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Sperglord Actual posted:Bond's marksmanship continues to strain plausibility. It is, in fact, essentially the only thing Book Bond is actually very good at.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 17:23 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:39 |
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"MY BLOOD GROUP IS F." Is this some sort of older blood type system that predates ABO, or what?
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 18:49 |
The_White_Crane posted:It is, in fact, essentially the only thing Book Bond is actually very good at.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 18:59 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Tiffany Case is so far the best Bond Girl in the books and honestly even more competent than Bond at everything but marksmanship. It's pretty much inevitable that Fleming is going to kill her off, isn't it?
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 19:21 |
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ulmont posted:"MY BLOOD GROUP IS F." It's a blood type for chimpanzees and cows. Maybe he is a chimp or cow.
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# ? Feb 4, 2019 19:30 |
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Quick, Tiffany! To the Bondulance! *spinning gun barrel transition*
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 00:08 |
I'm going to be in Boston until Saturday on a business trip, so I'm putting out another chapter to help tide you over. Chapter 20: Love And Sauce Béarnaise quote:Punctually at eight, the great reverberating efflatus of the Queen Elizabeth’s siren made the glass tremble in the skyscrapers and the tugs fussed the big ship out into midstream and nosed her round and, at a cautious five knots, she moved slowly down-river on the slack tide. I have a feeling getting all this italicizing right will be very annoying soon. The zig-zags and U-Boat packs were a fact of life of transatlantic crossings in World War II. The Battle of the Atlantic is classified as the longest military campaign of the war, from the time it started in 1939 until it ended in 1945. As an island nation cut off from Europe by the German occupation, the UK was reliant on ships and planes for supplies to keep the war going. Thousands of ships crossed back and forth, zig-zagging to avoid any kind of predictable route that could be intercepted, and engaging in well over 1000 battles and ship vs. ship encounters. Repainted in battleship gray, the RMS Queen Elizabeth was a valuable troop transport for her high speed. She carried over 750,000 troops during the war before entering her intended role as a passenger liner. quote:He picked up the telephone and asked for Miss Case. When she heard his voice she gave a theatrical groan. ‘The sailor hates the sea,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling sick already and we’re still in the river.’ Seriously. Every single line from Tiffany Case makes her out to be an incredibly interesting and engaging person who clearly gets up to a lot more action than just this book. It also makes the travesty that is the film adaptation even worse in how it treated her. quote:‘Just as well,’ said Bond. ‘Stay in your cabin and live on dramamine and champagne. I’ll be no good for two or three days. I’m going to get the doctor and the masseur from the Turkish bath and try and stick the bits together again. And anyway it won’t do any harm to stay out of sight for most of the voyage. It’s just conceivable they picked us up in New York.’ On the third day of the voyage, Bond and Tiffany make a date for cocktails in the Observation Lounge and dinner at the Veranda Grill. quote:‘What kind of a table’s this?’ she inquired sarcastically. ‘You ashamed of me or something? Here I put on the best those Hollywood pansies can dream up and you hide me away like I was Miss Rheingold 1914. I want to have myself some fun on this old paddleboat and you put me in a corner as if I was catching.’ Bond may drink a lot of whiskey, but I can see where the "vodka martini, shaken not stirred" came from. He downs tons of them and will even order them for other people without asking. In the era of the craft cocktail, I find them perfectly boring and okay drinks for getting drunk without much care. quote:‘Dear Diary,’ said the girl, ‘having wonderful time with handsome Englishman. Trouble is, he’s after my family jewels. What do I do? Yours truly puzzled.’ Then suddenly she leant over and put her hand on his. ‘Listen, you Bond person,’ she said. ‘I’m as happy as a cricket. I love being here. I love being with you. And I love this nice dark table where no one can see me holding your hand. Don’t mind my talk. I just can’t get over being so happy. Don’t mind my silly jokes, will you?’ Tiffany asks for Bond's real identity, and he finally admits to being a government agent (though he'll only go so far as "civil servant" rather than "secret agent") trying to shut down the smuggling ring. She asks him why he hasn't married and just sticks to having affairs. quote:‘I expect because I think I can handle life better on my own. Most marriages don’t add two people together. They subtract one from the other.’ Tiffany's backstory is even more captivating than the rest of the girls we've seen so far. Vesper was a girl manipulated into becoming a Soviet agent by torturing her boyfriend, Solitaire was a Haitian plantation girl brought to New York by a criminal, and Gala Brand was a no-nonsense cop who had no time for Bond's shenanigans. Tiffany has had a lovely life from day one of her existence, hosed by fate every step of the way, hardening her but turning her into a wisecracking professional criminal. Even in her early 20s, she can maintain a perfect poker face while backstabbing one of the most dangerous mobsters in America. The girl's hardcore. quote:She paused and smiled up at him. ‘Now it’s your turn again,’ she said. ‘Buy me another drink and then tell me what sort of a woman you think would add to you.’ I think Fleming was a big fan of Japan, despite the relationship he had with it in the war. Bond does indeed have a lot of fun there later. quote:‘I guess every girl would like to come home and find a hat on the hall table,’ said Tiffany moodily. ‘Trouble is I’ve never found the right sort of thing growing under the hat. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough or in the right places. You know how it is when you get in a groove. You get so that you’re quite glad not to look over the edges. In that way I’ve had it good with the Spangs. Always knew where the next meal was coming from. Put some money by. But a girl can’t have friends in that company. You either put up a notice saying “No Entry” or you’re apt to pick up a bad case of round heels. But I guess I’m fed up with being on my own. You know what the chorines say on Broadway? “It’s a lonesome wash without a man’s shirt in it”.’ And of course he just has to torpedo everything before it even starts. quote:Bond cursed himself. He put some money down on the bill and hurried after her. He caught up with her half way down the Promenade Deck. ‘Now listen, Tiffany,’ he began. If you recall Tiffany's childhood, she hasn't really had any kind of serious love in her life. Her first experience with sex was being gang raped as a teenager. She reacts to love with suspicion and fear, unwilling to trust if any man who seems attracted to her is just planning to use her for their own ends. It's important to note that Fleming is writing such a complex character in the 1950s, long before any serious modern feminist movement became mainstream and less than 40 years after the UK granted women the right to vote. While he may stumble and fail to live up to modern standards, Tiffany Case has been a very rounded and engaging female deuteragonist who can easily match wits with James Bond, the very picture of masculine fantasy. quote:She turned away from him and looked out of the window at the endless blue sea and at the handful of dipping gulls that were keeping company with their wonderfully prodigal ship. After a while she said: ‘You ever read Alice in Wonderland?’ I think following a hot bath or shower with a cold one is another Fleming quirk that he added to the character. I don't think I know anyone else who does it. quote:There was a knock on the door and his steward came in with a small tray which he placed on the table.
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 05:14 |
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chitoryu12 posted:He knew that nothing but the great step of physical love would cure these misunderstandings, but that words and time still had to be wasted. Of course the best way to make up for sticking your foot in your mouth is sticking your dick in the person you just upset. Thinking with the wrong head there Jimbo!
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# ? Feb 5, 2019 07:34 |
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On the other hand, Bond/Fleming takes time to think things like this:quote:Yes, he thought. It will be all right. That side of it. But was he prepared for the consequences? Once he had taken her by the hand it would be for ever. He would be in the role of the healer, the analyst, to whom the patient had transferred her love and trust on her way out of the illness. There would be no cruelty equal to dropping her hand once he had taken it in his. Was he ready for all that that meant in his life and his career? He realizes this isn't a girl he can have a casual fling with, not without hurting her, and that a relationship with her would take a lot of patience and work on his side. Another example of Bond being a softie deep down. He's besotted with her, probably because she's an equal to him in many ways. Something he seems to look for in a woman which has it's culmination in a few books with Tracy.
