Primarily the acting. The camp. Death by inflation. The capitalization on blaxploitation while putting a white english dude as the central figure. Rosie Carver. Rubber snakes. Overacted voodoo witches.
There were cool moments, I'll admit. Bond's pad. The black mamba scene. Running over the alligators. The boat chase. The theme song. Jane Seymour. But on the whole, Moonraker and Live and Let Die are my least favorites.
Make no mistake, I can watch any Bond film in a sitting. That includes Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again. I own them all, I watch them all. But this one is the least likely to be put in my player.
Feeling like I stepped in to a hornets nest and stirred it up. I have to concur with Bossk ... the title is correct with the British spelling. I learned this via Netflix myself a few years ago, hence my desire to point it out in the first place. Funny that Bossk had the exact same experience.
As for it being the best or the worst, it's right there in the middle for me. Best Dalton Bond movie IMO, but that's a coin toss, now isnt it? It outshines anything from the '70s (except, arguably, "Spy"), but is outshined by everything in the '60s, including OHMSS. Best of the 80's is For Your Eyes Only, IMO, because this is when Bond started to get serious again. John Glen was a helluva director for the franchise. He kept the shake-and-bake forumula while ditching most of the camp. Maybe not all, but most. It's not better than Goldeneye or TND, but certainly better than TWINE and Die Another Day.
Ranking my favorite bond films (excluding Casino Royale in its various forms and Never Say Never Again because it wasn't a "true" bond film, as good as it was): Goldfinger From Russia With Love Thunderball Tomorrow Never Dies Goldeneye For Your Eyes Only You Only Live Twice OHMSS Dr. No Licence To Kill The Spy Who Loved Me The Man With The Golden Gun Octopussy Diamonds Are Forever The Living Daylights Die Another Day The World Is Not Enough A View To A Kill Moonraker Live And Let Die
My wife would beg to differ. In her mind, this is James Bond: Pierce Pierce Pierce Pierce Oh, please let it be Hugh Jackman now. He's so dreamy.
I love that WB allowed the documentary on the Superman: The Movie DVD to present a lot of this Salkind dirt, rather than sweeping it under the rug. (Can you imagine Lucas talking in the Making of Ep II or III about how the world hated Jar Jar so he dialed back his role in response?) The behind-the-scenes story of Superman II is the stuff of legends. The most impressive tale was this (I'm paraphrasing):
Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz (co-writer for I, uncredited like Donner on II) recalled a story that when II came out, some particular reviewer praised the movie and Richard Lester for extracting much more impressive performances from the actors. In specific, Gene Hackman's acting was praised by this particular reviewer as a marked improvement, thanks to better writing and better directing. Mankiewicz wrote in a letter to the editor, which was never published or even acknowledged, pointing out that every last bit of Gene Hackman's performance was directed by Donner, from his script. Hackman apparently refused to work on Superman II at all after the Donner shakeup, and they had to edit around him, occasionally using wide shots and a (very impressive) voice double.
Incidentally, Brando legally sued the Salkinds to have his footage removed entirely on the grounds that they'd only contracted and paid him for one film. (The Salkinds were notorious for this tactic already, having done it with The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers). John Williams dropped out soon afterward but I don't recall if he specifically cited these reasons. Hackman, Brando, Williams ... these guys showed the Salkinds what true power in Hollywood was about. And history has been quite kind to them as a result.
Donner has publicly stated numerous times that he wants to do his own edit of Superman II. However, given that the unused Brando footage is now going to be used in Superman Returns, I don't know if it would ever be included. I do think that II sorely needs Jor-El's ultimate sacrifice to explain how Superman got his powers back. Given that Warner absolutely LOVES Donner (he's made them billions from many of the films mentioned earlier), I'm surprised this project didn't start the day after they bought the rights back from the Salkinds.
Originally posted by: Han Solo VS Indiana Jones I heard that they were using the guy who did the music for the X-Men movies to score "Superman Returns".
John Ottoman is editing and scoring the film as he did on X2, Apt Pupil and The Usual Suspects (among other films). He did not score X1; that was Michael Kamen. Personally I love Kamen's (R.I.P.) scores, except X-men. It was right awful.
Ottoman has acknowledged that it would be criminal not to include Williams' themes in the score for this movie, so expect to hear it. I also expect the score will be much better than Superman II. Ken Thorne's renditions of Williams' themes were downright cringeworthy.
I enjoy Ottoman's scores because of his dual role as film editor. He has a unique view on how to tie the score in with the film that, for me, has worked every time.
I'm with Warbler in having low expectations for this movie. I think they picked the wrong Superman and Lois for starters, but I am willing to give this movie a chance based on the director itself. I just expect that Singer is about to ruin two franchises ... X-men for leaving it (Ratner is an A-list hack) and Superman for what I've seen so far. Believe me, I hope I'm wrong on both counts. They'll still likely get my money for a matinee both times, but anything beyond that will be based on my expectations being proven totally wrong.
Is Apex still in business? I had a string of Apex models for years and loved every one. I originally had a model I customized with a toggle switch that switched between R0 and R1 to defeat RCE protection but still allow playability of other regions. Then a few 1100W models with the firmware hacked. Finally I settled on a 5313 changer model that I've had for 2.5 years. No problems and it'll play almost anything with a hole in it (not too happy with DVD+R DL at the layer break but that's the only incompatibility so far). I think I can put a glazed donut in the system and it'll get a signal.
