147 replies to this topic

[Blue Eyes]

Originally posted by General Koskov
Why?  I mean, sure N Korea wouldn't let them in because they bashed the country, but why not S Korea?

Well that would be exactly the same as not filming there at all. And what locations would they find in South Korea that they would actually need?

And Cuba would be so cheap to film in...or did Castro not like the strangely-familiar bearded man in Octopussy?

It has something to do with a terrorist threat I believe. They're about you know.

PS. Why does socıalıst Cuba have a private health clinic?

To pro-long the life of Cuban leaders.

[rafterman]

they were denied filming in South Korea because they didn't like the subject matter, the subject matter that is now causing a bit of an uproar there...

[Jim]

G is for Graves, Gustav. Let me see if I've followed the chronology correctly. At some point before the year 2000, Col Moon and Miranda Frost are on the Harvard fencing team. Col Moon then fixes it for Frost to win the Gold medal in Sydney. At some point before 11 September 2001 (I think we have to assume this given the crassly insensitive comment about the world changing shoved into the maw of the Dench), M sends James Bond to investigate Col Moon - without checking whether said Col Moon has any ties to her service. But that's another story. James Bond and Colonel Moon have a fight in a model of a temple and Col Moon drowns. Or does he? Bond is captured, released 14 months later and suddenly we have Gustav Graves kicking about. So...in that 14 months, Moon/Graves has done the following:

1. Pulled himself out of the water
2. Presumably walked back through the minefield
3. Somehow got out of Korea. Unclear how. Let's assume supporters in the North Korean army...
4. Who pay for him to go to Cuba and for his gene therapy? Or does he use the Van Bierk diamonds for that? And if so, considering that they've been blown all over Aldershot with C4, how does he recover them all.
5. Unclear how long gene therapy takes. "Some time"
6. "Some time" later, Moon appears, the gene therapy having apparently made him taller and given him a fearsome set of teeth.
7. Invents Gustav Graves - presumably orphan and I'm sure there was a reference to him being Argentinian (might be in novelisation)
8. Somehow - unexplained in film - sets up Graves Diamonds
9. Somehow - unexplained in film - builds Ice Palace
10. Somehow - unexplained in film - acquires/builds/pinches damn great satellite weapon thing (nobody notice this? Assume this is the Moonraker/invisible space station reference)
11. Somehow - entirely impossibly - an Argie is knighted (and very unlikely to happen within 14 months of first appearing, frankly)
12. Somehow - completely impossibly - becomes member of London club within 14 months. Yeah, right.
13. James Bond released.

That's a busy old 14 months, innit?

Why not make it longer? Wouldn't three years a) make it much more realistic to do all this (within the bounds of these things being credible at all) and be of "some" wit in explaining the three year gap between this film and TWINE? Or is it c) we can stretch imagination that a brand new super duper Phillishave/Norelco tat thing can get rid of 14 months's stubble, but for fear of litigation from an angry cretin, they were never going to suggest three years' worth?

c.

G is also for Gauntlet, Throw down the. After all the prominence given to this techno-mitten, I was anticpating a jolly fine joke along these lines - Bond has Graves at gunpoint..."Throw down th..." I dunno; I'd have laughed.

And ultimately, it's a bit odd, isn't it. Blofeld had pirhanas, Stromberg had a shark pool, Sanchez used a decompression chamber and Drax had ravenous hounds. Graves has a...glove. Christ, run, he's getting the glove out! Tempted to imagine initial ideas meeting:-

A: OK, we've got this duel and duality thing going on with the villain. Any notable device or trick we can give him?
B: Sharks with frickin' laser beams on them?
A: Er...no.
B: Outraged cormorant?
A: I think not
B: Erm...a glove?
A: You're kiddin' me.
B: No, no...wait, hold on, this is good. OK, he's got this glove, right?
A: Right.
B: And...it's like got a trackball mouse thing on it...
A: WHy?
B: So we can say the film is "ripped out of the headlines"
A: Go on. You interest me, strangely
B:...and, and....he uses it to control this death ray from space!
A: Thank God. I thought you were going to suggest something really stupid then.

G is also for garbage, tantamount to.

[JackChase007]

Although I love the film to no end, this is the most entertaining thing on this board ever. Keep it up Jim. I love your little exchange between the writers.

[Lotus Esprit]

OOhh..I did not know that there were so many letters in the alphabet

[General Koskov]

Ah what a tangled web Mr Graves weaves...and I thought Renard's role was mysterious.

How exactly did someone who fences as a hobby get beaten by someone who has not fenced in at least fourteen months, and most likely not since he got his commission (and sabre) in the RN?

