Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

General Bond discussion from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan
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dirtybenny
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

John P. Drake wrote:If only Babs have read this rant, dirtybenny. Couldn't have been said any better or accurate!
Thanks John P. Drake, if only she did read this site!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

The Saint 007 wrote:I will never understand why some say that Quantum Of Solace gets more enjoyable with repeated viewings, or how it will be the next On Her Majesty's Secret Service in that it will gain more appreciation years from now.
QOS will never be the next OHMSS in fact one of the few things I'm thankful for in the Craig era is the new appreciation of that movie I have. And Skyfall is quite the opposite, the more I watch it, the more I hate it!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

commander0077again wrote:DB's latest rant!
A very detailed one, DB! (btw, your initials are like the Aston Martin DB series)... I am amazed that you could remember all the details. As soon as Craig fills the screen, my mind goes half asleep and I just watch for the 'action' but not action in a Bond film, since this isn't a Bond film.
The Aston Martin DB series, the only thing Bond to be continued from the old series! How could one forget such a BAD movie. It's seared in my frontal cortex!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by Barry Niven »

I have just a couple of things you forgot to mention in your QOS summary. Although if you really did forget them, then I envy you, for these Low Points I speak of are so utterly baffling and frustrating in their inconsistent, self-righteous sloppiness that it only makes me hate the filmmakers more for having inflicted them upon my subconscious. So here goes.

1. The return of "Mr White", who I never understood the "appeal" of to be treated so highly as a "new breed" of Bond Villain. After doing little more than sulking in the shadows with vague boasts about the "Organization" he works for, bumping off LeChiffre, effortlessly recovering ALL OF THE MONEY from the collapsing house in Venice without so much as getting a drop of water on his sleek suit, and being shot in the leg so Craggy could announce that he's "Bahnt, Jaymz Bahnt" in CR, what delicate layers are peeled back to reveal the mystery behind this formidable foe upon his return in QOS?

Answer: A lame degeneration into a cackling, gloating, pantomime, Moustache-Twirling creep who only has to spout the cliche' of "we have people everywhere" to give Mitchell! his cue to start the shooting/chase scene while White reveals his own superhuman agility in making HIS escape without difficulty despite having just been SHOT IN THE LEG only hours before. And just to be reminded of how "all-important" White is supposed to be, he makes another appearance at the Opera scene, reverting back to smug snake mode by staying in his seat while his cohorts all expose themselves for Craggy to take crystal-clear, mega-accurate photos on his handy-dandy little camera-phone from faraway that Q emphatically did NOT give him. In the end, it all turns out to be pointless, as not only is there no payoff to this "loose end", but the later announcement in 2010 that Jesper Christensen wouldn't be coming back presumably because of a reputed "death" scene for White that ended up on the cutting room floor (followed by his publicly denouncing both his Bond films "as really $#!+") makes this a pretentious runaround that may never be resolved. Awww, that's too bad.

2. The overplaying of Greg Beam as the lazy, decadent, corrupt, whining, capitalist kiss-ass CIA Strawman just to make Black-Felix Leiter's cynical, disgruntled reluctance to sell out his "good pal" Craggy look "better" by default. As a pudgy, middle-aged White Guy with horn-rimmed glasses and a stupid-looking moustache, this Beamer clown couldn't have been more blatant as he chortled and basked in the opulence of Dominic Greeney's luxury private jet and fancypants villa, then bitched and moaned about the low-rent CIA HQ with its flies and the bottled water "some kids probably peed in". And as a Bureaucrat Stooge who was only following the orders of his own Corrupt Imperialist American Government anyway, Beam's offscreen removal in favor of the "good" Black-Felix felt less like a Moral Victory than another cop-out by writers who couldn't be bothered to resolve it properly so they just had Mommy-M play exposition-fairy so Craggy could mumble about being glad "the right people kept their jobs". Huh?

