With his space business and passing resemblance to Thunderball’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Jeff Bezos could easily be mistaken for a Bond villain.
But the founder of Amazon is now in a real-life struggle against the family who control the rights to 007.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Barbara Broccoli believes that Amazon is run by “f—ing idiots” – and the feud is holding up the release of the next film in the franchise.
Mr Bezos’s corporation bought the rights to release any Bond film when it purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio for $6.5 billion in 2022.
But Ms Broccoli, 64, owns the copyright to Britain’s most famous secret agent and has the final say on script, casting and when a film can go into production.
The daughter of Hollywood legend Albert “Cubby” Broccoli is delaying any move to release another film, the Wall Street Journal reported, over concerns that Amazon is too focused on algorithm-driven “content”.
The producer of Bond movies is complaining about algorithm- driven content?
Rilly?
Nobody owns the copyright on an idea. Ms Broccolli can only own the copyright on a WORK.
I thought that the new Bond was going to be gay, black and Trans anyway. What other baggage could Amazon want to load onto the poor sod ?
Is there a difference between algorithm–driven and formulaic? One for the philosophers I think.
“The producer of Bond movies is complaining about algorithm- driven content?”
Ah…no… As far as this kind of thing can be disentangled…
Amazon, through MGM, has the rights to produce James Bond movies.
mrs. Stuck-Up has the rights to the actual “intellectual property”.
It depends on the actual license MGM has if mrs. Stuck-Up can actually grant other production companies the right to produce Bond movies.
But you can bet MGM has exclusive rights to production of Bond material.
mrs. Stuck-Up would be on the credit roll as “Executive Producer” at best, but more likely a just a tail-end mention in the blob of lawyerese as the actual copyright holder at the very end of the credit roll.
The license to kill Bond was already issued and executed. Time to live and let it die.
Presumably neither party wants the spectre of another expensive reboot that will be, for your eyeballs only, straight-to-Amazon-prime, but there is doubtless a quantum of solace for the billionaire for whom the world is not enough in the fact that a public spat, Dr. No vs. Octopussy if you will, might ensure the streaming income dies another day.
I’ll get me coat.
Quick poll. How many of you actually enjoy the Bond films?
I thought the first two – Dr No & From Russia With Love – were watchable but even at my tender years Goldfinger had parted from reality. They just became so predictable they weren’t worth watching. In a fit of boredom one night in the summer I put the latest one on. Where they kill him in the last 5 minutes & I just thought “Nah. There’ll be a next one.” And there is. They’ve two in the can, haven’t they?
I read all the Fleming novels. They weren’t bad if you were 13. But he was a fucking dreadful writer. Real pulp stuff. Isn’t there some back story to Casino Royale where Fleming claimed to draw on his wartime experience of being posted to Lisbon(? ) with MI6(?) & it all actually happened to someone else?
By 14 I’d graduated to Len Deighton which made more sense. The Harry Palmer* series, the plot line is the protagonist attempting to get his expense account paid. Other things occur in the novels are peripheral to that. Which sounds much more like working for the government than Aston Martins & flash tarts. And Deighton captures the settings so well. 60’s Tottenham Court Road & it’s adjoining streets were my world. I knew the little private clubs & coffee bars. And I even spent some time in West Berlin & crossed to the east through Checkpoint Charlie. It was a schizophrenic city. Germany was so much better when there were two of them, wasn’t it? Country I drive across now to get somewhere else, ensuring I’ve got a full gas tank. Praying not to have to stop.**
*Harry Palmer was a creation of the films. The character in the novels never had a name. It was always cover names.
** There’s an experience I had pretty well sums up Germany & Germans for me. Happened back in the ’70s. I was in Cologne, at the main station, waiting for a connection south to Kitzingen. It was going to a couple of hours or so, freezing cold winter night. So went looking for a bar. Went into this place, I can remember it being somewhat red. Seat covers & flock wall paper & wood. Couples, single men & two or threes sitting at tables. Murmur of conversation. Rather of reminiscent of those 30s pubs with car parks you’d see along the Western Avenue, those days. Suburbia personified. So I perch on a bar stall & order a beer. A few minutes & this screen unrolls itself from the ceiling & a projector starts showing extreme hardcore porn in black & white. Not a single person in the bar even glanced at it. After a few minutes the projector cut off & the screen rolled itself back up to the ceiling. And a while later, it did it again with exactly the same result. Utterly inexplicable. But isn’t that Germany?
bis, that sounds more Frankfurt than (pre-reunification) Cologne. Both places that most people have waited a couple of hours for a train to somewhere else.
Big difference.