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 02:57 |
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Astroman posted:On the other hand, Bond/Fleming takes time to think things like this: The relation between Bond and Tiffany very much reminds me of the Travis McGee books; McGee also frequently gets involved with women who are trying to escape traumatic and dangerous situations, and ends up helping them to recover.
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 14:48 |
It’s very interesting because Fleming is a lot more “feminist” than many men of his period, but seems to be struggling to conflate that with his upbringing. Remember that he was 10 years old when British women gained the right to vote. He consistently writes strong and complex female characters who claw themselves out of adversity and provide serious help in defeating the bad guys, but are still secretly emotional and need the help of a man to solve their issues. It’s similar to his treatment of race. The same book will include tons of racist statements and slurs, but also depict both black villains and allies as strong and equal to the white men. If he had been born 60 or 70 years later, he’d likely have been pretty progressive in his social views. As it is, he’s almost got a cognitive dissonance between his actual experiences with women and racial minorities and the way he was raised to find himself superior as a white Englishman.
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# ? Feb 7, 2019 19:18 |
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chitoryu12 posted:It’s very interesting because Fleming is a lot more “feminist” than many men of his period, but seems to be struggling to conflate that with his upbringing. Remember that he was 10 years old when British women gained the right to vote. He consistently writes strong and complex female characters who claw themselves out of adversity and provide serious help in defeating the bad guys, but are still secretly emotional and need the help of a man to solve their issues. This is why I always believe in the currently unwoke and "objectively wrong" opinion that you have to take art, literature, and philosophy in the context of it's times. You can't drat our ancestors for not having modern perspectives and sensibilities, and throw them out because they aren't sufficiently progressive. You can instead enjoy stuff for what it was, and celebrate the moments when they managed to be a little ahead of their times. This debate is nothing new. One of the reasons for Purgatory in early Christian philosophy was they were reading guys like Plato and Cicero and thinking "Wow, these guys had good ideas and seemed morally right, it's too bad they never were introduced to the Judeo-Christian God and are probably in Hell and we can't like them. Hmm....what if there was another place their souls could end up..."
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# ? Feb 8, 2019 01:49 |
Chapter 23: The Job Comes Secondquote:It is an intoxicating moment in a love-affair when, for the first time, in a public place, in a restaurant or a theatre, the man puts his hand down and lays it on the thigh of the girl and when she slips her hand over his and presses the man’s hand against her. The two gestures say everything that can be said. All is agreed. All the pacts are signed. And there is a long minute of silence during which the blood sings. Betting pools on the ship's mileage were common in the days of passenger liners. You would try to guess how many miles the ship would travel each day, usually within 10 miles above or below the captain's own estimate. Roald Dahl (who shares a similar history as Fleming, being an author who worked for British intelligence in World War II) wrote a short story, "Dip in the Pool", about a desperate gambler who dives off the ship in the hopes of slowing it down and winning the bet, only to find that his sole witness is a dementia patient who isn't believed. quote:A steward offered the box of folded numbers to the richest-looking woman in the room and then handed up the piece of paper she had drawn to the auctioneer. The betting continues. Eventually a man calls out a 200 pound bet and Bond turns to look at him. quote:It was a biggish man. His face had the glistening, pasty appearance of a spat-out bullseye. Small, cold dark eyes were looking towards the auctioneer’s platform through motionless bifocals. All the man’s neck seemed to be at the back of his head. Sweat matted the curly black algae of his hair and now he took off his glasses and picked up a napkin and wiped the sweat off with a circular motion that started with the left side of the face and swirled round to the back of his head where his right hand took over and completed the circuit as far as the dripping nose. ‘Two hundred and ten,’ said someone. The big man’s chin wobbled and he opened his tight-buttoned mouth and said, ‘Two hundred and twenty’ in a level American voice. Bond asks Tiffany, but she doesn't recognize either of them. The fat man wins the auction with a £500 bet, then shocks the crowd by betting low. The weather is perfect and the ship is doing about 30 knots. Nothing would slow the ship down unless he knew something everyone else didn't. quote:Bond turned to Tiffany. ‘That was a queer business,’ he said. ‘Extraordinary thing to do. Sea’s as calm as glass.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘The only answer is that they know something.’ The matter was of no interest, anyway. ‘Someone’s told them something.’ He turned and looked carelessly at the two men and then let his eyes swing past and away from them. ‘They seem to be quite interested in us.’ Knowing Bond, that is a dangerous request. quote:And Bond bent down and put an arm round her thighs and picked her up and laid her gently on the floor.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 15:56 |
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Abbadabba was the nickname for a a guy named Otto Berman. He was Dutch Schultz's accountant, and was one of the four other people killed with him.
