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Despite my negative review above, Aki is one of my absolute favorite Bond girls.
Can’t decide between Mie and Akiko @Max_the_Parrot? How about both. They starred together in at-least two other movies: “King Kong vs. Godzilla” (1962) and “International Secret Police: Key of Keys” (1965). The later was used as the basis for Woody Allen’s dubbed spoof “What's Up, Tiger Lily?” The third actress in the photo is Kumi Mizuno. Along with Yuriko Hoshi, they formed most of the "big" Toho genre actresses during the mid-1960s.
It’s too bad that I could make the YOLT “Watch A Long” with Norman Wanstall the other day. Just how extensive was the post production dubbing of Akiko – if any?
The film doesn't make much sense, even for a Bond film standard. Nevertheless, I love the office fight, the moment with the magnet, the aerial shot at Kobe docks, M's office in the submarine, the moving lake in the vulcano... and Aki's death is dark in a good way. Oh, and the piranha set is perfect.
A movie which definitely belongs in the lowest third of my list but I always preferred it to MR.
The first 80 minutes of TSWLM are much more enjoyable than the rest, imo. Same goes for MR. But this is only my issue with space scenes.
I'm not sure if I prefer the first half of YOLT more than the second one. There are good and weaker scenes all over the place. Compared to others, I'm not a fan of the YOLT PTS.
Akiko is amazing, Mie is amazing, but both? Oh my, that Sean was a lucky boy! It may be too much for me but I’ve just found King Kong vs Godzilla on YouTube so I’m definitely going to check it out, thanks for the recommendation! 👍
No? That is what her character is actually called!! :))
Also: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/movies/going-from-bond-girl-to-a-normal-life.html
According to imdb the answer is no: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063172/. Kyôko Ai and Yukiko Kobayashi were the two female "leads" of that Toho classic.
Remember that the film careers of both Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi ended in the 1967/1968 time frame. Now part of that was due to the collapse of the Japanese film industry that took place in the late 1960's, but some of it was due to Mie's not wanting to do film roles like Kissy anymore. And as for Wakabayashi - who knows. According to her an on-set injury caused her to end her film career.
I think both 007 magazine and G-Fan (a publication for Godzilla fans) have attempted to interview her over the years. IIRC, one of them was successful, but the interview was done via e-mail. But again, I don't have the magazine issues to confirm.
It is an interesting topic. When retrospectives on "Bond Girls" are given, these two women are mostly left out.
Nevertheless, You Only Live Twice is among good company at the bottom here. I could carve a mighty fine desert island five from those listed so far.
There's still time for me to change that...
STARRING
Roger Moore as James Bond 007
WITH
Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Richard Kiel & Corinne Cléry
MOONRAKER
MUSIC BY John Barry
DIRECTED BY Lewis Gilbert
Not a bad ranking for the pre-DAD punching bag of the franchise. One very loyal fan even put it in first place, giving it the advantage over YOLT for the 16th spot.
MR is also the lowest ranked entry that secured a first place finish. Other than that, it also ended up 8th twice and added another 4 top 15 finishes to its tally.
Compare that to only 3 bottom 5 finishes, with a single 23rd spot being the lowest. Similar results as Gilbert's first Bond film, but taking home one gold medal makes a difference.
MR's total score is 123 points.
I love MR. It's an imperfect film, but it has a mission and it commits fully to that.
Unfortunately the bad things drags it down a bit, the horrendous gondola chase, Dolly, Bond riding to the ’Magnificent Seven’ theme are low points of the series.
It still gets a lot of undeserved bashing imo.
Its set work, cinematography and score are right up there with YOLT and surpass TSWLM. And it's script and story, even while more clearly embracing their own silliness, are a lot less stupid than the other two Gilbert films. Yes, you have to accept that they're in space, and laser guns are a thing, but unlike in YOLT, the villain's actions make sense given his aims, and nobody has magic TVs that can watch spaceships and helicopters. Unlike TSWLM, we don't have any characters like Felicca, whose motives, actions, and death are all unclear. And nothing as embarrassing as a roomful of heroes requiring several minutes to figure out that the word "oratory" sticking out from underneath a paper is almost certainly the word "laboratory" when seen in full. :))
Jaws is also handled better. He was an absurd character to begin with, and if you're bringing back a henchman for another round of failing to get Bond, it's best to take a comic angle. And despite this slightly different appproach (I say slightly because he dropped a rock on his foot in TSWLM), he gets his creepiest scene when he comes down the alley in Rio.
It's a delightful romp, and I'm happy to see it slowly trudge up the list in the popular imagination.
I have it ranked at #12 at the moment, the highest it has ever been on my list.
It seems to be on the rise with people...
When I was a kid I absolutely hated it, because, you know, James Bond is very serious indeed, and what is all this silliness? But as I get older, I realize it's fun to have fun, and also that the films always had a generous helping of silliness anyway.
MR excels however due to an engaged Moore, fun globetrotting, and less casual racism. It’s in a fantasy league of its own.
That said, none of the more fantastical Bond films rank highly for me, so that's faint praise. I have it at #20.
Agreed. YOLT's strengths are MR's strengths too, but MR improves on them and adds a better central performance.
Someone sure did, care to have a guess who? ;)
Unfortunately, it will always be a weaker Bond entry for me. Mainly because I don't like films in space. A PEW-PEW battle is something I don't care for at all. The only thing worse than that is the scene where Jaws is falling in love with this over the top music piece. Just no!
The movie has wonderful sets and beautiful sceneries and the first 80 minutes are full of entertaining scenes, despite some (too) silly moments. I don't mind the Bondola part and I absolutely love the pheasant-shoot: "Such good sport". The killing of Corinne is dramatic and dark in a very good way. Poor Corinne! I would have loved to see more of her.
There is always the Story Of O. 😉