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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 27, 2015 13:38:12 GMT -5
I really don't see how anybody could say Moonraker is better than Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy and View to a Kill. I think the most likely explanation is that you have somehow gotten hold of the Earth-3 versions of these films.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2015 14:05:03 GMT -5
I really don't see how anybody could say Moonraker is better than Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy and View to a Kill. I think the most likely explanation is that you have somehow gotten hold of the Earth-3 versions of these films. Hey to each their own...I will admit though that Moonraker falls apart drastically once they reach space...before they do though I enjoyed the film. It's pretty much a guilty pleasure movie for me. I will take any of the Moore films except Octopussy and View to a Kill over this film anytime. Moonraker is due for a rewatch coincidently since it's the next film I need to watch in the franchise since I picked up the bluray boxed awhile back. Stay tuned because my opinion may change.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 27, 2015 16:09:08 GMT -5
I really don't see how anybody could say Moonraker is better than Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy and View to a Kill. I think the most likely explanation is that you have somehow gotten hold of the Earth-3 versions of these films. Hey to each their own...I will admit though that Moonraker falls apart drastically once they reach space...before they do though I enjoyed the film. It's pretty much a guilty pleasure movie for me. I will take any of the Moore films except Octopussy and View to a Kill over this film anytime. Moonraker is due for a rewatch coincidently since it's the next film I need to watch in the franchise since I picked up the bluray boxed awhile back. Stay tuned because my opinion may change. I think a lot of it has to do with how old you are when you see them. The first James Bond film I saw in a theater was The Man with the Golden Gun, so it's always been a sentimental favorite. (But one of the things I like about it is how personal it is for Bond. There is an earth-shattering subplot about satellite lasers (or something) but who cares? Bond is personally offended by Scaramanga's bad reputation, cynicism and greed making the noble profession of government assassin look bad! Also, Britt Ekland is hilarious!) When I was poking around on James Bond sites a few years ago, I wasn't surprised at how many people have Moonraker at or near the bottom of the list for 007 films. But I was surprised at the number of fans who put The Man with the Golden Gun near the bottom. I like it! And I think it should get points for varying the formula as much as it does. Of course, at the same time I was seeing Roger Moore at the theater, I was seeing Sean Connery at home on TV. I was pretty excited about seeing James Bond at the movies (I was 12 when Golden Gun came out) so I'm sure I had seen some of the Connery films on TV, but I don't remember which ones specifically. I'm pretty sure I had seen Diamonds Are Forever because it was so recent and had just started showing on network TV. I also remember seeing it several times as a kid. I also remember loving Dr. No and thinking it was one of the best movies ever made (I still think that!) and I also think I saw the beginning of You Only Live Twice when I was very young and then fell asleep because when I saw the whole movie as a young adult, I remembered the beginning but didn't remember anything after the first ten minutes. I didn't see Goldfinger or From Russia with Love until I was 16 or 17. (They're both great. Actually, my top four favorite James Bond films are the first four with Sean Connery. I would have trouble ranking them.) As for Moonraker, I didn't see it in theaters when it was new. I saw it in 2005 or 2006 for the first time. I might have liked it a lot more if I had been 14 instead of 40. Sean Connery IS James Bond.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2015 16:17:13 GMT -5
I much prefer the Bond of the actual novels than any of the portrayals on film.