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 16:41 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Knowing Bond, that is a dangerous request. "Well alright, but I only have a .38 in my luggage..."
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 18:15 |
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He is such a bad secret agent
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# ? Feb 11, 2019 20:03 |
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quote:It is an intoxicating moment in a love-affair when, for the first time, in a public place, in a restaurant or a theatre, the man puts his hand down and lays it on the thigh of the girl and when she slips her hand over his and presses the man’s hand against her. The two gestures say everything that can be said. All is agreed. All the pacts are signed. And there is a long minute of silence during which the blood sings. quote:It was eleven o’clock and there was only a scattering of people left in the corners of the Veranda Grill. There was a soft sighing from the moonlit sea outside as the great liner scythed the black meadow of the Atlantic and, in the stern, only the slightest lope in her stride indicated a long soft swell, the slow, twelve-a-minute heart-beat of a sleeping ocean, to the two people sitting close together behind the pink-shaded light. The man knows how to turn a phrase!
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 02:21 |
Astroman posted:The man knows how to turn a phrase! Fleming's descriptions are downright intoxicating, especially if you drink as much as he did before reading.
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 04:42 |
Chapter 24: Death is So Permanentquote:The last thing Bond remembered before the telephone rang was Tiffany bending over him in bed and kissing him and saying, ‘You shouldn’t sleep on the heart-side, my treasure. It’s bad for the heart. It might stop beating. Turn over.’ And obediently he had turned and as the door clicked he was at once asleep again with her voice and the sigh of the Atlantic and the soft roll of the ship holding him in their arms. Bond calls Tiffany's room, lets it ring 4 times, then hangs up. Running up the corridor to her cabin, he finds her bag on the floor just inside the doorway, the contents scattered about as if it had been dropped. Bond stops to turn off his emotions and let his mind calculate. They probably would have taken Tiffany back to their cabin to work on her undisturbed, as they would need to interrogate her as to what she knew and who Bond was before killing her. Bond could alert the crew, but they'd never believe his story of a gangster kidnapping when it could just be a drunk lover's quarrel or someone trying to slow the ship down to win the Low Field bet. quote:The Low Field! Man overboard! The ship delayed! Bond rushes for his attache case. He removes the Beretta and fits it with a silencer as he starts planning and reading the ship's map that came with his ticket. The door is likely bolted and they could just toss Tiffany out the porthole if he tried to get the staff to open it peacefully. But the map says Wint and Kidd's room is right below him. quote:Bond shoved the gun into his waistband and wrenched one of his two portholes wide open. He thrust his shoulders through, relieved to find that there was at least an inch to spare. He craned down. Two dimly lit circles directly below him. How far? About eight feet. The night was still dead calm. No wind, and he was on the dark side of the ship. Would he be spotted from the flying bridge? Would one of their portholes be open? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0afkYn8vT8 quote:Bond put all his strength on the rope. Should hold. As he tied one end round the hinge of the porthole he glanced at his watch. Only twelve minutes had been wasted since he had read the cable. Had it been too long? He set his teeth and threw the rope out down the side of the ship and climbed out head foremost. Bond goes flying into the cabin through the porthole, somersaulting and landing in a crouch. His gun is up, waving between Wint and Kidd. quote:‘All right,’ said Bond, coming slowly to his full height. Bond is not only keeping Tiffany safe from any stray bullets, but also to keep her from witnessing whatever's about to go down. Though considering Tiffany, I'm sure she'd be eager to watch. quote:There was five yards between the two men and Bond