Moonraker

[greenman]

The first half is actually pretty good, but the second half is Die Another Day level bad.

The issue with Day Another Day for me though isn't that its over the top and cartoonish but that its so woefully charmless at the same time.

[biggytitbo]

And Piers Brosnan is awful. I went to see that at the cinema and to see his terrible smirk and comically bouffant stupid hair on the big screen put me off his Bond for life.

[Pinckle Wicker]

^ This!

Also the same for me. Thought he was an awful Bond and also found it creepy with his chasing women and his seduction etc. Was like watching some smoothy uncle at a party trying out his chat up lines.

I also found it becoming more and more a parody of Bond when Brosnan took the role.

[biggytitbo]

Yeah once Cleese joins they're worse than the later Moore ones in terms of stupidity but without one iota of the charm.

[monkfromhavana]

Those are some of the worst ones. You are out of your fucking mind.

My thoughts, at considerable length, regarding From Russia With Love:
http://horsehair-nebula.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/from-russia-with-love-who-is-bond.html

A great write-up, but you're so very very very wrong about those Bonds being some of the worst.

Don't start giving me any guff about Timothy Dalton.

[Pinckle Wicker]

A great write-up, but you're so very very very wrong about those Bonds being some of the worst.

Don't start giving me any guff about Timothy Dalton.

Robert Shaw was an excellent goon in FRWL. Very sinister Aryan type of killer IIRC.

[Jim_MacLaine]

The Spy Who Loved Me
Live and Let Die
A View To A Kill
Moonraker
The Man With the Golden Gun





For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
-------------------------------

Close thread.

[monkfromhavana]

The Spy Who Loved Me
Live and Let Die
A View To A Kill
Moonraker
The Man With the Golden Gun





For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
-------------------------------

Close thread.

I'll go with that. Apart from the inexplicable absence of You Only Live Twice.

[Pinckle Wicker]

Never Say Never Again!!!! [nb]just kiddin[/nb]

[Kane Jones]

The Man With The Golden Gun is shit.  Thunderball is boring.  Diamonds Are Forever is pretty average.  Licence To Kill doesn't feel remotely like a Bond film.  The rest I find enjoyable.

[monkfromhavana]

The Man With The Golden Gun is shit.  Thunderball is boring.  Diamonds Are Forever is pretty average.  Licence To Kill doesn't feel remotely like a Bond film.  The rest I find enjoyable.

You're bonkers. All that xmas sherry has clearly gone to your head and you need a good lie down.

[Jim_MacLaine]

I'll go with that. Apart from the inexplicable absence of You Only Live Twice.

Ah, It was Moore's ONLY. Live, Spy and Moon would make my all Bonds top 10.

[Kane Jones]

You're bonkers. All that xmas sherry has clearly gone to your head and you need a good lie down.

Ahh, but Live And Let Die and You Only Live Twice are two of my very favourites.  So clearly I'm not that bonkers.  Apart from Christopher Lee and the psychedelic maze thingy (oh, and the fist fight in the belly dancer's dressing room) The Man With The Golden Gun is terrible.  Nick Nack? Come on.

[shiftwork2]

(oh, and the fist fight in the belly dancer's dressing room)

It's New Year so the thread can handle a quote or two.

Belly dancer post punch-up: I've lost my charm!!

*two heartbeats worth of eyebrow action*

Roger Moore: Not from where I'm standing.

The rest of it is balls, mind.

[biggytitbo]

The Best Bond Film is View to a Kill.

End of debate.

Love your tits,

Biggy.

[Jim_MacLaine]

The Best Bond Film is View to a Kill.

Biggytitbo, fascinating creature. Brave but on the whole stupid.

[greenman]

^ This!

Also the same for me. Thought he was an awful Bond and also found it creepy with his chasing women and his seduction etc. Was like watching some smoothy uncle at a party trying out his chat up lines.

I also found it becoming more and more a parody of Bond when Brosnan took the role.

The problem is I would say that very quickly(was decent in Goldeneye) he became a slick merger of Connery and Moore as indeed did the films themselves achieving neither the sense of suave toughness of the former or the charm of the latter.

A real shame that Dalton's run ended up with a Miami Vice ripoff as I felt The Living Daylights was excellent, actually did what the latter Brosnan Bonds were trying to do much more successfully.

[Puce Moment]

Moore is awful in every way, but the films themselves were far superior to anything that came before or after. It's a great cinema anomaly in many ways.

