The Turkish carpet, but ONLY when it is the rejected one from Dalton in TLD.
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June 17.
On August 2 this year, I will have been haunting this website for 25 years. Due to an exceptionally childish sense of knockabout fun, I am aware that over this period I will have made the occasional comment that leaves the reader / victim (interchangeable) unsure whether it was a joke or not. Aware, if not given to care.
Still, everyone’s sense of humour differs, and this brings me to asking a favour of you (please don’t expect reciprocity; I am an ungenerous man).
In this James Bond film series, there are moments that are funny errors - the man sweeping the air in Quantum of Solace, say - and many times we are invited to laugh along with it, sometimes trying too hard - Diamonds are Forever in its entirety, as the obvious example
However, there are occasional moments where I am tempted to laugh AT it, and not just through a change of attitude to what is depicted. I am unsure whether some things are meant to be a joke, or just accidentally very silly and rubbish and therefore to be derided.
Today - Dr No
In the gambling scene at the start, to Sylvia Trench’s left (screen right) there is a man who is making a series of ludicrous faces as the game persists. I’ve always taken this as terrible, terrible acting, slack direction and worthy of mockery and derision and to be laughed at, but should I be…
- Laughing at?
- Laughing with?
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Supporting day players often are cast for their appearances, not for their overwhelming acting prowess - hey, don’t overwhelm our main actor!
If someone still tries to act (out) too much directors will reign them in. But when time and money are running out (and in a time when they had to wait for the rushes for one day to return from the lab), day players are mostly a (ha!) gamble.
In this case, of course, it could also be a satiric comment of Young‘s, showing the kind of people at the card table for what they are: hammy overactors.
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There’s no ‘right’ answer here. It is a slightly ridiculous affair, the whole Bond thing: a middle-aged guy in the doldrums writing down all of his daydreams, publishing them and the stuff taking off. I’m not talking about @Jim, obviously. Producers grabbing the rights for a steal, knocking off some film thingy just slightly above B movie level and the whole thing turning bigger and bigger, swallowing pop culture and burping out 25 films and billions of merchandise tinsel and plastic landfill material.
If I choose to laugh at it, wouldn’t be the laugh on me? Investing lifetime and resources in a thing that’s so clearly, utterly consumerist flimflam, the suits of James Bond ™, the toothpicks of 007©, the egg timer of the world’s most famous Secret Agent ©™; it’s all one big machine selling us a dream. A middle-aged guy’s daydreams from a past century, at least in tiny tiny doses.
So I choose to laugh with it, fully aware the ludicrousness of it all includes me. 
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I would like to buy the 007 egg timer, please… is a sentence I would have feel ashamed to utter. But I would have searched the store for it myself.
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I’m going with both.
It’s the nature of a long-running series, and repeated viewings of entries, that mean our own relationship is always evolving. I think there are moments that you “laugh with” but with time, that changes to “laugh at.” For me this tends to be the direction of travel, though I’m sure there are moments that work the other way to.
From a personal perspective I’d offer a third stop along the way - “cringe”
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Laughing with the infelicities of Terence Young’s cinema is one of the most effective ways to watch it.
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June 18.
Should I be laughing at it because it’s really awful, or with it because it’s meant to be funny?
Tomorrow Never Dies
A man in a coat the colour of doggy diarrhoea approaches an Avis desk at an airport. With the confidence of someone who has only just learned to speak any language at 10.30 that morning, he states in what could be German but could equally be Moose that his office has reserved him a car. Very, very badly. It’s hilarious, but should I be…
- Laughing at?
- Laughing with?
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As a German (sorry) I have encountered too many movies in which non-German actors speak, uh, or think they speak German. And it‘s mostly hard to grasp what they are saying.
And I am sure that is happening with most if not all languages spoken in movies. Heck, even accents not performed by actors well versed in those particular inflections stick out like you know.
So, is this Brosnan actor guy doing it worse than others?
Nein. Although there are people who coach actors. And what about the German crew members? Couldn’t they at least have given the director a line reading so Brosnan could have listened and practiced?
Apparently not.
Soon, AI will correct that. And is that a good thing?
No. People are people. And am I flawless at speaking other languages, even if I think I am not that bad?
You be the judge.
No, please don’t.
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Laughing with because
a)Bond is just playing his cover part of senior banker - whether business or finance economist is never quite explained - and such a character of course never has the time to learn a foreign language properly when lingua franca in his profession is English anyway and
b)you can approach any car rental service at any German airport and they’ll be happy to serve you in English.
Funny aside: my doctor’s surgery has a young Asian GP speaking excellent German. It’s her internship ending in November and my wife asked her where she’ll go next, hoping she’ll stay close by. But she’s actually a Briton and will return there. The usual compliments regarding her command of German ensued. To which she said she realised she’d reached a plateau with the language, a point from which progress wasn’t easily made any more.
I assured her that was because there is actually not a lot of space left above her plateau.
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The suggestion being that this is exceptional method acting by The Actor Pierce Brosnan? I may have seriously underestimated the man.
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Laugh with. I was waiting through Brosnan’s entire tenure for him to say something, anything genuinely funny and he never managed it. Mangled German is close enough so I’ll take it.
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Laugh with. Brozza’s accent is dodgy in any language and any iteration, veering all over the map like a bicyclist after 3 pints at lunchtime. Laugh with, as laughing at would be so easy as to be cruel.
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June 19.
Live and Let Die. Bond’s peculiar copper-dominated kitchen. Most odd. Probably not racist, which is a bit of a relief, but very, very odd nonetheless.
- Laughing with?
- Laughing at?
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Laughing with because Bond was - yet again! - ahead of his time with a designer kitchen like directly out of Architectural Digest, where very clearly nothing is ever cooked and the entire interior gets thrown out after the surface is stained with Bond’s fingerprints. Once more he’s the trendsetter for an army of hipsters investing in Japanese samurai cooking knives and Damast steel cleavers which sit on spotless magnetic displays behind glass like in a museum.
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Exactly. The early MooreBond can hardly work the espresso machine.
Although the AVTAKBond must have spent some hours perfecting his quiche.
Which gives the title of his farewell film a whole new meaning.
At least I could see MooreBond actually cooking.
Connery? Hey, doll, make me some eggs while I am having man-talk.
Lazenby? Cooking is for girly men in kilts, and they don’t have a lot of guts.
Dalton? Cooking for oneself is a dire reminder of the futility of our existence, and I will be thankful if my kitchen gets blown up by supposed milk bottles.
Brosnan? Sure, I cook, I will have my photo session in front of the stove, and then afterwards we will go to the Bahamas to feast.
Craig? I‘d rather slash my apron.
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As odd as it is in hindsight, it’s very much of its time. As was Blofeld’s offer of a stainless steel delicatessen. In all honesty I’m not laughing at all.
At either……
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Now now, Craig’s Bond did make his daughter…something
She was being kind in her response
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An apple…oh, daddy, you shouldn‘t have.
What’s that, usually you‘re slicing what with that knife?
Oh, you could show me?
But I want to know! It could come handy when someone wants to, you know, kill you and I could prevent that if you… Fine, have it your way. You never were there for me anyway. And now you appear as if I should be lucky to have villains becoming aware of my hiding place. I will tell my half-brother.
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June 20.
Sticking with the theme of things that aren’t particularly funny, here comes Q.
What’s he got in his (frequently racist) armoury this time? Oh, some grim old tat to justify “the Q scene”.
Which, though, is the most utterly useless? The most utterly Q-seless, as t’were?
- Licence to Kill - the exploding alarm clock
- For Your Eyes Only - that stinging umbrella thing
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