Hacker Cinema
James Bond
జేమ్స్ బాండ్
2015 · Film · 133 min
Directed by Sai Kishore Macha
Nani is a trepid and fearful guy who works as a software engineer. Bullet is a mafia don in Dubai. Her mother doesn't know about Bullet's profession. Bullet is forced to come back to India when her mother falls ill. Her mother's last wish is to get Bullet married. That's when Nani falls in love at first sight with Bullet when she visits a temple wearing a traditional dress. Rest of the story is all about what happens when a coward like Nani marries a gangster girl without knowing her real profession.
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129 comments on Hacker News
The villain in every James Bond film thinks they're the hero.
Real life isn't a James Bond movie. The next guy in line is more belligerent than Putin
I will never financially support Amazon ever in my life time. Any product or service that is exclusive to Amazon is not worth it.
I have stopped going to movies that are made and published by MGM. I have no intent to watch thew new James Bond movies.
I keep thinking that I want to see a "parody" of "James Bond (007)" called "Chad Bond (00G)" that is effectively classic bond style, but American and not any more campy than the earlier bond films were. Just actually being a classic Bond style, instead of a "for modern audiences" reshaping.
> I wouldn't want someone who is learning what is acceptable and normal to come across this.
I think that is a very very long stretch.
We live in a world where ads - also ads specifically targeting children - give wrong impressions of what's acceptable, "normal" and reasonable. We see huge effects of this.
Meanwhile we are in a society where romantic movies with sudden kisses are bordering on "rape" because there wasn't any verbal clear consent.
All while we live in a society where most people had relatively easy access to porn online and offline and that by today's standards was incredibly sexist only a few years ago.
I really think that if you have a child young enough to not understand that is not okay and at the same time looks at porn out of their own free will you have a serious problem in first place.
The whole "sex is something secret and forbidden" does a lot more harm and can also be seen by both perpetrators and victims.
It's also why schools start earlier and earlier about those things. Before there would be first contact with pornography even if there were zero measures and no parenting.
The idea that young children just happen to come across these things and not instantly close or even watch them, and draw morale conclusions from them if there wasn't any age verification is ridiculous.
But even if it wasn't, if parenting is that bad the expectation shouldn't be that this is the one thing that protects them from pornography. Because then it might as well run all day off a DVD or something.
I really dislike the whole "Let's think of the most ridiculous specific scenarios to justify laws" to then say "And if only one child can be saved", when we as a society seem to be arguing about whether it is morally okay to take a dime from a company to guarantee for proper healthcare for children - and parents so they actually can do a good job. And when we don't look at stuff marketed to children. We have Pokemon being a children's version of cockfights and that is evidently okay. We have dozens of fast food chains normalizing living off fat and sugar. We buy children toy guns and show them shows where they learn it's about being the strongest.
We have a mental health pandemic. We teach children that the right thing to do with your life is working for a soulless company at a bullshit job to then get shitfaced in a bar. The stuff that lets suicides skyrocket.
At the same time we are worried that children see two consenting adults having sex.
I think at this point that's "normal", but I really don't think it should be.
Totally willing to change my opinion if anyone can come up with perpetrators or victims become that by having seen porn, and then show it makes sense to do age verification here but not for James Bond, Superhero Movies or McDonalds ads.
Art imitates life, except when it doesn’t accurately depict the lived reality and efforts of those who did the work and won the war, in which case it’s arguably closer to myth making. The original author of the James Bond series of books, for example, engaged in this kind of propaganda, arguably with good intentions and positive impact.
It’s relevant whether or not they were depicted in a movie because that is the context of this thread, because that is the topic of the fine article itself.
No, they are different things. Physicists of today are technically much better than those of 50 years ago; basketball players, soccer players, musicians, they are all better, on average, than their colleagues of decades ago, for obvious reasons.
I was imprecise when using the term "creativity"--what I wanted to say is that the human experience is varied but not infinite. How many more Mission Impossible, special agent, whatever, can be perceived as "original"? The interesting part of the James Bond movie is who is the next Bond, the costume, maybe the Bond-girl or the location, but the plot is of very little interest; it is all already watched.
I have seen 2,000 kidnappings in movies, one million people dying in all sorts of ways (and never seen a shooting irl), I don't know how many affairs, failed marriages, aliens coming and going I have watched; it becomes increasingly difficult over time to propose plots and ways of narrating that don't evoke a "already seen" feeling.
After the peplum films of the 1950s, there was a hiatus in terms of ancient Rome settings. Then came Gladiator, Rome, and Spartacus, which were exciting. Now, when you watch Gladiator 2, it feels like you've seen it before, at least to me. Maybe if they stopped making these films for a couple of decades, they would become novel again.
>. It's why James Bond stopped smoking in movies, and people smoke far less now.
Lol what, what makes you think it was caused by James Bond, not countless other anti smoking initiatives?
I like this scenario for a future James Bond movie. Bond has to have an AI in chat pretend to be him to stall the bad guys while he is sneaking around the back, but the state of the art Bond persona bot that Q gave him in its own hardware enclosure has been smashed up in the previous fight scene.
Bond has only minutes to train a strong enough AI model to pretend to be him and fool his targets long enough for him to gain entry to their impregnable fortress. Can he do it?!?
The Zuckerbot needs a quite, remote place to hang his skin to dry, or to plot whatever supervillain-y plots the guy is plotting. Probably Metaverse 2.0! With Superintelligence!! And why to tech billionaires all aim to look so much like the evil adversaries from James Bond movies?
A waste of his talent.
I know they can’t just stop making James Bond movies any more than Rowling can stop flagellating the corpse of Harry Potter, but boy I wish they would find a new angle on the franchise.
> I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance I find this odd to hear. Not because I think we should base our opinions on someone's appearance but because I thought it was a common belief that we shouldn't. Or rather that you would be committing a faux pas by making such a statement publicly. That people at least wanted to paint the image of themselves as upholding this virtue, despite it being clear that society operated under such biases.
Growing up (American millennial) it was routine to see public service announcements to tell people to not judge others by their appearance. It was the lesson of not just children shows but a frequent trope in popular movies. Such as James Bond entering a fancy resort looking like a homeless man, being treated as such by some staff, only for that staff member to be chastised for not treating him with the upmost respect. "Don't judge a book by its cover". "The ugly duckling".
Have things changed? Is this no longer a social taboo? To at least feign this virtue?
The dynamic duo found an angel investor, called the U.S. treasury.
I read that an "inspection" of Fort Knox is planned.
This is all very much like a James Bond movie, less James Bond.
Even back in the Broccoli years, Bond was garbage.
LOLWut ?! As of 2023, the James Bond film franchise has grossed over $7 billion globally at the box office. It's the sixth highest grossing film franchise in history. Your opinions of taste aside, Bond was anything but garbage otherwise it would never have lasted as long, or made as much money.
https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/James-Bond
After I read the article in the WSJ[1] I wrote a Bond spec script over break. The tricky thing with spec scripts based on other people's IP is getting the word out, because unsolicited submissions can put the recipient in a bind if some element of what you sent ends up – even accidentally – in the final product. It's silly, but it's the reality of screenwriting.
