One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
She’s wrong about almost everything, and wrong outside of normal parameters.
Problem is, Farage would probably try and send her back!
I think the Tories should persuade Johnson to join Reform. Let's face it, though he won one election against Mr Thicky, he managed to absolutely fuck up the Tory Party for a generation. When he has inadvertently destroyed Reform, his Tory handlers could then instruct him to join the Labour Party, and replace Rachel Reeves as a more honest option.
Reform won't have him because he was too liberal on immigration
Yeah, except on Brexit (and how much he actually believed in that is open to question) Boris is actually on the "one nation" side of the party.
He's probably the most liberal leader the Tories have had since Heath?
He was also pretty poor at being Prime Minister. Given that I'm not arguing that Truss was a good one (her policies had potential but her political instincts were woeful), that means by my reckoning the Tories haven't had a good PM since Thatcher, or a half decent PM since Major. That's pretty awful.
Cameron was a decent LOTO and coalition leader, IMO. But yes, the last really good leader Con had is Thatcher (at least the Thatcher from 75-87)
There's an argument to say that the regicide against her 1990 has ultimately destroyed the party, despite their recent 14 years in office (but not necessarily in power) ?
Not really, Thatcher sealed her fate when she backed the poll tax and refused to back down.
Had Major not replaced her Kinnock would likely have won the 1992 GE despite her many prior successes
Well yeah, but that's probably the way it should have gone down.
Thatcher goes down to a "respectable" defeat to Kinnock in 1992. Con rebuild quickly in Opposition, Kinnock kicked out in 1997.
No Blair. No 1997 Con meltdown. No Cameron to bring them back from the wilderness. No Cameron means no referendum and no Brexit. No Brexit, no Boris and no 2024 near-extinction event....
Lots of if's, but's and maybe's there but it's always fun to ponder how history might have been different if this path or that path had been followed...
Though assuming Heseltine had been elected Leader of the Opposition in 1992 and beaten Kinnock in 1997 his pro Euro views would still have divided the party and Portillo would soon have been angling to replace him backed by Thatcher and her allies.
Blair could well have replaced a defeated Kinnock as Labour leader in 1997 too, just delayed by a few years
The film, rather than Putin's template crime organisation.
While Skyfall was hideously overrated, there is actually a good movie hidden inside the bloated and overlong Spectre. If you cut out the whole "Five Eyes" subplot you could have a good, well paced movie.
The.lost me with the Blofeld and Bond are brothers stuff, I mean really. Apparently in the next film OddJob was going to be revealed as Moneypennys second cousin.
Oh, it was so poorly explained. And to have exposition coming in the middle of a painfully boring car chase around Rome.
Ugggghhhh.
That said, I thought the whole Madeline Swann rescue and trip out to the desert were pretty cool, and I think that movie nailed the whole "Bond on the outside" thing.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I know there's a lot of really terrible stuff happening in the World right now but Eon productions have just ceded artistic control of the Bond franchise to the same people that brought us Rings of Power...
Star Wars - fucked
Bond - fucked
Dr Who - apparently put in deep freeze for a decade....
I couldn't see a way forward for Bond without it being ruined. And I think Wilson/Broccoli had had enough.
It had become a prime battleground for identity politics.
The worst aspect of the last 2 Bonds was the bizarre sibling rivalry explanation for Blofeld and SPECTRE. It is a bit ironic that just at a time where malevolent billionaire oligarchs with ambitions really are a threat to the world that such a pathetic bit of plot was used.
If Bond is to revive then they need to get back to decent writing. Bond was a bit of a throwback even in his Fifties and Sixties heyday with his snobbery and chauvinism. That's just part of the character. Taking that out of him would be like making Arthur Daley a straight dealer.
Nail on head Foxy, nail on head. Even back then most people didn’t get to behave like Bond did. Every city he turned up in he stayed in the best hotels, dressed immaculately on expenses, ate well and seemingly picked up gorgeous women for one night stands at will. Most men dream of such a life, at least until they wake up, marry the right woman and get to experience the joy of a life shared.
I think it was Charlie Stross that pointed out that Bond was aspirational fantasy for the “company man” of the 1960s. He gets the upmarket, exciting & exotic versions of everything that organisation man got - you have a company car? Well bond gets one with missiles; you have an expense account for foreign travel to a godawful hotel in the middle of nowhere? Bond gets to stay in 5* Hotels in city centre locations & spend with the elites at the casino on the UK’s expense account. You have to do deals with the corporate agents of other companies? Bond gets to shoot them in the head.
And so on & on.
IIRC this was immediately contrasted with Jason Bourne as a stand in for the equivalent “company man” of the modern era - the deniable external contractor who’s pension is a pile of gold bars in a safety deposit box in an anonymous city in the middle of Europe somewhere is just an amplified version of the typical modern professional contractor. Alienated, forced to survive through a succession of short term contracts, dropped like a bad smell the moment anything goes wrong. Sound familiar?
(spends a few minutes searching the web with increasingly abstruse search terms from the above)
In other news, right-wing lunatic and Trump sycophant, Kash Patel has got through the Senate and is now head of the FBI. Jesus f*cking Christ! Nothing sums up America’s decline than that appointment.
The film, rather than Putin's template crime organisation.
While Skyfall was hideously overrated, there is actually a good movie hidden inside the bloated and overlong Spectre. If you cut out the whole "Five Eyes" subplot you could have a good, well paced movie.
If you cut out the Bond and Blofeld bits and made it a Mallory vs Moriarty faceoff, it would be definitely less shit.
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I would watch the one where Bond escapes from someone holding a gun to his head. You know, just for a few tips.
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I would watch the one where Bond escapes from someone holding a gun to his head. You know, just for a few tips.
Obviously you whistle into your tie and your cufflinks explode, blinding your gunman.
I know there's a lot of really terrible stuff happening in the World right now but Eon productions have just ceded artistic control of the Bond franchise to the same people that brought us Rings of Power...
Star Wars - fucked
Bond - fucked
Dr Who - apparently put in deep freeze for a decade....
