Skyfall: Bond #23

last two posts have me even more excited!!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1074638/board/flat/206367651

wait, really?

wtf.. even happened in this

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 30 October 2012 20:57 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my flatmate went to see it, wasnt overly impressed..."not enough girls and it was too long"

― Michael B Higgins (Michael B), Tuesday, 30 October 2012 21:31 (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

last two posts have me even more excited!!

― goole, Tuesday, 30 October 2012 21:31 (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha otm

this had many enjoyable moments and was better than quantum but it was somehow leaden and effortful too much of the time. something i miss in this new bond series is bond's smile, his joie de vivre, his don't-give-a-fuck-ness, the suspicion that bedding beautiful women ranks right about the same place in bond's personal hierarchy of importance as tracking down terrorists, the sense that bond is the best not from any sense of loyalty to the mission or even his country but because of the sheer narcissistic pleasure it gives him to be the best

I liked the lack of that - between the Tinker Tailor moments and the gaunt lord of the estate look at the end, they managed to get 10-15 minutes of acting out of Craig, which was more than I expected.

its just a different vibe, i kinda dig grim fascist bond just because the series had gone so overboard in the other direction so many many times

if you don't like james bond overdosing on his own awesomeness you don't like james bond

james bond being a grim jerk is kind of at the core of jamesbondness if u go back to the books

I should read more of the books! The only time I really did was when I was on a vacation to Cancun and it was kind of cold out, so I laid out next to the pool under a towel and read Casino Royale and a collection of short Bond stories.

I really like James Bond as an awesome gadabout btw, Brosnan 4eva, but I don't think that Daniel Craig is any good at that, he just seems blank - so I'm glad when they get something out of him.

idk, being a dude who gets tortured occasionally and runs around killing some people and deceiving others seems to be a thing that'd make you less than jovial

Got a good bond for you Craig deniers

http://austenprose.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/downton-abbey-thomas2-x-200.jpg

Exactly, there's not much room for joie de vivre when your day job requires killing people. xpost

I mean, Fleming's Bond is a virulent misogynist to a point, but it's more that it's 90% misanthropy with a little misogyny on top. I feel like earlier film adaptations played down some of the misogyny by skimming from the bottom 90%, but they're doing a reasonable job of skimming off the top this time around. Opinion might change after I see Skyfall, I guess.

it's a pretty misogynistic movie all around tbh

how'd you see it already? reviewer screening?

let's just say i have some highly-placed friends at MI6

O_O

s1ocki I've always liked you, you know that right

yeah i have to say "that's a waste of good scotch" pretty much turned me against the movie actually

btw i'm not a craig hata at all! he's probably the best bond ever. but if you go back to spy/counterspy by dusko popov, aka agent tricycle, so named for his predilection for three-ways, i.e. the guy ian fleming was apparently a little bit obsessed with and the inspiration for bond, the guy wasn't exactly pierce brosnan (look at the photos of him some time) but he certainly knew how to enjoy himself, and how to get ladies to cackle

otm re: scotch line

also.. SPOILERS..

the movie rather firmly and happily reinforces the patriarchy in the way it ends... M is a man again, that pesky female agent is a secretary now...

also wordlessly creeping into the shower and bonking a victim of sex slavery, nice moves bond

aaaand removing bookmark from thread for a week

eek sorry d00d

it actually IS in character for bond to be a fairly unpleasant person in a few respects, and the last act of casino royale certainly set him up to be a bitter little cunt, so it's not like the scotch line is out of character for him exactly (though calling it "scotch" is...) but i dunno, it's like the movie had a little too much fun with it, i was genuinely horrified at the outcome of that scene and the movie's like welp, finito, put a quip on it, onto the next bit, seeya lady

If there's a spunky lady and a sultry lady in a Bond movie the sultry lady usually gets offed.

also wordlessly creeping into the shower and bonking a victim of sex slavery, nice moves bond

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, November 1, 2012 2:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this scene didnt make much sense, after he does that, they go on deck the next morning and immediately get apprehended... i had kinda assumed bond had 'taken out' her handlers when he did the bonk-sneak? or was that his whole plan?

