We were engaging in one of those meaningless but always enjoyable conversational riffs: which James Bond movies do you enjoy the most. Mine vary from time to time, but include On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice (each considered, on release at least, to be something of a box office disappointment) not to mention all-out blockbusters like Thunderball and Goldfinger.
"Ahh," said our son, "you go for the early ones."
Well, yes, I guess I do.
I think I'll be revising my proverbial list (I always do, anyway); on Friday night, we braved the mall - it was MIdnight Madness, the weekend when the stores stay open late and they bring in security to conduct the traffic - to see Skyfall on its opening night. Yep, we're that kind of James Bond family.
It turns out the generous reviews have been on target. Skyfall really is that good. I put a lot of the credit with director Sam Mendes, who emphasizes story and character as much as spectacle and dazzling visuals ... and the latter are there, too. The investment of the reboot of Casino Royale six years ago pays off splendidly here, and the franchise brings back several key elements, chief among them the Bond sense of humour. There's actually a whole theme of what the movie calls the old ways: key characters are reintroduced, and not just Q (I'll leave the other as the surprise that the movie earns) but ongoing riffs and nods. See above for the return of the Aston Martin, whose ejector seat makes for a one-liner.
There's more: the gadgets are back, with a knowing reference and a scaled-down appreciation. With Javier Bardem's Silva, a villain worth putting up against Goldfinger himself. The globe-hobbing locales. And, yep, the guitar riff of the theme. (Not to mention a theme song that will probably get Adele an Oscar nomination, if not a win.)
Speaking of Oscars, the calibre of the cast is something else. Mendes, a winner himself, brought back not only Craig and Judi Dench, but adds Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney and Bardem to the screen. The Bond pattern was usually to get curiosities and character actors to round out the parts. Consequently, with a decent script (cowriter John Logan is arguably one of the best currently in the business, in any genre) and a confident director, the cast make for a Bond movie that has something new: genuine depth. Go figure.
I'm game to see it again: not to revel in the performances, mind you, but to absorb the whole spectacle again, and, yes, enjoy the jokes. As a Bond movie, Skyfall really works on that level, too.
This was a nice surprise: the latest instalment of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's Century series of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was released today, so I downloaded it straight away through the Comics app. It's just $4.99 digitally.
I've haven't read it through yet, but I was schoolboy-giddy enough to flick rapidly through the pages quickly, looking at how this one is put together ... and to see what winks, nod, in-jokes, allusions and asides are packed inside. There are quite a few, right at the surface, from Bond girls to 30 Rock to Doctor Who to the Lion King, of all things. I imagine it would really help, again, to be English to spot some of the background characters who pop up in these books!
I'm setting it aside for the weekend. It looks like a treat, with the same attention to detail and sidebar production values (the fake ads are as complicated as anything else) as the preceding ones.
Here's an interesting graphic representing the breadth of the James Bond films, from Dr. No to the present (although how the still-in-production Skyfall fits in is a bit of a question). In any event, my son and I had fun picking over the different icons.
A scene that definitely did not appear in the Bond movies. (And the spilled martini? Unthinkable.)
The above is part of a collection (originally designed the goodwill of the Christmas season) that also features other pop culture figures sharing a moment. Check it out.
Sony Pictures released the above image, of Daniel Craig in character as James Bond, to pimp promote the upcoming film Skyfall. (It worked; sites like Entertainment Weekly picked it up, and that's where I saw it.)
But what does it mean? Is it a clue of the visual style director Sam Mendes is going for? Does it mean Bond still likes his trusty pistol? Does Bond need a shave?
Who knows. I'm always game for a new Bond movie, and the casting for Skyfall (Albert Finney is in it!) is the most intriguing element for me, so far anyway.
In the meantime, can it be too longer before the vague but delicious teaser shows up online?
Last year, around this time, the three of us started watching the James Bond movies in chronological order. It was fun; this weekend, we dipped into the DVD chest and pulled out a favourite (You Only Live Twice) as we took it easy one night.
I'd like to try something different: reading the original Ian Fleming books. Not necessarily in order, and while I read some when I was younger (my dad was and is a fan of spy fiction, and I tracked a few down at the library and bought at least one on my own), a good number I've never read at all. My impressions stand to be corrected, but I thought that the tack that the movie franchise has taken with Daniel Craig has been in line with Fleming's concept of Bond - apart from the easy sophistication, this guy was not afraid to use his fists. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see!
I don't actually expect Skyfall, the James Bond movie that is now officially underway, to be up for the major Oscar categories, when it's completed, but let's consider who's in it, and behind it. The director, Sam Mendes, won an Academy Award for American Beauty. Javier Bardem, who will play the villain, has an Oscar on his mantle, and so does Judi Dench, returning as M. Ralph Fiennes has been nominated twice, and I have no doubt Daniel Craig (whose range does not get much of a workout in the Bond series) will win one some day.
I don't want a high-brow experience, by the way; I fully expect to get a junk-food movie that actually has some fine qualities.
Not surprisingly, Connery's the one in front.
Aren't you, too?
There are a variety of ways to get the girl in the movies, and this chart (from Pleated Jeans) outlines all of them ... including a few ones that made me cringe and laugh at the same time.
