Just watched Skyfall again - the DVD hit the stores today and I've not revised my opinion one little bit. I loved it in the cinema and I still love it on DVD. Skyfall, to my mind, is Daniel Craig's best Bond movie and represents a true return to classic 007. The producers seem to have given up on buggering about with the formula and have brought back all that made the 007 series unique from other action movies. Daniel Craig still gives his hard edged performance but thankfully things have lightened up considerably from the previous two Bond movies.
Casino Royale, Craig's debut, was an OK action movie but it didn't really feel like Bond and was much too dark and the less said about Quantum of Solace the better, but with Skyfall many of the classic elements are returned to the franchise and not before time - we get Moneypenny, we get Q, we get a new we also get much of the outlandishness that's been missing since Daniel (miserable bastard) Craig slipped on the tux.
If you've not seen Skyfall yet then go get the DVD. This is one of the better Bond movies.
A big fuss was made over the fact that Daniel Craig in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall would be seen sipping Heineken beer after the producers signed a lucrative product placement deal with the beer company. Everyone know that Bond's favourite tipple is a vodka martini - or is it?
A study of the Fleming books reveals that on average Bond takes a drink every seven pages and throughout the entire series drinks exactly 317 drinks.
Now of these 317 drinks his preferred poison was whiskey of which he drinks 101 in total, among them fifty seven bourbons and thirty nine scotches. 007 also likes champagne and drinks 30 glasses throughout the series. He also likes sake which he tries in the book, You Only Live Twice and ends up drinking thirty five of them. And out of all the drinks Bond consumes in the entire Fleming canon he only sips the iconic vodka martini 19 times, while he opts for gin martinis 16 times.
The famous "shaken not stirred" line was first used in the novel, Diamonds are Forever, but the line was uttered by Sean Connery in the movie Goldfinger and countless times since, with Roger Moore's Bond insisting on his drinks shaken and not stirred more than any of the other Bonds- why shaken and not stirred? Well shaking a vodka martini actually makes the drink colder and sharper.
“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.” “Oui, monsieur.” ‘Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a
measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add
a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?’ ‘Certainly monsieur.’ The barman seemed pleased with the idea. ‘Gosh, that’s certainly a drink,’ said Leiter.
Ian Fleming's biography reveals that Fleming preferred his own martinis mixed with gin, but in later life he switched to bourbon on his doctor's orders.
It seems that Bond, like Fleming, was a man who knew what he liked.
Skyfall screenwriter John Logan spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and explained why he had incorporated the gay subtext into the showdown between Bond and Silva towards the end of the movie -
“Some people claim it’s because I’m, in fact, gay but not true at all. Sam (Sam Mendes - Skyfall director)
and I were discussing, there were so many scenes where Bond goes mano-a-mano with
the villain, whether it’s Dr. No or Goldfinger or whatever, and there’s
been so many ways to do a cat-and-mouse and intimidate Bond, and we
thought, what would truly make the audience uncomfortable is sexual
intimidation; playing the sort of homoerotic card that is sort of always
there subtextually with characters like Scaramanga in Man With the Golden Gun or Dr. No. So we just decided that we should play the card and enjoy it.” John Logan
The homoerotic scene may have been a masterstroke because it provides a lot of free publicity by bringing up an issue still
considered as controversial by many into a film and a
character who epitomises heterosexuality. By putting womaniser Bond in a
homoerotic situation, the producers of the film guarantee tons of press
coverage focused on the character's supposed bisexuality.
This is not the first time that James Bond's sparked off a gay controversy - Back in 1999 gay actor Rupert Everett created a
firestorm of headlines when he announced that he was writing and
planning to star in a movie about a gay James Bond. The project never
got off the ground, although Everett denied the project was ever in the planning stages and stated that the fact that he was openly gay meant that he would never land the part of 007 despite many feeling he would be superb in the role - “I'd like to play James Bond, but straight. It won't happen because
Bond fans would burn down MGM if the studios got a gay actor to play
James Bond. There was never going to be an alternative gay Bond either.
