Siskel and Ebert Picks
CasinoChris75
Posts: 80MI6 Agent
I was just viewing Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's 1983 show on James Bond, which was posted on You Tube. Each of them discused four categories; best Bond, best woman, best villain, and best film. Here are their choices-
Best Bond-This was no surprise
Siskel: Connery
Ebert: Connery
Best Bond Girl-
Siskel: Maud Adams in Octopussy
Ebert: Ursula Andress in Dr. No
Best Villain-
Siskel: (Tie) Auric Goldfinger/Largo in NSNA
Ebert: Largo in NSNA
Best Film-This was no surpise either
Siskel: Goldfinger
Ebert: Goldfinger
Best Bond-This was no surprise
Siskel: Connery
Ebert: Connery
Best Bond Girl-
Siskel: Maud Adams in Octopussy
Ebert: Ursula Andress in Dr. No
Best Villain-
Siskel: (Tie) Auric Goldfinger/Largo in NSNA
Ebert: Largo in NSNA
Best Film-This was no surpise either
Siskel: Goldfinger
Ebert: Goldfinger
Comments
Maud Adams is a lovely woman---and is quite appealing in both Bond outings, but she surely doesn't make my own list of 'Top Picks' ?:)
As I said, divergent and fascinating...proof that Bond tastes really do run the gamut :007)
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I can completely understand Ursula being picked. But Maud? I love her, but I don't think she was the greatest Bond girl of all time.
Goldfinger is an obvious choice, but I'm amazed that Largo from NSNA was picked. He's a very good villain, but do Ebert and Siskel really consider him to be better than No, Grant, Klebb, Blofeld, Stromberg or even Largo of TB? A very interesting choice.
It seems that they have excellent taste.
What a joke. Love(d) these guys as film critics in general, but not as Bond film critics.
Roger Ebert didn't take the Bond series seriously, and had certain notions about the way the films should be. He believed the films should be over the top, silly, and ridiculous spectacles. He welcomed big special effects and embraced huge set pieces. In 1981, he gave For Your Eyes Only 2 out of 4 stars believing it to be uninteresting simply because it was a smaller Bond film. In the new age of Spielberg and Lucas, Ebert argued that FYEO was dull because it lacked the bigness of a Star Wars or Indiana Jones picture. He thought Moonraker was a better Bond film because, in his mind, it had better special effects. Although he was not an admirer of YOLT, he believed For Your Eyes Only ought to have had an elaborate mountain top fortress in the way the hollowed out volcano was in the Connery film. The small aspect of the FYEO mountaintop looked boring to him.
Ebert accepted and anticipated the ridiculous formula of over-the-top villains, outrageous gadgets, and plots to take over the world. I doubt he ever read Ian Flemming, because he had no awareness or understanding of the possibility that a Bond film could be a smaller and more down to Earth picture; when a Bond movie was smaller as in the case of FYEO and TLD, he misinterpreted that as a sign of the formula becoming tired and exhaustive. He liked Licence To Kill, but that is not an entirely small picture as it has big action scenes, large sets, and big special effects.
In 1973, Ebert disliked Live and Let Die because it wasn't as big as the Connery films.
After so many years, however, Ebert planned to stop watching Bond movies after DAD because, no matter how big and spectacular the films may be, the formula was just worn out. Casino Royale surprised him since it goes against the tired formula.
The one thing about Ebert is that he sometimes demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the Bond films. In his review for DAD, he talked about how in every Bond film, there's a good woman who appears to be bad and a bad woman who appears to be good, which is simply not true.
It had much to do with breaking from the old formula.
Ebert:
"Casino Royale" has the answers to all my complaints about the 45-year-old James Bond series, and some I hadn't even thought of. It's not that I didn't love some of the earlier films, like some, dislike others and so on, as that I was becoming less convinced that I ever had to see another one. This movie is new from the get-go.
Year after year, attending the new Bond was like observing a ritual. There was the opening stunt sequence that served little purpose, except to lead into the titles; the title song; Miss Moneypenny; M with an assignment of great urgency to the Crown; Q with some new gadgets; an archvillain; a series of babes, some treacherous, some doomed, all frequently in stages of undress; the villain's master-plan; Bond's certain death, and a lot of chases. It could be terrific, it could be routine, but you always knew about where you were in the formula.
With "Casino Royale," we get to the obligatory concluding lovey-dovey on the tropical sands, and then the movie pulls a screeching U-turn and starts up again with the most sensational scene I have ever seen set in Venice, or most other places. It's a movie that keeps on giving.
This time, no Moneypenny, no Q and Judi Dench is unleashed as M, given a larger role, and allowed to seem hard-eyed and disapproving to the reckless Bond. This time, no dream of world domination, but just a bleeding-eyed rat who channels money to terrorists. This time a poker game that is interrupted by the weirdest trip to the parking lot I've ever seen. This time, no laser beam inching up on Bond's netherlands, but a nasty knotted rope actually whacking his hopes of heirs.
This is Campbell's second Bond picture, after "GoldenEye" (1995), but he breaks with his own and everyone else's tradition. He's helped by Craig, who gives the sense of a hard man, wounded by life and his job, who nevertheless cares about people and right and wrong. To a certain degree, the earlier Bonds were lustful technicians. With this one, since he has a big scene involving a merchant's house in Venice, we can excuse ourselves for observing that if you prick him, he bleeds."
I would speculate given its forty-five year run a couple people might like that formula, Ebert!
I sorta know what he's saying, but putting the blame on the formula is idiotic; most movies are formulaic. What it comes down to is all the component parts (story, acting, camera work, sfx) coming together and Bond does that in spades over most other films even at its worst.
Ebert praises CR for abandoning its heritage to be more like run of the mill spy flicks like Bourne. I'm not bashing CR - it's a good movie (just as the Bourne series are); it's just not a Bond movie in my view. -{
That sounds like something M would say to Bond!
I don't see James Bond films as sequels or prequels. It is all one original idea that continues to feel fresh even with a few films that copy it such as Austin Powers, and Indiana Jones popping up every once in a while. Bond stayed fresh because it has its own style and is its own business.
How many films do you know have a gun-barrell, pre-title sequence, title sequence with naked women floating around, a secret agent coming into an office to flirt with the secretary, a mad villain wanting to destroy the world and create a new one, and ridiculous gadgets that can make life easy? Not many. How many movies do you know that feature a secret agent going up against Count Dracula and Tattoo from Fantasy island? Not many. How often do we see Roger Moore screw Grace Jones? Barely ever. And did Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman open up a toy store in an underwater city that has man eating sharks, classical music blasting, and a 7 ft. man with steel teeth that could bite his way through a metal wall? I do not think so.
My point is that Bond is not only original, but has done many interesting and outrageously silly things that no other films could have, or that no other filmmakers could ever dream up.