Wednesday 28 October 2015

The Nameless Ones

I don't necessarily agree that women in Bond films are pieces of meat for 007 to chew up and spit out; I think they're a lot more interesting than that.  However, it's difficult to disagree that the sheer number of anonymous Bond shags is a little problematic.  These girls might have actual names, but as film viewers, we don't hear them, and often James himself would have only found out what they were called if he'd gone on IMDB.

Dr No - Miss Taro (Zena Marshall)

If Bond ever finds out her first name, we never hear about it.

From Russia With Love - Zora and Vida (Martine Beswick and Aliza Gur)

The fighting gypsy girls' names are unimportant.  What is important is that they look a bit saucy as they roll around on the ground together.

Thunderball - Mme La Porte (Mitsouko)

Mme. La Porte begins the grand tradition of pre-title sequence girls whose purpose is to provide a bit of sex appeal without any personal details like their name getting in the way.

You Only Live Twice - Kissy (Mie Hama)

Kissy is, allegedly, the main Bond Girl - she's certainly the only one still alive at the end - but Tiger and Bond refer to her as "a Japanese" and "an Ama Girl" before her appearance, and then nothing at all once she turns up.  Even her listing in the credits doesn't give her the surname, Suzuki, she has in the novel.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - the allergy girls

The first real appearance of a bevy of mostly anonymous saucepots in a Bond film.  The adorable Ruby Bartlett, of course, is named, and if you listen closely you can hear Irma Bunt call Julie Ege's Scandinavian girl "Helen", but the rest are anonymous and are credited only by their nationality.  Poor Catherine von Schell's character gets plenty of dialogue and a love scene with Bond, but we only find out her name is Nancy at the end.

Note: some of the girls, though credited by their nationalities in the credits, got names in the script.  They are Sue-Ann, the English Girl (Joanna Lumley); Sylvanno, the Jamaican Girl (Sylvanna Henriques) and Denise, the Israeli Girl (Helena Ronee).

The Man With The Golden Gun - Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) and Goodnight (Britt Ekland)

There's a weird formality around the girls in Roger Moore's second film.  Maud Adams' character is referred to as "Miss Anders" throughout, even after she's died, and it's only in the end credits we find out she was called Andrea.  Goodnight, meanwhile, is simply called by her surname, even when in a tryst with 007, and her first name from the novel - Mary - isn't even in the credits.  Perhaps she just has the one name, like Cher.

The Spy Who Loved Me - Log Cabin Girl (Sue Vanner) and Feliccia (Olga Bisera)

The Spy Who Loved Me begins a new tradition: the pre credit minx who doesn't even get a character name in the credits.  Poor Log Cabin Girl.  Olga Bisera, meanwhile, gets an ostentatious credit in the titles ("Olga Bisera as Feliccia") and then no-one actually calls her Feliccia onscreen.

Moonraker - Hostess, Private Jet (Leila Shanna) 

Another pre-credits saucepot without a real name.

Octopussy - Bianca (Tina Hudson)

Bond may give her a peck on the cheek and promise to see her in Miami, but he can't be bothered saying her actual name.

A View To A Kill - Kimberley Jones (Mary Stavin)

Unnamed pre-credits Bond Girl, #5583.

The Living Daylights - Linda (Kell Tyler)

Margo, the girl Linda is talking to on the phone, has her name said in dialogue.  Linda does not.

Licence to Kill - Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto)

Lupe's extravagant surname is never mentioned onscreen, and only appears in the end credits.  This is a crime.

GoldenEye - Caroline (Serena Gordon)

As part of his new take on 007, Pierce Brosnan took the traditional pre-credits shagpiece and moved her to after the credits.  Revolutionary!  He doesn't call Caroline by her name, but he does call her "dear", which is a 1000x worse.

Tomorrow Never Dies - Professor Inga Bergstrom (Cecile Thomsen)

Possibly the first Bond Girl with a PhD, Inga displays a bit of buttock but not an actual name.

The World Is Not Enough - Dr Molly Warmflash (Serena Scott-Thomas)

Another one to file under "close, but not close enough"; Bond calls her Molly, and M refers to her as "the good Doctor", but no-one actually says Warmflash.  For shame.

Casino Royale - Solange (Caterina Murino)

We were told that Daniel Craig's Bond would have deeper, more respectful relationships with women, but he can't be bothered calling Solange by her actual given name.  It doesn't appear until the credits.

