a response.

my problem with the arc in the last three is it's not like the arc is anything but hints at a greater conspiracy, without any actual concrete narrative connective tissue beyond mr white I guess. And skyfall seemed to drop the arc completely for something more standalone.

The Living Daylights was the first Bond I saw in the theater, and I dug the Aryan killer and using the cello as a sled.

Me too and me too.

I recently rewatched For Your Eyes Only & liked it quite a bit. I'm a sucker for alpine shenanigans, what can i say

but that bobsled chase scene is fucking cool, i dont care what you say

it's a lot less corny & there are no pigeon doubletakes

wonder if oberhauser will have a cat

i hope he has a hamster

FYEO alpine chase was okay but I kept comparing it to TLD alpine chase which was just more exciting and again better at convincing you that Dalton was on that cello case dodging those guys. Whereas the things they have Moore's stuntman doing are just so clashingly different from the way Moore (then 54 but feeling ten or fifteen years older) walks and moves... it just didn't work. I was also really struggling to keep track of who was even chasing him and why at that point. Or why he didn't just call the cops on the guy trying to kill him, who is a recognized star triathlete presumably recognizable by everybody in town and visibly sniping people in broad daylight by a heavily-populated ski jump.

fyeo easily one of the top roger moore bonds imo, plus the theme obv a classic

FYEO has one of the most amazing OTT Bill Conti scores ever. I got the OST album just for the chase tracks - do we still say "that shit is ridic?"

the piano octave hits during the ski jump bits - I wish my whole life sounded like that

"Ski... Shoot... Jump."
Good work with the titles there Mr. Conti!
It's like you were given a really terrible set of storyboards and a note that said "tension + excitement" and just decided to include all the ethnic percussion from the old steamer trunk, as a means to try and knit together 4 or 5 half-baked ideas you've had for other scores but never ended up using. And then the guys were like what do we put on top of the sheet music? And you said "Make something up!" and threw the storyboards at them, and they did what you said.

score is rad, it is true

am v happy that FYEO has fellow admirers! <3

I still don't think Dalton was right for the part? He should've played a villain

that was kinda what i liked about dalton in the role - he always comes across an immensely charming shithead which makes him a great villain but is also a totally valid take on bond

btw Clifton James, who played the 'southern sheriff,' is a solid Actors Studio guy and still alive at 94. I saw him off-Broadway in American Buffalo with Pacino in '81.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifton_James

still a chance for him to reprise the key 'southern sheriff' role, then :D

amazingly, there's been no speculation about how SPECTRE might be rebooting the southern sheriff, but it'd be great if they could have clifton james appear as his moonshine-peddling pappy or something. a similar idea worked out great in maverick!

and yeah, the undercurrent of diesel-scented menace from dalton is the best part of his bond. if it means the soft, gentle romance bits don't quite work, it does also mean you 100% buy it while he's faking a romance to try and get information out of the cellist.

meanwhile, we started watching never say never again last night. i'm stoked to pick it back up - - - connery seems to have a MUCH stronger take than moore on hwo a 50+-year-old action spy might act, and he actually does his own falls and punches and stuff. plus, count on irvin kershner to at least think about where he's putting the camera and the lights and shit, it never looks like i'm watching the Tea-Time Proggrame on the BBC which all the non-action scenes in most Moore flicks really feel like. and that's with mister bean showing up! also -- so far at least -- it feels far less flabby than thunderball. a few confusing things have happened but my only real gripe is that they're just slightly overplaying all the wink-wink stuff in the script about bond being old but still good, and M being turned into this sniffy health food junkie who doesn't listen to any of 007's ideas, cuz it's the 80s. also the ridiiiiiculous video game omg.

They're doing a Southern Sheriff origin trilogy before they integrate him back into the main series. The tone will be gritty.

*spits chaw all over desk*

Trivia

* Clifton James played a similar, loud mouthed sheriff, reminiscent of J.W. Pepper in the 1980 film Superman II. All three films were partly written by Tom Mankiewicz

* There is a sheet music company named J.W. Pepper

Clifton James specialized in Southern lawmen. He is from Spokane.

Clifton James played a similar, loud mouthed sheriff, reminiscent of J.W. Pepper in the 1980 film Superman II. All three films were partly written by Tom Mankiewicz

"Wayne. Ya gotta learn to kick ass if you wanna be a peacemaker."

am v happy that FYEO has fellow admirers! <3

It was my first Bond -- I remember ads on TV for Moonraker but I couldn't escape FYEO's theme song (and didn't want to -- perfect OTT melodrama, give Sheena that), and when it finally hit cable I must have watched it a slew of times. That it was Moore's one 'gritty' Bond as such -- however haphazardly -- probably helped, but I still retain a certain nostalgia for it. Connery's Bond in contrast was always an after the fact thing. But TLD would have been the first one I actually saw in the theater. (Now that I think about it, I've *only* seen five on first run -- TLD, License to Kill and the three Craigs.)

I think I've watched every Bond since Daylights in the cinema.

i think For Your Eyes Only is the bond film that's aged the absolute worst, i watched it earlier this year and got so bored during the endless stunt double ski chase scene that i almost just turned it off. it's all style no substance way moreso even than the average bond, and without the laugh factor of e.g. Moonraker to fall back on.

not for your eyes, anymore

also i could swear there was another bond film that had a really similar rock climbing sequence, can someone confirm/deny this?

Opening of TLD involves rock climbing.

got so bored during the endless stunt double ski chase scene that i almost just turned it off.

I felt similarly about the diving sequences in Thunderball last time I watched it.

Robert Sellers' book about the whole Thunderball/Kevin McClory saga is far more entertaining than the film itself

I felt similarly about the diving sequences in Thunderball last time I watched it.