That never happened.” Rupert Everett
EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Sony Pictures
Entertainment are delighted to announce that SKYFALL has become the
biggest film at the UK box office in 2012 surpassing both The Avengers and The Dark Knight
Rises with an extraordinary box office total of over £57m in just 12
days. It is now also the biggest Bond movie of all time in the UK
exceeding the £55.6m achieved by CASINO ROYALE in 2006.
Sam Mendes has told the Huffington Post that he considered casting Sean Connery in the Albert Finney role in Skyfall, but that he quickly changed his mind - "There was a definite discussion about that — way, way early on. But I
think that’s problematic. Because, to me, it becomes too … it would take
you out of the movie. Connery is Bond and he’s not going to come back
as another character. It’s like, he’s been there. So, it was a very
brief flirtation with that thought, but it was never going to happen,
because I thought it would distract." Sam Mendes
Oh Adele that is so touching. Sniff!
In other Bond related news current 007 Daniel Craig told Yahoo movies that he cried the first time he heard the Skyfall theme - "From the opening bars I knew immediately, then the voice kicked in and
it was exactly what I'd wanted from the beginning. It just got better
and better because it fitted the movie. In fact the more of the movie we
made, the more it fitted it." Daniel Craig.
That Daniel Craig is such a f**king girl - he got hit in the nuts by a big rope in Casino Royale without a single tear and a few bars of a retro sounding theme song gets him blubbering like a baby.
Details of the new Bond novel by William Boyd due to be published in 2013 are starting to leak through - the book is still as yet untitled but it is confirmed that the story will be set in 1969. Boyd seems a good choice for Bond - a lifelong fan of the Fleming novels he even used Fleming in the plot of his 2002 novel, Any Human Heart.
"His thrillers occupy the niche that Ian Fleming would fill were he
writing today and with similar style and flair. This, alongside his
fascination with Fleming himself, makes him the perfect choice to take
Bond back to his 1960s world." Corinne Turner, managing Director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.
And sticking with books Roger Moore's Bond on Bond, out now from Michael O'Mara Limited, is an entertaining look at fifty years of the Bond movies told in Roger's usual witty style.
Premium Bond
"As Bond I set pulses racing across the world but these days it is my pacemaker that keeps my pulse racing. Still I have my memories" Roger Moore.
And wonderful memories they are with Moore giving us his thoughts on all of the other actors who have worn the iconic 007 shoes.
Skyfall opens in the US tomorrow and it is a certain thing that it will repeat the success it's had in the UK these past two weeks. Daniel Craig still looks out of place as Bond in several scenes but in this movie he is very much Fleming's Bond. It's a far better Bond movie that both Casino Royale and Quantum of Shit and to my mind maybe the best James Bond movie since Goldeneye. After the previous Bond movies Skyfall returns us to classy, stylish movies instead of grubby shoot-em-up Hollywood look-a -like rubbish. And it's about time but yeah, James Bond is truly back.
Archive's full Skyfall review can be read HERE but watch out for spoilers.
And sticking with Skyfall - . Team Bond took to chain saws chopping down
two 100 year old trees meeting with protest from local residents in Istanbul. Insert your own Q branch jokes in here.
The new Bond movie Skyfall allegedly commits environmental damage in Istanbul according to a Turkish paper. Scenes were shot on and
over famous 600 years old Grand Baazar. During the motorcyle chase
shooting over the baazar, the roof of the historical building and 500
years old adjacent wooden building was damaged. Turkish daily Habertürk also reports that 2 trees, each over hundred years
old, were cut to make the shooting smoother for the crew of the movie.
Enviromental activists protested alleged cuttings and said Istanbul is ravaged for a movie that many of the population will never have the luxury of seeing.
Given that Skyfall has taken $77.7 million worldwide in its opening weekend, and that it doesn't open in America, easily the biggest market for the movie, until Nov 9th it looks like Skyfall may become the first Bond movie to cross the $600 million mark. The makers must be delighted and in the UK the film had the second biggest opening weekend in UK box-office history coming in second to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
It's good new for the evergreen franchise and not only financially but critically too,with Skyfall gathering mostly positive reviews. It's a better movie that both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, and is arguably the first Daniel Craig Bond movie that actually feels like part of the long running franchise. Top marks to all concerned - we've still got that tougher edge, but instead of all that brooding we've now got a new Q and Moneypenny to provide the classic ingredients missing from the previous two Bond movies.