(Obviously because this particular officer is James Bond.)

[stromberg]

Jim, where is the rest of it?
Hope we don't have to wait for it as long as we did for the first part.

[1q2w3e4r]

Err Im with Jim.. Thunderball's the best film with FRWL. And Die Another Day (Comic book Simpson's guy's voice) *Worst film ever*

Well not really but dissapointing. I felt they poked fun at me. I take Bond seriously the producers didn't in the second hour. Cut out the ice dragster sequence which wasn't needed and you loose the glacier atrocitiousity and cut the chase into the hotel. THEN you'd have a great film. I can't get past the flaws, I didn't really like the end. But it would have been able to suffer it if the film didn't have the rest of the **** in it and Brosnan didn't look like he'd put he's wax model from Madam Tusonnes (sp) into take his place.

[Jim]

H is for Hovercraft, Inexplicable use of. OK, so let me understand this then. Bond has to fly to the Demilitarised Zone (ironically enough close to one of the largest barracks in the UK in Aldershot, irony fans. Aldershot: very, very similar to North Korea, especially some of the pubs, similar hostile atmos. I digress.) because there are mines, see, in the mud. Can't drive there (and we'll ignore for the moment why Col. Moon has a fleet of luvverly cars in his compound - where can he go for a spin? Perhaps...he's mad. Too easy an explanation, but it's the one I fear we'll get). Hovercrafts appear, and again we'll ignore the issue whether a hovercraft could set off a mine. Let's say...it can't. Bit of a chase through some mud and then over the model waterfall the model hovercraft goes, ding dong, ding dong....and then, a cohort of heavily armed North Koreans suddenly hove into view...in trucks. Them's right...trucks. Now hang on a momo...wouldn't trucks set off the mines? Is Gen. Moon that much of a cretin that he'd drive his chaps through a minefield? Patently. But - crivens - hang on another mo! If Gen Moon hadn't turned up we wouldn't have had Bond being captured and this wouldn't have "set up the motivation that drives Bond forward in this up to the minute techno thriller" (The Lechlade Bugle). So, the whole damn shebang is predicated on the basis that one can drive a truck over a landmine. Oh, tip top.

H is also for Halle?, Is the name Halle meant to be a reference to Comet. Just wondering.

H is also for Hotel Manager, Hong Kong. Bond films, amongst the general public to whom they are presented, seem not to have the best reputation for yer actual quality acting. On the whole, I tend to agree with this view. I don't watch them for the acting, and that's largely safe in the knowledge that I won't get very much of it. But this chap, whoever the hell he was...substantially the worst performance since that woman in For Your Eyes Only tried to pass off a Geordie accent as Scouse or whatever the hell she thought she was doing (remains unclear). Aside from this fly in the ointment, this turd in the jelly, the Hong Kong bit's quite fun, except I'm not entirely sure (and this I may be remembering incorrectly) why Bond still appears to be wearing the prison duds he was released in. This might not be a valid point were I to watch it again, but as that's not going to happen it remains a valid point in so far as I watched it once and that was nearly a month ago now. Hooray.

H is also for Holodeck, British Intelligence apparently has a. Yes...well. Hmm. And hmm once more. And a bit more hmm. And it's a holodeck used for facile sexual fantasy - which could be the shooting M, were I to make this a bit weird. I know - let's make it a crossover between Star Dreck and the Matrix. That'll be good. The kids love that. That'll speak to the youth of today and make James Bond a really happening character for the kid, rock on hep cat daddio. Look - one can put a pensioner in a Ferrari, but he's still a pensioner, non? For God's sake, leave Bond be. All this tinkering is turning the genre, which it used to be, into the generic. It's not even the case that this is just another Bond film; it's just another action film, which is a further stage of erosion. I don't necessarily dislike the film; I pity it.

H is for Hogwash, Utter.

[Jim]

I is for Intelligence, British and intelligence, British. Two very different concepts. The former has no sensible vetting system for its employees (as an example of the top o' the noddle, perhaps checking out where they went to university...and with whom...). It knows where its best agent is, but does not attempt any form of rescue operation (British Intelligence also being sponsored by Phillishave; that beard MUST grow). Has no idea how much said abandoned agent knows (if anything) about South Korean military secrets. Cannot find said agent when (gravel voiced trailer man) "he goes rogue". Employs Cuban sleepers with bad teeth and worse diction. British Intelligence? British Thick, more like. Ooh, see what I did there? Clever, huh?

