Last week at the Oscars they put together a small celebration of James Bond. Seeing as last year marked fifty years of 007, this seemed appropriate. Rumors quickly spread that every Bond actor would show up onstage together, now while this was a nice thought. I never really expected it to happen. What I didn’t expect however, is what we ended up with.
Fans of Timothy Dalton and his debut as 007 in ‘The Living Daylights’ were ecstatic to learn last December that renown Bond scholar Charles Helfenstein had made this film the topic of the second of his exhaustive ‘Making-of…’ works (after 2009’s ‘The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’). Those who didn’t order right away were severely disappointed when Amazon for a short period put this item under review and for about ten days buyers could not obtain the book directly from Amazon. CommanderBond.net now is happy to announce both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com again stock the tome and sell it directly.
You can also order the book at Barnes & Noble.
Cover image ‘The Making of The Living Daylights’ by Charles Helfenstein, used with kind permission
In 2009 author Charles Helfenstein dropped the book equivalent of a nuclear bomb on James Bond fans:
The Making of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
The Bond experts took notice: Bond author, historian, and DVD producer John Cork was “Stunned” by what Helfenstein had uncovered. Bond author Raymond Benson described the research as “Jaw dropping.” 007 magazine‘s Graham Rye described the book as “Breathtaking, matching the movie in its scope and detail.”
The cast and crew took notice. OHMSS Cinematographer Michael Reed described the book as “Wonderfully well written and illustrated.” OHMSS cameraman Alec Mills was also impressed, summing up the book in a single word: “Wonderful.” 2nd unit director and OHMSS editor John Glen, the most prolific of all Bond directors, praised the book as “Beautifully produced.”
The entertainment industry took notice: The Motion Picture Editor’s Guild described the book as “A fitting tribute to Peter Hunt”, the man who so radically altered their industry. The book’s influence extended in a highly unlikely direction: The BBC’s Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Producer Mark Gatiss is a huge OHMSS fan, and he praised the “Exhaustive” book and described how the unused OHMSS scenes influence “A Scandal in Belgravia” in the audio commentary of that episode.
But we as Bond fans are always wanting more.
Did this Vulcan have just a single nuke on board? No.
The phrase, I believe, is “Better make that two.”
To mark the 50th anniversary of the James Bond series, Helfenstein turned his sights on the half way point of the franchise, the 25th anniversary film, The Living Daylights. In an exclusive excerpt from The Making of The Living Daylights, Helfenstein describes the first day of filming for the first unit, and its fascinating tie-in to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and For Your Eyes Only:
The very first scene shot by the first unit on the first day of filming on The Living Daylights was a close-up of a parrot once owned by Diana Rigg. The actress had bought the blue, green, and gold macaw, named Chrome, in the late 60s, and the bird caused her some distress during the filming of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Rigg would rehearse her lines of dialog at home, and the parrot would repeat them, which wasn’t a problem when they were alone, but Rigg realized that the words the bird was repeating gave away plot details when she had guests over to her house.
No sooner was our goal for 50 t-shirts in Navy blue reached (and you can still order one of those here) when the Admiralty decided to offer equal rights to female Bond fans. This is it, ladies; your chance to take the bloody shot in Navy blue with a formfitting cut. Open-minded in all the right places, figure-flattering everywhere else. Guaranteed to catch the attention of your significant other or potential applicants for the position – a.k.a. targets.
So stay calm, exhale until there is no more pressure on your lungs, hold your breath and squeeze the trigger…
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention the terms for this campaign. This time it’s ten orders within the next seven days for this to take off. Each shirt sells for $ 20,- as the other designs did.
…now you can get it here. The same requirements apply, 50 orders within seven days, each for $ 20,-.
Whoever finds this underneath the tree surely won’t have a blue Christmas!
Rumours about a ‘special edition’ with bullet hole are unfounded, so don’t wait for it and…
TAKE THE BLOODY SHOT!
Just a quick update:
We have roughly two more days to reach our goal of a minimum of fifty orders to get this campaign going. Now – at the time of writing this – we only need five more orders to get there!
So do your duty as a Bond fan – or make a Bond fan infinitely happy for Christmas – by ordering this classic t-shirt with M’s famous line from ‘Skyfall’ here.
From personal experience I can attest to the colour’s splendid quality in covering up small-to-mid-serious misfortunes while consuming spaghetti, hot dogs or Bloody Mary [sic!]. Frankly, which other t-shirt can claim such features?
Ten years ago next November, marked the release of Die Another Day, and as it turns out, it was the last film of Pierce Brosnan. We here at CommanderBond.net wish to celebrate the man who gave us four James Bond films and brought many new fans into the fold. I’m putting together a retrospective of the man, and his films debuting on this page sometime next month. As a companion piece I would love to put together thoughts from you.
Here’s what I’m looking for:
Two paragraphs (to me, a paragraph is about four sentences long) explaining what you like about Brosnan, what you like about his films, what he means to you, and/or a fond memory of his time as Bond. You can write about all of those, or you can write about one of those. It’s up to you.
Now to get your submissions to me, there are two methods. You can e-mail me at [email protected]
Or if you’re a member of our forums you can go to this thread.
Deadline for submissions will be November 9th. However if I feel I don’t have enough, I will extend it.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
In our constant striving to bring our readers information beyond the bare headlines and contents of Google-feed we aim – wherever possible – to go the extra mile for CommanderBond.net. In doing so we’ve already covered numerous stories going deeper into the works of Bond on page and screen. Now it is high time we talk about that nifty piece of promotional art ingeniously produced for the start of SkyMovies007 HD. Exclusively for CommanderBond.net our member Simon Firth interviewed Sky Producer David Millard, who kindly shed a light on the tricky background of this campaign. It’s far from easy to get all the Bonds in one place and translate this claim into 90 seconds of the most stunning impact.
Please discuss the clip and this interview in this thread.
David Millard is one of a number of Producers at Sky who create the promos for the new channels and programming – he has recently completed the advert for the upcoming 007 Channel that debuts on Sky Movies in October.
Can you give us a brief potted background to your career?
I initially trained at Virgin Media and have been a Producer now for the past 3 years – most recently at Sky. In fact the Head of Creative at Sky Movies (Scott Russell) originally trained me at Virgin Media and so we’ve always had a great working relationship. I’ve freelanced since 2011 until now but am hoping to go into something more permanent here at Sky.
What is the decision process to get to the current advert from a management perspective?
image ‘Jellion’ by Feggy Art (c)
How time flies! Today is your last chance to have your say in CommanderBond.net’s big ballot to celebrate our eponymous hero’s 50th year on the silver screen. Don’t let this opportunity pass, share your five most treasured moments of Eon’s Bond films.
To take part, by Friday 21 September 2012, send a Private Message to CBn member “Jim” setting out
– Your top five Eon Bond film moments
– With an explanation (as short or as long as you like) why you’ve picked each oneAlso – for a bit of a hoot – nominate your “worst” moment in the Eon Bond series.
By way of reminder, the Bond 50 moments (of any type) back in the summer of 2006 were:-
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