Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Dr. No [Movie]

I am starting, together with a couple of friends, a James Bond Marathon. We intend to watch all 007 seven movies in the next couple of weeks... I just hope I can survive it. I haven't really seen any of the 007's before Pierce Brosnan came along in Goldeneye, so this should be very educational. We started yesterday with Dr. No, the first time ever on the big screen a martini was asked "shaken, not stirred". This was in 1962, with an appallingly young Sean Connery accompanied by a bunch of hotties that are probably grandmas nowadays... but, what the hell, they looked pretty good in 62, I must say... specially that Taro chick and, of course, Ursula Andress... OK, but what about the movie? Well, it's kind hard to analyze it... it's a pretty good movie, that's for sure. And even though by now you've seen it all about a hundred times, you still gotta give credit where credit is due... Sean Connery is awesome, more cynical than I thought possible... all the girls are incredibly bad actresses, except maybe for Moneypenny... I mean, horrible actresses... but Connery more than makes up for it, he certainly takes over anytime he's onscreen (nothing like, for instance, that 007 movie with Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry where I would constantly find myself wondering "Bond, who?")...
The whole movie feels 45 years old many times, you're hard pressed not to laugh when "The Dragon" appears... Dr. No is not really the scariest of villains, I guess that somewhere along the next couple of movies they learned that, even though the big villain (Dr. No in this one) should be surrounded in mystery (and he is), you need a very nasty-looking goon to be on the movie from the beginning and antagonize Bond... and the closest they get to that is a pretty lame attempt (whose name I shouldn't say to avoid the risk of spoiling it for you guys)... but it's almost all there, everything that made Bond the icon it is, the women (I remember him sleeping with at least 3 different chicks, not counting the ones that wanted to but he unfortunately didn't have the time to do...), the weird villains, the world-domination plans, the not-killing-Bond-until-he-finds-a-way-to-escape, everything Mike Myers so brilliantly makes fun of in Austin Powers... but it's certainly a worthwhile movie, it's pretty cool to see where it all started and how good it was since the beginning... let's just see if I actually last the whole 21 movies... wish me luck!!! :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was going to comment this post, but then again I'd rather have my own post. And don't you dare think on giving up the marathon, mate.

Unknown said...

I'd never give up so easily!!!! Maybe when we reach the '80s, it'll be pretty tempting to skip straight to the Brosnan years... but Sean Connery and Roger Moore are great!! ehhehehheh