A View through the Wormhole – The 007th Minute rides the blimp!

Image ‘Psychedelic Blimp’ by ‘Sanandreas’ (c)

This time CBn’s resident dimension hopper and psychic Jacques Stewart takes readers into the shocking parallel universe of The Ken Loach Bond Film ™. Harrowing insights are revealed, most of them concerning our own universe and ‘A View to a Kill’.

May contain traces of ectoplasm. 

Should you spot any please report them here.

 

 

 

Unusually for A. Bond. Film, we start with a disclaimer.

 

Neither the name A View to a Kill nor any other euphemism or prolix self-indulgence in this piffle is meant to portray a credible review or an acceptable film.

 

I recently took a holiday and wrote this to you – you, specifically (get your hair cut and ‘phone your mother, she worries, although I couldn’t care less) – from my saver citibreak in an alternative universe. It has more varieties of cheese, warm unsalty seas, plentiful honeybees, cheap school fees, money grows on trees, every child says please and no dog has any fleas. ‘Tis bliss, even if everyone – everyone – appears to be called Geoff. Admittedly, the journey through the wormhole – the Octowormhole (fnarr, and I can’t believe I missed that one in the last “review”, must be losing my grope) – is two hours of misery and pointlessness. Oddly apt.

 

In this parallel dimension, the Bond films of the 1980s don’t exploit our patience-tested forgiveness for their tediously cynical habit of emitting lukewarm reheated thrills every couple of years. Instead of unleashing their pliant stooges, the producers hired award-winning film-makers to produce actual films containing proper characters and diverting plots that don’t just get by on the lazy premise that it’s A. Bond. Film, it’s got a dinner jacket and a gunbarrel, it’ll do, hand over the money you scum, yes of course this one is different, it has airships in it. That makes it sufficiently different. Different enough for your money, anyway, you pathetically-grateful-that-we-made-another-one dunderhead. What do you want, effort? Fur cough. Money. NOW.

 

I acknowledge that taking some care to spew out something with qualities other than the moth-eaten cloak of Bond Film routine is patently a ridiculous idea, but stick with it.

 

continue reading…

Javier Bardem is nominated for a SAG Award

Could SKYFALL have the first James Bond bad guy who gets major award recognition? Javier Bardem has scored a nomination as Best Supporting Actor by the Screen Actors´ Guild. Since this is about actors voting for their peers the choice might be an early sign for the supporting actor category of the Oscars. Tomorrow the Golden Globe nominations will be announced. I bet Bardem´s name will be again in the race.

Here you can find the SAG Awards nominations: http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/12/12/sag-nominations-2012/

SKYFALL scores 7 nominations for the Critics´ Choice Awards

SKYFALL continues to get award recognition, this time by the Critics´ Choice Awards. Again Javier Bardem, Judi Dench and Roger Deakins get nods (possibly a trend for upcoming award nominations). But the CCA have opened up new categories for action films – and this is where Daniel Craig even gets nominated for Best Actor!

See all nominations here: http://www.thewrap.com/awards/column-post/lincoln-sets-new-record-13-critics-choice-movie-award-nominations-68701?page=0,0

L.A. critics say “Best cinematography: SKYFALL”

SKYFALL won its first award when L.A. critics decided that ROGER DEAKINS was responsible for Best Cinematography this year!

See all the awards here: http://www.deadline.com/2012/12/la-film-critics-winners-2012/#more-385416

Skyfall Takes #1 Again

In its 5th week in the United States, Skyfall managed to wrestle its way back to the top of the box office pile beating out Twilight, Rise of the Guardians, and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln adding about $11 million to its U.S. cume. Skyfall now has $261.6 million in the United States. By tomorrow it’ll top The Amazing Spider-Man to become Sony’s #1 film for 2012.

Speaking of being Sony’s #1 film, Skyfall added another $20 million from overseas markets to push the 23rd James Bond film to $918.2 million worldwide. This makes Skyfall Sony’s highest grossing film worldwide beating out Spider-Man 3 (2007).

Box Office Mojo still claims Skyfall is on track to close out its U.S. run with approximately $290 million. and should be able to get to at least $950 million before launching in China next year.

Septopussy – Nobody does him better…

Image ‘Octopus’ by ‘Hacklock’/Heather Blacklock (c)

You guessed it, this is the 007th Minute of ‘Octopussy’,  personally observed by Jacques Stewart himself, counted down by the counter-thingy on his player-thingy, viciously dissected with the aid of a large glass of Indian tonic and the friendly help of Patrick Macnee’s voice. 

 Add your own shot of quinine in this thread.

(Adopts Patrick Macnee voice) It is the summer of 1983, the summer of the Jedi and the unbelievable opportunity – taken up at length by your correspondent (that’s me, “hi”) – for childish playground taunting in calling a corpulent chum a Big Fat Jabba. I think you can probably tell where this joke’s going to end up, so I’ll save you the inexpert fumbling and just get straight to the money shot of “…grossly overweight, leering at bikinied beauties through oily seepage, a crusty, ancient and wrinkled blob who at one point dresses up as a clown and stops a bomb going off”.

