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Dan did SNL skits as Bond? Must see!!!
Personally, I love Harold Sakata's cold remedy ads as Oddjob, and the Dalton Lark cigarette ad. Are they canon? Who cares! They still take up space in my memories, and so does H&G.
And I've been forced to think that each Bond actor's films are stories from a different universe.
(I didn't bother watching the Olympics opening ceremony because by that point I was really fed up with everyone going on about the wretched Olympics and there couldn't possibly be anything exciting about it. FOOL!)
Yes but...what about Lazenby and/or Brosnan looking fondly at keepsakes from former (Connery) adventures?
It's all good to me. I can read DC Comics where a Bob Kane/Sheldon Moldoff Batman interacts with a Neal Adams Batman and enjoy them without getting too meta about it. It's all fiction -- that is, an entertaining lie -- as long as it's done skillfully then I can enjoy it.
Sean and George are tied up as one by necessity, but I keep Roger, Tim and Pierce all separate. I'm not counting the rampant anniversary baiting of DAD as canon connections to past Bonds either.
-Craig playing Bond completely straight w/ the no-nonsense approach. Love it.
-Judi Dench is fantastic. (Her scene with foreign secretary is one of my favs in QoS.)
-The score
-the finale with Greene. I like the 'messiness' and spontaneous way Greene fights, almost instinctual, like an animal helplessly trying to kill a predator.
-Bond stays dirty for a good portion of the film. This continuity helps the realism of the film. The way Bond doesn't give a damn about his appearance, or himself, is great.
-Craig's delivery of his lines are underrated imho. And he has some cracking moments. His cynicism/humour is what a miss about his recent films.
-Felix and Beam's scenes are humourous too. Can't get enough of Beam's mistrust and disgust of everything around him.
-Camille cleaning her slide while Craig goes on a little speech w/ the montage is one of the best moments in the film imo. Well shot.
-Bond leaving Greene in the middle of the desert and the poetic jstice of the oil.
-Locations, locations, locations. Fantastic.
Well those are most of the best parts worth mentioning. (Don't worry I'll write more about Skyfall.)
THIS. Copy and paste that somewhere, so you can immediately post it when someone mentions how non-threatening the scene is.
As Greene swings wildly, Bond calculates every move and counter to ensure that he doesn't make the tiniest mistake, which will lead to a painful axe death. It's brilliant stuff. It's sort of like Craig's Bond acknowledging that Hinx has the advantage over him, so he tries to use his PPK, a lit candle, an ice pick, and more to get the edge over him.
Bond takes some crazy hits with the axe too, for all he blocks, including being smashed with the top of the thing on the forehead, leaving a nasty gash. Just brutal. And then there's that great moment where Bond sees Greene swing down at him, at which point he takes his hands and is able to dodge the blow while simultaneously sending the blade of the axe right into Greene's foot, where you can actually see a cut splitting his foot in two. The film does not hold back.
Another moment I love is during the Slate fight where Bond uses the scissors to stab Slate in the neck so that he'll bleed out quickly, and even when Slate starts to squirm his leg about on the balcony to kick at Bond, he then stabs him through the thigh as well to truly silence his movement. Bond's a surgeon in that scene, taking the bastard out as fast as he can, using anything in his environment, be it a telephone, hotel decoration or utensils.
I just love, love, love the combat in this film.
That's how I've always seen it. The last lingering shot we get of Slate, you can see a lot of blood near his leg.
Yes, hence him being silenced.
By the way, I just noticed that everyone currently involved with this leg of the Bondathon are far more positive about QoS than negative. After fighting for its honor for so long, it's a nice thing to see.
QOS was maybe a bit of a shock after the more casual, epic feel of CR. The general movie goer wasn't expecting such a different approach, plus of course the comparison to Bourne (I've never seen a single one of these films so I'm not in a position to comment - I just know the jerky hand held camera style isn't new to Bond or Bourne).
Yeah that's a really brutal fight. We would never get to see that sort of violence in SPECTRE. Shame that they deviated with Mendes' softer approach.
One other moment I treasure is after Mathis is taken out of the car (and unfortunately shot). Bond is quick though and he just executes them on the spot. He had the 2nd policeman on the ground, and instead of knocking him out, he just shoots him point blank without thinking twice.