I couldn't see a way forward for Bond without it being ruined. And I think Wilson/Broccoli had had enough.
It had become a prime battleground for identity politics.
The worst aspect of the last 2 Bonds was the bizarre sibling rivalry explanation for Blofeld and SPECTRE. It is a bit ironic that just at a time where malevolent billionaire oligarchs with ambitions really are a threat to the world that such a pathetic bit of plot was used.
If Bond is to revive then they need to get back to decent writing. Bond was a bit of a throwback even in his Fifties and Sixties heyday with his snobbery and chauvinism. That's just part of the character. Taking that out of him would be like making Arthur Daley a straight dealer.
Nail on head Foxy, nail on head. Even back then most people didn’t get to behave like Bond did. Every city he turned up in he stayed in the best hotels, dressed immaculately on expenses, ate well and seemingly picked up gorgeous women for one night stands at will. Most men dream of such a life, at least until they wake up, marry the right woman and get to experience the joy of a life shared.
I think it was Charlie Stross that pointed out that Bond was aspirational fantasy for the “company man” of the 1960s. He gets the upmarket, exciting & exotic versions of everything that organisation man got - you have a company car? Well bond gets one with missiles; you have an expense account for foreign travel to a godawful hotel in the middle of nowhere? Bond gets to stay in 5* Hotels in city centre locations & spend with the elites at the casino on the UK’s expense account. You have to do deals with the corporate agents of other companies? Bond gets to shoot them in the head.
And so on & on.
I think that we also have to remember that the Bond books, and to an extent the films, were written in a time when foreign travel was an exotic experience, and consumer luxuries were finally making an appearance. The films were heavily about aspirational consumerism.
Part of the reason that the franchise is so stale is that these things are now banal. My secretary holidays in Mexico or Thailand, and designer stuff is now just for footballers wives.
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
I presume you believe the same about illegal occupiers?
In other news, right-wing lunatic and Trump sycophant, Kash Patel has got through the Senate and is now head of the FBI. Jesus f*cking Christ! Nothing sums up America’s decline than that appointment.
Could be quite interesting, releasing Hannibal Lecter and sacking that woke DEI lesbian female hire Clarice Starling. A few ideas who I hope Dr Lecter goes on to eat but I will keep them for the next book.
In other news, right-wing lunatic and Trump sycophant, Kash Patel has got through the Senate and is now head of the FBI. Jesus f*cking Christ! Nothing sums up America’s decline than that appointment.
Could be quite interesting, releasing Hannibal Lecter and sacking that woke DEI lesbian female hire Clarice Starling. A few ideas who I hope Dr Lecter goes on to eat but I will keep them for the next book.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Somebody puts a gun to your head and says "Which Bond Film are you going to watch in the next ten mins". Not "Which one is the best", but "Which one would you rewatch". I'd be honestly stuck.
I would watch the one where Bond escapes from someone holding a gun to his head. You know, just for a few tips.
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
I presume you believe the same about illegal occupiers?
What like Putin? Illegally occupying eastern Ukraine including Crimea, parts of Georgia, and four Japanese islands?
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Austerity Reeves consulting "Abrdn, BlackRock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Schroders" about boosting growth.
First post meet policy announcement "Considering cutting ISA allowance to £4kpa" so the little people are encouraged to spend rather than save.
Cash ISAs are a bit of a bone of contention. Banks and building societies claim the funds deposited in them provide crucial liquidity for mortgage lending, but some economists argue that they imcentivise unproductive saving, and hope that people will invest more money in stocks and shares iSAs instead.
Of course, if either the Government or these people were actually committed to growth then they'd be looking at shifting the tax base away from earnings and towards assets, so that rich people get a bit of a soaking and ordinary workers get more money to save or spend. Which ain't happening, of course.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Eh, it's fine.
I rewatched it a month or so ago and enjoyed it, but ultimately it's not as well paced as it could be, and I think Brosnan is too smooth and too superman.
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
I like GoldenEye but mainly for the sense of wonder I felt playing the N64 game having seen the film.
She’s wrong about almost everything, and wrong outside of normal parameters.
Problem is, Farage would probably try and send her back!
I think the Tories should persuade Johnson to join Reform. Let's face it, though he won one election against Mr Thicky, he managed to absolutely fuck up the Tory Party for a generation. When he has inadvertently destroyed Reform, his Tory handlers could then instruct him to join the Labour Party, and replace Rachel Reeves as a more honest option.
Reform won't have him because he was too liberal on immigration
Yeah, except on Brexit (and how much he actually believed in that is open to question) Boris is actually on the "one nation" side of the party.
He's probably the most liberal leader the Tories have had since Heath?
He was also pretty poor at being Prime Minister. Given that I'm not arguing that Truss was a good one (her policies had potential but her political instincts were woeful), that means by my reckoning the Tories haven't had a good PM since Thatcher, or a half decent PM since Major. That's pretty awful.
Cameron was a decent LOTO and coalition leader, IMO. But yes, the last really good leader Con had is Thatcher (at least the Thatcher from 75-87)
There's an argument to say that the regicide against her 1990 has ultimately destroyed the party, despite their recent 14 years in office (but not necessarily in power) ?
Not really, Thatcher sealed her fate when she backed the poll tax and refused to back down.
Had Major not replaced her Kinnock would likely have won the 1992 GE despite her many prior successes
Well yeah, but that's probably the way it should have gone down.
Thatcher goes down to a "respectable" defeat to Kinnock in 1992. Con rebuild quickly in Opposition, Kinnock kicked out in 1997.
No Blair. No 1997 Con meltdown. No Cameron to bring them back from the wilderness. No Cameron means no referendum and no Brexit. No Brexit, no Boris and no 2024 near-extinction event....
Lots of if's, but's and maybe's there but it's always fun to ponder how history might have been different if this path or that path had been followed...
Though assuming Heseltine had been elected Leader of the Opposition in 1992 and beaten Kinnock in 1997 his pro Euro views would still have divided the party and Portillo would soon have been angling to replace him backed by Thatcher and her allies.
