It’s been confirmed in a short announcement on 007.com and the official social media accounts that the teaser poster for SPECTRE will be released at some point on Tuesday 17th March. Watch this space.
Another familiar face looks set to return in SPECTRE… Not just James Bond 007, but James Bond the ornithologist whose name inspired Ian Fleming’s creation. The latest clapperboard from filming at Pinewood shows the original Bond’s book “Birds of the West Indies” perched on the side. The book also featured in passing in DIE ANOTHER DAY.
Mexican actress Stephanie Sigman has joined the cast of SPECTRE in the role of Estrella.
It’s thought Sigman will be involved in scenes due to be filmed in Mexico City later in March.
She’s best known for her appearances in TV series The Bridge, and the Oscar-nominated movie Miss Bala.
http://www.007.com/stephanie-sigman-joins-spectre/
A literary meditation by Jacques Stewart
Start over, and simplify.
Often dreamt of by chaps sliding towards their forties, therefore not unusual for James Bond. True, it’s more commonly contemplated when staring into a ready-meal and the ready-meal stares right back, rather than after killing a maniac, impregnating a film star, unwittingly faking one’s own death and trying to kill the boss. Frankly, that lifestyle sounds titillating and a place one escapes to rather than from (possibly its original point) but perhaps even its view palls, in time.
Given the opportunity, what would I do differently? “Rabat 2001”, definitely. Ectually name one of the offspring “Remnant”. Avoid that encounter with [not telling], although it’s now a divinely grubby anecdote since his conviction, so I’d think carefully before dropping it completely. Would drink better wine and get that ptarmigan tattoo I promised meself. A life still too short to learn Welsh, or to contemplate using public transport. Using the public as transport… wholly different matter.
Not much else.
Especially if this reboot requires electrocution by my chums (I have three; possibly four if Torquil returns my pinking shears). Call me selfish, call me a coward, call me Bwana (eccentric, but so tremendously sweet of you) but the prospect of twenty-four zaps at my brain over the course of thirty days doesn’t thrill. Telling me about it would pass quickly, though. Bond’s reconditioning in The Man with the Golden Gun, his own side microwaving his mind and cynically taking a gift of an open-goal to re-educate him, telling him he’s been brainwashed and to Kill! Russians! but markedly not reminding him about the dead wife or that his real name’s David Webb, lasts less than a page before he’s Bourne again and let loose to disrupt the scheme of a… a naughty hotelier.
In both, one recognises the common perception of this novel as unfinished. What of Bond’s rehabilitation? Where is the villain’s outrageous apocalypse? Where are Bond’s reawakening memories of his marriage and realisation that his own side have done him more damage than Colonel Boris ever did? Why is it about an away-day board meeting / team-building exercise for conned investors? Where’s all the digression about shrubbery, for frick’s sake? However, Weir of Hermiston this is not. It is finished. There’s an ending – clue. What it is, is unpolished. Arguable evidence of “unfinished”, in that Fleming had yet to apply louche but increasingly ill-disciplined extravagances before his days were rendered unprolonged. Raises contemplation: this is Bond in raw form, uncluttered with “views”, light of diversions into the author’s medical history or whatever he had read, liked and then pinched. Terser, harder, quicker. Just as juvenile – the sexually foggy villain has three nipples and a big gold gun – but blunter overall.
If you haven´t had the chance to see this – you will get another one!
Due to popular demand the London Film Museum will remain dedicated to Bond in Motion until further notice. It will see new exhibits added in 2015, including vehicles from the latest Bond adventure, SPECTRE.
To mark the first anniversary of BOND IN MOTION at the London Film Museum, the museum will be hosting a weekend of Bond-themed celebration on 21st and 22nd March 2015. Distinguished Bond film crew and contributors will be holding talks, tours and open Q&A sessions in the museum throughout the weekend. Speakers will include stunt supervisor and action director Vic Armstrong, a veteran of seven Bond films and production designer Peter Lamont who worked on 18 Bond adventures. The official Aston Martin owners club will be descending on the Covent Garden Piazza outside the exhibition for the weekend with over 30 vehicles from the past to the present. All anniversary activities within the museum will be free to BOND IN MOTION ticket holders.
Special guests may change without notice.
Tickets are available at the venue box office daily. To avoid the queue please purchase your tickets in advance. *Check website for special event announcements as these may result in the Museum being closed. Museum closure notices: Closed all day on 28th May 2015
The latest behind-the-scenes footage from SPECTRE focuses on director Sam Mendes. It also features Daniel Craig as James Bond, Ralph Fiennes as M, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw as Q.
