From Russia With Love – 50 Years

image (c) Mark O’Connell, used with kind permission

Celebrating a film’s ‘birthday’ is a bit of a silly idea, isn’t it? After all it’s not as if a film could actually ‘die’. So making it, say, 50 years down the road isn’t so much a feat as a simple sign that time moves in one direction, and one direction only.

But today we do not just celebrate an ordinary film. This evening it’s 50 years since a true classic found its way onto the silver screen of London’s Odeon theatre. And from there right into the hearts of an army of Bond fans. The Bond phenomenon shaped modern pop-culture’s surface like few other trends and ‘From Russia With Love’ can justifiably be regarded as part of its cutting edge. It went deeper into early sixties sensibilities and the mindset of the Cold War than any other Bond film. And it was more serious about its business, influencing the entire spectrum of the spy genre. Terence Young’s landmark did not just teach audiences to tell the true Englishman by his choice of wine to go with fish. It also moved the action into dark corners where telling friend from foe wasn’t always easy. Where fights were tough, deadly serious business, bloody in the truest sense. Where Bond’s enemy’s enemy was decidedly not his friend, regardless how many times 007 profited from the silent killer in his wake. And where the beautiful woman is indeed an enemy agent, out to lure the hero – though unwittingly – to his doom.

‘From Russia With Love’ today is regarded as one of the great classics of both British cinema and of Eon’s Bond series. It is a favourite with many fans and critics and keeps coming up on top places with many rankings. It was indeed a marvellous cast of fortune that combined Ian Fleming’s original novel – a treasure in its own right – with the talents of Maibaum, Harwood, Barry, Hunt, Moore and countless others in the production team and in front of the camera. On top of this it was Pedro Armendáriz’s last role, enriching Eon’s Bond world with a character unsurpassed to this very day. Kerim Bey IS the epitome of Bond’s ally: shrewd, resourceful, charismatic. Many came after him, only few came close.

So it is with a sense of deep gratitude for this gem that I raise CommanderBond.net’s imaginary glass and toast to 50 years of ‘From Russia With Love’. I have no doubts this film will still be celebrated many more years from now.

Here’s to you, old friend!

Grateful thanks to Mark O’Connell for the kind permission to use marvellous above image. Mark O’Connell is the author of CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN “co-starring” Barbara Broccoli, Mark Gatiss and Maud Adams. Available now; for more details see www.markoconnell.co.uk

Wing Commander Ken Wallis, MBE, dies at 97

Wing Commander Kenneth Horatio Wallis, MBE, died on last Sunday. A passionate aviator, veteran of WWII and an enthusiastic developer of the autogyro design, Wallis became most famous for his stunt work on 1967’s  ‘You Only Live Twice’. His work in aerial reconnaissance continued well past his retirement from active RAF duty in 1964 and involved various missions for police and scientific research.

R.I.P.

Little Nellie will have to find her own course now.

The Reboot of the 007th Minute – DRAFT, DO NOT PUBLISH!!!

Bond fan workshop “hairdressing and film editing”, Ulan Bator 2006, image (c) ‘Monkeypainter’

On my way to the advanced course ‘Pre-neolithic Cinema in 7454 Easy Steps – Chapter 4: Impact of the Cave Wall’. The usual droves of bondnotbond-protesters clogging up the streets between Salzburg and Liverpool, a considerable percentage of them merrily sloshed on Zero-Seven beverage, White Russians or the evening news. Or any combination thereof. Cabbie thinks it’s helping if he’s hooting at them like mad, so I leave him to his fun, settle back comfortably in the slashed faux leather upholstery and unfold the ironed copy of today’s CommanderBond.net.  Right on the front page – above stories about book covers, knotted ties and plots, pictures of mysterious traces in the snow, a colour-enhanced Dorchester hotel and a slightly-older-than-17 Sean Connery – there’s a piece by CBn’s resident West Albion Bromwich supporter, Jacques Stewart, that catches my eye. It’s titled ‘The Reboot of the 007th Minute – DRAFT, DO NOT PUBLISH!!!’, and that’s a most curious title, even for that eccentric guy that puts up their main page stuff.

So I read on…

 

 

 

Time for a reboot.

 

Casino Royale is good, if long. It bothers to tell a story, rather than simply mine long-exhausted seams.  Its 007^th minute exemplifies something. Blah blah blah about the dog and overwritten whimsy. James Bond will return in the 007^th minute of Quantum of Solace and Jacques Stewart will refer to himself in the third person, because that’s the sort of prat he is. Some nerve to accuse Bond of being formulaic; what a hypocrite. I prefer the ABC game anyway. It learns me spell good.

 

Ah ah ah, not so fast, poppet. 