Quantum of Solace - Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton)

Fields absolutely refuses to say her first name onscreen.  It's only after she's dead and the film is over we find out her parents were big fans of Liverpool orphanages.

Skyfall - Eve Moneypenny (Naomie Harris)

Ok, we are told what her name is, but not until the very last scene.  Which begs the question: what was 007 calling her up until then?  Did she have a number?  Was he just calling her "Woman"?  Given that they've worked together in quite fraught circumstances and - possibly - even had sex, this is pretty dodgy behaviour from Bond.  Perhaps he assumed she'd be dead within a few minutes so it wasn't worth the effort of learning her name.  There is a precedent, after all.

Monday 26 October 2015

Roughly Everything That Went Through My Head During "Spectre"

SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS---SPOILERS

1. GUNBARREL!  All is forgiven.
2. Although the lack of the bouncing circle opening up on the action is a shame.
3. And the moody quote doesn’t help.
4. That’s not Bond in the white suit, is it?
5. Ah no.  There he is.
6. I’ve heard all this fuss about the five minute tracking shot, but I could see the join when the camera zoomed in on the poster.
7. And again when that bloke walked past.
8. Wouldn’t walk on that ledge for a gold watch.
9. That stadium dialogue was a bit clunky.
10. These people are still having a parade even though a building just exploded?!
11. Christ, that’s a lot of people in that square.  I’d have a panic attack.
12. Bad greenscreening.  Forgivable but bad.
13. Can all helicopters do loop the loops now?  I thought the Tiger in GoldenEye was special just because it could.
14. The pre-titles should have ended with him landing that helicopter on the roof of the hotel and shagging the Mexican girl.
15. Ok, Danny Kleinman has finally lost his fucking mind.
16. Silva!  Le Chiffre!  Vesper!  #justiceforDominicGreene
17. Are these titles going to spell out the whole film?
18. What’s going on with Ralph Fiennes’ lower jaw?
19. Are all of Bond’s effects from Skyfall in that box?  All of them?  What about the AB rifle?  Didn’t that survive?
20. Bond’s apartment looks quite good actually.  Nice furniture.
21. When did M film this?  And could she not have been a bit more specific?
22. Does everyone have to get to Q branch by boat now?
23. I bet the Tate were well chuffed when they built that skyscraper right outside.
24. Smart blood?
25. Proper gadgets though.
26. Q is just Pingu now.
27. Poor 009.
28. Why doesn’t Bond just slap Lucia in the face and say, “get over it love”?
29. Monica Bellucci looks gorgeous though.
30. Nice house.  This is the one Sony tried to get them to film in London, wasn’t it?
31. Behind you!
32. Seriously, was we meant to notice that bloke?
33. Oh.  They’re here to kill her.  Fair enough.
34. He’s assuming she hated her husband, but did she actually say that?
35. This is ever so slightly dodgy, sex wise.
36. Saucy undies.
37. Wait, is that it for Monica Bellucci?  Is she at least going to get horribly murdered?
38. Mickey Mouse.  LOL.
39. Lilith from Frasier is talking about sex slaves.  Ok.
40. Is this the record holder for subtitles in the series?
41. Yikes, that eyeball stuff was nasty.
42. Car chase!
43. Comedy car chase!
44. Moneypenny, you hot slut.
45. Love the little Fiat getting pushed around.
46. Ejector seat.  Fantastic.  Absolute Bond.
47. Moneypenny found Mr White pretty easily, which begs the question: why has no-one done it before?
48. John Glen screeching birds!
49. No, don’t make Mr White go upstairs.  I want to see what he was watching on telly.
50. Jesus, look at the dust on that chess board.
51. Bond giving his gun to show trust: very Columbo.
52. Just ask him what happened to Quantum.  Did it get taken over?  Was there a coup?
53. Christ, I don’t think I needed to see White shoot himself in the chin.
54. Though having said that, shouldn’t there be more gore?
55. Ewww, ravens eating his face.
56. Very sexy design for the Klinik.  Though wouldn’t helicopters be easier for access than planes?
