{"id":1591,"date":"2008-11-14T10:10:40","date_gmt":"2008-11-14T10:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1591"},"modified":"2008-11-14T10:10:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-14T10:10:40","slug":"fortysix_years_through_the_bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2008\/11\/14\/fortysix_years_through_the_bar\/","title":{"rendered":"Forty-Six Years Through the Barrel of a Gun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To commemorate today&#8217;s release of the 22nd James Bond movie, <i>Quantum of Solace<\/i>, allow me to present a nifty video clip I snagged from <a href=\"http:\/\/byzantiumshores.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/just-shoot-dummy.html\">Jaquandor<\/a>. It&#8217;s a compilation of the &#8220;gun barrel&#8221; openings from all the previous Bond movies, from 1962&#8217;s <i>Dr. No<\/i> to <i>Casino Royale<\/i> in 2006. Oddly, it even includes the &#8220;unofficial&#8221; Bond movie <i>Never Say Never Again<\/i>, which couldn&#8217;t use the gun-barrel thing due to legal issues (the <a href=\"http:\/\/expectyoutodie.blogspot.com\/2008\/09\/never-say-never-again.html\">history of NSNA<\/a> is one long legal nightmare) but attempted something similar.<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"725\" height=\"408\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6IdDl-pHeDw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThoughts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Like Jaquandor, I was struck by how slowly paced the earliest versions seem to our modern, ADD-addled eyes. Seriously, people in 1962 must&#8217;ve consumed much less caffeine or something.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;m no expert on guns &#8212; in fact, I&#8217;ve only handled an actual pistol (as opposed to a pellet gun) once in my enitre life &#8212; but Connery&#8217;s half-crouch, arm-out-to-the-side stance (seen in the opening for <i>Thunderball<\/i>, <i>You Only Live Twice<\/i>, and <i>Diamonds Are Forever<\/i>; it was a stand-in for the first three films) looks awkward as hell. He&#8217;s off balance and you can see him swaying a little bit right after the shot; I can&#8217;t imagine you&#8217;d be able to shoot with much accuracy in that position. Lazenby&#8217;s drop to the knee is a little better, but still looks weird, and a little fey, too, which is a bad thing when you&#8217;re supposed to be the most-awesomest killer ever. Dalton and Brosnan remain standing, but their poses also appear a bit shaky to my admittedly inexpert eye. The Bond who looks the most (to me) like he&#8217;s really making a dead-on-target shot is, oddly enough, the Bond I like least, Roger Moore. He&#8217;s well balanced and holding his gun with both hands. <i>That<\/i> looks like the stance of a true marksman.<\/li>\n<li>So, as I said, my favorite Bond is Connery, but Moore wins out again when it comes to my favorite of these sequences, which is from <i>For Your Eyes Only<\/i>. The pacing is faster than in the older ones, but not yet to the point where it feels like the sequence is an afterthought or simply some bit of formula that needs to gotten out of the way. I also like the updating of the iconic music, which sounds like the era in which the movie was made &#8212; kind of rock-ish, kind of disco-ish &#8212; but still retains a certain timelessness. Compare the really awful techno-influenced sound of <i>Goldeneye<\/i> or whatever the hell is going on in <i>Die Another Day<\/i>&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of <i>Die Another Day<\/i>, the bullet flying toward the audience is just silly. I can see where the producers were trying to come up with something fresh in a really well-used device, especially considering that DAD was being pushed as the big Bond anniversary film (the 20th movie, released in the 40th year of the franchise, 1962-2002), but still&#8230; it&#8217;s just silly.<\/li>\n<li>Although when you think about it, so is the entire gun-barrel concept. Think about it&#8230; we (the assassin) are looking down the <i>barrel<\/i> of the gun. This perspective makes no sense&#8230; unless we&#8217;re not even seeing through the eyes of the assassin, but those (if it had any) of <i>the bullet<\/i>. And where does the blood come from? It rolls down over the scene in a completely flat manner, as if over a sheet of glass. Wouldn&#8217;t it make more sense to gush outward from our &#8220;eye&#8221;? For that matter, wouldn&#8217;t it make the most sense if, instead of a gun barrel, we were looking down a rifle scope or something?<br \/>\nOkay, I&#8217;ll stop now&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>One final note: as much as I like Daniel Craig as Bond &#8212; and I do, quite a bit &#8212; and the way the series was successfully rejuvenated with <i>Casino Royale<\/i>, the gun-barrel sequence left me cold. Yes, it was something different while still referencing the old stuff, and it was kind of cool how it integrated with the fight in the restroom and all, but&#8230; well, it just didn&#8217;t grab my socks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And on that note, to everyone who&#8217;s going to see <i>Quantum<\/i> today, have a good time, and hold your bloody tongues because I don&#8217;t want to know a thing before I see it myself. Now then, where did I leave that cocktail shaker&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To commemorate today&#8217;s release of the 22nd James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, allow me to present a nifty video clip I snagged from Jaquandor. It&#8217;s a compilation of the &#8220;gun barrel&#8221; openings from all the previous Bond movies, from 1962&#8217;s Dr. No to Casino Royale in 2006. Oddly, it even includes the &#8220;unofficial&#8221; Bond [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}