Bond

[thecuriousorange]

According to that article, Sam Smith's turd of a song won an Oscar.

[magval]

Aye but they only ever have like four or five songs to pick from don't they? Plus it had class strings, the vocal line wasn't so bad, it just happened to be sung in his voice.

Maybe they award them based on their sheet music form?

[thecuriousorange]

The best movie song is Deeper Underground by Jamiriqaui and that probably didn't even get nominated.

[Noodle Lizard]

Even by Bond theme standards this is a bit "flash-in-the-pan" innit? Not sure anyone heard Billie Eilish when she appeared suddenly last year and thought "begging to be a Bond song, this". Then again, Sam Smith. Just commission Adam Buxton to do all of them and have done with it.

EDIT: it's just occurred to me that both Sam Smith and Adele have sort of fallen away since their Bonds, and now I'm struggling to think of anyone who became more successful as a result of doing a Bond theme. Aside from yer Tom Joneses, Paul McCartneys and Madonnas who were already huge in their own right, there's a lot of Garbages, A-has and Duran Durans. Hard to say with Shirley Bassey, since that's basically all she's known for. How'd Carly Simon fare, despite Nobody Does It Better being one of the more iconic Bond songs in history?

[popcorn]

Sort of a version of the Sports Illustrated jinx, ie regression to the mean.

Basically if you're doing a Bond theme you're probably about as big as a musical act is statistically likely to become, after which the only way is down.

[Captain Z]

Why you gotta sing that Bond Theme so loud - because we want to, because we want to!

[joaquin closet]

Even by Bond theme standards this is a bit "flash-in-the-pan" innit? Not sure anyone heard Billie Eilish when she appeared suddenly last year and thought "begging to be a Bond song, this". Then again, Sam Smith. Just commission Adam Buxton to do all of them and have done with it.

EDIT: it's just occurred to me that both Sam Smith and Adele have sort of fallen away since their Bonds, and now I'm struggling to think of anyone who became more successful as a result of doing a Bond theme. Aside from yer Tom Joneses, Paul McCartneys and Madonnas who were already huge in their own right, there's a lot of Garbages, A-has and Duran Durans. Hard to say with Shirley Bassey, since that's basically all she's known for. How'd Carly Simon fare, despite Nobody Does It Better being one of the more iconic Bond songs in history?

Adele didn't fall away, her album released a few year after skyfall (the one with Hello on it) was flipping massive. Been a few years since she released any music, but if she did it would be fucking huge, sales wise. Bigger than any other UK artist bar maybe Sheeran.

In regards to Eilish, I don't think she's flash in the pan. Recent, sure, but she's gonna be around for a long, long time.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Adele beats basically every other artist regarding sales. She's bigger than Beyoncé, bigger than anybody else. She set up a record in the US by selling 3M copies of 25 in its week of release in 2015. In the UK, she sold 800k copies in the first week, topping Oasis' Be Here Now, the previous record holder. For comparison, Ed Sheeran's latest ranks 3rd in the same category (672k).

[Dr Rock]

Still don't know any of her songs

[Noodle Lizard]

I got my timeline mixed up there, I thought Skyfall was from around the same time as that one. Still, where is she now? Bedsit in Bromley, I expect.

I don't mean to disparage Eilish either, I just found it surprising and it seems like the result of someone Googling "music people like 2019" moreso than being a good fit. Then again, that's probably been the case with a lot of Bond themes. The question is whether it helps or hinders a career in the long-run, I suppose.

[Norton Canes]

Why you gotta sing that Bond Theme so loud - because we want to, because we want to!

Money(penny) to the B

[beanheadmcginty]

Should have got Lizzo to sing it. And play the Bond girl.

[Wet Blanket]

I'm surprised that somebody apparently as cool and current as Billie Eilish has agreed to such a massive sell-out gig so early in her career. Adele and Sam Smith were already ploughing the furrow of Radio 2 mum music to a certain extent, which fits the Bond brand, but Eilish's album is pretty abrasive in the classic 'I'm a teenager everything's shit' sort of way. I'd have thought James Bond films were exactly the sort of thing she'd sneer at. Is she gonna be one of those acts that release one great, edgy album then immediately join the mainstream?

[madhair60]

Not sure, she'd have to release a great album or listenable record first.

[Cardenio I]

youre a bad guy

[Piggyoioi]

since Craigs' Bonds tastes seem to be getting younger with each movie, she's definetley old enough to be the new bond girl now

[thecuriousorange]

I hope they go for a "modern twist on the formula" (I actually like the Die Another Day song, for all its many faults) rather than putting her in a ballgown and giving her a ballad. DUH. Or should that be Duh-ble O Seven?

[Mike Upchat]

[tag]Gothsinger[/tag]

[thecuriousorange]

This is out in less than two months and I'll be sad to see Craig go, as patchy as his films sometimes were. I don't think Quantum of Solace was that bad, certainly nowhere near as poor as Spectre, which was his one true turkey (so far). Now that we're out of the EU and can make our own laws, I think we should put a three film limit on Bond actors.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

My issues with QoS are more with the directing than the script (even if it needed some more development).
Marc Forster aims at a Paul Greengrass shaky cam and quick cuts style for the action sequences, without all the storyboarding and preparation work that make these scenes work. Just take the opening car chase. A bunch of dark grey cars chasing Bond's dark grey car. Greengrass would have dropped visual cues (like an highlighted color), to allow the audience to follow the action with some degree of clarity in the middle of the confusion. Forster just understands the gimmicks without the logic. It's also obvious when there's this clumsy hand to hand fight scene in the Haiti hotel room with the consultant who looks like Craig. It's nearly impossible to differentiate the two of them.
Then, Forster decided, for some reason, to stage the film around four big action sequences, each of one related to one element: earth in Italy, water in Haiti, air (the plane fight) and fire (the hotel exploding), and some other idiotic symbolism. What is the point of covering Gemma Arterton in oil other than a reminder of Goldfinger?

