The Bond retrospective - Number 16

Remember this one?

We're confused too

16. A View To A Kill

Apparently the lowest ranked Bond film on Rotten Tomatoes, I have to say I disagree, while Moore’s final appearance is no classic, it is hardly discernable from any other average Bond film. The plot is fairly straightforward and understandable, if somewhat contrived, the action scenes are decent enough, with campness being kept to a minimum and there’s a decent villain in Christopher Walken. However, it doesn’t get much better than that, it’s quite long and trudges in parts, the plot is paper thin, Moore was already too old in the seventies, and Grace Jones was a terrible, terrible mistake. The long and short of it is, there’s nothing really bad here, on most counts you can find a film that did it worse, for example despite all the criticism of Moore’s age, I found it more of a problem in FYEO, which was four years earlier, it’s just that there’s nothing really good here either, it’s completely unmemorable aside from being ‘the one with Grace Jones and Christopher Walken in’ – hence why I’ve barely mentioned the film itself here, so yes it’s average, forgettable, but if you’re looking for the worst Bond film you would probably overlook this one as it simply slips under the radar.

Pros:
Christopher Walken is one of the better villains
Duran Duran, anyone?

Cons:
Nothing to remember fondly
Grace Jones

Go back?

I'm not going to go on about Glenn Beck's rally, because let's face it, it's crazy

But this stood out

"America today begins to turn back to God"

and the BBC reports

'Some individuals at Mr Beck's rally said honour and morality had diminished in the US because of the separation of government and religion'

Now, people can certainly want the US to be more religious, that's freedom - but surely comments or implications that it should somehow go back to God are just plain misleading, designed to stir the blood of the ignorant

Separation of government and religion was laid out in the constitution, the United States has always been that way - and while we may be more secular now in practice, the US was originally a mirror image of the British model (unelected head of state, established church etc), they were the ones stopping government bodies invoking religion long before we did such things, so now to call for it to go back to God is not only bizarre, but downright offensive to their own constitution, the same one held up by their historical conservative heroes and the basis of their 'patriotism'

Oui!

British pupils should give up learning French

If you hadn't noticed, French has gone into massive decline since languages stopped being compulsory at GCSE in 2004, now at nearly half the level it was before

As someone who had to go through the torment of five years of 'teaching' of French, I can only celebrate this and be envious of the lucky youngsters who can actually learn instead

I don't say this as someone who found it 'hard' as the BBC describe - I found it a doddle to get my B, the trouble is I can't actually speak it, or I can a bit, and I'm pretty good at reading it, but I can't work out a thing a Frenchman says

As Paul Noble points out in the article - we aren't taught conversational French, the bit that's actually got  a tangible benefit, sitting in a room with 30 people constantly writing out verb forms is a complete waste of time - the only students who were ever any good at speaking French were those who had a French-speaking background, the teachers all loved them of course, 'why can't you all do this?' they'd ask but no-one else stood a chance of being able to converse

Looking back, it's fairly obvious the teaching system was fatally flawed, mostly because you can't teach dozens a language at once, the small groups in the options of Spanish and German spent most of their time in conversation with assistants (who for some reason, were absent in the much bigger French classes) and seemed to be far more advanced than us. That, and my later experience of my friends teaching themselves languages like Spanish and picking it up within months proved to me that every student in Britain had been wasting 5-odd hours a week for five years of their lives

I don't think students are put of by the difficulty of gaining the GCSE (I certainly didn't perceive difficulty levels at the age of 14) , but the fact that they would've done three years of nonsense, whereas virtually all other subjects provide some sort of benefit - like being able to write or do maths, would put them off - if you could actually speak French at the end maybe they would bother - but if memory serves, not a single non-French speaker came out of my GCSE French class being able to communicate in it, it's a joke subject

Then we get onto the point of doing French - it's great for your holidays to the south of France, but what else? Some niche jobs in business and politics require it, but that's about it - and whilst it has been cemented as a language of diplomacy historically, it's now mostly an excuse for French arrogance that only they get their little language on Eurovision and the Olympics

