[film] Spectre, as texted to Adam

[kaberett]

THAT'S NOT WHAT THALLIUM POISONING LOOKS LIKE

THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT OF THE WINTER SOLDIER

Also? My tailor's better than Daniel Craig's.

Comments

[kaberett]

Additional notes:

That's not how fucking impact craters work, it looked more like a bloody volcano lair.

That's not how prosopagnosia works in neurological terms - acquiring it works through damage to a brain *area* not a specific nerve, and that's... also not actually how recognition works.

Lots of happy feelings about London/Rome/Austria.

Wow that was definitely a James Bond film.

[lilliburlero]

This (actually not-quite but near-as-dammit) prosopagnosiac was amused at the FATE WORSE THAN DEATH tone in which that line was uttered, if it's the one I'm thinking of. Also, that is not how recognition works.

Definitely a James Bond film.

[legionseagle]

I think I missed the line about prosopagnosia - which I'm sorry about, because I'm in the same boat as you about nearly being a sufferer.

[lilliburlero]

I was thinking of the bit where Blofeld threatens Bond with never recognising Madeleine again. I think what was meant was that he wouldn't know who she was, he would lose all memory of her, but it was phrased in such a way as to suggest prosopagnosia to me. I snorted audibly and said fate worse than at the time, anyway. (I've completely failed to recognise people whom I've known longer and more intimately than Bond's known Madeleine at that point (viz. romantic partners of years' standing, my mother...)

[legionseagle]

I was once returning from a sailing trip in the Lake District being driven by the friend who'd agreed to sail with me when I noticed my parents standing at the bus stop. So we waved and hooted and eventually pulled up about 50 yards past the stop. So I ran back, and my mother said, "Well, I wondered if it might be you, but I didn't recognise the car and I didn't recognise the man, so I thought I must be wrong." I thought of all those Attenborough documentaries about a mother penguin recognising her own chick among hundreds of thousands...

[davidgillon]

That's not how prosopagnosia works

Probably not how it works in the most recent two Dresden Codaks either http://dresdencodak.com/2015/11/16/dark-science-55-the-symbol/, though it's claimed as agnosia it does specifically relate to what Kim thinks is a face.

it looked more like a bloody volcano lair.

Well, they are traditional in Bond ;)

[recessional]

Thallium poisoning is distinctly un-romantic and ucky looking. Why would you go for thallium poisoning? At least as long as you keep the throwing up off-screen, arsenic is a much better idea.

[kaberett]

He wasn't exhibiting any hair loss or significant skin problems! He had been given a high enough dose sufficiently recently that he had... only weeks to live! IT IS MY ELEMENT OF INTEREST I KNOW WHAT POISONING SYMPTOMS ARE.

[recessional]

*shakes head* Silly movie-makers.

(Seriously guys, go with the classics! Arsenic is popular for a reason! You can even dose high enough that there's nothing anyone could do for them!)

[legionseagle]

Thallium is a classic. Both Ngaio Marsh and Agatha Christie used it, the latter with such precision that a nurse in the Middle East, who had read the book in question immediately realised what was actually wrong with the child in her care, and managed to save their life.

[recessional]

Okay that last bit is really cool. Who says genre fiction doesn't make a difference in the real world? /tongue in cheek

(about the "who says", obvs, not about it being really cool: it is actually really cool)

[legionseagle]

The Ngaio Marsh use is much more imprecise, I'm sorry to say, but the Christie is The Pale Horse and it's awesome. I'm particularly taken with the film/TV movie they made of it some years ago starring Colin Buchanan.

[kaberett]

This is awesome and I was unaware of those examples; thank you!

[vass]

I saw the part of this post outside the cut and immediately went "Agatha Christie's Pale Horse, right?" and went to Wikipedia to check my memory before going on. I haven't even read it since I was twelve or so.

It was a veryvivid description. One of her scarier books.

Probably an early contributing factor behind my mild paranoia about surveys/market research and people who want your data for vague, unspecified reasons, actually.

The bad guys in The Pale Horse call you pretending to be a market research company, and find out what brand of shampoo or shaving cream or whatever you use. Then they break in and replace your shampoo/whatever with one contaminated with thallium.

Whoever ordered the hit doesn't know when exactly you'll die or what the exact cause of death will be, just that it'll be soon and will look natural and will be untraceable to them.

