Post by Eddie Love on Mar 27, 2010 12:55:18 GMT -5
I love Bond. I love Harry Palmer. I love Mission:Impossible (the series), Deighton, LeCarre and all things cold-war spying. And I hate the Flint movies. I loved listening to you guys enthuse on this show -- I love listening to Lee from Cinema Retro on the box-set commentaries. But I just don't like the movies themselves. Mainly, I'm not a not a fan of movie spoofs. (I do like some books like Tanner, the Mallory and Morse books and the Lucifer Box series.) But with these two pictures here's what grates on me:
As Tom mentioned: Coburn's physicality. He's thin and lanky and it creeps me out for some reason. With his sleeves rolled up and his thin arms and those gleaming choppers. (Shudder.) I can't explain it, but I've always felt it and I think I said "Yes!" aloud when Tom mentioned this. I like Coburn in other things, especially the stone-cold caper DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND and HARD TIMES and the TV thing he did of THE DAIN CURSE, but not here.
The way these are shot: these are like 2 hour TV shows, there's no point-of-view, nothing cinematic. Everything is shot in these static, set-bound wide shots. Even when you see Coburn climbing scaffolding high in the air, they're shot in such a way as to not showcase him doing his own stunts.
We're told too much how cool Flint is. Show us instead. Each Bond film tends to convey that Bond is cool through his manner and action. Here they constantly tell us Flint is cool before we could ever decide for ourselves.
To paraphrase a great (great?) man -- Flint (and Matt Helm) were America's answer to James Bond -- and they got the question wrong. Nowhere is this clearer than in both series' depiction of women. The women in the 60s Bond films are desirable, athletic, beauties. They may be vulnerable, but they're not helpless and they're never stupid. Not so here. I can't even picture them in my head, they're so nondescript. And these films have this adolescent fixation on the hero having a harem -- which seems a preoccupation of movies at that time, possibly spurred by the popularity Playboy. (Under the Yum-Yum Tree -- a creepy Jack Lemmon sex comedy I watched recently, is similar.) Bond wins and -- yes, has sex with -- gorgeous women who are worth his time, rather than these infantile fantasy figures.
Anyway, great show. I truly wish I shared your enthusiasm. To make matters worse, I think I actually prefer Matt Helm to flint.
As Tom mentioned: Coburn's physicality. He's thin and lanky and it creeps me out for some reason. With his sleeves rolled up and his thin arms and those gleaming choppers. (Shudder.) I can't explain it, but I've always felt it and I think I said "Yes!" aloud when Tom mentioned this. I like Coburn in other things, especially the stone-cold caper DEAD HEAT ON A MERRY-GO-ROUND and HARD TIMES and the TV thing he did of THE DAIN CURSE, but not here.
The way these are shot: these are like 2 hour TV shows, there's no point-of-view, nothing cinematic. Everything is shot in these static, set-bound wide shots. Even when you see Coburn climbing scaffolding high in the air, they're shot in such a way as to not showcase him doing his own stunts.
We're told too much how cool Flint is. Show us instead. Each Bond film tends to convey that Bond is cool through his manner and action. Here they constantly tell us Flint is cool before we could ever decide for ourselves.
To paraphrase a great (great?) man -- Flint (and Matt Helm) were America's answer to James Bond -- and they got the question wrong. Nowhere is this clearer than in both series' depiction of women. The women in the 60s Bond films are desirable, athletic, beauties. They may be vulnerable, but they're not helpless and they're never stupid. Not so here. I can't even picture them in my head, they're so nondescript. And these films have this adolescent fixation on the hero having a harem -- which seems a preoccupation of movies at that time, possibly spurred by the popularity Playboy. (Under the Yum-Yum Tree -- a creepy Jack Lemmon sex comedy I watched recently, is similar.) Bond wins and -- yes, has sex with -- gorgeous women who are worth his time, rather than these infantile fantasy figures.
Anyway, great show. I truly wish I shared your enthusiasm. To make matters worse, I think I actually prefer Matt Helm to flint.