3. The heavy-handed juxtaposition of scenes to make "awe-inspiring" parallels as some kind of Bold Artistic Statement. Like the Craggy/Mitchell! chase alternating with An Actual Horse Race at the same time (Whoa! You just blew my mind, Movie!), culminating with the "tragedy" of a random civilian woman in the crowd being wounded by gunfire and Craggy not giving a fig 'cause he's sooo "single-minded" in his "selfish-pursuit" (That's heavy, man. Real heavy). Or the "real", incoherent carnage of the shootout between Craggy and Greeney's Goons during the "fake", staged bloodshed of the Opera itself (WOW! That's so deep!). And especially Craggy and Pouty-Cammy skulking indifferently in their evening wear past the Poor Bolivian Village suffering from the drought caused by the Evil Greeney's Capitalist Greed hiding behind Phony Benevolent Environmental Activism because our "heroes" are so lost in their own Mutual Brooding Inner Torments (OH THE HUMANITY!)

4. The sheer laziness of only "Telling" us about Big Scenes that Happened without actually Showing Them, which defeats the whole purpose of making a Motion Picture: To Show This Stuff Happen. Like Craggy pursuing the fleeing Greeney at the end, then cutting to having already "caught" him, been "told" all he knows about Quantum (what a stupid fruity name!) and then leaving Greeney behind so Mommy-M can "tell" us later how Greeney died. Or Craggy catching Vesper's Not-Dead Fake-Boyfriend just so this "tense" scene can cut away to Our Hero leaving the apartment for the Guards to take VNDFBF into custody. And worst of all, Craggy's seduction of Strawberry Fields Forever being completely skipped over in favor of some fancypants Art-Film "dissolve" to when Frenchy-Mathis knocks on the door later, so there can only be small talk about "afterwards" between Craggy and S.F.F. wrapped in the sheets. Given that S.F.F.'s foxy non-outfit of just the Trenchcoat and those Boots was the only Eye Candy this dumb PC-infested "Bond" movie had that was worth watching, it was a #'+!ing disgrace to not see any Action come out of it. Then again, it would've involved Craggy, so they were probably doing Gemma Arterton a favor by not degrading her any more than she already had been.

5. The flip-flopping of showing how "real" Craggy is in having "difficulty" maintaining his action-man antics, then reverting him to hyper-aware, bionic-man feats of strength and speed bull$#!+. At the start, he's having trouble keeping up with pursing Mitchell! to the point where he stumbles about and nearly loses his grip leaping from balcony to balcony, onto the passing bus, dangling with his leg all tied up in knots, and all that kind of jazz. But by the end when Craggy eludes the CIA SWAT Team sent to catch him at his meeting with Black-Felix, not only does he outrun their gunfire-drenched arrival at the bar, but he elbow-faces a Guard waiting for him behind a corner at the top of the steps without missing a beat as if Craggy can see around corners, then makes a flying leap from one balcony to the other like a Super Mario Bros. and gets away scott free. Jeez, make up your freakin' minds already. Is Craggy for Real, or not?

6. The Non-Humor. As I don't want to get any deeper in this awful topic, I'll limit it to this priceless exchange between the "meet cutes" of Craggy and Pouty-Cammy:

Craggy walks down the street after taking random thug's place at the crummy hotel in Haiti. Cammy pulls up in her car and harps, "get in." Craggy looks dumbstruck, so Cammy parrots, "I said, get in." So he does.
Later when Craggy leaves Mommy-M at the fancy hotel in Bolivia after clobbering the Four Agents in the Elevator with HIS hands cuffed behind his back, he's walking outside when Cammy pulls up in her car and harps, "get in". Craggy looks dumbstruck, so Cammy parrots, "I said, get in." So he does.

HAW HAW HAW!! OMG That is soooo HILARIOUS! Where do these clever writers come up with such Pure Comic Gold? _.//

7. And finally: "I'm motivated by my duty." The Worst #%!+ing thing ever.

As for the rest (Elvis the "henchman", long-winded political blatherings by snooty officials about "If we didn't work with villains, we wouldn't get anything done", shaky-cam hyper-editing nightmare action scenes, Craggy-brooding), that kind of crap has already been beaten into a dead horse ages ago so I won't bother with it. By now, it's all a hodgepodge of the obvious, which is what I hope I avoided here. At least, I try to.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

Thanks for some excellent additions Barry!