 

It’s not that radical, is it? There’s M, there’s gunbarrel (the law), there’s climactic action that goes on well past forever’s bedtime , there’s Bond theme, there are ghastly watches, lovely Aston Martins, booze, ladies of acceptable architecture, dinner jackets, carrrrddds (with the excitement that brings), there’s still an infantile grasp on political and geographical reality and there’s fighting, explosions, destruction, kissing, weak sex jokes and general daftitude.

 

Disappointing. Not what I was promised.

 

For at least a year in advance the internet told me – betrayed me, for internet is truth – that Casino Royale would be a disastrous experimental art project starring a deformed, flappy-eared, asexual, trades-faced mendicant dwarf with a head like a Belisha Beacon driving an automatic Fiat Panda, the highlight of which would be witnessing conjoined mutant step-siblings defecating glistening, maggot-riddled pusblistered-stools onto a plate of wilted broccoli. All so very Belgian. Although you might have a view of the sort of “person” what I am, you still can’t imagine how much I was looking forward to watching that.  So many profound commentators who knew things stated their predictions as Total Unadulterated Fact.  Everyone they knew (might be true, poor souls) agreed with them. Religions kill for such concord.  The hu-mil-i-a-tion was going to be fantastic.

 

What a chuffin’ let-down.

 

Instead of the guaranteed cataclysm, what Eon put me through was an exercise in finally grasping the bindweed their complacency had let choke the creative development of the series for twenty-five years and – clever, this – not removing it all, a slash-and-burn policy being a step too far, but selecting the bits they actually needed to tell a story, rather than obliged to shoehorn them in. No Moneypenny, no Q, no rubbish that came with both, no complaints from me. Albeit not a perfect film, propelled by a compelling lead performance and evident thought about what they were doing beyond shaking our memories until more money fell out, it’s the closest to a proper film for decades. Story first, statutory Bond bits second: Die Another Day reversed. Disconcerting. Who knew that this was going to happen? Who knew that the internet was so full of expertise about how it couldn’t?

  continue reading…

Happy Birthday Sir Sean!

Today 83 years ago Sir Sean Connery was born in Edinburgh. CommanderBond.net’s team and all CBners hereby congratulate and wish a very happy 83rd Birthday. May there be many happy returns and all of them finding you in the best of health and spirits!

007th Minute Dies Another Day

Aston Martin in stealth-mode chasing a Mini Cooper with caravan (image (c) Mrs Suzie Cue)

Blah.

Blahblah,

blahblahblah.

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

Now that the usual formalities are out of the way we finally approach the 007th Minute I’ve been waiting for since this project started. Without further ado you now get opinionated, articulate, fine-tuned-to-the-point-of-irony observations  by Jacques Stewart.  

Your own observations, comments, your personal defence or damnation of the film is welcome here.

I’m forty this year.

 

The… Mrs Jim (I struggle for an adjective adequate) has asked/told me how I want this marked. My initial answer – “not”, can’t make me, you’re not the boss of me (that’s a lie) – was met with her patented benev-iolence because the children want to “do something”. My wishes and “incidental” are in the same bit of the Venn diagram; whatever emerges has to involve the offspring in its organising (doubtless not in the “paying”) meaning they’re invited too. What utter bottom.

 

Therefore, a choice of:

• a family holiday away from “it all”, the brood ignoring their presence as a permanent feature of that bracket. Favoured suggestion is a bivouac in mid-Wales (where?) without telephone, television or internet. It has board games, meaning arguments, and books, meaning my sons won’t read them, and opportunities for mud, meaning I bet the boiler bursts. Straw Dogs beckons. I suppose we could pretend it was a temple in South Korea; or

 

• a New-Age retreat where one can detox the body and soul (it says here) and commune with one’s future through paradigms of guided holistic meditation (it also says here), perceptions of the developing One becoming a springboard into the next stage of life (it does go on a bit) and embracing the sort of inner peace and smug self-satisfaction that usually arises five minutes after a really satisfying vomit (it doesn’t say, but means); or

 

• sodding that for a load of old halleberries, blowing a stack of (my) cash and inviting everyone who’s ever heard of me around and spending far too long revisiting tired anecdotes of past glories, tales they’ve already heard n million times before, perhaps with a few flourishes to pretend they’re new, in the hope that it comes together as a unified whole but will probably spiral totally beyond control and fizzle out well before its end, leaving all those who witnessed it in denial, upset and dissatisfied.

None are fitly defined by the phrase “a good idea”. The first is boring and I know we’ll end up cannibalising each other. It’ll be “Devon 2005” all over again: tchoh! The second is patently going to involve scented candles and is probably a front for pushing “relaxation herbs”. The third is Die Another Day and not so much a fortieth birthday party as a wake.