57. Is she a psychiatrist?  What is this Klinik for?  Is it for rich weirdos?
58. Q’s got over his fear of flying then.
59. Nice jumper.
60. More gags.  Seriously, this is the funniest Craig’s ever been.
61. Did everyone touch that ring at some point?
62. Love Madeline fighting back and turning the tables on her kidnapper.
63. Why are they all so scared?  Surely a Land Rover would win in a fight with a plane?
64. Is that really how Q’s going to get away? Going through a fire escape?
65. Good explosions though.
66. Liked the plane bursting through the wood building.
67. Really, love, is this the time to get all snotty with Bond?  Just run if you’re not keen.
68. You could have left the chain on, Q.
69. Did they really think L’Americain was a person?
70. I liked the apology, then the cut to the room being torn apart.
71. Is that BELVEDERE vodka hidden behind the wall?
72. Don’t shoot the mouse!
73. He’s drinking beer now.  HEINEKEN beer.
74. When did she change into that saucy nightie?
75. Not really sure what’s going on here.  They’ve traced a particular satellite phone?  Was Mr White coming here every year on the off chance?  Couldn’t he do all this in Austria?
76. Rules!  That’s a Fleming reference, isn’t it?
77. Amazing how many sleeper trains are still running in the movies.
78. Nice woodwork.
79. I like that she’s just a girl, not someone who’s experienced at using guns.
80. Shit.  So much for that.
81. Is this train from the 1930s?
82. What happened to everyone else in the dining car?  Did they just run?
83. Moroccan Railways are really laissez faire about people demolishing their trains.
84. Good fight though.
85. Those barrels are like Jaws!
86. Urgh.  That swear word was totally unnecessary.
87. Raunch!
88. …and then the train carries on as if nothing happened, and they just let Bond get off at the next stop.
89. What are they waiting for?
90. Was this their plan?  To just hope they got an invite?
91. Mind you, it’s very Fleming.  Very Dr No.
92. Love the design of this headquarters.
93. Those are beautifully decorated bedrooms.
94. Did they give Bond a suit, or are they only interested in dressing Madeline up?
95. I’d have thought a meteorite that big would have made a much larger crater.
96. All those men in black turning in their seats at the same time.  Bit camp.
97. White cat!
98. Lots of white in fact.
99. Ewww.
100. No, really, ewww.
101. This is Colonel Sun, yes?  Only a bit more hi-tech.
102. Oh, he’s Blofeld.  Shame.  I was hoping that was just a rumour.  So we really are starting all over again.
103. Never let the girl kiss the man in the torture chair.  Foolish mistake.
104. Yes, but what happened to the cat?
105. Bond’s sharpshooting skills are almost supernatural now.
106. Nice explosion.  Always good to see a proper super-bang.
107. Oh, it’s London, is it?  Thanks for the caption.  The Houses of Parliament didn’t give it away.
108. Hildebrand!
109. Are they just going to kill C?
110. That’s the tunnel under the Barbican!
111. Did they just shoot Q?  I hope not.
112. They missed out Dominic Greene again.
113. In fact this is all laying it on a bit thick.  Was Blofeld really behind everything that happened in the last three films?
114. Three minutes to run to the top of the building?
115. The whole surveillance plot… so hard to get excited by it.  It seemed ludicrous that all those governments would sign over their secret services, and what have they got?  A load of CCTV cameras?
116. Thanks for letting us know that C is dead, Tanner.  Wouldn’t have guessed after that massive drop.
117. I wish they’d escaped Vauxhall Cross in the Q boat.
118. This is a bit of a let down actually.  A bit clunky.
119. Should have ended the film in Morocco.
120. Of course he’s not going to shoot Blofeld.
121. Is that it?  Walking off the bridge with Madeline?
122. Oh, extra Q scene.
123. I guess we’re meant to be happy about Bond going off with Madeline to happiness, but… she’s not that great.
124. BUT WHAT HAPPENED TO MONICA BELLUCCI?
125. JAMES BOND WILL RETURN!!!

