Hmmmm. Fair enough, I had purged that one from my mind since the Screenwriter's strike basically ruined it.

Exactly. James became a cold, calculating bastard with the ladies because of

1) Vesper playing him, and
2) His wife getting killed on their wedding day.

Can we all pretend ITT that Quantum was never made? Let us never speak of the Bond movie that must not be named.

I thought quantum of solace was ok. I mean, the plot to legally control the world's utilities was kinda dumb, but it was stylish.

I also had no real problem with QoS.

Also, the car chase at the beginning was terrific.

Or Die Another Day

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

Another exciting read, but not quite as good as some of the others so far. Fleming has a wonderful knack of making stuff he's made up seem authentic. He has several American gangsters in this one, and captures their different characters and concerns to a tee.

Contains some dodgy sexual politics when Bond goes on about 'pansies', and some actually somewhat hateful (rather than merely patronising) racism about Koreans. There's also stuff about OddJob being one of only 3 men in the world with a black belt in Karate that seems an odd assertion these days.

Pretty good.

Bond movies getting pulled from Netflix instant watch on Sept 2. Last chance to see.

Aw man, I've been watching them every night!

I saw QoS in theaters and for the life of me didn't remember one thing about it until I saw it again on TV earlier this year. I really enjoyed it the second time. I'll watch it again at some point and hopefully I feel the same way as the second time: fun, enjoyable action movie (nothing great or spectacular of course).

They're also on Amazon Prime Instant Video for free, but I don't know if they'll be pulled from there just as they're being pulled from Netflix.

For Your Eyes Only by Ian Fleming

Consists of 5 short stories involving Bond, though only 3 of them are Bond adventures. Bond is a passive observer in the main on the other two. They are:

From a View to a Kill - Bond uncovers a nest of killers hiding in the woods who are intercepting signals riders and killing them, and takes them out. Solid adventure.

For Your Eyes Only - Bond undertakes a revenge assignment on behalf of M, killing Cuban gangsters who murdered a harmless British couple in cold blood. Their daughter is also after them, and is herself a dead shot with a bow and arrow. Again, solid.

Quantum of Solace - Bond listens to a story about a married couple where one wronging the other leads to a breakdown in the marriage. Well written, but no adventure.

Risico - Bond encountering two Greek crime bosses, and taking out a major part of the heroin pipeline to England. Solid.

The Hildebrand Rarity - A blustering bully on a boat who whips his wife gets killed, and Bond decides to cover it up - not knowing who the killer is, but not caring much either. Again, not really a Bond aventure.


Elements of the first and 4th went into the movie For Your Eyes Only (along with bits of the novel Live and Let Die), and the whip described in story 5 if found in the movie Licensed to Kill.


The 3 adventures I'd recommend, the other two are for completists only. Fleming writes well, but he's better at thriller than human drama.

Thunderball by Ian Fleming

Whilst Fleming is a solid, engaging writer, and his meticulous detail is both engaging and very authentic feeling, this adventure feels bloated for the story. It needed to be lean in the same way Moonraker was lean, but he goes overboard on the minutiae of the details in this case once it gets to the Bahamas. Combined with this, the ending seems abrupt, like he just got tired of it.

Notable, as this is the first adventure in the books that include Blofeld, and SPECTRE.

The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming.

Written in three sections, from the first-person perspective of a young Canadian woman, Viv!

I have no idea what Fleming was thinking when he wrote this. The first section is a lengthy discourse on the life of the heroine, and is not great writing. I actually don't think Fleming wrote it. It uses his vocabulary, but has very little of his verve or style. There's maybe a handful of phrases that are pure Fleming, the rest seems plodding. Rather tiresome and dreadful.

The second section has the heroine alone in a motel in America, and two obvious gangsters turn up. They are called "Horror" (a tall skinny guy with metal teeth - obv an inspiration for Jaws) and Sluggsy. This is definitely better than section one, but it really feels like a very subpar Mickey Spillane story.

The third section has Bond turn up, and ultimately kill the bad guys and sleep with the girl. This is the best section of the three, but it's still pretty goofy. Bond tells this woman he's just met about a secret mission he's been on, in lengthy detail. Bond would never do that, imo.

Overall, very poor, and there was one phrase, spoken by the female protagonist, that gave me a WTF moment. "All women love semi-rape".

Yeah, you read that right. Let's give the rest of the lines...

"All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken. It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that had made his act of love so piercingly wonderful."

wow.

Avoid at all costs, unless you are a completist.

Fleming loved his rape. From Casino Royale:

"the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape"

"Sweet Tang of Rape" will be the name of my next punk band.

wow, I'm reading On Her Majesty's Secret Service now, and in like the first few chapters, there's a part where there's a guy talking about a woman who has the secret desire to be raped, and how he raped her and she became obsessed with him.

I hadn't noticed it before because I've never read them back-to-back like this, but Fleming was a freak and a very weird dude.

He's also quite old.

this is documented fact, right?

The World is Not Enough 67/100



Nice theme song, but strangely unmemorable as a movie. Sophie Marceau was pretty good as the main love interest, but Robert Carlyle as the main villain had a really good setup and then was severely underwritten. He could have been a great villain. Denise Richards as a nuclear scientist is just ridiculous - I do like her choice of tight t-shirts and vests though.

I want the T-Shirt

Die Another Day



66/100


Another ho-hum Bond, not particularly memorable, except for some bad decision-making: Invisible car, silly Madonna cameo, and kite-surfing a tsunami with PS2-level graphics, for example. Some nice action sequences despite this, especially the opening sequence involving hovercrafts over the minefields of the demilatarized zone of North Korea. Halle Berry and Rosamunde Pike are excellent glamour, though.

Mmmmmmm Rosamund Pike.

Invisible car was just terrible.

Die Another Day: the final nail in the coffin for Brosnan's era.