Blofeld might be back

Seve wrote:

he doesn't "own" the franchise, but he is the front man for the people who do own it and his vision of Bond is in alignment with theirs, or he has bought into their vision, which is why they brought him on board
he performs in interviews, acting as the franchises public face
QoS was a miss step, but less so than TMWTGG or LTK in the past, so they will not be pressing the panic button just yet
they don't absolutely have to hit one out of the park, just make a few adjustments to get back on course ("on course" for them being CR)
like it or not, Craig still has a considerable body of fans and the perception of him as Bond is still hugely positive, despite QoS
so I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you…

Really? And here I thought he really truly owned Eon. I won't disagree with you. We are both being quite speculative, however I do feel there is pressure on Eon to deliver something that resonates better with the broader audience, than the last film did, otherwise this new, somewhat humourless, more dour, grounded depiction of the Bond screen legacy, might get called into question by the people that count - those putting up the cash and looking to make lots more of it, from this traditional big-bucks maker of a franchise. Maybe a call to lighten things up a bit, which might cause dour Dan to bolt, if suddenly he has to put on a rocket jet-pak, or stealth-swim ashore undercover of a decoy duck. :affraid:

As an aside; Poor Dan, it looks like Dream House will be an even bigger critical and box-office bomb than Cowboys and Indians was. Film crtiics were not even allowed a pre-screening of Dream House which is never a good sign. I must say the trailers don't entice me to want to shell-out cinema cash. I might anyway, just out of deference to his current Bond status. Not as a show of support. I don't support him as Bond, but as a Bondphile, more as a point of staying in the moment with the current Bond.
He might need Bond to kick-start his bankability if Dragon Tatoo doesn't fly either.

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

he doesn't "own" the franchise, but he is the front man for the people who do own it and his vision of Bond is in alignment with theirs, or he has bought into their vision, which is why they brought him on board...
...like it or not, Craig still has a considerable body of fans and the perception of him as Bond is still hugely positive, despite QoS
so I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you…

Really? And here I thought he really truly owned Eon. I won't disagree with you. We are both being quite speculative, however I do feel there is pressure on Eon to deliver something that resonates better with the broader audience, than the last film did, otherwise this new, somewhat humourless, more dour, grounded depiction of the Bond screen legacy, might get called into question by the people that count - those putting up the cash and looking to make lots more of it, from this traditional big-bucks maker of a franchise. Maybe a call to lighten things up a bit, which might cause dour Dan to bolt, if suddenly he has to put on a rocket jet-pak, or stealth-swim ashore undercover of a decoy duck. :affraid:

As an aside; Poor Dan, it looks like Dream House will be an even bigger critical and box-office bomb than Cowboys and Indians was. Film crtiics were not even allowed a pre-screening of Dream House which is never a good sign. I must say the trailers don't entice me to want to shell-out cinema cash. I might anyway, just out of deference to his current Bond status. Not as a show of support. I don't support him as Bond, but as a Bondphile, more as a point of staying in the moment with the current Bond.
He might need Bond to kick-start his bankability if Dragon Tatoo doesn't fly either.

well I was meaning "own" in the down-with-the-homeboys metaphorical sense of the word anyway, rather than the literal
meaning I don't think he is setting the agenda, but his ducks are in alignment with their planets

I agree with you in broad terms of course, and I think the producers do to, it's just that their idea of lightening the mood will be to return to CR levels of humour, which is far less than what you are hoping for I imagine?

Dragon Tattoo may be the acid test of Craig's aspirations to stardom, personally I don't think he'll make it to that level
some might argue that's a good thing for Bond, having an actor who has a high profile in his own right playing Bond could be seen as a negative attribute

I might suggest Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan's pre existing established persona's were a distraction which hampered their ability to be fully credible as James Bond
whereas Lazenby and Dalton did not have that problem, although the evidence of audience acceptance would contradict me
(Connery being the exception as both he and Bond grew from being little known to box office stars together)

Sharky wrote:

Seve wrote:

QoS was a miss step, but less so than TMWTGG or LTK in the past, so they will not be pressing the panic button just yet they don't absolutely have to hit one out of the park, just make a few adjustments to get back on course ("on course" for them being CR)

I think the big difference here, is that TMWTGG and LTK did not follow very popular films. The reception to LALD and TLD was mild at best, compared to CR - which was coined "the best Bond in decades" by many. It's more the huge difference in reception than how QOS compares to other unipolar films in the franchise.