Fwiw I'm a former special operations veteran and an accomplished screenwriter. Here's my risk-mitigated pitch for HN's enjoyment.
==========
1. We want to preserve the Bond legacy. We also want to expand the world he inhabits. We can do both.
2. So much happens 'under the water line' of reality already. Psychological operations. Cyber warfare. Supply chain attacks. Transnational smuggling. There's literally gobs of espionage content that can be explored.
3. Ultimately bond is about heroes who preserve the realm when institutions fail. They become the cornerstone upon which the new institutions will be built.
4. We build a universe that predicts and reacts to our current reality, which, broadly, is about institutional failure. We are in a multipolar world now, and technology accelerates at the same rate as the danger. Can we demonstrate an escape route? A rallying cry for heroism in an unjust world?
5. We build a universe so rich with possibility that we can compartmentalize cleanly; for example, a show can live semi-independently of the film franchise.
6. Imagine a limited series about Chinese teenager working at a microchip factory in Wuxi. Alone, barely scraping by, forced labor. Then, over the course of a season, a Q Branch operative approachers her, recruits her, teaches her to smuggle out secrets, aides in her breathtaking escape when she’s caught. This characters
7. We build characters whose impact can be felt elsewhere. Q is later able to deactivate a missile - piloted by those smuggled microchips – fired at Bond in the big theatrical film.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/media/james-bond-movies-amazon-barbara-broccoli-0b04f0db
Barbara Broccoli thinks the people at Amazon are "fucking idiots":
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/james-bond-movies-amazon-barbara-broccoli-0b04f0db
Amazon has apparently solved the problem by pushing her out.
> The average age of boys being exposed to porn is about 13, and the bottom end of the bell curve is disturbing.
The bottom end of the bell curve is a distraction. I remember kids sneaking porno mags into their backpacks in middle school and charging kids dimes and nickles to take a look. I watched Indiana Jones, James Bond and other pulpy films that pile sex onto the narrative with no adult supervision. I read books with chapters dedicated to graphic sexual depictions and violent conflict before I turned 15.
The problem, as always, comes down to parenting. If you don't trust your child's own authority to select content that is healthy for them, then it's your responsibility to hire a babysitter or deliberately prevent them from using the internet. It's like complaining that your kid might cut off a finger because you gave them a jigsaw.
Some of these clues wouldn't be very good for a human playing. "007" for example isn't a very good clue for "laser", not only because something happening to be in one of several films about a character doesn't rise to the typical level of salience, but also because other words on-board like "shark" and "astronaut" even moreso meet the criterion of featuring prominently in James Bond movies, and "astronaut" appears to be a game-ending choice.
> Now it's really time to invent something else instead of keep doing the same stuff over and over. No matter how much the visitors of this website might downvote me :D
Be fine with the fact that you are not the target audience of the James Bond movies.
It wasn't a sudden change, it's been a gradual tendency towards them. James Bond was already 19 films by the turn of the century (or 20 if you include the other Casino Royale), King Kong and Star Trek both got to 6, Batman 8, Star Wars had just had the 4th, Friday the 13th had reached 9 films.
Even BttF itself was three films, and in the second one was parodying the tendency towards sequels with the holographic Jaws 19.
The way I see it, anti-Communist paranoia was so strong mid-century that a certain kind of self promotion propelled someone into CIA decision making. Agents could dose LSD to random workers, in public. Agents could take LSD on the job. The same government which tolerated that also needed to emphasize the importance of diplomacy to avoid a nuclear first strike. Even though Russian radar specialists avoided war by remaining calm, it’s true that global revolution was a widespread priority and tropical leaders who wanted favors tended not to be calm.
The objectives and contradictions are very different now. The first 14 James Bond movies were trying to avert a madman obsessed with triggering a nuclear first strike. The next 13 were not. The cool Russians who avoided hysteria devoted a generation of resources on real bad decisions made in Afghanistan. The only constant is how you’re treated if you get in the way of profit.
If an attractive story takes precedence over fact, then we will repeat the story of a James Bond film. Maybe the one with that bikini scene, bikinis are attractive after all.
> In the movies, spies are usually ripped hunks who carry lots of gadgets, like James Bond and Jason Bourne.
Neither James Bond nor Jason Bourne were really "ripped hunks." Maybe an argument could be made for Daniel Craig, but really most Bonds and Bourne were just kind of handsome, charming men who knew their way around a gun.
I don't know many producers, maybe with the exception of the Broccoli family who are producing James Bond :) I know some directors of photography, though, because their work is defines an aesthetic characteristic of movies. However I was/am a film buzz for a long time and don't think the layman will know any directors of photography.
Related it's also interesting that in German the directory of photography is only called a "Kameramann" (camera guy) while the English term emphasizes their "directing". And it's true. They are typically not the ones operating the camera but have operators for that like "focus pullers".
Sorry, I got carried a away with the topic a little bit :)
With things like James Bond and Star Trek. Is what is popular their original iterations or later ones? With Star Trek Movies yes, but the original series? Or something reasonably modern like TNG and DS9.
Same could be asked with James Bond, how well do all of the movies do? Or is it some specific pieces that still somewhat resonate.
Just sit and watch, while not doing anything else? Die Hard. At least once a year since it came out in 1988. Die Hard and pizza have been a Christmas Day tradition since it came out on VHS in 1989. (I saw it in the theater in 1988.)
Otherwise, if I am watching a movie more than once, it's wile I am doing something else. Working from home, I often have old science fiction B-movies -- both the MST3K versions and unriffed versions -- running in the background. Others I'll "watch" while doing something else are Animal House, Blues Brothers, the Lethal Weapon films, Patton, James Bond, and some others.
I feel this already spelled out in my previous post, and I feel strongly that you're not arguing in good faith here by calling my position impossible, but I'm content to try once more if only for readers. I can't stop you from replying but I won't be responding further to you.
James Bond movies typically treat all his enemies more or less the same. The only scene I can think of where someone actually explodes frames it as a pretty horrific affair. Characters in the movie and viewers alike are expected to have an uncomfortable reaction when the violence is extreme.
MIB doesn't do that. When a non-human is killed, whether or not they're even a hostile enemy (and they aren't always), there is no level of violence and gore that's off-limits. And it's a goddamn childrens' comedy. Do you think the movie would be the same if the aliens were replaced with humans? Or human-looking "elves"?
I believe you've entirely missed the point I was making, as there are only humans in James Bond films and they're mostly (entirely?) "bad" people.
To be fair you can make the same criticism of James Bond films or anything similar, with people gunned down wantonly for entertainment. More recently, Deadpool. Personally I'm usually unmoved about gratuitous violence.
