Speaking of Bond films...

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• Josh Z says:

  November 7, 2012 at 1:56 pm

  John Berry?

• Owain Wilson says:

  November 7, 2012 at 2:54 pm

  My one big prob­lem with this film, which I loved, con­cerns the end­ing. I prom­ise not to give ANYTHING away.
  I’ll just say that what should have been a thrill­ing cli­max ended up – like a lot of big action movies – inex­plic­ably peter­ing out, los­ing pre­cious momentum, and then ambling on for anoth­er ten or fif­teen minutes without tension.
  I’d love to say more but every one of your American read­ers would kill me.

• kdringg says:

  November 9, 2012 at 12:03 pm

  I’ll give some­thing away on the end­ing – it’s HOME ALONE.
  This is the most over-hyped, expens­ively made B‑movie of the year.

• Clayton Sutherland says:

  November 9, 2012 at 2:03 pm

  Yeah, once M star­ted break­ing up shards of light­bulbs and what­not, I was think­ing the same thing. But I liked it more than you, over­all. In fact, I would def­in­itely put it amongst the Top 5 best Bond films ever made (it’s cer­tainly the best acted, and pos­sibly the best look­ing), but keep in mind that I only really enjoy less than half of them.
  Where would you slot it in on your Top 25 list, Glenn?

• Melissa D says:

  November 9, 2012 at 7:32 pm

  Can’t wait to see it!
  Glenn, just your pos­it­ive impres­sions of the score would be enough to con­vince me. I’m already pretty pro-Thomas-Newman, end­lessly mim­icked “American Beauty” score not­with­stand­ing. And I will remain always in love with Barry’s “You Only Live Twice” score.
  (My fiancé was show­ing my 5‑year-old stepson an excit­ing early action sequence from “You Only Live Twice” this past week­end, and he wanted to keep watch­ing… then some of the more ballad‑y music star­ted, and my stepson said, “aaw, I hate this music! It sounds like get­ting married.”)
  BTW, Glenn, as a first-time com­menter and long­time read­er, can I just say thanks? Your blog reg­u­larly helps keep my lurk­ing daily life-of-quiet-desperation at bay. Merci. 🙂

• Brian Dauth says:

  November 10, 2012 at 5:16 pm

  In some ways, watch­ing SKYFALL a few days after the re-election of Barack Obama (and the vote per­cent­ages that won for him) is an odd exper­i­ence. Here is a film that proudly asserts the need for white men after an elec­tion that showed defin­it­ively that they can no longer dic­tate out­comes. When at the end of the movie, Bond tell M that they are going “into the past where we will have an advant­age,” he seems to be echo­ing Bill O’Reilly in his lament: “The white estab­lish­ment is now the minor­ity.” Now, O’Reilly has been using this “end of white civil­iz­a­tion” meme since last autumn, but it has been picked up by oth­ers sub­sequent to the res­ults of the recent American elec­tion, and SKYFALL is an urgent please-come-back-Shane beseech­ing to white male con­trol and power. M, the first female the series has had, loses the list of agents embed­ded in ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tions (women are always los­ing things in those big purses of theirs). When M is brought before a Parliamentary com­mit­tee, the film clev­erly has a woman lead the attack (hav­ing a man do it would just seem sex­ist, so have a talk­at­ive viper-woman do it as M is res­ol­utely stiffer than any British lip in his­tory). Even Miss Moneypenny comes back – and she is black this time! But alas, she is also the one who fires the shot (taken on M’s orders, of course) that misses the assas­sin and hits Bond – not only do girls lose things, they can’t shoot straight either. Moneypenny has decided that the field is not the place for her (Whew!), and settles in behind a desk to be a duti­ful amanu­en­sis. And wouldn’t you know – her first name is Eve (we know all about the trouble her name­sake star­ted; for­tu­nately her des­cend­ant has been securely secretarialized).
  And then there is the super vil­lain – Rosa Klebb resur­rec­ted as a gay man with a bad dye job. Silva’s (real name Tiago Rodriguez – those damn Latinos! – trait­ors to the nation who expose agents so they can be killed and, more import­antly, do not vote Republican) entrance is lif­ted from SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, and when he begins to speak I was temp­ted to think that Cousin Sebastian did not die at Cabeza de Lobo after all. Once again we have the queer male killer – ruth­less, heart­less, turned out in the fash­ion­able way het­ero­sexu­als think gay vil­lains would dress. All he wants is revenge on M(other) for her sins (yes, SKYFALL brings back Momism with a ven­geance – the 1950’s nev­er seemed so near). Made me wish I could have Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd back!
  But do not worry – once Bond and M(other) get back to the past, they are able to defeat Silva (who even tosses hand gren­ades like a girl). M(other) dies look­ing at her good son, who takes up the cause again from the new M (who is white and male, of course). The film then ends with the resur­rec­tion (which is what Bond claims he wants at one point) of the clas­sic shot (denied to the audi­ence at the start of the film) through an eye­ball of James Bond turn­ing, aim­ing, fir­ing and killing. As red pours down from the top of the screen, the old order has been restored and a new begin­ning announced. As I said: a most odd experience.