In 2004 the BFI ranked LALD as the fifth highest grossing Bond film in the UK (see here).
I remember when TLD was released and there was as much buzz about that film in '87 as there was about CR in 2006.

Seve wrote:

James Bond in - "Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating"
Bond - Where's Moneypenny?
Tanner - Austerity measures I'm afraid
Bond - That's a pity, I never did get round to… nice tan you've got there, just back from a Middle East assignment?
Tanner - What tan? my mother was from Trinidad
Bond - Strange, I never noticed before… is M in?
Tanner - Waiting for you
Bond - Good Lord!
M - What?
Bond - You’re a woman!
M - That's nothing, you're gay
Bond - What?!
M - We need you to go undercover, pose as a hairdresser
Bond - Hair salon eh? lots of totty then, can't I at least be bi?
M - Don't be ridiculous, the target we want you to turn is a man
Bond - Oh well, I'd better go and see if Q can fix me up with a set of exploding scissors or something
M - We had to let him go
Bond - Austerity measures?
M - This is serious 007, we think Blofeld may be back
Bond - Blofeld! thank God for something familiar at last!

Har Har Har! Good one!

I think the response that Tinker, Taylor, etc. and Misson:Impossible get will be a decent indicator of what audiences want to see in their espionage movies these days. They're looking to be on opposite ends of the spectrum, I'm sure EON is eyeballing that just a little.

Unless Bond is just an anomaly of tradition that people want to remain its own thing, jetpacks, ejector seats and all. Clearly, they shouldn't rely on other franchises, especially Le Carre or M:I (blasphemy!), but they do want to stay relevant with what $$-paying moviegoers want to see. It could easily go either way.

I don't agree that EON Bond is about grubby espionage. The films should be adventures not thrillers, larger than life and celebrate excess - in an economic recession that's needed more than ever.

Domestic problems in Bolivia shouldn't be on Bond's radar. Megalomaniacs with assorted nukes and deformities should take precedence. After all, there's no shortage of latter-day Hitlers for EON to choose from, though the fact that most of them are Russian, Chinese, African, or South American may present the PC-ers with problems.

Erica Ambler wrote:

After all, there's no shortage of latter-day Hitlers for EON to choose from, though the fact that most of them are Russian, Chinese, African, or South American may present the PC-ers with problems.

Aren't you leaving somebody out?

**chirp, chirp**

tiffanywint wrote:

Seve wrote:

James Bond in - "Just A Little Bit Of History Repeating"
Bond - Where's Moneypenny?
Tanner - Austerity measures I'm afraid
Bond - That's a pity, I never did get round to… nice tan you've got there, just back from a Middle East assignment?
Tanner - What tan? my mother was from Trinidad
Bond - Strange, I never noticed before… is M in?
Tanner - Waiting for you
Bond - Good Lord!
M - What?
Bond - You’re a woman!
M - That's nothing, you're gay
Bond - What?!
M - We need you to go undercover, pose as a hairdresser
Bond - Hair salon eh? lots of totty then, can't I at least be bi?
M - Don't be ridiculous, the target we want you to turn is a man
Bond - Oh well, I'd better go and see if Q can fix me up with a set of exploding scissors or something
M - We had to let him go
Bond - Austerity measures?
M - This is serious 007, we think Blofeld may be back
Bond - Blofeld! thank God for something familiar at last!

Har Har Har! Good one!

Agreed. Good stuff, Seve.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

After all, there's no shortage of latter-day Hitlers for EON to choose from, though the fact that most of them are Russian, Chinese, African, or South American may present the PC-ers with problems.

Aren't you leaving somebody out?

**chirp, chirp**

For some strange reason I left out the ones who might come and behead me.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

After all, there's no shortage of latter-day Hitlers for EON to choose from, though the fact that most of them are Russian, Chinese, African, or South American may present the PC-ers with problems.

Aren't you leaving somebody out?

