bunn: (icecream)
[personal profile] bunn
It seems unlike the Bond franchise to miss a commercial trick but
  1. They drove all the way to Scotland from London, and there was no shot of Bond moodily filling up the Aston with Super Unleaded from his preferred petrol pump!
  2. And no shot of M tucking into a Ginsters pasty or a Melton Mowbray pork pie!
  3. not really sponsorship, but those were SO definitely Calor Gas cylinders that got exploded, even if they did have the logo painted over.   As someone with a house entirely heated by Calor Gas and a much larger cylinder sitting outside, I felt the need of one of those 'If you have been affected by issues raised in this..." helplines.   I shall walk past that Calor cylinder with extreme caution in future, until I forget.  
I must say, I did enjoy the film, and not just for the explosions and cars.  [livejournal.com profile] philmophlegm described it as 'MI6 v Wikileaks' - the Wikileaks parallel hadn't occurred to me, but I can see what he means.  I could watch Judi Dench's M being morally ambivalent and brutally pragmatic, then quoting Tennyson for ages, even though I don't normally have much time for Tennyson. 

Date: 2012-11-14 10:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] parrot-knight.livejournal.com
Bond at his preferred motorway service area group, with his preferred coffee and preferred burger...

Date: 2012-11-15 07:51 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Car)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
Bond with Aston pulled over on hard shoulder as his preferred emergency repair service replaces a tyre...?

Date: 2012-11-14 11:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carmarthen.livejournal.com
I felt like they rather fell down on the implications of MI-6 vs Wikileaks, but I may be expecting too much from the franchise. Certainly the relative lack of sexism in the last two turns out to have been a fluke...

Giggling over Bond moodily filling the petrol tank.

Date: 2012-11-15 08:06 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
Well I guess a series where the central character is a man apparently irresistable to all women is always going to be a bit challenged on the sexist front. I was a bit sad that M's relationship with Bond wasn't further developed, but on the other hand I'm quite intrigued now by what exactly made him loathe his childhood home quite that bitterly...

Date: 2012-11-15 09:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carmarthen.livejournal.com
I don't mind him being irresistible, but I had hoped we were past him being a poster boy for sexual harassment and general creepiness. Craig had been doing so well. I dunno, I guess I thought the franchise had gone somewhere more interesting with Craig, so I was disappointed when Skyfall turned out so retro.

I assumed the hatred was just dead parent angst?

Date: 2012-11-15 10:43 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
It just seemed quite extreme levels of dead parent angst - for a man of his age to lose his rag so comprehensively when the name of his childhood home is so much as mentioned. And a Scot, who deliberately answers 'England' to 'country' in an association test??

I am intrigued about the bit where M asks how old he was when they died, and gets told she already knows all the details. I wonder why and how she'd know that sort of detail and how he knows she knows, and how they died anyway.

The shower scene was indeed weird and creepy. :-/

Date: 2012-11-16 05:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carmarthen.livejournal.com
I kind of think of Craig's Bond as a barely-hinged sociopath at the best of time, but yeah, IDK. Bond has had a weird relationship with being Scottish at least since the Brosnan films (which kind of makes me wonder if Cossack Alec needling Scottish-Swiss Bond about "For England" all through Goldeneye was tongue in cheek. I'm going to have to rewatch). The weirdness may have been there in the books, too; I can't remember, and these days I wouldn't be able to read Fleming without wanting to set the books on fire.

IIRC, his parents died in a skiing accident, unless they're changing that (although they seem to be going so classic, I doubt they will).

Taking M out of the picture takes out Bond's most interesting relationship, IMO. Sigh.

Date: 2012-11-17 09:17 am (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
It's a long time since I read any Fleming, never liked it much, if I'm going to read about irresistable and smug men of mystery of that period, I prefer Simon Templar...

I dunno, I just felt there was a faint hint of M knowing rather more about Bond's parents death than one might expect her to as their son's boss 30 or so years later.

I suppose if Bond is Craig's age, that would be around the mid-80's - though I think part of the attraction of the recent movies is that there is a sort of feeling to Bond suggesting the Cold War - even though he's clearly too young, that gives it a faint air of fantasy. Bond as a sort of Jack Harkness...?

Date: 2012-11-17 05:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carmarthen.livejournal.com
Yeah, Bond is kind of peculiarly Cold War (Brosnan's Bond was explicitly Cold War, wasn't he?). I dunno, there's a lot of Bond that only gets more confusing if you think about him too hard.

Date: 2012-11-15 02:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com
Have you tried getting super unleaded in the Highlands?! I imagine the lengthy scene in which Bond worries at length about whether there will be any super unleaded petrol stations past Inverness and whether his nice sports car will survive on the pigswill that lesser people put in their lesser cars was edited out.

I've been there, believe me...

Date: 2012-11-15 02:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] philmophlegm.livejournal.com
Oh and how did you _not_ get the wikileaks parallel from a blond-haired baddy with a continental accent who's an expert hacker and into sexual assault???

Date: 2012-11-15 08:27 pm (UTC)
ext_189645: (Default)
From: [identity profile] bunn.livejournal.com
I guess I don't see Assange as quite so likely to randomly gun people down...

Date: 2012-11-16 12:55 pm (UTC)
ext_90289: (Dragons)
From: [identity profile] adaese.livejournal.com
The same way I didn't get the symbolism of the Temeraire reference, and just thought to myself "Ooh, Temeraire!" - by enjoying the film as a well-made action flick, and not thinking too hard about cultural referents and deeper meanings.

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