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gncxx said:
"And in this ever changin' world in which we live in..." (Or is "In which we're livin'..."?)
I used to think that, but now I've come to believe that Macca is singing "if this ever-changing world in which we're livin'", which makes him less of an ungrammatical twerp than I'd thought!
 
Mythopoeika said:
I thought Brosnan fitted the part best, looks-wise.

If we're going with Book Bond, then Timothy Dalton was probably closest.

While I loved Goldeneye, each subsequent Brosnan offering seemed to find new depths of hell, to the point where I seriously wanted to smack him. Even now, he makes my palms itch, and that was even before I suffered through Mamma Mia.

I didn't think Daniel Craig could do it; didn't think he looked the part. But, hey, I was wrong. I'm looking forward to Skyfall because I think this is where we get the smooth, suave Bond. He's started as rough around the edges - a 'blunt instrument' - and now he's the guy who jumps onto the carriage of an exploding train and the first thing he does is check his cuffs. Suave. ;) It seems like we're getting a development of character, rather like through the books.

My favourite Bond was Dalton; he seemed to have the cynical, tired, weary warrior thing going on, reminiscent of my favourite Bond story, The Living Daylights.
 
Ravenstone said:
...My favourite Bond was Dalton; he seemed to have the cynical, tired, weary warrior thing going on, reminiscent of my favourite Bond story, The Living Daylights.

I thought Dalton was an excellent Bond too, and should have got at least a couple more films.

Off topic: both Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig have played Lord Asriel from His Dark Materials: Timothy Dalton on stage at the National, and Daniel Craig in the film The Golden Compass
 
I really liked Dalton's Bond. There was an air of danger about him. Like Connery, Lazeby and Craig, he gave the impression that he was someone you really did not want to get into a fight with (unlike Moore and Brosnan).

There's a scene in The Living Daylights where Bond's contact is killed and the look in Dalton's eyes was truly scary.

Shame he wasn't able to do more Bonds.
 
I think all the bonds have something about them that suited Bond at the time. I can't really pick one as a favourite as i grew up with Roger Moore and as such when your a kid watching it, its still great even if Roger Moore isn't considered a good Bond. Also Live and Let die is still a great Bond film and should be right up there in anyone's top 5 bond film's.

I liked Dalton and Brosnan's bonds and i also think Daniel Craig got it spot on especially in Casino Royale. I think you have to take into account the era the film is made in when your considering each Bond. I think if Roger Moore was Bond during Connery's or Dalton's time he would be looked on more favorably as they wouldn't have went for the funnier, slightly more ridiculous Bond.

And Chris Cornell's 'You Know my Name' is the best Bond theme tune ;)
 
bigphoot1 said:
Shame he wasn't able to do more Bonds.

Well, that's the studio's fault. Apparently, according to something I heard, he was offered the role for Goldeneye, but turned it down cus he thought himself too old then to play Bond. I dunno - I thought he still looked pretty good in Hot Fuzz.
 
Ravenstone said:
bigphoot1 said:
Shame he wasn't able to do more Bonds.

Well, that's the studio's fault. Apparently, according to something I heard, he was offered the role for Goldeneye, but turned it down cus he thought himself too old then to play Bond. I dunno - I thought he still looked pretty good in Hot Fuzz.

And being too old never stopped Roger Moore.
 
gncxx said:
And being too old never stopped Roger Moore.

Or Sean Connery, or Pierce Brosnan.

It seems that all previous Bonds except Dalton did at least one film too many. Including George Lazenby ;)

Brosnan did three films too many.
 
Gotta say, I think On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a fantastic film. Maybe despite Lazenby, but he is a strangely vulnerable Bond and there's so much great stuff around him - the music, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, the stunts, the innuendo and that ending.

As for Brosnan, it all started so well...
 
Oh the rest of OHMSS is great, but Lazenby just looks mildly confused all the time. The end still has me in tears though.

Yep, it started so well with Goldeneye *sigh* ...
 
Lazenby was a dandy with a plummy voice. He didn't exude 'machismo' or deadly intent. Awful.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Lazenby was a dandy with a plummy voice. He didn't exude 'machismo' or deadly intent. Awful.

Lazenby? I would have thought that was a description of Moore. I wasn't too impressed by Lazenby's acting but he was pretty handy in the fight scenes.
 
