Timothy Dalton was a Great James Bond

[ginscpy]

Heard Connery fell to his death while filming a movie in New Zealand.

Damn........

 

[slackjawed]

Heard Connery fell to his death while filming a movie in New Zealand.

Damn........

And here we see an example of how these internet hoaxes spread.......

 

[Synthaholic]

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes


Awesome!

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes - Roger Ebert's Journal

 

[ginscpy]

Heard Connery fell to his death while filming a movie in New Zealand.

Damn........

And here we see an example of how these internet hoaxes spread.......

I didnt read anything in the papers about it - would be front page news if legit.

Glad it was a hoax.

 

[Synthaholic]

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes


Awesome!

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes - Roger Ebert's Journal

Anybody watch this video?

 

[Harry Dresden]

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes


Awesome!

Top 50 James Bond moments in 007 minutes - Roger Ebert's Journal

Anybody watch this video?

 

[Zoom]

Personally, I like the newest version of Bond. He is uh, complicated.

 

[TruthSeeker56]

Sean Connery was the best James Bond.

Pierce Brosnan was the second-best James Bond.

All other Bond actors were pretenders.

End of story.

 

[Synthaholic]

Another one!


Why Timothy Dalton Is The Best Bond - One Room With A View

 

[NYcarbineer]

He's good in 'Penny Dreadful'.

 

[Harry Dresden]

Another one!


Why Timothy Dalton Is The Best Bond - One Room With A View

dam synth.....4 years later?....lol....

 

[Synthaholic]

He's good in 'Penny Dreadful'.

I've never seen him be bad, actually. He was even a hoot in 'Beautician And The Beast', with Fran Drescher.

 

[Synthaholic]

Another one!


Why Timothy Dalton Is The Best Bond - One Room With A View

dam synth.....4 years later?....lol....

Truth is timeless, Harry.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

He sucked.

Only good one was the orig.

.

I'm guessing only the OP thinks Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond, and that's ok.

I swear, none of you RWers can read.

Where have I claimed he was the best Bond?

Yeah trolls like him have horrible reading comprehension problems.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

Any opinions on the worst Bond?

Mine is George Lazenby.

It would be a tie between him and wooden Pierce Brosnan.Flip a coin on those two,you cant go wrong.I was so pissed when Brosnan took over fromr Dalton.

Dalton was 1o times better and I was elated when he took over the role from Roger Moore instead of Brosnan as it was being reported he would be next in line. Four films of Brosnan were so painful to sit through. Dalton was highly underrated as Bond and that was the worst thing to happen when mr wooden pierce brosnan took over from him.a travesty of justice.

 

[LA RAM FAN]

More evidence that, had he started a few years earlier and had more 007 movies under his belt, he would have contended as the best Bond ever. Unfortunately, legal problems plagued the studio during his time.

Timothy Dalton took over the part of James Bond at a time when the EON film series had veered far away from their literary source, and approached the role with the Ian Fleming novels and stories as the essence and foundation. In the press conference that officially introduced Timothy Dalton as the new James Bond, the actor noted that "I approached this project [the film The Living Daylights] with a sense of responsibility to the work of Ian Fleming."

He went on to discuss his interpretation of the Bond role further: "The essential quality of James Bond is a man who lives on the edge…he never knows when, at any moment, he might be killed. Therefore, I think some of the qualities we might associate with Bond, the qualities we´ve seen in this series of movies, the qualities that Ian Fleming wrote so well about, reflect that sense of danger in his own life…the qualities of the man are very much the qualities of someone who lives on the edge of his life." In the novel Moonraker, Fleming describes Bond´s "ambition to have as little as possible in his banking account when he was killed, as, when he was depressed, he knew he would be, before the statutory age of forty-five."

In Live and Let Die, Ian Fleming writes that there are times when a secret agent "takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death." Dalton captures this idea of somebody who lives in "the shadow of death." Within the parameters of the scripts he was given, in his two cinematic appearances as James Bond, Timothy Dalton brought a welcome course correction to the film series, porting the core essence of Ian Fleming´s immortal secret agent to the screen.

In Fleming´s writing, James Bond is vulnerable to the sheer tension that the danger of his job inspires. Fleming writes of this in "The Living Daylights," the short story that inspired the first Dalton 007 film, with Bond returning to the apartment in Berlin where he must assassinate a KGB sniper, and gives "a light hearted account of his day while an artery near his solar plexus began thumping gently as tension build up inside him like a watch-spring tightening."

While on the job and building up to a potentially deadly situation, Fleming´s Bond is a curt, focused professional. Dalton portrays this best in the introductory sections of The Living Daylights, often in smaller movements or gestures. As Bond and Saunders ("Head of Station V, Vienna") are about to step into the door of the building where 007 must kill the sniper, Dalton coolly glances both ways down the street, scanning for threats, and does the same briefly when they enter the ground floor room. "Turn off the lights," he almost snaps to Saunders, capturing some of the displeasure Bond feels in Fleming´s short story, where 007 notes the sight of Captain Paul Sender´s tie (the Saunders equivalent in the short story) and his "spirits, already low, sank another degree…He knew the type: backbone of the civil service; over-crammed and under-loved at Winchester…" His opinion of Saunders as an officious bureaucrat is revealed in Dalton´s contemptuous glance at him and curt tone as he counters Saunder´s assumption of ammunition type with "No, the steel-tipped. KGB snipers usually wear body armour."