I forgot about "Mr. White" because as you pointed out he was such a non entity in this movie he's almost not worth mentioning. However now that you do, I'm reminded of another ridiculous bit of this "film". Supposedly we join Craig "15 minutes after the end of CR", which is impossible. CR takes place in 2006, QOS in 2008, we know this as the invitation to the "Eco-party" gives the date as such. So either CR's ending is set 2 years in the future, which if so, it took Craig 2 years to track down the phone number Vesper left him, or Craig and his pursuers passed through some sort of space time continuum!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

RANT #5
Skyfail, or Welcome to Scotland the Dark Bond Rises

If EON was watching the Bourne series while writing QOS, then they were certainly watching the Dark Knight series while writing Skyfall! This is just meant to touch on the highlights or should I say lowlights of this movie, because to call out everything wrong with it would take ages. Please feel free to add your least favorite parts of this “film” below. First we open on a dark hallway and once again no gun barrel walk, because according to Mendez it would have ruined the artistic quality of the shot, god forbid you compromise the art of your ACTION film, I guess the MGM and Colombia Pictures logos didn’t compromise his artistic vision as they were right at the start. Anyway after the production logos a dark bow legged figure, in a suit that fits like a sausage casing approaches from a dimly lit hallway, and lo and behold it’s Craig sporting a ridiculous buzz cut. He finds an agent injured in the next room, and moves on to find a hard drive is missing, which contains a list of all the undercover agents working for the west. What Craig is doing there or why oh why a list of all agents exists, let alone why it is on a hard drive in Istanbul is never explained. Were they buying the drive? Selling it? Sitting around drinking tea while looking to see what all their friends in the espionage community were up to these days? Craig shows some uncharacteristic concern for the downed agent (especially since he dumped the last one in a garbage can in Bolivia) when micromanaging M orders him to go. So Craig blunders into the streets of Istanbul and into a Land Rover driven by agent “Eve”. A chase ensues and we combine the roof top and motorbike chase from Bourne Ultimatum in to one sequence. I can’t in good conscience skip over that at one point “Eve” who is 98 pounds soaking wet punches the windows out of her Land Rover so she can continue the chase. We end up on top of a train, and Craig is shot through a tractor window, fights with cardboard cutout bad guy, and long story short “Eve” shoots Craig off the train. I also must point out that throughout this sequence and the entire movie in fact everyone refers to M as ma’am in such a way it comes out mom, coincidence I think not. This leads into the title sequence.

Now I must admit I like the theme song, however the visuals are macabre and confused. After watching animated daggers fall and morph into skulls we find M getting a talking to by a “high ranking government official”. Spoiler alert it’s the new M. After a convoluted plot point about cryptology and gas leaks involving an explosion at MI6, we find Craig still alive and involved in a vulgar sex act already in progress. Despite living in a beach front resort Craig is disturbingly pale and sporting an odd grey/blond beard which makes him look older if that could be possible. Ghostly Craig goes to drink a shot with a scorpion on his hand, and after the crowd dissipates catches CNN on the flat screen T.V. behind him. Did I mention he was in a 3rd world dive bar, yet CNN is playing on a T.V. nicer than mine. After seeing that MI6 was attacked, Craig remembers he has a duty to Queen and country and jets off to England. Now during this time he was “dead” how did he live? How did he buy his scotch? Buy the mysterious pills he took but never again used after his return home? Buy his clothes etc.? These questions are never answered. We find Craig in M’s apartment mumbling about death and duty and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Why does he care now? When he was shot off that train he was after the list of agents that could ruin all western espionage as we know it. Once he was shot he forgot all about it, and played dead for 3 months. Then once M’s office is blown up he cares again? Anyway apparently after 3 months of bumming around a beach front resort one’s body is useless, because the world’s most deadly and efficient secret agent is now so much dead weight. Yes after one mission, remember the last two movies, when supposedly “Bond became Bond” we now have an old, over the hill, geezer who should be in a retirement home rather than fighting the enemies of the free world. After a bunch of pull ups, running on a treadmill, and some word association games he carves the bullet from his chest because he knows it will somehow lead to the man leaking the information. Funny how that bullet left a massive scar and yet no sign of the wound left by Eve’s fateful shot that knocked him from the train. Some nihilistic mumbling about duty and what not and we meet the new effeminate “Q”. Some awkward dialogue about a “bloody big ship” some week “gadgets” and we’re off to china… or so you think.

