#eon production

[ljones41]

“TOMORROW NEVER DIES” (1997) Review

"TOMORROW NEVER DIES" (1997) Review Recently, I had watched "TOMORROW NEVER DIES", Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as James Bond. Roger Spottiswoode directed the 1997 Bond movie. It co-starred Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce and Teri Hatcher.

  When I first saw "TOMORROW NEVER DIES" many years ago, I had a low opinion of it. I wish I could say that my opinion of the movie has improved over the years after this latest viewing . . . but I would be lying. TOMORROW NEVER DIES had some highlights, but unfortunately, it possessed more negative traits than positive ones. I think it would be best if I list both the good and the bad about this movie: Positive: *What else can I say? Michelle Yeoh. *I found Bond’s romantic scene with a Danish linguist rather sexy. *The film's foreign locations – Hamburg and Thailand (as Vietnam) - looked more lovely, thanks to Robert Elswit's cinematography. *Bond and Wai-Lin’s escape from Caver building in Vietnam proved to be one of the better stunts I have seen in the entire Bond franchise. *Thanks to Roger Spottiswoode's direction and Michel Arcand's editing, I thought the Saigon motorcycle chase was handled very well. *Pierce Brosnan gave a very natural performance, especially during his scenes with Yeoh. *Oddly enough, I rather liked Vincent Shirerpelli as Dr. Hamburg. He proved to be a more interesting henchman than Mr. Stamper. And his death proved to be even more interesting. *Mr. Gupta seemed like a pretty sharp and cool guy. *The movie's main theme song, performed by Sheryl Crow - what can I say? I realize it is not regarded as one of the best theme songs from the Bond franchise. But I have always had a soft spot for it, thanks to Crow's vocals and the lyrics she co-wrote with Mitchell Froom. I mean . . . the song did earn a Golden Globe nomination. Negative: *Brosnan's angsty scenes with Teri Hatcher seemed stiff and unnatural. And his voice sounded odd in scenes featuring Bond's attempt to suppress his emotions. *Why did the director Roger Spottiswode, have Brosnan shooting two machine guns at once during the final confrontation on Carver’s boat? The actor looked like a walking action movie cliché. *I thought Jonathan Pryce had portrayed one of the most overbearing and annoying villains in the Bond franchise. Only Sophie Marceau in the latter half of "THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH" may have surpassed him. *Is it just me or is the plot of this Bond movie seemed like an extended rip-off of a "LOIS & CLARK" episode from its first season? Perhaps the discovery of Teri Hatcher’s casting must have given screenwriter Bruce Feirstein an idea. *Why is it that nearly every sentence directed by Ms. Moneypenny to Bond came off as a sly, sexual joke? Their dialogue grew very annoying. *Spottiswoode managed to transform Bond and Q’s Meeting in Hamburg into a hammy production number. Q was simply in Hamburg to hand over an armored company car to Bond. What a bore and a waste of time! *Carver's top minion, Mr. Stamper, struck me as a second-rate version of Red Grant from "RUSSIA WITH LOVE". Where was Robert Shaw or Andreas Wisnewski when you need them? *The entire car chase sequence inside a Hamburg parking structure featured Bond using a remote control . . . ah, never mind! The entire sequence struck me as a bore. Even worse, it happened after the marvelous Bond/Kaufman scene. What a waste of my time. *Despite all of the gunfire exchanged and the other action during the final confrontation sequence aboard Carver’s boat, I thought it was too long . . . and boring. *Joe Don Baker seemed wasted in this film as C.I.A. liaison Jack Wade. *Bond’s Cover as a Banker – I am beginning to suspect that Bond makes a lousy undercover agent. By opening his mouth and hinting at Carver’s boat, he ended up exposing himself. What an idiot! *Teri Hatcher seemed wasted in this film. And her angsty scenes with Brosnan seemed forced - almost unnatural. TOMORROW NEVER DIES did managed to produce a few favorite lines of mine: Favorite Lines: "Believe me, Mr. Bond. I can shoot you from Stugartt and still create the proper effect." – Dr. Kaufman to Bond BOND: "You were pretty good with that hook." WAI-LIN: "That’s from growing up in a rough neighborhood. You were pretty good on the bike." BOND: "Well, that comes from not growing up at all." "No more absurd than starting a war for ratings." – Bond to Carver KAUFMAN: "Wait! I am just a professional doing a job!" BOND: "So am I." (Then kills Kaufman) Despite some virtues, "TOMORROW NEVER DIES" is not a favorite movie of mine. In fact, it is my least favorite James Bond movie featuring Pierce Brosnan. Unfortunately, director Roger Spottiswoode seemed unable to elevate Bruce Firstein's generic screenplay marred by an unoriginal plot and one of the hammiest villains in the franchise's history. Hmmm . . . too bad.

