Dirty Benny's Weekly Rant

[The Saint 007]

I saw someone make another good analogy of the Craig era. They said "Craig's Bond is like Sisyphus in Greek mythology, the guy who's forever pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it roll back down again."

Just when Craig's Bond overcomes one emotional obstacle, he's then given another to face. At this rate, I'm not sure if he will ever get a standard mission/adventure without some sort of emotional baggage attached. This is not to say that I don't think there should be any personal storylines in Bond films. It's good to have every once in a while, but not for an entire lengthly era.

[bjmdds]

Never mind "Sisyphus". He's more like "syphilis", a diseased entity requiring antibiotics to be eradicated.

[shaken not stirred]

Old bond: Like your dog (mans best friend), you knew what to expect and it was great, today: not mans best friend, full of rabies, dangerous and should be taken behind a shed and put out of its misery.

I am a dog owner this is just an analogy.

[Daltonite Toothpaste]

Old bond: Like your dog (mans best friend), you knew what to expect and it was great, today: not mans best friend, full of rabies, dangerous and should be taken behind a shed and put out of its misery.

I am a dog owner this is just an analogy.

So basicaly...

Old Bond = Lassie
Nu Bond = Cujo

[The Saint 007]

Old bond: Like your dog (mans best friend), you knew what to expect and it was great, today: not mans best friend, full of rabies, dangerous and should be taken behind a shed and put out of its misery.

I am a dog owner this is just an analogy.

So basicaly...

Old Bond = Lassie
Nu Bond = Cujo

Or you could say that the new Bond is the annoying Duck Hunt dog.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5w-5PKxZRI[/video]

[shaken not stirred]

Old bond: Like your dog (mans best friend), you knew what to expect and it was great, today: not mans best friend, full of rabies, dangerous and should be taken behind a shed and put out of its misery.

I am a dog owner this is just an analogy.

So basicaly...

Old Bond = Lassie
Nu Bond = Cujo

Or you could say that the new Bond is the annoying Duck Hunt dog.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5w-5PKxZRI[/video]

Yep (especially that d**n laugh, man I hate that dog)..

[shaken not stirred]

Old bond: Like your dog (mans best friend), you knew what to expect and it was great, today: not mans best friend, full of rabies, dangerous and should be taken behind a shed and put out of its misery.

I am a dog owner this is just an analogy.

So basicaly...

Old Bond = Lassie
Nu Bond = Cujo

Something like that.

[dirtybenny]

Rant 24: Origins


This is a different lazy sort of take on my rant formula, because Patton Oswalt says it all for me, albeit his subject matter is Star Wars but I think it translates to Bond.

Be for warned there are a few salty words in this video, but no more than the average paragraph of a Craig interview.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCjIjsZp_Y[/video]

[Veronica]

The whole "reboot" shitty thing wasn't needed.I think the best example is the line of Moonraker-FYEO.. MR is an incredibly campy and silly movie.it doesn't really get sillier than that.MR is silly even by Roger Moore standards.It is incredibly outlandish but the producers just moved on and made an down-to-earth low-key spy movie.Results?A really great Bond movie.There you go.Bond didn't got through any change.Bond was still the same.Charming,elegant in a "Roger Moore" like way.What do we have in CR?A completely charmless,un-sophisticated thug.When I watched Craig "Bond" movies I never felt like I was watching James Bond.There was no excitement or "Oh,God,Bond is the coolest guy on the planet" thoughts.I was utterly bored through practically whole movie.And don't get me started on that "Do I look like I give a d**n" line when bartender asks him "Shaken or stirred?" I was honestly very close to stop watch the movie but I somehow got through the rest.Another good example is "The Living Daylights".After "A View to a Kill" which is hardly franchise's finest hour we got a good spy movie.Did Bond change?Not completely.He is still recognizable.He still knows good vines and still drinks his martini's "shaken,not stirred".He doesn't have a"nudge-nudge,wink-wink" attitude that Roger's Bond had but it still holds your interest somehow.There are still some "Bondian" moments.
"A lovely girl with the cello."
"Forget the ladies for once Bond."

The ending of course is in a true Bond fashion way.M thinks Bond is on assigment.Oh,yes he is.

That's exactly what they should have done after DAD.In a "MR-FYEO" WAY.What makes it even worse.They said to Pierce they will make another movie and then they just booted him because Babs devolped stupid high-school crush on Craig.Don't ask me how tough.She said how Craig is the most beautiful man on Earth. Someone should tell her that when asked more than 80% of women choose Brosnan over Craig.I would love to see her face.

