{"id":14807,"date":"2012-03-30T23:56:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T22:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=14807"},"modified":"2012-03-31T17:54:05","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T16:54:05","slug":"film-notes-9-the-spy-who-loved-me-1977","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2012\/03\/30\/film-notes-9-the-spy-who-loved-me-1977\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes #9: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/The-Spy-Who-Loved-Me.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/The-Spy-Who-Loved-Me.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"The Spy Who Loved Me\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14810\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>* SPOILER WARNING: Details about the film will be revealed *<\/p>\n<p>Lewis Gilbert\u2019s 1977 Bond film is Number 9 in my 30 day Film Notes series.<\/p>\n<p>For newcomers, this month-long series of posts involves me watching a film every day for 30 days.<\/p>\n<p>The following rules apply:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It must be a film I have already seen.<\/li>\n<li>I must make notes whilst I\u2019m watching it.<\/li>\n<li>Pauses are allowed but the viewing must all be one session.<\/li>\n<li>It can\u2019t be a cinema release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The point is to capture my instant thoughts about a movie and my overall film diet for 30 days, as well as post interesting links to the film in question.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my notes on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0076752\/\">The Spy Who Loved Me<\/a><\/strong> (1977) which I watched on ITV4 on Friday 23rd March.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Roger Moore&#8217;s third and best outing as Bond, even though LIVE AND LET DIE (1973) is more purely enjoyable.<\/li>\n<li>The opening scene with the sub sinking is very similar to THE ABYSS (1989), only minus the aliens.<\/li>\n<li>The theme on Triple XXX&#8217;s music box is Lara&#8217;s Theme from DR. ZHIVAGO (1964).<\/li>\n<li>The other Lean film theme referenced in the desert sequences is LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1964)<\/li>\n<li>Subsequent stunt where Bond skis off a cliff is stunning &#8211; one of the best live action jumps ever.<\/li>\n<li>Bond films provide an interesting gauge of the Cold War &#8211; the Russian characters are usually consistent with Moscow relations<\/li>\n<li>The shark death at the beginning was surely a cash in on the success of JAWS (1975)? They even named one of the henchman after it!<\/li>\n<li>Stunts are mostly impressive for the time, blending live action, rear projection and miniature work.<\/li>\n<li>Marvin Hamlisch&#8217;s score is unusually funky for a Bond film.<\/li>\n<li>All the stuff with the Pyramids creeped me out as a 6 year old watching this on TV.<\/li>\n<li>The sexism of the era is apparent in the cheesy gags but the Bond girl is more integral to the story.<\/li>\n<li>Lotus coming out of the sea features the obligatory scene where a drunk man does a double take at his bottle.<\/li>\n<li>Some occasionally sloppy shots, such as Bond and Anya being lowered down to the US submarine.<\/li>\n<li>Guessing this was shot on anamorphic, but why do ITV persist in cropping widescreen films to 1:85? Will the audience complain?<\/li>\n<li>The miniature of the speed boat as Anya and Stromberg leave is woeful even by standards of the day.<\/li>\n<li>Stanley Kubrick advised his old colleague Ken Adam &#8211; who designed the iconic War Room for DR STRANGELOVE (1964) &#8211; on the lighting for the enormous submarine set &#8211; at that time one of the largest ever built.<\/li>\n<li>They must have needed a lot of orange boiler suits to film the climactic gun battle.<\/li>\n<li>The climax of TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997) references the climax of this film with the big fight on the sub.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script src=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-8-the-spy-who-loved-me-1977.js\"><\/script><noscript>[<a href=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-8-the-spy-who-loved-me-1977\" target=\"_blank\">View the story &#8220;Film Notes #9: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)&#8221; on Storify<\/a>]<\/noscript><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lewis Gilbert\u2019s 1977 Bond film is Number 9 in my 30 day Film Notes series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2487],"tags":[1388],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}