**chirp, chirp**

For some strange reason I left out the ones who might come and behead me.

Just don't go drawing any cartoons or making any documentaries, you hear? Or in other words, sit down, shut up and let Eurabia emerge. And if you fail to do so and the dervishes with scimitars fail to polish you off, the useful idiots at the UN, EU or the 10 Downing might just throw you in the slammer.

Erica Ambler wrote:

I don't agree that EON Bond is about grubby espionage. The films should be adventures not thrillers, larger than life and celebrate excess - in an economic recession that's needed more than ever.

Domestic problems in Bolivia shouldn't be on Bond's radar. Megalomaniacs with assorted nukes and deformities should take precedence.

The baddies of the Broz era all wanted to nuke something or gain some sort of world domination, and they generally (not the actors that played 'em) sucked balls. Sanchez, Scaramanga, and Kananga, on the other hand, were great villains outside the USSR/SPECTRE realm. I really should count Whitaker, too, since the movie he was in was good, he was just a little weak.

I tend to see the baddie plot of QOS as something transitional, showing how Quantum is interested in extortion on multiple levels and not just a blanket "give us $1,000,000,000,000 etc or we'll nuke/infect/provoke THE WORLD!!!". Clearly the stakes will be quite higher this time. I think they were only on his radar last go-round just because he wanted to take a chunk out of them, damage them as best he could for Vesper, and the fight's not over by a long shot. Similar to Bond's treatment of SMERSH, really (LALD wasn't about anything but Soviet money laundering, ultimately).

Like I said before, I'm all on board with Blofeld, or something like him (though not generic) next time. I liked the momentary lapses between "Mwahaha-ing" baddies these last 2 movies, though.

Erica Ambler wrote:

I don't agree that EON Bond is about grubby espionage. The films should be adventures not thrillers, larger than life and celebrate excess - in an economic recession that's needed more than ever.

Domestic problems in Bolivia shouldn't be on Bond's radar. Megalomaniacs with assorted nukes and deformities should take precedence. After all, there's no shortage of latter-day Hitlers for EON to choose from, though the fact that most of them are Russian, Chinese, African, or South American may present the PC-ers with problems.

I tend to agree with the first part....or at least I think they should retain a healthy connection with that larger than life aspect (in character if not in story structure) rather than obsess with the pretention of grit and realism that some fans seem determined to make it conform to.

In fairness re QoS, Bond wasn't concerned with domenstic water problems....he was pursuing quantum prior to having any knowledge of that, accidentally along the way there was revealed some reason that made it worthwhile to someone other than himself. Traditionally the 00's are a agent/unit moved in when descisive and lethal force is all but inevitable or some great threat to the country is hanging over it, "you're license to kill is useless unless one can set up the target" so Bond's involvement in seeking out an organisation whose only real established crime is behaving like a bank and being seccret is the rather wooly justification of quantum and not the actually more material - 'lets sell water to people who have no real money' scheme.

I think the filmmakers politics got in the way of QoS. The movie felt compelled to explain that western corporate interests ( no less dressed up as criminal interests for the film's purposes) are seizing up the natural water supplies of the local indigines in the global south. This theme was hammered home loud and clear. It's one of the progressive-left's pet propaganda themes; western exploitation of the natural resources of our "brothers and sisters in the global south" (that's how they talk);"commodification" of water. Cue the ban-on-bottled-water campaigns. Too bad its all a crock. Bottled water is hardly an evil empire. Then there were the cracks about western companies in Haiti and the CIA and oil. Yawn.

The movie may as well have been a co-production of Marx,Lenin and Chavez.

Vive la Revolution!!

tiffanywint wrote:

I think the filmmakers politics got in the way of QoS. The movie felt compelled to explain that western corporate interests ( no less dressed up as criminal interests for the film's purposes) are seizing up the natural water supplies of the local indigines in the global south. This theme was hammered home loud and clear. It's one of the progressive-left's pet propaganda themes; western exploitation of the natural resources of our "brothers and sisters in the global south" (that's how they talk);"commodification" of water. Cue the ban-on-bottled-water campaigns. Too bad its all a crock. Bottled water is hardly an evil empire. Then there were the cracks about western companies in Haiti and the CIA and oil. Yawn.