QOS has flown up my ranking thanks to this and seems destined to finish in a top ten position. Seeing as it finish 18th last time, this is one hell of a jump.
OHMSS is in my imaginary Dalton timeline. But then, so are CR and Moonraker-Done-Properly.
Now, I'm like @BeatlesSansEarmuffs, none of it bothers me. They're just big slabs of entertainment.
I know Peter Hunt talked about seeing OHMSS as a bit of a standalone adventure with no link to the other films. That explains Blofeld not recognising Bond, but not the misty eyed reminisces of Bond in his office.
So it doesn't bother me either way
What makes you think Greene is psychotic?
I think SP gets close to the darkness of QoS, and some of the violence or depravity we hear implied (such as SPECTRE's operations overheard during their meeting) are even more diabolical than anything in that film. I seem to be in the minority here, but I think SP is ominous from beginning to end, whereas QoS lets up in mood and feels far lighter in comparison at plenty of times. And the Hinx fight alone is just super violent. Bond almost getting his eyes peeled out, thrown through carriage walls feet thick, and being pummeled to near-death? Yes, it can go there.
SF was way lighter than SP could ever be with its heavy content.
He's certainly short-fused and gets to cackling when he feels in control, making him seem very mad. He implies at the beginning of the film that he murdered a piano student of his mother's when she made fun of him, and when Camille degrades him similarly he nearly shoves her off the balcony. Whenever anyone says anything to upset him, you can see flames burn in his eyes. He can't take it, and wants to kill whoever had the gall to cross him.
With his character and how Amalric plays him I always get the sense that whenever Greene is awake and walking around he's constantly looking at people who look at him, thinking, "They hate me," "They don't respect me," "They think I'm a fool." He's constantly acting wired and searching in need of some form of respect or power from others, likely because he feels powerlessness deep down. He's taken to power quite well, and his short-fuse ensures that when his grasp on that power loosens, he's going to snap as only he can.
He feels very psychotic in this way to me, thinking everyone around him doesn't respect or bow to him, when in reality it's likely all in his head. When he mentions murdering the piano student as a boy, I am always curious if the girl ever really made fun of him, or if his mind just made him think she was toying with him. His grasp on the reality of the moment makes him very dangerous, because he seems incapable of thinking clearly. Instead of being able to perceive things as how they really are, he sees things how his mind tricks him into thinking they are.
Which one of those? Kill piano students? Think people are talking about us behind our back? Lose grip on reality?
I can't say I have, but even if I had, I wouldn't admit to it.
That's what they always say. Book 'em boys. ;)
Sometimes they could've simply ended a scene with a nice long take but they prefer to switch camera angles and show pointless things to the audience. Also, at Greene's fundraiser, we get odd .5s shots of people talking and drinking. Usually they'd use long opening shots to introduce us to the setting and the atmosphere. Not here. Nope.
I also found out that most shots left in the final film rarely reach 15sec long, which is nothing. SPECTRE must of had dozens of that length. Many times you'd get them one after another in the same scene etc. So QoS wanted to keep the pacing up throughout the entire film, which does actually work. However, the film could've easily been 2 hours long and not an embarrassing 107 minutes. They cut moments that should've lasted way longer and it makes the film feel too raw imo. Take Greene's plane taking off as an example. We see many quick shots of it taking off but with not any fluidity in it. 1st it's on the runway and next it's high up in the sky... At the end of the day, I'd say the editors cut many moments too early (usually not done if the take is good) and yet they stuffed unimportant micro shots into the film, which just don't really work well.
A lot of the images lie to you, making you think everything is stable before the next set unravel it, which I like. The early Bond films would play similar visual tricks that I loved, usually due to Ted Moore's camera work. Some of these moments may go quick for some, but I have watched this film so many times that I don't even notice it at this point.
It was clear that the editors were keen on telling their story, so they snipped random things like a plane taking off to get you off to the next set of images. It can be jarring at first, but one of my favorite things about the film is that it is always a visual treat and a different experience every time. Like few Bond films, it tells as much a story with images as it does dialogue, which is damn hard to do without the great cast they have here.