Friday 23 October 2015

The Bond Theme Hierachy

No, this isn't another list of the "best" Bond themes, because there's enough of those about already.  Besides, the answer is Moonraker.  This is more about categorising the artists who performed the Bond themes.  It's a moment in history, an admittance to a rarefied pantheon, and as such only the very best should caterwaul over three minutes of naked women.  It doesn't always work out that way.

Division One: artists for whom performing a Bond theme is just another diamond in their glittering crown of achievements.

Shirley Bassey
Tom Jones
Louis Armstrong
Paul McCartney & Wings
Duran Duran
Gladys Knight
Tina Turner
Madonna
Adele

Division Two: artists who are well respected and popular though perhaps not legends.

Matt Monro
Lulu
Carly Simon
Sheryl Crow
Garbage
Jack White & Alicia Keys

Division Three: artists who were in a bubble of popularity that quickly faded.

Nancy Sinatra
Sheena Easton
a-ha
Sam Smith (he's only had ONE album; let's see him try to squeeze out another one)

Division Four: who did you sleep with to get this gig?

Rita Coolidge
Chris Cornell (if he's such a legend, how come his solo career died so fast and now he's back with Soundgarden, eh?)

P.S. Lani Hall would definitely be in Division Four, not least because she actually did get the gig by being married to Herb Alpert.

Tuesday 13 October 2015

10 Good Things about Die Another Day

Last night, as Adrian continued to watch all the Bond films ahead of Spectre's release, he tweeted about how dreadful it was.  I replied that it wasn't that bad, and we had a bit of a back and forth, culminating in this:


So here it is.  Ten Good Things About Die Another Day.

1.  80% of the Hovercraft Chase

Bond movies are always looking for new ways to cause vehicular trauma, and they'd never done hovercrafts before.  There was the brief glimpse of a Sealink in Diamonds are Forever, and the Bondola of course, but neither one was used as an actual device for destruction.  Die Another Day corrects this with an exciting, tense sequence that contains plenty of explosions, some interesting deaths, and an amusing climax with a good Bond groaner.  I'm knocking off 20% for the truly appalling back projection once Colonel Moon gets on board; that looks like something from the Roger Moore era.

2.  The Titles

Yes, I am going to defend Madonna's Die Another Day.  There's this idea that Bond themes have to be extravagant, overblown, silky torch songs crooned by a velvet throated madam, or to use a shortcut, "Shirley Bassey".  Would Shirley Bassey sing this? is a lazy shortcut.  Sometimes it works - the Bass would have done a great version of Skyfall, for example.  Sometimes it doesn't.  I have the Bassey Sings Bond album, and her take on A View To A Kill is horrific.  So is her version of Live and Let Die, and the less said about her cod-reggae cover of We Have All The Time In The World the better.  That doesn't stop them from being awesome Bond themes though, and while Die Another Day isn't in the same league as those three, it's still a great opener to the film.  It's dangerous and exciting and fast paced.  The lyrics are nonsensical, but so are the lyrics to The Living Daylights.  It's not trying to be a Shirley Bassey track from the Nixon era, it's trying to be a piece of music from the year 2002.  And Madonna is absolutely the calibre of artist who should be performing Bond themes: a legendary name in the music world, because singing a Bond theme is being admitted to a rare and privileged club.

(Having said that, I would pay an extraordinarily large amount of money to hear Shirley Bassey sing "Sigmund Freud: analyse this").

Daniel Kleinman's titles are genuinely disturbing, probably the first instance of his descent into madness that continued in Skyfall.  God knows what he's going to do in Spectre.

3.  James Bond walking into a five star hotel looking like a tramp and asking for his usual suite.

Because YES.

4.  Cuba

Alright, it's not really Cuba - twitchy insurers after 9/11 made them film it in Spain - but the Cuban sequence up until Bond goes to the beach is great fun.  Emilio Echevarria's Raoul is a proper old school Bond ally, like Kerim Bey or Sir Godfrey Tibbet: he twinkles charmingly throughout his scenes.  Die Another Day's version of Havana reminds me of Kingston in Dr No, all dusty streets and classic cars and saucy vixens on street corners.  There's even a brief appearance by Birds of the West Indies! Plus David Arnold's score is glorious at this point, camp and boisterous, and ending with the James Bond Theme picked out on Spanish guitar.  I will always give bonus points when the Bond Theme is played in the style of the location.

5.  Moonraker

As a Fleming fanboy, I'm delighted to see they finally adapted the Moonraker novel to the screen.  The middle third is a 21st century version of the book: the villain is a man who has undergone extensive plastic surgery and taken on a fake identity.  He becomes incredibly popular in Britain (even getting a knighthood) and uses his immense wealth to build a giant space device that will ostensibly bring great benefits.  In reality, it conceals a deadly weapon that he will use as vengeance for a lost war.  The British government don't trust him, and insert a female undercover agent to keep an eye on him; Bond is also assigned, and first meets the villain at a gentleman's club where he bests him in a battle of wits.  The female undercover agent is dismissive of 007 and resists his attempts to charm her.  Bond travels to the villain's base where he is introduced to the giant space device and the battle of wits continues.

Of course, there's nothing about lasers or ice palaces or Halle Berry, but it's nice to know that even in 2002 Mickey and Babs are trawling the novels for stuff they can nick.

