by 007hertzrumble | Nov 27, 2013 | My Favorite #Bond_age_
My Recent Date with Cary Grant: Was it all a Charade?
by Array Jackson (@ArrayJackson)
First dates are their own creature, each one a unique experience. You bravely take the hand of another person and step up to spin the wheel. Will this encounter you’re embarking on together entail adventure? Suspense? Comedy? Action? Romance? What you ultimately want on this date is often a reflection of your own individual character, and if you’re lucky, you and your partner’s two personalities will align in harmony, crafting a date that is a smashing success. But if you don’t really know that other person, the unveiling of their persona could be a ruse, and you might find yourself caught up in a Charade.
I recently had the good fortune to spend an evening with Mr. Cary Grant. I don’t know if this is every girl’s dream, but it’s definitely mine. He took me on a hell of a ride. For me, all the elements that make up a fabulous date were present: suspense, comedy, action and romance. Lots of romance. In fact, our date ended with a marriage proposal. And there’s only one reason I didn’t fall into his arms and cry, “yes, yes, yes!” You see, there’s another man that occupies my heart. His name is Bond, James Bond. And by James Bond, I mean Sean Connery. (more…)
by 007hertzrumble | Nov 12, 2013 | My Favorite #Bond_age_
Licence to Kill is one of the most daring, interesting and revolutionary Bond films ever made. Even the modern films of Daniel Craig, praised for their ‘edge’, ‘grit’ and ‘darkness’, owe a debt to this ‘unpopular’ predecessor. If this seems like an outlandish suggestion, then read on, and let a British child of the 80s show you why…
Reboot Revoked: The Postmodern Deconstruction of Bond
by Paul Harrison (@Doc_Harrison)
Artwork by Bob Peak
This article does not seek to be the definitive one-stop for all things Licence to Kill. You have your double DVD special edition, or remastered Blu-ray for that. I’m not going to focus on the trivia, such as that they altered the name from Licence Revoked. You know that story. I’m not even going to venture too deeply into the suitability of Dalton. He was, and remains, an excellent actor, and sound choice. I’m especially not going to tackle what seemed to be some reeeaaally awkward sexual tension between Dalton’s Bond and Felix Leiter’s ill-fated bride-to-be. No.
This article will focus on two key things: the context that created (or reinvented) a ‘darker’ Bond, who would endanger the life of dozens of bystanders that may deserve a bullet in order to get the one guy that did; and the notion that what makes this Bond movie stand out (and unpopular) is the fact that it isn’t a spy movie, let alone a ‘Bond’ movie as audiences knew him. Despite this, it is a thematic precursor to all three of Daniel Craig’s more recent blockbuster iterations in many ways. (more…)
by 007hertzrumble | Nov 11, 2013 | #Bond_age_ Project, Licence to Kill
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.
Of [In]human #Bond_age_ #16: The Immaculate Revenge of Licence to Kill
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.
(more…)
by 007hertzrumble | Nov 2, 2013 | My Favorite #Bond_age_, The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights: A Mission, Not a Fancy Dress Ball
by Hilko Röttgers (@incrdbl_Hilk)
“How on earth can you like The Living Daylights?”
Friends of mine tend to ask me this question, disbelief in their voice. “Seriously…?!” And more often than not, showing off supposed expertise, someone will add: “Isn’t that the one with that other Bond?” My friends may only be pretending to not know Timothy Dalton. But their disliking him as 007, unfortunately, seems to be genuine.
I have acquired a quarter century of experience defending Dalton’s 007 in general and – as I have named it my favourite Bond movie on several occasions – The Living Daylights in particular. Mostly, I try to be reasonable by simply stating: “The Living Daylights is a bloody good movie, and Dalton is an excellent Bond.” I can elaborate, of course, if you’ll lend me an ear.
First of all, The Living Daylights tells an intriguing spy story. There is General Koskov of the KGB, who supposedly wants to defect to the West, and 007 is assigned to bring him in. Koskov then reveals Operation Smiert Spionam, a secret Russian plot to kill Western agents. And soon after that he apparently gets re-captured by the KGB. Bond has his doubts, though, and decides to further investigate the matter. In the end it is finally revealed that arms dealer Brad Whittaker (Joe Don Baker) is behind it all.