And yes, it is a little language - the BBC points out that it's spoken by 200 million people, although it's only a first language to about 130 of those, this is roughly double the population of the native country, and the vast majority are in western Africa

It's beyond question that English, Spanish and Mandarin speakers vastly outnumber French speakers, whether first tongue or not, whilst Hindi and Russian are probably spoken by more people, Portuguese is probably a similar number and arguably more important economically

And yet we allow the French language to dominate international bodies simply so a few people in Paris can lean back and smirk as they get a special translation just for them, not bad for a country that lost all its power 200 years ago and left little discernible impact outside parts of Africa and Canada

Why should we help with this French ego stroking? By all means allow kids to learn it, some will need to, but forcing them was making the teaching of it pointless, and keeping out the world's more important languages (which are now soaring in schools) simply because France was near and had a plentiful supply of teachers was foolish economically - even German would be more useful, and it's far easier to learn, sharing a lot of roots with English

The Bond retrospective - Number 17

  17. Octopussy

Moore should have called it quits at five, but alas, he continued on until we got sick of him and needed Timothy Dalton and a cello. In this instalment we see Bond tackling an Indian jewel smuggler (or something) and a rogue Russian general in a rather convoluted and boring plot. Although in fairness it attempts to be more serious than certain ‘other’ outings, but it is completely ruined by the ever-increasing amount of insanity placed into the film – this is actually a fairly gadget-light spy flick about smuggling but it involves a ridiculous tennis-themed car chase, Bond in a clown and a gorilla suit…and even doing a Tarzan impression. That’s not to mention the fairly poor villains, where the main problem is the division between Kamal Khan and General Orlov, the latter being particularly underdeveloped, yet taking valuable scenes from the main villain. There’s also the seriously disturbing fact that Moore was 56 in this film, and that the eponymous female lead was played by Maud Adams, who was Scaramanga’s mistress, Anders, a few films earlier. All in all, it’s a fairly dull, uninteresting outing that’s not awful, but nobody’s favourite, and that’s its main problem – it’s forgettable, at least you remember the really ridiculous ones.

Pros:
Some semblance of a real spy flick

Cons:
Clown suits never make good drama
‘Octopussy’ really isn’t a good name for an actual person…seriously, call someone it

The Bond retrospective - Number 18

 It's getting hard to determine where to put these now...

Anyway, this may cause contradiction:

Who are you?

18. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

The infamous one, it remains one of the most divisive Bond films of all time, on the one hand you have some really shite acting from Lazenby and some frankly ridiculous scenes, and on the other this is the film where Bond gets married – which means it can never be forgotten, and is seemingly loved by mothers everywhere. Let’s start with the basics – the plot surrounds Bond’s hunt for Blofeld, which leads him to the top of a swiss alp where the main man is brainwashing pretty women (uh-oh!) and chopping off his earlobes so he can become a count for some unexplained reason. Along the way down the mountain Bond develops a relationship with Tracy, one of the better developed of all Bond girls, eventually asking her to marry him. Predictably, she gets captured and he gets his father-in-law (a crime lord..) to launch an attack on the alpine base in a bid to rescue her. Explosions follow and Bond escapes to marry Tracy, and then as he takes the flowers off the car, Blofeld drives past and Tracy takes one in the head, and so we witness the saving grace of the film, and probably the most poignant moment in the Bond series, as Lazenby cradles his dead wife saying ‘we have all the time in the world’. Other than that the film is a combination of dreadful acting, poor writing and stop-motion action scenes, some standout moments are Bond in a ridiculous kilt and cravatte combo, and the cringeworthy seduction where Lazenby repeats the same lines to different women. In short Lazenby is an appalling ‘Bond’, the action, the style, none of it’s there; but in his defence, there’s no way that the playboy Connery version could have pulled off love and marriage, so if you like a good action romp, don’t bother, but if you’re sentimental maybe you’ll like it a bit more than the average Bond fan. Personally, it’s always near the bottom for me, even if the ending is the saving grace.

Pros:
Diana Rigg as one of the best Bond girls
The ending

Cons:
Everything else