-M
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 27, 2015 16:31:40 GMT -5
I much prefer the Bond of the actual novels than any of the portrayals on film. -M Including Ian Fleming's lovable old-timey racism?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2015 16:42:42 GMT -5
I much prefer the Bond of the actual novels than any of the portrayals on film. -M Including Ian Fleming's lovable old-timey racism? I don't endorse it, neither do I endorse Robert Howard's racism, but his version of Conan is still the best, and Lovecraft's racism is detestable, but it doesn't lessen my admiration for the work and the characters. Bond in the books is a spy, an agent and a killer. Bond in the movies is secret agent Batman without the cowl but with all the gadgets otherwise but otherwise a super-heroic action hero. I prefer the the prose spy to the movie action hero. -M
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 27, 2015 16:52:22 GMT -5
Including Ian Fleming's lovable old-timey racism? I don't endorse it, neither do I endorse Robert Howard's racism, but his version of Conan is still the best, and Lovecraft's racism is detestable, but it doesn't lessen my admiration for the work and the characters. Bond in the books is a spy, an agent and a killer. Bond in the movies is secret agent Batman without the cowl but with all the gadgets otherwise but otherwise a super-heroic action hero. I prefer the the prose spy to the movie action hero. -M Here's my review of Live and Let Die - the book.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 27, 2015 17:20:47 GMT -5
Hey to each their own...I will admit though that Moonraker falls apart drastically once they reach space...before they do though I enjoyed the film. It's pretty much a guilty pleasure movie for me. I will take any of the Moore films except Octopussy and View to a Kill over this film anytime. Moonraker is due for a rewatch coincidently since it's the next film I need to watch in the franchise since I picked up the bluray boxed awhile back. Stay tuned because my opinion may change. I think a lot of it has to do with how old you are when you see them. The first James Bond film I saw in a theater was The Man with the Golden Gun, so it's always been a sentimental favorite. (But one of the things I like about it is how personal it is for Bond. There is an earth-shattering subplot about satellite lasers (or something) but who cares? Bond is personally offended by Scaramanga's bad reputation, cynicism and greed making the noble profession of government assassin look bad! Also, Britt Ekland is hilarious!) When I was poking around on James Bond sites a few years ago, I wasn't surprised at how many people have Moonraker at or near the bottom of the list for 007 films. But I was surprised at the number of fans who put The Man with the Golden Gun near the bottom. I like it! And I think it should get points for varying the formula as much as it does. Of course, at the same time I was seeing Roger Moore at the theater, I was seeing Sean Connery at home on TV. I was pretty excited about seeing James Bond at the movies (I was 12 when Golden Gun came out) so I'm sure I had seen some of the Connery films on TV, but I don't remember which ones specifically. I'm pretty sure I had seen Diamonds Are Forever because it was so recent and had just started showing on network TV. I also remember seeing it several times as a kid. I also remember loving Dr. No and thinking it was one of the best movies ever made (I still think that!) and I also think I saw the beginning of You Only Live Twice when I was very young and then fell asleep because when I saw the whole movie as a young adult, I remembered the beginning but didn't remember anything after the first ten minutes. I didn't see Goldfinger or From Russia with Love until I was 16 or 17. (They're both great. Actually, my top four favorite James Bond films are the first four with Sean Connery. I would have trouble ranking them.) As for Moonraker, I didn't see it in theaters when it was new. I saw it in 2005 or 2006 for the first time. I might have liked it a lot more if I had been 14 instead of 40. Sean Connery IS James Bond. Sean Connery is James Bond to me too. I didn't start watching the Bond movies until I was in my teens in the 90's. Growing up his were the only Bond flicks that I had ever seen and had any interest in. Then I decided to see the rest of them. I think there is something good to find in ALMOST any Bond movie good or bad. But Connery will always be my Bond. I'd write more and elaborate but I'm going to work so to be continued...
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Post by Action Ace on Nov 27, 2015 19:41:07 GMT -5
I really don't see how anybody could say Moonraker is better than Diamonds Are Forever, Octopussy and View to a Kill. I think the most likely explanation is that you have somehow gotten hold of the Earth-3 versions of these films. my Bond list from the Random Thread .....uh ....thread 1. The Spy Who Loved Me 2. Goldfinger 3. Thunderball 4. Moonraker 5. From Russia With Love 6. The Man With the Golden Gun 7. Dr. No 8. Goldeneye 9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service 10. Live and Let Die 11. You Only Live Twice 12. Skyfall 13. For Your Eyes Only 14. The World is Not Enough 15. View to a Kill 16. Casino Royale (Craig) 17. Tomorrow Never Dies 18. Octopussy 19. Diamonds Are Forever 20. Quantum of Solace 21. Die Another Day 22. Never Say Never Again 23. Licence to Kill 24. Living Daylights order of Bond actor preference 1. Moore 2. Connery 3. Brosnan 4. Craig 5. Lazenby 6. Dalton I'd like to thank the ABC television network and it's "Sunday Night Movie" program for playing all those Bond flicks. Goldeneye is still the only Bond film I've seen in a theater.