British intelligence in the meantime has developed the following: VR training room, in which flimsy virtual objects appear to have substance. One of Mr Brosnan's better scenes as a result; the virtual chair, in which Bond is sitting at the start, but appears to have disappeared when depressing reality kicks in and we have a scene where Mr Brosnan and Mr Cleese shriek and moan and perform some sort of dog training act perceptible only to pipistrelle bats and sonar; the sexually frustrated secretary (recently facelifted model, with added "ditch the subtle approach"); the knife satellite dish, an odd combination at the best of times. As likely a marriage as Elton John's; the Invisible Car (more - pun ahoy! - of which in a moment).

So if the former had the intelligence of the latter, then the world would be a safer place. Is one of the several flimsy subtexts of this film intended to be that the people in control are frickin' idiots?

And did we need to be told that?

I is also for Irony, Almost a subtle. OK, so M loses/never takes up the opportunity to do the obvious, which is to get Miranda Frost to spy on Col. Moon, given their (assumed) relationship on "the Harvard fencing team". Look, M, love, put the drink down and listen. One finds "Harvard fencing team" by typing the words "Harvard fencing team" into Google (trademark acknowledged, hurrah!). Don't type in "prick AND foil" because you end up with something very bizarre...utterly perverted...hmmm..."add to favourites"...are people really doing that to one another ...www.bastemebitch.de... anyway, back to the point (fnarr)...is it meant to be ironic - or indeed intended - that M doesn't take up the opportunity to assign Frost to Moon but instead assigns Frost to Graves. That's almost clever. if it was intended. Which I doubt. Because that would be based on the monstrous supposition that M is a half-baked moron.

I is also for Invisibility, Dubious execution of the concept of. OK, reams (not literally; this is a paper free environment) have been written about the "Invisible Car" (and what the hell were they thinking? James Bond is Wonder Woman? Invisible car to go with Invisible acting?) and all that has been written will not bear repetition here. I'll restrict myself to the following. When the car is introduced to us, Cleese walks behind it. His legs go all funny (moved from the Ministry of Funny Walks to the Ministry of Defence - is that meant to be the reference. I thought that was quite clever, if intentional). What does this mean? That - in lay terms - one cannot technically "hide" behind the car, in a roundabout sort of way. So...how does Bond manage to hide behind it in Iceland. Surely he can be "seen through" it, just like the concept is utterly transparent. Taking that on board, and accepting, if we must, that there are these clever little cameras that do whatever the half-line of rushed dialogue states they do, then there must be these little cameras in:
a) the glass and windscreen
the rubber tyres
c) the snow sticking to the tyres
d) any frost descending on the car, on the basis it is parked in Iceland, not in a car park in the Cotswolds in June.

Clever snow, that

And forgive me, I may have been drifting off at this point, but when Bond jumps into a freezing lake as a sensible health and safety move, isn't that his invisible car perfectly visible behind him? OK, so every Bond films has its bloopers, so that's hardly a valid criticism, but that little scene smacks of last minute addition to ensure a reference to thunderball...ahh, Thunderball: espionage, action, spectacle, proper bird, proper Bond, slick, stunning...oh dear, I think I've just come.

I is also for Idiots, Do they really think that just because we will go to see their film which makes them and not us plenty of dollars, that they are at liberty to treat us like.

[Jim]

J is for Jordan or Johnson or Jaaaahhnnn-Sssonnnnn, Jinx. Whatever her name is. Do we get a real reason why she's in Cuba? No. Do we understand why she believes the word ornithologist to be a "mouthful"? No. Try "flauccinauccinihilipilification" if you want a mouthful. Or James Bond's willy. That might have been what you were talking about, but the subtlety of the deft scripting may have misled me at that point. Are we meant to understand that she's not really there to investigate Zao, but as I rather suspect until it was decided to make it a film uncritical of the Western powers in these "post-9/11 times" (blurggh), to steal the gene therapy for the good ol' USA? That at least would have added an element of interest and ambiguity and shadow to her character. Do we get that? No. Do we really want to sympathise with a person who brings a fig to bed? Surely that's a little...odd? Unless there's an absence of seed generally and she wanted to up the quotient. Do we understand that bit? No. Do we understand why and how she ends up in Iceland, given that she isn't about when Bond establishes that the diamonds are (here it comes again) African Frickin' Conflict Diamonds - how does she end up on Graves' tail (as t'were)? Are we told? No. Do we accept her "cover" as whatever it was - astronomer?- beyond the excuse for a big bang "joke" - blimey, if she thought horny ornithologist was a mouthful, God alone knows what she'll make of Quantum Quark Dynamics. Unless that's another sex joke for Jinx. Hurrah! Character exists for sex jokes and has nothing much to do with the plot. And this is a progression how far exactly from Mary Goodnight? Well, it all begins to go a bit Wai Lin at the end, the only real difference is a bit more screen time (Clause 3422(a) of Ms Berry's contract) and doesn't really need saving at the end, and that genuinely makes her a Bond girl, doesn't it. And then, at the "climax" (fnarr), what do we have...no, surely not...a sex joke!! Fab. Well worth a spin-off series.