That said, Craig obviously has a blast every time he has a scene opposite Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini or Jeffrey Wright.

Which is far more than Spectre, where his big moment is opposite the rat at the Tangier hotel. Something went awfully wrong with the script on this one, and everybody went out of ideas by the time we reach the big Spectre meeting in Rome, turning everything into a Roger Moore-era travelogue, the kind of stuff that Mendes desperately wanted to avoid on Skyfall.

[Thomas]

This is out in less than two months and I'll be sad to see Craig go, as patchy as his films sometimes were. I don't think Quantum of Solace was that bad, certainly nowhere near as poor as Spectre, which was his one true turkey (so far). Now that we're out of the EU and can make our own laws, I think we should put a three film limit on Bond actors.

Can't believe he's only done five Bond flicks in 14 years. I've done more than that and I've been Bond for 0 years.

For me, Casino Royale is great. Perfect reboot, skilful modern adaptation - mad that it came from the quills of the war criminals who wrote Die Another Die. QoS is slight, a half-forgotten daydream, an optional DVD extra. After loads of interesting offscreen adventures we're not privy to, Skyfall is a big, gorgeous, meta-anniversary special, though 007 broods silently for 90% of the film and spends the remainder making mistakes. Perhaps he's too busy admiring the lovely scenery. Spectre was a wet attempt to join in with the Marvel-like trend for continuity; delving into Bond's mysterious background was justified in the anniversary special, but not here. Secret brother, for fuck's sake.

Craig's Bond has quit MI6 more times than he's done the gunbarrel sequence. He's lived a cyclical life, going rogue, retiring, and coming back. Being knackered and then putting on a sharp suit and promising he's ready to get to work. Hopefully, in No Time to Die, are brave Bond can finally rest in peace.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

My personal theory about Spectre is that SPECTRE and Blofeld were very forcibly shoehorned into an existing script developed for months (or the script was merged with ideas for the second half of a two-parter that would have been about Quantum) when EON managed to buy all the rights belonging to Kevin McClory. By making these elements an integral part of the plot, they got Sony to pay the entire bill for the McClory rights in the final entry in the production deal started with Casino Royale.

Latest rumour is that the next film is nearly three hour long. That would be, by far, the longest Bond ever. Casino Royale, Skyfall and Spectre are all between 140 and 150 minutes.

[Captain Z]

I've sat through QoS at least twice and the only things I remember about it is that he runs up some scaffolding at the start and then near the end a big building in the desert goes all on fire for some reason.

[Dex Sawash]

I think I may have never seen a Bond film movie at a cinema. I'm 54.

[greenman]

My personal theory about Spectre is that SPECTRE and Blofeld were very forcibly shoehorned into an existing script developed for months (or the script was merged with ideas for the second half of a two-parter that would have been about Quantum) when EON managed to buy all the rights belonging to Kevin McClory. By making these elements an integral part of the plot, they got Sony to pay the entire bill for the McClory rights in the final entry in the production deal started with Casino Royale.

This has been pretty much confirmed hasn't it? its faults do I think stand out the more due to parts of it showing a lot of potential, the opening, the stuff with Mr White and the journey though Morocco all belong in a much better film.

Rewatching QoS recently the editing wasn't as offensive as I remember after the opening 15 mins, moreso it felt like a film without much of a middle act.

[Kelvin]

This has been pretty much confirmed hasn't it? its faults do I think stand out the more due to parts of it showing a lot of potential, the opening, the stuff with Mr White and the journey though Morocco all belong in a much better film.

Yes, I actually think it's a pretty good film, very atmospheric, right up until the car chase after the Spectre meeting, at which point the entire tone changes to something much more goofy and Moore-influenced. That car chase alone features the bit with Bond playing the wrong music, and the bit with him pushing an elderly man backwards down a road in his car. It's like the film is written by someone completely different from that point on. Everything prior to that is much more straight faced and in keeping with the heightened but gritty tone of a film like Skyfall.     

[thecuriousorange]

Seen the new trailer? They've replaced the sighing way he says "Bond, James Bond" since the last one. I thought it was a funny moment in Trailer #1. Shame.

[Thomas]

I recall that in Spectre they changed the way he delivered 'I was taking some overdue holiday', which had also been better in the early trailer.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

That's a Super Bowl trailer that's 45 secs. long. It's a given that they won't keep everything from the 2 mins. version, especially as they also have to put some new shots and plot points.

[greenman]

Yes, I actually think it's a pretty good film, very atmospheric, right up until the car chase after the Spectre meeting, at which point the entire tone changes to something much more goofy and Moore-influenced. That car chase alone features the bit with Bond playing the wrong music, and the bit with him pushing an elderly man backwards down a road in his car. It's like the film is written by someone completely different from that point on. Everything prior to that is much more straight faced and in keeping with the heightened but gritty tone of a film like Skyfall.   

Certainly didn't think it was nearly as bad as a lot of the talk but as you say the attempts to force some kind of revival of Moore camp didn't come off and Blofeld as a whole felt rather shoehorned. The stuff on Morocco before that did actually work very well though pushing a somewhat more elevated tone and Seydoux was IMHO the first bond girl with an interesting character to play.