The Award Winning : 'Bond...comments while you watch...'

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Comments

  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    beautiful set, beautiful hair on swann
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    Honestly-- I DO love Ben as Q... but I do think he's unnecessary in the DC timeline. However, even if I didn't, he needed to travel to Austria to chat exposition with Bond?? Why?
  • Posts: 1,469
    Birdleson wrote: »
    Mr. White would have made a great Batman villain (but I'm glad he's with Bond).
    Yeah, that laugh he makes during the QoS interrogation was like the Joker.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    I like and hate Maddy's kidnap... The comedy of Bond punching out a guard and saying "no, STAY..."

    But I want DC more physical and challenged...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    I hate Maddy injecting the guy... But i like DC's salute to Hinx (another character I don't want in DC's Bond)...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    the plane sequence-- right idea, but there was something cheap in the execution...

    I like how DC plays offended when the person he just saved told him to go to hell...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    I don't like Q's shoe-horning of LeChiffre, Quantum and Silva. But--

    When Maddy and and Bond approach L'American-- the music, scene, costumes are bang on
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    when Madeleine goes to the front desk of L'American, DC scans the place-- looks as bad ass as ever...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    Birdleson wrote: »
    I fear that we will not get another short, no frills Bond film like QOS again for many years to come.

    I don't know @Birdleson ... If Mendes continued, I'd agree... But I don't think Danny Boyle wants, or needs $250- 300 million budget...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    Bed time-- I think I'm purposely avoiding the Third Act!... With all its faults, SP is okay, up until what's to come...

    'Night to all Bond nuts..

    P
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255

    Birdleson wrote: »
    peter wrote: »
    Birdleson wrote: »
    I fear that we will not get another short, no frills Bond film like QOS again for many years to come.

    I don't know @Birdleson ... If Mendes continued, I'd agree... But I don't think Danny Boyle wants, or needs $250- 300 million budget...

    That's what I'm saying I'm hoping for.

    U n me both... I hope that Boyle’s Bond is no frills and to the point...
  • Posts: 15,785
    Birdleson wrote: »
    Severine is a top tier, upper echelon, Bond Girl in my book.

    She is great. In a way it's a pity her character didn't become the lead Bond girl in SF. I always felt SF was the only Bond film to lack this traditional element. I've heard many people say M was the actual lead Bond girl here, but I don't see it that way. IMO, Severine's wonderful character was a bit wasted.
  • edited April 2018 Posts: 15,785
    Birdleson wrote: »
    It was the most shocking death of a Bond Girl in the series. It really shook me.

    When I first saw SF I actually missed that she had been killed. It was a press screening and so many critics, reporters with their annoying rattling papers, cell phones, getting up and down, walking the aisles, etc I think I turned my head and I missed that moment she is shot.
    Happens fast and nothing is made of it later.
  • Posts: 684
    Birdleson wrote: »
    Severine is a top tier, upper echelon, Bond Girl in my book.
    She's great, but for me she would need a few more scenes to make top tier.
    Birdleson wrote: »
    It was the most shocking death of a Bond Girl in the series. It really shook me.
    100% agreed. I might even go most shocking death period. I really felt it in a way that I'm unused to with the Bond films.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    edited April 2018 Posts: 45,489
    Birdleson wrote: »
    ToTheRight wrote: »
    Birdleson wrote: »
    It was the most shocking death of a Bond Girl in the series. It really shook me.

    When I first saw SF I actually missed that she had been killed. It was a press screening and so many critics, reporters with their annoying rattling papers, cell phones, getting up and down, walking the aisles, etc I think I turned my head and I missed that moment she is shot.
    Happens fast and nothing is made of it later.

    My friend gets invited to press screenings, and he was pretty sure that he could get me into SP. I was up for it, then he told me what you just said above; that they are among the loudest and most distracting audiences. That didn't sound like the way to see a new Bond film for the first time. Both of us waited for the regular opening.

