All things Bond -- James Bond

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OK, I've been wanting to do this for a while now, I hope I hit all the questions I wanted to ask. This was inspired by the recent movie scene thread. Here goes:

1: Who is your favorite Bond? Why? Who is your least favorite? Why?

2: What is your favorite Bond film? Why? Tell what made it your favorite.

3: Who was the best overall Bond girl? The prettiest? The best actress? The best written? Who was the worst for all those categories?

4: Who was the best overall Bond villain? The scariest? The best acted? The best written? The worst? WHY?

5: Same thing for henchmen.

6: Same thing for gadgets.

7: Final question: have any of you read the original novels by Ian Fleming? I got the whole boxed set a few years ago and found them fascinating reads for reasons I will address later.

GO!

 

7. I have read several of the books and thought they were pretty good. It's been a long time since I have read them, but I remember I was surprised by Flemming's ability and talent. I don't really care enough about the movies or actors to have any favorites though, LKD.

 

I'm not a huge Bond fan and I haven't seen Daniel Craig as 007 yet. Thanks to a Finnish tv network (it plays all Bonds pretty much every year) I've seen my share of the older ones, so here goes:

1. Sean Connery is my favorite and George Lazenby would be the least favorite (I don't know if he counts). Connery was charismatic and quite beliaveble as a Bond.

2. Goldfinger - it has everything that a Bond film is supposed to have. Least favorite would probably be On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

3. I like the newer Bond girls. Izabella Scorupco was one of the prettiest and ok actress IIRC. Michelle Yeoh was also very good, gotta love those kung fu moves. Can't name the least favorite.

4. I'd also name Blofeld as the best villain. Dr.Evil took the last remnants of scariness out of him

5. Best henchman is a tough call, here the older ones are way better. Very tight competition between OddJob and Jaws. Nick Nack was also great.

6. I don't remember many of these. The car ejector seat is the only I can name.

7. I think I've read them all. Quality writing and like dmc said, they definitely give a more interesting picture of 007.

Bonus category - the best Bond theme? Goldfinger.

 

1. Sean Connery is the most "James Bond," but Brosnan made them exciting to watch again, and I have a special place in my heart for McCheesfest Moore. Timothy Dalton was the worst - I got halfway through License to Kill and shut it off in disgust.

2. Favorite: I can't choose, I have had periods of time where You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Live and Let Die were each a favorite. Least favorite - License to Kill, Die Another Day.

3. Best bond girls (at the time): Jane Seymour was the hottest in LaLD, although she was far too helpless. Barbara Bach's cleavage at the end of TSWLM puts her up here, and although I hated Quantum of Solace, Gemma Arterton is fine. Least... I can't recall. Maybe the girl from For Your Eyes Only because of her eyebrows.

4. Can't name best and worst villains. Maybe Sean Bean?

5. Jaws was horrible! He bites people to death? Come on... Oddjob was a badass, and I liked the guy who didn't feel pain in The World is not Enough (despite being a generally craptastic film).

6. Well, one of the best lines in Bond history is in Die Another Day, when they are down in the subway station and Q says "The latest in British technology," and there is nothing there because the car is invisible. So... invisible car.

7. Never read any of them.

 

Hehehe, glad I could inspire a new thread.

1: I haven't seen that much of the classic (read "old") Bond movies and couldn't remember much of the ones I've seen but I did recently bought the Bond collection DVDs so that'll change eventually. I did covered all those starting from Dalton. So my favorite would be among the last 3 actors, it's toss between Brosnan and Daniels. Brosnan as most of his Bond movies are high-octane actions. Daniels, well his Bond is like the Christian Bale's Batman coming from the comedy-like George Clooney Batman. Dark and angry.

2: This would be Golden Eye. A female M, the same old Q and the best part is the bad guy is a double "0" himself. And a large part is because Sean Bean creeps into my top 3 favorite actors after this movie.

3: Best Bond girl for me would be Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh - Tomorrow Never Dies). Partly because I've spent my childhood watching her kicking Asian butts, now she's kicking Western butts. Prettiest for me would be Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike - Die Another Day). Best actress... can't think of one but I really hate Kara (Maryan d'Abo - Living Daylights). Her character was irritatingly naive and her acting did help either.

4: Ex-Agent 006, Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) of Golden Eye, an agent at par with Bond's skills and a despicable ambition. That's scary. He is also for me the best acted.

5: I'd say Zao (Die Another Day), with diamond bits encrusted in his face and can kick @ss who can top that. But for reasons I don't know, May Day (Grace Jones - View To A Kill) cracks me up.

6: I'm with Saber regarding the invisible car, the submarine-car from The Spy Who Loved Me comes in second.