Blair could well have replaced a defeated Kinnock as Labour leader in 1997 too, just delayed by a few years
The bigger counterfactual is not people. Suppose from the start of entering Europe in 1972 we had held referenda on its stages of progress so as to have it shaped and limited according to the voter and not just the government of the day.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
Not as good as A View to a Kill with Grace Jones.
I have a soft spot for Diamonds are forever it was the first Bond movie I saw at the Cinema
Much better than the actual first film I saw at the cinema which was Carry on up the Khyber which i believe i perhaps enjoyed at the time but in hindsight it was shite
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
Time for Europe to take the Russian money held in banks and use that to help Ukraine .
Enough messing around .
5 Pbers and counting support illegal seizure of sovereign funds.
Totally lost it
I agree that the funds should not be seized without appropriate laws being passed.
But surely even you would agree that seizing the assets of countries which invade other countries might actually do what you claim is most important to you: i.e. prevent war.
I presume you believe the same about illegal occupiers?
I notice you haven't bothered answering my question.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
But he has crippled the Russian economy by paying their now enormous signing-on bonuses (even if their families might not get the death settlement because they never acknowledge their deaths).
I guess the Norks were much cheaper. But useless. Then dead.
I know there's a lot of really terrible stuff happening in the World right now but Eon productions have just ceded artistic control of the Bond franchise to the same people that brought us Rings of Power...
Star Wars - fucked
Bond - fucked
Dr Who - apparently put in deep freeze for a decade....
I couldn't see a way forward for Bond without it being ruined. And I think Wilson/Broccoli had had enough.
It had become a prime battleground for identity politics.
The worst aspect of the last 2 Bonds was the bizarre sibling rivalry explanation for Blofeld and SPECTRE. It is a bit ironic that just at a time where malevolent billionaire oligarchs with ambitions really are a threat to the world that such a pathetic bit of plot was used.
If Bond is to revive then they need to get back to decent writing. Bond was a bit of a throwback even in his Fifties and Sixties heyday with his snobbery and chauvinism. That's just part of the character. Taking that out of him would be like making Arthur Daley a straight dealer.
Nail on head Foxy, nail on head. Even back then most people didn’t get to behave like Bond did. Every city he turned up in he stayed in the best hotels, dressed immaculately on expenses, ate well and seemingly picked up gorgeous women for one night stands at will. Most men dream of such a life, at least until they wake up, marry the right woman and get to experience the joy of a life shared.
I think it was Charlie Stross that pointed out that Bond was aspirational fantasy for the “company man” of the 1960s. He gets the upmarket, exciting & exotic versions of everything that organisation man got - you have a company car? Well bond gets one with missiles; you have an expense account for foreign travel to a godawful hotel in the middle of nowhere? Bond gets to stay in 5* Hotels in city centre locations & spend with the elites at the casino on the UK’s expense account. You have to do deals with the corporate agents of other companies? Bond gets to shoot them in the head.
And so on & on.
I think that we also have to remember that the Bond books, and to an extent the films, were written in a time when foreign travel was an exotic experience, and consumer luxuries were finally making an appearance. The films were heavily about aspirational consumerism.
Part of the reason that the franchise is so stale is that these things are now banal. My secretary holidays in Mexico or Thailand, and designer stuff is now just for footballers wives.
Package holidays only even became a thing, in 1948, with Vladimir Raitz.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
Casino Royale was a great reboot - remember watching Layer Cake at the cinema and my friends and I all immediately thought Craig would be a good Bond.
QoS has grown on me over time and I actually think it’s more like a traditional Moore bond film.
Skyfall didn’t work for me, don’t want bond to have all the feels etc.
Spectre never got past around 20 minutes.
Never bothered watching no time to die.
Obviously getting old now as finding the Roger Moore ones are just right if I decide I need to watch a bond film.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
Austerity Reeves consulting "Abrdn, BlackRock, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Schroders" about boosting growth.
First post meet policy announcement "Considering cutting ISA allowance to £4kpa" so the little people are encouraged to spend rather than save.
Cash ISAs are a bit of a bone of contention. Banks and building societies claim the funds deposited in them provide crucial liquidity for mortgage lending, but some economists argue that they imcentivise unproductive saving, and hope that people will invest more money in stocks and shares iSAs instead.
Of course, if either the Government or these people were actually committed to growth then they'd be looking at shifting the tax base away from earnings and towards assets, so that rich people get a bit of a soaking and ordinary workers get more money to save or spend. Which ain't happening, of course.
I think you could make an argument that CGT is anti-aspirational and entrenches inequality. Abolish it and replace with a flat capital tax - "use it or lose it".
I am sure there are catastrophic unintended consequences to that and I look forward to PB educating me.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
Harsh critic
I thought Skyfall was at least an 8 but would agree with your top and bottom rankings
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Wasn't the one with the Taliban as the goodies a Brosnan Bond.
For full on Bond excess I do like You Only Live Twice, though Sean Connery in yellow face is more than a little dated.
OHMSS doesn't quite work. Lazenby's quips fall flat and his snobbery doesn't ring true, but it does benefit from a great villains lair and cinematography, and much less reliance on gadgets.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
It's been a while since I've seen any of these.
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Wasn't the one with the Taliban as the goodies a Brosnan Bond.
For full on Bond excess I do like You Only Live Twice, though Sean Connery in yellow face is more than a little dated.
OHMSS doesn't quite work. Lazenby's quips fall flat and his snobbery doesn't ring true, but it does benefit from a great villains lair and cinematography, and much less reliance on gadgets.
The "Taliban as goodies" was the first Timothy Dalton movie, The Living Daylights.
Fun fact about You Only Twice, Mr Chow (of the incredibly expensive Chinese restaurant fame) is in it.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
Casino Royale is the greatest ever bond movie, and it isn't even close.
I found it fine but a bit forgettable.
I don't even think it was the best Bond debut - the crown for that goes to Goldeneye imo.
Goldeneye is OK; best of the Brosnan Bond movies, but I'm not sure I would put in the top 5 Bonds.
Take that back!
