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REMEMBERING SEAN CONNERY


mg240980

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Sean Connery, known for originating the role of James Bond in 1962’s “Dr. No,” passed away at the age of 90 on Oct. 31.

Connery is most known for his seven performances as James Bond, but he was also famous for his appearances in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and an Oscar-winning performance in “The Untouchables.”

While the name Sean Connery may be lost on some younger people, it is undeniable that his early works both influenced and set the standards for decades of film and television to come.

Beyond just influencing spy films, both serious and parodic alike, with his signature suits and suave style, Connery, in many ways, originated the modern action hero.

Before Bond, the archetypal film hero was tough-as-nails, a person jaded by the world around them that was often riddled with moral complexity, but Connery rewrote the script with his introduction of a hero who was almost impossibly, for the lack of a more elegant term, badass.

From the moment of his iconic introduction (“Bond… James Bond”), Connery’s Bond was slick, lethal, desirable, witty and charming. He was a man who could defy death, get the girl and beat the bad guy, all at one-to-100 odds, and not even bat an eye.

No longer was the hero sulking and pondering, he was just having a good time, one liners and all. Connery perhaps peaked as Bond in 1964s “Goldfinger,” where the titular hero was as self-assured and cunning as he would ever be.

In the first four minutes of the film, Bond infiltrates a heroin plant in a scuba suit, blows up the plant, takes off the scuba suit to reveal a white suit, brings a dancer back to his room, kills an assassin and drops a one-liner.

Connery’s iconic performances in the 1960s served as a bridge between the cynical and jaded protagonists of ‘40s and ‘50s noir and the blockbuster heroes that would begin to emerge in the late ‘70s.

As Daniel Craig, the current James Bond, put it in an interview with the 007 website, “He defined an era and a style. The wit and charm he portrayed on screen could be measured in megawatts; he helped create the modern blockbuster.”

Above all else, it was Connery’s ability to portray all of this with such ease that helped the Bond franchise become that cultural icon that it remains to this day. But, as he himself was adamant about, Connery was more than Bond.

Both during and after his Bond years, Connery, partially in an effort to not be condemned to typecasting for the rest of his career, broadened his horizons and worked with many acclaimed directors and rarely failed to elevate their work.

Overall, it was Connery’s ability to take on any role, and be so enthusiastic about it, that led to his post-Bond success.

 

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mg240980

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This era of his career saw Connery take on a large variety of roles, such as Colonel Arbuthnot in Sidney Lumet’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” Captain Marko Ramius in “The Hunt for Red October” and Daniel Dravot, a man mistaken to be a god by the people of a foreign land, in “The Man Who Would Be King.”

Connery also managed to earn himself an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1987 for playing the role of detective Jim Malone in “The Untouchables” .

Unforgettable is his performance as Henry Jones, Sr. in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

While the performance may not be as serious as the aforementioned ones, Connery’s ability to bring the character to life and portray them in such a clever and endearing way is a pleasure to watch.

Seeing him make an appearance in a franchise whose main character is so heavily inspired by the James Bond that he originated is pure, self-referential fun.

Connery may now be gone, but his larger-than-life legacy lives on through his iconic performances and monumental influence on popular culture.

 

 

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mg240980

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Sean Connery was the first actor to play the fictional secret agent on film, appearing with Ursula Andress in the first Bond film, Dr No, in 1962.

 

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He was regarded by many ( me too ! ) as the greatest ever James Bond.

 

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From Russia With Love came in 1963. Director Terence Young is seen here fine-tuning a love scene in a rehearsal between Connery and Italian actress Daniela Bianchi.

 

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He starred in six official Bond films - or seven if you include 1983's Never Say Never Again, which wasn't produced by Eon. Honor Blackman was one of the Bond girls in 1964's Goldfinger.

 

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He set the template for Bond as the suave, dashing hero who was surrounded by beautiful women - such as here in 1967's You Only Live Twice.

 

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Before becoming Bond, he made his name as an actor in the 1950s and early 60s. His pre-007 roles included Count Vronsky in Anna Karenina on the BBC in 1961.

 

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Beyond Bond, he continued to enjoy an action-packed career, and is seen here with Charlotte Rampling in the 1974 sci-fi film Zardoz.

 

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He won an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in The Untouchables in 1988.

 

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His other film credits included The Name of the Rose, Indiana Jones, The Hunt for Red October, The Rock and The Avengers - in which he is pictured with Ralph Fiennes.