7: No, never read any Bond book or short stories at all.

Bonus: Favorite songs, Golden Eye by Tina Turner (Golden Eye) and You Know My Name (Casino Royale)
Favorite car is the dark green Jaguar XKR driven by Zao.

@LKD, you should have a favorite Bond car and song too.

 

Forgot my favorite song: A View To a Kill by Duran Duran. It inspired my love for Duran Duran, and remains my favorite Duran Duran song.

I'm actually planning on writing a movie about Duran Duran loving college kids who start a male prostitution business to pay tuition.

 

1. Sean Connery IS Bond. Although Craig is very close to Ian Flemming's Bond. Moore was the worst, he just bumbled through everything.

2. Goldfinger. "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mister Bond. I expect you to die." Brilliant.

2a. Best Opening Scene -- The Spy Who Loved Me.

2b. Best Ending -- On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

3. Ursula Andress defined the Bond girl. There are very few that have ever held a candle to Honey Rider. I'm also very fond of the Teresa De Vincenzo character. I think the best actresses in the role of Bond girl were Diana Rigg and Halle Berry -- Eva Green did a wonderful job with one of the most complex Bond girls ever. The prettiest? Mrs Starr.

4. Most of the villians were poorly acted and very one dimensional. I have a fondness for Dr. No, but Goldfinger was probably the best.

5. Best henchman? Not even close -- Robert Shaw's Red Grant. The worst was Jaws in Moonraker (which was also the worst Bond movie).

6. Funniest was the fake sling/cast. Best was probably the Aston Martin. Little Nellie and the Jet Pack were cool too.

7. Yes.

Best Bond Song -- again no competition Live and Let Die by Paul McCartney and Wings. For Your Eyes Only deserves special mention because it was sung by Annah. Nobody does it Better by Carly Simon is a great song as well.

 

3. Halle Berry.

Song: 'The Living Daylights' by A-Ha. Seriously, are the bands who get these jobs to write theme songs told, specifically, that they must include the name of the movie in the lyrics? To me that always induces cringes because it's so obviously shoe-horned in.

"Whoa ... whoa-whoa, the living daylights, yeah baby."

(No offense Saber, but Duran Duran did that too in 'A View To A Kill.' Cringe! )

"And so we ... dance into the fire! ... With a view to a kill!"

 

OK, we've had a few responses, so now I'll weigh in (I didn't want to skew the results. One day maybe I'll put this up as a full fledged survey!)

I liked all the Bond actors. Even Dalton and Lazenby. Lazenby was quite tough in the role and I feel would have grown into it, but he had impossibly -- impossibly big shoes to fill. Connery was, until Craig, the closest to Bond as written by Fleming, and while I love the guy's acting, it wasn't just that -- the writing and production also helped. Moore's somewhat offbeat goofball approach was a result of changing production values, and he could be quite chilling -- when he kicked the assassin's car (Emile Locke, I beleive the character's name was) off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only he truly was chilling, as he also was when he threw the gunman off the roof in the otherwise quite silly The Spy Who Loved Me.

The best actress, IMHO, was Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She had the most acting skill. I'm always conflicted when judging between Barabara Bach, who as a teen I was deeply in love with, and Jane Seymour, who was just breathtaking. My least favorite Bond girl was Jill St. John as Tiffany Case.

Coincidentally, Diamonds are Forever was also my least favorite Bond film, and Charles Grey just sucked major donkey dong as Blofeld -- contrasted with Telly Savalas' previous performance as Bond's arch nemesis it was just no frigging contest. Incredibly crappy marks also go to Moonraker, which was just utterly stupid.

But he's not my favorite Bond villain, though possibly the best acted. My favorite villain will always be Christopher Lee's elegant yet perverted Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun. A ham actor to be sure, but well written -- and so frigging far from Fleming's character I'm surprised they had the balls to use the same name.

For music, I'm also conflicted -- Louis Armstrong's All The Time In The World still makes me cry, and call me a pansy if you will. Yet McCartney's Live and Let Die gets my blood pumping. My least favorite song has to be any of the ones done by brassy broads of the 60s: Goldfinger, The Man With The Golden Gun, You Only Live Twice, they all were heinous, followed closely by Tom Jones torturous rendition of Thunderball. High points also go to Sheena Easton and Duran Duran, as well as the quite topical You Know My Name -- don't know the artist but the song kicked and didn't have any cheese in it at all.

Favorite gadget of all time was the magnetic watch from Live and Let Die -- when he used it to unzip the Italian girl's dress, I knew it was gonna be a great show!

