654 replies to this topic

[Red Barchetta]

I liked DAD as a whole, except for the CGI surfing, and Madonna scenes.

[Double-0-7]

Ah, my favorite thread!

It makes my day to see this gem pop-up every couple of months. The film was about half of a good Bond movie and half cringe-worthy, but Zencat's review of the evening with Mr Axworthy shows why he gets paid to write.

This should be required reading in middle school, long live the thread!

[DaveBond21]

Ah, my favorite thread!

It makes my day to see this gem pop-up every couple of months. The film was about half of a good Bond movie and half cringe-worthy, but Zencat's review of the evening with Mr Axworthy shows why he gets paid to write.

This should be required reading in middle school, long live the thread!

I agree, and I enjoy bumping it up.

[The Richmond Spy]

I would not be the Bond fan I am today if it were not for DAD...and I'm not kidding.

[Bryce (003)]

Damn I through a good party.

Always makes me laugh to keep seeing this thread pop back up on the boards.

[DaveBond21]

Damn I through a good party.

Always makes me laugh to keep seeing this thread pop back up on the boards.

I bump it up as a tribute to you, zencat, Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan and the fact that we all have different opinions on Bond.

[Double-0-7]

If I'm feeling a little blue I do a search for the thread, reread Zencat's review, page through a few comments, then give it a bump so others can enjoy it as well.

I should print this out and get Zencat's autograph on it at DTBB3!

[DamnCoffee]

Zencat will never live this down will he!

[Jim]

Zencat will never live this down will he!

Shouldn't have to. It's a glorious expression of enthusiasm for what must have been a great experience. I envy him it.

[zencat]

Zencat will never live this down will he!

Shouldn't have to. It's a glorious expression of enthusiasm for what must have been a great experience. I envy him it.

Thanks, Jim.

Actually, when I re-read my top post review -- sans the fanboy enthusiasm of the moment -- I still stand-by much of what I said.

[HH007]

Zencat will never live this down will he!

Shouldn't have to. It's a glorious expression of enthusiasm for what must have been a great experience. I envy him it.

That makes two of us.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Halfway through DIE ANOTHER DAY, as Bond is traveling into Iceland, I turned to my companion sitting beside me in the Director�s Hall of The Bridge Theater--our very own Bryce (more on the amazing evening Bryce organized here)--and I asked him in all seriousness, �Is it possible we are watching the BEST James Bond movie EVER?"

No, zen, it's not.

[DaveBond21]

Zencat will never live this down will he!

Shouldn't have to. It's a glorious expression of enthusiasm for what must have been a great experience. I envy him it.

Thanks, Jim.

Actually, when I re-read my top post review -- sans the fanboy enthusiasm of the moment -- I still stand-by much of what I said.

Well I have said a few times that the first hour is pretty good, and I can remember thinking that this is a good Bond film. It sadly went downhill probably as soon we see the Ice Palace.

There are some great scenes - the PTS is great, Cuba and Raoul (reminds me of Mathis), and the fencing scene. Even the meeting with M in the underground station. And it was fun to see the old gadgets when Bond meets Q.

[Judo chop]

You know... this thread has been rolling on under its own inertia for so long now, I wonder if we've begun to forget just how and where it started? Like the great civil liberty movements of our world, we tend to take for granted the efforts of our ancestors while we sip the wine from the grapes they planted. Time to pay a little homage to that stumpy little wacko behind the curtain. I give you...

ZENCAT'S REVIEW OF DIE ANOTHER DAY - QUITE POSSIBLY THE GREATEST BOND FILM EVER!!!

Take a few moments to celebrate our history with me, will you? I've highlighted some of my favorite passages.

I know we�ve had too many reviews already, but hey, after 2587 posts, I�ve earned this! So here goes. (Obviously, this is SPOILER filled.)


THE BEST JAMES BOND MOVIE EVER?
A review of DIE ANOTHER DAY
By John Cox aka zencat

Halfway through DIE ANOTHER DAY, as Bond is traveling into Iceland, I turned to my companion sitting beside me in the Director�s Hall of The Bridge Theater--our very own Bryce (more on the amazing evening Bryce organized here)--and I asked him in all seriousness, �Is it possible we are watching the BEST James Bond movie EVER?"

Better than FRWL? Better than Goldfinger? Better than OHMSS? Better than TSWLM?

Is it possible for #20 to be #1?

I held my breath for the rest of the movie as scene after scene worked a Bond magic I haven�t felt in years. I got a little nervous when I felt the narrative getting overwhelmed by the action in Iceland, and yes, it went a bit OTT with the much maligned CGI stunt (but it wasn�t that bad, relax). Then that amazing climax kicked in and I'm breathless again. Then the Moneypenny beat at the end hits like an unexpected grand slam home run and when DIE ANOTHER DAY is over I�m sitting in my seat absolutely stunned. I decide then and there it was, indeed, the BEST James Bond movie I had ever seen!!