I think Thunderball underwater sequences were semi-unprecedented at the time, which is why they've aged badly.

thunderball underwater sequences reminded me of that feeling as a kid when I'd tune in to Wonderful World of Disney only to find some kind of nature documentary & you would just sit & watch in sullen boredom hoping someone would get attacked

I think Thunderball underwater sequences were semi-unprecedented at the time

I remember catching some of some godawful James Mason film about Atlantis on TV one afternoon, which had far longer and drearier underwater sequences than Thunderball, and which I reckon might have come first - got the impression it was late 50s. can't be bothered to google right now.

lol veg

next for Craig: Iago!

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/oct/19/david-oyelowo-daniel-craig-othello-shakespeare-new-york

chap, you BEST not be talkin' bout Mason's splendid Nemo for Disney.

Brit newspapers are raving about this although I'm pissed Seydoux seems to have been given a role with fuck all to do.

Also as dumb as this sounds I don't really trust reviewers with Bond.

LOL at the pull-quotes from the "fresh" reviews on RT:

It's easy to enjoy but hard to care about.

James Bond is ridiculous again in this disappointing (but still fun) outing.

Bond's 24th outing delivers handsomely in action set pieces and crowd-pleasing moments, but is let down by a weird mix of tone, a lack of plot and poorly defined characters.

A wealth of iconography - both incidental and integral - from the series' founding chapters is revived here, making "Spectre" a particular treat for 007 nerds, and a businesslike blast for everyone else.

It's easy to enjoy but hard to care about.

James Bond is ridiculous again in this disappointing (but still fun) outing.

Bond's 24th outing delivers handsomely in action set pieces and crowd-pleasing moments, but is let down by a weird mix of tone, a lack of plot and poorly defined characters.

All three of these statements could be applied to basically every Bond movie, just change the number in the last one.

and Bowie albums

apparently it starts in Mexico City w/ a 5-min unbroken shot

mayb Captain Quinlan will cameo

Found via HOOS on Twitter: http://www.redbulletin.com/us/us/culture/daniel-craig-tells-us-what-he-really-thinks-of-bond

Speaking of women, many men admire Bond for his way with the ladies …

But let’s not forget that he’s actually a misogynist. A lot of women are drawn to him chiefly because he embodies
a certain kind of danger and never sticks around for too long.

What about you? Are you the kind of guy who sticks around?

Well, I’ve been married for four years.

. . . And this time you’ve gone one better, showing 007 succumbing to the charms of an older woman.

I think you mean the charms of a woman his own age.

niiice

<3 u DC

that "well, i've been married for four years" sounds kind of ominous in reply, coming from a man in his late 40s

prob similar to what W Beatty wd've said 4 years into his marriage

I still feel bad for Darren Aronofsky tbh

lol, i was coming here to post LITERALLY the same pull quote.
anyway, score one for Daniel Craig

SPOILER ALERT

Just saw it. First half was p bad - Mexico, Rome, what even happened? Who cares. The moment he finds White it gets great. Who knew that what the world needed was slow, fever-dream Bond? But it did. Scene with the plane in the mountains satisfyingly awkward and physical and I loved how they didn't explain how Bond even got it. Scene with the mouse is all time. FANTASTIC fight on the train, every move utterly legible, held me so tight in its grip I didn't even see the classic twist coming which had been telegraphed from a mile away. I love that she got drunk and didn't fuck him. I loved the old spy shit locked away in the hidden room. I loved the villain's lair. But then, well, we get Waltz Waltzin it up. The drill sequence somehow both too much and not enough. Everything after had a slightly dutiful feeling, that the plot had set these plates spinning and now they had to be taken down, or, well, exploded dramatically, one by one. So sick of Q hacking into things. Was a bit shit that Bond's like "I'll protect her I promise" and then is like "o well lates", then appears surprised that she's in danger. Also there was a distinct lack of Bellucci. She's in the movie for like 40 seconds.

SPOILER ALERT CONCLUDED

lalalalala unbookmark

S.P.O.I.L.E.R.E

sorry dudes :/

trace did you like skyfall?

Not that much

oh cool then I will probably love this like I've loved all the other Craig Bond movies

fwiw I liked this almost as much as Casino Royale!

nice!

we have beaten this into the ground of course but it's beyond me how the world came to the consensus that quantum of solace was bad and skyfall was good.

QoS was... not good

they were both good

one was good, one was bad.

poll.

I would love to be a contrarian on this one but Morbs is correct

QoS is much better if you watch it immediately after Casino Royale imo

but i am quite alone in this opinion

nah goole otm.

i was sort of surprised at how bad people thought QoS was, since though it's clearly not nearly as good as CR, it's still watchable enough. it still doesn't make any sense but it's also a little less unoriginal and misogynist than skyfall though i'm not sure it's better or anything. interesting that in the first two craig bonds we don't see the villain die, nor is he killed by bond.

Skyfall isn't much better on a screenplay level, it's just really great to look at and features nice lucid action sequences where QoS' action is choppy and impossible to follow

but i am quite alone in this opinion

you are not alone in this opinion at all

I still feel bad for Darren Aronofsky tbh

― the naive cockney chorus (Simon H.), Thursday, October 22, 2015 1:49 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno, i kind of feel like that pretentious asshole got what he deserved.

rachel weisz defies nature, btw. she is 45!

http://cdn.yournextshoes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Rachel-Weisz-Face.jpg

photographed at the premiere for the new almond milk iced coffee i guess?

maybe it's what she rubs on her face to give her skin that lustrous glow

that signature blend of vitamin E, lactose, and caffeine

daniel craig seems alot cooler than aronofsky

<-- understatement.