This is a really lame James Bond movie!
I recognize that it is technically possible to cause mischief with these things, but they require access to substantial resources and are likely to get you arrested, all in the pursuit of basically nothing.
>This entire "zomg bad film + female character = woke mind virus!!11" is just silly.
Nobody is saying this. (Strong) Female main characters have been in many successful movies and video games before and nobody bat an eye, quite the contrary, they loved them: Sarah Connor - Terminator, Trinity - Matrix, Ripley - Aliens, Lara Croft - Tomb Raider, Blood Rayne, Salt, Black Widow, Lucy, Charlie's Angles, etc, I could go on and on, and I'm no movie/video games enthusiast to know all movies with female leads.
The big difference is that those females were always written as the main characters in their own stories from the start, whereas what Disney is doing, along with Gemini and other woke corporations, is they try to replace established male characters of beloved IPs with female leads in the worst way possible, by disrespecting the original character that made the franchise popular and shoehorning a fake Strong Girl Boss™ stereotype with no personality and no character arc in his place, and then when the movie inevitably flops they blame the CIS white male audience for being incels "unable to handle strong females".
Do you think people would go to see James Bond or Top Gun Maverick if they replaced the male lead with some female actress that's trendy right now? Or would they see Tomb Raider if they replaced Lara Croft with Tom Holland? You can try for diversity's sake of course, but the audience and bean counters might stop you.
There’s an excellent documentary series about things that go wrong with superyachts called James Bond.
Having seen that, I’d certainly invest in a pressure hull hangar if I were so inclined.
If you look at how most animals reproduce in the wild.
It is not pretty, at all.
There is force, and violence, and subjugation, and domination, biting, killing.
Reproduction is an ugly, ugly process.
A funny analogy with humans is Panda bears. Pandas are notoriously very hard to persuade to reproduce in captivity.
Now we are the panda bears.
We have put ourselves in captivity, built an entire society that drastically warps our behavior for several generations and now we are trying to sort of undo all that.
Those behaviors and those cultures took millennia to create. And we are going to sort of hit a light switch and toggle them back on?
Suspect the basics or love and romance have been completely forgotten. We have also actively denigrated male courtship rituals to the point that men have been discouraged from a wide range of behaviors we used to have.
Watching old James Bond movies. Wtf?
Men and women have to be trained and encouraged to reproduce and date.
We don’t necessarily naturally get along at all.
A big part of relationships used to come with external pressure. Men and women were poked and trained and prodded together by society.
Unless China plans to recreate all those missing societal pressures no idea how they will get men and women back together.
If you really want to do it, you basically just let everyone know directly and indirectly that you are all getting married at 20 and getting pregnant or you don’t get a house.
Something that extreme will be needed.
Suspect a single change like that: Literally, you cannot buy or own property without a baby or you get a significant substitute and the woman gets a dowry.
Humans are like panda bears: We do not mate in captivity the way we need to in order to create children.
China will have to bring all that back.
And if they want them to STAY married there will need to be a persistent social status imbalance where the man is higher social status or the woman won’t want anything to do with him.
How do you pull that off?
I certainly don't endorse a cavalier attitude towards firearms safely, but the reality is that the majority of people who are shot do survive. It is extremely rare for people to "turn limp" and fall to the ground. Real life isn't like a James Bond movie.
James Bond is odd because of how brazen and normalised the product placement is. I can't think of any other film or tv show of the size where branded products are so central to the theme
Eh, just a different kind of superhero imho. Like James Bond somehow never getting shot or Ironman making crazy tech, a movie hacker pulls off impossible feats, and people like that kind of thing.
I think it's pretty clear from context what happened... his son was in a car accident where he hit a bull with the car, the bull died, the car was damaged, and the son is fine. Yeah it's not a James Bond movie plot but I think that's kind of his point. Not every event needs to have an action-packed narrative. Sometimes things happen and we need to convey the state of things in a way that avoids causing a strong emotional action, because that would distract from dealing with the situation. It's pretty much the opposite of a movie, where the the goal (generally) is to provoke an emotional reaction, rather than convey information.
What happened with the bull?! The author undermines their thesis by leaving the audience hanging. The interesting bits have all been omitted. "James bond survived, foiled the villain's plot, and got the girl" is not a movie. I would hate to have to work or associate with someone who communicated like this.
Turkey is not a muslim turkic nation at all, Turkey is an ethnically diverse nation where almost all the population claims to be muslims but they all practice at different levels and the devote muslims are a small minority of the population. The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries, thus was influenced by western values for hundreds of years already. Then Atatürk happened, Turkey was formed as a nation with western ideals.
Also, an old hat factory which was used as a market is not something islamic. The mayor wasn't paddling any western values to islamists, the mayor was elected by the popular vote and he is still very popular. He does what the electorate demands and significant portion of the electorate demands art galleries.
I think you need to update your understanding of Turkey, it's very lacking and almost offensively shallow. Are you taking any red pills by any chance? Anyway, don't form your opinions from James Bond movies.
I don’t see where I pretend to be above spectacle: I highlighted a correlation (most movie with those things are not of my liking), not a prerequisite. I’m actually a big fan of James Bond movies, classic ones (very “shallow” by modern standards and still good imo) and new ones too, and there’s plenty of fighting and explosions in those.
I explained why to me it was a boring three hours in a very comfortable movie theatre armchair, so that you see why some people didn’t actually enjoy it as much as you did. On the masterpiece part, I’ll agree to disagree :)
We're close to peak population.
The idea we're going to run out of water is a James Bond movie, not reality.
Look at how productive China is compared to the US in growing calories. Then consider how little of China's land is fertile (12.6% arable vs 17.2% in the US).
China produces nearly 5x as many calories on 66% the arable land - nearly 6.7x more productive.
Then consider that India is FAR better suited for agriculture than the US, but is not considerably more productive.
We're not running out of food or water or solar radiation in our lifetimes.
> It's an adolescent fantasy that was mocked by the Austin Powers movies.
Why is that a negative? If it inspired other art, even as a parody, that makes it a valuable part of culture.
James Bond has inspired countless imitations, and has resonated with generations of people around the world. It doesn't need to be high art to be enjoyed. Everyone watching the movies or reading the books today will have a different perception of the material, in the same way we view art produced centuries ago. Art exists within the context of its period, and changing it to suit new generations produces strange results, completely disrespecting the author's intention.
Would you feel the same way if we started altering paintings someone considered offensive? That's as ridiculous as these changes.
Of course, this isn't new with books. Popular works go through many editions throughout history. We should be able to go back and read older editions, but sometimes these become harder to find, as new ones become more prevalent. Let's hope that won't be the case here.
James Bond is not great art.
It has female characters with names like Pussy Galore. It's an adolescent fantasy that was mocked by the Austin Powers movies.
