FANTASIA’s Night on Bald Mountain…
I rest my case.
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Ice cream in the cinema used to be the thing in Germany. Back in the day, there was a cartoon or a short movie, a trailer or two, a few commercials and then an Langnese ice cream commercial, “Like ice in the sunshine”. And then the lights went on, and an ice cream man (or woman) shouted “Who wants ice cream?” and started walking through the rows. We hated everyone who bought ice cream, because everyone waited for the film to start after that…
Haven’t had that for years, don’t when they gave that up.
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I, if course, bought my „ice cream confect“ before I entered the screening room.
And I still have that song playing in my mind, and the ad with the kid dropping ice on the bald head of the guy at the beach…
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I gobbled everything up during these years, even TRON, despite most of these films do not standing the test of time.
Nostalgia makes me turn off any reason.
Hey, I even love LEGEND, CONAN, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (a really stupid movie).
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Yes, I saw all of those in the theater on their opening weekends. THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER is by no means a good movie (a fact that applies to everything Albert Pyun ever directed), but it IS more fun than a huge swath of the short-lived sword and sorcery genre films of the early and mid-80s. I was a fan of the literary/pulp genre of sword and sorcery at the time, so seeing anything representing that genre was must-see for me back then.
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I just realized The Black Hole deserves a boost in my ratings if only because it gave the world an Ernest Borgnine action figure.
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Was that the one with the three-bladed sword, two of which you could shoot at the adversary? Almost as good as MEGAFORCE…
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You are correct! Silly, but very fun. Pulpy comic-book concept that I loved.
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Even back then I wondered where he could get the next blades or where he kept them.
Maybe from Q and the wrist dart factory.
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Ok, I’m going to throw myself on the sword here and admit that I’ve always had a question about the wrist dart scene but have been afraid to expose myself as the idiot I am…
When Roger fires the dart and its hits M’s painting M says “oh thank you, 007.” What am I missing here - why does he thank him!?
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That’s just a sarcastic reaction.
“Thank you very much for just destroying this beautiful painting, 007!”
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I was 14 when I saw that and seriously crushed on the princess. While I don’t remember the movie at all, I still remember her.
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He’s thanking him for using the cyanide-coated dart instead of the explosive one with the armor-piercing head. Otherwise they’ll all be looking out a hole onto the streets of London.
Throughout the film, Bond always manages to shoot the right one for each occasion. I guess it really is all in the wrist.
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ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
Now I’m finally making something of my Prime membership (that as of late entitles me to watch all the Bond films whenever I like, provided I expose myself to two brief ads during the experience; this is the bee’s knees of innovations, making the old boomer codger that I am feel like it’s early 90s private channel time again, brilliant! I certainly will not pay extra to feel old again…).
Naturally, Amazon makes the most of Bond by putting the most recent Craig films in the spotlight at the home page. Briefly, I was tempted - but then I remembered I spotted the first Christmas tree of the season yesterday at a department store and decided to keep up with the general air of total temporal displacement and watch my favourite.
I’ve written at length about ON HER MAJESTY’S, so I won’t go too far into specifics here. The film has some flaws that would bother me with a lesser production - but Hunt directed a perfect amalgamation of Bond here, a circus show that flows so smoothly that we don’t question the particular acts or the whole of it. This is what Bond ideally should be, an exciting, thrilling couple of hours of adventure.
One thing stuck out in particular though: action wasn’t only set in scene exceedingly brilliant for 1969 - no CGI-enhanced bluescreen compositions but good old Bogner camera-on-skis fare - but also written in white-knuckle edge-of-your seat manner that’s been sorely lacking for most of Craig’s run.
Bond is locked up in that giant cable car clockwork and his escape is a string of trial and error setbacks until he’s improvised himself makeshift gloves from his pant pockets and just barely so manages to avoid having his hands taken off by the cable car track wheels.
Bond tries to escape the gunmen on skis and gets one ski shot to pieces, after which he hobbles more or less to a precipice where he’s got to face his pursuers.
It’s a motif that runs through most of the film: Lazenby’s Bond tries some move or action, fails, adapts, fails again and adapts once more - until he finally succeeds. The fight with Blofeld starting as a shootout in the laboratory is a perfect example of this dynamic that’s actually closer to reality than one should expect in Bond escapism: things go haywire, wheels come off, plans turn to confetti and the only thing to do about it is getting back up and try again.
This is literally a world away from epic invincibility as depicted in huge portions of the Craig films - but also in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE’ harbour fight against an army of dock hands armed with all kinds of blunt, sharp and nasty objects.
This particular way to depict action really makes Bond sweat blood until he’s winning the day. I’d wish some of that spirit would return again in the future. It’s not been entirely absent - CASINO ROYALE’s stairwell fight; SPECTRE’s train fight - but it’s generally now so accepted that Bond is a fighting machine that a less invincible depiction feels quite refreshing.
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YES to all points.
I always loved Bond because he wasn‘t of superhuman strength and he always turned the tables on every dire situation only by improvising and being persistent.
This is what Bond should be. Not the fighting machine being able to withstand every kind of inflicted pain.
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One of the best films ever. Still.
And it has even Orson Welles killing Bernard Lee, with Guy Hamilton as assistant director.
Watch it if you haven’t yet. And rewatch it if you have.
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…and with sound editing by John Glen!
Love that cuckoo clock speech.
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Me too, but the speech contains several factual errors: in Switzerland, they surely did not have 500 years of brotherly love and democracy (take it from a descendant of Swiss immigrants to Germany from 250 years ago), and cuckoo clocks don’t come from Switzerland but from the Black Forrest in Germany (the Swiss do make and sell them now, but only because tourists expect them to). 
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Typical Lime mistake. 
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And also doubling for Welles in the sewer sequence.
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