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If you take it as a parody, it´s splendid. I´ve always loved it. Hamilton´s campiness so much more self-aware than Gilbert´s, who really made children´s films.
I don't know about that...there is something very sexual and adult about Brandt in YOLT and the way Stromberg's secretary dies in TSWLM.
MR, I'll give you, though.
It's pure Rogertainment. :-bd
I wish I liked MR more than I do. I just find it a bit of a slog to be honest. All the ingredients are there but it just doesn't have the same energy as TSWLM imo. I feel the same about TB and GF.
When it comes to Roger Moore films I think Spy and Octopussy are perfection (was a bit gutted when they went with FYEO for the memorial double bill). LALD is a strong third but I think it's more flawed than those two, there are a couple of little things that stop it being a proper top ten classic in my eyes. Not too keen on any of the rest, the man himself is always a joy to watch though.
I don't know how much of a choice it was. MKKBB was planned to be the theme because Barry felt he couldn't write about something nondescript called Thunderball. Bassey's version was dropped for some reasons and re-recorded by Dionne Warwick, which was also dropped for the opening titles when Universal insisted the theme would have to include "Thunderball". Then the Tom Jones song came as a substitute, and one can tell because MKKBB is still all over the movie, while the TB tune isn't. When the producers wanted to play Warwick's MKKBB over the closing credits, Bassey sued them for whatever reason, and that was it.
Okay, okay. Let's not get crazy.
Agreed. The Berlin section alone puts OP ahead of quite a few Bond films.
Well, I’m not sure because you can turn that statement around in the opposite way too.
As in:
“The terrible Tarzan yell and laughable disguises (gorilla, clown, crocodile) alone make OP worse than most Bond films.”
I do agree the Berlin section is great though. I’d say that apart from TLD it also has one of the very best post-credit scenes. Together with Orlov’s crazy speech it’s also among the best scenes sans Bond.
Nevertheless it’s far from perfect. It sits comfortably in the middde of my ranking, close to the other Glen-Moore films actually.
Same here !
I fail to see what's so great about the Berlin section. I suppose you are talking about the initial chase with 009 - or whichever number it was- being pursued by Mishka and Grishka and miraculously floating through that weir without any obstacles, and in spite of having a knife in his back, all the while hanging on to a balloon and the Fabergé egg, and ending up at the British ambassador's residence.
If that could really work out at the time, literally thousands of East Germans would have gladly and successfully taken that route, obviously without aiming for knife, balloon and egg, but nevertheless it amounts to an opening in the Berlin wall that simply wasn't there. It's Cold War Berlin as Little Johnny in 3rd grade may have imagined it.
Same with the fantasy railroad station of "Karl-Marx-Stadt" (once again called by its original name, Chemnitz, since 1990), a city which contrary to M's statement in the Mercedes on Kurfürstendamm is not at all to the east of Berlin, but actually to the southwest. OK, I realise they couldn't build a copy of the real station on the Nene Valley Railroad:
I also forgive them for using non-German engines including the Danish steam loco which was at least made to appear like a DR 62 series (minus one axle), and for ignoring that except for historic purposes, no steam engines were allowed to use West German tracks at the time any more. However, pretty soon after leaving the station the train supposedly crosses the border to West Germany, but AFTER that you see a selection of red (aka Communist) propaganda posters stretched across tunnel portals and the like. Someone didn't pay attention in editing. Or simply had no clue.
Likewise, I find it very unusual to say the least that the USAF would allow a train (and/or a complete circus) coming directly from East Germany to enter the premises of an air force base stocking nukes without thorough scrutiny. But here comes Little Johnny again.
As someone who has been quite familiar with all things German-German and Cold War for most of my life (my father was an office in the West German border protection force), all this strikes me as particularly unbelievable and renders the Octopussy story sort of fairy-tale-like for me. And it's that lack of "suspension of disbelief" that disqualifies the movie so much in my view. And the other silly issues that usually come up sort of do the rest, whether it's the Tarzan yell, the gorilla costume, the tiger incident...you name it.
See what I mean by controversial? (EDIT: Even in 1983/4, I - like most Germans I talked to at the time, and most of the German press critics - considered NSNA the clear winner of the Battle between the Bonds raging at that time. I still do.)
Have to agree and say OP is my favourite Moore Bond along with FYEO and LALD!
I take it you are not a fan eh ? ;)
Bravo good Sir,bravo !!
Wish you'd agree on TLD grrr
He he that day will never come my friend..... ;)
And just because you live there and know the place well is hardly an excuse. I live in London and work for TfL so I'm irked by the following:
- Bond and Silva sliding down the escalator without this happening:
- The bus on Vauxhall Bridge when MI6 blows up clearly being a driver training bus not an actual bus.
- The tube station claiming to be 'Embankment' being a disused station that TfL rents out to film companies as a generic tube station location.
I'd prefer these things not to be there but it doesn't stop me enjoying the film. Ar some point you have to understand that filmmakers take liberties from time to time.
A few more travesties from OP that you missed:
- The landing gear disappearing from one shot to the next when the Acrostar takes off and flies over the persuing vehicles.
- At the speed it was flying the Acrostar would take about a second to fly through the hangar not five or six as depicted.
- Bond: 'Well I've got 55 minutes to catch that flight Sir'. Even pre Al Qaeda security checks Whitehall to Heathrow in that time is very good going.
- Flying past the Taj Mahal makes no sense as Agra and Udaipur are hundreds of miles apart.
- Bond recognising the Bond theme?
Etc.
If you want realism watch a documentary or a Ken Loach film but it's a bit pointless ripping into a Bond film that has the sole aim of delivering 5 star Rogertainment.
Although a pedantry thread is a great idea. Does anyone know if we have one or not?
This guy! What the hell was he thinking? :))
I'm going to throw out the fanciful theory that he might have been off his tits?
Of course no Bond film is entirely consistent. That's why it's not a documentary. But I know Hamburg as closely as it gets and I'm not in the least bothered by Brosnan driving his 750i zig-zagging all over town, going to the hotel in the wrong direction of a one-way, using a "hotel roof parking" that is a kilometer away from the hotel, and so on. It doesn't take me out of TND. The Cold War nonsense in OP somehow does. Along with the silly stuff as mentioned, the corny girls' troupe, the hot-air balloon and what have you. I just don't like that feeling of the entire film, somewhere between Carry On Indiana Jones and Carry On Princess Bride. It's just not Bond for me and brings out the things I like least about Moore's tenure. The best thing about the movie is the PTS, no matter how long it takes the Acrostar to fly through the hangar.
Most likely, haha!