The character Q is a cheap plot device for resolving plot issues easily once the author has painted himself into a corner. Once in said corner, you go back in time and insert some gadget invented by some prescient genius that Bond will never use again and probably should have used at some earlier point but didn't.
James Bond is dated and really no longer works well. He was originally a ladies man in a conservative era when women did not readily put out who saw so much action because his wife died and he was all heart broken over that and women knew he was the marrying kind and blah blah blah. Now that everyone goes on Tinder and casually hooks up with random strangers, there's nothing special about James Bond getting laid left, right and center.
It's juvenile, it's out of date, it's misogynistic and generally ridiculous. It does not need anyone handwringing about trying to preserve its original form like there's something sacred there.
Don't get me wrong, I certainly watch the movies. But, no, they are not high art that requires special protection for the benefit of future generations.
F22 shooting this down is definitely a sign of strength. If this were a James bond movie, a predator drone would have just hooked that balloon and brought it back intact.
What prevents China or anyone else to just launch dozens or hundreds of these?
This thread is absolutely fantastic. It's hitting all the obscure spy thrillers. First sandbaggers now Len Deightons game set match. What next, Mr. Palfrey of Westminster? ?
That said, you're watching James Bond wrong. Watch it as a porno. There's a quick excuse for a plot, then you see the "spy" doing all sorts of cool and exotic stuff.
Same thing with movies like top gun, ignore the story and just watch it as an excluse to fly $50M planes near the edge.
This is why I despise movies like James Bond and Mission Impossible and love the movie The Lives of Others. James Bond would be the worst spy ever and is unlike any spy I know. Why should we glamourize those who spy on us?
Any sort of underwater demolitions is pretty much the opposite of "trivial". How much diving have you done? The real world isn't like a James Bond movie.
It's just ridiculous to claim that the US somehow sabotaged the pipeline to help LNG gas' future potential. There is infinite demand for LNG today, hugely unmet demand. It will take a least a decade of increased infrastructure and ships to get even close to meeting current European demand for natural gas. The world is not a James Bond movie. Obviously everyone is doing things to help Ukraine today. We are giving them billions in weapons, plus training, giving them money and intelligence, sending our advisors there. Lots of countries have given up greenhouse gas reductions temporarily hopefully, to handle the current emergency situation. The US govt wishes it had all this conspiratorial influence you imagine. The US has tried to talk the europeans out of depending on russian gas for decades. Of course we want all the customers we can find, but there's no shortage of customers! Geeze. The world loves oil and gas so much you don't need to sabotage alternatives to get more customers.
> subjective
"Corny dialog" is rarely a subjective observation. It's either corny or it isn't.
The rare exception might be when the dialog is deliberately corny for stylistic reasons or some kind of self-referencing theatrics. Corny dialog is easily identified... "I've got a baaad feeling about this".
> How could you possibly trust that statement
Because the statement doesn't sit in isolation. It's from a longer professional review where the show is deconstructed and analyzed. The statements are qualified, unlike user reviews.
Of course there are subjective aspects too, but there are also strongly bonded criticisms across reviews that can't be dismissed with "subjective" counter-claims. If not universal, then near-universal qualities can be found.
Take the recent James Bond movie. Even the good reviews were noting the "woke" themes. They specifically hired a writer to help inject those themes into the movie, such as anti-toxic masculinity etc. It turns out many people don't have much love for injected woke themes forced into their fictional movies. Many people wanted escapism from 007, not a social re-education lecture or some awkward comment about current world events.
CA literally just passed the bill you want.
That said, the problem is that sites don’t know for sure who is over and who is under 13. And more robust age proofs have lots of problems: https://www.techdirt.com/2022/06/29/california-legislators-seek-to-burn-down-the-internet-for-the-children/
Even if they did, many parents strongly disagree about what content is age-appropriate. When I was growing up my mom was shocked that other 10yo were allowed to view James Bond films.
So while you might be able to set some baselines, parents still need to do a lot of the legwork to make sure kids are ingesting media that’s aligned with their values. This was true on older media and it’s still true today.
I work in interdiction/interception (a long time now), yes people are way over paranoid about this type of stuff. Media makes so much sound like we're some james bond movie..
I believe a few of the James Bond movies meet those criteria /j.
> They can't tell the difference between a great film and a terrible film - they walk away thinking "I enjoyed that".
If I walk away and think "I enjoyed that" then by all measures that was a great film. A great film will please most of not all of its target audience. When a film is shown in Cannes the target audience is cinema enthusiasts who seek deeper meaning and interesting new ways to use the medium. When a new James Bond is shown, the target audience is anyone who enjoyed the trailer or the spy film genre enough to decide they want to see the movie.
Film critics like to be snobs about what is and isn't "real cinema", but that's not about superior taste. They may have a different taste, but that taste is no better or worse than anyone else's.
If 99% of people don't like what you like and therefore have horrible taste, maybe the problem isn't everyone else.
This "implication" of what the fake news propaganda articles are trying to say, is that there is some WMD superweapon being developered by Ukraine to genetically target Russians. Like that disease in the new James Bond movie.
That is the part that is clearly the fake propaganda. The US and Ukraine are not working together to design a disease meant to genetically target Russians, like from the movie James Bond.
Right out of a James Bond movie.
Yup.
Crab and lobster porn isn't really a thing, while Octopoda have a significant, lasting and ancient presence in Japanese lore, James Bond movies and whatnot.
... than your typical James Bond flick...
Ironic given the male lead.
Great film though.
There has been some shift in cultural perception, true (even though "Day of the condor" is even from 1975)
- but the official picture and the ones painted by a common movie, is still a very different one, from reality. I mean take James Bond for instance. Glorification of the noble spycraft par excellence. (but I have not watched the latest ones, maybe there was change, too?)
And I have no first hand experience with US school education, but here in germany we kind of were educated about our intelligence agencies(and about the ones of the US) in a very friendly way. One that does not match reality.
Foundation. Wheel of time. Lord of the rings. Marvel movies. James Bond. You’re right, lots of other media that drives book sales.
7 habits, win friends and influence people. There’s a decent amount of examples.
It feels like there is the premise of an incredible TV show in there somewhere.
Unfortunately, at first glance, there doesn't appear to be much overlap between the cultures of Silicon Valley and Westminster, which we might call "two nations divided by a common language", or the difference between "move fast and break things" and "move slowly and break things".
Having said that, if the Dominic Cummings plan of a "British ARPA" goes ahead, that could prove to be a comedy gold mine for some good satirists. Such a TV series would only need to take some inspiration from "The IT Crowd" and the "Q" character from James Bond, and it would become an instant hit.
Well yeah, they don't stop someone advertising a product in the main content. If they did, then James Bond movies would be a lot shorter.
Isn’t better to drive slower on scenic roads to have more time to observe the scene?
Or do you think there is an helicopter filming you from above like James Bond movies?
"Also, smart people tend to do something with their life,"
Dunno. The Unabomber had probably a higher IQ than most people on hackernews.
