sean connery was the first instance that stands out to me growing up, where i realized that A-list actors can be really stupid. connery played some highly intelligent, moral and cultured characters (ex. Henry Jones Sr)... but in reality, he was a dumb ass with marketable voice and face. if you look at pictures of him when he was young, it's pretty obvious what he was bringing to the table.
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i remember reading that story about how he was approached for the LOTR trilogy to play gandalf as literally the first choice. he turned down 30 million per flick and 15% of box office profits because he "didn't understand it." he ended up losing out on nearly half a BILLION dollars. he says he read the book and saw the movies, but still doesn't understand them. that is literally what he said. personally, i think LOTR is highly accessible material. you could show it to a child and they are not going to be confused by it. but 70 year old sean connery was fuckin' baffled.
I remember my childhood friend her older brother had the James bond Nintendo game and they played it all the time and were obsessed with wall mining and headshots then after that it felt like the james bond franchise was dead because I never met or heard of anyone who cared about James bond since.
I have a (millennial) friend who is obsessed with James Bond. He’s seen every movie, many of them multiple times, and I think he’s also read all the books. We haven’t spoken in a year.
He’s a good guy and quite a character. He’s been one of my closest friends for over twenty years. I radicalized into a Marxist a few years ago but he hasn’t. He’s also trans and I’ve heard that he’s using she/her pronouns but he hasn’t actually told me this so I don’t know for sure. But he’s also pretty rich and has admitted that while capitalism sucks, he can’t support communism because it means concentration camps for everyone (in his mind).
That kind of spy movie is extinct now because it needed the Cold War as a backdrop. James Bond was really the only franchise that survived to this day, and it turned into much more of generic action thriller.
I don't think the series ever truly tried to adapt to modern audiences - Goldeneye did some winking to the audience about how dated the premise was after history ended and Casino Royale rode the ”gritty and realistic shaky cam” coattails of Bourne, but really it was the same it ever was.
Bond is a nostalgia act and the people who remember the days of Connery and Moore when the franchise was at its cultural peak are getting very old. Last year was the 60th anniversary of Dr. No, and I don't remember that being a big deal in the media at all. When Skyfall came out, the 50th anniversary got a lot more press, and all of this tells me the marketing ghouls don't feel like James Bond is worth the money to advertise.
I remember watching the terrible James Bond Jr. cartoon as a kid, and that was just a sad attempt at making a generic 90s cartoon with the characters, real ”fellow kids” energy and of course it was a flop. Unironically, I think Goldeneye on the N64 is more memorable to anyone under like 50 than any of the movies that have been released since the 90s.
The fact that Gone With The Wind has ever had any popularity at all is such a fucking travesty. From the very first opening scene (“puddin’ time!”) that movie is such a fucking disaster. And yes, my film buff mom was into it.
Parenti goes on a hilarious tangent about Out Of Africa in his lecture "Images Of Imperialism: Media, Myths, and Reality"... it's somewhere towards the middle/end when he's talking about colonial movies set in Africa.
Here's a link to an unofficial Spotify rehosting of the audio that I listened to it on:
Yeah I also listened to this one and it made me think about my mom and her yearning for foreign lands and Roberth Redford, she loved this movie and was in her own mind a leftist (liberal). Then again they all loved Kennedy too, Dynasty and Dallas were their favourite drama shows and Tintin the go to comic. All Western entertainment is mostly empire upholding, personally am pretty ready to burn my Donald Duck comics from my childhood because I can't unsee it anymore.
The entertainment we consume is absolutely not innocent.
Bond movies, Out of Africa, Gone With the Wind
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I used to enjoy them as a kid
Kill James Bond reminded me of some details I'd have preferred not to remember lol
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Sean Connery on hitting women:
https://youtu.be/mzXkbJwrN38?si=BFtT2i4MDkDzZ8GZ
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
sean connery was the first instance that stands out to me growing up, where i realized that A-list actors can be really stupid. connery played some highly intelligent, moral and cultured characters (ex. Henry Jones Sr)... but in reality, he was a dumb ass with marketable voice and face. if you look at pictures of him when he was young, it's pretty obvious what he was bringing to the table.
i remember reading that story about how he was approached for the LOTR trilogy to play gandalf as literally the first choice. he turned down 30 million per flick and 15% of box office profits because he "didn't understand it." he ended up losing out on nearly half a BILLION dollars. he says he read the book and saw the movies, but still doesn't understand them. that is literally what he said. personally, i think LOTR is highly accessible material. you could show it to a child and they are not going to be confused by it. but 70 year old sean connery was fuckin' baffled.
He mows down dozens of dudes just out of nowhere in the beginning of Goldeneye. I rewatched this a few years ago and was like…uh…
I remember my childhood friend her older brother had the James bond Nintendo game and they played it all the time and were obsessed with wall mining and headshots then after that it felt like the james bond franchise was dead because I never met or heard of anyone who cared about James bond since.
I have a (millennial) friend who is obsessed with James Bond. He’s seen every movie, many of them multiple times, and I think he’s also read all the books. We haven’t spoken in a year.
Sounds like a good year lol.
He’s a good guy and quite a character. He’s been one of my closest friends for over twenty years. I radicalized into a Marxist a few years ago but he hasn’t. He’s also trans and I’ve heard that he’s using she/her pronouns but he hasn’t actually told me this so I don’t know for sure. But he’s also pretty rich and has admitted that while capitalism sucks, he can’t support communism because it means concentration camps for everyone (in his mind).
That kind of spy movie is extinct now because it needed the Cold War as a backdrop. James Bond was really the only franchise that survived to this day, and it turned into much more of generic action thriller.
I don't think the series ever truly tried to adapt to modern audiences - Goldeneye did some winking to the audience about how dated the premise was after history ended and Casino Royale rode the ”gritty and realistic shaky cam” coattails of Bourne, but really it was the same it ever was.
Bond is a nostalgia act and the people who remember the days of Connery and Moore when the franchise was at its cultural peak are getting very old. Last year was the 60th anniversary of Dr. No, and I don't remember that being a big deal in the media at all. When Skyfall came out, the 50th anniversary got a lot more press, and all of this tells me the marketing ghouls don't feel like James Bond is worth the money to advertise.
I remember watching the terrible James Bond Jr. cartoon as a kid, and that was just a sad attempt at making a generic 90s cartoon with the characters, real ”fellow kids” energy and of course it was a flop. Unironically, I think Goldeneye on the N64 is more memorable to anyone under like 50 than any of the movies that have been released since the 90s.
I think the N64 GoldenEye game and Austin Powers are more memorable lmao
The fact that Gone With The Wind has ever had any popularity at all is such a fucking travesty. From the very first opening scene (“puddin’ time!”) that movie is such a fucking disaster. And yes, my film buff mom was into it.
Parenti goes on a hilarious tangent about Out Of Africa in his lecture "Images Of Imperialism: Media, Myths, and Reality"... it's somewhere towards the middle/end when he's talking about colonial movies set in Africa.
Here's a link to an unofficial Spotify rehosting of the audio that I listened to it on:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1QuISSFwyFQGlZKFJvdbwJ?si=R5_SPQkrRfexKN5TqsETKg
Yeah I also listened to this one and it made me think about my mom and her yearning for foreign lands and Roberth Redford, she loved this movie and was in her own mind a leftist (liberal). Then again they all loved Kennedy too, Dynasty and Dallas were their favourite drama shows and Tintin the go to comic. All Western entertainment is mostly empire upholding, personally am pretty ready to burn my Donald Duck comics from my childhood because I can't unsee it anymore.
The entertainment we consume is absolutely not innocent.