Swords to ploughshares, spelling to confetti – 007th MinUte-fun with GoldenEye

Image ‘Goldeneye’ by ‘Theen’ (c), eye model tomcat ‘Jester’

As we cautiously approach the modern era of Eon’s Bond series we encounter  previously unheard-of hardships: a five year gap between films, a new actor that was – almost – his own predecessor, a monumentally ugly villain’s lair that turned out to be the real-life home of British espionage and a major London landmark, a new M, the Secret Service being called MI6, chilling new interpretations of orthography… the list is endless. CBn’s resident notary Jacques Stewart sets out to chronicle the most inteResting examples in the 007th Minute of ‘Goldeneye’. As always opinionated.

Agree or disagree in this thread.

The 1980s. Custodian of my childhood. Bringer of the Austin Montego, Kevin the Gerbil, acid-washed jeans and absolutely nothing else. Remover of Charles Hawtrey, the Ayatollah Khomeini and tolerable Doctor Who.

 

Apologist for four-and-a-half duff James Bond films.

 

That exquisite first hour of The Living Daylights almost compensates, but has no real prospect of succeeding against James Bond XII: Underage, Undershaven, Underwater and Under a Geriatric; James Bond XIII:  The Jewels ‘n’ the Clown; James Bond XIV: Aching, Baking and Earthquaking; James Bond XV: The Usual Letdown and James Bond XVI: Really Don’t Bother.

 
Quite a bit to put right, then.

 
With awards-bothering Skyfall laying waste to all that dares cross its path, be it ‘Obbitses, vampires or narrative coherence, it can be hard to recall – or recognise – GoldenEye’s achievement. Given the parlous state of Bond at the time, the films exhausted and unpopular, Mr Gardner grinding out his contractual obligation in ever more contractually-obliged ways, there was considerable doubt whether Bond films would return, could return, whether they would find an audience, whether there was any point. Whilst its supporters would claim that Licence to Kill wasn’t a disaster given that it recouped five times its budget , five times sod all is sodallsodallsodallsodallsodall (science fact). If the 1980s taught us anything – apart from never rub another man’s rhubarb – it’s that with Bond films, chuck money abite. Cheapo Bond gets noticed. You can’t make it with donkeycock, roadkill and offcuts of sickly bald Romanian orphan and not be found out. Speculate to accumulate, and spending lots on GoldenEye must have been pretty blimmin’ speculative. Change required.

 
Artistic merits of the decision aside, on a business basis Timothy Dalton had to go. Nobly, he went. Save for how he enunciated his Ts, he hadn’t clicked, and MGM/UA had shareholders to feed and receivers to fend off with a rickety chair and a whip. What was needed was a Bond built by a corporation to appeal to every demographic but not too strongly in any direction otherwise it could alienate, a Toyota Corolla of a James Bond, a reliable mass-market unthreatening consumer good, an item.

 

 

 

Gambolling off the conveyor skipped something calling itself a Pierce Brosnan. Halves of everything, Fate having associated him with Bond for many years in the PublicEye, and Luck not having exposed to the mass audience his astonishingly recondite talent beyond the challenging role of Man What Gets Fruit Thrown At Him in Mrs Doootfiah, subject to any prior demands on his time with knitting catalogue shoots, he was patently the chap. Bros-Nan, with GoldenEye as his definition, was a brilliantly populist strategy, bringing us something for everyone along with absolutely nothing for anyone looking for anything specific.

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Thespian Delights – which 007th Minute is this about?

In order to live up to our educational mandate and to keep our readers intellectually in top condition CBn decided to include various (read: 2) slight-to-mid-serious hurdles in this episode of the 007th Minute. Should you experience difficulties in deciphering this text and connecting it to a popular work of entertainment of 1987 you ought to spend more time at CommanderBond.net.

As always: Jacques Stewart’s opinion, wording, turn-of-phrase, summary. 

 

 

 

I come no more to make you laugh: things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present.

 

A worthy aim, even if it won’t quite come off. [If you don’t want to read on, assume that comment encapsulates this 007^th minute’s “plot”. It does lose itself in cellos and diamonds and tips for Mujahidining out; I know an appalling restaurant in Karachi, gave me a right case of the d’Abos and no mistake].