 

Hm. I seem to have drained the spuds a bit quickly there. I’m so sorry. If you’re submitting yourself to the girth of these 007^th minutes you’ll know that’s never happened to me before; honest. If only Octopussy were that swift but no, it tries so hard to pleasure us with multiple climaxes that it neglects to realise that all we want is a bit of a kip and to be left alone. Oh, Octopussy, put it away. Just stop. Please stop. I’ve a busy day tomorrow and I really don’t want you bothering me like a greymuzzled spayed Labrador giving the dining table a listless seeing-to, dribbling gently from the moist jowls, eking it all out painfully when it would be kinder to administer the old double-tap with a clawhammer to the back of the head and hurl it into a midnighted estuary. Look, we both know that we’re too old for this and I can see the self-loathing in your eyes as you summon up The Gush yet again. All I wanted was a sweet distraction for an hour or two. Tops. I never expected to do the things (oh God, the things) we’ve done. Things you now want to do to me again. Look, all that’ll happen is that you’ll end up a dried-out of husk of sex-pestiness. Who at one point dresses up as a clown and stops a bomb going off.

 

continue reading…

Skyfall is UK’s Highest Grossing Film of All Time

40 days after being released to high critical praise Skyfall has risen to beat Avatar’s record setting £94 million at the UK box office. It took Avatar 11 months according to Empire to get to that record. The 23rd film in the 50 year-old franchise now sits at $871 million worldwide. $248 million comes from the US where (if only for today) Skyfall recaptured the lead at the box office from Twilight’s latest release.

According to Box Office Mojo, Skyfall will easily pass $950 million worldwide before opening in China next year. Skyfall is also projected to cross $280 million in the United States by the end of its run.

Top Secret – For Your Eyes Only’s 007th Minute revealed

Image ‘Compound Eyes of a Robber Fly’ by Thomas Shahan (c)

31 years after its initial premiere ‘For Your Eyes Only’ still has up-to-now-overlooked details to reveal. CBn’s resident optometrist Jacques Stewart took it upon himself to have a close look at the 007th Minute of this opus of entertainment and shares his findings here with you. You may share your own opinion on his impressions in this thread. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go on then, make your outlandish Bond if you feel that you must. It helps disguise the onset of both decrepitude and breasts for your leading man. Cram it to overbursting with all the leftovers that you never thought you would get away with, administer it to the world and then have a crisis of conscience / money and trouble yourself with worrying about the direction to take it in next once you realise that you’ve rather overdone it and probably exhausted the concept of, and patience of the audience for, “Bond Films”. Rather brilliantly, you decide to make some proper films that incidentally happen to be “Bond Films”. Great success and critical acclaim await.

 

No, sorry, that’s the Barbara Broccoli way.

 

If you’re her father, you just plough on turning out Bond Films every couple of years because that’s mysteriously The Law, progressively less spectacular ones until you can’t afford to give Timothy Dalton a proper haircut, or story, and the series stalls. Mediocre returns and critical indifference await. I don’t pretend to know about the studio economic politik of the 1980s, largely because that would render me a fatuous dullard and “the” Internet already has more than enough of those, and of course it’s on record that 1989-1995 coincided with yet more litigation, Bond attracting as many lawyers as he does bullets. Yet so often is that dispute wheeled out as the explanation for the lack of production activity that one wonders if it’s a bit of a cover story, a convenient ruse for self-denying the truth that, starting with For Your Eyes Only, Bond was gently but horribly complacently driving itself into the ground, coasting along in neutral with the odd blip here and there on the accelerator, gathering some cash but running out of road, fuel and audience captivation in equal measures. Studio bankruptcy and creative bankruptcy going hand in hand. After eleven films, we can churn out any old dross, slap a gunbarrel on it to make it A. Bond. Film to draw the core punters in, and get away with it. Making it look effortless (The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker) is different to actually making it without any effort.

 

This isn’t to say that parts of the Bond Films of the 1980s aren’t appealing but, when it comes to it, they’re just yet another five Bond Films to watch. Despite pretence in each film at trying new stuff out (For Your Eyes Only – “seriousness”; Octopussy – “turbo-racism”; A View to a Kill – “quiche”; The Living Daylights – “an hour of mesmeric brilliance followed by an hour of the usual tat” and Licence to Kill – “shameful cowardice”), in essence they deviate very little from the previous eleven. Even the ostensibly “radical” Licence to Kill is teat-suckingly dependent on being A. Bond. Film, with all the decades of reheated canker that comes with that idea, and totally to its disadvantage.

 

For Your Eyes Only represents very little progress from Moonraker.

 

continue reading…

SKYFALL nominated for 7 Satellite Awards, incl. Best Picture

Award season has begun – and the SATELLITE awards love SKYFALL: the latest 007 adventure was nominated in seven categories, including BEST PICTURE.

Who would have thought? Maybe that´s a beginning of a trend?

See the whole story at Hollywood Reporter

‘Moonraker’ – Where other 007th Minutes stop…

Image ‘Moonraker 2’ by ‘pinkflo 13’ (c)

…this one is also going to end. But till it does so Jacques Stewart scrutinises the film and its impact on himself and the series as a whole with his usual mixture of opinion and Science Fact!

Share your own scientific findings about ‘Moonraker’ in this thread.

The first one. Film it in Jamaica, Bond investigating the death of British agents, an abundance of local colour to liven it up and make it so very terribly, veritably, exotic.

 
The second one. Bond and a meeting-his-match dark side of Bond killer circle around each other for ages whilst a cursory plot about an initially important but swiftly neglected device plays out.

 

The third one. Go showier, bolder, aim for definitive, iconic imagery, up the gadgetry significantly and bung him into a tremendously amusing car.

 
The fourth one. The third one having turned out “quite well”, what the Hell, just hurl it into overdrive and do some strenuous envelope-pushing to spew out something dementedly pursuing an agenda of entertaining us.

 

But enough about the Sean Connery films.

 

Right, then. Moonraker. Hm. This.

 

 

continue reading…