#james bond #007 #james bond franchise #eon production #roger spottiswoode #pierce brosnan #michelle yeoh #teri hatcher #jonathan pryce #ricky jay #judi dench #samantha bond #michel arcand #sheryl crow #joe don baker #colin salmon #vincent shiavelli #gotz otto #geoffrey palmer #julian fellowes #brendan coyle #christopher bowen #michael byrne #gerard butler #hugh bonneville #julian rhind tutt #pip torrens #philip kwok #daphne deckers #tomorrow never dies

[safinsscars]

#team safin #teamsafin #lyutsifer safin #rami malek #Set picture #Nttd set pictures #Poison garden #Poison garden set picture #EON Production #soundstage #Pinewood studios

[oldschoolfrp]

Darkover: The Ages of Chaos, a game of psychic conflict -- "On a beautiful alien world, a race of telepathic humans control elemental energies which can destroy their planet" (Eon, 1979; with Michael Whelan box art)

#Darkover #Michael Whelan #board game #sci fi #wizard #mage #wargame #Eon #Eon Products #Stormqueen! #lightning #science fantasy #fantasy #1970s

[cidraman]

007: The Timothy Dalton Era.

#007 #james bond #timothy dalton #.80s #ian fleming #the living daylights #licence to kill #mgm #eon productions

[muchemovies]

reporters & book-keepers are convinced AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON is the next 007 James Bond after recent meetings he had with EON/MGM/Sony

#aaron taylor johnson #eon productions #MGM #sony pictures #james bond #007 #speculation #casting #casting prediction #casting rumours

[crewman-penelope]

I still need that car!

#james bond #daniel craig #filmedit #movieedit #jamesbondedit #nttdedit #No time to die #eon productions #Eonedit

[vintagerpg]

No filler here, this is the first edition, second printing (I think) of Cosmic Encounter (1977), the science fiction game for everyone! Created by Eon Productions, this is a stone cold classic board game of the 70s.

The core rules are simple. You have your alien and your system. You need to colonize five planets outside your system. The player on defense is selected randomly. Conflict is resolved through combat and augmented through alliance, with other players joining the attack or the defense. It is possible to resolve an attack through timed diplomacy as well (or to feign diplomacy to gull your opponent into playing a Negotiate card against your attack card). Already we have a pretty fast, pretty complex strategy game.

The real joy of the game is the aliens, which are selected randomly at the start of the game and have special powers. Those powers modify and sometimes outright break the core rules in specific ways, allowing alternative paths to victory or specific advantages in conflict. There’s a big pool of aliens (expansions, of course, introduce ever more), which essentially ensures no two sessions of Cosmic Encounter will ever play the same.

It’s a massively influential game, basically the first to popularize the idea of having a set of core rules that get modified for each player. You can see this influence in stuff like Dune and Illuminati and on into the RPG-lite board games that start showing up in the 80s. Richard Garfield cited Cosmic’s idea of delivering a new experience with each play session as super important for the development of Magic: The Gathering. There are numerous editions, the latest, I think, being a well-expanded one from Fantasy Flight that my game group played the hell out of for a while.

This early edition features rad art by, I believe, Dean Morrissey. It is my favorite look of the game.

#RPG #TTRPG #Tabletop RPG #Roleplaying Game #D&D #dungeons & dragons #Board Game #Eon Productions #Cosmic Encounter

[clarascuro]

Maybe it's just because I have multiple family members who have/have had/have died of cancer, but I think that if you sell little bottles of "cancer support" vitamins for upwards of $30 a pop you ought to be crammed into a canon and shot out into the middle of the icy Atlantic ocean

#holistic 'health' gurus will spend eons upon eons on the mountain of purgatory before they see the glory of god #the person im bitching about also sells 'lean tea' that makes you shit yourself btw #anyway writing product descriptions for work is going great I don't want to claw my eyes out at all

[dye-it-rouge-et-noir]

Color palettes from the opening credits in James Bond - Quantum of Solace and Skyfall

Hex codes are provided as well alongside IDs in alt text!

#E9CE94 / #9E6752 / #5B605A / #303F47 / #182027

#EBEBEB / #DF9C6C / #B96234 / #984124 / #101214

#B9C3BF / #537376 / #1A5962 / #0E242B / #081219

#FFCB12 / #F9831F / #8F0D03 / #021B51 / #8945A8

#james bond #007 #quantum of solace #skyfall #my palettes #my gifs #you know what! i'm making color palettes from all of the eon productions films and i'm going to finish craig era first since i did cr #drowning #drowning cw #<- for the skyfall gif just in case

[rptv-jamesbond]

Storyboard for 'From Russia with Love'

#james bond #from russia with love #storyboard #eon productions #007

[keereejou]

using my shitty gamer headset to play shitty games that suck ass rn!!!!

