Bond goes off the reservation, executes a bunch of heavies in increasingly gruesome ways all in the name of avenging his good buddy Leiter (though in my essay on Licence to Kill I suggest there’s more to this rampage than just a convenient friendship with Felix Leiter). Tune in Wednesday at 9pm EST for the Licence to Kill Live Tweet. Follow hashtag #LtK.
Could it already be time to enjoy the fruits of The Smolder once again? It seems only like last week that we first fired up Roger Moore’s debut in Live and Let Die. Timothy Dalton might be known, generally, as “the people’s least favorite Bond” but among the #Bond_age_ crew, he’s nearly royalty. He may have only done two Bonds but that only increases our anticipating for the two-week-long #T_Dalt holiday. With guest host @krissy_myers taking the helm for an evening, I planned to sit back, relax and enjoy good #Bond_age_.
Initiate The Smolder… I mean, mission! #TLD
— Krissy Myers (@krissy_myers) November 7, 2013
For the PTS Glyn Baker & Frederick Warder were cast as 004 & 002 intentionally due to their resemblance to Roger Moore & George Lazenby #TLD — Krissy Myers (@krissy_myers) November 7, 2013
I’m AFRAYED this rope’s been intentionally cut. #TLD — #Bond_age_ (@007hertzrumble) November 7, 2013
Cue GoldenEye the video game lobby music. #TLD — #Bond_age_ (@007hertzrumble) November 7, 2013 (more…)
This essay on Licence to Kill is the sixteenth essay in a 24-part series about the James Bond cinemas co-created by Sundog Lit. I encourage everyone to read the other essays, comment and join in on the conversation about not only the films themselves, but cinematic trends, political and other external influences on the series’ tone and direction.
by James David Patrick
I sat down to write this essay for Licence to Kill and stared at an empty screen. I’d inadvertently used many of the points I’d plan to discuss in my conversation about The Living Daylights. And if not for my essay on guilty pleasures and The Man with the Golden Gun, I could have done something similar here. Outright Carey Lowell worship seemed too shallow (off to Tumblr!). Discussing the abundance of television actors in the Bond films of the 80’s seemed more like a TV Guide cover story. Underrated Bond villains? Davi’s at the top of the list. Do they still print TV Guides by the way? Boy is that a publication that overstayed its utility. I do, however, remember anticipating the arrival of the new TV Guide in the mailbox. I’d scan every day’s primetime schedule grid looking for cartoons, especially the holiday Peanuts’ specials and Garfield. I never missed a primetime Garfield special. I was diligent. But I digress. How could I digress without even getting started down a single path? Doesn’t that mean that the initial path was a digression, thus making the digression the legitimate path? After all, Licence to Kill does indeed mark a drastic series transgression — this essay could merely be a thematic homage that somewhere along the way stumbled onto relevancy.
Speaking of relevancy, check out this picture. There’s too much smolder going on here for mortal humans to fully process.
It wasn’t so much an epiphany as a ton of bricks. I’d been trying without any success to replace the A-Ha song for The Living Daylights but nothing worked. I tried four different songs. Nothing lined up. There has to be some kind of similarity in tempo and style. Everything was a bust… though, Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” almost had me won over. But as I started to idly think about how I could alter Licence to Kill, I knew immediately that it had to be Paul Simon. It had to be “Kodachrome.”
Licence to Kill Remixed Opening with Paul Simon from James Patrick on Vimeo.
Novelist and #Bond_age_ supporter, K.A. Laity wanted to share the origin of her “über-sexy” female Bond character, Chastity Flame. I thought this might be of interest to some of you spy fans.
by K.A. Laity
While in Washington DC recently, I went to the International Spy Museum. They were having a special exhibit, “Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains.” It was terrific fun and just packed with people, too. Everyone loves imagine being a secret agent—or else a supervillain. Okay, maybe more people want to be a villain; there were a lot of gleeful cat-stroking evil laughs there.
There’s just something really appealing about the idea of the secret agent. Like playing dress-up as kids, it’s a way to inhabit different roles. Even the villains get to remake their lives and their homes. Who doesn’t want a supervillain lair? And what about those minions? When they’re embodied by cool people like Grace Jones and Richard Kiel, they upstage the main villain altogether.
Of course Bond has to win in the end, so we can feel safe in the world. We might like to play the bad guys for a while but we all like to win. And Bond always looks good doing it. When I describe my secret agent Chastity Flame to people I usually use the shorthand description that she’s like an über-sexy female James Bond. Since the Bond reboot with the yummy Daniel Craig that’s a good selling point, although when I started thinking about Chas what I had in mind was the kick-ass heroine of Peter O’Donnell’s comics and novels (and yes, the rather camp, pop art movie version from the 60s with the gorgeous Monica Vitti) Modesty Blaise. (more…)