6.  The piece of music they play when Verity first appears is called "That Looks Like Madonna."

Thank you, David Arnold.

7.  Rosamund Pike

Fun fact: only three Bond girls have ever received Oscar nominations, and two of them are in this movie.  (The third is Kim Basinger, and she wasn't even in a proper Bond film).  In 2015 it actually seems weird to think of Rosamund Pike as a Bond Girl, but this was actually her first film, a fact that seems even more remarkable once you watch the film.  Ros gives easily the best performance in the film, straddling drama and comedy, being equally convincing as a sword-wielding maniac and an icy vixen.  Watch the scene with Jinx, Bond and Miranda in the ice palace.  Pike/Miranda knows that "big bang theory" has a multitude of meanings, but plays it straight.  Jinx responds with "I think I got the thrust of it," at which point Halle Berry rolls her eyes, sticks her tongue out, and just manages to stop short of honking her boobs and shouting "I'M ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT FUCKING!".  Miranda's response?  A single "Really?" which is a masterclass of understatement and wit.  There are reports that in a number of drafts of Die Another Day, Miranda was the good girl and Jinx was the bad one; this is an alternate universe I would like to be part of.

8.  The Ice Palace

It's thrown away on screen, with Lee Tamahori absolutely refusing to give us any kind of awe inspiring wide shot of the interior.  Its geography makes no sense - it's somehow big enough to have luxurious suites, and a central party area, but it looks much smaller from the outside, and it's never clear how the domes and the hot springs relate to it.  Its destruction is illogical - it's melting after one blast of Icarus's ray, and bits of it keep falling off, but it's still strong enough to support a car chase, apart from the room Jinx is in which melts REALLY REALLY FAST.  But it's the kind of epic architecture you only get in a Bond movie, a hollowed out volcano of a supertanker of an Olimpatec Meditation Institute, and I treasure it for that reason.

9.  General Moon

Like Emilio Echevarria, Kenneth Tsang seems to be acting in a much better movie.  His character reminds me of General Gogol, that quiet, sympathetic face of the enemy, and his realisation aboard the Antonov that his son is (a) still alive and (b) kind of a bastard is a rare moment of real emotion.

10.  It's never dull

The worst, most terrible crime any Bond film can commit is to be dull.  For Your Eyes Only is the worst offender, an utterly beige film, and who hasn't occasionally fast forwarded through the underwater bits in Thunderball?  We're only human.  Die Another Day is never boring.  There's always something happening.  It might be nonsensical (DNA transplants!), it might be embarrassing (CGI Halle Berry jumping off a cliff), it might make you want to reach into the screen so you can punch an actor (Toby Stephens), but you're not yawning.  The only time your mouth opens that wide is out of disbelief during the parasailing sequence.  (Of course I'm not going to defend that).  It's not the Bond movies' finest hour, but over fifty years, you're going to get some highs and some lows.  It's the worst Brosnan, but its failure (artistically: it still made shitloads at the box office) gave us Casino Royale.  Sometimes the Bond films need a mistake so they can correct the course and go back to being ace. 

Friday 14 August 2015

Agency, Or Why Lupe Lamora Is The Worst

Fandom is pretty much agreed that there are two candidates for the category of Worst Bond Girl.  It's either bumbling oaf Mary Goodnight or shrill bimbo Stacy Sutton.  There's a hair's breadth separating the two; trying to decide who is worse is like being a judge at a Most Obnoxious Tory contest - whoever wins, we lose.  

I disagree.  For me, while both these characters are flawed, the worst Bond Girl is one who rarely gets mentioned.  It's Lupe Lamora in Licence To Kill.

Goodnight and Stacy get a raw deal because, in both cases, the actress is miscast and there is another female role in the film which is vastly superior.  Goodnight is a comic character, and if she'd been played by someone with a natural wit - a Teri Garr, or a Goldie Hawn, or a Madeline Kahn - we'd laugh with her, not at her.  Britt Ekland is extremely beautiful, but being married to Peter Sellers doesn't make you a comic genius by proxy.  We end up feeling sorry for this poor dopey girl, instead of finding her charming.

Stacy, meanwhile, is apparently a trained State geologist who has time to get full make-up and extensive hair styling.  She has a lot of grand speeches about tectonic plates and unfortunately Tanya Roberts doesn't look like she understands any of them.  There's just something missing, an intelligence behind the eyes, which means she's far more convincing squealing "James!" than telling us about the Hayward Fault.  Plus, next to Grace Jones, Tanya Roberts is nothing.