J is also for Jaguar, The Zao. I just think this is substantially cooler than the Aston. Sorry. It appears to have far more gadgets in it. And there's no pretence at invisiblity. Quite glad they ditched the early draft proposals for the car, that instead of invisibility, it can disguise itself as one of those lovely Provencal villages, bathed in milky sunlight and replete with gap toothed peasants. Because that would have been utterly stupid. Still not entirely sure quite why Zao follows Bond into the Ice Palace - it's melting, yer twit - if Bond drives out again, get him then. If he doesn't, he's drowned. Seems like a waste of a jolly good car. Nifty colour too.

J is also for jumps, seasonal and (sort of related) jumps, parachute. OK - Graves being knighted, parachute jump blah blah, The Spy who Loved Me, blah blah, quite clearly a mid-spring, early summer morning. Rest of film suggests that it's taking place sometime in the mid-autumn of 2002. Bit odd, that. All I can possibly add about Bond's parachute "jump" in the floe-surfing bit is that the parachute used appears to be an entirely different affair to the parachute seen earlier stopping the silly ice rocket sled thing. And it all comes down to parachutes in the end. Are they really going to suggest that this is circularity for the Graves character - that we see him first with a parachute and we see him last with a parachute. The first time, the parachute is all a pretence, the Union Jack meaning nothing. The second time (we assume) it's North Korean army parachute. The irony is that the first jump is successful - hurrah for those promoting the Western powers - and the second is not - see, see what happens when one relies upon the parachutes of the axis of evil. This is (wake up, slow-witted children looking for depth and analogy in this rot) "significant". This is worth a Ph.D. : The relationship of the parachute to the story development arc in early 21st century twaddle. And it's all parachutes for Colonel Moon, innit? Doesn't have one in the first scene. Oh, there's so much to read into this that isn't really there...

And that last fight scene bugs me. The pay off line about meeting gravity os OK, -ish, but surely there was a moment to play on the sleep deprivation/insomnia thingie, which is an interesting (if shallow) character point - why not something like "Time to go to sleep" - OK, that's not up to much, but then I had three seconds, not three years to think it up

J is also for juvenile, barely sophisticated enough to be labelled

[Evil Doctor Cheese]

I'm agreeing with you so far Jim. Keep it up. You're making DAD enjoyable... shame Tamahori couldn't but there you go.

[Red Widow Dawn]

I love you, Evil Doctor Cheese.

[Evil Doctor Cheese]

I love me too! lol!

[Xenobia]

I am confused...yes, I know you know this Jim, but bear with me:

1) Which female character are you speaking of in FYEO?

2) When Bond jumps in the lake, you are speaking of when he "saves" Jinx, no? I don't think the car is supposed to be invisible at that point. He has turned it off.

Anyhoo...splendid work. You are a true critical genius.

-- Xenobia

[General Koskov]

Good job with the 'go to sleep' line, Jim! I was thinking of that too, but never said it (no, really). How about, 'Time to face your dreams.'?

Or, in the fashion of kids today, the totally irrelevant 'Yo momma!' which will actually fare better than Jinx' somewhat-relevant line.

[mattbowyer]

Don't you admire ambition. Throwing in everything but the kitchen sink for the sake of a good time. Lets try your conversation 'text type' with the finale...

a - so bond and graves, and jinx and frost both fight to the death
b - sounds good. how about we have it on a plane.
a - cool. how about the world's largest plane!
b - even better. then we could have it fly through a massive laser beamed from space..
a - and start disintegrating as they fight!
b - and once its all over they can escape the plane, now a plummeting fireball in a helicopter.
a - and the helicopter won't work, so they're falling in whilst avoiding bits of the exploding aeroplane above them
b - so it plummets with really good cgi, then just makes it and the bond theme starts and its a really nice moment
a - then it can fly past ferraris in the ground in the middle of a korean farm. that's funny and makes a nice bond moment.

This can even by applied to the ice surfing. OK, so DAD has maybe 5 or so clearly dodgy fx shots. But you can't bash them for wanting to put on a damn good show. And stop being mean to the invisible car. It's very cool.

