Old School - the 1967 Bank Holiday Sunday afternoon ITV perennial; total mess with five directors, scenes completely out of sequence, characters vanishing and reappearing without explanation, Peter Sellers throwing a hissy fit and walking out halfway through (which may explain any or all of the above), but not without its accidental surreal charm (e.g. Welles' magic act which seems to belong to a different and better film entirely).
New School - the 2007 Daniel Craig one Done Properly with sex, long psychological card games and violence, none of which seemed to have been extensively edited on the version I saw while flying from London to Toronto, but brilliantly done and admirably ruthless; Craig v. reminiscent of Steve McQueen. "Shaken or stirred?" "Do I look like I give a damn?"
― Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 14 January 2008 12:58 (eighteen years ago)
Old School: fucking dreadfully awful waste of a weekend afternoon. Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond, in-fucking-deed. "Are you Richard Burton?"
New School: holy shit that dude just like jumped off the crane. Bond is so damn bitchy in the car park! Best testicle abuse scene in modern cinema caps it off.
― King Boy Pato, Monday, 14 January 2008 13:05 (eighteen years ago)
new school- worst final twenty minutes of any otherwise good film, ever.
old school- not seen.
― darraghmac, Monday, 14 January 2008 13:09 (eighteen years ago)
I haven't seen the new one, but the 1967 film is better than its reputation. It starts out as a relatively straightforward and quite funny Bond parody (the scenes in the Scottish castle are hysterical!), then gets kinda muddled with all the different 007s introduced, then gets totally surreal for a while (the dream sequence with Sellers), then returns to Bond parody again (when the identity of the villain is revealed), then ends with a ridiculously over-the-top finale (even for a comedy). It's not a good film in any sense, but the lack of internal logic makes it quite fun to watch.
― Tuomas, Monday, 14 January 2008 13:14 (eighteen years ago)
The Scottish castle scenes with Niven and Kerr were directed by John Huston and, along with Orson's scenes (which he also reputedly directed himself though doesn't get a director's credit) they are about the only coherent part of the entire film.
Totally agree about the best testicle abuse scene in cinema history as far as the second one is concerned.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 14 January 2008 13:20 (eighteen years ago)
New School: Nice franchise reboot - couldn't have really gone on the way it was before. Bond-as-total-bastard is a bit overplayed though - I prefer Bond-as-effete-snob (booze/food/cars) with Bond-as-bastard underneath.
Old School: This is one of the first movies I remember seeing as a kid, so maybe I'm a bit biased. Anyway, I like the mish-mash of styles that comes from the different directors. The plot still kind of makes sense, or at least as much sense as "Living Daylights". Sellers walking out helps the film, because in the final scenes we get more Woody Allen and David Niven, which lifts what would otherwise be a dull ending. The whole thing screams late 60's, which is a bonus. There's about a million different actors in bit parts. And it parodies every Bond movie made before or, significantly, since.
― snoball, Monday, 14 January 2008 13:24 (eighteen years ago)
The final scenes were more or less improvised on the turn of a dime (as I think is evident) to cover for Sellers' disappearance; I believe Woody wrote his own dialogue.
About Sellers himself, I've always been disappointed by the fact that he didn't follow up his initial hunch to play Evelyn Tremble as a morose Brummie - he was basically going to do an impression of Tony Hancock playing Bond, but then there was Britt to impress and he wanted to come across as the Cary Grant of his day (as There's A Girl In My Soup and other films proved, he was singularly unsuited to this ambition).
― Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 14 January 2008 14:33 (eighteen years ago)
taking sides: eva green vs bunch of dudes
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 14 January 2008 14:36 (eighteen years ago)
I saw this scheduled for TV showing and thought "I don't recognise this list of actors" and then I realised I was looking at the list of named directors.
From IMDB
Directed by Val Guest (additional sequences) (scenes with Woody Allen and additional scenes with David Niven) Ken Hughes (Berlin scenes) (as Kenneth Hughes) John Huston (scenes at Sir James Bond's house) (castle in Scotland scenes) Joseph McGrath (scenes with Peters Sellers, Ursula Andress and Orson Welles) Robert Parrish (scenes with Peters Sellers and Orson Welles) Richard Talmadge (uncredited) (Casino Royale finale) Writing credits Ian Fleming (novel "Casino Royale")
Wolf Mankowitz (screenplay) & John Law (screenplay) & Michael Sayers (screenplay)
Woody Allen uncredited and Val Guest additional dialogue and Ben Hecht uncredited and Joseph Heller uncredited and Terry Southern uncredited and Billy Wilder uncredited and Peter Sellers uncredited
― Mark G, Monday, 14 January 2008 14:50 (eighteen years ago)
I never quite got the point of that unlovely hulk in a grey suit who wanders in and out of the action, unless he was drafted in to cover all the action scenes Sellers should have done.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 14 January 2008 14:53 (eighteen years ago)
old one: great Bacharach score, particularly "The Look of Love" obv. Otherwise, aside from Woody's threshold of death" line and a few other fleeting moments, a complete disaster.
new one: solid and not nearly as great as the Eberts of the world think.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 14 January 2008 15:01 (eighteen years ago)
Was Look of Love actually written for the film? If so that's probably its most significant cultural legacy.
― chap, Monday, 14 January 2008 15:04 (eighteen years ago)
It won the Best Song Oscar, so apparently it was, or they faked it well.
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 14 January 2008 15:05 (eighteen years ago)
Plus the Herb Alpert theme itself of course.
― Mark G, Monday, 14 January 2008 15:07 (eighteen years ago)
And also "Bond Street," the one which sounds like the Benny Hill theme played backwards.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Monday, 14 January 2008 15:12 (eighteen years ago)
I saw some of the 50s tv version w/Peter Lorre on This last night. It's in pretty rough shape (kinescope) and v.odd.
― Roomful of Moogs (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 12 April 2010 20:46 (fifteen years ago)
starts here on youtube.
― Roomful of Moogs (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 12 April 2010 20:51 (fifteen years ago)