Best henchman goes to Tee Hee -- he had the best dialogue and I liked his claw hand gimmick and the way Bond defeated him. Best acted henchman goes to Red Grant -- he rocked!

All for now.

 

Ummm ... Diamonds are Forever came before On Her Majesty's Secret Service, so Savalas did the remake (I actually prefer Grey). I also like All the Time In the World -- but then I like everything by Satchmo.

 

So true.

Woah woah woah. Vicious dirty lies! The song is about assassination romance.

"Meeting you with a view to a kill," is the assassin meeting his target, who is sexualized simply by the fact Duran Duran is singing it, through the scope of his sniper rifle.

The next mention of view to a kill is the line, "The choice for you is the view to a kill," again, referring to his choice to kill her (although there is some uncertainty, as he uses the word choice, not something stronger).

The last time it is used it at the end of the song "when all we see is the view to a kill," which seems almost regretful that all of his life is focused on killing, even when it is someone who is his lover. This line exemplifies Bond's struggles - often times (and I can't remember in A View to a Kill if this happens), he must kill someone he is sexually attracted to. Duran Duran suggests maybe there is some guilt and regret in Bond's work.

I didn't cite all references to making love, but if you read the lyrics... uh, all the rest of them are about that.

 

Not to be a dick, but Wikipedia and my own memory state that Majesty's was released in 1969 and Diamonds was released in 1971. The thing is, people think that Lazenby came after Connery, but that's not entirely true -- after Majesty's Connery came back for Diamonds and then dropped out of Broccoli productions for good, only to return to the role in Never Say Never Again, a non-Broccoli production.

 

Too late.

I stand corrected ... actually on two aspects -- I think the Donald Pleasence, Blofeld was the best. I would rather have seen Pleasence play Blofeld in all three.

 

Agreed -- and I think I heard somewhere that there was a really funny story why Donald couldn't do it. I do remember that he was a last minute choice for You Only Live Twice, and they had some doubts as to his abilities to pull it off, and he knocked their socks off!

 

I liked Lazenby in On Her Majesty, I don't get why people thought he was bad. Better than Dalton, for sure.

 

I always figured that Lazenby never got the chance to really shine because he ws overshadowed by Rigg and Savalas, and he just didn't have the acting experience compared to Connery.

I also didn't mind Dalton that much. He wasn't as funny as Moore or as charismatic as Connery, but he did a decent job. The plotlines were also pretty damn good in his two movies, I don't care what the critics say. I've seen truly awful acting in the past, and Dalton's doesn't qualify.

 

I didn't think the villians were very strong in the Dalton movies -- I mean, come on, a military wannabe and a drug dealer? Not very creative. The best Bond movies are driven by their villians.

 

1. My favourite is Connery, who just is Bond. He just radiates pure charisma. Least favourite is Lazenby. I thought he was really poor, although the film itself was terrible as well which hardly helped.

2. My favourite film is Goldeneye (for action) or Casino Royale (for plot and characters). I hate On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Moonraker is very silly now but I enjoyed it as a kid.

3. Diana Rigg is probably my all time dream woman but that's down to The Avengers rather than Bond so it's probably not fair to count her. I'll choose Eva Green as the best overall. Akiko Wakabayashi from You Only Live Twice is the prettiest. I also like Gemma Arterton and Ivana Milicevic (baddie's girlfriend in Casino Royale, she's also in Red Alert 3) though they're minor girls. Eva Green best written. Halle Berry is my least favourite. A crude Yank has no place in a Bond film except as comic relief or a minor baddie. I also don't find her attractive with really short hair. Denise Richards is the worst actress. I'd also like to mention Gloria Hendry, the traitor CIA agent in Live and Let Die. I found her far too stupid and helpless.

4. Dr No is the best Bond villain. Christopher Lee, Sean Bean, Le Chiffre and Goldfinger are all great as well. The worst is the guy from Quantum of Solace, far too boring, or Die Another Day, nowhere near menacing enough.

5. Oddjob mightn't have made much sense but he was iconic and so is my best. The Goldeneye henchmen are great, Boris is hilarious and Onatopp .

6. Another vote for the watch. There are so many times I think it would be really handy to have a laser on mine. The invisible car was too silly even for Bond.

7. Nope.

8. Goldeneye might be my favourite song. I also like The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day and You Know my Name and, well, there are loads of great songs. Another Way to Die was an appaling song. Shame as I really like Jack White.

9. I couldn't choose a favourite car but Bond should never drive a German car. And as for the Ford...

 

I always felt Goldeneye was very underrated as a Bond film. I always enjoyed it. My favourite is the old one with the weird witch doctor guy at the end on the back of the train, and the crocodiles. Don't have a clue on the name, but it's a good one.