yes, in another 007 forum, that did cause quite a stir, but my top 10 placements of CR and FRWL saved my bacon. I think my top five (except from TLD) is also very controversial.
There has been increasing love in some quarters here for both QoS and SPECTRE. What I find most provocative is DR. NO at #4–your highest ranking for any Connery Bond. Would love to read your reasoning for the placement.
1 Like
Own it dude! This lot like/tolerate me, so don’t flinch from your opinion.
2 Likes
Exactly! I echo @MrKiddWint though, it’ll be very interesting to get your thoughts on Dr No and why Thunderball ranks so low for you. We’ll say nothing about DAF, I’m in the other camp there and what we love about the movie is by and large what others hate about it.
QOS I loved from first viewing and is the Craig movie I watch most often. Living Daylights , Spectre and TND all share a duopoly of the serious and fantastical sometimes in the same scene, perhaps Dr No too. Interesting choices.
2 Likes
Camp being the operative word when it comes to DAF.
I love this.
2 Likes
I love all the Bond films so it’s always hard to rank them, so I find myself agreeing with a lot of rankings.
I don’t like Die Another Day as much as the rest, though.
I am an unapologetic defender of Tomorrow Never Dies and I love that it is your number 1.
4 Likes
Die Another Day isn’t a great movie. It’s not even a good one. But it’s the type of bad movie that is so bad it’s good. If you can shut your brain off, it’s dumb, stupid, fun. On the other hand, in my opinion anyway, Spectre is just stupid and dumb. It thinks its being so clever and smart when it isn’t. Spectre is the only (official) Bond movie that I ever struggle to get through when I watch it.
1 Like
@Stbernard and @MrKiddWint, I have Doctor No as my favourite Connery simply because I find it the most original. Notice also that I have FRWL as my second favourite Connery, I like the ones before the films got bogged down in paying attention to the formula established in GF. I DON’T hate DAF, it’s only been in the bottom space for around six months and I’m confident that it can climb back up, I think you’re getting the wrong end of the stick, DAF is only down there because I like the other 23 more. DAD even has the same plot, I just find it more entertaining than Diamonds. About Thunderball, I used to have it in second last position (when I hadn’t watched TWINE and DAD) so my appreciation of it has actually INCREASED rather than decreased. I really like Domino and her character arc, and Connery gives his best performance, I just think it’s weirdly edited, and t feels a bit incoherent at times. CONTROVERSIAL OPINION I don’t like the score of TB either. My opinion of it increased when I realised that this was revolutionary in the cinema in 1965 (I’m a millennial so I didn’t really understand). Hope this has explained my most controversial placements (although I thought surely TND at #1 would cause more trouble than it has).
4 Likes
Personal preferences about Bond films don´t cause trouble here. We just like to debate.
As Ted Lasso says: Be curious, not judgmental.
7 Likes
Hardly controversial, just interesting to hear other people’s subjective opinions about pieces of flawed yet beautiful art.
2 Likes
What a (re)fresh(ing) take! So often the first Connery Bonds are understood as the prelims to the main event that starts with GF.
So am I. DAF Forever Forever Forever (heck, it’s even in the poster)
Agreed. The editing drove me nuts the last time I watched it. Did Peter Hunt edit this film? IMDb does not list him as editor, but Wikipedia lists him along with Ernest Hosler (whom IMDb lists). Maybe it takes a Peter Hunt to bring coherence to Terence Young footage.
1 Like
I started to re-read the novel, simply because I have not read it in ages, and it was always one I did not read a lot anyway.
But absence makes the heart grow fonder, apparently. And right now I’m enjoying the novel because Bond is put in his place (with his prejudices against Italian-Americans and the Mob) and it really starts out as a fish-out-of-water situation. And while many parts of it actually were used in the film, the Tiffany Case in the novel is a tougher woman - at least she starts out as one, just as Jill St. John is allowed to do in the beginning.
2 Likes
The story (from the Rubin book IIRC?) goes along the lines that Young was fed up with the film - also had another project in his eyes maybe - and more or less walked out on Hunt. The footage was a huge jumble of material with little to no regard for continuity. So there sat Hunt, with thousands of different colour Legos, and had to build a house from them. He did, but he often admitted one mustn’t look too closely and forgive repetition and breaks.
Last time I watched THUNDERBALL it really struck me as incredibly faulty for such an expensive and groundbreaking production where most of the effects have been real. Young‘s opinion was that it’s lucky the film wasn’t the first in the series because for DR NO‘s $ 1m you would have ended up with some small Christmas cracker instead of full blown fireworks. But it’s perhaps a case where too much money met too little good use.
1 Like
And it came at a time when demand was so crazy, audiences did not see the faults or did not care. A situation which never again saved a Bond film.
Could it save NTTD? I imagine it could. But judging from the trailers the film is long but still very tight, lots of story with a driving narrative.
And no slow underwater scenes.
Then again, TB‘s underwater sequences, despite their editable length, are wonderfully enhanced by Barry‘s score. And they remain involving for me. Even without Jacqueline Bisset.
2 Likes
Also good to recall that Young went from writing to the director’s chair. Guy Hamilton had worked in editing and as an assistant director. I am not sure that he cut in the camera, but interviews show he learned through his apprenticeship about the importance of providing footage that could be edited. I know Hunt didn’t like Hamilton (or at least his footage), but then Hamilton’s approach was not suited to Hunt’s accelerated editing technique, whereas Young’s footage was.
2 Likes
Markiewicz said he felt that the script represented/used about 40% of the novel. I love the way the coffin scene morphs as it travels from novel to film. In fact, Fleming’s motif of confining spaces manifests a few times in the movie.
The novel’s Tiffany Case is one of Fleming’s most interesting female characters. Filmic Tiffany is a hot mess, and embodies the schizoid nature of both the film and the 1970’s.
I have always enjoyed the novel for Fleming’s take on the United States, and the novel’s less outsized villains (seen by many as a major flaw).
2 Likes
And JamesBond.com has a nice game on twitter today: you can only keep three of these films…
DN
TB
OHMSS
LALD
TSWLM
TLD
GE
CR
SF
My three:
TSWLM
TLD
SF
You can have my three from that group SAF, so now you have six.
2 Likes
The selection does not include DAF so I’m most curious!