In Cologne, the anecdote is usually that one stayed in the station for two hours, completely ignorant of the magnificent gothic cathedral a few paces outside the station.
In Frankfurt, the anecdote is that, having a couple of hours to kill, one left the station, only to walk into the scene straight from the pits of hell that has awaited one there for the whole of living memory, junkies, brothels, street prostitutes, etc.
No BiG. Definitely Cologne. I can remember the cathedral*. And rather the point. All I can remember of that dark winter’s night were virtually deserted streets, closed shops & the lights of this bar glowing possibly welcomingly. It was why it was so inexplicable. If it’d been Hamburg… But WTF in Cologne near the cathedral? Be like stumbling across a whorehouse in Frinton.
But Germany. There’s Brit blokes sortie over to DE for the FKKs. Not my sort of thing at all. Stark naked Romanian women in stilettos parading about fat middle aged Germans in bathrooms is definitely not my idea of erotic. But it’s a source of endless amusement. Being provincial, suburban Brits they have fuck all knowledge of the real world. The FKK label these clubs are hiding behind is friekorperkultur. The German nudist movement. It’s not unusual in the German countryside to have a straggle of Germans of assorted ages walk past you, totally naked apart from hiking boots with woolen socks & backpacks. “Gutten tag” is best deployed to at least the leaders. So if you see a sign reads Club FKK, odds on the best you’re going to find is a couple of naked grannies playing tennis. Inexplicable.
Oh & it’s often proudly claimed the RAF destroyed Cologne but intentionally left the cathedral intact as a testament to RAF bombing accuracy. It was in fact the aiming point.
In Frankfurt, the anecdote is that, having a couple of hours to kill, one left the station, only to walk into the scene straight from the pits of hell that has awaited one there for the whole of living memory, junkies, brothels, street prostitutes, etc.
I not sure if that won’t have improved Franfurt.
I went to Frankfurt once on a business trip for a couple of days and can’t remember anything about it. There were buildings I think. Nothing stuck in the mind.
I always laugh when the remoaners go on about how the City boys are all going to move to Frankfurt.
Both Frankfurt and Cologne are dumps.
The south side of the Main is not bad in Frankfurt but the city itself is crap.
>bloke in spain
December 21, 2024 at 12:45 pm
Quick poll. How many of you actually enjoy the Bond films?
I generally did through the Moore era as a young’un though as an adult I find the gadget-stuff too campy. I liked the Brosnan ones because I liked Brosnan. Casino Royale was good – largely because they *stayed away* from the gadgets – and then they went to shit after that. I haven’t even bothered with the last two.
If they went back to the early style – mostly serious with some colorful stuff – and stopped trying to cater to ‘the modern audience’ they could make a good movie. And they could do it no matter what color Bond’s skin was.
If they keep focusing on modern-audience, color of skin, and gadgets, well, we’re past all that.
I used to fly to Frankfurt regularly as a student in the late ‘80s & early ‘90s.
They had a strip club in the airport. Airside. As BiS said about his bar, it just seemed an utterly astonishing place to find such a thing.
Of course it possibly makes perfect commercial sense – lots of people on their own with an hour or two to kill. But I haven’t seen or heard of any other airport with one.
Bond – Octopussy is hilariously over the top (although the casual racism might be a bit much for modern audiences). But neither is surprising since the screenplay was written by the man who did the Flashman books.
Bond films are escapist nonsense and to be fair to them they don’t pretend, or at least didn’t if we are to believe the rumours, to be anything else. Good looking men for the women to gawk at, stunning actresses in all sorts of poses for the men to get excited, dry humour to prove they’re British, pantomime villain we can all dislike, lots of special effects to please the teenage boy crowd in between them getting hard-ons over the on screen women and good prevailing over evil. Ideal for wasting away a few hours over festive periods.
@BiND
It’s the utter predictability bores me. I reckon I could write the entire screen play after watching the first five minutes. At least half a dozen highly unlikely but convenient coincidences & load of bit part stunt actors playing targets for Bond to shoot. Done & dusted. And surely, isn’t a world famous secret agent a contradiction in terms? Why bother to give an agent a code name when the only person to use it is his superior?
It is worth reading Peter Fleming’s book about Brasil.
The first three Moore films I really enjoyed ( Spy Who Loved Me is a suerlative film ) . Moonraker rather jumped the shark ( Michel Lonsdale was great though ), the ones after that seemed to run too long and drag and with an aging Moore getting off with young girls, it all seemed a bit creepy.
Living Daylights I enjoyed, Licence to Kill was wrong on too many levels ( tried to be a cross between Miami Vice and some Schwarzeneggar flick ).
