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Today I got the AVTAK soundtrack CD and unfortunately the liner notes were written by Jeff Bond seem to sum up the mass generalizations and lazy misconceptions about the film:
Jeff writes: "After the dangerous, dark masculinity of Sean Connery, Moore's 007 was a more urbane character."
No argument here, but why the needless comparison to Sean after SEVEN films! This is not Live and Let Die we are talking about here.
Jeff writes: "The formula once again turned back to glamour, gadgetry and laughs."
John Cork made a similar statement in his Legacy book. As if AVTAK simply reverted to a tried-and-true formula without offering anything new. I agree the film has plenty of glamour, but the gadgets are toned way down to a modest assortment of spy tools like polarizing glasses and a mini-camera. This Bond is more reliant on his wits and resourcefulness. The laughs are also almost non-existent, especially compared to the broad humor in Octopussy. Instead, there is a harder edge to the violence and many of the kills are cold blooded murder.
AVTAK is in many ways a revisionist Bond film that flips the usual formula upside-down. Just one of many examples below:
FYEO Citroen chase: Bond makes the bad guys look like fools and escape scot-free.
OP Rickshaw chase: Bond makes the bad guys look like fools and escape scot-free.
AVTAK May Day persuit: Bond's car gets demolished, the bad guy gets away, and Bond ends up looking like a fool.
Jeff writes: "After largely self-reliant Bond heroines, Tanya Roberts' Stacy was a helpless damsel in distress."
At times yes. But so were many other Bond girls . Octopussy in Kamal's plane and dangling from the cliff. Barbara Bach strapped to a chair in Stromberg's lair. Solitaire about to be scarified at San Monique.
Dismissing Stacy as "helpless" is not doing her character justice. Finally we have a down-to-earth Bond girl who is just a regular 9-5 gal with her own house and pets. She defends herself against Zorin's stooges with a shotgun and provides Bond with her Geological expertise. A revolutionary Bond girl for the 80's and the first of her kind in the series. She served as a prototype for later 90's Bond girls such as Natalya and Christmas.
Jeff writes: "Tibbet suffers an ignominious fate in a carwash at the hands of May Day."
Really, ignominious? and why was this Deserving or causing public disgrace or shame.
Like many of the cold blooded kills in AVTAK, Tibbet's death was one of the most chilling and scary in the whole series. Especially how it was set up with Tibbet splashing water on the Rolls, exiting the gate while Mayday disappears, being followed by Jenny Flex, and finally the silent assassin emerging in the back seat. I get chills just thinking about it. This is great film making.
Only in the last couple paragraphs does Jeff actually discuss the soundtrack and he does have some interesting tidbits including "Duran Duran knew more about Barry's film scores than Barry himself could remember."
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Smashed box
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The box was all smashed.
By Joshua Ungar on September 17, 2019
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