http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html en-gb 30 Thu 24 Dec 2009 15:03:28 GMT+1 A feed of user comments from the page found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html?page=16#comment4 Hmmm... I went to see the film last night and, well, wow, it was brilliant. I admit it wasn't the usual bond but is that a bad thing? Me and my son thought it was a great film. Daniel Craig was his usual brooding Bond and Judi Dench was superb.The down side? The action scenes were WAY to fast for me to keep up and were hard on the eyes (maybe I'm just getting old?!).That aside, the only other down side was the theme song - rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.Don't knock the film - it's great! Sat 01 Nov 2008 21:10:55 GMT+1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html?page=12#comment3 I saw the new Bond film yesterday and while it is different from other Bonds, Craig's reading is much closer to the spirit Fleming's books.The audience at my showing were also subdued after it finished.It's quite a dark film, pessimistic and thoughtful, not played at all for laughs and the misogeny of the genre is less evident than in the past.For all those reasons it won't do as good business as other recent Bond outings.But if you put away the baggage of Roger Moore and Sean Connery it's a brave attempt at a more honest view of Bond, and will probably in time be seen as one of the best of the sequence.Agree with #2 about the lazy journalism... Sat 01 Nov 2008 12:11:39 GMT+1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html?page=8#comment2 #1: "(ps, I'll never understand how such a thing as a critic can exist...imagine being paid to express an opinion that only those responsible for creating the thing being criticised care about (although in this case probably not)...most people will just go a head and enjoy it anyway, regardless of what the "professional" tells us we should think)."Presumably in a vain attempt to counter the reams of slickly-presented and omnipresent PR campaigning that attempt to part as great a number of fools from their cash as is possible with a given budget.Its a pity that BBC news itself seems to be increasingly caught up in these campaigns, presumably under the umbrella of "public interest". It was the same situation for the latest Indiana Jones movie, The (risible) Simpsons Movie, The Dark Knight, Spiderman 3 (etc, etc.).Arguably the role of the critic is to indirectly provide feedback on the artwork, in order that the creators can maybe produce something better in future. Sat 01 Nov 2008 11:31:35 GMT+1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html?page=4#comment1 The lazy,unimaginative title for this article says it all really... Sat 01 Nov 2008 11:06:34 GMT+1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/paulinemclean/2008/10/shaken_not_stirred.html?page=0#comment0 It's a shame some people just don't get the point. The Bond franchise was fading as Roger Moore's stint was coming to an end - Pierce Brosnan just about killed it off altgother...not his fault (although he is my least favourite Bond) but the movies were dependant on the gadgets and the girls - Bond had nothing about it him but cheesy lines.In the Flemming short. Quantum of Solace, Bond learns that no matter how bitter the relationship between two people becomes, as long as the tiniest spark of what brought them together and what they once felt for each other still burns, they will still have something to hold on to, but without that, the relationship is dead. He also realises that he's never had that quantum of solace, he's never had that kind of relationship.What the last two films have done have taken Bond back to what he was always supposed to be - a ruthless, hard-ass governemnt agent, but also human and flawed. As Daniel Craig's first film ended with Bond having being betrayed by, and then robbed of, the first true love he had felt that could have taken him away from the only way life he had known, the second sees him out to take revenge on those who had done that to him.It's odd to mourn the absence of megalomaniac baddie set on world domination, then complain that the gadgets are unbelievable. In this day and age, there's nothing more realistic than a global corporation out to make the world suffer in the name of making money - that's something we can all relate to.And as for the gadgets, touch-screen technology is already here for crying out loud. And what we saw here was far more believable than the outrageous technology that the pre-Craig Bonds had become reliant on.No, Bond is now as it should always have been - about the man and his character, scarred on all levels by his past, motivated by duty and his own desire.(ps, I'll never understand how such a thing as a critic can exist...imagine being paid to express an opinion that only those responsible for creating the thing being criticised care about (although in this case probably not)...most people will just go a head and enjoy it anyway, regardless of what the "professional" tells us we should think). Sat 01 Nov 2008 08:45:49 GMT+1