Most of the way through I was thinking it could be a tie withheld CS for best Craig Bond - great, crisp action, wonderful atmosphere, gorgeous cinematography. But they really botched the third act. I in no way ever again need to see James Bond pilot a motorboat down the Thames, or bring down a helicopter with a single shot.

I need to stop reading this thread til SPECTRE's out here in the US haha

This is going to sound wanky but I thought the photography in a lot of the first part was wack. there was one particular clanger I thought in the gorgeous and underlit dream-villa of Belucci's where she's in focus in the foreground and Craig is out of focus in the bg, and Craig walks right up next to her, dramatically, as she's talking, and... he stays out of focus! Your eye's like oh, sorry, thought you wanted me to pay attention to BOND JAMES BOND who just came WALKING UP.

Not only the photography but everything about the first helicopter scene was dreadful. Ohh it's a helicopter doing a slow barrel roll! Oh, and again! Oh man, and AGAIN!! Good plan Bond, immediately incapacitate the PILOT of the copter because that'll totally help. Really playing the angles there. FFS!

But but but... I kid because I love. Somehow it turned into a legit good movie somewhere in there. Which seemed to coincide exactly with the length of time Lea Seydoux was an active presence in it..

I want to say I saw maybe 15 minutes of QoS, but it was incoherent, almost to a Michael Bay degree. Enjoyed Skyfall, though. Don't remember a lick of Casino Royale.

SPOILERS
it's fantastic. and tense! a few mis-steps but as Tracer says soon as he meets Mr White.. showtime. weird the extent to which this is kinda 'wrapping up' all 4 of the Craig Bonds isn't it? especially seeing as Skyfall never seemed especially 'sequel-y' but this one is all suddenly 'hey remember this freaky dude from 2 films back?' etc
Moneypenny kinda.. vanished in all that A Team style hoo-ha with the gang running around near the end. seemed a little ungallant.

And v ungallant of me not to even notice :(

So like, what was up with the dress on the bed (and why ffs did she wear it???) Seemed significant, but.. no

I liked how when Bond was asked what he was doing there he's like "well I'm here to kill YOU." Shades of Luke inside Jabba's lair with the startling confidence inside the heart of darkness. Like - "what's he planning?" Was he planning anything, by the way?

mm i dunno you know.. after he gave the gun up to the butler, i expected him to at least have an extra hidden gun in his sock. and the torture seemed to have no effect whatsoever! originally he killed him at the end too, according to leaked early script drafts which the studio execs hated supposedly
http://defamer.gawker.com/new-bond-script-leaks-execs-scrambling-to-fix-awful-en-1670479885

Seydoux gonna be proper megastar huge IMO.

Haha yeah there was just no consequence to the drilling. Bit cheap to make us wonder - "will he really get drilled? or won't he??" and then have the answer not matter.

Still properly horrible and ball-tightening so job done I guess..

Was he even trying to find anything out, I can't remember?? It seemed like just sadism

Bad guy was trying to get Bond to forget who Seydoux was before he died for some reason but Bond was just like 'I can never forget... you are... too... hot' or whatever so it didn't work

basically he was an amateur neurologist on the side? "Bond... I'd like to talk to you about computational aspects of neurological modeling"

60% on RT is pretty pathetic... but it won't matter.

i choose to take the critic who says "Craig's boredom is contagious" at his word.

i get a real sense of the 2nd wave of reviews reviewing-the-earlier-reviews with this tbh. i forget what that phenomenon is known as.
the disparity btw the uk and the us reviews a week later is.. quite something.

I haven't paid attention. What's the disparity?

Saw this yesterday. Opinions, I have them.

Was he planning anything, by the way?

He expected.. TO DIE! No but seriously it's a suicide mission, he warns Scarlett Johansson off in pretty much exactly those terms, all he has is a watch that goes boom and a hope that the villain will explain his whole plan.

I am surprised that I'm surprised that after she does one thing in character and walks away, she becomes the damsel to save - half of me feels I have been let down, and the other half has no idea why the first half thinks that.

I fairly certain that no-one has ever said "I do like the action scenes and the sexy ladies and the cocktail tip, but what I really return to the Bond films for is the tightly-bound mythos": watching them continuity-wank the Craig reboot with one hand and the 50-year history with the other, I couldn't help wondering who really cared.

One of the effects of trying even the short-term continuity is that there's probably some people watching the film thinking "WTF is a picture of Hannibal doing in that cell?"

Always terrible: a Mocking Maze of Memories, also all hacking, ever.

A fucking waste of Andrew Scott, though: "Did you see, from my first scene, that I was the baddie? Did you spot that? Hmm?"

I was surprised by there only being M and Q and C (big laugh at the line before "Careless") in that room, because I'd just been thinking that Rory Kinnear had been growing into an actor who'd be at home in LeCarre, a deft hand from housekeeping, dependable if you needed a gun kept on someone. Of course he's also growing into Roy Kinnear, which he may not be as happy about.

Whatever about the second drill and the ability to remember faces (Blofeld says "Oh, if you get it in the right place"), I'm more struck by how the first drill was meant to make Bond woozy - cut to a presumably concussed Bond dead-eyeing a half dozen goons five minutes later.

The IMDB page talks a lot about how this was going to be filmed back to back with Bond 25, which Craig is apparently still contracted for - but the ending seems very much like a sign-off, even not counting Craig feeling free to say he'd rather slash his wrists than do another. I mean, I'm not befuddled how they'd do it, it'd be a bullet in the head of Madeleine Swann before the opening credits, because Bond.

I did largely enjoy it though - like chap, I think it's only the last reel that goes off the rails. One thing we're sleeping on though is Dave Bautista, who is great in every scene he's in and clearly enjoying himself immensely. His one line is great - I keep thinking that I've seen the method of his departure before but nothing comes to mind - a tight and tense fight scene that ends in slapstick is something that I think of as a Bond staple, and indeed not a bad simile for the film.