So the two detectives (who don't know it's thallium) decide to investigate this by one of them posing as the other's husband and ordering the hit on her, to see what happens...

[jelazakazone]

I think someone recently wrote a book about the poisons used in the Agatha Christie books. Woman did her research! I could try to dig that up, if anyone is interested.

[legionseagle]

I, for one would be fascinated.

[jelazakazone]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/05/agatha-christies-poisons-crime-fiction is a review of the book written by the author herself, so it gives you a good feel for the book plus some background on Christie. :D

[wordweaverlynn]

Thank you!

[jelazakazone]

No problem! :D

[frobisherw]

Also, thank you! (says the random bystander)

[jelazakazone]

No problem! Glad people are enjoying the link!

[kaberett]

Spoilers!

(It is literally a shadowy evil organisation that's infiltrated every intelligence agency in the world to set up a global surveillance programme for great evil THE SYMBOL OF WHICH IS A TENTACLED SILHOUETTE, though, I can't even.)

[recessional]

Bwahahahahaha. Ahem.

Well hopefully someone out there has written the crossover. XD

[kaberett]

I can but assume that reporters got timelines confused and the meetings to set up Nine Eyes (Project Insight) were the World Security Council from the UK point of view...

[hilarita]

Out of interest, who is your tailor, if you're happy to share?

[kaberett]

Got him from hairyears, who is best placed to provide the requisite recommendation/introduction! He is, however, not exactly cheap. Good value; not... cheap.

[hilarita]

Thanks. It's OK, I wasn't expecting 'cheap' necessarily to be a defining characteristic of a good tailor :)

[starlady]

It was not a good movie. The worst of the Craig Bonds, actually, I think.

[kaberett]

Oh sure, but I don't go see Bond movies with any expectations beyond "shit will get blown up"and "it will reliably annoy me in specific ways I can have a soothing rant about without at any point actually being surprised", so ;-)

[randomling]

I sort of have no idea if it was good or not. I was entertained for two hours or so, but I think I left my brain in the lobby. (I have a feeling that might have been wise.)

My main memory is of one of my OCs jumping up and down in my head telling me how much he misses Rome during the car chase there. (I haven't been there for 20+ years...)

[tree_and_leaf]

My tailor's better than Daniel Craig's.

Bond's taste has never exactly been reliable, so I suppose that's fair enough...

[kaberett]

So specifically they're perfectly adequate suits for sitting around looking decorative in; the problem is that his line of work doesn't involve much of that, and if they're going to explicitly credit his tailor the least they could do is clothing that won't look awful any time he raises his arms!

[legionseagle]

As per nineveh_uk I can now say knowledgeably, "Ah! Lack of attention to the armscye."

[silveradept]

Well, I wasn't impressed with Skyfall, so this seems like yet another disappointment, ho hum.

[kaberett]

*shrug* -- as I've mentioned elsecomment my attitude to Bond movies is pretty much that they're guaranteed to give me explosions and sweeping panoramic shots of places I'm fond of, generally avoid the kind of gore I find distressing, and are immensely predictable in terms of the kinds of ways they might piss me off -- so aren't going to hit an unexpectedly vulnerable spot and knock me for six. Consequently they're an opportunity for me to look at nice scenery and complain in a comfortably scathing and predictable fashion about plot holes, how bullet exit wounds work, etc etc etc: it's... honestly not entirely clear to me what people who are Expecting Different Things of a Bond film are looking for/hoping to get out of them? Which is sort of a question, I suppose, about what it is you'd like to have in them that you don't -- Skyfall also filled the niche of What I'm Looking For Out Of A 007 Film nicely, so clearly different aim and expectations are in play here!

[silveradept]

Fair point. Bond does all those things. I don't know that I want any of those things in movies, and then if there aren't secondary characters that are interesting, since Bond isn't really a protagonist I like...

...Skyfall was mostly getting it on disc to see if I would like it. I guess I don't like the form.

[kaberett]

Oh, I don't want those things on the regular, by and large, and they're not things I keep around to rewatch, but sometimes being snide about characters I dislike jumping out of explosions in utterly predictable fashions is good for my head. (If MM:FR had still be in cinemas I'd've gone to watch that instead and found it much more emotionally fulfilling and come out of it being much less nasty, but hey.)

[silveradept]

Oh. For some reason, I was missing that context. Sporking movies is totally a thing, and might make Bond much more enjoyable.