 

It’s product placement time, gang (don’t run, it’s not “watches”). Not subtle; I’m busy and am not shaped for sportive tricks and have emergency sitting down to do, contrived flippancy to mash out and humpbalm to apply. So, here it comes; see if you can spot it. Buy Charles Helfenstein’s book The Making of The Living Daylights. Do that. Do it NOW. If you’re more of a “visual learner” (i.e. you can’t read), imagine me holding it up and pointing at it as if t’were shiny coin – try not to be distracted by my “face” although you’re only human (or vaguely so). If you truly cannot read, your gawping at this nonsense is odd but, even more so, the book’s jawtofloor stupendousness will be lost on you; still, there are nice pictures. You could colour them in; I’m assuming your keeper allows you felt-tip pens, if only to sniff. If you can, though, read it. You have nothing better to do. You can’t have; you’re reading this. You were taught to read for stuff like Mr Helfenstein’s work, not to waste it on shallow guffbombs. Value your teachers, value your dignity, give yerself a treat and buy it and read it and learn and become a better person. It’ll improve you and make your willy ginormous. That’s (probably) untrue but it holds with the mendacious subtext of James Bond product placement, be it grotty watches or naff mobile telephones or nasty lager or delicious Huw Edwards.

 

So, that’s The Making of The Living Daylights.

 

This is not its unmaking.

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Off-’Licence to Kill’ – The Spirit of its 007th Minute

image by ‘London looks’ (c)

February already? High time CBn’s resident food critic Jacques Stewart had himself a taste of Eon’s famous 1989 recipe ‘Licence to Kill’ (readers confused by the strange spelling can get help here).

Gourmet readers will find healthy doses of opinion and science-fact in this recipe. CommanderBond.net suggests a claret to go with this grand meal...

 

 

 

 

Bituvva scandal in 1989 at the moment about aJames Bond film value-brand “hamburgers”, whatever they might be, being cut with last gasp desperation for dollars horse meat; popular if uninspired product, delivered on a reduced budget, mixed with the unpalatable. At first glance this seems unfair on Eon Tesco, with its record of being reliable, if slightly insipid, with patches of quality – their lead character own-brand meatballs are the dog’s bollocks, for example. Still, unwise to mash up suspect ingredients and pretend everything’s OK, business as usual and this is in some mysterious way defensible. The consumer may well rebel. Or vom.

 

 
Perhaps we’re so spoilt by recent Gourmet Bond that it’s too easy to sneer at the cheap brands, too easy to buy identical ready meals equally questionably produced but sold in a nicely fonted box that smelly riff-raff cannot read – science fact, French Script MS causes scutters to immolate. Too easy to become the father who proclaims that his offspring go anaphylactic at the merest suggestion of a fishfinger and can only eat Danish pomegranates, Nepalese sushi and Egyptian Cotton. Taste the Difference CraigBond, all fancy and theme-y and hand-reared by posh directors rubbing the finest organic artisan jus into its skin to soothe it, relaxing it into production by giving it its own thoughtyurt and feeding it honeysuckle gravy with a hand-carved Inca lovespoon, or something, is it really going to be any better for your straining, time-bound heart than some reconstituted old bollocks blatted together by a greasy robot? It all comes out as light entertainment in the end.

 

There’s an argument that the cheap product is a more honest conspiracy between producer and consumer than asserting that because one’s Bond comes with shavings of free range, corn-fed cin-eh-mahhh on it, it’s better. If one acknowledges it cost tuppence to make then one is braced for it to be foul and there’s no point whining. How can it disappoint? You know that the film you’re masticating through is fungal gristle chivvied from the crevices of the Bond factory floor, bulked up with mechanically-separated violence; horrid, but still you partake.Perhaps it’s a guilty pleasure; there you go, pretending to like quadruple-fried free-range yam croquettes and Swiss Lobster when what you really crave is Scampi Fries and a box of damp Micro chips. In white bread. With marge.

 

 

It’s fatuously snobbish – and eyegougingly ironic, given the source of the comment – to liken some Bond products as being savourable at Sardi’s and others munchable at McDonald’s. I am fatuously snobbish. C’mon, you’d guessed. Even knowing full-well that Bond Sixteen wasn’t dealt a happy hand from the get-go, even knowing full-well that as a result I should be more forgiving and try to emphasise the points at which it outshone its meagre origins, even knowing full-well that I should accept that it was going to be dreadful and therefore spare all of us, myselfincluded, pointing that out at overconsiderable length, taking all those potential excuses into account it’s still, without doubt, one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever sat through.

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A View through the Wormhole – The 007th Minute rides the blimp!

Image ‘Psychedelic Blimp’ by ‘Sanandreas’ (c)

This time CBn’s resident dimension hopper and psychic Jacques Stewart takes readers into the shocking parallel universe of The Ken Loach Bond Film ™. Harrowing insights are revealed, most of them concerning our own universe and ‘A View to a Kill’.