After the movie, I, and 55 other formally attired Bond fans, recovered from the experience over pints of Guinness and fish and chips at an English pub (the whole place reserved for us and all was on the house, thank you again Bryce!). I decided maybe DAD wasn�t the �best� Bond film of them all�but it was damn close! And it�s very possible when I see it again (which I MUST do ASAP) I�ll come out saying it is indeed #1.

Yes, I liked this movie that much!

Okay, breathe, breathe� For those of you interested, I�m going to briefly bullet point my thoughts and reactions to the major sections and elements of the movie. Here we go.

Pre-titles: A surprise here. Despite was what others have been saying, I thought the pre-titles was nothing special. I feared a re-hash of the TND pre-titles, and it was (but the hovercrafts were cool). I also didn�t care for that washed-out overly saturated look the DP gave the whole sequence. Bond movies are not supposed to look that way. Stop trying so hard, I thought. But then there was something about Bond hanging on the bell after the hovercraft goes over the waterfall that made me sit up and say, hmmm, nice Bond moment there. Then�

Titles: Amazing, breathtaking, inventive, interesting, incredible! Even the Madonna song with that annoying audio drop out couldn�t ruin it. Here I realized DAD was boldly experimenting with the formula without betraying it. This was Bond, but not the same old Bond and it worked beautifully. Oh, Scorpion Girl�I love you, you little savage cutie-pie.

Bearded Bond/Hong Kong stuff: This was so bold, so unexpected, so unBond, and so overtly dramatic, I should have hated it. But I didn�t. I loved it. Loved it! Bond goes into cardiac arrest and dies on the table? I was stunned. The audience was stunned. The movie had us all by the throats. We�re not just watching a great Bond movie here�we�re watching a great movie, period. Amazing. And then Bond walks into the Hong Kong hotel in his ragged condition but still with full Bond aplomb and, hey, this movie is working!

Cuba: Okay, for everyone who says Dalton was the book Bond...no, you�re wrong. Pierce is the book Bond here, Pierce is Connery�s Bond here, Pierce IS James Bond here! This is the best part of the film, in my opinion. Classic Bond. I love, LOVE, that Bond and Jinx hit the sheets right off the bat. Of course this is how it should be. I realized I�ve gotten very tired with the Bond-has-sex-with-the-main-girl only-at-the-end formula. I think it works much better that Bond and the main girl START their relationship with pure, animal lust, then arc to respect one another. It�s Bond and Tracy. Sex first...love later. Nice.

London calling: All the London stuff is fabulous. I loved the Blades swordfight, classic Bond and villain duel turned up to the maximum. (Re Madonna�s cameo--can someone say, �Vaseline on the camera lense.� How vain...and sad. Madonna has become Barbara Walters.) I wish I didn�t know about the VR training sequence because that would have blown me out of my socks (curse the internet!). John Cleese IS Q. �Nuff said. And the invisible Vanquish...yes, yes! It�s about time we got more than rockets behind headlights. (Shame we didn�t see Bond�s flat in all this.)

Iceland: Don�t get me wrong, I love the location, the ice palace, the Icarus demonstration, the dragster, Miranda, etc...but I did feel the wall-to-wall action in this part of the film started overwhelming what up until then had been a very clean narrative. Jinx is captured and saved twice in the same location? Overkill. Seemed like a hard choice should have been made here and a major set-piece should have been sacrificed to lighten the load on the storyline (and the audience). In my opinion, the big glacier surfing stunt could have been lost, cool as it was. My objection to this scene wasn�t with the cheesy CGI, it�s with the fact that it was SO big it played like a sequence ending climax and took away from the ice ballet car chase that followed. The audience was exhausted. But the ice ballet was so well done that it still worked beautifully and Bond saving Jinx brought the narrative back to emotional clarity. Still, I got a bit lost amid all the action in Iceland, but this is my ONLY complaint.

Climactic battle: Awesome, incredible, one of the most exciting Bond climaxes ever filmed! I love the Icarus satellite burning it�s way through Korea as the plane disintegrates. Loved that Miranda took the time during all this chaos to change into that sexy fencing outfit for her battle with Jinx. Miranda�s death was a bit shocking, but effective. And Graves died the way a Bond villain should die�big! The audience cheered.

Then there was the final Moneypenny scene that had the audience almost on their feet with cheers and laughs and, yes, DAD in my mind at that moment was the BEST JAMES BOND MOVIE EVER!

Now to address a few of the elements of controversy I had heard before going in.

DAD goes OTT with the sci-fi element: What? How? I think DAD did what all the �spectacular� Bond films do and that�s bring it right to the line without crossing it. Nothing in DAD is impossible�it�s improbable, yes, but it�s not impossible and that�s the Cubby Broccoli edict. No probs. I welcome the return the BIG fun Bond film, and DAD is certainly that.