In The Living Daylights, there is spying and scheming and betrayal and double-crossing and whatnot to an extent that’s somewhat unusual to a Bond movie. There’s a reason for that, of course, and I will come back to it later. At this point, let’s just agree that 007 is a secret agent; spying is what he’s expected to do. And in fact, I’m quite happy with it. Bond’s ally Saunders gets to say the line that describes what The Living Daylights is all about: “This is a mission, not a fancy dress ball!” As opposed to, let’s say, Moonraker, which was rather more a fancy dress ball than a mission. (more…)
by 007hertzrumble | Oct 22, 2013 | My Favorite #Bond_age_
Mute Button Optional: The Redemption of AVTAK
by John Gilpatrick (@johnlgilpatrick)
It was 2004; I’d just started my first ever part-time job.
At the ripe young age of 14, I wasn’t exactly a saver, so each paycheck—as meager as it was for a busboy like myself—was gone before the next one arrived. The target of my retail affection? Movies. And not just any movies, but James Bond VHS tapes (yep) that I could pick up on the cheap. I didn’t know much about each movie before I bought it. All I knew was that 007 and I clicked (I credit the Goldeneye N64 video game as much as any movie). So purchases were informed by packaging more than anything else, and the phenomenal purple pastels of that A View to a Kill box just sang to me. I went home, I watched it, and… well, I didn’t love it. Far from it, actually. It was hokey. Roger Moore looked laughably uninterested. Tanya Roberts and her throaty scream—let’s just not even get into that yet. The whole exercise was borderline excruciating, and I was teenager whose idea of movie criticism was labeling something “awesome” or “not awesome.” “But wait, John, aren’t you supposed to be writing about how you love A View to a Kill? How it’s your favorite Bond movie?” Spoiler alert: it’s not. But don’t worry, I’ll get to all the things I love about A View to a Kill—and there are a lot—shortly.
*****
I collected every Bond film I could find on VHS.
(Then I bought all the DVDs. And now I own Bond 50 on Blu-Ray… yes, I have a problem.) They sat on my shelf in descending order of preference—From Russia With Love always first, Octopussy always last. Somewhere in the middle sat—side by side—License to Kill and Die Another Day, two perfectly respectable if unremarkable Bond movies, said 14-year-old me. I bring this up to demonstrate how one’s opinion of these movies changes over time and how multiple viewings can make what seems not so awesome feel kind of awesome, and vice versa. Today, License to Kill and Die Another Day could hardly be further apart on my ranked list of Bond films. And as for A View to a Kill, the hokiness that drove me crazy as a teen feels like a rather brilliant tongue-in-cheek nod to the series’s history. Roger Moore’s work as old-man Bond is so brazenly unapologetic that I can’t help but admire what he does here. And Tanya Roberts… yeah, she’s awful. That scream—like nails on a chalkboard. But still, the movie’s good qualities (and my remote’s mute button) make her contributions (or, more appropriately, her lack thereof) easy enough to abide.
*****
Time to talk about the movie, I suppose.
Following Moore’s final gun barrel sequence, we’re taken to snowy Siberia. A screechy 80’s electric guitar riffs as Moore’s 007 skis around looking for something. What exactly? A chip, hidden in a locket that’s clasped around the neck of a dead body. But wait—the Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! The ensuing ski chase is surprisingly inspired (perhaps the perfect descriptor for the film as a whole). It’s playful, with composer John Barry letting loose a little Beach Boys as Bond switches from skis to a makeshift snowboard and “surfs” across a pool of water. Before long, he’s safe in the confines of a killer gadget—a submarine-type vessel disguised as an iceberg. “Be a dear and put it on autopilot,” he tells some chick we’ll never see again before we cut to an all-time great opening credits sequence.
*****It was 1985, and the last time a relevant artist tackled a James Bond theme was eight years earlier when Carly Simon belted out “Nobody Does It Better” over the opening credits of The Spy Who Loved Me. And a male vocalist hadn’t led a James Bond theme since Paul McCartney earned an Oscar nomination for the Live and Let Die title track. I bring this up to demonstrate how against-the-grain Duran Duran’s “A View to a Kill” really is within the canon. It’s the kind of song that you’d think is ushering in a brand new Bond era, rather than closing one out. Nevertheless, it’s bold and doesn’t make a ton of sense (I’m not sure why anyone would want to dance into a fire), but with high-haired women wearing nothing but strategically placed ribbons—women who also happen to be skiing indoors and bathed in neon light—rocking out on the screen, I’m happy to rock out, too.