He really deserves to become a meme, popping up in a car, leering at you, never actually hurting you but never going away

And then I guess hurting you quite a lot in a train. Hard to put all that into one image macro though

This just wasn't much fun at all (not for lack of supercars or pyrotechnics). Needed more Moneypenny! Needed more jokes.

Agreed. I heard some bellyaching about how Skyfall was humorless, but that was fun and colorful while this one was beige FPS Bond all around w/the exception of the introduction, maybe. Entertaining enough, I suppose. Waltz is as wasted as Bardem was, and his villain backstory was much more nonsense.

I guess at least Davebomb Batista got some work out of it

It wasn't stolid or self-serious, it just wasn't funny, ever.

I thought this was a gigantic amount of fun.

Kind of a mixed bag, but so much better than Skyfall that I'm not mad or anything.

I REALLY dug Batista here, kinda hoping the character somehow isn't dead and randomly pops up in, whatever, the next reboot or iteration, Craig or no Craig.

There were at least two moments where I wished VegemiteGrrl was in the theater next to me so I could jokingly elbow her after some of her earlier insistences about the plot :)

chekov's cat -- if Q mentions a cat in the first act...

so someone strokes a cat in this?

no comment

this was great! I caught myself being disappointed she didnt get offed at the end, i was feeling the OHMSS nods lol

love a train fight, bautista was so good!!!

the sheer physicality of that fight was amazing, just brutal

might have just been the large screen nature but the 'romance' seemed more intense, lots of close shots of almost-kissing, heavy breathing

i don't know. that scene where Bond "seduces" Monica Bellucci was classic Bond nonsense cheese

I felt like Bellucci was kinda wasted in this, she deserved a bigger role imo

also the Bautista eyeball popping - did he have metal thumbnails? i didnt quite catch them

Fell asleep :(. Was enjoying but just was exhausted. Gonna try again

in the UK they shaved some seconds from 2 scenes to get a 12A, i'm thinking one musta been the eyeball-popper.

This movie kinda convinced me that I'm ready for a return to batshit, balls out Bond movies.

Remember when these movies had tons of random agents and characters, and when they were overtly funny and witty?

but everyone moans when they get too silly, and this is the essential Bond quandary! the lows of the Moore era (Jaws running in slo-mo with his girlfriend at the end of Moonraker, "Hiss off" to a snake in Octopussy etc etc) and the windsurfing Brosnan.. oh man.

i think the Craig 4 have been as good a 'linked' run of popcorn movies as i've ever seen and i hope they do no more in case they spoil it.

i could handle one more

def needed more Belucci but I feel that way about most films

anyone else wonder during the entire last section if he was, in fact, face-blind and the portraits he encountered meant to mock him all looked the same? everyone else either spoke to him first or was very recognizable via voice/smell/size

First three Craig bonds took my money and had their way with me over a cumulative ten hours or so of fun-free overly-expositioned SRS BZNESS griefy mummy issues thug but srsly u gotta get wise sometime and fuck the nolanisation of bond

ps its been done by Dalton, and it didn't take all fucking day either.

xpost i kinda wondered

tell you what's odd.. Skyfall had zero connection to the previous 2 (aside from the characters) mainly i guess because they wanted to have no obvious link to Quantum. but this one has all kinds of .. elements that tie up loose ends from *all 3* of the Dan Craig films. it's weird. soon as you see Vesper *and* Javier in the credits it's like 'woaah WTF'. i wonder if the writing guys had originally wanted the new Mr White scenes and suchlike, in Skyfall but someone poo-pooed it.

At least White was in Casino Royale and a dangling loose end from Quantum's introduction. Feel like they deliberately ignored Quantum as much as possible because, well, it was awful

Also I suspect you're right about Skyfall, they seemingly intentionally cut ties to Quantum, which was annoying considering how the movie ended so open

But what do they even tie up from the other three films, really? Kind felt like the villain in Scream 3 - the guy YOU NEVER KNEW was there from BEFORE the beginning and it turns out he was responsible for EVERYTHING!

I must be the only person who couldn't stand Skyfall, in large part because of the Adele song (sorry).

Really though, no more backstory please, no more connective tissue between episodes, etc. ENOUGH. Spectre "tying together the loose ends" felt super perfunctory.

Also I would dig a movie entirely about Mr White's life more than Spectre itself

Like I saw the movie Friday and was on the fence about it, some good and some bad, but then when I sat down to write a review today all my bile came up

idk, it had most of the things I wanted from a Bond movie & for a Craig joint it was pretty fun. Not giddy but more enjoyable than the usual grim tone

Exotic cold open!
Car chase through Rome!
Imposing henchman!
Alps & a plane chase!
Train fight!
Villain + ACTUAL lair
Cat!

etc

I am more than happy with it & def bump this well above Skyfall

Mr. White all radiation-poisoned, paranoid, and hiding in a basement in the middle of snowy nowhere was a nice scene

Helicopter scene made me wince whenever the copter started looking like it was going to take out hundreds of civilians

$73 M in North America this weekend to Peanuts' $45 M

Why It’s Time to Retire James Bond (As We Know Him)

The 24th Bond film, ‘Spectre,’ is in theaters this Friday. And it’s very, very lame.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/07/why-it-s-time-to-retire-james-bond-as-we-know-it.html

Saw this Friday – that Daily Beast review is pretty much spot-on.

isnt mgm's bond contract up? pretty sure its all gonna get rebooted once that happens.

he warns Scarlett Johansson off in pretty much exactly those terms

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I almost mentioned that, but wondered if that was supposed to be funny.

Much prettier than ScarJo imo

Opinion duly weighted.

thought she looked a lot like naomi watts in the train scene

minus 50% in N America this weekend

will likely be outgrossed by The Martian

Sounds good.

