Skyfall Redux

While web browsing, I found this group who do "honest" film trailers. Their latest is on the recent Bond film:

Although I don't agree with all of it, they do have a point.

Skyfall - Bringing the House Down

Well, I had to go and see it.

Not bad. They clearly pulled out all the stops to make it work, plus they got Sam Mendes to direct and he's done a good job. There is a line in one of Le Carre's books where George Smiley says that espionage requires a certain gentleness, and that's what I think was missing from the previous two films, a lightness of touch. They have to be fun, and this one was. There were exotic locations (the Macao Casino scenes looked beautiful), plus Bond movies have a little surreality, as shown by using the abandoned island Hashima as the villians' lair.

There were also spectacular stunts which worked well, and a final showdown that showed that Mendes understands Bond movies.

There are criticisms, though. Any system administrator who allows a dodgy laptop to be attached to his network gets what he deserves and I wouldn't trust Q to work at PC World, much less MI6. The plot was a little obvious in that respect. Bérénice Lim Marlohe was good eye candy but under-used as the Femme Fatale/Bond Girl. Javier Bardem was good as the villain, but creepy rather than menacing, but I still think they need a really good henchman. Mark Strong would be good for that, or Arnold Vosloo. Yeah, Arnold would be great.

As for Craig as Bond, to paraphrase what Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, "Don't try to be James Bond; Be James Bond!" and I think he might be getting there, but it will be a lot longer road than everyone says. Not yet. Not bad, though.

And I rather liked the yatch. Nice. It's called the Regina and it's a snip at $14,000,000.

Nah, I'll leave it for this year, what with Christmas coming up...

Bond Deathmatch!

I've just spotted this on Youtube (via Boing Boing):



Connery beats Craig! Yeah, sounds about right.

Ooooo, extra points for the movies (not counting the Lazenby one). For answers see the comments.

Daniel Craig on Saturday Night Live

Apparently, Daniel Craig was hosting Saturday Night Live, the famous comedy sketch show over in the U.S. yesterday, no doubt as part of promoting Skyfall.

Got some good reviews too. Maybe they needed a bouncer?

As a contrast, here's one of my favourite pieces of dialog from The Bourne Identity:

Oxfam Thursday: Venus in Furs

I pulled a double shift at the shop today and was on the bottom deck throughout. Not much trade, but under the desk was the novel Venus in Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whose name the word masochism is derived. Whoever left it there was obviously very naughty and will be punished severely at some point, if he's very lucky. It does give me the excuse to show the track of the same name by the Velvet Underground:



Which is what Southend is like on a Saturday night. Venus in Furs depicts the sexual and emotional domination of a man by a woman. Sacher-Masoch was a utopian and an advocate of what we now call gender equality. The novel ends with the moral:

"That woman, as nature has created her and as man is at present educating her, is his enemy. She can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. This she can become only when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work."

In real life, Sacher-Masoch had a contract with his then mistress, Fanny Pistor (I'm not making this up; that was her name) which stipulated that she "promises to wear fur as often as practical and especially when being cruel". This contract was for six months, so he couldn't do much else as he was all tied up for that time.

Fun Fact: Sacher-Masoch is Marianne Faithful's great-great uncle on her mother's side.

I didn't get chance to play any music, but Lee on the upstairs till managed to dig out a sixties album which seemed to consist of Rolling Stones tracks, including this one:



If you want to pout, ladies, this is how you do it!

I also managed to get a pristine copy of the Penguin hardback publication of You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming. The Bond Girl in the novel is called Kissy Suzuki; I kid you not.

We've also had donated a lot of Folio Society books. These are re-prints of existing popular books in a distinctive, high quality format.

Skyfall

The London Movie Meetup Group is meeting to watch the new Bond movie Skyfall on Saturday, 27th October at the Vue cinema, Islington, with optional socialising afterwards.

As an aside, here's some young people having fun running about:

James Bond Films

With going to the exhibition I've been thinking about Bond films. There's been quite a few by now and  everyone has their opinion, mostly based on which one they saw first, so I thought I'd put mine down.

