Comingsoon.net has posted a very interesting article on the various details of SKYFALL´s props.
Including the real name of Judi Dench´s “M”…
Be surprised here: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=100663
In a new article by IGN, Skyfall writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade sit down and discuss the past, present and future of James Bond, and don’t rule out the possibility of working on future Bond outings. You can read the full article here
Ben Whishaw, the actor behind ‘Skyfall’s new Quartermaster, has revealed that Bond 24, the followup to ‘Skyfall’ will start shooting this year. Speaking to the Radio Times, Whishaw revealed that he thinks that Daniel Craig and himself will “probably be back together again in about ten months”. Whishaw also revealed that he wants a larger role in 007’s next outing, and that Sam Mendes needs to return to the directors chair. You can read the full article here.
So production could begin sooner than later? Could this mean that Mendes signed up secretly to Bond 24 and Bond 25 way before ‘Skyfall’ finished production? Has the recent Mendes news all just been a very brilliant publicity stunt by EON? More news will be revealed soon, so keep checking back for more updates.
CommanderBond.net’s main raison d’être – besides enlightening, see our deviously out-of-sequence posted two recent 007th Minute entries – is to entertain. Not an easy task, given the fierce competition offered by tabloid headlines, bank scams, neighbourhood watch reality TV from Azerbaijan and National Geographic documentaries about Atlanta’s savage tribes. Thankfully Mark O’Connell – known amongst various other heroics for penning the enormously entertaining cult standard ‘Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan’ – provided us with 3 minutes of outstanding amusement, both visually and acoustically. Material we of course shamelessly exploit and hereby gladly pass on to you.
The following pictures begin to move when you click the click-thingy. Thus the often heard/seen expression “movie”.
Enjoy.
Responsibly.
In order to live up to our educational mandate and to keep our readers intellectually in top condition CBn decided to include various (read: 2) slight-to-mid-serious hurdles in this episode of the 007th Minute. Should you experience difficulties in deciphering this text and connecting it to a popular work of entertainment of 1987 you ought to spend more time at CommanderBond.net.
As always: Jacques Stewart’s opinion, wording, turn-of-phrase, summary.
I come no more to make you laugh: things now,
That bear a weighty and a serious brow,
Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow,
We now present.
A worthy aim, even if it won’t quite come off. [If you don’t want to read on, assume that comment encapsulates this 007th minute’s “plot”. It does lose itself in cellos and diamonds and tips for Mujahidining out; I know an appalling restaurant in Karachi, gave me a right case of the d’Abos and no mistake].
It’s product placement time, gang (don’t run, it’s not “watches”). Not subtle; I’m busy and am not shaped for sportive tricks and have emergency sitting down to do, contrived flippancy to mash out and humpbalm to apply. So, here it comes; see if you can spot it. Buy Charles Helfenstein’s book The Making of The Living Daylights. Do that. Do it NOW. If you’re more of a “visual learner” (i.e. you can’t read), imagine me holding it up and pointing at it as if t’were shiny coin – try not to be distracted by my “face” although you’re only human (or vaguely so). If you truly cannot read, your gawping at this nonsense is odd but, even more so, the book’s jawtofloor stupendousness will be lost on you; still, there are nice pictures. You could colour them in; I’m assuming your keeper allows you felt-tip pens, if only to sniff. If you can, though, read it. You have nothing better to do. You can’t have; you’re reading this. You were taught to read for stuff like Mr Helfenstein’s work, not to waste it on shallow guffbombs. Value your teachers, value your dignity, give yerself a treat and buy it and read it and learn and become a better person. It’ll improve you and make your willy ginormous. That’s (probably) untrue but it holds with the mendacious subtext of James Bond product placement, be it grotty watches or naff mobile telephones or nasty lager or delicious Huw Edwards.
So, that’s The Making of The Living Daylights.
This is not its unmaking.
image by ‘London looks’ (c)
February already? High time CBn’s resident food critic Jacques Stewart had himself a taste of Eon’s famous 1989 recipe ‘Licence to Kill’ (readers confused by the strange spelling can get help here).