The second unit photography crew went to China; however all of the shooting locations were in the comfortable confines of London. The only scenes the principle cast filmed outside of England (not counting the pre titles sequence) occur in Scotland (hence welcome to Scotland in my title). Some shots of the Shanghai skyline, Craig swimming in the roof top pool of a London, I mean Shanghai hotel, a blue lit highway, then we’re in front of a local London, I mean Shanghai office building. The assassin Craig is trailing kills two security guards to gain access to the office building he plans to use to kill an art buyer. Craig watches as he cuts the glass in an empty floor of the building, assembles his rifle, and kills his target. Now why did they need such a complicated scheme to kill this guy? Everyone in the room with the target was in on the hit. Why not have one of THEM blow this guy’s brains out IN the room, rather than a sniper do it from across the street? This caused breaking glass and a bigger mess and would draw more attention. Once again Craig screws it up and his lead slips away literally, as we watch the assassin fall 15 stories to his death, with lights flashing in the background and we are supposed to be dazzled. The cardboard cutout “Bond” girl catches a glimpse of Craig and he disappears, if only it were forever. Craig finds a casino chip in the assassin’s luggage and decides a quick bath and shave are in order before moving on. “Eve” shows up inexplicably to shave that ridiculous bit of glorified 5 o’clock shadow off his face and swap double entendres. Supposedly a deleted scene exists, which makes it quite clear there was no “inappropriate contact” between the two, if that matters to anybody, but at this point I doubt it does. Some more double entendres at the casino and Craig meets cutout Bond girl face to face, who between her black dress, black makeup, and black nail polish, looks likes Mortisha Adams. They share some “deep dialogue” about her lover the man Craig is after and Shanghai sex houses. He agrees to meet her on her boat if he survives her “body guards” who are there to kill him. Craig takes part in a stilted fight scene involving CGI “dragons” and makes his way to rendezvous with the girl. Craig accosts her in the shower in a scene that’s more rapey than romantic. Next we find Craig standing proudly on the deck of the ship heading into the villain’s lair, not very clandestine. Did he think the crew was going to be ok with his stowing away? Why is he surprised when they load up their guns and drag him and his new found friend off to their doom?

Craig is tied to a chair and now in walks the joker... er I mean Silva the main villain. Silva has wild brightly colored hair, a big and we find out later damaged mouth, and an effeminate accent. You know, nothing like the joker. Silva’s entrance is made while making a speech about rats and oil drums and islands. He moves on to his disdain for MI6 and M. Silva starts fondling Craig, who doesn’t seem too concerned and insinuates he’s done this sort of thing before. This is especially odd since Mendes and Logan have said this was supposed to be a very uncomfortable situation for Craig’s Bond. Mendes and Logan state this is in reference to the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, which I must admit I haven’t read in a while, but I don’t remember Bond getting fondled by Scaramanga anywhere in that book. Now that Craig’s quip has made Silva titter like a school girl he is forced to “save” the Severene by shooting a glass off her head. He fails miserably, because “he’s lost his edge”. Silva kills the girl and in a moment of sentimentality quips what a waste of good scotch it was. Suddenly Craig’s “edge” comes rushing back as he disarms and kills all of Silva’s henchmen. Why didn’t he do that 30 seconds earlier, maybe he could have kept his promise and saved the girl? Oh well.

Silva is scooped up and placed in a Hannibal Lector cage. “Q” tries to unlock Silva’s hard drive by plugging it directly into MI6’s mainframe, good move! Craig is somehow able to figure out Silva’s security protocols better that the tech genius Q? So anyway thanks to their blundering Silva has now “hacked” MI6 and is able to escape, so he can kill M at a Parliamentary hearing. Apparently this was all part of his plan! Like the Joker in the second Dark knight! Look in the following post to see how ridiculous this is. Craig follows Silva into the underground of London, where they play cat and mouse. Silva drops a tube train on Craig, because he knew just where he would catch up with him and that a train would be coming along at that precise moment. Long story short M pretentiously quotes Tennyson, Craig disrupts Silva’s complex plan and absconds with M.

