bweefar

More Open Mike Eagle please. I enjoy the musical episodes and an artist like Open Mike would be perfect because lyrics. Science: guinea pigs are docile because they are a domesticated animal. There are no wild guinea pigs. Wikipedia says they were first domesticated in 5000 B.C. so that's a long, long time to loose that ferocious survival instinct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea_pig#As_food

The thing about this particular Bond Villain who will fall to his death from a great height, as so many super villains must, is that he will laugh and enjoy the experience, relish the sensation of plummeting through space toward his violent destruction, because (we are told) he is a psychopath. His psychopathic nature is not earned in the first 90 minutes of the film by specific actions. He does not demonstrate a lack of empathy for fellow beings. He does not drown kittens, nor does he rape women. Instead we are left to trust James Bond's diagnosis that he is a psychopath because this villain has a weird and sinister face (he is a young Christopher Walken after all). Maybe it's his disturbingly peroxided hair color that is enough for us to judge his personality by, since a Bad Guy devising elaborately inefficient methods of murdering enemies is typical Bad Guy behavior and no proof at all of a dangerous mental disorder. Maybe he is a psychopath because he doesn't seem to mind when James Bond fucks his girlfriend, the stunning Grace Jones playing the role of master assassin, May Day. For evidence that the villain really is a psychopath we will have to wait until the climax of the movie when he makes up for lost time by personally murdering hundreds upon hundreds of his loyal henchmen with dynamite, drowning and machine gun. Bonus psycho points for entombing these victims deep underground, down in his company's own mine. Corporate chiefs in the mining industry do make believable psychos. The mine shaft is supposed to be an oil well now that I think about it, but it looks more like a mine, and it will have to do as the setting for this major action sequence because this Bond villain doesn't have any other secret base. No mountain base, no under sea base. He does conduct a lot of business on his corporate blimp though. Killing all of your henchmen along with your underutilized female assassin squad, here is sufficient proof that we have an extremely psychopathic Bond Villain. The sane Bond Villains just plan to murder innocents by the thousands, but this one chuckles behind the trigger and slaughters his own men for no reason. Perhaps he is acting as a hyper rational CEO, thinking of the savings down the road on pension costs. If this failure of a James Bond movie has anything going for it, then it is the theme song, Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill." A triumphant 80's classic, with sultry lyrics like: "Could it be? The whole world opening wide! A sacred whine, a mystery gaping inside." Horny! Please tell me more about dancing and fire Mr Le Bon. Le Bon. Simon Le Bon. If they had given the lead singer of Duran Duran the title role of A View to a Kill and done some rewriting to make the aging British spy into a younger British pop singer we might have had ourselves an interesting picture. Keep in the extreme Siberian ski chase and the accidental invention of snow boarding. Keep in the remote control steroids and the rigged steeple chase; and keep in the muted themes of Nazi eugenics. (On second thought, lets unmute those themes and let the weird racial breeding subtexts of the movie run wild. ) Definitely keep Christopher Walken and Grace Jones, but this time devote more of the script to exploring their obviously complex relationship. How does he really feel when she fucks James Bond for reasons that are completely arbitrary and unclear? Let's see this power couple work out their tensions in the light of the day after the betrayal. I bet they fight like fucking tigers and then fuck like frickin' rabbits. Why can't we see that movie? Sadly, in this life we don't get the 80's cinema we wish got made, (Aykroyd's original Ghost Busters script please!) we live in the real world, where in the mid 80's the Bond movie was almost as worn out and tired as both the Cold War and old man Roger Moore. Somewhere along the meandering path of this movie, Bond is undercover at a fancy party for the One-Percent. Double-Oh-Seven sees the young blonde that he really wants to stick it in, standing off by herself. He chats her up, but for some reason she doesn't find his creepy innuendo charming, even though he cleverly used his opening line to suggest that she might be a prostitute: "Well are you buying or selling?" Get it? The party is all about buying and selling race horses, but also James wants to know if she will have sex with him for money. That's not the only horse-related word play. Take this exchange with a skinny young henchwoman, Jenny Flex, who seems to have been cut from the rest of the movie despite the inclusion of the following banter: James Bond: "Well my dear, I take it you spend quite a lot of time in the saddle." Jenny Flex: "Yes, I love an early morning ride." James Bond: "Well I'm an early riser my self." Boner jokes. Classy. So Bond is chatting up the blonde, who will eventually become the movie's leading lady, when May Day (Grace Jones) with her hair styled to look like either pointy horse ears or demon horns, is sent over by Christopher Walken to cock block James Bond. Stepping into the path of his boner, May Day says to Bond: "Some one will take care of you." To which Bond replies, ""Oh, you'll see to that personally will you?" A little rapey, but May Day sort of accidentally on purpose ends up in bed with Bond that night and they make weird sex happen together. Christopher Walken as the psycho Zorin asks James the morning after: "You slept well?" To which Bond answers, "A little restless, but I got off eventually." There are many, many moments where this movie looses its way, but I want to argue that this moment is the biggest loss of them all. Here is the blooming of a cinematic love triangle that could have rivaled Casablanca. Old Roger Moore, Young Christopher Walken, and Grace Jones in her physical prime. Once the plot began to sink its teeth into this trio and their tensions I cannot say why, other than cowardice or attention deficit disorder, why did they ever let it go? The possibilities for greatness are staggering: Is Bond serious about this love affair with such a strong and aggressive woman? Can he even handle a woman who fights back? Is May Day playing Bond, and will she end up murdering him while mounted on top of his aging frame? Is she toying with him like a cat playing with a mouse or is it vise versa? Maybe Zorin is just playing at being a detached psycho because he really is falling for this one-of-a-kind woman, even though his one-percenter friends don't approve. Maybe Bond and May Day begin the affair just playing, but as they are thrown together in their opposing roles in the espionage game they find that they can't keep their hands off one another, even though when they are not groping they are grappling. Maybe she will accidentally on purpose kill the old man with her vagina? Maybe Mr. Zorin really has the secret hots for James Bond so he throws his assasin/lover at him, and then, since Zorin can't face the boner in his closet for 007 he'd rather murder his lover and his crush in the same diabolical mine shaft cave in. There are options, but the film makers partake in few to none of them. Instead they abandon the love triangle entirely and end up with a completely different movie, with a different woman, and this other movie is a whole lot less interesting. Something about microchips and a firetruck chase through San