• D says:

  November 10, 2012 at 5:20 pm

  In some ways, watch­ing SKYFALL a few days after the re-election of Barack Obama (and the vote per­cent­ages that won for him) is an odd exper­i­ence. Here is a film that proudly asserts the need for white men after an elec­tion that showed defin­it­ively that they can no longer dic­tate out­comes. When at the end of the movie, Bond tell M that they are going “into the past where we will have an advant­age,” he seems to be echo­ing Bill O’Reilly in his lament: “The white estab­lish­ment is now the minor­ity.” Now, O’Reilly has been using this “end of white civil­iz­a­tion” meme since last autumn, but it has been picked up by oth­ers sub­sequent to the res­ults of the recent American elec­tion, and SKYFALL is an urgent please-come-back-Shane beseech­ing to white male con­trol and power. M, the first female the series has had, loses the list of agents embed­ded in ter­ror­ist organ­iz­a­tions (women are always los­ing things in those big purses of theirs). When M is brought before a Parliamentary com­mit­tee, the film clev­erly has a woman lead the attack (hav­ing a man do it would just seem sex­ist, so have a talk­at­ive viper-woman do it as M is res­ol­utely stiffer than any British lip in his­tory). Even Miss Moneypenny comes back – and she is black this time! But alas, she is also the one who fires the shot (taken on M’s orders, of course) that misses the assas­sin and hits Bond – not only do girls lose things, they can’t shoot straight either. Moneypenny has decided that the field is not the place for her (Whew!), and settles in behind a desk to be a duti­ful amanu­en­sis. And wouldn’t you know – her first name is Eve (we know all about the trouble her name­sake star­ted; for­tu­nately her des­cend­ant has been securely secretarialized).
  And then there is the super vil­lain – Rosa Klebb resur­rec­ted as a gay man with a bad dye job. Silva’s (real name Tiago Rodriguez – those damn Latinos! – trait­ors to the nation who expose agents so they can be killed and, more import­antly, do not vote Republican) entrance is lif­ted from SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER, and when he begins to speak I was temp­ted to think that Cousin Sebastian did not die at Cabeza de Lobo after all. Once again we have the queer male killer – ruth­less, heart­less, turned out in the fash­ion­able way het­ero­sexu­als think gay vil­lains would dress. All he wants is revenge on M(other) for her sins (yes, SKYFALL brings back Momism with a ven­geance – the 1950’s nev­er seemed so near). Made me wish I could have Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd back!
  But do not worry – once Bond and M(other) get back to the past, they are able to defeat Silva (who even tosses hand gren­ades like a girl). M(other) dies look­ing at her good son, who takes up the cause again from the new M (who is white and male, of course). The film then ends with the resur­rec­tion (which is what Bond claims he wants at one point) of the clas­sic shot (denied to the audi­ence at the start of the film) through an eye­ball of James Bond turn­ing, aim­ing, fir­ing and killing. As red pours down from the top of the screen, the old order has been restored and a new begin­ning announced. As I said: a most odd experience.
  Brian Dauth

• D says:

  November 10, 2012 at 5:23 pm

  Sorry for the double post. It did not seem to take by just using my name, so I signed in to try and make it appear that way.

• Josh Z says:

  November 11, 2012 at 5:04 pm

  Brian, don’t you think you’re read­ing far too much into the movie? Your attempt to impose a polit­ic­al mes­sage on the con­tent strains credu­lity at every level.

• Steve says:

  November 11, 2012 at 8:25 pm

  I agree with much of Brian’s take on SKYFALL, but I don’t find it nearly as sex­ist as he does. Judi Dench’s per­form­ance, and the affec­tion with which Bond treats M help mit­ig­ate the plot’s treat­ment of her. I can­’t ima­gine a char­ac­ter like her appear­ing in a film like GOLDFINGER or FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, even if Silva seems like an unfor­tu­nate throw­back to a more homo­phobic time. How many sup­posedly “pro­gress­ive” films would devote so much time to a woman in her 60s and make her so cent­ral to their narratives?

