A Day at the Chases
Nov. 4th, 2012 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steepholm"You and I are very much alike.. .Our methods have not differed as much as you pretend. I am a shadowy reflection of you. And it would take only a nudge to make you like me, to push you out of the light."
Thus says Raoul Silva to our hero in the latest Bond movie - oh no, wait, that was Rene Belloq talking to Indiana Jones. Oh well, same difference - they're both dressed like the man from Del Monte, with their brilliant minds and tricky foreign accents. (On reflection, Silva also has a smack of Ian McDermid's portrayal of Hugo DeVries in Morse. In fact the whole plot of Skyfall is somewhat reminiscent of that episode.)
Yes, having braved Legoland's Jolly Rocker yesterday, this afternoon I went to see Bond, in a determined quest for further visceral thrills. Actually I enjoyed it, even if I winced at the damage that was done to Istanbul and its citizens in the opening chase sequence. I was particularly sad to see that almost the first thing to happen was the overturning of a number of fruit stalls. I honestly don't know why people who live in Action Movie World even bother having fruit stalls. So little gets eaten that they must all have scurvy.
I even liked the part set in Scotland, which I've seen criticized in one or two places. Particularly good was the "I was not angry since I came to France until this instant" expression on Bond's face when Silva blows up his Aston Martin - which tells us a lot about his priorities. (Severine's fate, by contrast, seems not to have troubled his thoughts from the moment she slumped dead against a piece of Ozymandian statuary.) Silva's comic exasperation on being thwarted of his Romeo and Juliet moment with M was also very good.
There was a lot of emphasis on Bond's age and relative decrepitude - both explicitly and through heavy references, ranging from Tennyson's "Ulysses" to Turner's "Fighting Temeraire". I don't suppose Sam Mendes is too worried about how the franchise is going to find a reset button - other than by pensioning off Daniel Craig, but then the movie was all about not pensioning him off. They've set themselves an interesting problem, though.
Thus says Raoul Silva to our hero in the latest Bond movie - oh no, wait, that was Rene Belloq talking to Indiana Jones. Oh well, same difference - they're both dressed like the man from Del Monte, with their brilliant minds and tricky foreign accents. (On reflection, Silva also has a smack of Ian McDermid's portrayal of Hugo DeVries in Morse. In fact the whole plot of Skyfall is somewhat reminiscent of that episode.)
Yes, having braved Legoland's Jolly Rocker yesterday, this afternoon I went to see Bond, in a determined quest for further visceral thrills. Actually I enjoyed it, even if I winced at the damage that was done to Istanbul and its citizens in the opening chase sequence. I was particularly sad to see that almost the first thing to happen was the overturning of a number of fruit stalls. I honestly don't know why people who live in Action Movie World even bother having fruit stalls. So little gets eaten that they must all have scurvy.
I even liked the part set in Scotland, which I've seen criticized in one or two places. Particularly good was the "I was not angry since I came to France until this instant" expression on Bond's face when Silva blows up his Aston Martin - which tells us a lot about his priorities. (Severine's fate, by contrast, seems not to have troubled his thoughts from the moment she slumped dead against a piece of Ozymandian statuary.) Silva's comic exasperation on being thwarted of his Romeo and Juliet moment with M was also very good.
There was a lot of emphasis on Bond's age and relative decrepitude - both explicitly and through heavy references, ranging from Tennyson's "Ulysses" to Turner's "Fighting Temeraire". I don't suppose Sam Mendes is too worried about how the franchise is going to find a reset button - other than by pensioning off Daniel Craig, but then the movie was all about not pensioning him off. They've set themselves an interesting problem, though.
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Date: 2012-11-04 10:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-05 01:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-11-05 09:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-08 04:33 am (UTC)If you have not seen Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel series Legend of Korra, you should on principle; they are very good, complex YA television with brilliant worldbuilding and way more emotional realism than anyone expected from a show with flying bison. Korra suffers slightly from having had to pack its entire second season's plot into the first-season finale after threat of cancellation and then, of course, being renewed after it was too late to do anything about it, but I'm still going to watch the second season. I mean, I'm curious.
In any case, it is this precise trope that is being sent up every time the mysteriously ubiquitous cabbage vendor's cart is overturned with a despairing cry of "Not my cabbages!" After a while, even the characters begin to notice and wonder what the hell he was doing there.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-08 08:05 am (UTC)Actually, I think most of my exposure to it comes from being shown parody versions on Youtube by my daughter. This seems to be the route by which I get a lot of my popular culture these days. It keeps me up to date, but in a twisted way. (My daughter had Honey Boo Boo as her ring tone long before there was a television series. Is this something to be proud of?)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-10 10:26 am (UTC)But you did have me worried with the Belloq quote, I was sitting there thinking, "Wait a minute, isn't that-"
I know that so well, because it sums the world of commercial archaeology, methinks:-(