May contain traces of ectoplasm. 

Should you spot any please report them here.

 

 

 

Unusually for A. Bond. Film, we start with a disclaimer.

 

Neither the name A View to a Kill nor any other euphemism or prolix self-indulgence in this piffle is meant to portray a credible review or an acceptable film.

 

I recently took a holiday and wrote this to you – you, specifically (get your hair cut and ‘phone your mother, she worries, although I couldn’t care less) – from my saver citibreak in an alternative universe. It has more varieties of cheese, warm unsalty seas, plentiful honeybees, cheap school fees, money grows on trees, every child says please and no dog has any fleas. ‘Tis bliss, even if everyone – everyone – appears to be called Geoff. Admittedly, the journey through the wormhole – the Octowormhole (fnarr, and I can’t believe I missed that one in the last “review”, must be losing my grope) – is two hours of misery and pointlessness. Oddly apt.

 

In this parallel dimension, the Bond films of the 1980s don’t exploit our patience-tested forgiveness for their tediously cynical habit of emitting lukewarm reheated thrills every couple of years. Instead of unleashing their pliant stooges, the producers hired award-winning film-makers to produce actual films containing proper characters and diverting plots that don’t just get by on the lazy premise that it’s A. Bond. Film, it’s got a dinner jacket and a gunbarrel, it’ll do, hand over the money you scum, yes of course this one is different, it has airships in it. That makes it sufficiently different. Different enough for your money, anyway, you pathetically-grateful-that-we-made-another-one dunderhead. What do you want, effort? Fur cough. Money. NOW.

 

I acknowledge that taking some care to spew out something with qualities other than the moth-eaten cloak of Bond Film routine is patently a ridiculous idea, but stick with it.

 

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Septopussy – Nobody does him better…

Image ‘Octopus’ by ‘Hacklock’/Heather Blacklock (c)

You guessed it, this is the 007th Minute of ‘Octopussy’,  personally observed by Jacques Stewart himself, counted down by the counter-thingy on his player-thingy, viciously dissected with the aid of a large glass of Indian tonic and the friendly help of Patrick Macnee’s voice. 

 Add your own shot of quinine in this thread.

(Adopts Patrick Macnee voice) It is the summer of 1983, the summer of the Jedi and the unbelievable opportunity – taken up at length by your correspondent (that’s me, “hi”) – for childish playground taunting in calling a corpulent chum a Big Fat Jabba. I think you can probably tell where this joke’s going to end up, so I’ll save you the inexpert fumbling and just get straight to the money shot of “…grossly overweight, leering at bikinied beauties through oily seepage, a crusty, ancient and wrinkled blob who at one point dresses up as a clown and stops a bomb going off”.

 

Hm. I seem to have drained the spuds a bit quickly there. I’m so sorry. If you’re submitting yourself to the girth of these 007^th minutes you’ll know that’s never happened to me before; honest. If only Octopussy were that swift but no, it tries so hard to pleasure us with multiple climaxes that it neglects to realise that all we want is a bit of a kip and to be left alone. Oh, Octopussy, put it away. Just stop. Please stop. I’ve a busy day tomorrow and I really don’t want you bothering me like a greymuzzled spayed Labrador giving the dining table a listless seeing-to, dribbling gently from the moist jowls, eking it all out painfully when it would be kinder to administer the old double-tap with a clawhammer to the back of the head and hurl it into a midnighted estuary. Look, we both know that we’re too old for this and I can see the self-loathing in your eyes as you summon up The Gush yet again. All I wanted was a sweet distraction for an hour or two. Tops. I never expected to do the things (oh God, the things) we’ve done. Things you now want to do to me again. Look, all that’ll happen is that you’ll end up a dried-out of husk of sex-pestiness. Who at one point dresses up as a clown and stops a bomb going off.

 

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Top Secret – For Your Eyes Only’s 007th Minute revealed

Image ‘Compound Eyes of a Robber Fly’ by Thomas Shahan (c)

31 years after its initial premiere ‘For Your Eyes Only’ still has up-to-now-overlooked details to reveal. CBn’s resident optometrist Jacques Stewart took it upon himself to have a close look at the 007th Minute of this opus of entertainment and shares his findings here with you. You may share your own opinion on his impressions in this thread. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go on then, make your outlandish Bond if you feel that you must. It helps disguise the onset of both decrepitude and breasts for your leading man. Cram it to overbursting with all the leftovers that you never thought you would get away with, administer it to the world and then have a crisis of conscience / money and trouble yourself with worrying about the direction to take it in next once you realise that you’ve rather overdone it and probably exhausted the concept of, and patience of the audience for, “Bond Films”. Rather brilliantly, you decide to make some proper films that incidentally happen to be “Bond Films”. Great success and critical acclaim await.