    No wonder they get so much wrong. Add to that that they often leave before the film finishes to meet some deadline.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    edited April 2018 Posts: 8,255
    ... continuing on my SP re-watch... L'American is the best of this film. It looks good. The costumes and actors look good. And, I actually find sexual attraction not so hard to believe in this... Although Maddy is giving some push-back, she is attracted to her "personal bodyguard"; and Craig looks the part. A man that a younger woman could fall in love with.

    This is, not yet, a Bibi who wants to bed a man who wears his pants above his belly button...
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    when a Bond actor can say "of course" using only a frustrated exhale-- you know he's a great actor:

    L'American. Rat scene. Bond watches the rat run into the wall. And with an exhale, just before punching the wall, he figures something out-- and he lets us know with that frustrated exhale.

    Acting, meet good; good, meet acting...

    (and, for the "I never noticed that" thread: it appears like the wall the rat ran in through, was different to the one Bond knocks down.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    ... and jesus, when did Maddy change into that sexy negligee??????
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    i think I always loved that Maddy found a father who loved her, in these scenes (via the photos he kept); Vesper tape: redundant.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    generally speaking, L'American had some of the finest scenes in the film, only to be shat upon by a follow-up 9eyes scene...

    Mendes copies his own rooftop-shot scene from earlier (Bond leaving his meeting with M; M and MP).

    Then it goes into the most non-threatening conversation between M and C as two actors mumble and snarl at each other; MP is the cherry on the top as she give C "a really disapproving look".
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    Maddy's story about hiding under the sink with an insinuation of shooting the man who was sent to kill her father, sounds eerily similar to the story Blofeld tells to Maddy that he remembers her from a visit to her father;

    But in this second story Blofeld obviously didn't remember getting shot from a little girl, and she didn't remember shooting this man either.

    Plot, meet Hole (who the F was Maddy telling Bond about on the train? It mirrors Blofeld's later story about coming to Maddy's house...)
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited April 2018 Posts: 23,883
    peter wrote: »
    Maddy's story about hiding under the sink with an insinuation of shooting the man who was sent to kill her father, sounds eerily similar to the story Blofeld tells to Maddy that he remembers her from a visit to her father;

    But in this second story Blofeld obviously didn't remember getting shot from a little girl, and she didn't remember shooting this man either.

    Plot, meet Hole (who the F was Maddy telling Bond about on the train? It mirrors Blofeld's later story about coming to Maddy's house...)
    I've always assumed that they are in fact the same scenario. Madeleine lies to Blofeld when she says she can't remember. I don't think she says she shot the man - just that she knew where he kept his gun. So perhaps she pulled the gun on Blofeld and he left. It's open to interpretation without the details of the encounter.
    Birdleson wrote: »
    I'm also watching SP now. Man, with all of my problems getting into this film one of the most difficult obstacles is Craig himself. I really dislike his approach to the role in this film, right from the onset. To me he seems bitchy and overly effete in his mannerisms.
    I couldn't agree more. It is now indubitably my worst Bond performance by an actor. Brosnan in TWINE is now second worst. If he attempts that shtick in B25 he may drop below Dalton and Laz to five in my ranking of Bond actors.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited April 2018 Posts: 23,883
    Birdleson wrote: »
    If Craig had been as engaging in this one as he had been in the previous three I would at leasts have something to latch onto.
    True, and it's possible for a Bond actor to elevate & transcend a poor script with his performance. Such is not the case here imho, sadly.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    @bondjames , you may be right, but the story, as a story she tells, still makes no sense, or, at the very least has loose ends:

    "A Man once came to our house to kill my father (if this was Blofeld, then this was some time ago, when Maddy was a child; yet in Bond-time, Mr White was working with Blofeld until quite recently (according to CR and QoS); and when Bond meets the dying Mr White, it sounds like their feud was quite recent, with White being turned off of his boss and then White's subsequent poisoning...)

    "he didn't know I was upstairs playing in my bedroom, or that Papa kept a Beretta 9mm under the sink with the bleach. That's why I hate guns."

