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with forbidden love ! .............. :D well, that's my thinking on it, but it would all be done
" In the best possible Taste !"
Me too, and the office team should have their own very specific part. Meanwhile it has really become ridiculous as if all the administrative staff members do half the field work. I mean they could easily make it more serious by adding a few other interesting alies or even double agents (and if it is only for their deathes) as it has been made before.
MILF and The Youngster, @Thunderpussy? ;)
Sadly I doubt said snuff movie would pass the family friendly 12A cert EON strive for.
It moves with a steady pace through empty streets, dusty environments, never with losing the classical elegance of what is atypical for a Bond film.
All this is crowned with Mendes and Hoytema's approach with moving between hot/cold, heaven/hell, love/purgatory. The way the colours are almost scrubbed of the screen in Blofelds communications center, in a way showing the gray-zone of Blofelds inherent vices, and how deep blacks casts hellish shadows on Bonds final ruminations in the ruins of his own world in the films last act.
Spectre is not the typical Bond-film, it plays with the norms and subverses everything we know and think about Bond behind the classic, international facade. We are being subjected to the very core of what Bond is and what he represents. The film is centered around what Madeleine says to Bond, at a culminative moment, when they finally can settle down and have their respective outlooks of the world shared: "Is this really what you want? Living in the shadows, hunting, being hunted, always alone" and this mantra is displayed in all departments, the aforementioned cinematography, the set design (the transparency of Madeleine's office, the classic rustic style of Lucia's apartment), the score which builds more on themes and motions than on actual scoring on the events (omnious callbacks from the past, both from Skyfall and use of diegetic sounds within the score that creates a very different sound picture).
The action-scenes is something that I have noticed is one of the things that have drawn the largest criticisms. Sure I can see where they're coming from compared to the often superb scenes from Craig's earlier films, but the action in Spectre has a very clear sense of forward momentum. It derives from being vehicle-bound, Bond is caught in a kind of metastasis, flying ahead, driving ahead. The iconic vehicles is an extension of Bond himself, he is controlling and heading non-living things, much like how he infuses life in a profession filled with death and non-living entities. It's a roaring experience, but which creates an detachment between the narrative and us as an audience. That is something that is different from the earlier Craig films where he is a more direct and physical being in the vivacious action-scenes.
Speaking of which, Daniel Craig's performance as Bond was one thing that I was sorely disappointed in when I first saw the film. I saw him as bored and slightly sluggish, wispering many of his lines and just looked uninterested. But now I rather see his performance as a relaxed, laid back man, he conveys that certain kind of calm and cool that only Connery could exuberate. Craig displays the kind of man Fleming so often described, a man at ease with the world around him but not with himself. The conflict between those two is interesting and very well displayed.
Christoph Waltz as Blofeld, a subject for much controversy is something of a revelation for me. He was the actor that I since 2009 had hoped to see play Blofeld, and when he finally did it he did it with bravur! He downplays himself, he plays with the smallest of movements, he barely blinks and when he does it feels almost as his minds works on. Blofeld here is a quitely displayed maniac, a man who seems himself as the forefront of the human race, a man with a heavy inferiority complex but ironically enough can never be seen for what he is when he is the leader of a shadow organisation as tangled and substantial as SPECTRE. One can see how a man like Ernst Stavro Blofeld could have risen to power, he is cunning, he is charismatic, and he is a visionary. Imagine if this character was someone who really lived in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century...
I have always seen the major conflict between Bond and Blofeld in this film as something as a sidepoint, sure Blofeld sees himself as mistreated by his father and wants to rationalise his behavior and doings (killing his father) by having to applicate it to someone. He puts the blame for himself on Bond. It is also displayed quite clear that Blofeld never built SPECTRE for the sole purpose of undermining Bond, it rather seems like a way of getting inside Bond's head (which he also does quite figuratively). Blofeld is the indirect reason of the events in the earlier films, but he never did it for the sole dismay of Bond.
Just look at how Waltz says the word "brother" in the film, he accentuates it in a mocking way, not even Blofeld believes that they once were brothers.
No, Waltz plays Blofeld very discreetly, miles away from how Silva was displayed and this was precisely what the film needed. He is the leader of the greatest shadow organisation there is and can't then be flamboyant in the apparent way.
As a way to end this I can't quite say if I prefer Skyfall or Spectre, they both are two very strong and thematically driven films. Ones opposites one might say. Skyfall poses questions which then Spectre answers. Skyfall represents new beginnings, youth and modernity whereas Spectre represents passing of time classicism and death.
Much like the "heaven&hell" concept which Mendes displays in Spectre his two films works as two sides of the same coin. Two films that can never be separated.
Right now I feel like Spectre is the better film, if only because it entertains me more, it goes by faster and it poses more interesting questions. It feels overall more like a prime production with a better sense of delicacy.
It does brilliantly cap of the strongest 4 film run in the franchise thus far, and with great sadness it may also be the end for Craig as James Bond. But if it is, he certainly goes out in pride.
I will end this piece by showing the following pictures:
http://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Casino-Royale/images/Casino-Royale-1202.jpg
You can have me anywhere
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By62fkUldN1MSTVSaWNxTmlHZGM
I recognize you anywhere
The way this particular setup is made in the latter film it feels like a tragic flashback for Bond, how he says those word to Vesper and to everything she represented to Madeleine. Which makes him realize that in that moment he had to get out, while he still has a soul left to salvage.