The franchise is now is fast forward with the next Bond adventure already being scheduled for 2014.
What a surprise - after the dire Quantum of Solace Eon have now given us what is not only Daniel Craig's best Bond movie, but maybe the best Bond film in years. I've never been a fan of Daniel Craig's Bond and yet at the climax to Skyfall, when we have all the components in place - a new Q, a new Miss Moneypenny and even a new M- I had tears in my eyes. Yep, the real Bond is back and dare I say it but Daniel Craig is Bond. There was another emotional moment when Bond loses his temper after the iconic Aston Martin is destroyed and the Bond theme swells up in the background, I was ready to punch the air and shout, 'Go get em, Bond.'
Skyfall continues the harder edge of the Bond movies but it brought back a lot of the good nature and humour that's been missing ever since Craig stepped into Bond's shoes - Skyfall delivers with emotional weight, characterisation,
astonishing action sequences and sly humour. And it's a welcome return with Craig even delivering several one liners that hark back to the old style 007. Make no mistake about it Skyfall will both please those who like the new harder egde and also Bond purists like myself who believe that first and foremost Bond should be escapist. There was one moment I could have done without and that is the scene where it is suggested Bond has experienced homosexual sex but thankfully this is downplayed and only a small moment in a film that rarely puts a foot out of place. Though why this scene was included is beyond me - what are they trying to say here? Danial Craig's got a large gay fanbase and maybe they are trying to give a nod to this demographic. That's just fine and dandy but just remember James Bond, the pussy magnet, is far from gay.
Silva, the baddie, is excellently acted by Javier Bardem and reminded me a lot of Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill, and his ultimate demise at the climax is stunning - often the old ways are the best. Judi Dench in her last Bond movie goes out in style and newcomers Q and Miss Moneypenny are superbly brought in. Skyfall is set more firmly in the real Bond universe than any of the previous Craig Bond movies - the pre-credits sequence is the best since the boat chase in The World is not Enough, and the film that follows is tightly scripted and doesn't meander too much. The changes in location are also quite logical and it's great to see a Bond movie with so much of its action set in the UK - London comes across as a high tech metropolis and Scotland looks absolutely gorgeous. It was also nice to see Bond's boyhood home and the graves of his parents - "I always hated this place,' Bond says as his ancestral home is blown to the high heavens.
At last I feel as if I've seen a real Bond movie. I was never a fan of Casino Royale since I felt the movie didn't feel like a Bond movie at all, and I hated Quantum of Solace, but with Skyfall I have a Bond that stretches back through the entire franchise and can sit comfortably alongside all the other Bond movies.
It's been a long time but Bond is most certainly back.
WELCOME BACK 007 AND IT'S GOOD THAT YOU'VE BROUGHT Q AND MISS MONEYPENNY WITH YOU.
The movie opens up a few minutes following the end of Casino Royale, and we are thrown into a generic TV car chase - what the f**k! The Bond pre-credit sequence has always been a big opening, often nothing to do with the plot of the film that follows, designed to get the viewer into the right frame of mind. This opener however is so badly edited that the viewer doesn't know what's going on and we are immediately thrown into Bourne territory -it's as if Paul Greengrass has taken control of Bond and decided to drag the viewer into the action by giving us shaky camerawork and fast cuts. The editing in the opening sequence of Quantum is perhaps the worse of any other Bond movie. Enough of the jump cuts and makro shots, already! To illustrate the point I am trying to make watch the scene where Bond shoots the car and it goes off the cliff - this scene uses two of the most uninteresting and predictable camera angles possible. For years the Bond films set the level to which all other action movies tried to reach, but this new incarnation is heavily influenced by the Bourne movies and it just doesn't work.
Another bad point is that Casino Royale showed us an origin of Bond and ended with Craig speaking the line - my name's Bond, James Bond and then the famous Bond theme played, so Quantum should have picked up from there, but for some reason the film wants to continue the origin and tells us that the Bond we are about to see is still some way from being the Bond we know and love; the Bond we supposedly got when Casino Royale ended.