A wedding cake right out of a James Bond action sequence, complete with minions? Almost worth getting married again just for that!
During the James Bond marathon that I've described here in the past (recap: the three of us watched the James Bond canon, in chronological order, over not-necessarily-consecutive weekends starting in January), we became familiar with some of the Bond songs. The one has proved to be among the most hummable? It'd be the title theme to You Only Live Twice, sung by Nancy Sinatra.
John Barry's melody and string arrangement (Leslie Bricusse wrote the lyrics) were lifted two decades later by Robbie Williams for the tune Millennium.
You can see how the song was used in the opening credits of the film by clicking here.
Seven shades - make that 007 shades - of funny.
I've mentioned a few times that we have been watching the James Bond films, more or less in sequence. We started in January; when a weekend slot is open and we're in the mood, we pop in a DVD. (Buying that set from Costco years back has paid off!).
This weekend, it was The Living Daylights, with Timothy Dalton, from 1987. A little while ago, we finished the last of the Roger Moore films, as I would call it, The Trough. I didn't think much of Octopussy and especially A View to a Kill when I saw them, and my sour impression holds up.
The Living Daylights was a bit of a mini-reboot ... nothing like what has happened recently with Daniel Craig, but definitely a step in the right direction. It's easy to credit the changes with Dalton himself, who lost the wink-wink light-comedy sarcasm of Moore, and tried to put some smoulder back in the part.
It was interesting to learn from the mini-documentary attached to the DVD that the production team had the redesign in mind well before Dalton was cast. After all, Pierce Brosnan was their choice, but he could not be released from Remington Steele to make it. Dalton (who had been on the franchise's radar since 1969!) got the part. The next film, Licence To Kill, had a grittier feel, maybe anticipating where Craig's Bond would go, but my recollection is of an unsatisfying film.
That would be it for Dalton. The franchise ran into a wall, and it wouldn't get back on track for six years.
Those films are on the horizon. In retrospect, I still see Timothy Dalton as the Bond who didn't get his due.
Nick, by the way, loved it.
We made it a 007 twofer this weekend; as mentioned, we tucked into supper last night with From Russia With Love, and today we went for the decadent late-morning lounge (with laptops, where applicable) and picked up the chronological order with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a.k.a., the one with George Lazenby. I'd put it at or near the top of my favourite Bond films, and today's rescreening reminded me of how "Sixties" the movie is, especially with its colours. The men wear bright orange shirts, the women (especially Blofeld's mind-controlled angels of death) wearing the funky paisleys and fabrics of 1969.You definitely get a sense that they were trying to keep the series current; just check out the poster above.
A few thoughts: Diana Riggs looked amazing when she was young. Lazenby, by all rights, should have had another crack at the part (Sean Connery scrapped that when he returned for a last hurrah in Diamonds Are Forever, two years later). Telly Savalas was definitely the heppest of the Blofelds.
We continued our James Bond immersion last night (in which our son Nicholas is seeing the Bond canon for the first time) with From Russia With Love. (Yeah. we're not quite doing them in order.) I forgot how entertaining Lotte Lenya is as Krebb, the nasty ex-Russian spymaster turned No. 3 in SPECTRE.
I was explaining to Nick that Lenya had had quite the career before she took on the role of Klebb, particularly as the key collaborator with her husband, Kurt Weill.
Before Bond, Lenya had earned the 1950s equivalent of a shout-out with Bobby Darin's reinvention of Mack The Knife ... a song Lenya had helped introduce, in its original theatrical setting. Here it is:
I can hum melodies that John Barry wrote. You can too, I'm sure of it. Born Free, for starters. Though he did not legally compose the James Bond Theme (the courts have ruled that Monty Norman gets the credit), Barry made the theme work, not to mention many bits of Bond music that are deeply embedded in the culture.
Barry died Sunday. He was 77. I have in my collection a box set of his work. It's astonishing how much he wrote over the years for the movies, and what a legacy he put together, one score at a time. Click here for a BBC radio interview about his lifelong connection to the movies.
I've been a James Bond fan since some friends and I snuck into The Spy Who Loved Me. It wasn't that much of a cheat; as I recall, my dad and I watched another one soon after on television. As much as I like complex films with strong writing ... I love the Bond films. It's something Martha and I enjoy together; yes, she has her principles and feminist ethics, but she's as keen to get a blanket and some popcorn and pop one of them on. Years ago, we bought one of those DVD sets, and later were enthused with the grittier but more satisfying reboot with Daniel Craig.
Things took a bit of a twist on Saturday night, when Nick sat down with us to watch Goldfinger. He's 11, and I figured he's old enough to handle the Bond films. Goldfinger, which must have been racy in its day, seems kind of quaint now (although the presence of a character named Pussy Galore, and a few of Sean Connery's double-entendre bits of dialogue, flew past him ... I think).
It turns out that Nick was more than aware of some of the images and scenes from Goldfinger, thanks to parodies in the Simpsons and, evidently, a Mythbusters takeout on gold paint, among other things.
In all, though, a bit of a graduation. And a new excuse for me to have a chuckle all over again with some old acquaintances.
I am a journalist with CBC News in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. I'm taller than I look. This blog has been running quietly since 2004.
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