reflected that if they could draw fast enough they had him bracketed. With men like these, even in the split second of his killing one of them, the other would have drawn and fired. While his own gun was silent, its threat was infinite. But with his first bullet, for a flash, the threat would be lifted from the other man. Wint stops, his gun barely raised, and drops it at Bond's command. At Bond's orders, he puts his hands over his head and walks to the chair to sit down. quote:He stood facing Bond and quite naturally he let his hands fall down to his sides. And the two hands, relaxed, swung naturally back, the right hand more than the left. And then suddenly, at the top of the back-swing, the right arm tautened and flashed forward and the throwing-knife bloomed from the tips of the fingers like a white flame. Bond pulls the knife out of his chest and tosses it out the porthole. It's not a bad wound, just nicked his rib. quote:Almost reluctantly he turned back and faced the shambles of the cabin. He looked it over thoughtfully and with an unconscious gesture he wiped his hands down his flanks. Then he carefully picked his way across the floor to the bathroom and said, ‘It’s me, Tiffany,’ in a tired, flat voice and opened the door. It's not outright stated, but I think there's an implication that Tiffany's kidnapping had given her some kind of flashback to her gang rape as a teenager. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5e5GjnyMHI This scene in the film is, uh, slightly different. quote:Bond gave her a reassuring smile and walked out and shut the door of the bathroom behind him and went about his business, doing everything with great deliberation and pausing before each move so as to examine its effect on the eyes and minds of the detectives who would come on board at Southampton. Bond covered everything really well here. A powder burn from a contact shot, using his own gun as the drop so the bullets and casings match for forensics, and dumping Kidd's body so it couldn't be investigated. quote:At all events, reflected Bond, it would stand up until the police arrived at the dock, and by that time he and Tiffany would be off the ship and away and the only trace of them in the cabin would be Bond’s Beretta, and that, like all other guns belonging to the Secret Service, had no numbers.
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 17:35 |
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Here's the poem Fleming is referencing here:quote:Brahma Very appropriate with those last words from the dead man. Fleming is actually a pretty decent writer.
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 18:39 |
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poisonpill posted:Here's the poem Fleming is referencing here: he really is, that passage climbing down the rope to the porthole was very well done.
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 19:45 |
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I was honestly expecting Bond to gently caress up and get himself tortured again.
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 21:31 |
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Uh, yes, by, uh, “accident”, right
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# ? Feb 12, 2019 21:34 |
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Selachian posted:The relation between Bond and Tiffany very much reminds me of the Travis McGee books; McGee also frequently gets involved with women who are trying to escape traumatic and dangerous situations, and ends up helping them to recover. Yeah, I'd noted the same thing. And McGee is at turns okay with this and caustic with himself over it. To some degree this is inherent to the logic of action and hardboiled detective stories, where the protagonist is a strong man of action and their role in life (agent, detective, etc) has vulnerable women regularly showing up on their doorstep. The fact that these women are almost always beautiful is pure convention, however.
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 00:41 |
It's very interesting to see the evolution of Bond from the page to the screen. The books are firmly pulp detective and adventure stories, but even from the first movie there's a focus on elaborate sets and advanced gadgetry (both for the villains and the heroes) that very quickly rises to camp. I'd be very interested in seeing a faithful adaptation of the books.
