The James Bond / 007 Franchise

What about that guy?

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He wrote Peaky Blinders, a very shit show about Cillian Murphy looking serious in poorly lit rooms and walking down grimy alleyways in slow-mo camera shots.

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Idk, many people liked the show.

I took Scats comment as half tongue in cheek. It was an excellent show, but there was a whole lot of Cillian Murphy looking serious in dingy alleys and poorly lit rooms. Lots of slow motion explosions and back then a lot of the streets weren’t paved and plumbing was not like it is now so they are literally walking around in shit sometimes.

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It was not tongue-in-cheek at all - I think Peaky Blinders is absolute turboshite, all style (and a style I don’t like at that) and no substance. That said, I looked further into Knight’s resume and I really liked the film Locke, so hopefully his writing for Bond approaches that end of his quality spectrum rather than the Peaky Blinders end. :grin:

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Not been around for the last few days due to birthday stuff, but beforehand I beat (almost) every Bond game. I had only played the two N64 games before, so decided to pick up and play anything I was able to play on physical hardware. Here’s my ranking of the games after my marathon:

I also got a couple of bits of memorabilia as gifts, which made my Bond game collection seem a bit more padded out (got a couple of Alien bits too, so didn’t crop that out just in case you were interested):

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Nice! I wanna go on a bit of a Bond game marathon myself once I get some unfinished games out of the way. Only ever played Nightfire (and the PC version at that), so I want to catch up, at least on the games I can run.

How do the different versions of The World Is Not Enough compare? I heard the PS1 one is inferior to the N64 version?

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Get a couple of buddies to come over for Goldeneye! It’ll be hard to capture all of the fun from yesteryear but the multiplayer was super fun. No online stuff just split sceeen couch play, and yes, you totally looked at other people’s screens :rofl:

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I like all the versions of TWINE, especially as they’re all completely unique games. The N64 one is best as it has the better control scheme (and multiplayer), but I’d honestly say they’re about as good as watch other. Some stages are better on one, some are better on another.

GBC version is a little more annoying, but I still liked that one too!

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Appreciate the clarification! I´ll try to give both a whirl then. Mainly the PS one, since I don´t know how well I´ll fare with N64 emulation. Won´t probably bother with GBC though.

Aye, that´s what split screen was like no matter the game :grin: Hopefully I´ll be able to emulate Goldeneye, though I might just wait for the decomp to finish :thinking:

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The PS one can be hard to start off, as the first level isn’t the most interesting (although I like how you finish the stage) and the single stick moving and turning feels very antiquated. But it’s still worth it!

Hopefully you can get TWINE working, and GoldenEye shouldn’t be too hard since I think that’s playable on PC now?

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I haven´t dabbled in PS1 emulation yet, but I´m hoping they have the single stick stuff sorted out somehow. Will see.

From what I gathered, it´s playable with MKB via a particular build of the N64 emulator, so that would be my first try, but there seems to be a decomp in the works that should provide an even better experience, so I might just wait for that. I´m planning on playing the PS2 and PC releases first, so it will probably take me a while to get there.

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The Edinburgh Filmhouse, as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and presumably to help advertise the 4K restorations, are showing the 6 official Connery Bond films this week. I saw Dr. No on Friday and From Russia With Love on Saturday.

The Filmhouse has had a recent restoration. The seats are nice and the theatre itself is lovely. Shame there doesn’t appear to be any AC though. I assume it’s not possible because of how old the building is, but on both days, particularly on Friday, it was pretty stuffy. Wasn’t even that hot compared to other days, Friday was around 21-22C, and the theatre was only about 60% full. Wouldn’t want to be in there on a hotter day with a full crowd to be honest.

It has been a while since I’ve rewatched any Bonds. I’ve never seen these 2 particular Bonds in the cinema before. My opinion on either hasn’t really changed on seeing them again, but it was nice for the ambience, and for the new restoration. Jamaica in Dr. No looks like it could of been shot yesterday, the establishing shots as soon as the title ends are just insane in how good they look.

It was interesting to have an audience in the room. Dr. No didn’t get too much reaction. I heard a few audible shock noises when Quarrel is iced by the photographer lady. Laughter when the music sting is timed with Bond hitting the spider with his shoe. And after Honey Ryder tells the story of killing her rapist with a black widow spider, and Honey asking if she did anything wrong, Bond’s quip of “don’t make a habit out of it” got a few laughs.

From Russia With Love was definetly more lively. Think at least a good dozen moments got laughter in the audience, mostly for bits that were meant to be funny. I think Kerim Bay actually got the most audience approval, a lot of his lines were met with laughs. Also the scene with M, Moneypenny, and the various officers listening to the tape Bond has recorded. Rosa Klebb’s death also got some laughs with how long it took her to die after she was shot.

In terms of stuff I noticed, I couldn’t help but think of Honest Trailers video about the Connery Bonds, and how in them they would spend time establishing stuff like Bond checking into his hotel, and then looking around his hotel room. Was quite interesting in Dr. No for them to even include a very small scene of the hotel receptionist saying Bond’s rental car had arrived, to set up Bond’s car chase with the Three Blind Mice later. Couldn’t help but also find it a little funny that when Bond is picked up at the airport, Bond complains that the driver is going to quickly on an empty country road, and you can clearly see the speedometer says just less than 60mph. Still don’t know what the whole 13th/14th day of the month is about in From Russia, Bond wants to do the plan on the 14th, then does it on the 13th?

As for my opinions, not much has changed. I like Dr. No, but I don’t love it. Probably lower middle in my Bond ranking. Honestly, I think the film’s strongest stuff is on Jamaica, it’s nice to see Bond investigating in (what seems like) a relatively low stakes affair. The jungle stuff on Crab Key is fine. The dinner scene with the titular Dr. No is excellent, and a real hallmark for all other Bond and villian interactions to follow. But after that? The film just kindof ends, like they ran out of time or money. Hard to care much about the US space program honestly. Dr. No’s death by his hands is great, but I really wish him and Bond got another conversation, or proper confrontation.

From Russia With Love, easily in my top 10, possibly even top 5. So well paced, such great atmosphere, setting, etc. Honestly my only real issue with the film is that I think it goes on a little too long after Red Grant dies. I’d chop the helicopter fight scene, even if it is a great action scene. I actually felt bad for Tanya watching it this go around. I’ve always liked her as a Bond girl, and I really wish Bond did something to apologise for how he treated her after Kerim Bay dies. Honestly, kindof begs the question even why she chose to shoot Klebb in the end. But still, great movie.

May get around to rewatching more Bond movies soon. My Bond appetite has started to grow now that the IOI Bond game is on the horizon. I actually don’t own No Time to Die, and have still only seen it once since it came out. It just left me very cold and conflicted, perhaps time I need to give it a rewatch and reevaulate it.

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