The Brosnan films I hated and have only ever watched them once ( Teri Hatcher notwithstanding ). Casino Royale was utterly brilliant, but after that they seriously lost their way. Keeping Judi Dench on was a massive error. SPECTRE was a particular disappointment and i also haven’t bothered with the latest one.
So there.
No one who’d watched Roger Moore being challengingly insipid in The Saint could ever take the Moore Bond seriously. One kept expecting the Daz advert to punctuate the action.
bloke in spain, Quick poll. How many of you actually enjoy the Bond films?
I’ve actually enjoyed them in my younger years..
But I’ve never seen them as more than an extension of… say… the Thunderbirds.. which you could get from BBC on granddad’s old telly if you aimed the Antenna *just* right from your attic room as a pre-teen.
Say…. on par with the Biggles books that landed in my lap, along with Enyd Blyton’s output. Adventure Stories.
Certainly better than the Amurrican stuff of the Rambo/Rocky era. More understated, more subtle humor, still very black/white good v/s evil.
And Q’s gadgets were pure gold.. You knew there’d be something insane that would need them…
More entertaining and worth the cash to see on a big screen than most of the “offerings” in a time where cinemas either rehashed old successes, or did pure Art House.
Much of this is crackingly awful. The parachute is cracking….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEU_A405zA
Say…. on par with the Biggles books that landed in my lap
Here’s a thing. When I was over clearing out my parents home I found some of my Biggles books in the loft. And having nothing better to do ( I was, after all, in England ) reread a few. The WW1 ones. They were surprisingly well written. Far beyond what one would expect from children’s books. Biggles is a three dimensional character with flaws & doubts. Thoroughly believable. I don’t think Fleming ever managed that with Bond. They’re “adventures” with no particular logic of why they’re occurring. The villains exist because the plot requires the villains.
Frankfurt(aM) Hbf is the only place I’ve ever seen a junkie shooting up in broad daylight. But I’ve led a sheltered life …
Bis
“ It’s the utter predictability bores me. I reckon I could write the entire screen play after watching the first five minutes.”
Isn’t that the case for a lot of films and TV. I was going to say nowadays but I suspect it’s always been the case, it’s just we’ve been around long enough to see them all.
I suppose with action films it’s inevitable, BiND The male lead’s costing 75 million so you can count on him being neither dead nor maimed outside of the last 10 minutes. So whatever situation the screen play’s got him in, it’s going to get him out of it.
Although, now with Bond, you can’t even count on the final 10 minutes. Not now they’re come up with Resurrection. Do you reckon they’re going to do a steal from Dr Who? Craig plays the next film in drag & blackface billed as Daniela. Shouldn’t the female lead will be overly happy. Unless they’ve contracted Jo Brand, of course.
Tim Worstall said:
“Much of this is crackingly awful. The parachute is cracking….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEU_A405zA
The little pre-credits bit is often better than the movie.
I was thinking how poor a medium film is while watching the Smiley film again recently. In the book you don’t get the denouement of who the mole is until the second to last chapter. In the film, Smiley’s wife Ann’s infidelity with Hayden is depicted whilst in the books it’s only Smiley’s suspicions. It’s Hayden’s ploy to divert Smiley’s suspicions about him being the mole. But since in the film it’s only Hayden gets closely inspected, he’s the one one suspects & one suspects the ploy. Or why are we watching it?
I suppose it’s because film isn’t a particularly dense information carrier compared to the printed word, so there isn’t space to examine the other suspects so closely. Not unless they wanted to add several more scenes & another 20 minutes. OK, I’ve read the novel & knew the ending. But if I’d been coming to the film afresh I’d have solved the puzzle 20 minutes before the end. Simply by subtraction. There’s no reason given to suspect any of the others.
Agatha Christie it ain’t.
There’s a nerd theory that James Bond is a Time Lord. Changes appearance, has been around forever, weird gadgets, indeterminate age…
My favourite Bond is Sterling Archer.
“Much of this is crackingly awful. The parachute is cracking….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaEU_A405zA”
Top Bond Nerd fact. The head of the Russian assassins was Michael Billington. He was down as first reserve Bond in case something happened to Moore.
He used to be in UFO and died roughly the same time as Ed Bishop of the same hospital acquired infection.
The music is good in SWLM – Marvin Hamlisch I believe.
The only thing I remember about Frankfurt is that fucking great illuminated Euro symbol.
As for Bond, the first two were good but I was a teenager at the time. Most of the rest I’ve only seen bits of occasionally. The original Casino Royale with David Niven was quite funny. That’s really the only way they could play it. I still fancy Joanna Pettet as Mata Bond.