[1q2w3e4r]

Yes you can. They never put on a dodgy show in the previous 19 films. Production values on Bond films are normally better than any other films.

[Dr Niles Crane]

G is for good old fashioned fisticuffs. What would a Bond film be if there was no conflict? A Miramax film on the shortlist for an oscar probably starring Anthony Hopkins. Keep it up Jim. It is always wonderful to hear the opposition's point of view. How else would James learn about the bad guys plans for world domination if he didn't engage them in a little confrontational banter?

Some letters of my own:

B is for I shed Buckets watching Brosnan Battling with a Bloody awful script. He is not a complete moron. He can walk and talk at the same time. Give him some decent lines and he is quite good. I just wonder what the poor boy thought when he would come to work and try to make sense of lines like "let's do it" and "let's get this over with". I wouldn't imagine the shooting script gives him much room for dramatic improvisation - run that way, shoot that guy, head but this guy. Yes the guy is in about ninety percent of the scenes but most of the time he is just standing around looking suave, sexy and faintly dangerous. P is for put upon actor and W is for what script?

P is for psychiatrist. Who needs one? Five minutes with his Phillips supa-shaver and James forgets completely about that 14 months or tortuous hell he has just endured. I know James Bond ain't like the rest of us, but er sorry that one didn't quite ring true.

P is also for phantastic title sequence. Much as I love watching naked ladies woggle around, after 20 films it does get a tad predictable. It was rather enjoyable to actually see some action/plot development during th opening titles (even if, as someone pointed out, Pierce having his head shoved in a a bucket of water isn't that terrifying).

M is for where is Michael Kitchen? I have a feeling he wasn't in it because he was off filming his own TV show Foyle's War. But I do miss him. What is the point of having access to all these wonderful British actors if you don't use them.

L is for plot loopholes one could drive a truck through. After TWINE I remember asking myself for months just what the hell was Q planning to do with that fishing boat anyway - hunt down Moby Dick? This movie avoids that problem by not really having a plot at all (All I remember was evil villian, world domination, lots of sex, gratuitous violence - something completely different for a Bond fim). However it was violent, nasty, visually exciting (except when they kept doing those little Matrix slow motion bits, which was just silly and kept making me laugh), and not being a Tokien fan what was I to do on a Saturday night.

[Jim]

K is for Kill, A View to and Kill, Licence to. Odd bedfellows, and quite difficult to believe they are in the same series, but that's a separate issue. The point here is that I was wracking the old brain (getting older, more shrivelled and pointlessly bitter each passing second) in trying to establish which Bond film Die Another Day reminded me of, and I couldn't pick out a single one, and just hit on it being an odd mix of these two. Widely seen as polar opposites in tone, that's quite an achievement to merge them together. It would be lazy to assert that there are obvious similarities to the basic tone of LTK in the opening hour or so, there's a scene of an aged Bond carrying off a surfing stunt that he couldn't possibly do and that the climax involves genetically mutated villain flying over the scene of his planned devastation. It would be even lazier to assert that this shift in tone (call it Iceland onwards) unbalances the film to a degree when the whole thing suffers. Which is it to be - "serious" (well, relatively) or "stupid"? AT least Moonraker is consistently stupid, but deserves credit beceause it is conscious of its own stupidity. Licence to Kill is largely serious, but incredibly po-faced with it. TWINE would like to be serious, but is undermined by the acting, which is uniformly cretinous and shaming. This..this mess...what is it? Is it trying to hit all possible targets and missing the lot? What could have been a genuine attempt to examine (with too much teenage analysis SHOUTED AT US IN DUFF LINES) the effect of Bond's incarceration upon him and his descent into a world that has "changed" whilst he was imbibing arachnid juice, descends into "I've got a new face" and the requisite BrosnanBond film blowing things up because...they blow up. Totally schizophrenic. Mad as a window, this. Feels like two films spliced together, and those two films are those mentioned at the top. Aged Bond and his stuntmen do silly things having started off in a sombre fashion. The attempt - and I use the word advisedly - to have Bond reflect on Frost's death just doesn't resonate after an hour or so of flabby action and villains with incredible teeth. Yeah, the kitchen sink's in there. But this is no kitchen sink drama.