Jinx/Berry: Come on, she was awesome! Like it or not, Halle Berry as Jinx enters the pantheon of great Bond girls. She was also flippin� hot! It�s been a long time since I�ve had a sexual fantasy about a Bond Girl and, well, Jinx delivered.

Gunbarrel CGI bullet: What's the big deal? It's fine. I like it.

Too much CGI: Nah, it was fine. Even the much-maligned glacier surfing stunt didn�t bother me. Hey, I didn�t let the Tarzan yell ruin Octopussy, I�m not going to let one bad special effect ruin DAD. I�m there to have fun, and I did. So should you.

Congrats Eon, MGM, and everyone involved with DIE ANOTHER DAY. Even if�when I come down from my high�I decide it�s not the best James Bond movie of them all, it�s still the best Bond movie in over a decade and one that reinvigorates the series and that�s an amazing accomplishment.

Here's to you, Zencat.

[DamnCoffee]

OK Zencat, you made me appreciate Die Another Day just a tincy wincy bit more.

[Gravity's Silhouette]

Iceland: Don�t get me wrong, I love the location,

An underused location to be sure. Not even an establishing shot of Bond flying into Reykjavik.

Jinx is captured and saved twice in the same location? Overkill. Seemed like a hard choice should have been made here and a major set-piece should have been sacrificed to lighten the load on the storyline (and the audience).

Agreed. The ice wave and the speedster could have been cut, and the film would've only lost 10 minutes of action. The script should have been reworked to avoid having Jinx needing to be saved twice, which brings up my next point....

In retrospect, I find DAD a very odd film to have come straight off the heels of TWINE, and I'm wondering how much of that had to do with 9/11. I remember wire reports saying that the studio ordered big changes to the script after 9/11. Not having ever seen any version of the DAD script, I'm wondering if we would have had a much more serious, less sci-fi heavy movie had 9/11 not occured. The "conventional wisdom" (which I never bought into) right after 9/11 was that films such as Die Hard and True Lies could never work again....that audiences would never be able to accept such serious, topical, terrorist-themed movies as entertainment ever again. So did DAD go from a serious, timely thriller to the more light and fluffy fantasy-driven vehicle that we got?

Weird thing is, I didn't have as much trouble with the gene-therapy/plastic-surgery subplot than I did with what appears to be a glaring plot hole in the film: how did Moon go from being a Colonel in North Korea in the Summer of 2001, to a knighted, billionaire industrialist/adventurer in the Richard Branson mold with the capital and resources to launch a space weapon just 14 months later?

I thought the film was cast well and most of the performances were very good (Berry was good, but not great). But some of it treaded too close to BATMAN AND ROBIN territory for me, especially Graves' presentation of Icarus. The overuse of CGI hurt the film.

I thought it was a shame that the name Gala Brand was dropped in favor of Miranda Frost; everyone involved must've thought the audience was stupid and we wouldn't get that Gala was cold and aloof, so they had to name her "Frost" as well. Ugh. The film seemed to hint that Frost was lesbian and that she had some sort of crush or relationship with Verity.

[zencat]

Yay! The thread's back!

[Judo chop]

Yay! The thread's back!

For some of us, Zen, it never left.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Weird thing is, I didn't have as much trouble with the gene-therapy/plastic-surgery subplot than I did with what appears to be a glaring plot hole in the film: how did Moon go from being a Colonel in North Korea in the Summer of 2001, to a knighted, billionaire industrialist/adventurer in the Richard Branson mold with the capital and resources to launch a space weapon just 14 months later?

Perhaps that was part of the rewrite?

[Gravity's Silhouette]

Yay! The thread's back!

Well, I'm on a personal Bond-movie marathon right now as we head into November, so some of these films I'm seeing for the first time in years and feel the need to comment upon them. It's interesting what time can do to your perspective.

[Publius]

Do you think the opinions of CR will have cooled 9 months from now, after the luster of opening night has worn off, and the DVD has allowed a much closer inspection?

Two years on, and nope.

[Judo chop]

Do you think the opinions of CR will have cooled 9 months from now, after the luster of opening night has worn off, and the DVD has allowed a much closer inspection?

Two years on, and nope.

Quite. A much closer inspection of the DVD has had just the opposite effect on my opinion.

[PrinceKamalKhan]

I thought it was a shame that the name Gala Brand was dropped in favor of Miranda Frost

I'm sad that the expected quip from Bond about "defrosting" her never came in the final print. I do agree with Purvis & Wade for their reasoning of dropping the Gala Brand name and changing her to Miranda Frost. P & W said they though the name "Gala Brand" should be saved for a character who resembles Fleming's Moonraker heroine, i.e., be the "girl who got away" from Bond and dumped him for another man. Also, Rosamund Pike said she preferred it on the DVD commentary since Miranda was the name of a female character from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

[Mr. Blofeld]

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

So... the way Jinx is played at the beginning; i.e., killing the geneticist, yadda-yadda, is a way of covering Graves' tracks?