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Eh, it's fine.
I rewatched it a month or so ago and enjoyed it, but ultimately it's not as well paced as it could be, and I think Brosnan is too smooth and too superman.
But he's against someone who (spoiler alert) is as good as he is.
Yes, Brosnan's Bond in the film is a bit Brosnanny. He isn't my favourite Bond actor. But he is still very good, and he doesn't pull down what is a great ensemble piece. The blippy soundtrack is the only less than stellar thing imo. But the theme tune is very good.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
But he has crippled the Russian economy by paying their now enormous signing-on bonuses (even if their families might not get the death settlement because they never acknowledge their deaths).
I guess the Norks were much cheaper. But useless. Then dead.
Unfortunately the effort to immiserate and possibly bankrupt Russia will be entirely undone by Trump. I'd be amazed if he didn't want their oil back on the market.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
It's been a while since I've seen any of these.
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Jonathan Green in QoS was just so unthreatening. He certainly didn't look like the kind of guy Bond would take more than 5 seconds to dispatch. And to then have him in a climatic fight scene was just absurd and spoilt the whole tone of the movie, which was very Bourne.
But yes, the premise was good. It was just incomprehensible.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
This needs a detailed, long reply (sorry). I should have said "charged" - Vance did not say "arrested" himself.
For the case you raise, the charges were dropped.
This was Vance's account, which is misleading in several respects. It's sexed-up:
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
1 - Vance did not mention that Smith-Connor was arrested after refusing to leave the area for 1 hour 40 minutes; that's NOT for "3 minutes silent prayer". It's a PSPO not a "buffer zone law", so to arrest him they actually have to summon a Warranted Police Officer. The Council Officer who asked him to leave cannot make arrests.
2 - As 1 it's not the "new buffer zones law" (actually safe access zones), which was not in force until October 2024. The incident described was in 2022.
3 - He was convicted of "breaching a safe zone after refusing requests to move on", not "silent prayer". *
4 - He was not sentenced to pay thousands of pounds. Those were court costs. He had been given extensive opportunity to move on, and chosen not to do so - which would have stopped it at that point. He has support from a funding organisation.
If Vance wants to make a case, he should at least not use a garbled account.
Consider Matthew 6:5, where the Lord's Prayer is given: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others ... when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. "
But it isn't about prayer - it's about pressure and intimidation, and calling it "prayer" to get some attention and sell a narrative, getting round restrictions which have been put in place to prevent previous actions designed to intimidate women accessing legal medical services.
In the UK we start from the impact on the victim.
That is why 75% of local residents supported bring in the protection zone, after previous activities.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
She’s wrong about almost everything, and wrong outside of normal parameters.
Problem is, Farage would probably try and send her back!
I think the Tories should persuade Johnson to join Reform. Let's face it, though he won one election against Mr Thicky, he managed to absolutely fuck up the Tory Party for a generation. When he has inadvertently destroyed Reform, his Tory handlers could then instruct him to join the Labour Party, and replace Rachel Reeves as a more honest option.
Reform won't have him because he was too liberal on immigration
Yeah, except on Brexit (and how much he actually believed in that is open to question) Boris is actually on the "one nation" side of the party.
He's probably the most liberal leader the Tories have had since Heath?
He was also pretty poor at being Prime Minister. Given that I'm not arguing that Truss was a good one (her policies had potential but her political instincts were woeful), that means by my reckoning the Tories haven't had a good PM since Thatcher, or a half decent PM since Major. That's pretty awful.
Cameron was a decent LOTO and coalition leader, IMO. But yes, the last really good leader Con had is Thatcher (at least the Thatcher from 75-87)
There's an argument to say that the regicide against her 1990 has ultimately destroyed the party, despite their recent 14 years in office (but not necessarily in power) ?
Not really, Thatcher sealed her fate when she backed the poll tax and refused to back down.
Had Major not replaced her Kinnock would likely have won the 1992 GE despite her many prior successes
Well yeah, but that's probably the way it should have gone down.
Thatcher goes down to a "respectable" defeat to Kinnock in 1992. Con rebuild quickly in Opposition, Kinnock kicked out in 1997.
No Blair. No 1997 Con meltdown. No Cameron to bring them back from the wilderness. No Cameron means no referendum and no Brexit. No Brexit, no Boris and no 2024 near-extinction event....
Lots of if's, but's and maybe's there but it's always fun to ponder how history might have been different if this path or that path had been followed...
Though assuming Heseltine had been elected Leader of the Opposition in 1992 and beaten Kinnock in 1997 his pro Euro views would still have divided the party and Portillo would soon have been angling to replace him backed by Thatcher and her allies.
Blair could well have replaced a defeated Kinnock as Labour leader in 1997 too, just delayed by a few years
The bigger counterfactual is not people. Suppose from the start of entering Europe in 1972 we had held referenda on its stages of progress so as to have it shaped and limited according to the voter and not just the government of the day.
Nah - we elect MPs to make decisions on our behalf - for better or worse. Yes, I do understand democracy is sub-optimal when you factor in the average IQ of 100.
But, do you really think the average Joe in some shithole like Hartlepool or Scunthorpe can understand the nuances and intricacies of the Brexit debate. It ultimately boiled down to an illogical dislike of foreigners and darkies and/or let’s give the establishment a kicking.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orlov.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
It's been a while since I've seen any of these.
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Jonathan Green in QoS was just so unthreatening. He certainly didn't look like the kind of guy Bond would take more than 5 seconds to dispatch. And to then have him in a climatic fight scene was just absurd and spoilt the whole tone of the movie, which was very Bourne.
But yes, the premise was good. It was just incomprehensible.
Ok, yes that's true. No real menace. It is by no means a classic Bond film for many reasons. I rate it as a half-decent plot driven spy film though.
For me, DC never really got his golden Bond films. They went from studiously avoiding being classic Bond (Casino Royale, QOS), to his overblown nonsense phase (Spectre, NTTD). That leaves Skyfall in the middle, and though I've not seen it for a while, I think I remember it being my favourite Craig.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
I'm in agreement here with Bart.
