bond, more bond
If you missed any of the 3 million showings of the Bond movies that played during the Thanksgiving weekend, you might be able to catch them while they play again this week. They don't play in order or in any special sequence, so don't try to plan your day around when you think you're film is going to show according to which film it is in the series, or where it sits alphabetically. It's a mess, one film you watch will be with Sean Connery Bond, and the next, Timothy Dalton Bond, then Roger Moore Bond, then Pierce Brosnan Bond. Rarely do you see the Lazenby Bond. He's a gift showing.
These marathons are a good deal if you're a big Bond fan or if you haven't seen any of the older films and you want to see every single one of them before you die. There are 20 or so Bond films, depending on who you ask, ( a few are remakes of early Bond films, so I don't know if you can count them) and almost all of them are classics. Everyone has a favorite Bond film, which one it is depends on when you were introduced to the series. My mother and her ilk, came into the Bond game early on and feel that Connery is the best Bond and so they think that "From Russia with Love" or "You only live Twice" is the best film. I came along during the Roger Moore Bond and so I still see him as the original and my favorite Bond film is Octopussy. Today's new Bond fans are all about Pierce Brosnan and I witnessed first hand people chasing him down the street screaming "Mr. Bond" at him.
Where you came into the series and why, has a lot to do with what kind of fan you are. I don't think too many of the people that see a Bond film today are as big of a fan as say, someone who came into the series back in the sixties. A lot of this has to do with the entertainment value of the films in their perspective eras and what Bond meant to the world during that time.
According to old people: Bond represented one of the few options a person had at seeing other parts of the world and watching revolutionary technology for the first, and perhaps, only time. Bond films showed the world off as a two hour advertisement for travel agencies and it also fed a hunger that lived inside of a sci-fi mad group of youngsters that thought a digital watch was pretty amazing and out of the box thinking. Of course, today, you can see any part of the world on any number of channels on your television and there is nothing that can be invented today that we would have a hard time accepting or being excited about. If we see small computers that are injected into our bodies to perform micro-surgery, we are not impressed. It's going to take a lot more than that to get our jaws dropping. Sci-fi has just lost a lot of it's entertainment edge. There was a time when we "couldn't believe it", but now our attitude is, "is that all it can do?" Bond - the early trendsetter and world traveler - has become just another action hero with not so funny puns and an over achieving sex drive for an average looking Brit.
I really pulled for Pierce Brosnan to be the next Bond way back in the 80's when I was watching his television show, Remington Steele. I really thought he would make a better Bond than Moore, but it was not meant to be. He ran into some legal problems and wasn't allowed to do the role and it went a rather odd choice, Timothy Dalton. No one likes to talk about his films in Bond circles. He is sadly just viewed as "necessary until something else came along" and that's all anyone ever says about it. He's actually quite good as an actor and it's sad that his record will be stained with the Bond tag.
The sad truth about Bond is that he better known for his sexual escapades than his detective work. I thought this was odd and I was upset when people brought it up, but then I refreshed my memory by watching the majority of the films over the past seven days and I came to the conclusion that if we didn't have the sex, we wouldn't have a character. I didn't realize how easy his job really is. First, he only gets the cases where the bad guy (almost always a blond man) is just hell bent on destroying part of the world to make money. It's not that blondie needs any money, he's already as loaded as one person can get, they already own islands, massive boats and space stations, so what they need more money for is kinda sketchy. But for some reason, he wants EVEN MORE money. I think he's bored and just looking for something to do with all of the money he already has. Bond gets these cases. The ones where you just have to find the rich blond man with a small army and the best computer system in the world and then kill him. Then bed and kill his girl and his right hand man/butler/driver/masseuse/psychopath. (Bond if fond of killing the super naughty massuese by letting him fall a great distance. This theme reoccurs in most of the films and signals that the climax is near)
Not once has Bond been given the job of actually figuring out a hard case. He isn't asked to piece together cold leads or interview anyone. He just flies to Rome, humps a girl, endangers the lives of those that help him and then drops a bad guy from an extreme elevation and then blow up the bad guy's house... or boat... or mountain... or blimp and gets the praise. Bond, 007, is the K mart of special agents. The rest of the double O's must be fuming that he gets the girls and the glory and they get the leg work and brief cameos which they can only get if they are about to die to thicken a plot. This must really make them mad. Bond, the lowly, gets the glory and they get to fill out paper work.
I don't think in today's world that a Bond film is seen as anything more than just a British soft core porn film ; Not big on story, ugly dudes, hot chicks, lavish settings, funky music and no real money shots. I dare anyone to name the last five Bond films and tell me what their plots were. Can you name the last five porn films and what their plots were?
The next installment of the Bond series sees a drastic change to the series. Bond will be BLOND! Yes. Blond. Sensing that their baby was rotting on the vine, the studio powerful have decided that they need to go back to the beginning and try to restart the franchise with a healthy new look. So, they decided to remake "Casino Royale". The idea with the new film is to show a young Bond in the early days of his career as a special agent, when he used to tell everyone to call him, "Jimmy" and his best pick up line was, "Do you chicks like uncut?" and he only had a license to tease you real bad. Hopefully the film makers will add some spice into the films by making the films funny. I think you can do a lot by mocking the technology that he used back in the 50's and 60's and I think it would be funny to mock the social stereotypes that were so common in those early Bond films. Humor is something that everyone enjoys and I think that, with a little little more love making time on the screen, will help revive this franchise until Colin Ferrell takes it over in 2013.
Oh, if you're watching the Bond marathon, you can play a little number game. Try to calculate how many films will play before the ONE Roger Lazenby film plays. It's like a winning power ball ticket, you are only going to see it if you watch and maybe not even then.