And on a side note: who cares about James bond? It is always the villain who makes or breaks a James bond movie. I am actually sad that Jet Lee never played the villain.
> like a record label is manipulating me - using my sexuality as lever to increase their stream count.
You mean the same way James Bond movies are "manipulating" you to buy tickets?
It makes for an interesting world.
For millions (billions?) James Bond movies are kinda cool, these sort of things help make these movie work.
We'll all be living in the same printed house all eating the same food soon enough, lets not get there too soon.
If you think about it, it really shouldn't be surprising. James Bond and other spy movies have convinced us that the government just has endless amounts of money to throw at hard problems. But they don't. Even though the numbers involved are staggering, government departments fight tooth and nail for allocations.
The cash you do get, you have to spend most of it on things that make your department look good rather than what will make you better at your job. Then there's plain ole' fraud, waste and abuse, trying to instill an ethic of frugality into someone who is in charge of more taxpayer money a month than they make in a year, well a lot of times that's just going to fall on deaf ears.
Spy departments derive effectiveness mostly from having the ability to skirt the law rather than training or having better equipment. The government does have people that really know what they're doing. But their time and attention is limited, again mostly to projects that make their departments look good.
As a result it's much easier than you'd think to get away with a lot more than you would think you could.
Could be the plot for the next James Bond movie, I think they have had movies where the villian is trying to corner the market in oil, gold, water, media, space, etc. Maybe cornering the market in frozen tundra could be the next villainous objective.
A non nuclear submarine can be parked and carried around inside a midsize container/cargo ship for example. An operation for a small well financed, though probably well less than a billion (otherwise it is just cheaper to build a sub yourself) team/organization.
>Real life is not a James Bond movie.
True. For example James Bond's jetpack was much more inferior to that https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/8/4/20753648/jet-powered-hoverboard-english-channel-crossing-franky-zapata-success
Interesting! I spend quite some time sim-racing, so I know some track layouts very well. I might try and use them as a memory palace.
As a trial, I'll map all James Bond movies in chronological order to the track while I drive through it and see whether I'll be able to recall them more easily than I can now.
That is the enduring appeal of James Bond movies - the comforting fantasy that the spy agencies are competent
My parents immigrated (not to the US) in their 30s and they were amazed at how many locals had never been to the postcard spots.
I work across from the famous Sugar Loaf mountain with the trolley between the mountains, maybe familiar to some from James Bond movies. It's really really really expensive to go there.
By accepting that event cinema is the only thing the movie industry has left in its favour right now. As they say in the article itself, many people watch maybe four films a year, and usually stick to those with the highest profile.
So I think that's really what film as a medium is going to be in future. It's going to be the place you watch the next Avengers or Star Wars or James Bond or what not. The place for big picture films with million dollar budgets and rosters brimming with A listers, and nothing else beneath that.
Or okay, maybe indie cinema may exist on the fringes or something. But fact is, the industry has probably got to accept that low/medium budget films are pretty much history, and they've been replaced entirely by streaming services and sites like YouTube.
Still, it's not all bad news. No, if you want bad news, that's probably the future of television. That's on the way out right now, is probably going to completely supplanted by streaming services like Netflix in future, and as a format has pretty much no advantages over the internet whatsoever. Seriously, could you imagine trying to selling the experience of watching TV in a society that already has the internet? You couldn't. It objectively be a worse solution for most people.
So yeah, I think film is probably gonna be reduced a bunch of blockbuster films by large studios mixed with some arthouse works, and TV is probably just going to be completely replaced by streaming services and video sharing platforms.
I do not think that we should operate our world as if it were a James Bond movie.
It shows a fundamental moral deficiency that effectively makes civilization into a myth. And regardless of morals, it's an inherently insecure paradigm.
This article feels misguided because it seems to start from the assumption that your social media presence is supposed to be a whole representation of your life. It's like saying James Bond movies fail because they don't show him going to the bathroom.
They're not failing, it just isn't their intent. If you're contemplating suicide, perhaps your distant aunts and people you last saw in high school are not the appropriate lifeline.
Isn't blockchain/cryptocurrency popular enough that it should be in summer blockbusters / James Bond / Avengers movies alreadh?
it doesn't necessarily make them right either; there's always a tradeoff. when I was a kid, I was allowed to spend as much time as I wanted on the computer (I dunno why lol), but I could only watch thirty minutes of TV/movies per day and my parents refused to get a console. my parents were always very conservative with what I was allowed to watch, so what little I could watch was 2-3 years behind what my median classmate was watching in maturity level. when I was 8/9, all my classmates were obsessed with james bond. I asked my dad when I could watch james bond too and he said "maybe when you're 14". I know my parents had good intentions, but it meant that I couldn't really participate in most of the conversations my classmates had at school. I essentially lived in a culture shifted back several years. it was extremely isolating. on the other hand, I did get real good with computers and make a good living from coding now.
What are the odds of every James Bond movie getting all the tech stuff ludicrously wrong and, yet, getting all the spy parts perfectly right?
> You could also store bitcoins, or bricks of drugs, or all sorts of things that carry value in the current climate
Thats true and every investor, even a disaster investor, should diversify. Except for cryptocurrency...they are barely useful during peacetime. In a disaster, people will want something they can put in their hands.
Most of your responses seem to suggest that there are people who are so crazy about gold that it is all they own. Only in James Bond movies...
> * is actually a 'clip' rather than a trailer
To me that is almost ideal. Doesn't reveal the entire movie, but gives you an impression of what the movie is like.
James Bond always open with this action scene that isn't really relevant for the plot. Makes for great promotional clip, as it really shows off what the movie is about, but not really any of the movie.
The best thing about this approach is that replacment computers can use related but distinct versions of their ancestor's names.
For instance, my old server was called TheQ (i.e. 'Q' from James Bond) and the new one is named Judy, because Judy Dench plays 'M' in the most recent films. It's convoluted, but it's neat to have what is effectively your own mythology.
Ever wondered why brands create long emotional videos when consumers are not even interested to watch a 20 second ad? Ever wondered how celebrity interviews are out just before the release of their movies? How much did Heineken pay to make James Bond drink its beer instead of a Martini?
I agree. I enjoy the new ones, but they're missing exactly what you described. It's what made a James Bond movie unique.
I'd wager that's not how the bulk of whatever was used there was imported, but I may have seen too many James Bond movies.
When I've been telling everyone that James Bond and other similar movies serve the same role as military parades in Soviet-block countries, and heavily scripted by the military, they told me that this is another conspiracy theory and I must be plainly wrong.
I wasn't.
It's far closer to Austin Powers. You can't parody suave James Bond with a no class street thug who spends most of the film in training, which Bond has never done on film. Or moping about his mom, Bond doesn't even have have a mom. Bond works for the British government, and he works alone.
And a parody is supposed to be funny.
