Well I foolishly suggested to my son that he have a weekend watching all of the James Bond movies. He took me up on the offer with the suggestion that I lay in at least 12 frozen pizzas. The agreed upon date was his long school weekend, the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. I could think of no better way to celebrate this giant of civil rights that watching a film series that features a whole bunch of white people.
Anyway Friday rolled around and the movie watching commenced with DR NO. This is a movie I have seen many times, and I was able to get through it basically because it's one of the shorter ones. Re-watching it this weekend my mind drifted to the thought, that this was basically a high class B movie,. A lot of it was filmed on location in Jamaica and that certainly helped the look of the film. I enjoyed it.
We next rolled into FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. I made it about halfway through this one before falling asleep. It's not like I haven't seen this one before, so it wasn't like I was missing anything. Istanbul looked pretty exotic, and the producers stuck pretty close to the Fleming book.
I woke up as Evan was starting GOLDFINGER, drifted back to sleep immediately after the pre-credits sequence, woke up towards the end of the movie and dragged myself off to bed at around 12:40 am. Gave Evan orders to go to bed after this film.
Woke up around 5:40 in the morning, noticed the kitchen light was on downstairs. Stumbled my way down to the family room and found Evan on the couch finishing up YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, the remake of DR. NO. Things were blowing up so that signaled the end of the movie. Evan had been up all night and apparently made it through THUNDERBALL.
Ordered Evan to bed, he decided to sleep on the couch in the family room. He woke up after 2 hours and started ON HER MAJESTIES SECRET SERVICE. I actually sat down and watched a large chunk of this movie. I still think the movie has a deadly dull long stretch where nothing happens. I guess you would say Bond falling in love in this movie is nothing happening, even if it is with Diana Rigg. The last hour is still pretty entertaining, it does have some pretty cool ski chase footage which they obviously worked incredibly hard to capture on film.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER was next on Evan's list. He was starting to crack, lack of sleep and the general suckeyness of this film caused him to shut it off a couple of times. But being a total trooper he finished the movie out. I had enough. This film was the beginning of the general jokey tone in the films which is frequently blamed on Roger Moore, but it actually starts with this film. Apparently Ian Fleming's plots weren't good enough to use anymore, although interestingly enough when they remake Casino Royale they use Fleming's story for the most part.
Evan finally cracked during LIVE AND LET DIE, which to me has always represented the worst of the films. (Actually the Brosnan films aren't very good and QUANTUM OF SOLACE was pretty unwatchable. ) LIVE AND LET DIE IS pretty bad, the producers stuffed it with lots of chases, car chases, boat chases, a very strange airplane chase. Roger Moore doesn't even seem to be trying and the stuff with the black mob is borderline offensive. They didn't even have the guts to use a black actress as the leading lady and ended up with the very bland Jane Seymour. Seymour reached her career peak as the tiresome "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman".
We took a long break and finished up Saturday night with MOONRAKER, probably the ultimate comic book movie in the series. I actually enjoyed this one. I always thought this movie was kind of stupid, but looking back at it now, its pretty entertaining. Roger Moore actually holds it all together as it bumbles along from one ridiculous situation to another.
You can say what you want about this movie, but you have to admit it is professionally assembled by a group of people that deliver the goods for the teenage boy audience. This audience consists of the age range from 12-72 for males.
Evan was completely exhausted and dragged himself off to bed. There have been no more Bond movies after this one.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Surviving the James Bond/Martin Luther King Weekend Marathon
Well I foolishly suggested to my son that he have a weekend watching all of the James Bond movies. He took me up on the offer with the suggestion that I lay in at least 12 frozen pizzas. The agreed upon date was his long school weekend, the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. I could think of no better way to celebrate this giant of civil rights that watching a film series that features a whole bunch of white people.
Anyway Friday rolled around and the movie watching commenced with DR NO. This is a movie I have seen many times, and I was able to get through it basically because it's one of the shorter ones. Re-watching it this weekend my mind drifted to the thought, that this was basically a high class B movie,. A lot of it was filmed on location in Jamaica and that certainly helped the look of the film. I enjoyed it.
We next rolled into FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. I made it about halfway through this one before falling asleep. It's not like I haven't seen this one before, so it wasn't like I was missing anything. Istanbul looked pretty exotic, and the producers stuck pretty close to the Fleming book.
I woke up as Evan was starting GOLDFINGER, drifted back to sleep immediately after the pre-credits sequence, woke up towards the end of the movie and dragged myself off to bed at around 12:40 am. Gave Evan orders to go to bed after this film.
Woke up around 5:40 in the morning, noticed the kitchen light was on downstairs. Stumbled my way down to the family room and found Evan on the couch finishing up YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, the remake of DR. NO. Things were blowing up so that signaled the end of the movie. Evan had been up all night and apparently made it through THUNDERBALL.
Ordered Evan to bed, he decided to sleep on the couch in the family room. He woke up after 2 hours and started ON HER MAJESTIES SECRET SERVICE. I actually sat down and watched a large chunk of this movie. I still think the movie has a deadly dull long stretch where nothing happens. I guess you would say Bond falling in love in this movie is nothing happening, even if it is with Diana Rigg. The last hour is still pretty entertaining, it does have some pretty cool ski chase footage which they obviously worked incredibly hard to capture on film.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER was next on Evan's list. He was starting to crack, lack of sleep and the general suckeyness of this film caused him to shut it off a couple of times. But being a total trooper he finished the movie out. I had enough. This film was the beginning of the general jokey tone in the films which is frequently blamed on Roger Moore, but it actually starts with this film. Apparently Ian Fleming's plots weren't good enough to use anymore, although interestingly enough when they remake Casino Royale they use Fleming's story for the most part.
Evan finally cracked during LIVE AND LET DIE, which to me has always represented the worst of the films. (Actually the Brosnan films aren't very good and QUANTUM OF SOLACE was pretty unwatchable. ) LIVE AND LET DIE IS pretty bad, the producers stuffed it with lots of chases, car chases, boat chases, a very strange airplane chase. Roger Moore doesn't even seem to be trying and the stuff with the black mob is borderline offensive. They didn't even have the guts to use a black actress as the leading lady and ended up with the very bland Jane Seymour. Seymour reached her career peak as the tiresome "Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman".
We took a long break and finished up Saturday night with MOONRAKER, probably the ultimate comic book movie in the series. I actually enjoyed this one. I always thought this movie was kind of stupid, but looking back at it now, its pretty entertaining. Roger Moore actually holds it all together as it bumbles along from one ridiculous situation to another.
You can say what you want about this movie, but you have to admit it is professionally assembled by a group of people that deliver the goods for the teenage boy audience. This audience consists of the age range from 12-72 for males.
Evan was completely exhausted and dragged himself off to bed. There have been no more Bond movies after this one.
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