    You're right @bondjames, I made the mistake that I always assumed this was her first kill, or at least first firing of a weapon, out of necessity, to save her father; and then I have always been confused when Blofeld says later, to Maddy, that they had met (when he came for a visit to their home); obviously these stories were related, so, I was always left wondering: what happened that night? Why was Blofeld trying to kill White? yet White continues to work for the man who attempted to kill him? Did Maddy stop the assassination?...

    In the end, there's a cool backstory here, but not consistently developed...

    @Birdleson and @bondjames , I have to admit, that, up until L'American, I have no problem with DC and think he's the only glue holding this film together... There are scenes I feel he doesn't present as well as he has done (the M scene at the beginning-- but I really found it was an error in shoddy pacing, not what the actors were doing); at the clinic talking about "the middle man"; screaming in the snow surfing plane (I chock this up to direction))... Otherwise, to me, he's the only thing worth watching in this film (I didn't like Waltz, nor Hinx; I'm guessing now I don't mind Maddy 50% of the time; loved Q in SF, and found him totally unnecessary in SP (he flies out to Austria-- the guy who doesn't like flying (according to SF), leaves his post and flies out to warn Bond and then leave to go back home????))...

    DC seemed to be the only thing to make sense (along with Lucia) in this film.

    p

  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited April 2018 Posts: 23,883
    @peter, you're right that there are definitely holes in the story she tells and yes, as you said, why would Blofeld want to kill White all those years ago? Furthermore, if that is what happened, then again as you said, why was he working for Blofeld until recently. My take: given she was young, I just assumed she misunderstood what was happening and what she saw. Perhaps it was just a feud/argument which frightened her and she decided to get the weapon to scare him off. He remembered it and that's partially why he was happy she came to his HQ. So that is how I pieced it all together even though I acknowledge it's a stretch of the imagination.

    Re: L'Americain, I've often said that I think it's one of the better scenes in the film and I like Craig's acting approach there. He behaves more like how he did in the previous films and the scene with the mouse is quite amusing. Apart from that though I'm not impressed, although I can appreciate that you and others see positives in what he brought to the table in other scenes. I could go into what I find borderline offensive in the other scenes, but it will just be retreading old ground so I'll leave it be.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    @bondjames , you have a better back-story than the back-story in the film, quite frankly.

    Re: Craig: I do find so much wrong with the script (see above backstory); M was weak, Q unnecessary, Hinx didn’t fit into the Craig era; Waltz/Blofeld was terrible... and DC had to play against all these things... he was the only consistent, and mostly enjoyable thing about this mess ( with Lucia).

    Another mess of a film is Batman and Robin; clooney crappef the bed, along with the film; in context of Bond, DC was given an equally shite script in SP; he, to me, still delivered a semblance of his character, in a film that didn’t know what they wanted to do with his character
  • w2bondw2bond is indeed a very rare breed
    Posts: 2,252
    Craig's performance in SP is almost like Connery's in TB, in that they both tried to play is cool and relaxed. Connery pulls it off effortlessly, whereas it 's just not Craig's style. It doesn't bother me, but Craig is much more at home in CR and QOS
  • Posts: 12,243
    Birdleson wrote: »
    The only thing preventing SP from being a great Bond film is that there are simply not quite enough references to Vesper, M, Silva and Le Chiffre to satisfy me.

    @Birdleson you have a great sense of humor!
  • edited April 2018 Posts: 684
    w2bond wrote: »
    Craig's performance in SP is almost like Connery's in TB, in that they both tried to play is cool and relaxed. Connery pulls it off effortlessly, whereas it 's just not Craig's style. It doesn't bother me, but Craig is much more at home in CR and QOS
    I think SP, ideally, demanded a performance in the spirit of Connery's TB. However what Craig gave us was more like Connery in YOLT. These are the only two performances where I feel the actor is in coast mode (although Connery in YOLT bothers me far less). Say what you will about Brosnan but he always gave it his all; same for Rog (even in AVTAK) and obviously Laz and Dalton in their brief stints.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    peter wrote: »

    This is, not yet, a Bibi who wants to bed a man who wears his pants above his belly button...
    Great to start the morning with a laugh.
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