What both these characters have that Lupe doesn't, though, is a bit of gumption and action about them.  I'm not talking about physical prowess - the idea that a Bond Girl can only be 007's equal if she kicks arse is utterly tedious - but a drive and movement within the film.  Goodnight and Stacy might be annoying, but they both have a bit of gumption about them.  Goodnight knows about Hong Kong, acts as an efficient liaison, tries to plant a homing device on Scaramanga's car off her own back, and, let's not forget, she flat out murders Kra.  It might have lead to the destruction of the island, but Goodnight didn't hang around waiting for Bond to rescue her: when he encounters her after killing Scaramanga she's already half-way out the door.

Stacy might be played by an actress who's best being seen and not heard, but her entire role is vital to the film.  If Bond hadn't met her, would he know what Main Strike was?  Would he have any idea what Zorin's scheme was?  If Stacy hadn't been on board the airship, it wouldn't have crashed into the bridge, and Bond would have been left out to die of exposure.

However, you could take Lupe out of Licence To Kill and it's hard to believe anyone would notice.  She does something of importance exactly three times in the film.  At the film's start, she's absconded with Alvarez, and this is what gets Sanchez to leave Isthmus City.  Halfway through, she provides a distraction so Bond can escape.  And towards the end, she lets Pam and Q know that Bond is still in Isthmus and on Sanchez's trail.

What's notable about these is how utterly passive Lupe is in all of them.  She's not luring Sanchez out of his home base deliberately; she's just buggered off with someone else.  She helps Bond get away by dropping her handbag so he can run across a living room unmolested - it's hard to believe the world's greatest secret agent would have found getting past that one guard difficult.  And when she goes to speak to Pam and Q, it's not because she has a plan for them, or an idea of how to help Bond; she just drops the info then is hurried out the door, leaving the far more capable characters to actually do something.

Lupe is quite astonishingly vapid.  She exists within the context of the film to look pretty and bat her eyelids.  She has no actual purpose beyond showing that Sanchez really isn't a nice guy.  Compare her with other examples of the trapped villain's girlfriend - Domino, Andrea, Severine.  Each of those women hates their circumstances just as much as Lupe, and each of them is far more active in trying to get away.  Domino is romanced away from the villain and then, when she's finally given in to 007, she works against him, taking a geiger counter onboard, refusing to talk under torture, and then finally rescuing Bond from Largo.  When Severine discovers Bond can help her, she is insistent: "Will you kill him?"  And let's not forget, if it wasn't for Andrea Anders, Bond wouldn't have gone after Scaramanga at all - she was the one who sent the golden bullet at the start.

Lupe on the other hand drifts from man to man and asks him to rescue her.  First it's Alvarez, and when he is killed, she wanders back over to Sanchez.  Bond turns up, and she attaches herself to him.  By the film's end, she's a millionairess, having somehow inherited Sanchez' estate (do you think he left a will?).  But she still needs a man, and so suddenly she's holding President Lopez' hand.  According to Krest, she can't even win Miss Galaxy without someone fixing it for her.

Look at yourself, Lupe!  Look at how utterly weak you are!  Bond girls are never weak.  There is an idea that all they do is lounge around in a bikini and wait to be rescued, but that's not true in the slightest.  All the best Bond Girls - Honey, Pussy, Tracy, Anya, Kara, Pam, Wai Lin, Vesper - are strong and gutsy and brave.  They work with Bond and have lives and independent spirits.  Honey Ryder might emerge from the waves in a bikini, but she also brought herself up after being orphaned and killed the man who raped her.  She's not a damsel in distress.

Lupe wanders around in pretty dresses, getting passed from person to person, making cocktails and coffee and dealing a few cards.  She doesn't really help Bond.  She doesn't really hinder him.  You could say that this is the classic victim of abuse, but she doesn't seem that traumatised.  (Admittedly part of this could be down to the inexperience of Talisa Soto, an actress who  literally looks down the camera lens at one point).  In fact, after being torn away from Alvarez and whipped, she seems to slip right back into the role of trophy moll quite well.  The most disgust she can manage is directed towards Sanchez' iguana, and her revenge against that is to take off his pretty diamond necklace and wear it herself.  Take that!