Lowest hanging fruit would suggest James Bond? The insane gadgetry, the dedication to Britishness, the utterly bonkers plot of the villain and "getting the girl" at the end were all mainstays of that type of film. Albeit turned up to 11 and taken in, as mentioned above, farcical directions.
This sounds like something straight out of a James Bond movie.
"One decision that hasn’t aged terribly well is the way the game lets Max score with progressively hotter secretaries as he cracks more cases."
Watched a James Bond movie lately?
Modern multi-blade drones do this very thing : attitude, altitude and heading hold. They are incredibly stable, and even have a "return home" feature, obstacle avoidance, and more. Very sophisticated.
Could this be adapted to a full-size craft? Possibly, but that's a serious engineering task that would involve a lot of development and testing.
For that reason, I think it is exceeding unlikely to think a 78 year old man, ill with cancer, would invent and equip a 3-axis fly-by-wire guidance control/autopilot system for a helicopter so he could rappel down and hide a treasure while a helicopter hovered overhead. Then after securing the treasure, he would presumably climb the rope to re-enter the craft, disable the attitude hold then fly away.
This sort of thing is best left to the James Bond films.
Movies are, in my humble opinion, not the best "standard" yard stick to measure fluency. First thing is that films most often use quite limited vocabulary, and it's wildly different vocabulary than, say, found in newspapers, technical writing or in business language. Moreover films present a wide variety of communication styles. It's much easier to understand James Bond than South Park, because humour is actually quite high and demanding register of speech.
There aren't that many film series or sets where you can easily jump in and out of attentiveness, like you can with a TV show once you're familiar with the characters. I do remember having the James Bond marathons on TV all day, but anything less formulaic means having to make a substantial investment of attention when starting a new "chunk".
> it's really hard to outdo any previous movie they release
This is exactly it. Each epic battle scene is so over the top it's almost impossible to come up with something even more epic and over the top. Too bad they don't realize a good story doesn't need that. I thought the older James Bond movies had it figured out.
Just a feeling. It's really very hard to get major brands like Nike as advertisers on board. Why: they want a perfect environment. A positive one and a premium brand which fits to them and a great audience. And not to forget a HUGE reach. Once you have all of these PLUS contacts to the right media agencies then you get good deals based on CPM. The less you as a publisher can offer the more you end with CPC or even crappy CPA deals where you never know if the intermediate evades your commissions.
Just look around, usually advertisers pair themselves with publishers with a similar brand awareness and quality. Eg Nike or BMW won't advertise on Reddit or Facebbok because there would be a too strong asymmetry between advertisers' and publishers' brands. Nike and BMW would rather place and position themselves to eg the next James Bond movie from Sony (=> similar brand perception).
Reddit is the typical publisher that is avoided by a lot of major advertisers. The brand and the audience is maybe too heterogenous and inconsistent. While a sub like Photshopbattles might be positive and funny many other subs like Gonewild (which is huge btw) give Reddit a mixed perception. However, doing a deal with Viglink shows that they must have tried everything before (to get deals with major brands) but finally resigned and go now the affiliate path.
There is one good thing about affiliate marketing though: ad blockers do not harm your business.
Old James Bond movies at the very least come close to that. I was rather shocked watching over on a plane recently.
Whatever the psychological issues he had, I suspect they were coupled with the so frequent movie plot of "I'm right and the stupid FBI doesn't believe me". So many movies portray this image of the clueless law enforcement agencies and the guy who, although has never heard of intelligence analysis and is mentally unstable, somehow ends up being right and everyone else ends up appologizing to him, becomes a hero, and the President honors him.
It sounds absurd but it's exactly what's happened here, down to the attitude of the FBI agents. Some people watch a James Bond movie and start acting like him, some even apply for a job in the intelligence domain (of course I suspect their names are diligently saved and they're prohibited from ever working in such an unforgiving field).
What irritates me isn't that an outsider took it upon himself to right a wrong by taking as a hobby something people do for a living and many die while doing so... what irritates me is that: Of course this would happen, what would one expect? The problem is how was this allowed to happen. No fail-safe mechanisms to make it impossible to go directly from selling Toyotas to jail.
So many red flags that should have triggered each a different action:
He wasn't aware of his own condition and his own delusion. He was mentally unstable, unknowingly incompetent in what he pursued which made him a fanatic in a way, armed, threatening tone ("Any attempt to arrest me will be treated as a hostile act"? It's a miracle he's still alive), and had a seemingly lousy lawyer who was confused about what his job was (to get his client out, not to diagnose his mental health).
With all that, add the fact he wasted agents' time and interfered with their jobs (every moment they spent on him, there was real work not being done; lives were at stake. Not only that but the worst he could do is add a parameter, a degree of freedom, to something already hard to do).
The question still is: why was this allowed to go this far? Why didn't the family seek help (the guy 'quit his job' because of his online activities). Whatever the psychological issues he had, I suspect they were coupled with the so frequent movie plot of "I'm right and the stupid FBI doesn't believe me". So many movies portray this image of the clueless law enforcement agencies and the guy who, although has never heard of intelligence analysis and is mentally unstable, somehow ends up being right and everyone else ends up appologizing to him, becomes a hero, and the President honors him.
It sounds absurd but it's exactly what's happened here, down to the attitude of the FBI agents. Some people watch a James Bond movie and start acting like him, some even apply for a job in the intelligence domain (of course I suspect their names are diligently saved and they're prohibited from ever working in such an unforgiving field).
What irritates me isn't that an outsider took it upon himself to right a wrong by taking as a hobby something people do for a living and many die while doing so... what irritates me is that: Of course this would happen, what would one expect? The problem is how was this allowed to happen. No fail-safe mechanisms to make it impossible to go directly from selling Toyotas to jail.
So many red flags that should have triggered each a different action:
He wasn't aware of his own condition and his own delusion. He was mentally unstable, unknowingly incompetent in what he pursued which made him a fanatic in a way, armed, threatening tone ("Any attempt to arrest me will be treated as a hostile act"? It's a miracle he's still alive), and had a seemingly lousy lawyer who was confused about what his job was (to get his client out, not to diagnose his mental health).
With all that, add the fact he wasted agents' time and interfered with their jobs (every moment they spent on him, there was real work not being done; lives were at stake. Not only that but the worst he could do is add a parameter, a degree of freedom, to something already hard to do).
The question still is: why was this allowed to go this far? Why didn't the family seek help (the guy 'quit his job' because of his online activities). Prevent instead of mitigate.
The difference is that in spy movies it looks cool and glamorous, not a bunch seedy dysfunctional ex-military types pretending life is like a james-bond flick. Maybe if someone like Tarantino got their hands on this.
This looks like a way to break BitTorrent, as other posters have outlined.
Streaming in general (apart from via a local server) frustrates me. The entire idea is simply a way of relinquishing control to an external body. Hard drives are not that expensive, and patience is a virtue. I'm very happy that youtube-dl exists, for example, because otherwise when Google disappears I'll lose a lot of useful material I have access to at the moment.