Gourmet readers will find healthy doses of opinion and science-fact in this recipe. CommanderBond.net suggests a claret to go with this grand meal...
Bituvva scandal in 1989 at the moment about aJames Bond film value-brand “hamburgers”, whatever they might be, being cut with last gasp desperation for dollars horse meat; popular if uninspired product, delivered on a reduced budget, mixed with the unpalatable. At first glance this seems unfair on Eon Tesco, with its record of being reliable, if slightly insipid, with patches of quality – their lead character own-brand meatballs are the dog’s bollocks, for example. Still, unwise to mash up suspect ingredients and pretend everything’s OK, business as usual and this is in some mysterious way defensible. The consumer may well rebel. Or vom.
Perhaps we’re so spoilt by recent Gourmet Bond that it’s too easy to sneer at the cheap brands, too easy to buy identical ready meals equally questionably produced but sold in a nicely fonted box that smelly riff-raff cannot read – science fact, French Script MS causes scutters to immolate. Too easy to become the father who proclaims that his offspring go anaphylactic at the merest suggestion of a fishfinger and can only eat Danish pomegranates, Nepalese sushi and Egyptian Cotton. Taste the Difference CraigBond, all fancy and theme-y and hand-reared by posh directors rubbing the finest organic artisan jus into its skin to soothe it, relaxing it into production by giving it its own thoughtyurt and feeding it honeysuckle gravy with a hand-carved Inca lovespoon, or something, is it really going to be any better for your straining, time-bound heart than some reconstituted old bollocks blatted together by a greasy robot? It all comes out as light entertainment in the end.
There’s an argument that the cheap product is a more honest conspiracy between producer and consumer than asserting that because one’s Bond comes with shavings of free range, corn-fed cin-eh-mahhh on it, it’s better. If one acknowledges it cost tuppence to make then one is braced for it to be foul and there’s no point whining. How can it disappoint? You know that the film you’re masticating through is fungal gristle chivvied from the crevices of the Bond factory floor, bulked up with mechanically-separated violence; horrid, but still you partake.Perhaps it’s a guilty pleasure; there you go, pretending to like quadruple-fried free-range yam croquettes and Swiss Lobster when what you really crave is Scampi Fries and a box of damp Micro chips. In white bread. With marge.
It’s fatuously snobbish – and eyegougingly ironic, given the source of the comment – to liken some Bond products as being savourable at Sardi’s and others munchable at McDonald’s. I am fatuously snobbish. C’mon, you’d guessed. Even knowing full-well that Bond Sixteen wasn’t dealt a happy hand from the get-go, even knowing full-well that as a result I should be more forgiving and try to emphasise the points at which it outshone its meagre origins, even knowing full-well that I should accept that it was going to be dreadful and therefore spare all of us, myselfincluded, pointing that out at overconsiderable length, taking all those potential excuses into account it’s still, without doubt, one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever sat through.
SKYFALL has not only won over world wide audiences – it now has been awarded the prestigious BAFTA award, in the category OUTSTANDING BRITISH FILM.
Thomas Newman also got the BAFTA for BEST ORIGINAL SCORE.
Also, Roger Deakins was honored as Best Cinematographer for SKYFALL by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC).
See the whole list of nominees here:
http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/bafta-awards-2013-winners-list/
http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/cinematographer-awards-2013-asc-winners-list/
‘Barbarella’ cover (c) Dargaud, used with kind permission
Variety reports Bond script veteran team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (amongst others involved in the scripts for ‘The World Is Not Enough’, ‘Casino Royale’ and most recently ‘Skyfall’) are set to pen the scripts for Nicolas Refn’s upcoming ‘Barbarella’ TV series. The project is based on a French comic book character invented by Jean-Claude Forest which in turn inspired Roger Vadim’s 1968 cult sci-fi film ‘Barbarella’ with Jane Fonda in the lead.
Read Variety’s article here.
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.