*****Back at MI6, Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell, in her Bond movie swan song) is dressed to the nines. M and Q give Bond a rundown of what he exactly he found in Siberia. The computer chip is designed to be impervious to an electromagnetic pulse, and it comes from Zorin Industries. Its founder, Max Zorin (Christopher Walken), is big in the horse racing circles, so it’s off to the races for our heroes. Zorin, flanked as always by the beautiful and powerful May Day (Grace Jones), owns Pegasus, who wins the race following an almost impossible to believe final sprint to the finish. It’s Bond who suspects Zorin of dirty deeds—from drugging his horse to producing counterfeit microchips—from the outset, but it isn’t until he spends a weekend at Zorin’s stables that he becomes certain.
*****
I’ll argue here that A View to a Kill doesn’t have a truly weak scene.
It’s slower sequences are always offset by delightfully brash humor; its less successful comedic moments are always overshadowed by a pretty killer action scene. That said, the film’s reputation suffers some, I think, because most watch A View to a Kill without noticing its standout scene. Bond and his partner Tibbett (Patrick Macnee) spying around the stables is not just A View to a Kill‘s best sequence (and it’s a long one, clocking in around 30 minutes), but one of my favorites in the entire Bond film catalog. Why? 1.) Solid action—the horse race—that’s unique among the Bond films. 2.) Laugh-out-loud comedy. The only thing more biting than Bond’s awful treatment of Tibbett (who’s posing as his manservant) is the smarmy way he corrects everyone who mispronounces his cover name—James St. John Smythe (that’s “sin-jin-smythe”). 3.) The insane cast of characters is confined to one relatively small space. There’s Bond, Tibbett, and Zorin (who’s a top-five villain as far as I’m concerned). May Day is this totally bizarre anomaly within the series. She’s one of the most physically imposing henchpeople Bond has or ever will come across. She’s also, I guess, a sexual presence. She and Bond share a truly weird night in bed, and she wrestles in a thong with her boss/lover, Zorin. Don’t forget, too, about Stacey Sutton (the aforementioned Tanya Roberts), who plays a much bigger role when the film moves to San Francisco. And I’ll always have a place in my heart for Scarpine (Patrick Bauchau) and Dr. Carl Mortner (Willoughby Gray)—two Zorin associates who ultimately go down in a pitch-perfect blaze of incompetence.
*****
Following the horse race, there isn’t a ton left to report.
Zorin’s grand plan, as you probably know, is more-than-vaguely reminiscent of Goldfinger‘s Operation Grand Slam. Bond and Sutton become close in San Francisco. There’s a fire at City Hall, a flood in a mine, and a fight atop the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s all pretty good stuff if you can handle Roberts spewing geology at you. (Silver lining: at least she’s not Dr. Christmas Jones.) A View to a Kill is Roger Moore’s final Bond film, and most fans wish he went out a film or two earlier. He’s lost a step, I agree, and watching him bed a woman nearly 30 years his junior is a tad uncomfortable. But it’s for all these reasons that I genuinely enjoy A View to a Kill. Everything about it feels a bit off, but it goes for the jugular on every front—Moore, Walken, Jones, Roberts, the Eiffel Tower leap, the firetruck chase, JAMES FREAKING ST. JOHN SMYTHE—and I can’t help but eat it up.
by 007hertzrumble | Oct 21, 2013 | My Favorite #Bond_age_
Octopussy: A Sweet Distraction for an Hour or Two
by Adam Slusar (@TapwaterAlice)
Frequently lambasted for its cartoonish excesses, perplexing storyline and – of course – being the only James Bond film to see Roger Moore disguise himself as a clown, Octopussy is generally considered to be one of the weakest entries in the 007 franchise. Like Moonraker, the humor falls flat at times; look no further than one scene in which a Tarzan cry accompanies Bond as he swings across treetop vines. Ten years after his initial turn in Live and Let Die, Moore was ostensibly “too old” to play Bond any longer. And with the revered Sean Connery set to return as 007 in Never Say Never Again that same year, Octopussy was thrown into a “Battle of the Bonds.” The odds seemed stacked against it; film critics already knew which James Bond they preferred, and needless to say, it wasn’t Roger Moore.
But while Octopussy may falter due to its occasional missteps and oddities, it’s actually pretty great. A charming, elegant, and inventive action thriller, Octopussy is superior to Never Say Never Again in almost every way, and is by far the most unfairly maligned of the James Bond films.