Saw it yesterday. About 40 minutes of fun rattling around inside 2 1/2 hours of pointlessness. When Bond says "It's not over" to Girl, as they're walking out of the Villain's Lair, my wife and I both groaned out loud. Then later, when he's creeping through the abandoned HQ from Skyfall and passes a boat, I immediately thought, "Fuck, there's still a boat chase coming?"

at least they didn't jump over j.w. pepper

mendes's two movies seem determined to resurrect every element of the old format, which i consider a mistake, but it's keeping in line with recent blockbusters (star trek, star wars, terminator, jurassic x, etc.)

I think you can rest assured that these are not films where the director makes all the decisions

yeah, this is probably stating the obvious but there's some funky self-referentiality going on between new movie and old movies and media coverage and audience interaction etc. that made me think baudrillard could have written a hilarious essay on spectre

was hyped for this, but it never quite hit its stride until the scenes with lea sedoux. the self referential stuff never quite added up to much, dont think i needed ANOTHER film (or have there been less than i think?) where bond is going rogue - cant he just have normal missions? and belluci was in it for like 5 mins, which was weird (also her performance seemed quite terrible). it was a fun watch, but i would like a bond film that sort of feels like it coheres a bit more, the first 30 mins or so seemed to be quite choppy.

also, chris waltz was underused. he was more villainous in tim burtons big eyes!

As I said above, I'm not sure that the canon-wanking (including a lot of Waltz's character - based on not one but two book characters!) is for any actual audience.

saw thus yesterday, thought it was poor enough. waltz is basically austin powers level. the actual evil plot and the james bond solo run didn't really combine that well - it felt weird for bond to just arrive at a base and get captured and tortured. what did he think would happen? he just walked in.

there were some good scenes, agree thay lea sedoux was great - the train scene was really good. most of the action sequences were good too. there were a few ludicrous and/or camp bits but i guess they felt in the spirit of the classic bond movies.

also felt like there were a lot of dumb parts, like i realise suspension of disbelief is important for all blockbusters, but just silly moments, eg lea sedoux just removed her own gag off her head at the end.

lastly, dunno if it was the cinema i saw this in, but loads of the dialogue was really garbled i thought.

also i know its not a serious political movie or anything, but they could have fleshed out the motive for the plot just a bit...

daniel craig should give it a break now though - he looks genuinely tired of it, or maybe just tired...

haha I was reminded of Austin Powers too once they got to the volcano lair and Waltz dressed as dr. Evil (makes sense since Evil was 70s Blofeld spoof, again I wish there was an idiosyncratix Baudrillard riff on this)

how about the boat chasing a helicopter
or the evil trafficking/medicine/terrorist conglomerate meeting eyes wide shut style etc etc lots of silliness idd

the monica bellucci sex scene was pretty stupid too - i'd need to see the script cos i can't remember it exactly, but i remember feeling it was maybe one line away from descending into total farce.

"lots of silliness"

yet not nearly enough really.

true, if they'd really committed to being over the top, it'd have made some scenes make more sense

you have christoph waltz and he's torturing james bond for pure spite, he could have really cut loose and gone all the way

i started rewatching 'on her majesty's secret service' last night and it's full of ridiculous moments but the editing during the fights is excellent, especially for the time. someone really put some work into the cuts. and telly savalas is both menacing and ridiculous, just such a charismatic dude

I don't think turning this movie into a Moore-era flick would improve it.

That was the Lazenby film!

never go full Moore-era

I don't think turning this movie into a Moore-era flick would improve it.

It might, only because the Moore-era movies were 15-20 minutes shorter than the Craig-era ones (except for Quantum, which is one of the shortest movies in the series).

this was just a middle of the road bond movie really. the last one was clearly some sort of high water mark for 00s bond.

no

turning james bond into nolan-era batman isn't a high water mark

the last one was clearly some sort of high water mark for 00s bond.

Ha ha, no. The series has been tumbling downhill since Casino Royale.

xp It totally was, dawg

"turning james bond into nolan-era batman isn't a high water mark"

it adapted the nolan era batman approach in a way that was better, less po-faced, and more fun than actual nolan era batman

"Laughable" is not the same thing as "fun."

it was never laughable, nor was it as funny as some of the pre release interviews made out. that would have made it more entertaining to be honest. it never seemed to quite excel in any one area, it just did a little bit of all the things bond should do, without doing them esp amazingly.

The bit with the rat was quite funny.

It was amazing how similar the Blofeld "reveal" was to the way they treated Khan in Into Darkness. The whole pre-release strategy of "oh he's definitely not who you think he is" followed by the utterly anticlimactic scene where the villain utters his name and 90% of the audience goes "huh?"

Surprised that so many people are saying it picks up with Sedoux's introduction as well. Even by Bond standards her instant transformation from takes no shit independent woman to goo goo eyed love slave ("James, I'm scared") was pretty cringeworthy

Anybody else notice at her weirdo psychiatric retreat centre where Bond has just met her and it's clear the scene's been written as classic on-the-pull Bond filrt fest, and she says something like "enjoy the view?" referring to the stunning alpine vista behind her and Bond is CLEARLY meant to subtextually say "PHWOAAARRRR" on his next line but just mumbles through it. I thought that was shocking. Fair enough if Craig doesn't like the dialogue but it's up to the director to either make that moment happen that way it's supposed to, or change the line

that said the whole middle section was hugely enjoyable despite the worst intentions of all involved and fuiud

HEY IF WALTZ WEARS A BALD WIG I MIGHT SEE THIS EVENTUALLY

He wears a little tiny bald wig on one of his eyeballs, that totally counts.