The movie may as well have been a co-production of Marx,Lenin and Chavez.

Vive la Revolution!!

Every single non-Bond fan I know gets confused about the water bit. Every. Single. One. 'Hammered home?' Only to those looking for it.

tiffanywint wrote:

I think the filmmakers politics got in the way of QoS. The movie felt compelled to explain that western corporate interests ( no less dressed up as criminal interests for the film's purposes) are seizing up the natural water supplies of the local indigines in the global south.

One word: Cochabamba.

Quote :

This is an extraordinary theory of cinema in many regards, not the least because it suggests that, before the rise of the bourgeoisie, there were neither interesting nor sympathetic characters. In any regard, one is cheered that even the professionally hostile responses to the film are able to lay the relevant cards on the table.

One would guess (rightly, it turns out) that the critic in question (A. O. Scott) preferred The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles’s 2004 film that now serves as a sort of Part Zero to Soderbergh’s opus. That earlier film shows young Ernesto approaching his future, episode by personal episode, as he and a friend travel the length of South America by motorcycle. It is Che before Che, before politics, and the film is more free to indulge in psychologizing.

But the question, quite evidently, is not which film is more bourgeois (indeed, we must be honest: both releases charged the full ticket price, and by that real measure, stand in identical relation to the marketplace). The most serious question, rather, is the most obvious one: thirty years after his death, why the hell did we suddenly need to make almost seven hours of Cinema Guevara, from his Argentine youth to his death in La Higuera, Bolivia?

This is the kind of mystery that requires James Bond.

The mystery begins with the peculiar narrative coincidences of Quantum of Solace and Che: each comes to a peak in central Bolivia, and features a scheme to overthrow said government. Following the Bond film’s plot is no easy business. It’s not that there’s precious little, as with many actioners. There’s loads, more than a reasonable film can bear, and it’s edited to incoherence. Tracking it is a bit like watching the CGI battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings or, more charitably, like examining a large-format, digitally tweaked Andreas Gursky photograph. You can stare directly at it and still have the sense that you aren’t really seeing what’s going on — it’s too complex, or perhaps your faculties of perception aren’t yet developed enough to take it in.

One strand of narrative has Bond tracking the Quantum cabal in the wake of his lover’s death at the end of the previous installment, Casino Royale. Thus Quantum of Solace begins with this pursuit in Italy, and ends with it in Russia; these bookends are all action but for the final mild revelation about Bond’s ex, his rapprochement with the home office, roll credits.

It’s in the middle of the film that things get screwy. On the trail of Quantum, Bond runs afoul of one Dominic Greene, played by Mathieu Amalric. The French arthouse star, who looks a bit like a younger Roman Polanski, has a nice sideline in Hollywood bad guys, like his sinister ferret of an underworld plotter in Munich. His physical size is suggestive, as is the straitened scope of his villainy herein, which includes no nuclear clocks, orbital platforms, or threatened genocides. A sign of the times; every economy gets the super-villain it deserves.

The diminutive Gallic technocrat runs Greene Planet, an ecologically minded outfit. Under its green fig leaf the international combine schemes—in collusion with local strongman General Medrano—to acquire monopoly rights to the Bolivian water supply. Greene Planet will help Medrano to the presidency, and in return reap superprofits from already impoverished Bolivians on the water concession. Cue mad cackle. Bond saves the day, you will not be surprised to hear, with the help of one good-hearted CIA agent and your standard-issue Russo-South American supermodel-freedom fighter.

The plot is utterly vertiginous. This is not because of its ludicrousness but its familiarity, it being wholly plagiarized from the archives of reality—a fact apparently lost on every major national critic. The New York Times summarizes the plot as “Greene’s diabolical scheme, itself never fully explained”; the Los Angeles Times settles for “a very standard-issue plot.” The reliably sophisticated New Yorker dismisses it as “a squabble that feels both crazed and touchingly provincial.”

None of them manage the word “Cochabamba.”