K is for Kil, Mr. "I am Mr Kil". "I am saying one liner". Character ends. Dies interestingly, and the use of the severed arm is neat, albeit much funnier in Demolition Man (albeit eyeball). But need he really be there? Need he actually have that name. Oddjob, you see, is a pun. Handyman, retainer, that sort of thing. Jaws, yer see, is a sort of pun, a sort of take on Spielberg's version and the man-eating shark is a fun idea. But "Mr Kil" - lame. Why not "Monsieur D'eath" or "Hench-Man"? Just there for the joke, and not a very funny one at that, character fails and then flails and then pales into insignificance. The only really interesting thing about him is that he's the one who wants to cut people up with lasers (anyone know why these should fly about the room like that? Anyone know why we should be able to see them quite so clearly?) whereas Zao just wants to shoot people. That Zao - all dressed up nicely but no real style. As least Mr Kil had panache, albeit rather silly panache. His level of panacheness (not a word, or is it? Hmm....) is fairly high. Well done him. Not sure what else he does.

K is for Korea, South. Which is apparently a colony of the USA and UK, shared governorship, without any recognisable government or army of its own (albeit they supply natty threads for Bond and Bird in the final half hour of gibbering about a 'plane...not, sorry, indoor set with about three other characters. Cost cutting?). South Korea, that nation that was all over our television screens when it hosted the World Cup, the rivers, seas of folk having a jolly time in Soeul. South Korea, that nation of millions of people. South Korea, o land of mountains and sunsets and nice bits of countryside. South Korea, o nation of bays and inlets and islands, all bounteous with the sweetest honeyblossoms. But do we see any of this? Might as well have filmed it in Cornwall.

That bit at the end, with the Dench and the American - I take it from their running about when things go fizz and bang that this is ostensibly in South Korea. Spot the asiatic faces. OK, so it may be set on a US air base (which is apparently the whole of South Korea), but still...unless that was the implication the film wanted to create. South Korea, globalised nation, brought to you by Starbucks and McDonalds and...oh I dunno...Woodpecker Cider. Well done, Eon, in making the most insidiously racist and imperialistic film of the year! Tip top fun for Republicans! Hurrah for you, taking a dispute which has created misery and deprivation and suffering (and I'm not talking about Manchester United here) and turning it into a jolly lark about villains with wacky teeth and death rays from space! Well done you!

K is also for Kampuchea, Camdodia used to be called. (Couldn't think of a suitable "k" insult. Kobblers? Krud? Krap? Oh, hold on a mo...)

K is also for Know-nothing Bozos, Do they really think that we are. If one picks up one's knowledge of the world from James Bond films, what are we led to believe here? That the USA and the UK run everything and independent nations' governments are incapable of doing anything themselves. Well, that's nice. Anyone any ideas why the USA and UK should be number one terrorist targets, then? Dogma and dogpoo amount to much the same thing.

[Dr Niles Crane]

I agree with Jim - James has been imprioned, tortured and generally not had a great time and then where does the plot line go. At least Tim Dalton was shirty all the way through Licence to Kill.

[Jim]

L is for Laser from Space, Death. Personally I think that's a better title. "Death Laser from Space". Does exactly what it says on the tin. Well, that's essentially what the film is, isn't it? Who's to say that the device in Diamonds are Forever couldn't achieve much the same effect? OK, so technical detail - this one harnesses the sun's rays and doesn't appear (so overtly) to use diamonds in its construction, but...it's essentially the same idea, non? I know it's too easy to say that James Bond films do (and, after 20 films,inevitably must) reference one another, and it's hard to come up with new ideas, but not to even bother trying...and Gustav Graves doesn't appear versed in La Rochefocauld, which is the greatest pity of them all. Perhaps that (the "that" being "wit") would be lost on the target audience who appear to have demanded Robocop meets The Emperor meets Face/Off meets (for some inexplicable reason) Flashman.

L is also for Lasers, Diamond cutting. OK, so the mine is fake, but the diamonds aren't and the lasers aren't. So if the mine is fake, why have the lasers there at all, anyone? I know that there's this laser signature on the AFRICAN CONFLICT DIAMONDS but wouldn't that actually devalue the purity of the stones? Just a thought. Don't know much about diamonds, but then clearly neither do the scriptwriters - one couldn't distinguish the chemical composition of AFRICAN CONFLICT DIAMONDS (that phrase again - do you understand - these are African. Conflict. Diamonds.) just by looking at them through a mangy eyepiece in some dive in (cough) "Havana".