 

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When he walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999 with wife Micheline (left) and Catherine Zeta Jones to promote the film Entrapment, fans showed their love by bringing a banner reading: "Sean 007 the most talented."

 

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Connery was the recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 2006 - presented by his Indiana Jones co-star Harrison Ford.

 

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The star was famously proud of his Scottish roots, and celebrated that with his 2008 book Being A Scot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mg240980
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mg240980

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Connery’s Bond embodied the postwar ideal of masculinity, a complex mix of old-fashioned charm and tough virility, loyalty to “Queen and Country”, and relaxed sexual mores. Raymond Mortimer wrote at the time, in his review of Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963): “James Bond is what every man would like to be, and what every woman would like between her sheets.”

 

The late Honor Blackman, who played alongside him in Goldfinger, described working with Connery as “romping about on international locations with the sexiest man ever seen on screen”.

Connery’s Bond may get his Savile Row suit dirty, but he never loses his cool. Ruthless with his enemies, he’s not afraid of hurting many a female villain who threatens the success of his missions. He’s also, of course, an irresistible lover, able to seduce even those, like Pussy Galore, who claim “immunity” to his charms.

Here are possibly the top five Connery Bond films, and why you may want to watch them again.

 

 

1. Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964)

A beautiful woman whose spectacular death, and gold-painted lifeless body – remains, for better or worse, one of the most iconic images in the history of the franchise. A squad of female pilots is led by the talented Pussy Galore, whose name is an ironic reference to her sexuality. Goldfinger is a criminal genius, whose plan to make the US gold reserves radioactive in order to increase the value of his own is nothing short of brilliant, and whose laser beam poses a literal threat to Bond’s virility.

 

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2. Dr No (Terence Young, 1962)

Set in Ian Fleming’s beloved Jamaica, hints of Sinophobia lurk in the figure of Dr. No, whose Chinese ethnicity is conveyed through the Asian style of the clothes he wears. The first cinematic “Bond Girl” makes a memorable entrance wearing an equally memorable white bikini. But the fact that Honey Ryder also wears a knife around her waist suggests that she’s more than eye-candy. We’re also told she has used a black widow spider to kill an abusive landlord in the past. Just like Dr. No threatens the authority of white British Bond, so Honey represents a challenge to the patriarchal order he represents. She is a new kind of woman, as Andress claims, physically strong and ready to take part in the action.

 

 

3. From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963)

The romantic settings – Istanbul, the Orient Express train journey – and the beautiful co-star, Daniela Bianchi, who plays defecting Soviet spy Tania Romanova, may fool us into thinking that this may be a Cold War “Romeo and Juliet” love story. Tania is, however, less interested in Bond and more attracted to the other tempting luxuries of the West that he may help her achieve.

The poisoned blade concealed in the toe of villain Rosa Klebb’s shoe, provides another unforgettable moment in the film franchise, and one that insinuates further doubts about Bond’s invulnerable masculinity. And while at the end of Fleming’s novel, Bond is left for dead, in the film, it is Tania’s quick thinking and good aim that saves his life.

 

 

4. Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)

Still, according to Forbes, the highest grossing film of the franchise, Thunderball sees Bond in action in the Bahamas, a place which would remain close to Connery’s heart until his death in Nassau on October 31 2020.

As the action unfolds around the beautiful island setting, and its treacherous coastline, Bond’s life is threatened by SPECTRE operative Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), and especially Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), one of the many phenomenal female drivers in the film franchise – and a woman who is confident enough to ridicule his alleged sexual prowess. But it is the leading Bond Girl, Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), who, again, saves Bond’s life by shooting a harpoon at Largo.

 

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5. You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967)

We may raise an eyebrow at Bond’s dubious transformation into a Japanese man, the patriarchal attitudes towards women presented as traditional of Japan, not helped by the lukewarm performance by Mie Hama, who plays what has been described as “servile Lotus Blossom” Kissy Suzuki, but there is enough charisma between the other female roles in the film, Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) and Helga Brandt (Karin Dor), to make up for Kissy’s submissiveness.

Both die, the latter in a spectacularly sadistic execution in a piranha pool. But Helga also very nearly mutilates Bond with a surgical scalpel and chucks a lipstick bomb at him before parachuting herself out of the plane she has been flying. A “bombshell” she may be, but not on the terms set by the men who try to control her.

 

 

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mg240980

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He would always be known as Bond — James Bond — and it’s near-impossible not to say those words without imitating Sean Connery’s deep Scottish baritone. But while the former lifeguard, bodybuilder and Mr. Universe competitor-turned-actor would help turn 007 into an iconic screen character, he was more than just the man who gave Bond his first license to kill.