Francisco that probably amused the 80's audience, but grown ups in the future have seen every type of vehicle chase every other type of vehicle through every city. Inter-racial love triangles with the fate of the world in the balance would have been better. The love triangle does come back near the end, when May Day learns the inevitable lesson that psycho super villains will always break your heart, but this all comes about an hour too late to matter. Imagine how much harder the existing dialogue would have landed if they had just taken my advice: May Day: "And I thought that creep loved me." Bond: "You're not the only one he double crossed." Here is a movie that fails to thrive because it can't figure out who the Bond girl is. The obvious choice is Grace Jones. But the film chickens out and gives us more than one basic blonde instead. One blonde is so unremarkable that A View to a Kill just switches to another, a Russian ballerina turned K.G.B. agent, who is the Bond girl of the moment for about 15 minutes before James switches back to the other one. How many times had Roger Moore played Bond at this stage of the franchise? Answer: A lot. He is still handsome and rugged enough at 58, but his distinguished charm and chiseled good looks work better in a well tailored suit and less so in a steaming hot jacuzzi, where his old man flesh is saggy, pink and sweaty. Maybe the film makers couldn't figure out what to do with this Bond story because the Evil Empire was deflating faster than their leading man in a hot tub. "Detente can be beautiful," the lovers joke, but then add: "This is no time to be discussing politics." Another batch of ideas that almost make up enough of a skeleton to hang the plot of a Bond movie on is the whole Nazi eugenics and its links to race horse breeding, experimental remote control steroids, and black people. If there is a fine candidate for fan fiction from the Bond-verse then Grace Jone's May Day is maybe the finest. Let's imagine her as the central hero with the story rewritten around her. She possesses superior strength and fighting skills. She base jumps off the Eiffel tower and lands on speeding speed boats on the Seine. She is the horse whisperer, but instead of whispering to horses she just commands them to obey her and they do obey because she is extremely fucking powerful. Instead the vaguely racist script (I'll put my finger on it someday, but A View to a Kill on its surface is not as blatantly a racist 80's movie as Gremlins or Star Wars) sort of flirts around the edges of what is separating good and evil. I'd like to think that there was a much better, much more blatantly racist screen play that stuck with the race horse race baiting before it got dumbed down in the rewrites and we ended up with blimps and microchips. I know that this movie is a little bit super racist because in addition to leading the audience to think of Grace Jones as an animal with the strength and grace of a thorough bred horse there's also the following: Bond is discussing eugenics with an elderly Nazi scientist at a party, while in the background there is a broad shouldered black man filling out a tuxedo and flirting with two white women. Keep in mind, there are no other black men in the movie until we get to an extra or two in a crowd scene outside San Francisco City Hall over an hour later. Here is a black man in a tux at a fancy party talking to two pretty white women in a movie that is kinda about steroids and the following dialogue is spoken: James Bond: "Tell me, are you a doctor of medicine?" Nazi Dr.: "No, no, no. I am Mr. Zorin's breeding consultant." "Oh really, then you can let me in on a little secret. How is it that you succeed in breeding bloodlines that other experts consider inferior?" "Ah, selective breeding is important, yah. But more important is conditioning and desire." "Are you talking about people or horses?" "Oh, haha. My principals apply equally to human beings." It's hard for me to figure out exactly what the film makers are getting at with this juxtaposition. One has to wonder if they had any idea themselves. Possible themes of A View to a Kill the 80's Bond movie that lost its way: Microchips are important and so is Silicone Valley. Rogue K.G.B. agents are coming for you, computer nerds. African American women are really strong (like super hero strong) and they still have working vaginas. Psycho Pimps hold business meetings aboard their corporate blimps. 80's Action Movies signal not to take them seriously when their heros invent snow boarding and the sound track switches to the Beach Boys (which every nerd can tell you, is not surf music). It's completely normal for everyone in the spy game who is male to be over 50 and every woman to be 26. Are you a spy? If so, always check to see if Grace Jones is hiding in the backseat with a garret when you enter a vehicle. When in doubt, a handy trick is to get James Bond trapped in a shaft again and again. Mine shafts. Elevator shafts. Underwater shafts. Any shaft will do. 007's License to Kill must be a big deal, not because he is allowed to get away with murdering regular people, but because he has a license to kill other rich people. Chinese Americans make for good non threatening, disposable side kicks. The radio deejays in Mountain View, California offer you "smooth sounds to soothe those computer blues." You can escape the consequences of a catastrophic mega quake by taking to the air in your personal zeppelin where you will have a one of a kind view to the killing of millions, but it's tacky to brag about it. So this Bond movie opens as all Bond movies must with an innovative action chase scene. A View to a Kill has old Roger Moore on a pair of skis, cutting through untracked Siberian powder, extreme skiing like a pro with the Russians S-turning hot on his tail. Then James Bond kills a helicopter with a flair gun. And then he invents snow boarding. And then he gets away and locates his partner in a secret spy submarine disguised as an iceberg (that looks a lot like a giant cock.) Of course his partner on this mission is a hot blonde, and she must have been blasting the heat in that submarine when James was out battling the Russians, because her parka is unzipped down to her navel and she's not wearing a bra. Of course they get right to humping because this is a Bond movie that can't keep its boner in its ski pants for longer than 10 minutes. As June Diane Raphael said on the internet, here is a man with a problem. Clearly old James is running from something more dark and sinister than Russian agents on skis and snow mobiles, and all of the booze and pussy in the world can't keep whatever it is at bay forever. Eventually it's going to catch up with him. Although, since James Bond gets to live in multiple bodies, spanning multiple decades, then maybe he is different from other men hiding from their demons. Maybe they never will catch him. Pussy and Booze for all eternity. Anyway. If only this movie had remained inside of the iceberg penis submarine as it sliced through arctic waters on a five day voyage to the northern tip of Alaska, with this incarnation of James Bond on the verge of retirement and this nameless blonde conquest is his arms. Let's dawdle and dwell inside the steamy sub and their victory fuck party (she calls him "Commander"). What do Bond and this young agent talk about in the nude, between bone sessions, as they cool their swollen genitalia and sip their chilled cocktails. Do they discuss where this nice girl will be while James is off making the rest of this dumb movie? What do James Bond and this specific sex partner do about birth control? Or maybe this time is the right time to start a family? Alas, these are not scenes the screen writers were ever paid to imagine into being. Alas.