L is also for London, Curious depiction of. Not just London, in actual fact, but for most of the locations. Anyone else struck by the fact that a hell of a lot of thise takes place...indoors? A lot of standing around (and only a few pwople seem to be involved) snarling at each other or bedding one another or both, if it's that damn fool woman with the fig. But, in a film so determined to be "epic", it ends...indoors, essentially (or inside a computer program, take your pick) and it struck me that the only prolonged period of exterior action was the choppily edited car chase which then goes...indoors. Is this a) a treatise on the internalisation that Bond withdraws into as a result of his torture or rampaging cost cutting because it's cheaper to have a film with eleven people in it rather than dozens? Yeah, fine, the endings to YOLT and TSWLM were essentially "indoors", but at least there was a cast of "thousands" - some idea of spectacle. There just seem to be a few people here, rattling around big sets and then it ends. Very odd. Somewhat anticlimactic - but then that's largely true of all the Brosnan Bond films - when I say "true" it's "true" in so far as that's my opinion, which may be "false". Complex, huh? But the better bits of the previous films have occured well before their endings - this one fits the same formula, as with the formula that it basically comes down to about ten people left standing. For lordy's sake, this is almost a war film, or it exploits a war for the sake of a few million quid for the little Broccolis. Where's the war? Where's the spectacle? Where are all the bodies flinging themselves about? What is this - a world shortage of stuntpersons? I think we should be told.

L is for Location, Location, Location and. The South-West coast of England can be very pretty at this time of year. Save for the introduction to the Cadiz bit, there's no genuine attempt to show us something interesting and new. Fine, there's the Ice Palace, which is a clever bit of model design, but save for the opening drive-up shot, it seems tro have been filmed very close up - no real impression of the scale of the thing. And that's a very nice painted and lit backdrop standing in for Hong Kong. Look at the earlier Bond films and their attempt to give the audience something they hadn't seen before. Some call it travelogue. Some call it sense of place. I call it Aldershot, Cornwall and Pinewood. It just doesn't feel very special, jumping from location to location without any time or effort to linger on the interesting places they've gone to this time. And the effort to show us South Korea is shoddy in the extreme.

L is also for Lee, Can't remember the rest of his name chap who plays Col. Moon. He was quite sinister. Quite fun too. Shame he's a good inch shorter than Toby Stephens. Gene therapy. Screws you up as much as Gene Pitney (a "joke" from "The increasingly desparate joke book")

L is also for Lamentable, Very possibly

[Jim]

M is for M, The increasingly poor judgment of. An idiot. Basically. Shame that was only "pretend" when Bond shoots her. Piddy. Fundamentally an irritant, and appears to be wearing her pyjamas for most of the film. Given nothing to do, and that's largely a good thing because when she gets "involved", things "go wrong" (qv TWINE). Why hasn't the damned woman been fired? If we're meant to take the first hour relatively seriously (and I think we are), how can it be when this cretin is still knocking about. Expertly acted, as ever, but still...useless. Trivia for yers, trivia fans (and again this may be wrong) but she doesn't appear to be hitting the drink in this one. Perhaps she's on the wagon. Perhaps she's hooked up to a drip. perhaps she's upgraded to crack - this would explain the countenancing of MI6/SIS budget on invisible cars and kickin' VR training facilities. Although it is interesting that she's had programmed in to the facility that she gets rescued by Bond. Give it up, love: he's too old for you.

M is also for Moneypenny, Miss. That scene. Yeah. James Bond's virtual willy. Some folk find this funny. Good-oh. It's not so much the scene itself, which was largely inevitable given the prominence given over to the Holodeck fantasy room set beneath the sewers of London (this is getting increasingly crazed the more one thinks about it), but the desiccation of Moneypenny from subtly frustrated hag into overtly frustrated hag. We got the point the first time. Please, Messrs Writers, trust our brains. We can work things out for ourselves. Stop treating us like children, unless that's the target audience now. Which it very well might be. And it's a clever VR program that includes "touch" and "feel"; unless the is another direct Matrix steal and the point is that we feel if our minds are manipulated into "feeling". That's quite clever - but ultimately I don't think it goes that far and Moneypenny is further reduced to a bawdy sideshow act, there for a few blatant sex innuendos and whatnot and that's largely it. God, that's emancipated, innit? And the other multiply irritating thing is, despite GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies trying their damnedest to portray a service of hundreds, we're back into the old Octopussy/A View to a Kill days of the British Secret Service apparently consisting of four people and James Bond. A little cosy family. Awww.

M is also for Madonna, Ultimately one of the least worst new innovations is the title song by. OK, breaking the cycle and all that rot, let's consider for a moment what this film has introduced to the series. Heavy use of CGI. Confusing editing. A song without an apparent tune. Of the three...the song is the least worst option. It grows on one. It isn't much of a song, but then neither were those Phil Collins songs for Tarzan and they gave Oscars to those, so...why not? It's innovative, at least. Not saying it's great, not saying it's beautiful, but it tries to shake things up a bit and at least it isn't Goldfinger part 12. Didn't like it at first, still not fond of it as a song, but seems to work with the titles and is an attempt to wrap up something drab and reheated in a nice shiny package. Like a bitter cherry crowning a fresh turd, it's substantially not the worst thing about this film. It's also significantly the best piece of music in the film, "best" here jusged (for the hell of this point) as "freshest". BAckhanded compliments I know, but then I can't really say I like it in asbstract. In context, it's one of the things to savour. It really is. Speaks volumes about the rest of the debacle more than it speaks about the song, but hey ho, them's me views.