British film magazine Empire features SPECTRE on the cover of its latest edition, and has a lengthy report including new details from the sets in London and Austria. The article also features new photos of Léa Seydoux as Dr Madeleine Swann and Dave Bautista as henchman Mr Hinx. Both Seydoux and Bautista also give further insights into their respective characters.
More details from Empire can be found here:
The Aston Martin DB10 and Jaguar C-X75 stand side-by-side during night filming in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome.
“Two supercars, one beautiful city.”
A literary meditation by Jacques Stewart
Previously, on James Bahnd…
Bezants! Syphilis! Girls! Chickens! Christmas! Microbes! Earlobes! Bobsleighs! Wedding! Bang!
Exhausting.
Chap’d need a holiday after that. Touch of sightseeing, a wander around an exotic garden, visit a castle, perhaps a mud-bath or a swim-swim. Pick up local customs, pick up a local, enrage them by behaving as a Brit abroad, complain about the food, have a fight, throttle someone, go crazed in blood lust and, when it’s time to go home, forget it all and defect. Have had similar city-breaks (ah, Paris) except for the last bit. James Bond has to go that one stage further, doesn’t he? Show-off.
Mr Grumpy goes to Tokyo, then. I accept he has reason to be miz. However appealing a short-term solution to impeded freedom to do whatever and whomever one wants, losing one’s spouse cannot be fun. In vowing to be true until death does you part, one’s not expecting that to happen within an hour, before the weak buffet and witnessing an elderly relative get whammed and claim they invented the lemon. Won’t have even have had time for photographs of hair and faces both questionable when viewed a decade on; I mean, who the F*** is that bloke, there, next to your ferociously slutty fat friend with the tattoo of Harvey Keitel on her pockmarked whalethigh? What do you mean, how do I know about that? Look, there, atop those veined legs reminiscent of cheap Stilton. Agreed, it could be some cake, but it looks like Harvey Keitel. So does she.
That said, Bond didn’t so much lose Tracy as have her removed from him, and only shortly after they’d met. Given that she was practically a stranger, is it more the traumatic manner of the separation (bound to tend to upset) rather than the loss itself? If so, arguably Bond could be happier: he had yet to observe the way she ate eggs, or cut her toenails whilst watching television, or [continues in this vein for umpteen tedious paragraphs of trivial domestic irritations] or the annual one-day interest in “sorting out the garden” despite patently not knowing a weed from a banana. All these things James Bond is blissfully denied and then he gets a knock on the head and forgets about his marriage anyway. I’m struggling to see the downside.
So’s M. Not the most sympathetic of reactions, referring to Bond as a “lame-brain” and being “under the weather”, the brutal old blister. Bond’s more than that. The desperate, death-dripped recounting of a sweaty, out-of-condition James Bond shuffling around Harley Street practitioners trying half-heartedly to get well but trapped in the countdown to his next drink, resonates bleakly with what one knows of Fleming’s imminent fate. Possibly the saddest piece of writing in all the books, the loneliness in a crowd of a dying man and, more than that, a man who knows the game’s up but cracks a forced smile to try to convince others, and himself, to the contrary: heartbreaking. Possibly literally. Wasting one’s days in trying to prolong them, despite death addiction. All that work Fleming has been doing to undermine Bond’s appeal and I feel sorry for him now. Looking death in the face with a pointlessly brave one of his own; might be a second life, but it’s not much of one. The medical history Fleming ascribes to 007 one suspects is voluntary disclosure of his own records, embellished. The autobiography turns bitter. Just not up to it any longer and the demands of the job increasingly beyond him. A couple of Bond’s recent missions have failed; stretching it perhaps but authorial reflection here on the trouble surrounding Thunderball and the reception for The Spy Who Loved Me? The expectations – the demands – of others have turned it sour and unappealing.
What is required of Bond is required of Fleming: a supreme call on his talents in the face of an impossible job. You Only Live Twice tackles this need for energy by appearing to turn in the drowsiest novel of the run. That’s a disguise, and better than the one Bond adopts. Admittedly, the atmosphere is so dense one could dig into it with a spoon, but everything’s here, deceptively muted by oppressive melancholy and a pace that for two-thirds of the book might frustrate those seeking “thrills”. Fleming always was one for structural whimsy, was he not? Look carefully: what he’s ectually doing, skin tinted much darker but palpably there, is taking familiar tricks by the hand and skipping merrily over the top with them. A final wild fling for the old ways. The path may lead towards rebirth but before one emerges there washed of brain and identity, before one sloughs the old skin, all the characteristics of your first life get an outlandish, bacchanalian wake. For example –
Courtesy of the official James Bond 007 twitter account, a glimpse of Monica Bellucci and Daniel Craig above the rooftops of Rome, where they had a meet-and-eat-your-hearts-out appointment with the press.