They decide the best course of action is to run off alone, an old woman and an “over the hill” agent, to face Silva and his army of henchmen. Not the SAS or even a couple dozen MI6 agents, just the two of them. Craig is somehow in possession of the DB5 from Goldfinger complete with gadgets despite that mission not occurring yet if the “reboot” is to be believed. Not to mention even if it had, it would belong to MI6 not Bond. They make it out to Wayne Manor… er I mean Skyfall Lodge, Bruce Wayn… Bond’s “ancestral” home. Where they meet Alfred oops I mean Kincaid, Craig’s butler, I mean gamekeeper guardian. Craig displays some feats of marksmanship despite supposedly not being able to hit the broadside of a barn just days before. They plucky little band make like the A-Team and concoct some booby traps worthy of Home Alone. Kincaid tells M about the night Bruce’s parents died and how he hid in the Bat I mean Bond cave and another origin story is born or should I say Bourne. The first wave of Silva’s men show up Craig guns down half of them with the DB5’s machine guns and the rest are taken care of Macaulay Culkin style. All of this is done in such pitch black photography it’s amazing anyone is able to see it. M catches a round in her hip, and then Silva makes his grand entrance in a full blown military helicopter. Where he got it and how he could fly it though British airspace without a challenge is beyond me. More shooting and gun fighting ensue and Craig sends the geriatric duo to the Bond Cave. Some more skulking around in the dark and Craig blows up Wayne Manor just like in the first Dark Knight film. Kincaid who is an experienced hunter, and should know the terrain like the back of his hand needs a flashlight to get to the little chapel nearby. This gives away his position to Silva who quickly catches up to them. Craig “saves” M before Silva kills her just so she can die anyway in his arms, how touching. So know with Craig having utterly failed in his mission we find him standing Batman style on the roof of a London office building, as if he’s the master of all he surveys. Eve comes up to fetch him and they return to her office where surprise it turns out we were also watching the Moneypenny origin story! A little fan service in the design of the new M’s office looking like the original M’s office, and we get the gun barrel walk at the end.

Next week when Bond is at his best.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

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Silva's Brilliant Plan:

First Silva has to know M will be chastised in front of a subcommittee several years in the future as Q said this was years in the planning. Then he must know Patrice will escape with the hard drive leaving enough evidence for MI6 to find him. Then MI6 has to botch the capture of Patrice so they can be led to Severine. Sevrine then needs to hate him enough to lead the MI6 assassin to him. The assassin must then be dumb enough to be caught in this case walking about above deck on the yacht so he will be captured. The assassin must then be good enough to kill all Silva’s men and be careful enough to not kill Silva right there. Silva must also know MI6 will move to the underground HQ, and that MI6 must be dumb enough to hook his computer to their mainframe. MI6 now must unlock Silva’s hard drive at just the precise time to allow him to escape in time to make it to the hearing so he can publicly assassinate M. Along the way Bond must stop him at just the right spot where he has a bomb set up and at just the right time to drop an oncoming train on him. Why not just go to London without being captured and kill her, there is no need to go through all this Rube Goldbergian planning when you could cut out the first two acts of the movie and have the same results!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by The Saint 007 »

Nice summary of Skyfall, Benny. Although the film is an improvement from Quantum Of Solace, that's still not saying very much. With Sam Mendes returning, Bond 24 will most likely be a more bloated version of Skyfall, and Naomie Harris apparently wants to reinvent Moneypenny and not just sit behind a desk. So I'm expecting she'll become sort of a Jinx type of character.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by John P. Drake »