It needs a defeat, Russia expelling back to the borders of Ukraine, then I think ... regrettably ... we are possibly going to need a new version of the iron curtain.
We may be going back into either 1 - a series of hot wars or 2 - a cold war.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
It's been a while since I've seen any of these.
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Jonathan Green in QoS was just so unthreatening. He certainly didn't look like the kind of guy Bond would take more than 5 seconds to dispatch. And to then have him in a climatic fight scene was just absurd and spoilt the whole tone of the movie, which was very Bourne.
But yes, the premise was good. It was just incomprehensible.
Ok, yes that's true. No real menace. It is by no means a classic Bond film for many reasons. I rate it as a half-decent plot driven spy film though.
For me, DC never really got his golden Bond films. They went from studiously avoiding being classic Bond (Casino Royale, QOS), to his overblown nonsense phase (Spectre, NTTD). That leaves Skyfall in the middle, and though I've not seen it for a while, I think I remember it being my favourite Craig.
There's lots to like about Skyfall, and the opening sequence is one of the best in the whole Bond oevre. There were great scenes, like when he turns up at M's house. (Although it was never quite explained why she'd left the modern apartment where she lives in CR for a Chelsea townhouse.)
The balletic fight in the skyscraper felt forced, and the whole arc around "is he fit or not" was totally wasted because - errr - the moment he left MI5's training centre he was superman again. And it ended with Home Alone.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orloff.
An absolutely brilliant film, candidate for my favourite Bond. Poor OhNotNow, he missed Moore doing an impression of Barbara Woodhouse to quell a Bengal tiger.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
Admittedly the image of the Russians getting booted out on their filthy rapist arses, followed swiftly by Ukraine starting to sell all those coveted minerals to everyone but Putin and Trump, is quite delicious. But also firmly in the too good to be true column. Ukraine has already lost so many casualties, and the effort to try to force the Russians out of their fortified positions along a huge front would be immense. I fear that some form of partition may be inevitable.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
One of the joys of having kids was rediscovering the Roger Moore Bond films. Just fun. Far easier to share with the boys.
From Russia with Love is my favourite, but I do have a soft spot for Live and Let Die, perhaps because it was the first one that I saw as a new release in the cinema. Roger Moore in a film with more than a whiff of Blaxsploitation is quite some casting.
From Russia with Love is excellent, definitely top 5.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
I like it though have to avoid the snake bit which gives me nightmares . Sean Connery was the best bond IMO . I understand why they went for Craig, a bit more gritty . I thought No Time To Die was good but just a bit too sad for a Bond film .
Casino Royale - 9/10, nearly perfect Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
It's been a while since I've seen any of these.
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Jonathan Green in QoS was just so unthreatening. He certainly didn't look like the kind of guy Bond would take more than 5 seconds to dispatch. And to then have him in a climatic fight scene was just absurd and spoilt the whole tone of the movie, which was very Bourne.
But yes, the premise was good. It was just incomprehensible.
Ok, yes that's true. No real menace. It is by no means a classic Bond film for many reasons. I rate it as a half-decent plot driven spy film though.
For me, DC never really got his golden Bond films. They went from studiously avoiding being classic Bond (Casino Royale, QOS), to his overblown nonsense phase (Spectre, NTTD). That leaves Skyfall in the middle, and though I've not seen it for a while, I think I remember it being my favourite Craig.
There's lots to like about Skyfall, and the opening sequence is one of the best in the whole Bond oevre. There were great scenes, like when he turns up at M's house. (Although it was never quite explained why she'd left the modern apartment where she lives in CR for a Chelsea townhouse.)
The balletic fight in the skyscraper felt forced, and the whole arc around "is he fit or not" was totally wasted because - errr - the moment he left MI5's training centre he was superman again. And it ended with Home Alone.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orloff.
An absolutely brilliant film, candidate for my favourite Bond. Poor OhNotNow, he missed Moore doing an impression of Barbara Woodhouse to quell a Bengal tiger.
My wife's favorite, so I've watched it many times. It's definitely in the underrated column, and I like it the most of the Roger Moore movies. But not quite an all time classic: 7/10.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orlov.
The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Worth watching for Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orloff.
An absolutely brilliant film, candidate for my favourite Bond. Poor OhNotNow, he missed Moore doing an impression of Barbara Woodhouse to quell a Bengal tiger.
My wife's favorite, so I've watched it many times. It's definitely in the underrated column, and I like it the most of the Roger Moore movies. But not quite an all time classic: 7/10.
Ooft.
The pre-title sequence alone is surely worth more than that.
Though I could do without the lacklustre theme tune that doesn't even contain the word Octopussy. After the success of Nobody Does It Better, everything was a sappy ballad, and 'All Time High' has to be the all time low.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
This needs a detailed, long reply (sorry). I should have said "charged" - Vance did not say "arrested" himself.
For the case you raise, the charges were dropped.
This was Vance's account, which is misleading in several respects. It's sexed-up:
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
1 - Vance did not mention that Smith-Connor was arrested after refusing to leave the area for 1 hour 40 minutes; that's NOT for "3 minutes silent prayer". It's a PSPO not a "buffer zone law", so to arrest him they actually have to summon a Warranted Police Officer. The Council Officer who asked him to leave cannot make arrests.
2 - As 1 it's not the "new buffer zones law" (actually safe access zones), which was not in force until October 2024. The incident described was in 2022.
3 - He was convicted of "breaching a safe zone after refusing requests to move on", not "silent prayer". *
4 - He was not sentenced to pay thousands of pounds. Those were court costs. He had been given extensive opportunity to move on, and chosen not to do so - which would have stopped it at that point. He has support from a funding organisation.
If Vance wants to make a case, he should at least not use a garbled account.
Consider Matthew 6:5, where the Lord's Prayer is given: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others ... when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. "
But it isn't about prayer - it's about pressure and intimidation, and calling it "prayer" to get some attention and sell a narrative, getting round restrictions which have been put in place to prevent previous actions designed to intimidate women accessing legal medical services.
In the UK we start from the impact on the victim.