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 01:49 |
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Casino royale is decent
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 06:38 |
Chapter 25: ....The Pipeline Closesquote:There was now no scorpion living in the roots of the great thorn bush which stood at the junction of the three African states. The smuggler from the mines had nothing to occupy his mind except an endless column of Driver ants flowing along between the low walls which the Soldiers had built on both sides of the three-inch highway. Imagine being so racist that you hate ants because they're black. quote:A mile away in the low bush the big iron ear of the sound-detector had already stopped searching, and the operator, who had been softly calling the range to the group of three men beside the army truck, now said: ‘Thirty miles. Speed one-twenty. Height nine hundred.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65ZewIslLbA The Bofors is a big Bofors L/60 40mm anti-aircraft gun. It's fully automatic (albeit with a very slow rate of fire) fed by clips from the top. They were extremely common during World War II on both sides of the war and are still in use today among third world militaries. quote:Now they could hear the distant clatter in the sky. Bond gave a short laugh. ‘Helicopter,’ he said. ‘Nothing else makes that racket. Get ready to take the net down when he lands. We may have to give him a warning shot. Is the loud-hailer switched on?’ After the Queen Elizabeth landed in England, Bond was sent on a Canberra bomber down to Africa. He was called by M first for an update, where he surreptitiously let M know about his killing of Wint and Kidd so he could keep the Secret Service out of the investigation. MI6 has confirmed that "ABC" is Jack Spang under the alias of Rufus Saye and have tracked his movements to Africa. They suspect that he's closing off the diamond pipeline, killing everyone down the line. As for Tiffany Case, Bond sent her to his flat. He recommends against prosecuting her, since she's been such a big help after all. quote:The smuggler from the mines stood and waited, holding the fourth torch in his hand. There it was. Coming right across the moon. Hell of a noise as usual. That was another risk he’d be glad to get away from. As the smuggler starts to ask a question, he's cut off by Spang drawing a gun and shooting him. I guess he's not getting the raise he demanded. quote:‘Don’t move.’ The clanging voice came over the plain with the screeching echo of the amplifier. ‘You’re covered.’ There was the sound of an engine starting up. The old Bofors is a somewhat unusual weapon. It uses pedals for the triggers and is able to be continuously fed with clips by assistant gunners; while it only holds 4 rounds at a time in the magazine, a skilled team can keep up a high rate of fire. quote:‘Boompa’. The helicopter spirals down into the brush. Jack Spang, the boss of everything that Bond had only ever seen in person for a few minutes, is royally hosed. quote:Bond could imagine the scene in the narrow cockpit, the big man holding on with one hand and wrenching at the controls with the other as he watched the needle of the altimeter dip down through the hundreds. And there would be the red glare of terror in the eyes, and the hundred thousand pound pocketful of diamonds would be just so much deadweight, and the gun which had been a strong right arm since boyhood would be no comfort. With everything finished, Bond lights up a cigarette from the seat of the AA gun. Essentially by accident through his own impatience, he killed his way across America and back and destroyed an entire diamond smuggling operation and the gang that ran it. quote:Bond put up a hand and wiped it across his dripping forehead. He pushed back the damp lock of hair above the right eyebrow and the red blaze lit up the hard lean face and flickered in the tired eyes. And that's another one down. The film would ruin just about everything good about the book, turning one of the strongest Fleming women into a screeching moron, dialing up the camp to absurd levels, and replacing the American mobsters and anti-aircraft gun in the African brush with Blofeld and an oil rig. Unfortunately, we're inevitably forced to leave Tiffany Case behind for a new lover. Maybe one day someone can write a book about her. Our next book is From Russia With Love, the book that finally got Bond recognition in America thanks to its popularity with the president himself. We finally get a setting that virtually all of the thread readers will find exotic and one of the most surprising endings in the series. I think you'll all enjoy it.
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 15:51 |
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Diamonds do actually burn if they get hot enough, Ian. Loving this thread chitoryu, i read them all when i was a kid and it's surprising how clear all these lines still are in my head.
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 19:41 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Maybe one day someone can write a book about her. Well why not? They already brought back Pussy Galore, didn't they?