Quantum should have opened with the gun-barrel sequence and gone on from there, but in place we get a mess of a Bond movie; a film that beats both Moonraker and Diamonds are Forever for the title of being the worse Bond film in the long history of the franchise.
And once the film starts proper things don't really get any better - if anything they get worse.
"We have people everywhere,'Mr White tells Bond and M after he's been removed from the boot of that car and taken to the MI6 lair to be questioned. Then the MI6 guards standing around pull their weapons to try and kill everyone, M and Bond included. M, of course, survives and then we are into another thrilling chase only this time on foot, as Bond pursues one of the MI6/Quantum double agents. Again in this chase the editing is atrocious with constant cutting back and forth between the main action with footage from some horse race. This makes no sense and the viewer isn't sure what is happening. Is there something the director is telling us with the constant cross cutting between foot chase and horse race? Is this some kind of arty bollocks? Are the horses all stallions or something? I do wish someone would tell me what the f**k the horse race is about? This nonsensical editing will be repeated later during the opera scene, but by this point I had walked out of the theatre. As far as I was concerned James Bond was dead, at least as far as the movie series was concerned.
It took me a couple of years to finish watching the film on DVD - and I'm someone who has seen every Bond film on opening day since Moonraker back in 1979 - I wasn't overly keen on Casino Royale's dark edge but Quantum completely alienated me - a life long Bond fan and I couldn't even be bothered to watch this on DVD and had to force myself to finally sit through the entire car crash of a movie.
Later we get a boat chase that isn't a patch on the record breaking boat chase from Roger Moore's debut, Live and Let Die. Surely if you're going to have a boat chase in a series that has done this so many times before - Live and Let Die, World is not Enough - then you should at least try and best that which came before. Instead here we get a pointless chase that does nothing to take the movie forward and shortly after we find ourselves at that awful opera scene. It looks stunning and Daniel Craig is excellent as he slips his way into the opera, but as soon as the fight starts we get more of that cross cutting nonsense that makes it hard to follow and destroys any suspense.
What a load of total bollocks!!!
Quantum of Solace is a mish-mash of the movie - Casino Royale took us back to basics and Quantum follows this, and yet some of the scenes could have come from Star Trek - we don't even have a Q branch yet when we are shown MI6 it is a paperless place with documents floating around on wafer thin screens. This is an odd choice in this supposedly back to basics Bond. It would have fitted right into any of the Brosnan Bond movies but is so far out of place here that it is jarring.
Daniel Craig gives the best performance possible given the terrible script and art-house editing, but at the end of the day even the weakest Bond films have often had their moments but Quantum doesn't seem, to my eyes at least, to have any. The makers seem to have forgotten they are making a Bond movie, they have ignored the rich legacy of the series and instead delivered a third rate action movie, and whoever did the editing of the action scenes needs to go back to film school, and learn how to interest the audience. It might look effective cutting back and forth to the opera and the action,the opera and the action, the opera and the action, the fucking opera and the action, but what the fuck does it all mean? Self indulgent crap is what it is.
Here's to Skyfall...surely it can only get better.
AudioGo have released all new audio book recordings of Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels - I've just listened to an eight hour recording of Her Majesty's Secret Service with David (Dr Who) Tennant doing the reading. And a damn good job Tennant did too!
“I am delighted to say that Ian Fleming Publications and AudioGO are
thrilled to be working together to present some of Britain’s best-known
actors reading Ian’s classic Bond novels, for your ears only...”
Lucy Fleming
Each novel is read by a different actor and each set features an intreview with the respective reader on what Bond means to them. So far I've only heard OHMSS (truly a great Fleming novel) and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Here's a list of titles now available:
Casino Royale read by Dan Stevens
Live and Let Die read by Rory Kinnear
Moonraker read by Bill Nighy
Diamonds Are Forever read by Damian Lewis
From Russia With Love read by Toby Stephens
Doctor No read by Hugh Quarshie
Goldfinger read by Hugh Bonneville
Thunderball read by Jason Isaacs
The Spy Who Loved Me read by Rosamund Pike
On Her Majesty's Secret Service read by David Tennant
You Only Live Twice read by Martin Jarvis
The Man With The Golden Gun read by Kenneth Branagh
The new banner for upcoming Bond movie, Skyfall certainly looks cool - and in product placement news we've now learned that Coca Cola have signed a deal with Eon and that their Coke Zero brand will feature in the forthcoming action packed movie cum advertisement - It's Coke Zero, Zero Seven all the way.
