' ' Cinema Romantico: Why Isn't This Still A Movie? James Bond At Blades

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Why Isn't This Still A Movie? James Bond At Blades

Why Isn’t This Still A Movie? is a non-existent series in which Cinema Romantico spies a particular movie’s still and thinks that should have been/should be the movie instead...

Last week the Interwebs were alive with the sounds of Pierce Brosnan, ex-Agent 007, explaining in the latest issue of Total Film that even if he went all in on what his version of James Bond was meant to be he nonetheless came away lamenting that his version of James Bond was not allowed to go, as Daniel Craig’s version of James Bond has, “gritty.” {Insert sound of artillery shells hitting the beach at mention of “gritty”.} I was all set to use this as a springboard to a blog-ish dissertation, something like “Grittiness In Modern Cinema: Why People Who Think ‘It’s Just A Movie’ Want Every Movie To Be ‘Real’”, until I got a look at the “Die Another Day” still that Digital Spy, where I first read about the Total Film article, employed as visual accompaniment. It was this still……


To tell the truth, I hardly remember “Die Another Day”, not even The Invisible Car which is cited in the article and which should be pretty memorable. I did remember Madonna’s cameo, seen in the still, but that’s likely because I’m a pop diva devotee. I had forgotten that Ms. Ciccone played a fencing instructor aptly named Verity and I had forgotten this sequence at a fencing club nimbly called Blades where 007 gets in a swordfight with chief villain Gustav Graves. But never mind all that and just look at this still. That still? That still is a movie unto itself.

That still is not so much a James Bond movie as “Grand Hotel” re-imagined in a fencing club, a crisscrossing story of Gustav Graves, a cocky entrepreneur hiding the fact that he is broke, his assistant, Miranda Frost, seeking to strike out on her own as she gradually uncovers the truth about her boss’s financial predicament, and who falls for this mysterious James Bond, who never talks about work because he doesn’t “talk about work on the weekend” even if he seems oddly able to bypass any security system, and, of course, Verity, the fencing instructor, suicidal and thinking about sticking an épée in her heart, who falls for Bond even as he falls for Miranda, as they all fence, cajole, scheme, and occasionally retire to the veranda glimpsed through the window in the background for cocktails.

If we have to have “Star Wars” spinoffs why not toss off a few James Bond spinoffs too? Who wouldn’t have gone in for a Roger Moore Bond movie set entirely on Bond’s weekend off at ski chalet in St. Moritz since Roger Moore always played Bond like he was on vacation anyway? Who wouldn’t go in for a Daniel Craig Bond movie as “24 Hour Party People” re-imagined in the present day Berlin music club scene? Like George Costanza telling George Wendt “It’s enough with the bar already”, hey, Barbara Broccoli, it’s enough with stunt-laden secret intelligence already. It is time high time the martini stops being a mere interlude in Bond and starts being the overriding point. Bond always made time for play between his globe-trotting, of course, but perhaps it is time to stop trotting, just once, and stay put. It’s...James Bond At Blades.

Prototype James Bond At Blades poster

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I totally support this idea. My personal wish list would be a spin-off of "A View to a Kill" that is similar to "My Dinner with Andre." Picture it: Roger Moore at the ski chalet sitting by a fire drinking hot toddies and bantering with Grace Jones.

*jaime

Nick Prigge said...

I would green light this movie in a second. No, half-a-second.