That is why 75% of local residents supported bring in the protection zone, after previous activities.
Vance's portrayal of the thing is nonsense of course, and he presents as a dreadful man; but getting the law right is a difficult balance. By their nature the sorts of people who want to make a point about an issue they feel deeply about are often very annoying people. Just the sort of people who use every device to do what they want to the annoyance of others. Just Stop Oil types are just such a group, as are the pro life anti abortion fundamentalists.
But we should be very slow to remove the rights we all have - basically to be in the street in a rather irritating and unwanted way holding up their morality for inspection - because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orlov.
The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Worth watching for Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orloff.
An absolutely brilliant film, candidate for my favourite Bond. Poor OhNotNow, he missed Moore doing an impression of Barbara Woodhouse to quell a Bengal tiger.
I also missed out on the glass table incident. I count myself blessed.
The best Bond film is the first one you see as a child.
YOLT in my case.
It was pointed out to me recently how extraordinarily flat Connery's performance in that is. He was apparently a bit disillusioned at the time, and though I never noticed before, you can't un-see it. He barely gets out of his bored stupor for the whole film.
She’s wrong about almost everything, and wrong outside of normal parameters.
Problem is, Farage would probably try and send her back!
I think the Tories should persuade Johnson to join Reform. Let's face it, though he won one election against Mr Thicky, he managed to absolutely fuck up the Tory Party for a generation. When he has inadvertently destroyed Reform, his Tory handlers could then instruct him to join the Labour Party, and replace Rachel Reeves as a more honest option.
Reform won't have him because he was too liberal on immigration
Yeah, except on Brexit (and how much he actually believed in that is open to question) Boris is actually on the "one nation" side of the party.
He's probably the most liberal leader the Tories have had since Heath?
He was also pretty poor at being Prime Minister. Given that I'm not arguing that Truss was a good one (her policies had potential but her political instincts were woeful), that means by my reckoning the Tories haven't had a good PM since Thatcher, or a half decent PM since Major. That's pretty awful.
Cameron was a decent LOTO and coalition leader, IMO. But yes, the last really good leader Con had is Thatcher (at least the Thatcher from 75-87)
There's an argument to say that the regicide against her 1990 has ultimately destroyed the party, despite their recent 14 years in office (but not necessarily in power) ?
I suspect that changes to the composition of the Conservative Party might be key, though I've not given this much thought.
Mrs Thatcher brought forward more business people and entrepreneurs to replace the old elites, but not women, oddly enough. The wartime generation retired. David Cameron posed as an egalitarian but seized on the expenses scandal to rid himself of experienced backbenchers and surrounded himself with young MPs who had learned which knife and fork to use at Eton and Oxford – the chumocracy. Later Boris would throw out anyone who'd been on a motoring holiday to France.
New Labour did something similar on the left. No more the ordinary working man who'd left school at 15 and worked his way up through the union movement. If the blue team had the major public schools; the red team had minor public schools. John Prescott was an anachronism, as now is Angela Rayner.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orlov.
Does he do any other performance? A while back I rewatched this play he did with Joan Collins :
Two couples, representing the upper and lower ends of the British social classes, are having affaires. Lower-class Steve with Belgravia socialite Helen; and his nouveau riche wife Sybil with working-class Les, a private detective she has hired to kill her husband.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
I’d rate From Russia with Love highest, but I agree with OHMSS being fine too, if only for the tribute to The Golden Road to Samarkand, and helicopter attack scene.
No love for Daniel Craig's Casino Royale?
Funnily enough, I’ve never seen it.
The last Bond film I tried to watch was Roger Moore-era. I have a faint memory of the opening chase sequence through streets in India which ended with him grabbing/catching a suitcase full of cash. Which he handed to the local police chief with the quip "Haha - don't spend it all on curry!".
At which point I turned it off.
Octopussy.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orloff.
An absolutely brilliant film, candidate for my favourite Bond. Poor OhNotNow, he missed Moore doing an impression of Barbara Woodhouse to quell a Bengal tiger.
I also missed out on the glass table incident. I count myself blessed.
The Russian army and its donkeys seem to be having a rough time lately at the front.
Funny if Trump backed the wrong donkey.
Sadly Putin has access to a virtually inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder. Were that not the case, the invasion might very well have failed by now.
The supply of cannon fodder that Russia has is severely overestimated. Including potentially by Moscow.
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
Admittedly the image of the Russians getting booted out on their filthy rapist arses, followed swiftly by Ukraine starting to sell all those coveted minerals to everyone but Putin and Trump, is quite delicious. But also firmly in the too good to be true column. Ukraine has already lost so many casualties, and the effort to try to force the Russians out of their fortified positions along a huge front would be immense. I fear that some form of partition may be inevitable.
A Russian collapse followed by the soldiers deciding to bugger off home is more likely than you think, or that they will be forced out of their positions.
Armed men with guns tend to turn those guns on their superiors when the superiors run out of cash to pay them.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
Elon likes calling people "Retard", especially "f u retard".
There was another prominent one - I can't remember who it was.
Trump and Vance both went for personal insults when answering Bishop Budde and Rory Stewart, respectively (but not respectfully).
It seems characteristic, a little like the way the "every accusation is a confession" quip when they try and go for officials or political opponents has turned out to be surprisingly reliable.
"You do not have shared values if you're jailing people for saying we should close down our border. You don't have shared values if you cancel elections because you don't like the result. And that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you're so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up."
A perfect illustration.
This is exactly the same problem as Vance had in Munich declaring that we were arresting people for silent prayer or banning prayer in private homes (the ones I fact-checked about the UK), and the other things.
We aren't and he's lying to himself - just like Trump when he claims the USA put in 6x as much support into Ukraine as Europe.
They are a pair of fantaloons, treating stuff they have made up or falsehoods they have swallowed as fact and acting on that basis.
I think Vance's attitude to Europe is more easily explained. It is that "cultural cringe" that Vance wrote about in his book. When he went to Yale he was a fish out of water, not knowing what to wear, how to eat in formal dining, etc. He has written of spitting out sparkling water when he first tasted it, and of thinking Cracker Barrell was an upmarket place to eat. He is a human chameleon in such places, but like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman knows that he is always tainted by his origins.