• Best film: You Only Live Twice. It's based in Japan and it's got lots of helicopters and Little Nellie and Sumo! and it's a Connery film (see below) and it's got spaceships and ninjas and samurai swords and Donald Pleasence as Blofeld and a pool full of piranhas and... It ticks a lot of boxes.




• Runner Up: Difficult. Any Connery (even Diamonds Are Forever at a pinch) apart from Never Say Never Again, or any Brosnan apart from the last.


• Best Bond. Sean Connery. The original and still the best.
• Runner Up: Pierce Brosnan. Not as iconic as Connery, but understood the role better than the others.


• Best Villain: Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), but only just (see below), and he set the mould really. Fröbe couldn't speak very good English, so he was dubbed! Bet you didn't know that.
• Runner Up: Dr. Julius No (Joseph Wiseman). I know Blofeld is a more obvious choice, but he got played out pretty quickly. A more recent alternative would be Electra King (Sophie Marceau), the ultimate bad girlfriend!

Oooo, pop quiz. Which Bond villain was played by Royalty? (see answer below)


• Best Henchman: Oddjob (Harold Sakata), no question. Jaws was just too silly.
• Runner Up: Tee Hee Johnson (Julius Harris), from Live and Let Die, but I thought Richard Stamper (Götz Otto) from Tomorrow Never Dies was good.


• Best Girl: If I had to choose, it would be Solitaire (Jane Seymour) in Live and Let Die, first impressions being the best.
• Runner Up: Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi, but voiced by Barbara Jefford) from From Russia with Love or, more recently, Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) in Quantum of Solace or Colonel Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) in Tomorrow Never Dies. She's got to be a lot more than eye candy.


• First film: Diamonds Are Forever (1971). I was about eight.

Fun Bond fact: "The World is Not Enough" (Orbis non sufficit, in Latin) was actually the family motto of Sir Thomas Bond (ca. 1620–1685), James Bond's supposed ancestor.

I've not been convinced of recent Bond films. Brosnan's era ended with a damp squib (far too self referential) and the last two films have been a bit tame. Maybe it's the Bourne thing, but Daniel Craig doesn't convince either: Bond has style and charm, "a man that shakes the hands that shake the world" (Dean Motter's expression, not mine, sadly), while Craig just looks like a scary nightclub bouncer who's been hit in the face once too often. Maybe third time lucky with Skyfall:



Another reason for my lack of conviction is that I read Greg Rucka's Queen and Country.

His heroine, Tara Chace, makes Bond look like a part-timer. The dialogue's pretty good too. When she and a contact are in a corner, she asks how fast he can run. He replies, "When someones shooting at me, I'm bloody Carl Lewis!"

...and another thing, when Grosse Point Blank has a better two-blokes-trying-to-kill-each-other (John Cusack and Benny Urquidez, the former's kick boxing trainer) fight scene than many a Bond movie, you've got to wonder!



Pop quiz answer: Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big in Live and Let Die was played by Yaphet Kotto, who's father was a Crown Prince of Cameroon.

Designing 007 and A Day in the City

I went to see some former colleagues today who've moved into new offices in 30 St. Mary Axe, a.k.a. the Gherkin. It was good to catch up with current developments in the team and I did the obvious joke, "who's got the corner office?" I'd worked with them two years ago, but with all that's happened since then, it feels half a lifetime ago. After much gossip, we parted and I continued on to The Barbican to see the James Bond exhibition.

Designing 007 at The Barbican

I couldn't take any photos in the exhibition itself, but I took one of the Aston Martin outside the front entrance:

Even if you're not a Bond fan, I'd recommend the exhibition, certainly to those who are interested in films generally. The sheer quantity of things on display is astounding: gadgets (Oddjob's hat!, Scaramanga's golden gun), costumes (a LOT of tuxedos and amazing outfits for the ladies), plus lots of film clips, original storyboards and models used for both planning and filming.

Afterwards, I took a walk through London from the Barbican to The V&A, through Holborn, Picadilly and Knightsbridge:


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These are the ornaments in Chinatown.

At the V&A, they have these giant "tops" which people sit in and roll around.

It seems to be addictive as I've never seen any unused.