Dalton shows the mild contempt through his clipped responses to Saunders, while allowing the buried coilsprings of tension to surface, in sometimes subtle ways. There is a small, almost imperceptible moment, where Dalton sits on the bed, preparing his sniper rifle, and his fingers slip as he loads the bullets into the rifle cartridge. Perhaps my favourite moment where Dalton portrays this subsurface tension is where he, sniper rifle in hand and ready for the kill, turns to Saunders, exhales distinctly, and quietly asks him to "Bring the chair." Compare that moment with Fleming´s Daylights: "Bond said, ‘Yes.´ He said it softly. The scent of the enemy, the need to take care, already had him by the nerves."

Fleming´s Bond takes brief refuge in sensual, carnal pleasures to help steel his nerves for the coming confrontation. In the beginning of the film version, which follows the basic plot of the short story, Dalton scans the crowd at a music recital, looking for the defector Koskov, and casually notes the "lovely girl with the cello." His expression while he says the line is a small, tight-lipped smile, an indication of the underlying tension as he gratefully takes in the beauty of Kara Milovy.

An underlying distaste and loathing for his profession also manifests in Fleming´s Bond stories, and this is another facet that Dalton brings to the screen. After Saunders expresses his anger at Bond´s commandeering of Koskov´s rescue and threatens to report to M that he deliberately missed shooting Kara, Dalton snaps back "Stuff my orders. I only kill professionals…Go ahead, tell him what you want. If he fires me, I´ll thank him for it." Dalton´s forceful delivery of this dialogue, tinged with an edge of cruelty and contempt, brings out James Bond´s uneasy relationship with the hard, soul-eroding surfaces of his double-o status.

Dalton is helped by similarities to some lines from the Fleming original: "‘Look, my friend," said Bond wearily, ‘"I´ve got to commit a murder tonight. Not you. Me. So be a good chap and stuff it, would you? You can tell Tanqueray anything you like when it´s over. Think I like this job? Having a Double-O number and so on? I´d be quite happy for you to get me sacked from the Double-O Section. Then I could settle down and make a snug nest of papers as an ordinary Staffer. Right?" (Sidenote: It´s amazingly easy to imagine Dalton delivering those lines exactly as written by Ian Fleming.)

Fleming´s Bond has an uneasy relationship with the killing that is a necessary part of the job of a double-o. In Chapter I of Goldfinger, Fleming details Bond´s self-reflection after completing a kill for Her Majesty´s Secret Service: "It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it." Though it is "his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon," James Bond finds himself running the death over and over in his head, a signal that a part of the secret agent is uncomfortable with executing his licence to kill. Dalton´s performance in the opening of The Living Daylights captures this weariness, this tense introspectiveness, and brings it out through his clipped, almost cynical line delivery, quietly bringing to the surface the Bond that has an inner struggle between professional killer and the regret that lingers in his soul.





Much more at the link.

For me,Connery and Moore are the only true James Bond actors.All the others are phony wanna be's. Yeah I know a lot of people dont like Moore but thats because of the direction the series started to take when he came onboard. as Dalton said in that link you provided earlier,he was offered the role back then when Diamonds are forever was made but he turned it down because he did not like the direction the series had taken and it started with that movie and really became more so under Moore.

Moore is my favorite Bond and then Connery second and thats because I grew up with Moore and never knew about Connery until many years later. Moore for me is my favorite because I loved his sarcasm.He would always crack jokes when his life was in danger and was mr calm all the time.Never panicked when things looked grim for him.

LIke in the fight with Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me he gets that metal attracting device to grab Jaws by his teeth and it picks him up in the air and he says to him while remaining calm without cracking a smile-"Hows that grab you?" You look at the one James Bond film he was in where the movie under him WAS serious Live and Let Die,where they stayed away from having so much comedy in it,he was great in that film.

As I said, Moore and Connery for me are the only real James Bond actors but Dalton is easily leaps and bounds a much better Bond that Brosnan.the guy could not act,was wooden as hell and you had the sense he was just there because he HAD to be there,that he really did not want to be there and was not enjoying what he was doing.Moore and Connery you could tell always enjoyed and had fun with it. Dalton should have remained as Bond for at least three more films after the two he did. should have been Dalton with four films as Bond and Brosnan with only two.that was an injustice.

 

[NYcarbineer]

He's good in 'Penny Dreadful'.

I've never seen him be bad, actually. He was even a hoot in 'Beautician And The Beast', with Fran Drescher.

If you look back on Dalton's career, a long career, you see he had a knack for getting into some very high quality movies, mostly of a historical nature, such as Mary Queen of Scots, Cromwell, The Lion in Winter, etc.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I was not favorably impressed with Mr. Dalton's performance in The Living Daylights. I had the sense that he couldn't decide whether he was supposed to be playing Sean Connery or Roger Moore, and he seemed to keep flip-flopping between rather poor impressions of each.

In License to Kill, he was much better. He finally got that he wasn't supposed to be playing Sean Connery, and he wasn't supposed to be playing Roger Moore; he was supposed to be playing James Bond. And here, he played the role spectacularly. It was a rather different role, than usual, for the character, not just the professional government agent out to do his job; but an angry, vengeful James Bond determined, at all costs, to take down the villain responsible for the maiming of his close friend and the rape and murder of that friend's new wife; and not caring how much else he had to bring down in order to do it.

Mr. Dalton, I think, is not my favorite actor to play the role, but I think that License to Kill is, in my view, one of the best—if the the best—out of all the James Bond movies.

I think that on the whole, Pierce Brosnan is my favorite of all the actors to play the role, though it seems that in his period, they were rather bereft of really good stories to put him in.

 

[Zander]

Anyone who has read Read Ian Fleming's books knows that they all sucked.

Watching movies is a poor substitute for reading.

 

[Synthaholic]

Maybe my favorite Bond Girl. From GoldenEye.