• Shamus says:

  November 12, 2012 at 5:46 am

  I too largely agree with Brian- the main thing about SKYFALL, apart from its remark­ably strong Oedipal theme, seems to be nos­tal­gia for the good old days of colo­ni­al­ism (some­thing impli­cit in every Bond film, but espe­cially so here), and everything else colo­ni­al­ism entails (cf. Moneypenny’s decision to take the sec­ret­ari­al job seemed pos­it­ively offens­ive). By killing off Dench’s M, and intro­du­cing a new male M, the series seems to align itself very pre­cisely with the Connery films (a desire expressed, at the very least, in the set design of the M’s new office, and the oft-repeated line about the desirab­il­ity of the old ways). I’ll prob­ably con­tin­ue to watch the Bond films – I do enjoy them, and I’ve watched everything else – but I hope the writers know how ridicu­lous it sounds when Bond goes on about “the Empire”.
  (Deakins’ pho­to­graphy was so extraordin­ary that everything else- plot, act­ors, direction- film felt sec­ond­ary and unim­port­ant: the Bond films have NEVER looked this good.)

• Josh Z says:

  November 12, 2012 at 8:22 am

  I think you guys have entirely missed the point. The Daniel Craig reboot rep­res­ents back­story for the char­ac­ters. With this film, the pieces have fallen into place to intro­duce more of the icon­o­graphy of the fran­chise. This is THE M. She is THE Moneypenny. What we see in this film is how they got to those positions.
  With that said, it’s still a reboot. Things are dif­fer­ent in the mod­ern day, and just the fact that a man is put in charge at the end does­n’t auto­mat­ic­ally make the movie sex­ist. If that’s the case, then any insti­tu­tion in the world with a man in charge must by defin­i­tion be misogynist.
  Killing M gives both Bond and the audi­ence real emo­tion­al stakes. She’s a char­ac­ter we’d come to care about over the last sev­er­al movies. She has far more to do in this one, and is far bet­ter developed as a char­ac­ter than ever before. Putting anoth­er woman in that role to replace her, just for the sake of hav­ing anoth­er woman there, would rep­res­ent obnox­ious polit­ic­al correctness.

• Josh Z says:

  November 12, 2012 at 9:41 am

  Nostalgia is not always a reac­tion­ary polit­ic­al state­ment, no mat­ter how hard you may try to read one into it.

• Shamus says:

  November 12, 2012 at 12:21 pm

  I’m not exactly sure that the icon­o­graphy of the fran­chise ever rep­res­en­ted pro­gress­ive lib­er­al­ism (it was always “Queen, coun­try… whatever”). Also, the icon­o­graphy var­ied from Bond to Bond- Dalton’s films, I think, had no Moneypenny, no M.‘s office in London, and all that (although, I’m not really sure- it’s been over a dec­ade since I saw those films), unless you are refer­ring to the ele­ments in the Connery films, in which case it is a little dis­con­cert­ing to see the writers pre­tend that noth­ing sig­ni­fic­ant had changed any­where since 1962.
  I am more con­cerned (and Brian D. and Steve, too, I think) with the acrid whiff of the sub­text rather than any par­tic­u­lar inten­tion of the cre­at­ors. And the sub­text here seems to be: women should stay behind their desks as sec­ret­ar­ies and flirt (in the next film, wait and see) rather than go into the field, which is a man’s job really.
  And nos­tal­gia for colo­ni­al­ism and the mon­archy (let’s just call it imper­i­al­ism, shall we?) is just plain reactionary.
  (For what it’s worth, I always thought that cast­ing Dench in the role as M was an inspir­a­tion. Killing her off just so the series could go back to for­mula felt regressive.)

• andy says:

  November 12, 2012 at 12:21 pm

  I guess this site is now a spoil­er zone. Dang.

• Josh Z says:

  November 12, 2012 at 7:18 pm

  Shamus, are you say­ing that you think the James Bond fran­chise SHOULD rep­res­ent pro­gress­ive lib­er­al­ism? If so, why would you ever think that?
  Exactly where in Skyfall do the char­ac­ters express a desire to return to colo­ni­al­ism or imperialism?

• karieem9 says:

  November 14, 2012 at 2:04 am

  http://www.automateandvalidate.com