I didn't think about it but the psychiatric center is almost a callback to OHMSS too -- Blofeld was using an allergy research center w/hypnosis as cover to create brainwashed agents

the aspects of Blofeld: white cat, scar over eye, bald, nehru collar jacket

guess they covered most of them

00's high water mark bond (I would watch a mark bond movie) is casino royale as far as the poker game. Downwards sharply after that.

Felt like a perfectly anonymous Brosnan-era movie. Maybe The World Is Not Enough? I never ever want to see a super-hacker in a Bond movie - especially if it's Q.

ur insane

Nah, super hackers are always terrible. Exception that proves the rule: Nathalie Emmanuel in Fast & Furious 7.

Mr Robot is a whole show about a super hacker which manages to be not terrible.

Only just, tbrr

Fair point (tho I haven't watched it) - super hackers in a film where they're just an adjunct to a filling progress bar are terrible.

At least we didn't get stupid cackling-skull graphics this time like in Skyfall.

(minor spoilers for Sherlock and Spectre) Kinda funny/sad that Andrew Scott pretends to be a superhacker in Sherlock when he's really got moles everywhere, but in this "spy" movie he actually manages to hack into every private camera.

very disappointed that all possible spa hijinks were reduced to one juicing joke.

also, the anti-privacy villain should have been nathan barley, not moriarty.

haven't seen that actor in anything lately, that would have been good

honestly was disappointed that he didn't use the moriarty voice

I enjoyed this but I always get annoyed at the whole "SOFTWARE IS GOING ONLINE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES" trope in films.

this isn't Skynet. Couldn't they just like....turn it off even if it goes live for like 2 hours, after they've removed the imminent threat?

oh noes Moriarty saw my grandpa in the shower briefly

do you know what a pain it is to roll back software that's been released to production?

my company seems to do it every October so...

lol u guys this was so bad

goes sideways with the opening credits/theme and then just... keeps... going... sideways. the decade-long slide that began with the closing credits of casino royale

what a waste of bellucci and batista

It was shocking yeah, but I'm not sure how much more they could have done with Batista tbf

his intro was only moment where this thing threatened to come alive, but after that it was all anonymous mustache-twirling villainy and Jaws callbacks.

dunno what else you expected really. The guy's not an actor. His role in GOTG was essentially based around him being terrible at saying words

Like The Rock, the guy has a ton of charisma from his wrestling days - he can definitely be used much better. Deserves more credit for perf in GOTG IMO

Rock had way more conventional acting talent though.

i dunno christoph waltz is an actor and batista was def more watchable

harsh but probably true!

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6805226/lana-del-rey-bond-song-nme-007

I don't like Lana Del Rey, but I'm sure could whack out a miles better Bond theme than the one we got.

she is so blatantly right for it. the latest album has 3/4 songs that are classic bond songs without even trying. sam smith. whatever.

Holding out for Goldfrapp myself.

XP One of which has a blatant lift from "You Only Live Twice".

sam smith's spectre song sucks but the instrumentation really worked well in the movie theatre.

this movie was so. fucking. terrible.

terrible opening credits - the song was sooooo lame, the visuals were extra lame.

just about every piece of dialog was so tired and cliched.

i kept seeing monica bellucci billed as 'the bond girl' but she's in it for all of 2 minutes.

poor waltz is never going to play any other character than a smug asshole.

and daniel craig is a lame bond.

i was with you till that last bit. casino royale is still tight.

i just don't find him appealing at all!

;_;

he's my favorite bond

his face annoys me, and i don't mean "annoys" me, either

the only good thing about this movie is bond moving across the rooftops in the opening sequence with total poise and assurance - craig is remarkably graceful

otherwise it was shit, obv

Any analysis of the movie that ignores Dave Bautista's gleefully murderous henchman is a little lacking, I think.

Basically though Daniel Craig is good at playing a version of Bond that I have no interest in watching, even as murder machines go Bourne was at least charming.

I think I just uncritically like movies like this about 90% of the time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

except Sam Worthington movies, those are almost always reliably terrible

Yeah, I occasionally wonder about him - what would it be like to star in, and be completely incidental to, the biggest movie of all time?

he was in Titanic?

he played Kathy Bates

The iceberg is more his speed tbrr.

if only worthington could muster a fraction of the charisma of that iceberg

i suggest Daniel Craig go back to being a gay sex object in films like Love Is the Devil.

maybe we should poll the least charismatic leading men of the last decade or so - worthington, jai courtney, taylor lautner, alex pettyfer...

http://shop.nfsa.gov.au/images/Macbeth.jpg

armie hammer

boy yeah, armie hammer is not as bad as worthington imo but there's another guy hollywood decided needed to happen and you feel bad for everyone involved.

haha yup, finally watching The Social Network made me say "I sort of see how they thought this dude could be an action star but I still don't really see why"

dude should have built up a portfolio of thoughtful secondary antagonist roles before trying to carry a franchise; "The Birth of a Nation" is a good move for him IMO

i thought he was really good and funny in TSN which really is what puts him a step above fellas like worthington/courtney/lautner et al. also he looked a little bit better than henry cavill in that man from u.n.c.l.e. remake from last year. basing this on the one time i saw the trailer and nothing else.

the problem with him is more that yeah they tried to make him a leading man right away, i think he's alright i guess. the problem with those others (and even cavill) is that they're boring.

lol I couldn't even remember who Jai Courtney was and just I watched Insurgent last weekend

oh and he was in Spartacus: Blood and Sand too? lol dude is the most unmemorable actor I've encountered in a very long time

the best jai courtney role is his key #2 bad guy role in Jack Reacher, but apparently he's so forgettable that in the plot summary on wikipedia his actually crucial character is referred to as "a man".

he was also bruce willis' son in Die Hard 5, which alone imo renders the movie non canon