Very very well written review, Benny! Incredible!! Now, I wonder, is the crew entirely full of idiot people not to realize a single bit of the mistakes they've done in this movie? or should I say "the rebooted timeline"? Maybe one day, they're planning to have the main character killed so that would shake off the audience, you know? It's artsy. LOL! Sam Mendes will do that in "Bond 25" to end the Craig trilogy much like it happened with Nolan's sloppy Dark Knight thing. And what do you know? Craig steps away and EON announces that for a decade they'll stop producing a new entry in the series. Right. As for Eve... I think she wants to re-invent Moneypenny as a Tonto to Craig's Lone Ranger... ehem Bond (?), who knows? Maybe she'll send Craig another bullet to catch so more edgy touch would be dragged in? Clever, isn't it? _./// And then, we'll have M exposed as the head of a villainous organization and as EON purchased the rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld a few months ago, expect M to be revealed as Blofeld, the head of Quantum, and not SPECTRE. But wait... they did something clever here too... (*cough* sarcasm *cough*), Quantum actually stands for "Spectre" in some Eastern European foreign language, hence "Quantum of Solace" was translated to "Spectre of Solace" in a country I don't remember, probably Bulgaria. And since Miss Babboon Green Vegetable Broccoli, aka Horny Babs, is trying to make an utter politically correct garbage out of the franchise, expect worse things to come in the future that might blow your mind... in a very negative way I mean. Wasn't the conversation between the blond joker without white make-up in the first scene irritating and disturbing enough?
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

Thanks for the kind words Saint and John P. I appreciate them very much!

I read what Naomie said about reinventing Moneypenny, Saint. I guess she never saw a Bond film before, because if she did she would know that she was taking the role of the most famous SECRETARY ever. Not to mention in SF she states quite clearly field work is not for her, so why would she then be inexplicably out in the field tagging along with Craig. I know that won't stop her from doing so because as we've all seen making sense is not the priority of the current regime at EON... and to that point...

As you point out John P. this reboot has become so schizophrenic. SF doesn't know if it's continuing where CR and QOS left off or if it's throwing out the reboot entirely considering Craig is supposedly the worn out old warhorse with the GF DB5 in his garage.

So now we have 3 "origin stories" because we are supposed to care about "what motivates Bond". I don't want to go to an action movie to play Freud! I want to be entertained and taken on a grand adventure! Not learn about his ID, Ego, and Super Ego!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by Capt. Sir Dominic Flandry »

dirtybenny wrote: As you point out John P. this reboot has become so schizophrenic. SF doesn't know if it's continuing where CR and QOS left off or if it's throwing out the reboot entirely considering Craig is supposedly the worn out old warhorse with the GF DB5 in his garage.
They had to ditch the young Bond angle as Craig looks like Mr Magoo.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by John P. Drake »

No, they don't, Benny. They have no idea what are they doing, it's clearly a business for them to do, now, and of course... some eye candy for Babs and a few of her twisted imaginations dragged into a "Script", and there you go, you get a Craig movie. It's something worse than "Chick flicks with guns" title... yikes!
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by commander0077again »

The production values seem much lower scale, with DB's reporting that the Shanghai scenes were mostly filmed in London, save for some establishing shots. Couldn't afford to send the film crew and 'star' to Shanghai? China has plenty of scenic thrills that the real Bond team (Broccoli & Saltzman) would've instinctively been aware of. Again, I did not care to even try to figure out the plot line Skyfail. 'Moneypenny' takes orders from micro-brained and micro-managing M, "I'm not there, but take the shot!" OK, mom! Take that, you shrunk-clothed pinch-face! The lowest of the lowlights, to me, are when 'Bond' loses his mojo and (sky)fails to save the William Tell on her head, yet seconds later his mojo returns. Austin Powers would've done a better job. In fact, after watching Craiggy-face, one has to recover with the international man of mystery. Finally, we approach the death of 'M' (which had the emotional impact of watching 'Bond' emerge from the surf when we were expecting Honey Ryder), and to '007's' ancestral home in Scotland, no less. The Connery must have been shrinking in his seat, Happily, at least Craigster didn't do a Scottish accent. It would've lightened the mood somewhat. So we're treated to dark dark photography with the implausible set-up of bringing an elderly woman to Scotland with only a handful of men. 'Bond' doesn't have the foresight to bring along some heavy weaponry. As the Benny points out, he certainly forgot to bring along a team of hard cases. I forget, but I suppose something happened to the DB5? zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz :down:
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

Time to take stock

Hello everyone,

I'm currently working on this week's rant, but thought I'd take a moment to ask you all how I'm doing so far and what you think of my efforts. Am I adding anything to the site? Are you enjoying what I have to say or has this "preaching to the choir" becoming too tedious? Is there anything I could improve? What do you like, not like so far? Please let me know what you think.