[bjmdds]

So would I Veronica She idolizes and worships her Cr-egg creation.

[Veronica]

So would I Veronica She idolizes and worships her Cr-egg creation.

I don't know what she does really.I really can't understand it.I read somewhere that someone from EON came here on the site to see what was written about Craig...I wouldn't be suprised if Babs herself logged in and started to write pro-Craig comments.
Also,Sophie Marceau,Brit Ekland,Honor Blackman and Ursula Andres all said how they don't think Craig is Bond...that's because they were Bond girls to the men for whom you could really believe could swipe the woman of her feet.

[Veronica]

I remember a time when I was watching Octopussy years ago, my father started razzing me about how Moore's Bond was being a wimp for dispatching the enemies by shooting the tiers on their jeep during the opening sequence. "Brosnan is a much tougher Bond, he would have just shot those guys!" Needless to say, Brosnan's Bond, once upon a time, was considered to be the best and most bada$$ since Sean Connery. Critics praised him for showing a more human side to Bond, and his style, along with popular Bond video games like GoldenEye, helped bring in a new generation of fans. But after his swan song, as well as God's supposedly latest and greatest answer to James Bond coming down from the heavens, Brosnan has now become the "Roger Moore lite" of the series. Along with Moore, Brosnan is now the one of the most bashed Bonds on the Internet, and shares the Moore Bond characteristics of being wimpy, pretty boy, campy, etc. But that's the James Bond Cycle for you.

I honestly have no idea why Craig is considered to be so special. Sure, he has more muscle compared to the other Bonds, but that's about it. He doesn't have the looks or charisma, in my opinion, and when you remove all that artsy fartsy fluff from the films, they're really not as sophisticated as most people make them out to be. And why a sloppy abomination like Quantum Of Solace gets a pass while other films in the series get constantly bashed and down rated for the most ridiculous little things I'll never know. I'm not sure if Sean Connery would even get away with something like that.

I think Brosnan's Bond is very much no.2,second only to Connery in public's eyes if we forget those Craig fanboys who have never seen a Bond movie.

[The Saint 007]

Even as a nerd, I don't really care much for origin stories of my favourite film characters. It's been a while since I've seen the Star Wars prequels, but from what I can remember, it tells the stories and ties up various loose ends with the characters in a much better way than what has been done with Bond in the reboot. I know I might get flamed for saying that, but with the Star Wars prequels, there was at least some progress being made. Craig, who's now on his forth Bond film, is still dawdling about with childhood drama. If the producers decide to keep Craig when he's well into his fifties, I imagine they're going to further explore aging Bond. People can say what they want about the 1980s Moore Bond films, but I love the fact that they were three standard/unpretentious adventures with an older Bond. The way the Bond filmmakers are now, I doubt they could make films like those again.

As mentioned above, I think a Bond film along the lines of For Your Eyes Only or The Living Daylights was all that was needed after Die Another Day. In the past, the filmmakers did give Bond's character some emotional moments without going too overboard, and that's the approach that works best for the series, in my opinion.

[dirtybenny]

Well said Saint! I'm not much of a Sy-Fy fan so I don't get too worked up over the Star Wars prequels, although I can see how some would. I felt though the video above accurately depicted how most of us felt about these origin stories.

As you pointed out we are now on our fourth origin story in a row! It's gotten to the point where the origin story's origin story has an origin story!

CR and QOS are one big story lumped together, although they are a origin story in name only as we learn nothing about Bond's past (not that I want to!) If you wipe away the PTS and a few lines about how it was too early to promote Bond you wouldn't know this is supposed to be his beginning.(If you want to give Bond an origin story why not show his recruitment from the Royal Navy make that in to a whole films story line and be done with it.) So with SF we go further back to see his childhood home and learn about his angst ridden emo past, but that's still not enough because now in SP we're going back again to learn he "created" Blofeld by being his adopted daddy's favorite! At what point does this fat bloated rotting horses corpse of an idea that they are beating in to oblivion become too heavy to support it's own weight?