looks like my 3 year old comment is gone from this OLD DOGS thread, just like everyone elses'. here's a recap: This movie is more fun if you just imagine Robin Williams and John Travolta as an old married couple. That's it. They are two older gay men bickering while on a road trip. That's a better movie, and its only one little, tiny step of the imagination to get there. That's all I can remember about my observation from way back in 2011. Also RIP and much respect to Mr. Williams.

Corrections and omissions. When James Bond is discussing eugenics with the Nazi scientist at Zorin's party, there is a black man in a tux flirting with two white women in the background. This is no coincidence. After picking up on the cues the film makers' laid down comparing Grace Jones to a horse, we get this African American man directly over Roger Moore's shoulder as the following dialogue is spoken. Remember, this is a tall good looking black man flirting with TWO white women in 1985: James Bond - "Tell me, are you a doctor of medicine?" Nazi Dr. - "No, no, no. I am Mr. Zorin's breeding consultant." J.B. - "Oh really, then you can let me in on a little secret. How is it that you succeed in breeding bloodlines that other experts consider inferrior?" "Ah, selective breeding is important, yah. But more important is conditioning and desire." "Are you talking about people or horses?" "Oh, haha. My principles apply equally to human beings." Are the film makers trying to make some point about African American athletes and nature vs nurture? Are they being super evil racists? Whatever they are doing, their intentions are as murky here as they are everywhere else in the movie. (there isn't another black man on screen until outside City Hall.)

How Did This Get Made just took a giant leap from the funniest podcast about shitty movies to the Best Podcast about movies. This episode is a landmark in the series. I love it when HDTGM rips into shlock, but talking shop with real film makers is even better. Great job.