America has less social mobility than many European countries, but is rather more open about money equalling class, in a way that old money in Europe finds difficult. He hates the European elite as they seem so arrogant, so condescending and supercilious. In part this is because old money in the USA apes European styles.
Starmer is a more subtle version of the same, coming from a modest background, and never looking completely comfortable in a suit despite it being his uniform. That gives him a connection, though someone like Rayner would probably get on even better.
My mother once defined good manners as being able to make other people comfortable, and that is a very difficult line to follow with someone like Vance who has the unfortunate combination of a thin skin and being socially clumsy, unable to read a room. Starmer has his work cut out.
Perhaps the Blofeld character in SPECTRE was a similar figure, craving an acceptance that was never offered.
America doesn't really have truly old money as it doesn't have any royal families and aristocrats like Europe, Arab nations, India and Japan and Thailand do. American wealthy families are really just different degrees of new money, with the old Mayflower and Founding Father families and the 19th century oil and railroad and banking and finance and tea barons at the top of the tree of their 'old money'
Not really true. Read ‘white trash’ by that NY history professor. The idea that all the Americans arrived and were given an acre each, and the ablest and hardest working emerged at the top is a myth. The US’s leading families were such when they arrived, and quickly established themselves in commanding positions controlling both power and wealth. Whereas the multitudes arrived under indenture or penniless and a poor white underclass was a feature of US society from the very beginning. A key reason why slavery was defended was because it gave the poor white workers a higher spot on the social ladder, and such attitudes endure through to modern US politics.
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
A former colleague was Boston old money. His fiance was whip smart, gorgeous, held a very senior position in one of the world's top cosmetic empires - and was the daughter of a Greek shipping magnate.
He was taken out by a group of his WASP buddies, who proceeded to tell him he had to call off the marriage - she wasn't good enough for him.
Comments
Blair could well have replaced a defeated Kinnock as Labour leader in 1997 too, just delayed by a few years
Ugggghhhh.
That said, I thought the whole Madeline Swann rescue and trip out to the desert were pretty cool, and I think that movie nailed the whole "Bond on the outside" thing.
I find Live and Let Die almost unwatchable today.
(spends a few minutes searching the web with increasingly abstruse search terms from the above)
Ah ha! It wasn’t Stross, it was this post on Metafilter (from back when Metafilter was good, if insufferable) https://www.metafilter.com/93504/You-carry-a-00-number-it-means-you-have-License-to-kill-not-GET-killed#3171708
First post meet policy announcement "Considering cutting ISA allowance to £4kpa" so the little people are encouraged to spend rather than save.
Part of the reason that the franchise is so stale is that these things are now banal. My secretary holidays in Mexico or Thailand, and designer stuff is now just for footballers wives.
Then, I think, Goldfinger in fourth.
Can't decide about fifth.
https://youtu.be/a8yZKMow0ME?feature=shared
For me, it's the perfectly cooked Bond. Not overdone, not underdone. Great villain/henchmen. Stunning Bind girls with great acting chops. Great humour but never going full spoof (pigeon double-take). Great locations. Great acting. A lair that's impressive but somehow believable. Great M. Great Moneypenny. Desmond Lewellyn's Q still doing great work. And Brosnan does a great job. Did I say great?
Of course, if either the Government or these people were actually committed to growth then they'd be looking at shifting the tax base away from earnings and towards assets, so that rich people get a bit of a soaking and ordinary workers get more money to save or spend. Which ain't happening, of course.
Quantum of Solace - 4/10, I genuinely had no idea what was going on most of the time
Skyfall - 5/10, great baddy, shame about the Home Alone bits
Spectre - 5.5/10, remove the most boring hour, and there's a decent movie hidden in there
No Time To Die - 6/10, overlong but good action sequences, and an OK sendoff
I rewatched it a month or so ago and enjoyed it, but ultimately it's not as well paced as it could be, and I think Brosnan is too smooth and too superman.
Much better than the actual first film I saw at the cinema which was Carry on up the Khyber which i believe i perhaps enjoyed at the time but in hindsight it was shite
I guess the Norks were much cheaper. But useless. Then dead.
QoS has grown on me over time and I actually think it’s more like a traditional Moore bond film.
Skyfall didn’t work for me, don’t want bond to have all the feels etc.
Spectre never got past around 20 minutes.
Never bothered watching no time to die.
Obviously getting old now as finding the Roger Moore ones are just right if I decide I need to watch a bond film.
I am sure there are catastrophic unintended consequences to that and I look forward to PB educating me.
I thought Skyfall was at least an 8 but would agree with your top and bottom rankings
For full on Bond excess I do like You Only Live Twice, though Sean Connery in yellow face is more than a little dated.
OHMSS doesn't quite work. Lazenby's quips fall flat and his snobbery doesn't ring true, but it does benefit from a great villains lair and cinematography, and much less reliance on gadgets.
Reyt pair of lungs that Welsh lass
I am genuinely not wishing to be a contrarian but I quite liked Quantum of Solace. The story about a feted 'climate activist' turning out to be a psychopath who wanted to control natural resources rang very true for me.
The last two were just execrable. I don't remember a good action sequence in NTTD. Perhaps there was one. By the end being pointlessly put to death was really the best thing for him. His soul had already died and left his body in disgust when he put on those hideous centrist dad moccasins in the first act.
Fun fact about You Only Twice, Mr Chow (of the incredibly expensive Chinese restaurant fame) is in it.
Just saying. Good evening, everybody.
Yes, Brosnan's Bond in the film is a bit Brosnanny. He isn't my favourite Bond actor. But he is still very good, and he doesn't pull down what is a great ensemble piece. The blippy soundtrack is the only less than stellar thing imo. But the theme tune is very good.
But yes, the premise was good. It was just incomprehensible.
At which point I turned it off.
For the case you raise, the charges were dropped.