While the previous effort, For Your Eyes Only, was a departure from the campier Bonds of the 1970’s, Octopussy retains a comfortable balance between fanciful escapism and Fleming-esque adventure. Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, in collaboration with George MacDonald Fraser, wrote a film that fits Roger Moore like a glove; combining his penchant for casual wit with his occasional ruthlessness (as evidenced by his car-kicking performance in For Your Eyes Only). We get to see Moore deal a few bullets in addition to his fair share of one-liners.
Even with age, Moore still proves perfectly capable of selling his unique brand of 007 in Octopussy, lending a sense of credibility without betraying the overall tone of the film. His performance acts as a nice counterpoint to his passive-aggressive portrayal in Moonraker. Although the vehemently detested “clown scene” is remembered for all the wrong reasons, it demonstrates Moore in an authentic, all-too-rare occurrence of Bond losing his cool as a doomsday machine counts down to its final seconds; much like The Spy Who Loved Me or For Your Eyes Only, this showcases Moore at his absolute finest.
In terms of progressive feminism and gender equality, Octopussy is a considerable milestone in a franchise made popular by its womanizing secret agent protagonist. Leading the charge – and an army of jumpsuit-wearing female acrobats – is Octopussy herself, a neutral entity working alongside the nefarious Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) in a grand-scale jewel smuggling plot. Previously seen as Andrea Anders in The Man with the Golden Gun, Maud Adams lends an air of mystery, assertiveness, and professionalism to role of Octopussy. Odd though it may be for a suggestively-named Bond girl to live on an island inhabited only by women while also running a travelling circus, these sort of extravagancies are part-and-parcel with the 007 franchise, and Octopussy exemplifies the standard of proactive female characters in the Bond films.
Octopussy marks the first (but not the last) Bond film to divide its screen-time between two main villains. In addition to Kamal Khan, we have General Orlov (Steven Berkhoff), the true mastermind behind the theft of a Fabergé egg and an evil plot to overtake Western Europe with a Russian artillery brigade. This is a brilliant plot perpetrated by two sub-standard villains, but Jourdan and Berkhoff do admirably with their otherwise thinly-written roles; Khan is given juicy dialogue to complement his incredibly suave demeanour, while Orlov chews up every scene with intense proclamations.
Filling in for Oddjob and Jaws this time around is the blunderbuss-wielding Gobinda, who gets to take on Bond in some of the most inspired stunt sequences in the film. In a nutshell, the villains of Octopussy leave something to be desired, but are still more colorful and entertaining than your average Blofeld regurgitation.
Clearly inspired by the high-adventure of Raiders of the Lost Ark two years prior, Octopussy contains no shortage of tremendous action scenes. This time around, we get to see Bond pilot a mini-jet while pursued by heat seeking missiles, taking on a thug with a razorblade yo-yo, leaping across train cars while evading dangerous obstacles, and even clinging for his life from the top of an airborne plane. Here, director John Glen demonstrates his strengths as an action director. He would continue to up the ante in his three subsequent efforts. Octopussy, nonetheless, contains some of the finest stunt choreography in the Bond series.
Following the post-disco instrumentals of Bill Conti in For Your Eyes Only (of which I’m admittedly a fan), John Barry returns to the Bond franchise with Octopussy, lending gravitas to the film with a sweeping, romantic score occasionally punctuated by frenetic action cues and exotic flair. His work in Octopussy would pave the way for his return in A View to a Kill and The Living Daylights, and Barry would provide those films with perhaps his greatest work.
If you aren’t a fan of the Roger Moore films leading up to it, then Octopussy may not be your cup of tea. Still, it isn’t the train-wreck that most people would have you believe. I first watched Octopussy late in the game, expecting something utterly terrible but coming away pleasantly surprised but also a little disturbed that so many people failed to see the pure joy of Bond escapism contained within. All the negativity surrounding Octopussy chalks up to needless comparisons to the Connery era and an unusual emphasis on the sillier aspects of the film. And truth be told, it is silly, but there’s just so much more to it.
First Bond Movie: Tomorrow Never Dies
Favorite Bond Actor: Roger Moore
Favorite Bond Girl: Solitaire
How I Discovered #Bond_age_: Nic Suszczyk of The GoldenEye Dossier, who invited me to participate in the Moonraker Live Tweet Session.