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 20:58 |
Sperglord Actual posted:Well why not? They already brought back Pussy Galore, didn't they? That's actually something I had thoughts about doing, along with possibly doing the later non-Fleming books. In 2015, Anthony Horowitz (the creator of the Alex Rider series) released Trigger Mortis, a book set two weeks after Goldfinger and showing the difficulties Bond and Pussy Galore have in trying to actually maintain their relationship. What makes it really interesting is that the opening chapter is taken mostly from Murder On Wheels, an unpublished treatment Fleming wrote for a canceled Bond TV series in the 1950s. Bond would be assigned to prevent SMERSH from assassinating Stirling Moss (a real British racing driver) by being trained as a racer himself to take out the Russian agent in a crash during the race.
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 22:56 |
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James bond is if nothing else extremely good at crashing cars
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# ? Feb 13, 2019 23:05 |
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She's not quite as snarky as Tiffany Case, but Modesty Blaise does the rear end-kicking hero thing pretty well, and with the same combination of surprisingly modern and cringingly backward bits.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 00:09 |
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Man this group did not even try and capture Spang. Though I am more shocked that Spang did not even try to bail on the Helicopter with a parachute.
MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Feb 14, 2019 |
# ? Feb 14, 2019 01:45 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:Man this group did not even try and capture Spang. Though I am more shocked that Spang did not even try to bail on the Helicopter with a parachute. It was spinning; good luck with that even if you are wearing a parachute at the time.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 08:24 |
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chitoru, how many books have you been through in this thread and how many Fleming books do you still have to do?
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 08:27 |
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Selachian posted:The relation between Bond and Tiffany very much reminds me of the Travis McGee books; McGee also frequently gets involved with women who are trying to escape traumatic and dangerous situations, and ends up helping them to recover. Or getting them gruesomely murdered; sometimes McGee seems to help, sometimes he just gets people killed for no good reasons. I always avoided the Fleming novels because of the films, the reputation of the author, and just a general consensus, but for all his faults at least Bond is good at a few things like killing people, gambling, taking a beating and being really lucky. And it seems that when Bond is mentally sneering at some woman he has to work with or underestimating them, he can be proven wrong and come to rely on the strengths he didn't see or outright ignored on first impressions. McGee never seems to have any talent other than taking a beating. And, frankly, seems positively stone age compared to a misogynistic snob like Bond who will, at least, realize he's wrong and change his behavior at times.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 09:00 |
Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:chitoru, how many books have you been through in this thread and how many Fleming books do you still have to do? Diamonds was the fourth book. There’s 10 books remaining if you include the short story collections. This, uh, will take a while.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 14:38 |
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I could barely bring myself to finish the first McGee book. Fleming seems to write Bond as a dumb misogynist, while MacDonald seems to be a dumb misogynist.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 16:44 |
From Russia With Love From Russia With Love was the most significantly rewritten book of any of Fleming's first drafts at the time. He wrote it as Diamonds was still being edited in January 1956 and feeling burnt out from spending so many years writing a new Bond book every time he flew down to Jamaica. This contributed to the book receiving its shocking and ambiguous ending in case he decided not to continue with the series. The book was based on Fleming's trip to Istanbul the previous year to cover an Interpol conference for The Sunday Times. Darko Kerim was modeled heavily on Nazim Kalkavan, an Oxford-educated ship owner he met there. A major part of the book also comes from the story of Eugene Karp, an American intelligence agent in Budapest who took the Orient Express to Paris with documents detailing compromised American spy networks in the Eastern bloc. Unfortunately for Karp, there were Soviet assassins on the train; the conductor was drugged, Karp killed, and his body thrown out as they passed through a tunnel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lRuXckWC_8 From Russia With Love was the second ever James Bond film and is generally regarded as one of the best. The success of Dr. No led to United Artists doubling the budget and giving Sean Connery a big bonus; adjusted for inflation, his pay for this film was around $1.275 million. The film is a relatively faithful adaptation of the book, with some of the biggest changes being the switch to SPECTRE as the villainous organization, additional action sequences after the Orient Express and a modification to the ending that better matches Fleming's first draft. The film added many of the conventions that are now expected for Bond films, from the title sequence with nude women dancing around to Bond's gadgets. It also acts as the film universe's introduction to the infamous Blofeld, albeit left unnamed and virtually unseen. And here we get the first ever Bond theme. Lionel Bart, the creator of Oliver!, was asked to compose it. Funny thing about Lionel Bart: despite being a world famous composer and one of the most influential figures in the history of British musical theatre, he never learned to read or write musical notation. The song was sung by Matt Monro, "The Man with the Golden Voice". He was one of the most popular British pop singers of the time, setting the trend of hiring prominent contemporary singers and bands to give more clout to the Bond themes.