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Post by berkley on Nov 28, 2015 3:48:22 GMT -5
I read Fleming's Live and Let Die as a teenager in the late 70s, so it's very possible my memories are unreliable, but my feeling is that Fleming's attitude towards African-Americans - obviously not a term he or anyone else would have used at the time - in that book were more patronising than racist. This may be a distinction difficult for younger people, and especially Americans, to grasp.
I'd go even further than that: I believe Fleming's intentions were actually quite progressive, within the context of that era: he was trying to say that Black Americans, in spite of the impression that might be left on his readers by their alien (to his theoretical audience) culture and dialect, were motivated by the same desires and fears as those readers themselves - IOW, that they were human beings, just like them. Shameful though it be - and as a "white guy" not even born then I still feel ashamed just having to say it - this was a truth that was not universally acknowledged at the time.
This is not to deny Fleming's own problems as a writer or a human being: he was a man whose formative years came in the pre-WWII era, when the illusion that the British Empire had suffered nothing more than a temporary setback was still prevalent, and when the very thought of gender equality was still a new and disturbing idea. But to interpret Live and Let Die as if had been written by an American in the 1970s is a big mistake, IMO.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 28, 2015 7:11:12 GMT -5
Connery is my favorite but I have to say that Timothy Dalton was a bit underrated. I never really thought Brosnan was a good Bond. I thought Roger Moore was a soft Bond.
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Nov 28, 2015 10:22:20 GMT -5
The only way James Bond works for me is as parody. Except for the Woody Allen movie, I can't take it seriously...
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Post by Phil Maurice on Nov 28, 2015 10:29:49 GMT -5
But I was surprised at the number of fans who put The Man with the Golden Gun near the bottom. I like it! And I think it should get points for varying the formula as much as it does. I think one of the reasons Golden Gun ranks lower is the inclusion of Clifton James' buffoonish Sheriff J.W. Pepper, a character no one asked to be brought back and which no one other than the director seemed to feel was appropriate for the series. With the addition of Pepper, the Bond films lurched further into cartoonish comedy, a move which history has not treated kindly.
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Post by Hoosier X on Nov 28, 2015 10:37:17 GMT -5
I read Fleming's Live and Let Die as a teenager in the late 70s, so it's very possible my memories are unreliable, but my feeling is that Fleming's attitude towards African-Americans - obviously not a term he or anyone else would have used at the time - in that book were more patronising than racist. This may be a distinction difficult for younger people, and especially Americans, to grasp. I'd go even further than that: I believe Fleming's intentions were actually quite progressive, within the context of that era: he was trying to say that Black Americans, in spite of the impression that might be left on his readers by their alien (to his theoretical audience) culture and dialect, were motivated by the same desires and fears as those readers themselves - IOW, that they were human beings, just like them. Shameful though it be - and as a "white guy" not even born then I still feel ashamed just having to say it - this was a truth that was not universally acknowledged at the time. This is not to deny Fleming's own problems as a writer or a human being: he was a man whose formative years came in the pre-WWII era, when the illusion that the British Empire had suffered nothing more than a temporary setback was still prevalent, and when the very thought of gender equality was still a new and disturbing idea. But to interpret Live and Let Die as if had been written by an American in the 1970s is a big mistake, IMO. I think maybe it's been a very long time since you read Live and Let Die. I think you're being very generous to Mr. Fleming. And I don't think I'm being unfair to Mr. Fleming just because I'm not giving him a pass because he's British. Here's a very long excerpt from my review of Live and Let Die, including lots of quotes from the book:
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2015 12:59:05 GMT -5
Connery is my favorite but I have to say that Timothy Dalton was a bit underrated. I never really thought Brosnan was a good Bond. I thought Roger Moore was a soft Bond. I think Dalton is vastly underrated. Surpringly he turned down the role 3 times before he accepted it. The first being when he was only 22 years old at the time as a replacement for Connery...he felt he was too young. In fact his portrayal of James Bond was closer to Ian Fleming's original novel version of the character than any other Bond actor. The Living Daylights is my favorite Bond movie from the 80's...second only to For Your Eyes Only. Liscense To Kill was just "OK" but I did like the gritter feel he brought to the role in the film.
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