 

Which it is.

 

They were killing off the “James Bond” we knew/they were bored of making, and inviting us to the world’s most outrageously gem-dripped post-dispatch piss-up. Mix me a mojito, pass round the individual pork pies and let’s reminisce with a moistened eye about how fine it used to be. Self-indulgence excused because we’re still in shock about witnessing it collapse in front of us last time out, overstretched, wheezy and attempting things way beyond its strength and ability, painful exertions it wouldn’t have dared try (or needed to) at half its age.

 

140 gazillion dollars spent on (at best) questionable artistic decisions, DAD is a costly public euthanasia solution (I would have gone for the pillow and/or canine bolt-gun option) but disappearing up its own AFRICAN CONFLICT DIAMOND-encrusted backside is possibly still cheaper than disappearing into a warehouse on a Swiss industrial estate. Plumping for Indignitas instead, it’s not a celebration, it’s a commemoration. Commiseration, maybe.

 

The series had keeled over and its damp corpse was being nimbly – if jitteringly – stepped over by The Bourne Improvement. With this sort of rubbish, Eon left the door wide open for it to do so.  Barbara Broccoli is on record that September 11^th 2001 changed everything, but DAD was filmed after that. I know these things take years to develop but questionable not to reconsider the approach whilst filming; the “Making of” indicates that much outlandish stuff came about as they went along. Whilst it’s noble of Ms Broccoli to react, I suspect it’s the events of June 14^th 2002 that really made them wonder, waking to the realisation that it was too late to reverse decisions on the DNA replacement therapy, Bond stopping his heart, the dialogue, the invisible car and the CGI kite-surfing, all that money blown and Matt Damon in an old Mini had just driven right through the whole sorry circus. Why bother? So they didn’t. DAD’s lasting impression is as a series end filler clip show where, surprised that it’s gone on so long, they forgot to commission a script and just have people sit around foreshadowing “best bits” by saying “D’you remember that time when…”, mould passed off as fresh. There was nothing left to chivvy from the bottom of the barrel.

 

continue reading…

Around The World Is Not Enough – give it another 007th Minute

(c) Ivan McClellan Photography

Desk? Check.

Books? Check.

Notes? Check.

Laptop? Check.

Foxhound, furnishings, food? Check.

Family? Check.

Internet connection? Working, surprisingly (scratch a German and you find a Telekom victim).

Moving from A to B: Mission Accomplished. And I sincerely hope that one doesn’t come back to bite my behind because, you know, history…   

All systems seem eager to ‘go’, high time for Jim’s next 007th Minute then. The usual CBn conformance marks apply: strictly opinionated content by CBn’s resident 007th Minute expert Jacques Stewart. 

Italics piffle by yours truly. File your well-reasoned and formulated  complaints, thoughts and ideas here.

 

 

 

 

 

A limited concept stretched to its nineteenth circumnavigation of the one joke, becoming bloaty, self-indulgent and unfocused; churned out regardless. As for The World is Not Enough, submitting it to a 007^th minute could be the unreadable in pursuit of the unwatchable. This may become as turgid as the film it gnaws. I could claim that this is “meta”, if I understood what that was.

Right.

 

 

Must I? Cold-blooded murder is a filthy business. I hope you’re not after “constructive”; construction isn’t exactly my speciality. Quite the opposite, in science fact. Still, there’s no point in living if you can’t smugly slag off witless entertainment with zero accountability for its failure to meet specious and whimsical criteria. It must give me pleasure. Remember… pleasure? What brings you pleasure? A pleasure you’d confess to the police or your granny?  Something you’d tell the meltypops choccydrop eyes of your doggy-woggy without abusing its uncomprehending trust, even though the wretched hound is only waiting for you to fall downstairs again so it can eat your face. 

 

Let’s assume that you haven’t found this balderdash by searching for “abused granny doggy confess police” on a wage-cage colleague’s computer at your salary-farm, avoiding whatever you “do”, marking time until a yumlunch of low-calorie wet chemicals and (avert your soul) bought cake. Assume, let’s, that giddywhirl of super isn’t your day, this only [x] day of [y] 20[zz] you’ll ever live, so a reasonable inference must be that something that has given you pleasure is James Bond.

 

Whyever not? Breadth of shapes, heights, perversions, fatuous belief systems and smell that the human race tolerates, within the films there must be something that appeals, even if not all of them will, save to a hardened deluded core expressing love via the medium of defamatory whining. If the lazy myth were true, that Bonds are the same thing 23 times, we would never have had 23 times.

