Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Nigel Parkin's Bond Things
posted @6:28 p.m. by Richard Kelly
Nigel's ten entries brim with a special passion for and appreciation of the core elements of the Bond corpus. And Moonraker is back in the game too.So what have we learned here that we could pass back to Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson?
1. Don't ever mess with the theme.
2. The Dan Craig thing is working.
3. Maybe clone Donald Pleasance from surviving DNA, and the white cat too? And give them metal teeth?
4. The girls are great, just try and make them all English - or French at a push.
Nigel's List:
10. Donald Pleasance as Blofeld.
Those pinhead eyes, that slightly disembodied voice. Easily the creepiest villain in a Bond film, like some particularly spiteful, demented child bent on world domination. Perfect casting for a Roald Dahl take on the Bond universe.
9. The helicopters appearing over the mountain caps to attack Blofeld's base in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
An exquisite moment in the one Bond film that consistently reaches the level of the poetic.
8. Jane Seymour/Solitaire's hair.
7. The pre-credit sequence for Moonraker.
I am seven years old. I have seen The Spy Who Loved Me in the cinema and Goldfinger on the TV and I am sitting in the front row of my local cinema bursting for an end to the Pearl and Dean adverts so that we can get to the main event...the first Bond film I have actively anticipated. Within minutes I am seeing Bond flying. His hands are on his arse and he's flying!! And Jaws is chasing him...through the sky! In my memory I am clapping, laughing and cheering all at once. I know I am in good hands. Does anything get better than this?
6. Pierce Brosnan killing Sophie Marceau
A moment that cuts to the heart of that film's title sentiment...nothing can ever be enough. You can hate someone enough to kill them but you instantly realise that in spite of that you still want to make love to them. Brosnan reaches classical heights in this moment. Extreme, merciless brutality and eroticism powerfully combined. Here we get a fleeting glimpse of Bond's darkness - the insatiable passion that will leave him forever stalking the world like a lustful, vengeful ghost.
5. Matt Monro's rendition of From Russia With Love
Wistful, theatrical, achingly romantic.
4. Richard Kiel as Jaws.
They may have used Christopher Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun, but this is where the spirit of Hammer and Dracula really came to the Bond films. Jaws is a terrifying, looming presence in The Spy Who Loved Me; framed against the pyramids, the ultimate symbols of ancient curses, he moves through time and space with supernatural grace. The decision to make him into a comic teddy bear by the end of Moonraker may have irked some, but it seemed entirely appropriate to me. If he hadn't shown his tender side he would still be biting through the chains of my nightmares to this day.
3. The James Bond theme.
It still gets to those hairs on the back of the neck.
2. The look Roger Moore gives to villainous assailants in the midst of duels and chases
You know the one I mean, a slight double take with a cheerful smile and a flick of both eyebrows, as if to say, 'Isn't this fun?' And yes, it is. The very best fun. One day Moore's delicious irony will be appreciated for what it is - the work of a genius, an almost Brechtian approach to the role that revels in the silliness while denying none of the excitement. And his voice is to die for. I love him. I love him. He is Bond and beyond!
1. Daniel Craig's reinvention of the turn-and-shoot moment in the pre-credit sequence to Casino Royale.
This time I definitely know that I clapped, laughed and cheered all at once. There may be better things than this, but not in a cinema.
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