[Veronica]

Even as a nerd, I don't really care much for origin stories of my favourite film characters. It's been a while since I've seen the Star Wars prequels, but from what I can remember, it tells the stories and ties up various loose ends with the characters in a much better way than what has been done with Bond in the reboot. I know I might get flamed for saying that, but with the Star Wars prequels, there was at least some progress being made. Craig, who's now on his forth Bond film, is still dawdling about with childhood drama. If the producers decide to keep Craig when he's well into his fifties, I imagine they're going to further explore aging Bond. People can say what they want about the 1980s Moore Bond films, but I love the fact that they were three standard/unpretentious adventures with an older Bond. The way the Bond filmmakers are now, I doubt they could make films like those again.

As mentioned above, I think a Bond film along the lines of For Your Eyes Only or The Living Daylights was all that was needed after Die Another Day. In the past, the filmmakers did give Bond's character some emotional moments without going too overboard, and that's the approach that works best for the series, in my opinion.

Exactly.Let's take GoldenEye as an example.There are really some moments that make you see more of a retrospective look of Bond.The M speech for example or that scene one the beach with Natalia.The Freud talk by Alec and the one in the statue park also by Alec."James Bond,her majestice's loyal terier." I simply loved this.Bond is a lot of things but one of them is being loyal to the Queen and Country. "For England James?" "Enjoy,while you still can." "The very words I live by." M also says how Bond has cavalier attitude towards life.This was just spot on.With the job Bond has he needs to have it.Also I think there were also little things that made Chrtopher Lee say Brosnan was by far the best and closest to the character.We could say Fleming's Bond was a man who took refuge in good and luxury living to escape the fact that there was always a shadow of death behind him.When Electra asks Bond in TWINE what does he do to survive he stops for a second and answers:"I take pleasure,in great beauty." Now this was first and foremost a compliment for Electra in that moment,but Bond takes pleasure in a great beauty of life.Expensive cars,martini's,food,vines,clothes,watches.Everything.This was all more well done and way more subtle than the whole "Craig is diffirent with more personal side" propaganda.I personally don't see it.

[Kristatos]

Exactly.Let's take GoldenEye as an example.There are really some moments that make you see more of a retrospective look of Bond.The M speech for example or that scene one the beach with Natalia.The Freud talk by Alec and the one in the statue park also by Alec."James Bond,her majestice's loyal terier." I simply loved this.

I personally found that stuff way too "on the nose", a weakness shared by both Martin Campbell and Sam Mendes. These ideas should be conveyed through action*, not dialogue. So. Much. Dialogue.

*=I use the word broadly here - I'm not just talking about the action sequences, but everything the characters do, rather than say.

[Veronica]

Exactly.Let's take GoldenEye as an example.There are really some moments that make you see more of a retrospective look of Bond.The M speech for example or that scene one the beach with Natalia.The Freud talk by Alec and the one in the statue park also by Alec."James Bond,her majestice's loyal terier." I simply loved this.

I personally found that stuff way too "on the nose", a weakness shared by both Martin Campbell and Sam Mendes. These ideas should be conveyed through action*, not dialogue. So. Much. Dialogue.

*=I use the word broadly here - I'm not just talking about the action sequences, but everything the characters do, rather than say.

Well,I personally liked those scenes in GoldenEye.The ones I didn't like are the one in CR.Don't get me started on that shield of heart and the whole soap opera-esque dialogue between Vesper and Bond.That was just terrible.Oh and the train conversation! So forced,so over-the top...God.I think that the scenes from TND for example the one in hotel where Bond is sipping vodka,and when he finds Paris dead are truly great and really show the inner character of Bond.

[Veronica]

Rant 20

I Don’t Know What Craig Is Smoking…



I found this snippet of an interview Craig gave in 2012 leading up to the premiere of Skyfall. Here is a link so you can read it in the context I found it.

http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles ... =&id=03796

Standard font are the original words my commentary is in bold. Oh and I censored the curse words, cause in 4 paragraphs Craig managed to drop just as many F bombs, you stay classy Dan!



How much of 'Skyfall' was a reaction to 'Quantum of Solace' or 'Casino Royale'?

