Time to retire Roger

A View To A Kill was the first Bond film I can remember seeing. I was born smack in the middle of the Moore era and didn't really know what Bank Holidays were about until I was about seven. A View To A Kill remains arguably my favourite Bond film and this is mainly down to Christopher Walken.

The story goes that David Bowie turned down the Zorin part. Walken was ace but you still have a little feeling of 'what if....' with Bowie's snub.  Walken has said he based his performance on Robert Shaw's Red Grant. Fair play to an American caring about a movie legacy. Walken is understated and menacing as the genetically engineered genius. You just wish he was in the movie a bit more.

OK, so A View To A Kill has it's bad points. The sodding Beach Boys and the iceberg submarine. Roger Moore spending a fair amount of time looking for his pension book on screen and the God awful fire engine sequence. Chuck in the fact that you can have a very easy game of 'Spot The Stunt Double' when Bond is engaged in mild action and you should have a Bond film that is worse than Moonraker (if possible)  But you don't, thanks to a reasonably sensible plot compared to other Moore jaunts, Patrick Macnee and some great set pieces on the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.  Oh, and Duran Duran with the best Bond theme since Goldfinger.

That's not Roger

So we go from retrieving a microchip in Siberia and a well utilised smoke flare to San Francisco via an odd horse doping set up in France and a detective named after a vegetable.  I, for one, was quite relieved Detective Aubergine was a very bit part.  Chuck in a solid job by David Yip as a helping CIA agent and a bizarre turn from Willoughby Gray as Hans Glaub and you can forgive them for casting Tanya Roberts and her throaty screaming in the lift shaft.  If only those petrol filled Bacardi bottles had hit her on the head.

Then there's Grace Jones.  Most people are still scared of Jones but Moore, well, ahem, Rogered her and did his standard sucky face kiss thing.  Hard to work out who was on more drugs, Pegasus the horse or Grace Jones. Mind you I'd run faster than Pegasus in that mine shaft if she was after me and I certainly wouldn't want Little Roger anywhere near me.

Why haven't they invented Viagra yet?

A View To A Kill is a fitting send off for Roger Moore, after the piss poor Octopussy the game had to be raised for fear of mortally wounding the franchise but it's almost a movie or two too late. the fight scene with Grandpa's ashes was almost exclusively carried out by Moore's stunt double. Roger probably had the day off for a prostate exam and a couple of big cigars. A bit worrying then that the tagline for this was 'Smooth Operator' describing a man seemingly crying out for a hip replacement.

The final scenes high up on the Golden Gate Bridge see the more youthful Walken fighting on a level of OAP. No punches but a bit of pushing and shoving with an axe. Zorin gives Bond a chance and pays for it by transforming into a shop mannequin as he plummets to the ocean. You don't technically see him die, in a Mr Big/Scaramanga kind of way, so maybe he was due to pop up again for revenge. We'll probably never know.

What we do know is that James Bond will return.

And this time he'll be Welsh.

Just leave it George. Please.

George Lucas. You have wronged me. I'm not the first and I won't be the last but your constant desire to tinker with Star Wars has now become laughable.

I could handle the added extras and tinkering in the late 90s. I can just about accept the prequel trilogy despite their gakness. I can accept the bloated marketing and sheer market exploitation of the cartoons and toys but 3D?  3D is too much. A needless gimmick. I dread to think of Jar Jar Binks emerging from a twenty foot screen let alone a CGI enhanced Jabba flicking drool towards me and the less said about Luke Skywalkwer's mournful sulking the better.

Apart from the now, consuming, hatred I am now feeling towards Lucas (I already loathe 20th Century Fox) I am left with one chilling thought. Lucas simply doesn't have any new ideas and so we will routinely be subjected to the rape of a classic until we're injecting liquid digital Star Wars into our tired veins.

I'll listen to a song until I'm sick of it. I'll tell the same joke until it's boring but I can come nowhere near the example Lucas is setting at flogging a dead horse. With a light sabre. Then going back and adding an extra torture scene. Then in 3D.  I find his lack of faith disturbing.

Now he's trying to defend himself. The shame

http://www.totalfilm.com/news/george-lucas-defends-star-wars-changes?utm_source=&utm_medium=&utm_campaign=

The optimism of a lazy weekend

January sucks. We all know that. There's such a long wait til payday and it's too dark and cold for anything too meaningful to happen.


So some smart arse created Blue Monday, which we all know is a crock of shit. You would have thought that someone would create a New Order day for the right reasons, and preferably after a national Joy Division holiday.

Without actually realising the 'most depressing day of the year' was upon me I decided to have a lazy weekend. A lazy weekend with several aims in mind; the desire to recharge my batteries, save a bit of cash as I've got a weekend away at the end of January (badly planned for just before payday) and to catch up some college work.

My noble aims were almost thwarted by procrastination and the knowledge that James Bond films turned 50 this year but progress was made. Homework was all but completed and the pub was avoided. Whoever said staying in would save moolah was a fool. Either that or they were blissfully ignorant of Internet shopping and gambling.  I shopped and bought some damn classic movies on DVD and threw some cash at some horses, modestly successfully. All this must have contributed to a strange feeling at the back of my mind.

This strange feeling was difficult to pin down but even more difficult to ignore. 2011 was, on the whole a bit shit but now it occurred to me that this was a new year. Two weeks too late but I'm at the 2012 party now.

Without any knowing justification I look out at the rest of this fledgling year positively. It's not about the Olympics, Lord of the Rings Lego or even The Dark Knight Rises but I have a feeling that something splendidly lovely is going to happen in 2012. It's like a sneeze that's not quite ready. Something is itching to happen.

If only I knew what it was.


The whole weekend and even on 'Blue Monday' all I've been able to hear is this

 

I hope this feeling lasts

This is the one

Right then. OK. This is it. Let's go. I Tweet, I Facebook, I look blankly at Google + and I've started blogs before.

This time it will be different. I will make a concerted effort to maintain this blog regularly. Or semi regularly. I just need to find something to blog about. I could pick one specific theme or I might just pick things at random, but first, I'm off for a cup of tea