Connery had the distinction of working with directors ranging from Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma, of winning Oscars and BAFTAs, of playing everything from soldiers to train robbers to kings.  He became a de facto ambassador for his home country of Scotland and embraced the thick, oft-imitated brogue no matter who he played. He was a versatile actor and also a movie star, the kind of performer who could infuse roles with a certain kind of radiating, rough-and-tumble persona that you could only describe as Conneryesque.

 

'Zardoz' (1974)

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Connery would continue to play a host of interesting, different parts during his tenure as Bond (see: Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie) before officially turning in his killing license and Walther PPK in 1972 with Diamonds Are Forever. Few of those roles were as out-there, however, as the John Boorman sci-fi movie he made shortly after he left Bond behind. In the 23rd century, humanity is divided into wasteland-dwelling lower classes and an aristocracy who calls the shots via a giant flying stone head named Zardoz. Connery plays Zed, one of the “exterminators” who keep the plebeians in line; after hiding out in the mammoth cranium and infiltrating the world of the future patricians, Zed eventually becomes radicalized and helps lead a rebellion. It’s even crazier than it sounds, and its status as both a campy cult classic and a funky ’70s science-fiction landmark is well-earned. And Connery somehow finds the exact wavelength needed to make this WTF movie work. Once you’ve seen that image of the star rocking a droopy Zapatista mustache, a long braided ponytail, a bandolier, red bikini briefs and thigh-high boots, it’s virtually impossible to forget it. 

 

'The Man Who Would Be King' (1975)

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John Huston’s rousing, boys-adventure adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s novel paired Connery with Michael Caine — really, who better to play two 19th-century British Army officers who decide to pitch themselves as muscle to an Eastern European ruler? On the way to establishing a career as mercenaries (“a scheme for rascals to become royalty,” per the trailer), Connery’s Daniel Dravot is mistaken by the locals as a god. He happily settles into the role of both ruler and deity … and that’s when the real trouble starts. It’s both an epic romp filled with thrills, spills and derring-do, and a tongue-in-cheek take on the empire’s less-than-moral misadventures in foreign lands. Connery lets you see how the good fortune his con-artist colonialist has stumbled on warps him, and eventually sends him to a tragic end. That climactic walk across the rope bridge, singing a hymn, is one hell of an exit. 

 

'Robin and Marian' (1976)

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One of the most underrated films in Connery’s filmography, Richard Lester’s addition to the Robin Hood legend features one of the star’s single best turns. His Robin of Locksley is no longer a young hero stealing from the rich and giving to the poor but a middle-aged man, returning to Sherwood Forest with battle scars and old scores to settle. He goes in search of his lost love, Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn), who’s become a nun in his absence. Meanwhile, the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) and his cohorts want to see their former foe with his head on a spike. It’s a perfect lion-in-winter performance and a sort of first-rate fan-fiction coda to the prince of thieves’ story. The scenes between Connery and Hepburn suggest a genuine chemistry between the two, as well as a bone-deep sense of regret; his speech about taking part in one of King Richard’s campaigns during the Crusades (“He was my king”) is an all-timer.

 

'Time Bandits' (1981)

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Connery’s part in Terry Gilliam’s time-tripping fantasy is a small but highly memorable one: He’s King Agamemnon, the regent of Greek mythology who took part in the Trojan War. He’s also one of the friendlier historical figures that the movie’s young hero, Kevin, comes across in temporal travels, befriending the lad after he helps him kill a (literally) bullheaded opponent. Connery does a lot with the little screen time he has, leaving you with a sense that this kindhearted ruler is a nice substitute father figure for the kid. It’s a nice little drop of humanity in this wacky, whimsical romp. 

 

'The Untouchables' (1987)

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Connery won a well-deserved Oscar for his role as Jimmy Malone, the hardbitten, shotgun-toting cop who instructs the goody-two-shoes Eliot Ness in the art of fighting Prohibition gangsters. In a lot of actors’ hands, this might have merely been a good mentor role; given to Connery, however, this man becomes a force of nature. And the way he digs into David Mamet’s flinty, pulp-poetry dialogue is a dream come true. His advice to Kevin Costner’s Ness about the way to nab Capone is extra-quotable simply because of the sheer, aggressive delight with which Sir Sean delivers it: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!”