Also in Bond news, Roger Moore (the Archive's choice for best Bond) stated in his new book, Bond on Bond that Daniel Craig is the best Bond, or rather the best actor to play Bond - strange given the Rog has complained about the violent direction of the modern series.
"I loved 'Casino Royale' and Daniel Craig. He is a wonderful actor, certainly the best actor to play Bond." Roger Moore.
On the question of corporate sponsership of the movies, Moore had this to say: "Of course, we had executives breathing down our necks when I was
playing [Bond], but I never took them seriously. In fact, I
don't think I took anything seriously. Except making sure I got paid on
Friday."
The new Bond is looking more interesting all the time -we know Q is back, but we also think Moneypenny will be turning up and the all new trailer looks as if they've gone back to the style of classic Bond.
And here he is - British actor Ben Whishaw plays the role made famous by the late
Desmond Llewellyn, who played Q in 17 Bond films between 1963 and 1999.
We've got Bond playing a word association game in the first official trailer from the Skyfall people - you can view it below - It's a moody trailer - are we excited? To be honest I still haven't been able to sit through previous Bond movie, Quantum of Shit, so I'm kinda a little bit excited...not much, mind.
Not content with taking away the character's uniqueness, style an class but now they want to take away his taste too and forthcoming Bond pic, Skyfall will apparently see the character drop his Martini in favor of a Heineken as Daniel Craig's Bond becomes a larger lout.
Also on the Bond front it seems that a special sequence will be filmed with Bond parachuting into the Olympic stadium to open the 2012 games.
The first advertising shots for the forthcoming James Bond movie, Skyfall features Daniel Craig looking more like Bond than ever - they've darkened his hair for a start, and given him more of a classic Bond look. And Q and Moneypenny will appear so maybe Skyfall is something to look forward to after all.
Related - Sam Mendes, the director
of next James Bond flick ‘Skyfall’, is being condemned for including
scenes of military funeral repatriations apparently inspired by a town
in England, Royal Wootton Bassett.
The scenes, which feature the bodies of
eight servicemen killed overseas being repatriated and driven in a
funeral cortege past hundreds of mourners lining the streets, worry the
Royal British Legion, a leading daily has reported.
“The last thing we want is a glitzy film,” said Royal Wootton Bassett spokesman.
“Attending
the repatriations started as a pure and simple tribute. How are the
mothers and fathers of the fallen soldiers going to feel when they see
this on the big screen? It is cashing in on people’s grief and is just
cynical.”
It now seems a certain thing that the role Naomie Harris would be taking a role in Bond 23, Skyfall, will be that of Moneypenny. Several newspapers have run with this story and it also seems that Q will return. If this turns out to be true that I applaud it - Daniel Craig's Bond has been missing far too many of the trappings of the franchise for my liking, and not only have fans had to contend with the changed character of 007 but also a vastly altered Flemingverse. And by the way the rumoured title of Red Sky at Night pisses all over the now official, Skyfall.
The producers may have finally realized that the formula Fleming invented is what made the series so popular in the first place. Bring back Moneypenny, Q and the humour, please!
The plot of Skyfall will see Naomie playing a field operative who is taken off active duty to become the new Moneypenny.
James Bond website MI6 are reporting sightings of Daniel Craig driving the Aston Martin DB5 on a recent night shoot in London - the website claims that the scene is similar to the one in Bond classic, Goldfinger where Connery drives the Aston Martin through the warehouses of Auric Enterprises:
“Shot at night, the scene is reminiscent of Goldfinger, with
Bond driving the DB5 down narrow streets, zipping past warehouses and
ducking under the arches of a railway line. For the 1964 film, the chase
scene at Auric Enterprises was actually shot at Pinewood
Studios. Filming will continue in Deptford and New Cross in London. In
the movie, the DB5 action will feature in scene #134.”