Apex may have gone under though, as I recall the CEO was indicted in China for fraud or something to that effect? They weren't paying their bills, long and short of it, and the Chinese government doesn't like it when their companies behave like, well, a lot of our American companies.
Edit: here is a link to a progressive-scan model on their official site. Click on "where to buy" to find out who carries that particular model. Call around first, to be sure.
Quote Originally posted by: Darth Chaltab Why do you think the Vendetta flick is going to suck?
Well, I had a vibe from the get-go that this wasn't going to be stellar in spite of every attempt to the contrary. First off, Hollywood so far has a great track record of adapting Alan Moore novels into crappy movies. From Hell was adequate at best, with Heather Graham's performance making you wish she'd return to fare like Boogie Nights and Austin Powers where her, ummm, talents are best put to use. LXG needs no further explanation. Hollywood just doesn't know how to adapt Alan Moore's graphic novels into watchable movies.
Second, Natalie went cueball for the role, and audiences are not kind to films where a popular actress goes bald for the part (unless she's playing a cancer victim). Look at Sigourney in Alien3 and Demi in G.I. Jane (from other acclaimed directors, to boot) for evidence to this. They shave for a noble reason, but it just turns the mainstream off.
Third and most revealing, moving a release date from a high-profile holiday release (November or December) to March (the month I've always referred to as "where bad movies go to die") smacks that all isn't well with this film. This was done in recent memory with The Time Machine, and (though, like "V" it is too soon to judge) the new version of The Pink Panther. Move a film from a high-profile month to a low-profile month means the writing is on the wall already and you're just trying to shift bad press to a quarter when it won't matter so much.
I could be totally wrong and time will tell, but my gut tells me they've screwed the pooch on this film.
Quote Originally posted by: Warbler I hate License to Kill. Bond movies are supposed to be spy movies. To me that movie belongs more with the Dirty Harry movies than with the Bond movies. Was it really necessary to Felix Lighter's legs chewd up by a shark? Too dark for a Bond movie.
For the record, much of Licence (that's the spelling of the movie according to the spine on my shelf), including Felix's limbs getting gnawed off by the bad guy was derived from the novel for Live and Let Die. Since the movies, starting with You Only Live Twice, started largely ignoring the books more and more, it left a lot more material to derive for future movies after the books were all exhausted. Dalton was actually very responsible for getting the filmed Bond back to Ian Fleming's character, and people called it too dark. He got Bond to actually tangle with SMERSH, whom politically-correct MGM made the Broccoli's drop in favor of the less-political SPECTRE in all the movies of the 60s (when SMERSH was still active in the USSR).
Personally, I'd love to see not only Casino Royale made into a real Bond movie as is finally planned, but Moonraker too. That was a stellar novel and the only resemblance it has to it's horrible film of the same name is the name of the bad guy. Literally, that's it.
Now, if we'd only see in the movies what we saw of Felix in the book after the shark attack: a scarred, mangled CIA op with a hook, a cane and an eyepatch ... that would be priceless.
I thought Padme looked pretty good when she stripped for Clive Owen. Now, if I could get ahold of a time machine, I'd travel back to Princess Leia's coked-out glory days when she was nailing everything with an appendage and wearing gold bikinis. But seeing the shape that the mother of Han's children is in nowadays, I'd take the stripper with the pink wig any day.
Yep. Just reviewed it and I have a couple of individual frames still to clip. The source material for the lost scenes is pretty bad (they found it on a 3/4" tape in a box if I recall correctly) but Python has never been about slick production quality anyway. Otto and the suicide squad is not only hysterical, but it actually explains their arrival at the crucifixion. I'm surprised that wasn't cut as well when so much of the setup was.
Actually, there are DL versions of all 5 films (and will be for ep III as well). However, only IV and VI have any form of special features (multiple audio) on the DL version. The other 3 are merely un-re-compressed video. Because of the expense of DL media and the lack of ubiquitous DL burners, they're not in the PIF system. Perhaps somebody with the DL discs will PM you. They ARE floating around though.
All of my DVD cases get packed into a cardboard storage box. I keep my discs in those 200-disc folios. Takes up less space in the "liveable" part of my home.
They finally announced the street date for this one. 10/18, same as the Burton/Schumaker boxed set. Three editions of this one are planning to street: Widescreen single disc, Fullscreen single disc, and a Widescreen "Deluxe Edition" 2-disc set. The 2-disc set is only a buck or so more than the single disc set, begging the question "why bother with just the film."
Well, the cost of DL media is about $8 a disc, vs. $0.40 a disc for SL media, so the ratio would be a lot more than 1:2. However, hopefully somebody with the DL copies will work a deal with you in PM. PIF hasn't been economical for DL media so other approaches are being taken. You should turn on private messaging in your profile.
Muxing Hannibal. I'm calling this one "Hannibal: Desserts served with your main course" ... catchy ain't it? Lots of fun dinner references on these menus.
Found the Hannibal Lecter font online for the menu. Seems almost illegible, but what the heck, it seemed cooler than the zillion script fonts in my library.