 

They’re designed (some say cynically) (N.B. I am one of “some”) and (ruthlessly) targeted so that core ingredients – Gunbarrel! Explosions! Jiggaboo! Weak jokes! Cars! Guns! Beastly furr-ners! Grr! Cackle! BOOM! DahDah d’DAHHH durdurdur – the rot of continuity, routine that draws in “Bond fans” however much they snivel, the stuff those “fans” neglect to admit impedes the series’ longevity and continued interest for the passing filmgoer – all that tedious dross can be hidden in films actually aimed at those who liked Shaft or Enter the Dragon or Jason Bourne. What is Moonraker other than trying to entice fans of the Jeddy, or whatever it was. Arty-Deety, that gang. And Nazis.  Diamonds are Forever? Supporters of ennui-dripped sneering and Manfrockery. GoldenEye’s patently for the Undemanding Deaf and Die Another Day for the Undemanding Dead.

 

These aren’t made “for the fans”, locked in their anonymous begrudgery. These are made “for the fans of other things because we want lovely money off them, too”. Taken one look at, say, George Lucas’ billions and thought – let’s devise a film for those accepting such concepts as an elected queen, must be pretty thick, lure them in with equally stilted dire-logue and an invisible car: no less ridiculous. This doesn’t always mean appalling results. If Bonds were actually made “for the fans” they would be impenetrable to the casual viewer who doesn’t give two hoots whether Bond was married, nor that the Skyfall car cannot be the Casino Royale one nor, as it turns out, the colour of Bond’s hair or where a gunbarrel is. Where the producers try direct continuity – Quantum of Solace the obvious example – the sequel aspect is its weakest element. Would civilians coming to watch The New Bond Film have expected spending ninety minutes trying to remember a film they think they saw two years previously, oh she died didn’t she, I remember now, I didn’t expect a memory test, I just wanted diversion from the kids and the perpetual threat of redundancy, what do you mean that’s the end? Bit odd. It just encouraged the more demented “fans” to whine that Bond isn’t wearing the same suit, has lost weight and doesn’t seem that upset. That way lies Star Trek. Bring on an impossible Aston Martin in a London lock-up and make a billion dollars instead. Even implicit continuity can be awful; but that’s the next film’s problem.

 

continue reading…

Happy Birthday Dame Diana Rigg!

image (c) wikipedia

Until today there have been an unspecified (and somewhat controversial) number of Bonds busy at making this world a more exciting place for fans of 007. Undisputed however is the fact there has been only one Mrs Bond. And only one actress to own this part: Dame Diana Rigg. Today is her birthday and CommanderBond.net wishes

A Very Happy Birthday & Many Happy Returns, Dame Diana!

We’d also like to use this opportunity to congratulate Mrs Emma Peel, who incidentally shares her birthday with Dame Diana.

Mrs Peel, you’re needed. Badly…

Sam Mendes will direct BOND 24 for 2015 release!

Finally, EON has confirmed what Mendes had alluded to in the last weeks – he will return to helm his follow-up to SKYFALL.  A release date has also been set: in the UK on October 23, 2015 and in the US on November 6, 2015.

And the script will be written – as also formerly rumoured – by John Logan.

Full press release here: http://www.007.com/bond-24-news-2

GET M4ORE – ‘Live and Let Die’ turns 40!

LIVE AND LET DIE @ Forty (c) Mark O’Connell 22-06-13 www.markoconnell.co.uk

40 years ago 007 took a walk on the occult side of death, leading him from Harlem’s colourful backstreets to a Dixieland excursion in New Orleans and a survey of Louisiana’s native fauna. Seldom did Bond try so hard to blend in with his surroundings. Charming a High Priestess, trading his code book for a deck of – marked – tarot cards and equipped with a wheelgun to defeat a Voodoo master, Bond is not just a lover but also a fool in this one. The supernatural comes astoundingly natural in ‘Live and Let Die’, so much so that the last laugh is rightfully that of a ghost.

CommanderBond.net celebrates this anniversary in this thread.

Grateful thanks to Mark O’Connell ( http://markoconnell.co.uk/) for the above image!

Mendes publicly confirms he´s in discussions to direct the next Bond

Okay, so it´s not just a rumor. In a new interview with “The Stage” Sam Mendes has confirmed that he is in discussions to direct the follow-up to SKYFALL.

However, he claims that he will not decide to actually do it before his current stage production of “Charlie and the Chocolat Factory” (now in previews) has officially opened. The Opening Gala is set for June 25th. Maybe we can expect an announcement soon after that.

Another sign that Mendes might be planning to direct BOND 24 could be seen in his decision not to run the National Theatre, a position which he was interested in before.

Read the interview here: http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2013/06/sam-mendes-rules-himself-out-of-the-running-for-national-theatre-job/