I spectacularly failed to see Die Hard 5 but I'm certain I would still have zero recollection of him as an actor in it, as he appears to be made almost entirely out of anti-DJP and my brain is actively attempting to reject his existence

like, when his character popped in Insurgent, I was all "ho-hum generic bad guy" and then he started interacting with the leads and they were all "we meet again" and I had the horrifying realization that he had actually been in the first movie as Mekhi Pfeiffer's evil second-in-command and I could barely remember him

garrett hedlund too

cute, but a charisma vacuum

christ i forgot that both he and worthington starred in terminator movies that everyone hated.

that's how black holes are created

i used to get garrett hedlund mixed up with garret dillahunt, just because of the name thing. like visually i have never recognized garrett hedlund (whose name in autocorrect get changed to "garrett headlined" which is funny because who'd want to see him headline a thing.)

haha I remembered Worthington because he is full of anticharisma but I have no idea who Courtney was in that movie at all

The only thing I've seen Garrett Hedlund in is Troy, so I feel a little better about having absolutely no idea who he is

courtney was kyle reese in the last one. hollywood casting needs more michael biehns and fewer jai courtneys, really.

Just did a Google image search on Jai Courtney; he looks like a plastic head aspiring hairstylists and makeup artists would practice on.

ohhhhhhhhhh wait I was thinking he was IN the Sam Worthington movie, not that he starred in the newest one

not that it matters, had I seen Genisys I still wouldn't remember who he was

i saw it and i still just had to look it up on IMDb to remind myself he was in it

This really needs to be a new thread/poll -- Anonymous White Meat Action Stars of the Past Ten Years

taylor lautner is the worst out of all of them - his voice is just.... ehhhhhh.

Ned make it so!

Nah I'll forget somebody. You should do it.

Craig rankings? mine: Royale> Skyfall> Spectre> Solace. and yours?

Royale >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the rest

Craig is a great Bond, and I think great at being the charming roguish Bond (cf Casino Royale) but when they decided to go Bourne in QoS it wasn't so great, and going the full Nolan Batman in the last two hasn't really paid off anywhere except the box office. idk i mean people seem to really love skyfall especially but it just feels wrong even if it's "accomplished" in many ways.

Of all the things people seem to love about Skyfall, I never got the applause for Bardem - such a hammy (borderline homophobic?) performance

Whishaw also unbearable charisma vacuum - I'd rather Jai Courtbey tbh

lol Ned I would to but I'm not a scholar of this stuff either and have already learned a lot itt

i love ben whishaw!

I find his acting a bit mannered and try-hard. And he's not very good at jokes. Nice to look at though, totally.

(Basing this only on Skyfall and The Hour, which is unfair - he could be great in other stuff)

i'll always remember him from the tv show nathan barley

he's in a new bbc joint called London Spy, it is A+

literally just learned that Sam Worthington went to America and starred in lots of films and video games, also that he married the "where the bloody hell are you" footballer-fucking girl, and they have a baby called Rocket Zot Worthington

waht

I'd give London Spy B- myself. Wishaw was good in it.

they have a baby called Rocket Zot Worthington

― glandular lansbury (sic), Wednesday, 3 February 2016 03:10 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

waht

― Flamenco Drop (VegemiteGrrl), Wednesday, 3 February 2016 03:14 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

srsly waht

Not sure it's more ridiculous than being called Lara Bingle-Worthington, in fairness.

at least we now know one moderately interesting thing about human lacuna sam worthington: he lumbered his baby with a fucking ridiculous name

Craig quits! makes for a pretty perfect uh 'quadrilogy' now i guess. i couldn't see how they could come back with Craig after he literally drove off into the sunset.

I got around to watching this last weekend. Felt empty and muddled, with every scene twice as long as it needed to be. Straining for gravitas? Also curiously spare for a movie budgeted around $250 million. Lots of stately on-location camerawork with nothing going on but people walking from one place to another.

Anyway, total snoozefest. Mendes has no idea what fun is.

I'm pretty sure there were only four three things that happened in this film

1. I received programming to get an awesome skeleton mask for next Halloween, because I bet even my craggy-ass potato face could make it look as least as good as D Craig
2. I got a little sweaty about Monica Bellucci that actually has nothing to do with this specific movie
3. 2. Dave Bautista got robbed, even worse than Richard Kiel ever did, maybe
3. James Bond quit, because a blonde

and BTW, fuck #3, that's always been bullshit and it's just as bullshit now, if not more so, starting with an age-appropriate superhot actress and then just dump her for yet another ingenue who also happens to be THE DAUGHTER OF YOUR CRIMINAL PEER what the fuck about janus, "oedipa" and proper tragic resolution don't you people under fucking stand

I hope Waltz as Blofeld comes back and kills them both like the end of OHMSS but with bonus explicit 007 death. That better be the beginning of the next one. Actually, Bautista should do it, and one-eyed Waltz should observe it from an unmolested helicopter. That would only be appropriate to serve as the completely necessary binning of the old 007 in exchange for whatever they come up with next, which should probably not be a white straight man.

This film was dumb, I didn't hate it, but I barely enjoyed it. Would rather re-watch that Bourne knockoff where Rachel Weisz has the bangs.

Oh and yes the theme song for this one is COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE like a perfect example of throwaway bond theme trash, where Adele's Skyfall should probably be right there with Goldfinger or Thunderball as a classic regardless of the franchise, this one is just absolute effluvium on its face. IT WON AN OSCAR because our society is a self-congratulating compost pile.

^^ all OTM except you should have hated it. it didn't think much of its audience.

...Adele's theme song?