#Overwatch is a game i have a VERY complicated history with :) #nyatblog #seriously though i hate Gamer products so much i need them to burn #i could go on for eons about my thoughts of the gamer aesthetic

[konakoro]

Me the moment the Lackadaisy Essentials book is delivered to my doorstep

#i have been waiting... so long... #longer than the animated pilot i have wanted this #I've been reading lackadaisy since 2011 and have privately wanted an artbook-type product for eons #it's on the way -

[buzzdixonwriter]

The Best Of The Bonds

I was a James Bond fan long before I saw any of the movies. 

As a kid I saw the posters in movie theaters, the promo trailers on TV, and of course all the cool toys inspired by the series. 

I watched knock offs like The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, Secret Agent (my personal favorite TV spy show which later morphed into The Prisoner), and The Incredible World of James Bond TV special promoting the series.

Somehow I managed to convince my parents to buy me the Signet paperback boxed set (wish I kept that) and read every article on the movies I found, including the really good Esquire article on the making of Thunderball which I cut out and saved for years.

And the music -- wow!  John Barry’s incredible jazz compositions remain favorites to this day, and starting with a Frito-Lay sponsored tie-in to The Incredible World of James Bond, I bought every LP long before I first saw the movies.

The Bond films didn’t just provide popular entertainment, they also helped shape pop culture in the 60s, heavily influencing movies that came after them.

We’d see a much different pop culture today without the Bond films.

The first actual Bond films I saw were a triple bill of Thunderball and You Only Live Twice sometime in the early 1970s, followed by a triple bill of Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Thunderball yet again. 

I missed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the theater but saw Diamonds Are Forever on the big screen.

By that point I was drafted and in the Army, but managed to see Goldfinger on TV.

After that I caught all the Bond films in theaters up to the Eon Production of Casino Royale.

By that time, I felt pretty much action-adventured out.  While I still enjoy older action films, I’ve lost interest in action for action’s sake.

I watched the Daniel Craig Bond’s on cable, but not in order of release.

When they cast a new Bond, I’ll watch them…eventually.

At one time I had VHS copies of all the Bond films released to cable channels, but those are long gone.  I may have converted some or all of them to DVDs, but can’t remember if I did or not.

That says something about where the characters and series have fallen in my estimation, doesn’t it?

This is not a hit piece on Bond, I deny no one their pleasure. 

In fact, I’m not even going to mention any of the negative feelings I hold on certain films in the series, just the ones I like and recommend.

In reverse Bond order…

No Time To Die (2021) is the most interesting to me because Eon Productions packed the stones to actually kill 007 off.  In my mind it really doesn’t feel like a classic Bond movie, but then it wasn’t trying to be a classic Bond movie.  The Craig Bonds’ overall story arc marked a new direction for the series (which previously offered standalone films, a few of which might refer to earlier productions but weren’t direct sequels).  Craig is the best actor to star in a Bond movie, but despite his character being called James Bond I could never really embrace him as the character.  As the star of a series of well-done spy movies, he’s well cast, and opposite number Rami Malek is outstanding as Lyutsifer Safin, the best Bond villain of the 21st century.  This isn’t the Bond movie I feel most enthusiastic about, but the best of the Craig series.

Die Another Day (2002) is my favorite non-Connery Bond.  I know a lot of fans dislike it because it’s one of the more fanciful Bond movies, the CGI effects aged poorly, and just a general antipathy to Madonna, but I favor it because it gave us a Bond adventure we never experienced before.  The invisible Aston-Martin bugged a lot of people, too, but I give the movie bonus points for cleverly using the ejector seat to flip the car upright after it turned over.  To me the best scene in the movie -- and one of the all-time truly great Bond moments -- is when Bond -- emaciated, bearded, barefoot, wearing prison pajamas -- escapes from a prison ship, swims ashore, enters the posh Hong Kong Yacht Club dripping water behind him and he’s still the coolest guy in the room!  Pierce Brosnan is my 3rd favorite Bond, the fun Bond.

Timothy Dalton is my 2nd favorite Bond, the tragic Bond.  He looks and acts more like Fleming’s version of the character than any other actor, but The Living Daylights (1987) feels more like a Roger Moore era Bond while Licence To Kill (1989) seems more like an extended Miami Vice episode.  A variety of behind-the-scenes legal woes stalled the Bond series for the better part of a decade and Dalton eventually moved on without getting a movie truly worthy of his talents.