'Skyfall' fetches £55m in new US box office record for Bond franchise

James Bond's 'Skyfall' has fetched a franchise record $87.8 million (£55 million) in its first weekend at the US box office.
Adding in $2.2 million from Thursday night previews at IMAX and other large-format theatres, "Skyfall" has taken in $90 million in America, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
That lifts the worldwide total for "Skyfall" to $518.6 million since it began rolling out in Europe in late October.

The third instalment starring Daniel Craig as British super-spy Bond, "Skyfall" outdid the $67.5 million US debut of 2008's "Quantum of Solace," the franchise's previous best opening. "Skyfall" more than doubled the $40.8 million debut of Craig's first Bond film, 2006's "Casino Royale."

"Skyfall" already has passed the $407.7 million overseas total for "Quantum of Solace" and by Monday, it will top the $432.2 million international haul for "Casino Royale."

The Craig era has reinvigorated one of Hollywood's most-enduring franchises, whose first big-screen Bond adventure, "Dr. No," debuted 50 years ago.
"It's quite a testament to Bond, considering it's the 50th anniversary. What a great anniversary present," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at Sony, which produces the Bond films along with MGM.

While "Skyfall" marked a new high for Bond's opening-weekend revenue, the film has a long way to go to match the biggest audiences 007 has ever drawn. Adjusted for inflation, Sean Connery's 1965 "Thunderball" would have taken in an estimated $508 million domestically in today's dollars, with its 1964 predecessor "Goldfinger" not far behind at $444 million, according to boxoffice tracker Hollywood.com.

The Bond films over the last two decades have come in around the $200 million range domestically in inflation-adjusted dollars

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... chise.html
 
46 Years Of Violence In James Bond Movies Before 'Skyfall'
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/253916.php

Article Date: 14 Dec 2012 - 0:00 PST

Violent acts in James Bond films were more than twice as common in Quantum of Solace (2008) than in the original 1962 movie Dr No, researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago have found.

The researchers analysed 22 official franchise films, which span 46 years, to test the hypothesis that popular movies are becoming more violent (The latest Bond film, Skyfall, was not included as it was unreleased at the time of the study).

They found that rates of violence increased significantly over the period studied and there was an even bigger increase in portrayals of severe violence: acts that would be likely to cause death or injury if they occurred in real life.

While Dr No only featured 109 trivial or severely violent acts, there were 250 violent acts in Quantum of Solace. The latter film featured nearly three times as many acts of severe violence.

In counting and classifying violent imagery in the films the researchers used a scheme modified from a US 1997 National Television Violence Study. Violent acts were defined as attempts by any individual to harm another and classified as severe (such as punching, kicking, or attacks with weapons) or trivial violence (such as a push or an open-handed slap).

The research is newly published online in the US journal Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

Study co-author Associate Professor Bob Hancox of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine says that as these popular films have no age-restriction and will be seen by many children and adolescents, their increasingly violent nature is concerning.

"There is extensive research evidence suggesting that young people's viewing of media violence can contribute to desensitisation to violence and aggressive behaviour," Associate Professor Hancox says.

The increase in violent content of Bond movies likely reflects a general increase in the exposure of young people to media violence through similarly rated popular films, he says.
 
Odds against James Bond's survival
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... vival.html

AS CAMP as a row of tents. That's Feedback's assessment of the James Bond film franchise. Why? Consider this: the transvestite road-movie epic The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert almost certainly contains far fewer flagrant challenges to the reality scientists know and love than any one Bond film does.

This is, we admit, a finger-in-the-wind assessment. But Feedback reader Gordon Stanger has the data at his fingertips. Last year he answered a question put to New Scientist's The Last Word: "Can anybody calculate the odds of [Bond] not having taken a fatal hit over the past five decades?" (5 May 2012). Now he has revised his response.

"Alas," he writes, "the most recent film, Skyfall, demands an update. The probability of Bond surviving at least 5026 shots (over the 23 films) are now so slim that the average calculator cannot handle such a small number. It's in the vicinity of 1 in 10112 – and that last number is many squintillion times the number of stars in the universe."

Returning to "sensible" numbers, Gordon reckons Bond has now survived 134 blatantly homicidal attacks and seen off at least 214 villains.

We suspect Gordon's tongue is firmly in his cheek when he says: "It's good to see the franchise sticking to 'realism'!"
 