 

No, sorry, that’s the Barbara Broccoli way.

 

If you’re her father, you just plough on turning out Bond Films every couple of years because that’s mysteriously The Law, progressively less spectacular ones until you can’t afford to give Timothy Dalton a proper haircut, or story, and the series stalls. Mediocre returns and critical indifference await. I don’t pretend to know about the studio economic politik of the 1980s, largely because that would render me a fatuous dullard and “the” Internet already has more than enough of those, and of course it’s on record that 1989-1995 coincided with yet more litigation, Bond attracting as many lawyers as he does bullets. Yet so often is that dispute wheeled out as the explanation for the lack of production activity that one wonders if it’s a bit of a cover story, a convenient ruse for self-denying the truth that, starting with For Your Eyes Only, Bond was gently but horribly complacently driving itself into the ground, coasting along in neutral with the odd blip here and there on the accelerator, gathering some cash but running out of road, fuel and audience captivation in equal measures. Studio bankruptcy and creative bankruptcy going hand in hand. After eleven films, we can churn out any old dross, slap a gunbarrel on it to make it A. Bond. Film to draw the core punters in, and get away with it. Making it look effortless (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) is different to actually making it without any effort.

 

This isn’t to say that parts of the Bond Films of the 1980s aren’t appealing but, when it comes to it, they’re just yet another five Bond Films to watch. Despite pretence in each film at trying new stuff out (For Your Eyes Only – “seriousness”; Octopussy – “turbo-racism”; A View to a Kill – “quiche”; The Living Daylights – “an hour of mesmeric brilliance followed by an hour of the usual tat” and Licence to Kill – “shameful cowardice”), in essence they deviate very little from the previous eleven. Even the ostensibly “radical” Licence to Kill is teat-suckingly dependent on being A. Bond. Film, with all the decades of reheated canker that comes with that idea, and totally to its disadvantage.

 

For Your Eyes Only represents very little progress from Moonraker.

 

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‘Moonraker’ – Where other 007th Minutes stop…

Image ‘Moonraker 2′ by ‘pinkflo 13′ (c)

…this one is also going to end. But till it does so Jacques Stewart scrutinises the film and its impact on himself and the series as a whole with his usual mixture of opinion and Science Fact!

Share your own scientific findings about ‘Moonraker’ in this thread.

The first one. Film it in Jamaica, Bond investigating the death of British agents, an abundance of local colour to liven it up and make it so very terribly, veritably, exotic.

 
The second one. Bond and a meeting-his-match dark side of Bond killer circle around each other for ages whilst a cursory plot about an initially important but swiftly neglected device plays out.

 

The third one. Go showier, bolder, aim for definitive, iconic imagery, up the gadgetry significantly and bung him into a tremendously amusing car.

 
The fourth one. The third one having turned out “quite well”, what the Hell, just hurl it into overdrive and do some strenuous envelope-pushing to spew out something dementedly pursuing an agenda of entertaining us.

 

But enough about the Sean Connery films.

 

Right, then. Moonraker. Hm. This.

 

 

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From Summer 0077: The Spy Who Loved Me’s 007th Minute

Image ‘Dear diary’ by ‘incurable hippie’ (c)

(contains traces of the secret diary of a super villain, found by renown beachcomber Jacques Stewart)

… and as such things do is a primarily opinionated affair. 

Tell us about your own adventures with ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ in this thread.

 

 

Time for a running total.

 

 

On the basis that this little misadventure was initially an exercise in establishing whether the 007^th minute of each film exemplified “A Bond Film”, one may as well, upon reaching 00-figures, “Apply. Observe. Conclude”, as a Chemistry teacher of mine used to shout. Given what subsequently happened to him, he evidently interpreted the process as “Binoculars. Boys. Not just calling a register but also signing one”.
Accordingly, working through our nine 007^th minutes so far, in order, where we appear to get to is:-

 

 

1.    British interests are in dire peril; the stiff upper hair is wobbling. Send for the hero, a high-living gambler.

 

 

2.    The opposition are a roster of equally sophisticated parallels, although they can be more intellectually blessed than the hero.

 

 

3.    Let’s be bold and brash and a lickle bick cheeky…

 

 

4.    …and push it to the cusp of outrage, when we can.

 

 

5.    Amidst the madness, we can inject some moody solemnity for “depth” – if not realism.

 

 

6.    Thunderous action in interesting locations, and wink at the audience to reassure that everyone knows it’s all pretend.