Thank you all
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by John P. Drake »

I am enjoying all the rants you're composing, Benny. It's actually something I could give my precious minutes to read, it does enlighten the reader better than anyone else's does. So, you're doing fine, keep the bullets coming! :cheers:
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by Kristatos »

The only thing I'd question is the weekly schedule. It doesn't look like you're strictly adhering to it anyway, so probably best to drop it from the title. Other than that, I enjoy reading them.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by The Saint 007 »

Your rants are very well-written and bring up some good points of how the Bond producers and the Craig era in general are not as perfect as most people say. No complaints from me, Benny. Keep up the good work! :up:
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

Thank you for the kind words gentlemen! I just wanted to make sure I've not become tedious and began to wear out my welcome. You've encouraged me to redouble my efforts. And your right Kristatos I'm not really keeping to the schedule perhaps I'll change the name to Dirty Benny's Random Rants.
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by dirtybenny »

RANT 6

Bond at his Best.

We all know what a bad Bond movie looks like. One just has to look for Craig’s mug on the poster, so I won’t dwell on those. But when is Bond at his best? We have our favorite films, but what makes them great? Personally I think Bond films, at least the first 20, are like pizza and sex even when it’s “bad” it’s still pretty good. But I’ve come up with a theory using my own opinions, and data I compiled from this site and others to figure out what makes a “great” Bond film. Of course your opinions may vary and I’d love to hear them.

First Bond is at his best when he’s presented as Fleming intended, a hairy, barrel chested manly travelogue. In FRWL we are taken on a tour of Istanbul upon Bond’s arrival, from the airport to the grand bazaar via the highways and back streets, just background shots sure but it gives us a taste of what this city is really like. We not only see the famous land marks i.e. the afore mentioned bazaar and the St. Sophia Mosque, but also some lesser land marks like the train station the building which stands in for the Russian Consulate. We are also taken on a ferry ride of the Bosporus and the reservoir built by Constantine was included in an ingenious way. Now for the other side of this coin, Bond films don’t feel as complete when we are just given some obligatory shots of the tourist traps such as in AVTAK we go to Paris and San Francisco, two beautiful cities rich in culture and lousy with great filming locations and all we see are the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Second, Bond must be suave and sophisticated. This is the essence of Bond. Without it he’d just be another action hero like Dirty Harry. Now obviously I’m a fan of Dirty Harry (just look at the name) but I love Bond because he is NOT Dirty Harry or any other beer drinking, muscle car driving, hand cannon shooting “badass”. Bond is the antithesis of this type of movie hero. He charms women; he doesn’t flex his bicep like Arnold Schwarzenegger and make them come running. He wears finely tailored suits not bomber jackets and jeans.

Third, we need a serious but lighthearted tone. This is why I think Connery is still considered the best all these years later. To be compared so favorably to the 5 successors 50 years later you must be doing something right. Now let’s put this theory to the test. Connery’s films particularly the early ones always rank high on lists of favorite Bonds except for DAF which took a much more comical approach. The same can be said for Moore (don’t get me wrong I quite enjoy him as Bond) who is accused of being far too flippant in the role; however his more “serious” movies are counted as his best. The flip side to that point is Dalton (whom I also enjoy especially compared to Craig’s “dark” Bond) who was seen as too “dark” in general and particularly in LTK whereas TLD where he was a little lighter is better received.

Fourth and finally Bond is best as an “adventure” film compared to an “action” film. FRWL is considered by many to be one of, if not the best Bond films, yet it’s also one of the most shall we say “subdued”. It’s not all explosions and chases and stunts. The same can be said for GF, and even for the most part TSWLM, TLD and OHMSS. And these films are coincidentally considered each of the Bond Actor’s best.

So that’s my theory, what do you think?
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Re: Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

Post by Kristatos »

Agree with pretty much all of this, though describing OHMSS as "the actor's best" is cheating a little :mrgreen:

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