Moonraker and Live and Let Due are the only Bonds I would consider watching more than once.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I like that scene. Action scenes in old films always look a bit clunky and daft but it works for me. It's definitely in my top 5 Bond films, and probably the most Hitchockian of them all.

Wasn't Hitchcock approached to direct the first Bond film, when the producers considered Thunderball as the source material? Hitchcock received an offer by telegram, but it didn't go much further.
There are some definite influences in the direction, especially due to North by Northwest, Cary Grant was the first actor they asked to star in Dr. No, and Connery did Marnie with Hitchcock a few months later.

The remarkable thing about FRWL is its concision. Look at the scene at the train station just before the border. There's not one line of dialog, as it's inaudible due to the train noise, yet the action is perfectly clear. Terrence Young's first two films hinted at leaner, swifter films, but Thunderball is much more formulaic due to the producers sticking to the Goldfinger recipe, and the aquatic scenes being shot concurrently by a second unit using doubles. Young is still miles above most of the Bond directors, along with Martin Campbell, Peter Hunt and maybe Sam Mendes. They're the only ones with a strong take on the material and the character.

Lewis Gilbert's three films (You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) are basically the same story, with a misanthropic madman trying to start a war between the two blocks as the USSR and the USA blame each other for some unexplained incidents that the guy secretly orchestrated. There's also the action sequence with a lot of gunfire in a very large set.
TSWLM is the best of the bunch, due to its creativity, a love interest who's not just a damsel in distress and the introduction of Jaws. Moonraker suffers from diminished returns, and too much silliness. The Rio scenes are overlong, and Jaws is mostly played for laughs. But it's also the last film designed by Ken Adam, the last great score by John Barry (even if The Living Daylights has its moments), and there's definitely something that the next films have been unable to capture.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

The Best Bond Film is View to a Kill.

The first 30 minutes are good. Then everyone involved completely lost interest.

[newbridge]

Goldeneye is one of the best Bonds, when will all you anti-Brosnan oldies just admit it.

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

there's definitely something that the next films have been unable to capture.

It was the end of the 70s. Star Wars had shaken up the world of movie blockbusters. Bond just seemed ridiculous. They never knew where to go after that: For Your Eyes Only experiments with being a serious, gadget-free Cold War spy film, then Octopussy brings the gadgets back, then View To A Kill just loses the will to continue after a reasonably exciting bit of chasing about. After that they start cycling though the same options with different actors.

[greenman]

Goldeneye is one of the best Bonds, when will all you anti-Brosnan oldies just admit it.

I agree it is although mainly because he plays it relatively straight with an excellent cast around him and a good plot, it was in the films afterwards that he started doing a very unconvincing merger of Connery and Moore coming across as someone mentioned more like a dodgy uncle.

[Replies From View]

Everyone should do what I do and pronounce the "Live" in 'Live and Let Die' to rhyme with "skive".  Makes it sound like some kind of concert and some people even bother correcting your pronunciation because they think you've accidentally got it wrong - a great wheeze!

[biggytitbo]

Everyone should do what I do and pronounce the "Live" in 'Live and Let Die' to rhyme with "skive".  Makes it sound like some kind of concert and some people even bother correcting your pronunciation because they think you've accidentally got it wrong - a great wheeze!

Also, its 'the world in which we're livin' of course.

[garbed_attic]

Goldeneye is one of the best Bonds, when will all you anti-Brosnan oldies just admit it.

My first wank was after having watched the Xenia Onatopp sauna scene. I was surprised, delighted and alarmed by the experience (as I imagine may be common).

True factz.

[biggytitbo]

My first wank was after having watched the Xenia Onatopp sauna scene. I was surprised, delighted and alarmed by the experience (as I imagine may be common).

True factz.

Then you got chucked out of the cinema?

[grassbath]

My first wank was after having watched the Xenia Onatopp sauna scene. I was surprised, delighted and alarmed by the experience (as I imagine may be common).

True factz.

Me too. I was also fond of the bit where she shags and murders the naval captain, though was dubious when someone at school said she killed him "with a pen knife in her fanny." Rewound that VHS until it was knackered.

[garbed_attic]

Then you got chucked out of the cinema?

And then I got off the bus.

[Noodle Lizard]

Also, its 'the world in which we're livin' of course.

He's only just now started to say: "I can't remember.  I think it's 'in which we're living'".  But it is blatantly sung as "in which we live in", which is also the way it's transcribed in the official sheet music, the lyrics booklet on my Bond Songs CD as well as the liner notes on McCartney's All The Best CD.  Now I know that's not 100% definitive, but there's more evidence pointing towards him being a big old grammatical idiot than not.