Monthly Chat - January 2016!

[mi6-cafe-mod.livejournal.com]

Happy New Year! A new year brings in lots of new changes to the comm! Thank you to everyone who took the time to take part in the MI6 Café Survey – we have taken onboard all of your comments and will be releasing information about new comm events over the coming months! In the meanwhile, here is the monthly chat!

Anon commenting is on so you don’t need an account to join in the fun! If you are using anon comments, if you could put your name/handle in the subject line/body of the comments that would be fab (just so everyone knows who they are talking to!)

Weekly Recs

We’ve had many weekly recs over the past 6 months, so whilst we’re getting together the new reccing system, here are the weekly recs from the past 6 months! In the meantime, feel free to rec whatever you like this month!

MI6 Café Book + Film Club

Our next book for book club is From Russia, With Love, which you can find resources for in the links on the sidebar. The next Book Club to discuss this book will be held on the 16th of January, with the Book Club for the second half of the book held on the 30th.

Potential trigger warnings for From Russia, With Love include:

- violence

- racism (specifically against Romani people, the g*psy slur is used multiple times)

In film club will be watching You Only Live Twice on the 9th of January, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service on the 23rd. Please see the schedules for more information on times!

This month’s questions
1: For those who are familiar with the earlier Bond films, what’s one of the things that you enjoy most about Craig!canon as compared to classic Bond? Is there anything you miss from the Connery-to-Brosnan era?
2: What are your favorite headcanons about Q Branch?
3: Why DOES Bond destroy all his tech?
4: MI6 Squad guilty pleasures: What’s something that our favorite MI6 Squad members enjoy doing but wouldn’t want to tell anyone about? This could be a group secret (video game night?) or each individual’s down-low hobby.

Comments

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

1. Craig!bond seems the most /realistic/ than the others. Mostly because he doesn't have gaudy gadgets from Q-branch. Sure, he needs shoe with a phone in it but as we saw in CR, Craig!bond knows how to use a goddamn phone and knows somewhat how to hack even. [he's using our secure servers with your name and password] I don't mind Q gadgets but some of them were just. god. damn. horrible and to me, turned the JB franchise into an almost parody. [looking at you, brosnan].

2. they're all uni or just graduated uni students. or around q's age. old vs new theme popping up again. one or two boffins play the whole: why do we need spies when we do all the work and then james basically is like: because you're too chickenshit to fire a goddamn pistol that's why.

3. because he hates happiness. in serious though, probably because he's thinking on his feet. he has all this cool shit but it's like in video games. you get that really cool ass item but you can only use it once before it disappears. james is basically that main character, found a shiny cool thing, uses it ,and it disappears/breaks after one use.

4. they all play poker once a month and drink, gossiping about the people of mi6 because fuck everyone else, the squad are the only people that get shit done.

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

1) whenever someone says that the gadgets are the best/most important/coolest part of bond I just shake my head, because surely that's not all people get out of the franchise? I mean, they're sometimes cool, and the old Q was a dear, but seriously. no one likes the fancy action scenes?

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

i don't understand that that part. like, it's supposed to be an action film not a film about these somewhat ineffective and shitty gadgets.

Also, eddie izzard on james bond: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwZbuF40T1M

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

Omg, can't wait to watch that link, thank you!

[isthisrubble.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY

also, I read somewhere that they used to write the Q scenes after the rest of the story, so they could work out what gadgets he would need

Castillon02

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, the gadgets are a bit... I mean, I think some of it might just be that gadgets were viewed differently back in the day? Like, maybe things that seem ridiculous now seemed more vaguely plausible then? IDEK, but I mean, we're talking the age of the Jetsons cartoon and people being pretty optimistic but perhaps uninformed about technology. And of course the action genre has progressed by several decades. (But THE JETPACK. STILL NOT OVER IT. It's the most bizarre thing and it's not even used later in any way. He just has a random jetpack for 'it seemed like a good idea at the time' reasons!) Bond is always about balancing out the ridiculous with the real, and I think it can be easy for filmmakers to get too ridiculous with cool-seeming gadgets.

What did you think about the gadgets we saw in Spectre?

Re: Castillon02

[spike-wilbury.livejournal.com]

see the thing i like about craig!bond is that the damn gadgets are plausible. [except for the watch, okay it's a nod] like, if james bond was real, the gadgets and stuff could be found in real life and to me that's neat. Some of the older stuff, yeah it was in that phase of the whole: WELL WE MADE IT TO SPACE, TIME FOR ALL THE FUTURE SHIT stuff and it's bad. it's really bad. it's like, that's nice blofeld, go back to your room and play quietly.