This, it must be said, is rather dreadful dereliction of duty. It is on the order of watching a Bond movie set against the occupation of Tiananmen Square in Beijing by masses of students, and missing it entirely. In 1999, Cochabamba, the third largest city in Bolivia, privatized its water supply— as a condition of receiving a loan continuation from the World Bank. The Aguas del Tunari consortium, as it was called, was an international combine including a couple of local corporations but led by International Water Ltd, a subsidiary of Bechtel Corporation. Their pricing meant that the Bolivians were paying in some cases a quarter of their income for water.

Public response, in the form of occupations, blockades, and a general strike, was massive; repression followed, including military action against civilians, and a government-declared state of siege. The protest spread throughout the nation; midway through 2000, the “Bolivian Water Wars” ended with the eviction of the consortium and, shortly, the fall of the government itself. One of the occupation leaders, congressman and coca grower Evo Morales of the Movement for Socialism, would become the first indigenous head of state since the Spanish conquest five centuries earlier.

This is one of the great political stories of our time. It cannot be entirely surprising that it would resurface in Hollywood, which never met some prefab content it didn’t like (though the reliably symptomatic Bond series has seldom tarried so closely with the topical). It would be easy to argue that the film preserves the story exactly so as to rewrite it, to rescue it for the ideological doxa of Hollywood; the screenplay is something like a primer in recuperation.

Rapacious capitalism gets its indictment only because it appears in inverted form: Bechtel returns as Greene Planet, ecopolitics merging with corporate cynicism. This is a moral missing from the actual history but, well, good ideals must always mask bad motives. So say the rules. In the film, the water plot is a shadowy conspiracy entwined with a military coup, pointedly impossible to credit—rather than the open corporate deal with the government that no one bothered to conceal. And inevitably, the communal insurrection of lived history is nowhere to be found. The fiendish plot must instead be foiled by our lone hero, who is also a representative of the global policing system, and who further is driven not by commitments but by personal demons. Though Cocha-bamba is just down the road from La Higuera, Quantum of Solace, one might say, is the anti-Che.

But Quantum of Solace still comes closer to telling the Bolivian story than the critics are able to address, or notice. If it stands that story on its head, we aren’t surprised: per Marx, “in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura.” Once the story is set on its feet, it instantly becomes the key which will unlock the mystery of all this Che revivalism. Salles and Solace and Soderbergh stand as a single notion: not one about the lost and romanticized Bolivarian revolution of the 1950s and 60s, but a present fact. They index, in their cynicism and idealism and mainly in their sheer insistence, an anxiety and a hope about contemporary geopolitics: a cinema for the new Grand Game of the Global South.

The Cochabamba story is itself a moment in a larger motion: in the last decade, the southern cone has turned left in a way without historical precedent. It is a variegated Left that includes neoliberal rejection, socialist movements and indigenous struggles, old and new populisms, tentative coalitions. But it includes Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Cuba; here in the public imagination of the imperial core, we give this vast and complicated wave the rather simple name of “Hugo Chavez,” and pretend it is confined to Venezuela, an isolated instance.



Geopolitics is destiny
Quantum of Solace. © 2008 Danjaq LLC, United Artists Corporation, Columbia Pictures Industries Inc.

http://www.filmquarterly.org/2009/06/cinema-for-a-grand-new-game/

Chief of SIS wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

I think the filmmakers politics got in the way of QoS. The movie felt compelled to explain that western corporate interests ( no less dressed up as criminal interests for the film's purposes) are seizing up the natural water supplies of the local indigines in the global south. This theme was hammered home loud and clear. It's one of the progressive-left's pet propaganda themes; western exploitation of the natural resources of our "brothers and sisters in the global south" (that's how they talk);"commodification" of water. Cue the ban-on-bottled-water campaigns. Too bad its all a crock. Bottled water is hardly an evil empire. Then there were the cracks about western companies in Haiti and the CIA and oil. Yawn.
The movie may as well have been a co-production of Marx,Lenin and Chavez.
Vive la Revolution!!

Every single non-Bond fan I know gets confused about the water bit. Every. Single. One. 'Hammered home?' Only to those looking for it.

Or those with their eyes even slightly open. I know its tough dealing with the notion that our favourite film series was hi-jacked by an agenda. Cochabamba indeed.