The way is see it 'James Bond' is just the code name for the top agent, hence the changing face and his existence through the decades. So those figures really should only be based on each actors tenure rather than the entire span of the movie series. I kind of assume each 'James Bond' gets killed off screen and thus the new actor represents the next in line to the role of 'James Bond', top agent.
 
McAvennie_ said:
I kind of assume each 'James Bond' gets killed off screen and thus the new actor represents the next in line to the role of 'James Bond', top agent.
I can't believe you said that with a straight face! ;)
 
No way is that Fleming canon.

(Though there are discrepancies in his past, and we are indeed unsure how old he is.)
 
No, it's not canon, but it has been put forward before.

However, Connery's Bond takes revenge on Bloefeld for the death of Tracey, who married Lazenby's Bond, and Moore's Bond visits her grave, then Leiter says that Dalton's Bond was married once but she died.

The only Brosnan Bond reference is that Brosnan said he related to the character as a widower, and Craig's Bond is a complete re- boot from the start.
 
Shortlist of directors emerges for Bond 24

Earlier today First Showing suggested that Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson, Drive) was under consideration to take over the reigns from outgoing Skyfall director Sam Mendes for the next instalment in the blockbuster James Bond movie franchise, and now Variety has confirmed the report, as well as revealing four more directors said to be on Eon and Sony's radar for Bond 24.

According to Variety, Refn - whose latest film Only God Forgives premiered at Cannes this month [read our review here] - is joined on the shortlist of potential directors for Bond 24 by Oscar-winners Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi) and Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, Les Miserables), in addition to David Yates (State of Play, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2) and Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3). Previous candidates are said to include Danny Boyle (127 Hours, Trance) and Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises).

Skyfall screenwriter John Logan is currently penning the script for Bond 24 (which is said to be a two-parter, concluding with Bond 25), but the report goes on to state that Sony are still finalising a deal with Daniel Craig to return for his fourth outing as 007, so it could be some time before a director is confirmed.
http://www.flickeringmyth.com/2013/05/s ... bond.html#
 
And just in...

Sam Mendes May Come Back For Bond 24 After All

It seems as though Sam Mendes may not be too keen on other filmmakers stepping on his turf.

Just a short while ago we reported that Eon and Sony were looking at directors like Nicolas Winding Refn, Ang Lee, Shane Black, David Yates and Tom Hooper as potential helmers of the untitled Bond 24, but suddenly it appears that Mendes is actually back in the running in a big way. Deadline is saying that Mendes and the studios have actually begun active talks for the Oscar winner to come back for a follow-up to Skyfall. It's an interesting development given that the previous story said that it would be a while before a director was hired. I suppose they have Mendes in a good position and want to try and lock him down.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Sam-Mend ... 37770.html
 
The fact he is a widower is of course Fleming canon.

Which is of course very tragic, we think of him as the sort who makes no attachments, but in fact he can.
 
Kondoru said:
Which is of course very tragic, we think of him as the sort who makes no attachments, but in fact he can.
In the book, it's clear that Tracey actually brings him out of the shell he's built enough to want to commit, only for her to die, closing him down emotionally altogether. It makes him all the more driven. But then the books don't romanticise him at all, which is what's good about Craig's Bond. He gets physically hurt, he drinks too much, and he's a nasty bastard when he needs to be.

I hope Mendes does come back for Bond 24. Skyfall was quite the best Bond film I've seen (and that's from a massive Connery fan.) Please don't let Ang Lee within ten miles of it - I know Crouching Tiger is marvellous, but Hulk was all over the place, and Bond takes special treatment otherwise you end up with Die Another Day. Or Licence to Kill.
 
Ravenstone said:
...and Craig's Bond is a complete re- boot from the start.

Which can be seen as a promotion of a new agent codenamed 'James Bond'... ;)

Although why he has the Aston Martin in storage and knows about the ejector button is another matter!
 
I'd like to see Mendes back too, but please, not Refn, he's so boring. I used to wonder if the director was really important to Bond movies because they're more producer-led, but Mendes opened my eyes.
 
McAvennie_ said:
Ravenstone said:
...and Craig's Bond is a complete re- boot from the start.

Which can be seen as a promotion of a new agent codenamed 'James Bond'... ;)

Although why he has the Aston Martin in storage and knows about the ejector button is another matter!

And why he has the same M as Brosnan :D
 
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