Top 5 Bond Girls

The pandemic is seemingly going to be book-ended by No Time to Die‘s attempted release and its actual release. Astonishing then that in 18 months Cary Fukunaga never thought to edit down his bloated 163 minute movie, which is nearly a full hour longer than Quantum of Solace. Let us take a more abbreviated run thru the Bond greatest hits.

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5) Wei Lin

Michelle Yeoh’s turn as a Chinese super-spy in Tomorrow Never Dies feels underwritten, a complaint you could throw at almost anything during the Brosnan years. And yet, Yeoh’s combat skills and delightful insouciance, alongside her character’s almost incidental contacts with Bond as she pursues her own parallel adventure, elevate her to a more convincing version of Anya Amasova aka xXx in The Spy Who Loved Me as truly being Bond’s opposite number.

4) Mayday

Roald Dahl said he’d been briefed for screenwriting You Only Live Twice on having a good girl that died, a bad girl that died, and a good girl that lived. Grace Jones got to play a twist on that as physically imposing Mayday in A View to a Kill. Betrayed by Zorin, for whom she has caused much mayhem with glee, she sacrifices herself for the greater good, with a wordless exit glare.

3) Domino Derval

Claudine Auger’s Domino is very stylish in her bespoke black and white outfits, but is more than just a very pretty face. She mordantly undercuts Bond’s first attempts at seductive patter, and has her own personal reasons for falling in with his plans against her lover Largo, a character arc climaxing in some truly monumental brass from John Barry’s score when she saves Bond with the lethal use of a harpoon gun.

2) Pussy Galore

Three knockout English blondes play the Dahlian triptych of Bond girls in Goldfinger, and Honor Blackman is the one with the most substantial role, and the most absurd name. Blackman’s considerable swagger and judo skills would have been no surprise to anyone who’d seen her as Cathy Gale in The Avengers. In a film that drips great lines, she has an almost Bogart/Bacall spikiness with Connery, trading barbs while dressed elegantly.

1) Vesper Lynd

Eva Green’s woman from the Treasury set a high watermark for Bond girls that the Craig era has never managed to reach again despite its sincerest efforts. Their first meeting on the train to Montenegro is delicious. Over dinner the pair verbally dissect each other’s characters based on their first impressions of each other. Bond is cruel but Vesper hurts him back with interest, and it is this which makes Bond interested.

* It may seem odd for a fan of The Avengers not to have included Diana Rigg’s turn as Bond’s wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but her wit and athleticism as Emma Peel were so clinically stripped from Tracy Draco that I can only watch it with deep disappointment.

Any Other Business: Part LXX

As the title suggests, so forth.

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The Dolt Who Shouts Bravo

Before the pandemic ruined everything I taped a performance of Debussy’s La Mer from the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. And at the end, before the orchestra had had a chance to relax, before the music had had a chance to die away, and before the audience had had a chance to register its deep appreciation, some idiot bellowed BRA-VO! This really got my goat at the time. And it got Petroc Trelawny’s goat a few weeks ago when the dolt who shouts bravo appeared again at the Proms. I could have done without that BRA-VO!, muttered the good Trelawny, as, once again, the last notes of music were not given a chance to settle and fade away before this jack in a box was out of his seat shouting BRA-VO! I’ve been trying to parse what it is that so irks me about this fool, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is because his shout has nothing to do with the orchestra and everything to do with him. Sitting in a mass of people he cannot bear the thought of being lost in the thunder of group applause, he must assert his individuality by gazumping the audience, the music, and common decency by shouting before the time is right. He would no doubt dispute this, saying that he is so moved by the music that he simply must jump up and register his individual approval before everybody else in a packed Royal Albert Hall. I would dispute this disputation as bosh.

To be a party man is to be morally compromised

Fine Gael are currently spitting blood at why the Zappone saga just will not end. The answer is simple, but eludes them because it is so very simple. The saga will not end until someone has been punished for wrongdoing. But that would be to admit that there was wrongdoing, and that would be to admit that someone in Fine Gael has done wrong, which is not possible because then they would not be a member of Fine Gael but of another political party. And so on runs the logic of each party’s think-in at this time of year. To be a party man is to be morally compromised. I never engaged with being a football fan because I found exactly this kind of blind loyalty disgusting. A player from a rival team barely brushes one of your players, and there are cries of REF SEND HIM OFF! A player from your team breaks the leg of a rival player, and there are mutters of No, that was a fair tackle, shouldn’t be a red card, nothing deliberate in it, I didn’t see any foul. If you are not affiliated with either side you look at this carry-on and see utter brazen mind-blowing hypocrisy. And that is what drives ordinary people mad about politics: the endless defence of the indefensible. The unquestioning acceptance of orders from the party that black is white on Monday and black is black on Friday if that’s what the party thinks is now needed to gain or retain power. In its own way it’s not just a question of being morally compromised, it’s a return to a pre-Socratic way of thinking. I owe generosity and decency to my clique, to everyone else the devil take the hindmost. It is somewhat depressing to have arrived at this present moment in history and find the party political system has reversed the axial moment in history. Coveney is bleating about the perception of lobbying and the perception he lied, because she lobbied and he lied. Simon Harris is leaking like a sieve, as is Catherine Martin, but they are in the ha’penny place to Leo the Leak, who has now been caught out three times during the pandemic doing things that he or his flunkies have told everyone else not to do. One feels Harold Macmillan would have fired Coveney, Varadkar, Harris and C Martin by now, but Michael Martin apparently feels unable to do so because it would spark an election. Well, given that Varadkar scraped in on the 5th count in the last election that’s something of a suicide pact, so have at it. If someone isn’t fired for this,  this scandal won’t leave the newscycle.