 

'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' (1989)

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Really, who else were you going to get to play Indy’s dad if not the man who gave us the first James Bond?! Steven Spielberg’s decision to cast Connery as Professor Henry Jones in the third Indiana Jones movie might have come off as a stunt if the veteran actor hadn’t been such a perfect fit — instead, it comes off like a coup. From the second the patriarch yells “Junior?” at the globe-trotting archeologist, there’s an instant feeling that you’re watching two pop culture icons having the time of their lives acting against each other. There was really no keeping up with the Joneses once they were onscreen, and though Connery had originally turned down the role, he ended up doing a lot of research on what sort of professor Henry would be. And the key to the whole film is really this father and son’s endless game of one-upmanship even when the band together to find the Holy Grail. “Whatever Indy’d done,” Connery was quoted as saying, “my character has done … and my character has done it better.

 

'The Hunt for Red October' (1990)

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If Tom Clancy’s novels about the C.I.A. analyst Jack Ryan had been made 20 years earlier, Connery might have been a good choice to play the hero. Instead, Alec Baldwin stepped in to the role (he’d be the first of several stars to step into Ryan’s shoes — not unlike Connery’s inauguration of Bond), and the Scottish movie star took on the bad guy’s role: A Russian nuclear submarine commander named Marko Ramius who’s keen to heat up the Cold War. There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in hearing a Soviet zealot speak in such a noticeably Scottish accent, but Connery digs into this role with such gusto that by the end of this tense thriller, you don’t even mind the geographical mix-and-match approach. There’s a reason it’s Connery’s face on the poster. “I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking, ‘This guy is going to hijack a nuclear submarine, where’s the fervor in this character?'” his costar Baldwin told us. “Then as it goes on, I realized: Oh, no, this is perfect. Most people would have this guy pacing in his cabin, or wringing his hands. He has him sipping tea! It’s genius.”

 

'The Rock' (1996)

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“Welcome … to the Rock!” Michael Bay’s slam-bang action-movie is, like most of his blockbusters, a lot of nonstop sound and fury with the dial turned up to 11. But it has two saving graces: Nick Cage’s wonderfully weird chemical-weapons expert, pitched at a maximum level of Cage-like quirkiness; and the mere presence of Sean Connery. His federal prisoner John Mason is the only inmate to have ever escaped Alcatraz; given that a righteous general has taken over the tourist attraction and is threatening to send missiles to San Francisco unless his demands are met, his knowledge of the island’s penitentiary’s ins and outs may be the only thing keeping that city from being destroyed. Connery knows when to go camp with this career criminal, and when to simply be the flinty straight man to Cage’s absurdist egghead. And once it comes down to a mano a mano fight with Ed Harris’ military villain, you’re reminded of the way that Connery could bring gravitas to even the goofiest, most over-the-top of multiplex movies.

 

'Finding Forrester' (2000)

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Coming off of an Oscar nomination for Good Will Hunting, indie director Gus Van Sant proceeded to take on the story of a reclusive, Salinger-esque novelist who helps a young, African-American writer (Rob Brown) find his potential — and to say that his follow-up was chasing the same feel-good tone would be putting it mildly. But that doesn’t detract from  how Connery’s adding a number of extra layers and some much needed gruffness and grit to the elderly author; if you remember this movie for anything, it’s almost certainly the star yelling “You’re the man now, dog!” in his well-aged brogue. The star would retire a few years after taking the role, and even though he played a few more parts after this, the cantankerous literary superstar-in-hiding is really his swan song. It’s a wonderful last hurrah. 

 

 

 

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mg240980

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The name of the rose ( 1986 )

 

 

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In the 14th century, William of Baskerville (Sean Connery), a renowned Franciscan monk, and his apprentice, Adso of Melk (Christian Slater), travel to an abbey where a suspicious death has occurred. Using his deductive powers, William begins investigating what he believes to be murder. During the course of his investigation, several more monks wind up dead. With fear running through the abbey, the church leaders call forth Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), William's nemesis, to find the truth.

 

Murder on the Orient Express ( 1974 )

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From Agatha Christie's renowned novel.

 

 

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robertrolwing

Posted (edited)

where is my favorite BONDAGE film, ''DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER'',1971 / ???!!!!

I want a diamond round panelled laser satilte  / my other 2 favorite Connery BONDAGE films,-''From Russia With Love'', 1963 and ''ThunderBall'',1965

🙃

Edited by robertrolwing
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ColtMann

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this may seem o/t, however I must share:

this dude is in a bar, confronts a young lady and says, Bond, James Bond. to which she coolly looks him over and replies, Lost, Get Lost :lol-1074:

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