it actually IS in character for bond to be a fairly unpleasant person in a few respects, and the last act of casino royale certainly set him up to be a bitter little cunt, so it's not like the scotch line is out of character for him exactly (though calling it "scotch" is...) but i dunno, it's like the movie had a little too much fun with it, i was genuinely horrified at the outcome of that scene and the movie's like welp, finito, put a quip on it, onto the next bit, seeya lady

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, November 1, 2012 3:24 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya i agreed, i thought this was supposed to be the moment where bond got really mad, and he was just like, LOL scotch

can we both agree that the bladerunner-esque shanghai sneak-up and fight was awesome though

yeah, str8 up homage to collateral by my lights

the boat scene was a weird one.. when the henchman comes down and says "we're ready to cast off in 5 minutes" he gives her this weird stare.. what was that about? was bond already on the boat at that point? if he was, did she know? it seemed set up to be a wistful "well i guess he got killed and isn't coming" scene, but if that's really what was going on it makes the shower scene even weirder..

by the way.... whatever happened to the hard drive?

also do you think the movie is aware that the bad guy basically succeeded at his plan and bond in the end did nothing to stop it in any way?

I assume that the hard drive was recovered from the last level of Inception, thus putting a stop to Silva's "plan" (tho the "ah that was just a plan so he could get us in close for his planned-to-the-second real plan" kind of annoyed me)

ya i kinda hate that plotline... "we caught him... but he wanted to be caught... so he could... escape."

any movie where it turns out everything the hero did was part of the bad guy's elaborate plan kinda retroactively makes the fun parts less fun imho

Also, everything Silva did in the whole film was a totally cackhanded and elaborate and excessive way to execute a plan which could have been achieved v. easily with a single bullet at any given moment.

Shanghai fight scene was awes though, but ugh, the pay-off for Eve was ridiculous.

They flag that fairly early though - he waits until M is out of the building before blowing it up, he wants her to suffer first - the "plan" is to kill her at the point where she's seeing her life's work crumbling in front of her (but instead he presumably causes the government to take MI6 much more seriously - good thing he's crazy)

Yeah, I got that, but it's such a shit plan!

I liked the "waste of good scotch" moment, if only because I hated that the rest of it was far too much in the vein of The Dark Bond Returns - now filled with more anxiety, self-doubt, and holding onto a childhood loss. I want Bond to be less stubbly and bleary-eyed, and kind of more of the smug thug of old.
The film felt really flat, tonally, as well. Some nice looking sequences, but so dreary.

Also: teal & orange!

Yeah "miserable alcoholic Bond" is not something that needed excavating tbh

I think I have a tendency to shut down all critical faculties while watching Bond-movies, cause I always love them, pretty much unconditionally. Some good points here, though. But I never see them myself.

Wasn't expecting Oedipal Bond - this was even more ludicrous than usual.

I don't know which movie you guys watched. My first reaction was "so they're back to making traditional Bond movies with gags, laughs and over-the-top villains", only allowing Bond to have a personality of his own unlike Brosnan. There was no real anxiety or dreary darkness here. Having said that it's not as good as CR and not as impressively slick as QoS. Fun, though.

Well, there is the entire subplot regarding "Bond is clearly unfit for service but he and M conspire to cover this up"? It bobs in and out of view amongst the usual superheroics, but it's not like it's not there.

Thought the final 30 minutes or so was a cringeworthy embarrassment. I think this could have been a much better film if edited tightly and reined in on the sentimentality.

I think I have a tendency to shut down all critical faculties while watching Bond-movies, cause I always love them, pretty much unconditionally. Some good points here, though. But I never see them myself.

i sympathise with this point of view a lot tbh

Thought the final 30 minutes or so was a cringeworthy embarrassment. I think this could have been a much better film if edited tightly and reined in on the sentimentality.

― Bob Six, Saturday, November 3, 2012 9:38 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god it looked so good how can you say that