Just loosely 007-related but anywhere:
âWhen she was asked to skid along a balcony floor on her shoulder while being shot at, in No Time to Die, âmy life flashed before my eyesâ
Iâve been fruitlessly pondering what quote to choose from this article. Itâs such a farcically bizarre story you have to read the whole piece to truly appreciate its madness.
I particularly love the snapshot of the Aston Martin spa at the end. Reminds me of a convalescent clinic I spent some time at. Someone pitch Aston the rehab market pleaseâŚ(photo edsmitter/Aston Martin via Guardian)
Only acceptable with thisâŚ
Iâve actually been thinking about this as a title song back in the day; some of it has that certain arrangement, sounding like a nod to Bond without being too serious about it. Nice of her to confirm it. Wonder what didnât work out there in the end.
New documentary
SHE HAD BRACES 
O-kayâŚ
So sad we never saw Connery or Moore do this.
I want Daniel Craig to remake Zardoz
Daniel Craig is showcasing his range in a new Loewe campaign.
Worth it for this line alone.
Now the next time my wife complains I look a disheveled mess, I can tell her Iâm just âshowcasing my range.â
Here is an interesting article from The Nation. One gets three free articles, so no need for a subscription. This passage stood out for me:
Over the past 16 years, Feigeâs tenure at Marvel Studios has generated $26 billion, making him the most revered Hollywood producer since Robert Evans presided over Paramount in the 1960s and â70s. Yet while Evans successfully fostered a generation of directorial talentâthe so-called New Hollywood of Francis Ford Coppola, Roman Polanski, and John SchlesingerâFeigeâs innovation has been to wrest control of the creative process from the directors and writers, running movie production from the C-suite down.
Both Evans and Feige were known to exercise the power of final cut on their pictures, but while Coppola once reflected that Evansâs habit of deeply embedding himself within the quotidian churn of a filmâs creation meant that, âultimately, a mysterious kind of taste comes out; he backs away from bad ideas and accepts good ones,â thereâs nothing mysterious about Feigeâs taste. In an earlier interview with Joanna Robinson for Vanity Fair, Feige called himself âobsessed with deep mythologies.â Though he pays lip service to the idea that each individual film ought to stand on its own, Feige has always been most animated when talking in the lingua franca of the comic book nerdâcontinuity, or the ability to âbring that experience that hardcore comic readers have had for decades of Spider-Man swinging into the Fantastic Four headquarters, or for Hulk to suddenly come rampaging through the pages of an Iron Man comicâŚthere is something just inherently great about that: seeing charactersâ worlds collide with one another.â
In 2023, the novelty of the crossover began to wear offâand with it, the profitability of Marvel Studios.
Thing is, in a way the comic book world - that of the pages as well as that of the screens - is just a version of the soap opera and the telenovela: one continuous stream of action and interaction, endless love triangles, infinite buildup without ever arriving at a definite end. For a time itâs fascinating, immersive even. But after a while one just isnât as much invested any more.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the MCU should have ended with, oh I donât know, a film titled Endgame.
The telenovela comparison is spot on and perfect.
I fell under the marvel spell for a while, but now I wonder why - I canât even bring myself to rewatch these films.
The number of them that have any rewatch value whatsoever can be counted on one hand.
And the number of them with any rewatch value that donât involve Robert Downey Jr. equals about⌠zero.
The MCU had the good fortune, much like Jackman/Wolverine in the X-Men franchise, to start its run with the perfect actor in one of its most popular roles. That they even pegged RDJ onto Spider-Man - without real reason beyond being able to put RDJ/Iron Man on the poster - shows how aware they were of his drawing power for the entire franchise.