I am very, very keen that you can't make films in a reactionary way. You can't do it! (Funny you say that Dan as you contradict yourself only one paragraph below when you say “We had to destroy the myth because Mike Myers… MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO DO THE GAGS.” Looks to me you just made films in a reactionary way!)There has been a lot of talk, from the beginning from 'Casino' into 'Quantum' because everyone has gone, "Where's the 'Bondness'? Where's all the old stuff?"(Yeah where is it?) I was given this chance by Barbara and Michael, which is the first of the books, and the conceit (shouldn’t this be consensus?) is we began again, but I couldn't come in and pretend to be James Bond,(really? Isn’t that the point of acting) because everyone knows Bond as Pierce or Roger or Timothy or Sean.(I got bad news for you Dan most of us still do) I couldn't come in and go, "Hmm, Martini," or whatever.(yes I have so much respect for the character I mock one of the series’ most iconic lines) It's not who I am, and how I kind of approach things.(sure because you’re such a professional actor, what else have you been in again?)

The truth of it is that I always had this plan in my head is that we got to make them and begin them again and bring all that back in, but it had to happen the way it did.(I see, so YOU are the mastermind at EON, Barbra and M.G.W. are just your lackeys) I can't see it happening any other way.(I can) We had to destroy the myth because Mike Myers f@cked us - I am a huge Mike Myers fan, so don't get me wrong - but he kind of f@cked us; made it impossible to do the gags.(again not reactionary!) What I am proudest of in Skyfall is the lightness of touch we've been able to bring back into it (yes so light we couldn’t even feel it) but not lose the drama and the action.(yeah you didn’t lose it cause it never was there to begin with)



You captured a lot of the Fleming energy from the novels of The Man With The Golden Gun and You Only Live Twice in 'Skyfall',(he did?) was that a conscious decision?

We always go back to Fleming. (My favorite EON cop out, no matter what they’re trying to justify they just say it was an attempt to go “back to Fleming”) We just do it, you have to. I mean, the darkness, the conflict...(the brooding, the lack of fun, the ridiculous plot holes…) His wife thought they were smut, but smut that got them a lovely place in Jamaica.(yes Dan that is the only redeeming factor to Fleming’s works) He was conflicted. I like that. He wanted to make a spy, after his war experience, and the knowledge of these brave men who had gone to battle - and he'd sent a few to battle, probably to their deaths, making heroes out of them. You know, the despondency of coming out of the '50s. He set the tone of the '60s. In a way his stories had nowhere else to go until they were made into films.(wait, he set the tone of an entire decade but his works meant nothing until they became films?) They literally changed the face of movie making in the '60s. The legacy is incredible.(yes it is, so why are you urinating all over it?)



Where does Bond go from here?

Who knows? I think we set a good tone,(you do?) I think we set a real tone,(you did?) but I am happy for f@cking exploding volcano lairs.(huh?) Obviously I am joking but what I love and what I really wanted to achieve with Skyfall was a level of fantasy,(yeah it’s pretty fantastic how people think this was a good film!) it's one of the less violent ones,(what?) there's less blood, and people aren't dying in a horrible way,(no, falling off a building, or getting shot in the head is almost like passing in your sleep after a long fulfilling life) and it feels like much more of a family movie,(yes between humping a woman up against a wall, abusing a former child sex slave, homoerotic dialogue and a depressing as all get out ending this one is practically a Disney film!) and they should be family movies.(really? You better tell that to your lackey Babs! She's stated how she "went back to Fleming" making the films "darker") I don't want to go ludicrous and we've got to keep them in reality,(we do? I thought the point of cinema, especially action adventure films, was to escape reality?) but Christ almighty, the world's f@cking weird and there's plenty we can start mining and taking out. If Blofeld turned up again, it wouldn't be a bad thing.(no it wouldn’t, but it would the way I’m sure you’d do it!)

Benny-all I can say is :Bravo!

[dirtybenny]

Thanks Veronica, it's nice to be appreciated!

It's funny you brought up that rant as it mentions Austin Powers and his effect on the Bond franchise.his Particularly how they had to "de-bondify" Bond because of it.

I posit to you that SF and now from what we know of SP are in fact "gritty, realistic" remakes of the last two Powers films.

Think about it in SF Bond loses his "Mojo" after falling off the train trestle and magically regains it halfway through the film like Austin 2, and now in SP Blofeld turns out to be his big bad foster brother! Just like Dr. Evil in #3!!!!!!

[Omega]

Wayyyyy back people question why cr was bond begins . And why James Bond didn't bother showing up.
Some said it was because Craig isn't not capable of doing one screen as bond like Connery Dalton or Brosnan were.
Seems the naysayers were correct . I doubt the series with Craig will ever come close to being bond again . Each movie has been a different take on bond becoming bond.

It's not that hard people! Stop trying to make the bond equivalent of Shakespeare in love.


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