The good ones... Octopussy, Thunderball, Diamonds are Forever, For your eyes only, Goldfinger, Live and Let Die.
The not so good ones... Dalton Bond films and, sadly, all of the Brosnan ones as well.
These marathons are a good deal if you're a big Bond fan or if you haven't seen any of the older films and you want to see every single one of them before you die. There are 20 or so Bond films, depending on who you ask, ( a few are remakes of early Bond films, so I don't know if you can count them) and almost all of them are classics. Everyone has a favorite Bond film, which one it is depends on when you were introduced to the series. My mother and her ilk, came into the Bond game early on and feel that Connery is the best Bond and so they think that "From Russia with Love" or "You only live Twice" is the best film. I came along during the Roger Moore Bond and so I still see him as the original and my favorite Bond film is Octopussy. Today's new Bond fans are all about Pierce Brosnan and I witnessed first hand people chasing him down the street screaming "Mr. Bond" at him.
Where you came into the series and why, has a lot to do with what kind of fan you are. I don't think too many of the people that see a Bond film today are as big of a fan as say, someone who came into the series back in the sixties. A lot of this has to do with the entertainment value of the films in their perspective eras and what Bond meant to the world during that time.
According to old people: Bond represented one of the few options a person had at seeing other parts of the world and watching revolutionary technology for the first, and perhaps, only time. Bond films showed the world off as a two hour advertisement for travel agencies and it also fed a hunger that lived inside of a sci-fi mad group of youngsters that thought a digital watch was pretty amazing and out of the box thinking. Of course, today, you can see any part of the world on any number of channels on your television and there is nothing that can be invented today that we would have a hard time accepting or being excited about. If we see small computers that are injected into our bodies to perform micro-surgery, we are not impressed. It's going to take a lot more than that to get our jaws dropping. Sci-fi has just lost a lot of it's entertainment edge. There was a time when we "couldn't believe it", but now our attitude is, "is that all it can do?" Bond - the early trendsetter and world traveler - has become just another action hero with not so funny puns and an over achieving sex drive for an average looking Brit.
I really pulled for Pierce Brosnan to be the next Bond way back in the 80's when I was watching his television show, Remington Steele. I really thought he would make a better Bond than Moore, but it was not meant to be. He ran into some legal problems and wasn't allowed to do the role and it went a rather odd choice, Timothy Dalton. No one likes to talk about his films in Bond circles. He is sadly just viewed as "necessary until something else came along" and that's all anyone ever says about it. He's actually quite good as an actor and it's sad that his record will be stained with the Bond tag.
The sad truth about Bond is that he better known for his sexual escapades than his detective work. I thought this was odd and I was upset when people brought it up, but then I refreshed my memory by watching the majority of the films over the past seven days and I came to the conclusion that if we didn't have the sex, we wouldn't have a character. I didn't realize how easy his job really is. First, he only gets the cases where the bad guy (almost always a blond man) is just hell bent on destroying part of the world to make money. It's not that blondie needs any money, he's already as loaded as one person can get, they already own islands, massive boats and space stations, so what they need more money for is kinda sketchy. But for some reason, he wants EVEN MORE money. I think he's bored and just looking for something to do with all of the money he already has. Bond gets these cases. The ones where you just have to find the rich blond man with a small army and the best computer system in the world and then kill him. Then bed and kill his girl and his right hand man/butler/driver/masseuse/psychopath. (Bond if fond of killing the super naughty massuese by letting him fall a great distance. This theme reoccurs in most of the films and signals that the climax is near)
Not once has Bond been given the job of actually figuring out a hard case. He isn't asked to piece together cold leads or interview anyone. He just flies to Rome, humps a girl, endangers the lives of those that help him and then drops a bad guy from an extreme elevation and then blow up the bad guy's house... or boat... or mountain... or blimp and gets the praise. Bond, 007, is the K mart of special agents. The rest of the double O's must be fuming that he gets the girls and the glory and they get the leg work and brief cameos which they can only get if they are about to die to thicken a plot. This must really make them mad. Bond, the lowly, gets the glory and they get to fill out paper work.
I don't think in today's world that a Bond film is seen as anything more than just a British soft core porn film ; Not big on story, ugly dudes, hot chicks, lavish settings, funky music and no real money shots. I dare anyone to name the last five Bond films and tell me what their plots were. Can you name the last five porn films and what their plots were?
The next installment of the Bond series sees a drastic change to the series. Bond will be BLOND! Yes. Blond. Sensing that their baby was rotting on the vine, the studio powerful have decided that they need to go back to the beginning and try to restart the franchise with a healthy new look. So, they decided to remake "Casino Royale". The idea with the new film is to show a young Bond in the early days of his career as a special agent, when he used to tell everyone to call him, "Jimmy" and his best pick up line was, "Do you chicks like uncut?" and he only had a license to tease you real bad. Hopefully the film makers will add some spice into the films by making the films funny. I think you can do a lot by mocking the technology that he used back in the 50's and 60's and I think it would be funny to mock the social stereotypes that were so common in those early Bond films. Humor is something that everyone enjoys and I think that, with a little little more love making time on the screen, will help revive this franchise until Colin Ferrell takes it over in 2013.
Oh, if you're watching the Bond marathon, you can play a little number game. Try to calculate how many films will play before the ONE Roger Lazenby film plays. It's like a winning power ball ticket, you are only going to see it if you watch and maybe not even then.
The good ones... Octopussy, Thunderball, Diamonds are Forever, For your eyes only, Goldfinger, Live and Let Die.
The not so good ones... Dalton Bond films and, sadly, all of the Brosnan ones as well.
posted by Daniel Loomis | 10:44 AM
<< Home