While Madeleine declare her love for the "blue eyed, vulnerable boy" which in that moment is not any longer an assassin. Bond sees a way out, a representation from someone who in visual terms is the opposite of Vesper. But as Blofeld says
The faces of your women was always interchangeable, wasn't they James?
Bond is getting out, but he is not gone.
The dead are alive
Well said, sir! Hopefully it won't be Craig's last Bond film. But well said. The dead are alive.
in SP, not to have a meal with the villain scene. As Waltz seems to have given some of his best
performances, sitting at a diner table
The epilogue of our life..
The way Blofeld was reintroduced in SP started off great but everything with Waltz after Rome was a complete...
I was sold the day I went to see it in the cinema and as I'm currently watching it for about eight time, I must say my opinion has not changed. When I first saw it, I thought it was on par with the exitement and quality of Casino Royale or at least almost as good as the first Craig film. Now I was'nt that sold with Walhtz's Blofeld. I did not mind the connection with Bond. Thought they only knew each other for two winters and the boy must have already been a little cuckoo to have killed his father because of Bond. So it wasn't all Bond's fault what became of young Blofeld. Sure he holds Bond responsible. But he needed to see a good psychiatrist in any case. Though I think he wasn't menacing enough. Still glad they brought him and the organisation back.
As for a Bond film, I still think it's exiting. No bad editing, great cinematography, action was better than in Quantum or Skyfall, the pacing of the film and it brought back some classic old school feel to the series. I don't think Craig sleptwalk through the film, like I've heard someone complain. To me he had fully grown into the role, being able to be more relaxed than ever. Not forgetting to be the rougher edged Bond in the process we know from earlier Bond. Just a tad bit more relaxed and should I say jokey.
I'd say Spectre combined the old and the new Bond quite well. Don't think his Bond changed in the process. He's just now more seasoned spy, and I thought it was his best performance yet.
The ending I did not like that much. Okay, it's good to finally see him ride into the sunset with his leading lady. But seeing his future in the role is uncertain, I would have liked to see a more open ended last scene. But if Craig quits and they're going to treat his era like Nolan's Batman trilogy, well then it's okay. But I don't really like to see another reboot. But there are always excuses to bring Bond back from retirement or extentended leave of absence. Whether it would be with Craig in the leading role or someone new.
And hey, Blofeld's not dead and I dont think we've heard the last of Spectre either.
That, ladies and gents, is my honest opinion of the film and is not likely going to change anytime soon.
Sorry for possible typos. New to using android phone.
I now find myself in agreement with this review...
@LeonardPine you and me both.
Sounds like a lot of the comments on here.
I'm not a big Mendes fan but SP is no way the worst Bond film for 30 years. Flat and dull in many parts but on production values and cast still much better than most of the Brosnan entries.
This guy thinks Skyfall forgot about the Brosnan movies.
It makes the apparent desire for 'freshness' (as mentioned by Boyle in one of his last interviews before leaving on account of creative differences) all the more necessary. I hope they find a way to clean this up and provide a reasonable conclusion to this interconnected area with the next film.
Bond might not have really wanted to see that footage at first, which is natural.
Bond 25 still has a chance to show this tape and maybe include Jesper Cristensen reprising his role as Mr. White and also Guy Haines be there during the interrogation as Eva Greene has not aged all that much since the days of CR.
This tape could hold key clues about Spectre.
I was hoping oberhauser would play the vesper tape instead of whites suicide. They would have been so much better and relatable to bond and the audience
I understand that all opinions are subjective but in my view this is a massive over-exaggeration. When reading reviews and comments about Spectre, I keep seeing the Moore Era brought up in reference to moments from and the tone of the film. Just because the filmmakers decided to bring alittle levity to a Daniel Craig movie for a change and not treat it as serious as a heart attack does not mean that the film has anything even remotely close to as silly as what we got in the more absurd Moore/Brosnan entries. I can even make a strong argument that there are far more more awkwardly campy elements in the Timothy Dalton movies. The cello case escape scene immediately springs to mind. And License to Kill (a movie that I love BTW) is woefully uneven at times. It's a film that presents us with a James Bond who's overcome with rage and vengeance while at the same time giving us scenes with Wayne Newton hamming it up and an ending scene so cheerful, tonally out of sync, and eager to press the reset button, you wonder if the filmmakers accidentally filmed the wrong ending.
Now I won't defend Blofeld being Bond's jealous stepbrother or tying the film with Skyfall (although it's connections to CR and QOS don't bother me as much as Quantum was always basically supposed to be a modern day Spectre) but those aren't deal-breakers for me. Not like the entire second half of DAD was. I think at it's worst SP can be described as a mediocre Bond film with flashes of greatness sprinkled throughout. The PTS is an absolute hoot, every scene between Bond and Q puts and a smile on my face, and we get the most balanced and purely Bondian performance from Daniel Craig yet. Although I don't think SP is as good as CR/SF or as rewatchable as GE, I still consider it to be on the top half of the 8 films of the MW/BB era.