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It's probably for another thread but I'm not 100% convinced; I especially don't think it would have any wear and tear because the props were brand new and Bond at that time always had pristine stuff- I think the 'scratches' are equally likely to be reflections in the shine. The cigarette case in the same scene looks equally black, but you can tell it's actually shiny; I don't think it displays any wear either. And it's even possible the two are likely to match.
If only there were any photos at all of the thing, or it even appeared properly in more than one shot! :)
That QOS is only a revenge movie.
Layer Cake be the only reasen Daniel Craig was cast as Bond. Daniel Craig being choosen Sony released movie in October 2005 straight to dvd in some country's. The movie is from 2004 mabey only limited released for UK. Road to Perdition from 2002 is mabey bigger reasen, also because he and Sam Mendes (and production designer of QOS / SF / SP). Also fact is that Barbara Broccoli mother Dana Broccoli (She for example was person who choose Topol as Columbo for FYEO) died around same time of Layer Cake. Whyle of course at same time Brosnan offical out.
Yeah that's a fair point. Although it's probably more of a point of debate than a definite misconception: but I'd certainly say that James Bond 007, as most of the world knows him, is the creation of three men: Ian Fleming, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.
Yep, very good point. It's actually an anti-revenge movie: Camille is the character out for revenge and it gets her nowhere.
Another misconception is that it's 'yet another film where Bond goes rogue'. He doesn't though, he's doing his job the whole time, following the mission M gave to him. He literally says 'I never left' and that's because he didn't.
Another good one: I think they've said that surprisingly Layer Cake didn't really do much but confirm what they already thought. Broccoli has said it was his role in Elizabeth which caught her eye.
Sure, but most of the luxury goods we see him with are generally spotless. Like the cigarette case, his Louis Vuitton credit card swiper, his LALD Rolex, his Octopussy Seiko, his poison pen etc. etc.
This might be a bit of a controversial one but I think it’s in the same ballpark and is one I’ve heard a lot. It’s the idea that Silva wins in SF and Bond fails. It’s perhaps more a misreading of the movie, and while M dies indirectly because of Silva that’s not his goal. His goal was to kill M by his own hand and then presumably himself. By throwing a knife in his back Bond takes that opportunity from him (and as far as the dying Silva is concerned M could survive and he’s completely failed). Heck, Silva doesn’t even completely dismantle MI6 as we can see at the end of the film with the new office. Bond’s main goal on the other hand was to lure Silva in and kill him. Protecting M is arguably secondary. At best no one fully succeeds in the strictest sense, but I’d say Bond comes out on top.
FIFA would say they qualify for both
Boris probably has more chance of playing for USA than England?
Bond is spoilt for choice, Scotland, Switzerland or Germany (maybe even France?)
The fictional character James Bond, created by Ian Fleming, is typically said to have been born in Wattenscheid, Germany to a Scottish father, Andrew Bond, and a Swiss mother, Monique Delacroix Bond.
In Pearson's book, 007 fans discover that James Bond was born in Wattenscheid near Essen, in the Ruhr region, on November 11, 1920. While it used to be a separate town, Wattenscheid now belongs to the city of Bochum, where the exhibition "On a secret mission: The spy who came from Wattenscheid" opens on February 1.
https://dw.com/en/james-bond-born-in-germany/a-47267698
Now that depends on what you consider "the story". While the GF PTS does tell a story of its own vs. the actual fight against Goldfinger, it is pretty much part of the beginning of the original novel. So "blame" Fleming if you wish, but this is part of "the story" as he wrote it...unlike the TB intro. Also, the CR '06 PTS makes sense in establishing Bond as a double-O before receiving his first assignment as such, which is why I would definitely consider it as having a whole lot of connection to the main story.
And excuse me, WTF is YMMV? I don't have the slightest idea. Something like YMCA? :D
PS: Checked it in the meantime since I didn't know the expression. I thought you referred to a novel or something.
OP.
YMMV means Your Mileage May Vary. Such as in this case. For me, the PTS of GF has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie (unless you can prove to me that the drug dealers were in cahoots with Auric all along). And Blofeld having nothing to do with the ATAC, that means that the pre-title sequence from FYEO has nothing to do with the movie.
For example, Cliff Richard...
... was born in India but his parents were British. Cliff Richard was never described as the most successful Indian UK male pop singer of all time. ;))
Also, it always struck me Timothy Dalton never sounded remotely Welsh so it's not a surprise he never considered himself Welsh. He just happened to be born there but doesn't identify as Welsh.
It's rather amusing former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was born in New York, USA so could, in bonkers theory, run for president!
That would be some comeback. 🤭
I think his mum was American, in fact; his dad was English.
Yes, he was, but he gave up his US citizenship when the tax laws became too strong for him. But you're right that Dalton is as Welsh as Johnson is regarded as an American.
And I'm sure Dalton is probably an American now anyway, much like Craig.
Richard Burton, the well known Welsh actor, never sounded Welsh. And Desmond Llewelyn didn't play Q with his natural Welsh accent. My guess is strong Welsh accents would limit your acting prospects. Having an English received pronunciation accent would give you more acting opportunities.
Sean Connery successfully reduced his Scottish accent in the earlier part of his career although somewhat ironically his thicker Scottish accent added to his appeal. Few people can do a convincing impression of Connery's voice when playing Bond of the 1960s. People only do an impersonation of older Connery with this more pronounced accent. "The name'sh Bond." 😉
I'm guessing Dalton never had a Welsh accent? Maybe not.