(And a shout out to David Niven, who was briefly considered as the original big screen Bond for Dr. No but saw producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli pass him over in favor of Connery, the kneeslapper here being Niven as a bona fide WWII commando who participated in the invasion of Normandy was more qualified to play the character than anyone else.  He did play the retiree Sir James Bond in the spoof version of Casino Royale so he garners a mention here.)

For Your Eyes Only (1981) is the only Roger Moore Bond I truly enjoy and would watch again.  It brought the Moore era Bond series back to a more human scale, and while the pre-credits and closing scene leave me cold, all in all it offers a sound, exciting adventure.  Moore turns down the comedy several notches this time and for once he gets to be credibly ruthless in a couple of scenes.  Add to that an interesting twist on the requisite Bond car chase and a unique setting for the climax.  I didn’t care that much for the other Moore Bond movies but have come to recognize them as the comedy Bond series.  (And as a sidebar I’ll add Bond’s underwater escape from gunman by breathing air from the tire of a submerged car in A View To A Kill is one of the coolest Bond moments ever.)

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) is the one that got away, the Bond movie that Connery should have played, only his legal conflict with Eon Productions precluded it.  While I agree Telly Savalas wasn’t the best choice for Ernst Stavo Blofeld, Diana Rigg leads me to forgive a multitude of sins and shortcomings.  If Connery couldn’t star in this one, it should have been pushed back to be George Lazenby’s third or fourth outing as Bond after he had a chance to get settled into the character (but of course Lazenby himself torpedoed his own career).  An unusually plotted film, ABC re-edited it for American TV to tell the story in flashback form, thus putting an action sequence earlier; they also included some deleted scenes.  To be honest I prefer that version over the theatrical cut.

From Russia With Love (1963) is my 2nd favorite Connery Bond, and like For Your Eyes Only one of the few Bonds that scaled itself down to a more human level.  In a very real sense, this is the movie that made the Bond series possible.  Dr. No was the first Bond movie and while they didn’t have the mix quite right yet, it proved successful enough to warrant a sequel.  At that time a typical sequel only did 30% of the box office of the original, so Eon Productions took advantage of United Artists’ money locked up in Turkey to make a smaller scale film there (a similar situation that led to Star Wars filming in Tunisia).  To everyone’s surprise and delight, From Russia With Love did far better than Dr. No and justified spending even more on Goldfinger, thus kicking off the most successful film series in history.  It’s the first Bond film with a pre-credits sequence, the first to really feel like what we know now as a Bond movie, a trio of the best Bond villains ever (Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw, and Vladek Sheybal) plus the first glimpse of Blofeld (played onscreen by Anthony Dawson, voice dubbed by Eric Pohlmann), plus he best line ever uttered by James Bond:  "Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something."

Goldfinger (1964) is the gold standard of Bond movies, starring many folks’ (including me) all-time favorite Bond, Sean Connery.  It’s one of the rare Bond movies that fires perfectly on all eight cylinders (minor quibble for a Beatle joke that aged badly aside).  It’s breakthrough worldwide success insured the Bond series would continue on solid footing for decades to come, continuously trying to top themselves.  Great story (although Bond spends much of the movie as a prisoner), three of the best Bond females (Shirley Eaton and Tania Mallett as the doomed Masterson sisters, and Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore*), great art design by Ken Adams, great music by John Barry with Shirley Bassey belting out the theme song, and of course, the best Bond baddies of all time, Gert Frobe and Harold Sakata as Goldfinger and Oddjob.  Bonus points for the best line ever in a Bond movie:  “Do you expect me to talk?”  “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to DIE!”

We’re now in a lull period as Eon Productions weighs what to do next with the character series.**  I don’t know what Bond’s future holds, and while I’m unlikely to see them in a theater, I’m sure I’ll eventually catch up with them on TV.

  © Buzz Dixon

  *  Seriously, Ian?

** If I were king of the forest (or perhaps M), I’d make Putin, Trump, Boris Johnson, Musk, and Jeffrey Epstein the villains in the next series of films.

#James Bond #007 #Eon Productions #James Bond movies #No Time To Die #Die Another Day #For Your Eyes Only #On Her Majesty's Secret Service #From Russia With Love #Goldfinger

[cidraman]

007: The Sean Connery Era.

#007 #james bond #ian fleming #sean connery #60s #70s #80s #eon productions #dr. no #from russia with love #goldfinger #thunderball #diamonds are forever #never say never again

[davejcummings]

Some recent sketches

#captain picard #star trek picard #phantom of the paradise #traditional drawing #digital art #adobefresco #eon productions #traditional illustration #cats of tumblr

[crewman-penelope]

#james bond #agent 007 #gun barrel #nttdedit #Nttd #jamesbondedit #filmedit #espionage #007 #No time to die #daniel craig #danielcraigedit #eon productions