Regardless - I'm surprised to see this here. Sci-Hub is one thing - it's an educational resource.
Mainstream media... I just gave it up rather than pirating it. I'm not 18 any more - my friends don't really care about the latest Marvel flick. The movie companies have lost even my mindshare now. Books, online reading material, educational videos, all free, all a better use of my time, all less likely to leave me wanting a fast car like James Bond.
I was about to laugh at you for not realising that Netflix's House Of Cards is actually a remake of a BBC series from 1990, but on reflection that probably adds to your point.
Many British films of the 1950's and 60's (also being non-rigorous!) are morally very black and white, lots of war movies, but also things like the early James Bond films have an absolute faith that Britain was a world power, maybe alongside the US and USSR, but still important, whereas by the late 1980's that self confidence had pretty much gone and instead you get the shades of grey and cynicism of things like House Of Cards.
Of course Britain's loss of empire was much more definitive then any US decline, which is mostly a post-9/11 post-iraq war loss of confidence but there is an interesting parallel.
Most programmes are a commentary on the time they are made, not the time they are set so I agree deep reads can be very revealing.
Series Q. Quite appropriate in a James Bond spy movie kind of way.
He is a good actor but why dont they give him a different super spy film?
James Bond is a British spy of Scottish ancestry.
It would be cultural misappropriation.
It is a mess.
On all Danish produced TV production created after 01/07-2013, product placement is banned. This includes films as well, since they can be broadcasted.
But foreign produced films and series are not included in this, so we can still be able to enjoy James Bond on TV.
The trade association suggested to show a notice in the program, or afterwards, when they used product placement, but it was never put in law, and was it was banned instead.
But I was replying to the thought, which I quoted, that "to support another country's foreign intelligence service is nothing short of treason on an organized scale". (I mean official support and cooperation, that both services know about, like James Bond and Felix Leiter, his American counterpart who sometimes makes an appearance, in the films.)
I would have seen her in a James Bond movie I would have thought "yeah right, IRL nobody in IT is like that".
<goes back to his all male team>
There is no objective reason to consider comic books as childish and James Bond has been a super hero since before that term was even coined. Heck look at the amount of beatings he take in basically any movie, yet he is rarely damaged at all.
I have to admire your cynicism. To consider that this attack might have been nothing more than a sales demonstration...
That's a scary thought, even as it sounds like something out of a James Bond film script.
Yes, registered trademarks are a different beast to mere trademarks where as you say it is normally required to prove confusion.
But the "confusion" in question is not just that this mark sounds like another it is that the public will be confused about the origin of the goods that the trademark is applied to. Trademarks indicate the origin of goods or services.
So, if your film is "valleyer's presentation of James Bond, not associated with the estate of A R Broccoli" then clearly no member of the public will be confused and by rights you should then be free to use an unregistered mark. Sadly money has a way of talking louder than democracy.
A name can't really be trademarked in such a broad way, afaik (though, IANAL). This would prevent you from using James Bond as a trade name, obviously, but can't prevent you from having the character in a story. So, you might be able to name your story or film "Never Eat Pasta Again" and have Bond as your main character and win a court case.
Also I'm pretty sure the trademark in question applies specifically to films (held by ION Studios), but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
I think that the nationalism and counter-nationalism is a cold war remnant.
Everybody older than 25 watched a good number of movies where Russians were the threat. Mostly James Bond style movies, but you've got a few others in there as well.
Yes Google TV was a flop, but the Nexus Player could be hugely successful.
People hate being advertised to, but they put up with and and they clearly identify 'native' ads as just more advertising.
Regarding point 3: Sorry, I wasn't clear - I didn't mean product placement in the James Bond film. I meant that Google can simply buy the right to screen the movie and run their 30-second ads at the appropriate points (ie. like movies on regular TV).
This analysis is wrong for several reasons:
1. Android is no longer just a way for Google to protect its search engine - it is now a strong contender to become the biggest platform for watching TV and movies in the world.
2. Google knows more about me than anyone else. They know my age, sex, occupation, where I sleep, who I email, what supermarket I shop at, and a thousand other details. That's an enormous competitive advantage in the business of selling brand (or 'Native') advertising.
3. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, people who produce compelling TV and movies usually just auction off the advertising rights to the highest bidder. Google can simply buy the right to advertise in the next James Bond film or English Premier League final.
I agree, but hundreds of nuclear power sources hovering around the planet controlled by a single corporation ... sounds like the plot of a James Bond movie.
I've been sitting on this gem for a while. I present to you: The Bruce Wayne Gap Year.
Wealthy people with desires to become Batman can more-or-less do so.
First they sign a waiver and an NDA, removing any liability from the Bruce Wayne Gap Year company. Then they'll pay the company tens of thousands of dollars to pay for what is to come.
They'll be put into a real criminal gang [1], and taken around the world getting involved in all sorts of illegal [2] activities.
Sooner or later they'll be subtly led to the Himalayas, where they'll join a monastery, lead a simple life of celibacy and minimalism and slowly learn to meditate and fully understand themselves and their body.
After a while, they'll be groomed by a man [3] claiming to be working for a mysterious and powerful leader of a guild of assassins, and taught all kinds of martial arts over months and months, culminating in a complex battle which determines their eligibility. At that point, they will be asked to do something their morals will not allow (this will be determined in a psychological screening), and end up betraying and destroying [4] the guild.
Then they return home, better for the experience.
It can't fail. A friend of mine also suggested it be re-implemented for all sorts of action hero/film type situations. James Bond, Die Hard, Rambo, etc. It's essentially a very expensive, realistic roleplaying experience.
[1]: Actually, very highly paid and well-trained actors. We don't tell them that though.
[2]: Mostly not illegal, but they're made to believe that these things are illegal. Some things will be borderline (they may accidentally end up threatening people who are not part of the ruse, for example), hence the NDA.
[3]: Also an actor. A very good, very well paid actor. Possibly we'll just get Liam Neeson, and he'll act so well that he'll convince them that he's not Liam Neeson.
[4]: Not really. The martial artists will never be allowed to be worse than the client, and will also be stunt-trained and capable of faking death.
Because if there is one thing the US is known for, it is waiting for legal jurisdiction to kill someone.
If they were going to kill anyone ever for anything they didn't like, it would have happened already to a whole lot of people. Life is not a James Bond film.
>between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold.
Err, life isn't a james bond movie. For money transfer like this we use bank wires. We dont buy gold and ship it on gunships anymore.
"What happens when your prints are duped once?"
Most of us don't live in a James Bond movie.
(1) If someone has my fingerprints they still need my phone to do anything.
(2) Even with my phone there's a good chance it's worthless unless they also have my pin.
(3) Stealing my phone has also become worth much less unless you have my prints and the followthrough to make fake ones and again they'll want my pin in most cases because you only get 5 failed attempts with your fake prints.