A good Bond Girl needs to push herself and Bond and the audience.  She has to have some fight in her, some bravery, some actual inclination to shape her own role within the narrative.  Lupe is utterly disposable; she doesn't even have a death scene to make us miss her.  Kill a girl - a Paula, a Jill, a Tilly - to remind us that the villain is a really bad man, and to give a slightly written character a bit of purpose within the script.  Lupe survives.  She lives to host expensive parties and wear diamonds.  How is that a victory?

Thank goodness for Pam, who is everything Lupe isn't.  No wonder she was so furious that Bond slept with her.  Lupe is nothing, and she doesn't deserve their attention.

Sunday 2 August 2015

Every James Bond's Tenure

FILM ONE: Everyone tries their hardest to really launch the guy in style.  The script and casting all get that little bit more effort applied to them; the action is a bit grander; the jokes are a bit funnier.  Everyone wants this to succeed.

Dr No, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live and Let Die, The Living Daylights, GoldenEye, Casino Royale.

FILM TWO:  They try to make the first film again, but something stops it from working properly.  There's a writer's strike that stops development of the script, or it's rushed into production too quickly to meet some arbitrary factor like a stock issue.  It comes out a little bit unsatisfactory in many ways, with some of the polish of the previous film absent, and you feel the script could have done with another couple of passes.

The Man With The Golden Gun, Licence To Kill, Tomorrow Never Dies, Quantum of Solace.

Exception that proves the rule: From Russia With Love.

FILM THREE: Everyone's firing on all cylinders.  They've worked out what their lead actor can do and is comfortable with, and allowed him to have script input to make it more to his voice.  A new director comes in and brings a freshness to the series.  It all just works, and in subsequent years, the film is seen as a high point of the entire series.

Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, The World Is Not Enough, Skyfall.

FILM FOUR:  They try to make the third film again, only BIGGER.  Everything that happened in the previous film is repeated only blown up by a thousand percent.  The result is a film that wobbles and collapses and doesn't work anywhere near as well as its predecessor.  These films have their supporters, but are mainly seen as pale shadows of the one before.

Thunderball, Moonraker, Die Another Day. 

Currently pending but all the signs are there: Spectre.

FILM FIVE:  After the relative artistic (but not financial) failure of the previous films, there's a comprehensive change in personnel.  A new director comes in and he makes different decisions to his somewhat jaded predecessor.  It doesn't do as well at the box office but it's largely seen as the superior film over the one before.

You Only Live Twice, For Your Eyes Only.

FILM SIX: Everyone is just pissing about now.  The set is a load of fun, the actor is so relaxed he's practically asleep, and silliness seeps into every part of the script.  The Bond family are having a party.

Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy.

FILM SEVEN: You're getting too old for this shit.

Never Say Never Again, A View To A Kill.

Wednesday 22 July 2015

Towards A Unified Timeline Of Bond Films

The Spectre trailer premiered this morning (is that title all in caps?  Is it not?  I need guidance!).  There were guns, gadgets, girls, all the usual stuff, but it was backed by something unusual: the theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

The trailers usually use either a souped up version of the James Bond theme or a bit of music from one of the previous films.  For Spectre, they've gone to the trouble of arranging a new, 2015 version of John Barry's 1969 classic.  That's odd.  Obviously, it's a superb piece of music, but why that specific theme?  Does Spectre tie into OHMSS in some way?

This lead me back to one of my pet theories about the time frame of the James Bond films.  Between 1962 and 2002, it was simple: James Bond was a creature who went from film to film, one after the other, in a straight and linear fashion.  We'll have to gloss over the fact that he hasn't aged over the course of forty years, because that's a whole different can of worms, and it plays right into the hands of those idiots who claim that "James Bond" is just a codename.

References to previous films are few and far between but they definitely point to a linear route.  Kronsteen mentions that 007 killed Dr No in From Russia With Love.  Bond tries to get his hands on his black attache case from that film in Goldfinger.  On Her Majesty's Secret Service has an entire scene where Bond fiddles with stuff from previous adventures, and then the death of Tracy is referenced in The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only and Licence To Kill.  There's a school of thought that believes Robert Brown is playing Admiral Hargreaves from The Spy Who Loved Me, newly promoted to M, in Octopussy through to Licence To Kill.  And Die Another Day features an entire raft of self-referential moments, including a scene in Q's lab that may as well have had a caption running along the bottom telling you to freeze frame your DVD for maximum enjoyment.

Casino Royale, though, presented a Bond newly promoted to the 00-Section, so the assumption was: we've rebooted.  This is a new Bond without any past, starting all over again.  Quantum of Solace continued on directly from Casino Royale.