This was Vance's account, which is misleading in several respects. It's sexed-up:
A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
Now, the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new “buffer zones” law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could “influence” a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
https://archive.is/20250220192955/https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/18/vance-speech-munich-full-text-read-transcript-europe/#selection-3863.0-3869.324
1 - Vance did not mention that Smith-Connor was arrested after refusing to leave the area for 1 hour 40 minutes; that's NOT for "3 minutes silent prayer". It's a PSPO not a "buffer zone law", so to arrest him they actually have to summon a Warranted Police Officer. The Council Officer who asked him to leave cannot make arrests.
2 - As 1 it's not the "new buffer zones law" (actually safe access zones), which was not in force until October 2024. The incident described was in 2022.
3 - He was convicted of "breaching a safe zone after refusing requests to move on", not "silent prayer". *
4 - He was not sentenced to pay thousands of pounds. Those were court costs. He had been given extensive opportunity to move on, and chosen not to do so - which would have stopped it at that point. He has support from a funding organisation.
If Vance wants to make a case, he should at least not use a garbled account.
Consider Matthew 6:5, where the Lord's Prayer is given: "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others ... when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. "
But it isn't about prayer - it's about pressure and intimidation, and calling it "prayer" to get some attention and sell a narrative, getting round restrictions which have been put in place to prevent previous actions designed to intimidate women accessing legal medical services.
In the UK we start from the impact on the victim.
That is why 75% of local residents supported bring in the protection zone, after previous activities.
That's my view.
* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo
Why do you think they've resorted to dredging through prisons and getting the Koreans involved?
Russian demographics have been awful for years and while it may have once been true that they had an effectively limitless supply of young people to throw at the enemies bullets, it's not the case anymore.
Russia is an impoverished country teetering on the brink. If Europe steps up to the plate and continues to support Ukraine they very much can still be defeated. Even without American support.
What a turnup that would be.
But, do you really think the average Joe in some shithole like Hartlepool or Scunthorpe can understand the nuances and intricacies of the Brexit debate. It ultimately boiled down to an illogical dislike of foreigners and darkies and/or let’s give the establishment a kicking.
Worth watching for Stephen Berkoff's demented performance as General Orlov.
(The "I am invincible" Boris computer programmer character was deeply irritating mind.)
For me, DC never really got his golden Bond films. They went from studiously avoiding being classic Bond (Casino Royale, QOS), to his overblown nonsense phase (Spectre, NTTD). That leaves Skyfall in the middle, and though I've not seen it for a while, I think I remember it being my favourite Craig.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6WiXmPdd3E
It needs a defeat, Russia expelling back to the borders of Ukraine, then I think ... regrettably ... we are possibly going to need a new version of the iron curtain.
We may be going back into either 1 - a series of hot wars or 2 - a cold war.
The balletic fight in the skyscraper felt forced, and the whole arc around "is he fit or not" was totally wasted because - errr - the moment he left MI5's training centre he was superman again. And it ended with Home Alone.
So, It tend to think it overrated.
You Only Live Twice
Living Daylights
YOLT in my case.
🚨 NEW: Elon Musk got called out by the Commander of the International Space Station for lying about President Biden supposedly leaving them stranded for political reasons. His response? Calling the commander “retarded.”
This is what passes for leadership and discourse in 2025 in America? Unreal.
https://x.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1892645750082834747
The music that plays under the casino scene in sublime.
And of course Louis Armstrong
Though, as a kid, I thought Thunderball better - the underwater fight sequence, amazing.
And did any viewer have a clue as to what they were doping - apart from Bond always wins.
It was only by reading Casino Royale that I learnt what it was all about.
Ironically as in the Casino Royale film they play poker instead of baccarat.
Worth watching for Heather Graham as Felicity Shagwell.
Am I not playing this game right?
The pre-title sequence alone is surely worth more than that.
Though I could do without the lacklustre theme tune that doesn't even contain the word Octopussy.
Zelensky pushes back on Trump with facts, not rhetoric.
Zelensky: The U.S. has provided Ukraine with $67 billion in military aid and $31 billion in budget support.
Trump’s $500 billion fossil fuel claim isn’t a serious conversation. 1/..
https://x.com/Mylovanov/status/1892181153999704214
Facts vs the bullshit.
But we should be very slow to remove the rights we all have - basically to be in the street in a rather irritating and unwanted way holding up their morality for inspection - because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
Plus in the Niven Casino Royale.
Mrs Thatcher brought forward more business people and entrepreneurs to replace the old elites, but not women, oddly enough. The wartime generation retired. David Cameron posed as an egalitarian but seized on the expenses scandal to rid himself of experienced backbenchers and surrounded himself with young MPs who had learned which knife and fork to use at Eton and Oxford – the chumocracy. Later Boris would throw out anyone who'd been on a motoring holiday to France.
New Labour did something similar on the left. No more the ordinary working man who'd left school at 15 and worked his way up through the union movement. If the blue team had the major public schools; the red team had minor public schools. John Prescott was an anachronism, as now is Angela Rayner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence_(film)
Two couples, representing the upper and lower ends of the British social classes, are having affaires. Lower-class Steve with Belgravia socialite Helen; and his nouveau riche wife Sybil with working-class Les, a private detective she has hired to kill her husband.
By Vendetta Films - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109582/mediaviewer/rm1165662209/?ref_=tt_md_3, Fair use, Link
The idea that the US doesn’t have a class system is for the birds.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jeWyEFOqXzA?si=-RLVXmtsoT283XBf
Armed men with guns tend to turn those guns on their superiors when the superiors run out of cash to pay them.
There was another prominent one - I can't remember who it was.
Trump and Vance both went for personal insults when answering Bishop Budde and Rory Stewart, respectively (but not respectfully).
It seems characteristic, a little like the way the "every accusation is a confession" quip when they try and go for officials or political opponents has turned out to be surprisingly reliable.
He was taken out by a group of his WASP buddies, who proceeded to tell him he had to call off the marriage - she wasn't good enough for him.
To his eternal credit, he told them to fuck off.
There's certainly class in America.