Well The Prince & I had a high pressure planning meeting this morning. Whoever had the idea to move house on both sides of the planet at once has freaking rocks in their head! No pressure here then. Not much.
Trying to focus on the positive & looking forward to reuniting the stash.
*SPOILER ALERT* Discussions of the plot of Skyfall
We thought we should do something nice to reward ourselves & keep ourselves grounded so we went off to see the latest Bond film. We were really looking forward to it as we have seen all the clips & interviews in the last few weeks.
Well we left the theatre very disappointed. There were some magnificent scenes especially the motorbikes across the tiled roofs and sweeping views of the Shanghai skyline.
However the story lines left a very bad taste. Now don't get me wrong, Bond movies have always been bastions of machismo & that is part of the charm but why do they feel the need to do this at the expense of women? I know they have never really treated women as anything other than scenery but they had been moving away from that to some extent in the recent movies. This movie seems to hurtle right back to the old days with the likes of Ursula Andress & Solitaire.
The underlying storylines in this movie are interesting to say the least. The new young Q is dismissive of the experienced Bond, Bond is sceptical of the abilities of the young Q.
Loads of dialogue about the old being outdated, past it, time marching on & new ways of doing things. This was in reference to Bond, M and the movie genre in general.
There is a big push to get rid of M, she is seen as having lost it & become incompetent. Things beyond her control are seen as her fault & she should fall on her sword & "retire". Similar things are said of Bond.
It seems to be a narrative directed at the franchise in general, kind of a justification of why they continue after 50 years.
The portrayal of women in the film harks back to the old days. There is the high class call girl, being used by the bad guy, terrified to stand up to him & get away. (did I mention Solitaire??) Her death is like a sport for the bad guy with the bonus of torturing Bond (of course he has slept with her). This supports the conservative view that "bad girls get what they deserve" in the end.
Bond & a bad guy are fighting on the roof of a moving train (as you do), his female colleague does not really have a clean shot but is instructed by M to "take the bloody shot". Of course she hits Bond & we next see her assigned to a desk job. The implications here are that a female spy would hesitate & because she hits Bond she has made a mistake that deserves demotion. Later we see her as the new Moneypenny, the new M's secretary, where she claims that some people (ie: her as a woman) are not suitable for field work.
Whatever the feck ever happened to girls can do anything??
As a bonus, the bad guy is gay and has an Oedipus complex with M. At one stage he propositions Bond. Bond knocks him back but makes an allusion to the fact that he has walked on the "wild side".
Bond kills him in the end.
And then there was the anonymous person sitting in our vicinity who kept dropping toxic farts all through the movie.
Not the best of times.
Here is a picture of Princess Daisy & Diego Pavlova proving that they can share space next to the Mama. Well for a little while at least.
Loving what I do. Not so keen on the farter.
Lush x