But then Skyfall came out, and didn't reference either of the two films.  And rather than 007 being a new, relatively green agent, he's explicitly back to being an old dog, someone M will really go to bat for ("He's the best we have - though I'd never dream of telling him" she confesses to Elektra in The World Is Not Enough).  Meanwhile, Mallory explicitly suggests that Bond simply gives it all up and retires to the Cotswolds or something, which seems a bit much given that he's only completed two assignments at that point.

So I came to think: maybe Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace weren't reboots.  Maybe they were prequels.  They were flashbacks to a time before the rest of the series started, a bit like episodes of Friends that suddenly feature Fat Monica and Rachel's old nose.  You have to take on board the fact that the flashbacks were set in the present day, because if they suddenly set a James Bond film in 1961 it would be weird (plus you'd have that whole question of exactly how old is 007 anyway, given that he's been an operating agent for the best part of six decades).  Remember how the Enterprise of Jonathan Archer's time was much more advanced looking than the Enterprise of Jim Kirk's time, even though technically it took place decades before?  It's like that.  Bond had access to computers and mobile phones in Casino Royale and a while later in Dr No he was sticking hairs over door jambs - just go with it.

It's perhaps best to think of the Bond films as running into one another, assignment after assignment after assignment, that just happened to be filmed and released over the course of fifty years.  If you add up the timescale that way all 24 Bond films happen over the course of a couple of years.

Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are the flashback episodes then: how James Bond earned his stripes.  After Quantum, we move onto Dr No, and the rest of the series proceeds from there.  After Die Another Day, the next film in the timeline is Skyfall, and from there we move to Spectre.

Ah, but what about Judi Dench's M. I hear you cry?  Simple: there are two female M's, one who promoted James Bond, and one who took over in GoldenEye.  They both happen to look a lot like the venerable Dame Judi, but Henderson in You Only Live Twice looks a lot like Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever and we all accepted that.  Something terrible happened to Judi Dench I after Quantum of Solace, and so Bernard Lee's Sir Miles Messervy took over for Dr No (he does actually mention that's he's not long been in charge - ok, he says he's in charge of MI7, but that's not the point).  Then, after Robert Brown's M/Admiral Hargreaves retires, Judi Dench II takes over.  Female M never actually got a name (I'm ignoring Barbara Mawdsley from the awful Raymond Benson novels on the basis that it's a really awful name and the books are really awful) and so she could be two separate people.  We're also expressly told that her replacement is Gareth Mallory, not Sir Miles, so Skyfall can't take place before Dr No.

Naomie Harris' Moneypenny is also a different Moneypenny to the one from Dr No to Die Another Day; perhaps she's Moneypenny's daughter, like in the 1967 Casino Royale (there's a fifteen year age gap between Harris and Samantha Bond, so it's not inconceivable).  And there have definitely been three different Q's - Major Boothroyd (Peter Burton/Desmond Llewellyn), John Cleese (who was presumably sacked after Die Another Day for being rubbish) and Ben Whishaw.

To bring it back to Spectre, which appears to follow on from Skyfall, that would make this the re-introduction of the criminal organisation, not its introduction - that already happened in Dr No.  Perhaps Quantum has been subjected to a hostile takeover.  Perhaps it was just a cell of SPECTRE all along.  And so the use of the OHMSS theme is deliberate: Christoph Waltz says, "It was me James; the author of all your pain" - exactly the kind of thing someone who was responsible for the death of both Vesper and Tracy would say.  In my timeline, Bond was still married to Tracy and widowed, only after he fell for Vesper (when Daniel Craig was a one year old, apparently - again, don't be too welded to the actual passing of time in the real world).

The one problem (every single reader: ONE problem?) with this theory is Felix Leiter.  Unfortunately, Bond meets him for the first time twice: once in Casino Royale, where he doesn't recognise him at the gaming table so he's clearly a complete stranger, and once in Dr No, where Bond outright says "I've heard of him, but never met him."  We'll just have to gloss over this.  I mean, nothing about Felix Leiter really makes sense over the course of the series (is he fat or thin?  Old or young?  Blonde or brunette?  Black or white?  CIA or DEA?  Effective or incompetent?) so we'll just have to handwave this one away.

Of course, this is all just stupid conjecture.  When Spectre finally comes out in October it'll probably turn out the whole thing is set in the far future, and Monica Bellucci is a cyborg, and Christoph Waltz is Bond's long lost son.  Until then I am clinging to my little theory.