Sam Smith's, isn't it (Spectre)?

https://media.giphy.com/media/Go3UGSproOkg0/giphy.gif

Adele's theme is a worse offender

Adele's theme is the very worst theme of the franchise

Adele's theme feels like 1/3 strength watered-down Bond theme pastiche but Smith's is actively atrocious probably beating Cornell's for worst

ha xpost

I like Cornell's. And I don't mind Adele's, though it's not doing anything interesting with the format.

Adele's song is fine. Not great, not terrible.

Sam Smith's would be better if he could still sing it.

Adele's song entire recorded output is fine. Not great, not terrible.

Rolling In The Deep is a banger, the pastiche of Skyfall beats the forgettableness of most of the last 30 years' efforts

That's what I'm saying

although the Duran Duran one wasn't exactly forgettable

now i'm going to have view to a kill stuck in my head again

I've a big soft spot for the A-ha, the Living Daylights being the first Bond I saw in the cinema prob has a lot to do with it.

since duran duran the only ones i'd put above adele are a-ha, gladys knight, and maybe garbage

was really hoping for more Belluci in this movie

although the Duran Duran one wasn't exactly forgettable

It was outside the 30-year window, boom guess what you're old, Mr Bond. Are your joints aching? Is your drive fading?

Skyfall is the best Adele song.

are you here to mess up this thread like the political one with your weird opinions?

This was shockingly bad, really. Just really hollow and boring and badly acted - Batuista's the single good performance but he doesn't get enough scenes. Highlight was Andrew Scott's Wile E Coyote arm-waving as he suspends in the air before plummeting to his death.

Mostly I was just curious about how Bond escapes the exploding M16 building at the end. So - Blofeld has taken the time to make little photostats of Bond's old buddies but he... leaves a giant net for Bond to jump into and save himself? Why is there a net at the bottom of the building anyway?

This is bad and dumb (and anything good about it the new Mission Impossible did a million times better) but I liked and respected it more than Skyfall. PRobably because it's the most phoned in movie Sam Mendes has ever done, meaning it's less Sam Mendes-y.

anything good about it the new Mission Impossible did a million times better

otm, new MI was really good

It's still too Sam Mendes-y!
If his uniting shtick seems to be "look pretty, don't sweat about massive holes, here's a jerk man for your enjoyment!" that seems to be consistent since American Beauty.

*plot holes

Mendez is utter waste

His best bond is still prob the second one, which had zero highlights and far fewer absolutely stupid holes or do-you-see moments and could have passed for a moore-era frippery as opposed to nolanisation of the franchise

New MI is the absolute balls and shouldve swept the oscars

I like how the M:I movies have elaborate setpieces. The Bond movies just go, "Let's do another motorboat bit," or "We could set it in MEXICO."

This was by favourite bad line/tautology, which apparently someone thought was good enough to use as a PR pullquote:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CQPtb5wWEAE4CNl.jpg

looks like a magazine ad for an offshore bank

http://youtu.be/v9DmcxIZ_fA

this movie was just so grim. in casino royale everyone seemed to be having so much fun, this one seemed so bored with itself. it wasn't *boring* exactly, there was a lot to like here and there. mexico city tracking shot, bond's quick escape from the 'eyes wide shut' party, lea seydoux, dave bautista...but idk. the fact that everything in the craig movies has to be tied together, and not just tied together but personally related to bond's childhood, and in such a gloomy way. ugh who cares, more international intrigue and less 'the creepy kid i knew when i was a kid grew up into the world's most destructive troll'.

Why is there a net at the bottom of the building anyway?

Because the building was in the process of being demolished and it was presumably there to catch demolition rubble.

I think it was because they were still using the boat dock and there was a giant hole from the prior explosion that stuff kept falling through

source: the beginning where they're in the boat dock and James looks up and says "wow guess I won't get hit by any rocks today huh"

this movie was just so grim. in casino royale everyone seemed to be having so much fun, this one seemed so bored with itself. it wasn't *boring* exactly, there was a lot to like here and there. mexico city tracking shot, bond's quick escape from the 'eyes wide shut' party, lea seydoux, dave bautista...but idk. the fact that everything in the craig movies has to be tied together, and not just tied together but personally related to bond's childhood, and in such a gloomy way. ugh who cares, more international intrigue and less 'the creepy kid i knew when i was a kid grew up into the world's most destructive troll'.

― nomar, Wednesday, October 26, 2016 2:19 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this has been the problem w/ all the craig bond movies after casino imo

yeah. i've probably said this already itt but Casino Royale saved the franchise from death and the lesson they took was somehow not "make more good Bond movies" but "oh good everyone loves Bond again let's go right back to the shit that drove them away the first time"

Don't really agree with that. While the Craig movies have a lot of flaws (I despise the second and fourth installments), going for a more sad-faced, comic book-like serialized deep backstory was not what the old Bond films had to offer. For better or worse they reflect the time they were made, just like all the other Bond films.

Also, Skyfall is great. But we've been over this countless times. I hardly doubt it drove anyone away, though, it was an insane success on every level, right? Spectre was disappointing though.

skyfall is kinda bollocks but goddamn it looks amazing

basically the problem is that sam mendes is terrible and should be locked in a dungeon for the rest of his life

Well, mostly you're right, but he did make Skyfall, so he's not entirely terrible.

he's great at hiring cinematographers!

Watched Casino Royale recently - it's actually way more cheerful and cheesey than I remembered - much closer Goldeneye than Skyfall. Wish they'd stayed on that course.

Re: the cinematography - the only other Bond film with great art direction is OHMSS - that's a great looking film. Skyfall looks more like... semi-professional Instagram. And the opening sequence to Spectre is so ugly and incoherent.

i think you've got the direction of influence backwards with 'semi-professional Instagram' - the extent that skyfall looks like instagram (which i'd argue is... not much) is more of a reflection of the influence of roger deakins on the art of photography than the other way round