 

 

7.    If in doubt, fall back on some proven routines…

 

 

8.    …but don’t be afraid to inject even into them an element of the bizarre and unexpected now and again.

 

 

9.    …Um…

 

 

Hmm. What is the positive ingredient to extrapolate from the 007^th minute of The Man with the Golden Gun? 9. Ensure a bird is very dead before resting one’s weapon thereupon? Not convinced that’s appropriate family viewing, although it’s arguably evident in other films in the way The Actor Pierge Brosmomb’s Bond ostentatiously sniffnibbles murdered women. Applying his little shooter is surely only one step further. 9. Do not listen to cackling power-crazed midgets? Not even when they’re banging on about the gorgeousness of Rosamund Pike? Shame. 9. Hang around filling time and wasting it in the process? Too many other examples to mention. No, no, come now Jimothy, one must be positive and clappy and blisswhacked and…

 

 

…ah.

 

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Pure 007th Minute – 24 carat of The Man With The Golden Gun

Image ‘Ko Tapu Island’ by ‘Moe-tography’ (c)

…and every ounce of it extracted from its real 007th Minute by our resident metallurgist and fine jeweller Jacques Stewart. Exclusively  dissected and commented in the most opinionated manner by himself, just for your distraction. 

Please applaud us for this amusement in this thread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I appear to have made a serious mistake.

 

Such confession doubtless prompts troubling thoughts in the reader, replacing that one about whether your boss is contemplating having you killed, namely:-

 

A ) of course you have, you clot. You’ve subjected yourself to The Man with the Golden Gun; and/or

 
B ) only the one serious mistake? In a whole lifetime? I find this unlikely; and/or

 

C ) you haven’t gone and told someone about that bad thing, that really bad thing you did, twice, with [name redacted: seditious libel]; and/or

 

D ) you’ve gone and spent the pocket-money Mrs Jim permits you on obscenely expensive wine again, haven’t you?

 

Tackling these in reverse order, it’s D ) how is this a mistake? Don’t understand; C ) not yet, but blackmailing Clarence House can be so protracted; B ) find it unlikely, then; I am evidently a god amongst worms and A ) ouch. Smidge harsh, pickle. More on this “soon”.

 

Nope, the serious mistake – and By Toutatis, is it serious – is that anyone bothering itself to consider these fistfuls of red-hot excreted tapeworm as anything approaching a meaningful enterprise and is playing along interactively (in which case I pity them, but pity more the people who have met them), will now have realised that the timings of the 007^th minute in each case so far is “off”. Timing’s never been my strong suit. I have more offspring than the rhythm method and piteously listless willymilk would otherwise allow, for example, and there was of course that time I sat next to Kevin Spacey on a train and failed to repeatedly smash him in that face of his with my bony elbow for making me sit through Pay It Forward.

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Live and Let Die – More Action. More Excitement. More 007th Minute!

Baron Samedi original art by Cecily Devil (c), used with kind permission

Here now another adventurous instalment of Jacques Stewart’s 007th Minute series. Watched and commented by himself. Commented by you in this thread.

Oh, and everything written here is of course subjective, seen through Jim’s eyes. Only our illustration is the genuine work of Cecily Devil, whose other work we hereby warmly recommend. You can find it at Cecily Devil’s own website here.

 

OK, so the last one was a bit unrestrained, directionless and flabby, a scattergun and largely busked collage of old tat with a distractingly sinister undertone to it all. The film it was purporting to criticise wasn’t much better, but I suppose I could argue – if bothered (not very) – that “review” and “reviewable” being of similar hopeless natures is a tremendously funny joke and, more pompously (it is possible) that Diamonds are Forever is a corrupting influence not only on the young but also on the decayfrayed and moth-chewed, i.e. me.

 

Its corrupting influence on the next few films is a popular perception, that it was with Diamonds are Forever that the rot set it, that shocking rot of making millions of dollars, oh that hateful, hateful money. The burden. Oh, the humanity. Will no-one think of the children? Tonally, its successor does look like someone was thinking of the children as ostensibly it appears to be a gentler affair, or at the very least a far more even one, absent the violent mood swings of Connery’s Fat Vegas Comeback Special. Obviously that’s only perception; it’s simply much, much better at disguising its bipolar, filleted soul, if only by dint of having an actual story this time, to distract one from all the jarring inconsistency that’s still jumping about like youths at a (ahem) “jazz funeral”. I don’t want dancing like that at my funeral, although I am trying to engineer it that there will be a good fight when they find out that all the money’s been left to, oh I dunno, some donkeys or something.

 

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