Buy another day: join me for a budget James Bond celebration
Who needs October's elitist parade of tributes when you can put on your dad's tux and walk around being sexist?
It's been 50 years since James Bond first appeared onscreen in Dr No. In that last half-century, Bond may have got variously taller, and sillier, and nastier, and smarmier, and wiggier, and more fond of safari suits, and briefly more Australian, but despite these superficial changes the character has endured like no other.
That's why, on 5 October ? the exact 50th anniversary of Dr No's initial release ? EON, MGM, Sony and 20th Century Fox are planning a global James Bond day. It's a chance for fans around the world to revel in cinema's most beloved alcoholic aristocratic borderline-misogynist state-sponsored murderer, and there will be a raft of glitzy events to accompany it.
So far, these events include the release of a new documentary entitled Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007, a charity auction at Christie's, a movie retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a Music of Bond night in Los Angeles hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a style exhibition at Toronto international film festival. And there'll be a survey to find the best Bond film. And all the Bond films are coming out on Blu-ray. And there will inevitably be lots of interviews with the Skyfall cast all over the place too.
That's all well and good in principle, but all these planned events sound a little bit la-di-dah to me. Because, really, the common man on the street won't be able to enjoy the Music of Bond night, or the TIFF exhibition. Unless they live in New York, they won't be able to see the retrospective. Unless they're rich beyond their wildest dreams, they won't be able to buy anything at the auction. And unless they're too stupid to realise that it'll be on TV every single bank holiday afternoon until the end of time itself, they won't rush out to see Everything or Nothing. For such a global occasion to mark a character with such broad appeal, James Bond day comes with an undeniably off-putting veneer of elitism.
That's why I'm proposing an alternative James Bond day, full of activities that people such as you or I ? normal people, the people whose wages helped turn 007 into such an enduring icon in the first place ? can easily celebrate in our own homes. For example, who needs to go all the way to Toronto to look at a James Bond style exhibition when they can simply put on their dad's old wedding suit, construct a makeshift girdle out of belts and clingfilm and spend the day wobbling around their house being sexist to women young enough to be their daughter?
Or why not celebrate the day with a vodka Martini? Can't afford the ingredients? Put some WKD in a vase and just drink that instead. Planning a fish pedicure? Why not ask to be lowered slowly into the pool feet-first like Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die? Or, to really capture the true spirit of the James Bond series, why not just buy as many Sony products as you possibly can and show them to people logo-up for just the right amount of time ? long enough to break their concentration in the wider story but not long enough to actually make them want to go and buy any Sony products themselves? James Bond would be proud.
There. The official James Bond day might be hopelessly alienating to anyone who isn't a super-rich Hollywood mogul, but together we can create a better, more faithful, more recession-sensitive day of our own. Who's with me?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/aug/30/james-bond-day-budget-celebration
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