Unless your name is Windsor Davies (who was English in the same way Timothy Dalton was Welsh)
reminded me of this (last bit) :
Exactly, it's like when Craig has that gag about their codenames in CR, he calls Vesper Stephanie Broadchest, and they smirk at how silly that is, when in reality Fleming was the one responsible for coming up with those silly names - that was a part of the original stories as Fleming wrote them. Glibly poking fun at that convention is actually moving further away from the Fleming source material, not closer. Roger Moore's films were more faithful to the Fleming Bond, at least in that sense.
I would say Craig's Bond had many sides and angles too, and is probably funnier than Fleming's Bond too (although Bond would make a joke on rare occasion). That said, I don't think he's exactly the book Bond, although probably is one of the closest. To be honest I think his character is actually more interesting than the book one.
Dalton's Bond, yes I guess he's not a bad representation of Fleming's, although does seem a bit overly serious. I watched LTK about a week ago and to be honest I do get a sense of there being a bit of a vacuum in the centre of it.
Ultimately, I doubt that Fleming’s Bond served as an exact template for any of the actors. That said, I’d argue that Young and Connery understood him best. Dalton definitely returned to Fleming for inspiration, but I agree with @mtm that he took thing perhaps a little too seriously for the ultimate Fleming experience.
But ultimately I think any actor/director knows it’s not about being 100% faithful to the books or the original character. I think all the Bonds are noticeably related to the literary character though, and are shockingly close considering it’s a 60 year old film franchise.
Craig's Bond corresponds well to the "blunt instrument" version of Bond in the early books, though he was never convincing in portraying Bond's bon vivant side (a great strength of Connery and Moore) and his melancholy tended toward stolidity. Dalton corresponds well with the burnt-out Bond of TLD, but his lighter moments were too few. Still, we tend to over-focus on his seriousness because LTK was his last film and it was a very serious one, whereas if his tenure had ended with TLD our general impressions would be different. The same goes if he'd returned with a lighter third film. Similarly, many of us would think much less of Moore if his tenure had ended with TMWTGG.
I think the interviews Dalton gave upon accepting the role--especially for the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor--showed an understanding of the literary character beyond that of any of his colleagues. It's a pity that he had too abbreviated a run to fully bring out that understanding. Lazenby was lucky in that OHMSS was in a sense the ultimate Bond film: it encapsulated and concluded the cycle of the films that established the series, and it ran the entire gamut of Bond's character. None of the later Bond films have fully succeeded in that, regardless of their ambitions.
The issue of humor in the Bond books is an interesting one. They're not humorless, though CR and LALD are short on humor, and from DAF on there are a good amount of wisecracks and aphorisms. But it's a different sort of humor than the puns that the films rely on. In a book you need to work to establish suspension of disbelief; in a film what happens onscreen happens, and the puns were originally there to relieve the tension of what the audience witnessed ("shocking, absolutely shocking"). They wouldn't work on the page.
Again, the competition (notably M:I series) have picked up on that as well, leaving the Bond-series as only unique due to their own tropes and history.
So comparing Craig's tenure to the books is possible, but to compre it with the books and the interpretations of actors gone before makes little sense. Craig's iteration has a lot of character traits in common with Fleming's description, maybe most even. He's handsome in a cruel kind of way, more so than any of the other actors. He's going beyond the call of duty and endures the most pain and suffering. And yes, he enjoys the finer things in life (I'd rather stay in a morgue), but it doesn't stand out that much anymore in our society as it did in the 50's and sixties of the last century. On top of that there seems little hesitations in the killings, and little inner motivations when he does, except, obviously, for Blofeld's demise.
I think Dalton tried to balance the killing- and caring, which is also in the books, a little bit more. He seems more driven to kill those that kill, and it seems warmer and more caring for those he tries to protect. But we only have two films, and in both he's already the seasoned agent.
Indeed, character traits that also stand out in OHMSS.
Maybe things aren't as 'played out' in Connery's era, but that's hardly fair, as the effect was there already in the public perception. I.E. the gypsy girlfight in FRWL, probably was as exotic, sexy and stunning as could be for all those machine workers in Leeds who only could go on holiday to the Coswolds if they were lucky.
Quite funny that the 20th and 21st films are full adaptations, to differing extents perhaps, of the first and second Bond novels respectively, and it took them that long to get around to them. And that there were adaptations of these Fleming novels in the cinemas that long after the 50s.
I mean Pussy Galore and Kissy Suzuki were the only questionable names that Fleming created. Vesper Lynd a bit more clever, but the rest were above board in terms of double entendres.
With regards to the humour of the novels, I don't think Fleming was particularly funny in a quippy way. There are attempts at the sort of one-liners that characterise the films: Bond says to Mr. Big "Those who die the death they deserve," he mocks Drax about the loss of the Nazis by saying "Too bad" and when Drax about what led him to guess Drax's cheating he says "my eyes."
Later on I think Bond finds his charm: even if Fleming does have Bond tatter on for much longer after the fact, the "it's the right size for me" is a clever retort. Not to mention the quite charismatic man we see with Jill in Goldfinger, Domino in Thunderball and Tiger in YOLT.
Dalton I think gets the earlier awkward charm even if the films try to go for the later novels in terms of jokes. And where I think he triumphs over Connery is that Connery's Bond constantly toed the line between bastard and hero in way that I only really saw in Casino Royale. Craig does a good job of replicating the late novels.
But it's not the fact that they don't DO more silly names which I find grating, it's the fact that they would visibly turn their noses up at the idea, and create a joke out of it, almost saying "could you imagine?" When the reality is that the reason they included those names like Mary Goodnight and such in the films is precisely because it was Fleming that made the creative choice to include them in his books.