(4) All of that takes time, during which I may be able to remote wipe my phone, making the whole exercise worth even less. And it takes money, again lowering potential returns.
It's easy to imagine (numbers pulled out of ass) that a thief could get a few hundred bucks for a 5C (no touch id) but say half that for the more expensive 5S. Maybe that won't hold up for various reasons (hey thieves will work hard to make those stolen 5s's worth more) but the principle behind multi-factor is sound.
There is no concept of maintenance in consume movies (the closest is netflix monthly fee) microsoft has years to sort out its problems, it is also highly liquid.
if a movie distie has a run of bad movies, it will become insolvent, which means that they'll not have enough cash to progress the movies in its pipeline. (For example MGM went tits up and delayed james bond by years)
James Bond films are James Bond films, as long as you accept that fact they're great. They're only stupid if you try to impose reality on them.
I didn't notice any sexual harassment this year at either BSidesLV (where I was on the security team both days, and where one of the main organizers is a woman) or at Defcon (although the in-your-face Chippendales posters all over the hotel were annoying). Nor at HOPE. Other than at Bsides, I wasn't actively seeking out bad behavior either, but it wasn't in-your-face if it did exist. (One speaker at Defcon used a James Bond movie hook in a talk about trusted platforms, with "don't get hacked, win the money, and get the girl", but I wouldn't consider that particularly inappropriate -- that it was James Bond makes it less bad than if it were a generic "don't get hacked, get laid" reference.)
Compared to Defcon 1-13, which had pretty pervasive sexual harassment. (Plus more public drunkenness and drug use, too). I was in Iraq during 14-18, so I can't really comment on those.
(This year, at an after-Defcon party on Sunday, the only obnoxiously drunk harassing person I encountered was female, too. That's probably not an improvement for society.)
I do kind of hate how people-with-kids now bring their children to Defcon, and the general push to turn it into "hacker disneyland" (with NSA recruiting there, various "Defcon kids" programs, etc.). I don't think that's related to less sexual harassment, just with the thing being bigger and a lot of participants now being old.
USENIX Security, IETF, and Nanog seem to be the best overall blend of "non-offensive atmosphere", "actual technical content", and smart/interesting people. There's probably a role for something cheaper and similar, maybe an extension of BSides, since as an individual, I'm a lot more willing to pay $100-200 for a conference than $1500-2500.
Watch the James Bond flicks for Sony Ericsson phones, there are many teen movies showing blackberry and Motorola phones
There is discussion about it, among both the gaming and film industries. See my sibling comment to yours and the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" which is from 2005 IIRC. They delve into it quite deeply, even looking at why some sex scenes are given the deadly NC-17 (spoiler: the MPAA doesn't like gay sex and sex where the woman is enjoying it) and comparing the kinds of violence in films that are rated differently.
I remember one especially biting criticism from a comedian or filmmaker who basically argued that we have it backwards with the ratings for violent films, and instead should rate certain war movies so that younger people actually CAN see them, and rate other, "fantasy" violence higher so only adults who can discern the difference can see them.
I think the example was "Saving Private Ryan" which is rated R, but in this new scheme would be PG-13, because it depicts war realistically. The James Bond movies, which are PG-13 because they have no gore, should be rated R, because the violence in them is depicted unrealistically: with no consequences, with effortless skill on the part of the killer, and with clear cut "good and evil" roles. I'm sure I'm butchering this argument, but I found it to be an extremely compelling one, if a bit too optimistic that this would ever change.
In games, see the recent article on Jonathan Blow that was posted to HN, called "The Most Dangerous Gamer". There's definitely a related discussion among certain game makers about violence in games.
> The funny thing is, if James Bond would do something similar in a movie, everybody would fall in love with the technique.
Well, James Bond saves the world and doing something like sneaking into a party is probably a 2/10 on his list of skills. All this guy does is desperately seek attention, religiously look up to money and then he seeks more approval and attention about it online.
It's like James Bond. You see in the movies the one week every couple of years where he's actually being a spy. The rest of the time he sits at a desk at MI6 HQ doing paperwork.
It is roughly as unstructured as a typical 5by5 podcast. There are often topics and/or guests selected in advance, with some or a lot of rambling.
(Personally, I like some rambling. A good podcast is like a good essay in that it will go off on tangents. But there needs to be unifying theme acting like gravity to reel the tangents back to Earth. For the StackOverflow podcast, the initial unifying theme was building StackOverflow, with the cofounders debating various decisions. With 5by5's The Talk Show it's typically one (or more) Apple events from the week plus a James Bond movie at the end. For The Pipeline and some other podcasts, the focus of each show is the guest who comes on the show that week.)
It is interesting, though, that we've pretty much gone off digital watches since that was written in the early 80s.
I was watching an early 80s James Bond movie recently and shocked to see that even James fricking Bond wore a digital watch in those days.
now scene to be the weakest part of the film
Agree. It felt almost like padding material, like someone said "we have this gap in the plot, ah let's just fill it with some james bond action".
People need a modern reminder like Wikileaks
Is there really a lack of suspicion of intelligence agaencies going about? Roughly one out of every three movies currently being made is something about the US Government being secretly involved in dodgy clandestine activities. How many movies have the "twist" that the real bad guys turn out to be some corrupt US Government official?
Want to make a short list? Count up the number of movies where the CIA is portrayed in a positive light. Even the latest James Bond, a series which has been refreshingly positive in its depiction of the Western intelligence agencies, had the CIA as the bad guys.
Ask people what they think of the CIA and you'll find that they have an image much more Jason Bourne than real life.
This looks like something out of a James Bond movie villian's hideout - all it needs is a self-destruct sequence announced over the PA system by some lackey with a monotone voice who inexplicably sits through the entire process while paitiently waiting to be engulfed in flames by the resulting explosion.
Sorry, I've had a lot of caffeine today.
> "The idea of this corporation portraying itself as some sort of buddy who will be by my side as I go through life..."
But often they are. Example: I grew up watching James Bond movies - I still watch James Bond movies, and there will probably be many more Bond movies between now and when I die. It's a known quantity - despite whatever different directors have done to the franchise, it's a mainstay and recognizable part of my existence.
In some ways, it is a buddy that will be by my side as I go through life.
Now, I can be cynical about it and see Bond as merely a corporate, franchised brand being foisted upon me as the unsuspecting consumer... But I choose to see Bond as something genuine people have put genuine care into creating for my consumption. It's not nearly so bad if you put it that way, eh?
I don't think Google is entirely off its rocker trying to portray itself as my "buddy" - because it is. It knows everything I've ever wondered about, either publicly or privately, and so far anyway its products respond to my needs much better than any of its competitors (GMaps vs. MapQuest, for example).
> Yes - if he had chosen to improve his British English he would be on the 20th floor
Quite possibly, especially if he had the accent to match, considering the success of James Bond movies in America.