[PrinceKamalKhan]

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

So... the way Jinx is played at the beginning; i.e., killing the geneticist, yadda-yadda, is a way of covering Graves' tracks?

Possibly. Remember she also says something along the lines of "You think I'm good?"

Do you think the opinions of CR will have cooled 9 months from now, after the luster of opening night has worn off, and the DVD has allowed a much closer inspection?

Two years on, and nope.

Quite. A much closer inspection of the DVD has had just the opposite effect on my opinion.

It will be interesting to see if opinions on Casino Royale change post-Quantum of Solace. It interesting how a later film can sometimes affect how we see an earlier one. I know that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service went up for me post-Casino Royale whereas The World is not Enough went down(not that it was particularly high to begin with). I don't think my positive view of Casino Royale will change too much since it has the advantage of being a relatively faithful adaptation of Fleming source material.

[Gravity's Silhouette]

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

So... the way Jinx is played at the beginning; i.e., killing the geneticist, yadda-yadda, is a way of covering Graves' tracks?

Hmmm...interesting. I remember when the story got out that Berry had been approached by EON or MGM to star in the film that she was being hired to play "the villainess Jinx". At the time I stated that there was no way she was going to be hired to play a villainess; that she was being hired to complement Brosnan and to have an active, lead role in the film. I never believed for one second she was going to take a smaller role and let an unknown actress be the lead Bond Girl, and this was *BEFORE* filming started or the rest of the cast was announced. Berry was integral to the marketing of Die Another Day, and in some of the print ads she got above the title billing with Brosnan, and she also got top-billing in the tv spots and the final trailer here in the U.S.

I think the press simply got carried away with the idea of Berry playing a "villainess" and they phrased her role incorrectly.

Going into the film I pretty much knew Frost was the double-agent, but I still enjoyed the movie and her performance. I wondered, though, whether casual film goers would figure it out before the big reveal that she had betrayed Bond. Same with Elektra in TWINE. Was anyone surprised that these two women betrayed Bond?

I'm still looking for a DAD script, or any information that would tell us what action scenes were removed or rewritten after 9/11. Even as it stands, the film was somewhat controversial in South Korea. I remember people picketing the film, and it might have even been seen as being an extension of U.S. propaganda from George W. Bush, because he'd earlier mentioned North Korea as part of the "Axis of Evil", although I felt the film portrayed the North Koreans even-handedly.

[Double-0-7]

Yay! The thread's back!

Sweet, it was in remission for nearly 2 months!

[Mr. Blofeld]

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

So... the way Jinx is played at the beginning; i.e., killing the geneticist, yadda-yadda, is a way of covering Graves' tracks?

Hmmm...interesting. I'm still looking for a DAD script, or any information that would tell us what action scenes were removed or rewritten after 9/11. Even as it stands, the film was somewhat controversial in South Korea. I remember people picketing the film, and it might have even been seen as being an extension of U.S. propaganda from George W. Bush, because he'd earlier mentioned North Korea as part of the "Axis of Evil", although I felt the film portrayed the North Koreans even-handedly.

So, d'you think the film is basically a bizarre amalgamam of realism (for the Brosnan era, being the South Korean portion of the film) and over-the-top Moore-ian hyperbole (everything after Bond jumps out of the hospital ship)?

[Blofeld's Cat]

Yay! The thread's back!

Just accept it!

[Mr_Wint]

Makes me wonder if earlier script versions meant for Miranda f.k.a. Gala to be the good girl and Jinx to be the bad girl. There were rumors that this was changed and rewritten after Halle Berry won the Oscar during filming.

So... the way Jinx is played at the beginning; i.e., killing the geneticist, yadda-yadda, is a way of covering Graves' tracks?

Hmmm...interesting. I remember when the story got out that Berry had been approached by EON or MGM to star in the film that she was being hired to play "the villainess Jinx". At the time I stated that there was no way she was going to be hired to play a villainess; that she was being hired to complement Brosnan and to have an active, lead role in the film. I never believed for one second she was going to take a smaller role and let an unknown actress be the lead Bond Girl, and this was *BEFORE* filming started or the rest of the cast was announced. Berry was integral to the marketing of Die Another Day, and in some of the print ads she got above the title billing with Brosnan, and she also got top-billing in the tv spots and the final trailer here in the U.S.

I think it was mentioned that Jinx was topless in the beachscene, in an earlier draft. Maybe this was the main reason why Halle Berry was selected for the role from the beginning (since she was famous for that after 'Swordfish'). Anyway, she played the 'bad girl turns good' role in DAD so the media reports was not completely wrong.