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# ? Feb 14, 2019 16:57 |
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# ? Apr 28, 2024 03:39 |
Chapter 1: Roselandquote:The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead. Today, a Girard-Perregaux watch would cost as much as $15,000. quote:A blue and green dragon-fly flashed out from among the rose bushes at the end of the garden and hovered in mid-air a few inches above the base of the man’s spine. It had been attracted by the golden shimmer of the June sunshine on the ridge of fine blond hairs above the coccyx. A puff of breeze came off the sea. The tiny field of hairs bent gently. The dragon-fly darted nervously sideways and hung above the man’s left shoulder, looking down. The young grass below the man’s open mouth stirred. A large drop of sweat rolled down the side of the fleshy nose and dropped glittering into the grass. That was enough. The dragon-fly flashed away through the roses and over the jagged glass on top of the high garden wall. It might be good food, but it moved. The blonde man's time sunning himself in the villa garden is interrupted by the sound of a car approaching. The doorbell is the only thing to give him even a slight stir, opening his blue eyes for a quick second before relaxing again. quote:A young woman carrying a small string bag and dressed in a white cotton shirt and a short, unalluring blue skirt came through the glass door and strode mannishly across the glazed tiles and the stretch of lawn towards the naked man. A few yards away from him, she dropped her string bag on the grass and sat down and took off her cheap and rather dusty shoes. Then she stood up and unbuttoned her shirt and took it off and put it, neatly folded, beside the string bag. This girl has been his masseuse for two years now. As she stares at him and tries to wonder why she feels so strangely about his body, we get enough of a description that it makes me question Fleming's sexuality. quote:To take the small things first: his hair. She looked down at the round, smallish head on the sinewy neck. It was covered with tight red-gold curls that should have reminded her pleasantly of the formalized hair in the pictures she had seen of classical statues. But the curls were somehow too tight, too thickly pressed against each other and against the skull. They set her teeth on edge like fingernails against pile carpet. And the golden curls came down so low into the back of the neck–almost (she thought in professional terms) to the fifth cervical vertebra. And there they stopped abruptly in a straight line of small stiff golden hairs. Did, uh, did you use a model for this Ian? quote:The girl shifted her position and slowly worked down the right leg towards the Achilles tendon. When she came to it, she looked back up the fine body. Was her revulsion only physical? Was it the reddish colour of the sunburn on the naturally milk-white skin, the sort of roast meat look? Was it the texture of the skin itself, the deep, widely spaced pores in the satiny surface? The thickly scattered orange freckles on the shoulders? Or was it the sexuality of the man? The indifference of these splendid, insolently bulging muscles? Or was it spiritual–an animal instinct telling her that inside this wonderful body there was an evil person? I don't find it coincidental that this blonde, blue-eyed man bears such a resemblance to James Bond, either in musculature or his tendency to disappear and then come back covered in injuries. As she starts on his face, the telephone rings inside and the man shoots up onto one knee as if ready to sprint inside. A voice inside answers the phone and he's off and running before the servant is halfway through signaling him to come in. To avoid any perception that she might be spying, the masseuse dives into the pool. quote:Although it would have explained her instincts about the man whose body she massaged, it was as well for the girl’s peace of mind that she did not know who he was.
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# ? Feb 18, 2019 16:00 |