M is also for Merry Christmas, because rather shockingly I have failed to wish everyone one of those.

M is also for Money, Pots of. It's very successful, isn't it? Hurrah - MGM is saved! Dwell upon whether that's a cause for celebration. And does the generating of whoppin' great wodges o' cash mean that this is the future for the series? Dwell upon whether that's a cause for celebration. And if it is, is this the last Bond film I will dare see unless I want my head to explode? Dwell upon whether that's a cause for celebration. But don't answer it.

M is also for Micturate, Stale.

[Roebuck]

M is also for Magnificent and Masterwork. As in this thread. Intelligent, funny and beautifully written.

[john007]

Hey Dave,

Wonderful post, i agree with some of your posts, but not with all. I just wan't to know if there is anything you like about DAD??

john007

[Xenobia]

N is for Naughty and Nice which Jim is in this thread. Very well done.

Merry Christmas to you and yours and a Happy New Year.

-- Xenobia

[DLibrasnow]

Y is for yawn

[Loomis]

Originally posted by Jim  
there are mines, see, in the mud. Can't drive there (and we'll ignore for the moment why Col. Moon has a fleet of luvverly cars in his compound - where can he go for a spin?  

Well, the North Koreans wouldn't have entirely stuffed their part of the DMZ with mines, for the obvious reason that they'd have a hell of a job getting in and out (same goes for the South Koreans, who are also on to a nice little earner bussing tourists into the DMZ). Possibly Moon uses his flashy motors for trips to and from Pyongyang, as befits his privileged station, rather than riding military transport.

Minor quibble aside, your review continues to entertain - more so, admittedly, than DIE ANOTHER DAY itself.

On the other hand, to paraphrase Jodie Foster in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS: You see a lot, Jim, but are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at THUNDERBALL (I gather you like that one)? Maybe you're afraid to. The jet pack - millions of pounds' worth of cutting-edge technology - that Bond leaves unattended on a rooftop. His chucking said jet pack into the boot of his car before it has cooled off and is no longer likely to blow the auto to smithereens. Etc. etc.

[Loomis]

Another couple of things:

Originally posted by Jim  
 
that's a very nice painted and lit backdrop standing in for Hong Kong. Look at the earlier Bond films and their attempt to give the audience something they hadn't seen before. Some call it travelogue. Some call it sense of place. I call it Aldershot, Cornwall and Pinewood. It just doesn't feel very special, jumping from location to location without any time or effort to linger on the interesting places they've gone to this time. And the effort to show us South Korea is shoddy in the extreme.  

I'm afraid that Pinewood also played a rather large role in "the earlier Bond films and their attempt to give the audience something they hadn't seen before". DIE ANOTHER DAY hardly marks the first time that British soundstages and studio lots were passed off as far-flung locales. And I don't remember that sort of thing being done any more convincingly by the likes of, say, THUNDERBALL (although I do agree that the 1960s Bond films made much more of their exotic locations, a major reason for the series' success at a time when foreign travel was beyond the wildest dreams of most viewers).

But, dammit, it's all about artifice and make-believe, just like, er, any movie that's ever been made. As for "the very nice painted and lit backdrop standing in for Hong Kong", if you had been in charge of DIE ANOTHER DAY, would you have sent a unit at enormous expense to Hong Kong purely to capture an "authentic" establishing shot?

Similarly, you sneer at "the final half hour of gibbering about a 'plane...not, sorry, indoor set with about three other characters. Cost cutting?)." Well, yes, I imagine a few pennies WERE saved, since shooting the finale on a real-life cargo plane while airborne would have (a) cost a fortune, ( taken forever, and © probably cost lives, since setting off movie pyrotechnics in an aircraft in flight is perhaps not entirely safe.

But instead, the cheap so-and-sos had to resort to an INDOOR SET, of all the cheeseparing, realism-ruining tricks.

Jim, one has to tread so carefully for fear of being accused of "flaming" and suchlike (again, I point out that I am thoroughly enjoying your review, and indeed that I agree with much of it) but once more I am compelled to ask: what exactly are your artistic expectations of a James Bond film?

[marktmurphy]

Excuses..mere excuses...