Odds & Ends
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Back Again
When I uploaded my review of WALL-E a couple of days a go, I was surprised to see it was more than a month since I posted something. Surprised, because I'm doing lots of film-related writing at the moment, so it seems like the page should be ticking over. But it's all been for things outside the page, notably my Masters. Over the long term this should generate some interesting content for the page, but there are also going to be times where I disappear for a few weeks to write things. You may also have noticed that the Wall-E has a comments facility; this will be the norm on new reviews from here on. To get consistency across the site, I've switched the Odds and Ends comments over to the same system. I am a little uneasy about handing my comments over to a third party provider, in case they disappear one day, but the positives of improved interaction and consistency across the site were too attractive to ignore. I've copied the old comments across, but had to do it manually (thank goodness my site isn't more popular) due to eccentricities of the integration of the blog into my site, so the dates on all comments have been reset to October this year. Otherwise they should be unchanged. As is often the case after such disappearances, there are a few things I'm interested in sharing. There's the new Bond song, for one, by Alicia Keys and Most people seem to hate it (and particularly, the wailing vocals): I actually like it, in a weird way. Certainly it made a better first impression than Chris Cornell's "You Know My Name," from Casino Royale. I didn't really like that at all, until I saw it in the movie with that awesome opening credit sequence by Daniel Kleinman. (Incidentally, Kleinman has been dumped from Quantum of Solace, replaced by design group MK12, who worked on director Marc Forster's previous films.) I could just be strange though, as I also enjoyed Madonna's "Die Another Day." Incidentally, the new trailer for Quantum of Solace is up over at 007.com and is even better than the teaser. I'm pumped for this, no matter how bad the title is. Speaking of the Quantum of Solace theme song, here's another fake one, I believe from the same radio team that came up with the last one I posted. The YouTube video for this one isn't as much fun, but the "big bags of solace" line in the lyrics kills me. There's also a trailer out for Oliver Stone's W., which suggests Stone is back to his rabble-rousing best. You Tube below, or go here. If this is what he does with George W, imagine what he could achieve if Sarah Palin makes the White House? Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Thursday, August 07, 2008
The Something of BorisFor anyone wondering what the "Quantum of Solace" theme song might sound like, here's as good an answer as any. (I don't post most of the YouTube joke clips I come across, but sometimes I just can't resist). . . . . . .. . . . _
Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, June 30, 2008
Quantum of Solace Trailer
Here's the new trailer for Quantum of Solace (aka the Bond movie with the title that makes everyone snicker but which has actually kind of grown on me). High definition version, which as always is worth it if you can, here.
I've said way to much about Bond over the years for it to be worth any detailed comment, but it is kind of cool. I love that finally we have some linkage between the films, in a way we haven't had since the sixties. This looks like it could be the Bond revenge story that should have, but didn't, follow the best Bond movie of all, On Her Majesties Secret Service. You also have to love that Bourne-ish shot following the motorcycle jump. Also - the first review I've seen anywhere of Baz Luhrmann's Australia, is here, from some random mallgoer in America. As such, the word "review" is used loosely but it's interesting to see such an early word on a film about which I am now increasingly curious - no matter who the source. Tha trailer for that one is here. Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, April 30, 2006
Not the Sequel to Martin Scorsese's CasinoA trailer (in French) and a poster have hit the net for Casino Royale, and while I remain deeply sceptical about the film, I must say both look pretty good. Click the poster to go to the trailer, which is on a French 007 fan site.
 Labels: bond Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, October 24, 2005
Craig, Daniel Craig
The news that Daniel Craig will take over the role of James Bond in the upcoming Casino Royale has been greeted with a brief flurry of perfunctory publicity, but what seems to be general apathy. It's not hard to see why: as Jaime J. Weinman put it, "The Bond movies are basically the big-budget equivalent of an endlessly-running TV adventure show, and replacing Bond doesn't mean much more than replacing Dr. Who." Which, as a Bond fan, is sad but indisputably accurate.
 What interests me most about the decision to axe Brosnan and use Craig is both its perversity and its eerie echoes of the handover from Sean Connery to George Lazenby for 1969's On Her Majesties Secret Service (hereafter OHMSS). Perverse, because Brosnan had been agitating for ages that he wanted to do a tougher, grittier, more Fleming-inspired take on Bond, and Quentin Tarantino has been advocating a "straight" adaptation of Casino Royale for a couple of years. Brosnan has been the best thing the Bond series has had going for it recently - he has been an excellent Bond in generally indifferent movies. Tarantino, of course, could have been just the shot in the arm the series needed. As I argued here when the Casino Royale idea was first floated, the Tarantino Bond film could have been done as a one-off "art Bond" project without upsetting the whole series, possibly as a farewell film for Brosnan. Instead, the producers have spurned Brosnan, rejected Tarantino... and then gone with the mediocre action director Martin Campbell, and Daniel Craig as Bond, to do a version of Casino Royale that is reportedly - you guessed it - a return to Fleming's source, including making it an origin story a la Batman Begins. It seems to be all downside with no upside: they are taking the risk of "rebooting" the series, but not choosing to take advantage of the talents who had advocated taking that chance in the first place. The parallels with the situation in 1969 are interesting. For those who haven't read the books, Casino Royale is, like OHMSS, one of the key novels in terms of defining the character. In the case of OHMSS, this carried through to the film series. (I'm going to move into some spoilers here: while I'll tread lightly on the events of Casino Royale, I'm going to reveal the end to OHMSS, on the grounds that it's much more familiar to most filmgoers). In OHMSS, you'll recall, Bond marries, but has his wife slain by Blofeld on his wedding day: it's an event that is referred to occasionally in the subsequent films (most explicitly in The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, and Licence to Kill, but obliquely elsewhere) and which provides a tragic undertone that has forever informed the understanding of who Bond is. The entire arc of the 1960s Bond films (which work as a serial in a way the later films don't) works up to this event, and OHMSS is one of a very short list of Bonds that stands as a film classic in its own right. The irony of all this is that the series took this dramatic turn after Sean Connery had quit the series out of frustration. Connery was concerned about typecasting and wanted to branch out, and he announced that he was quitting during the filming of You Only Live Twice (1967), which was the film that defined what would become the worst aspects of the Bond series. The first of the series to completely discard Fleming's source novel, it's overlong, flabbily directed, and represents the start of the treatment of Bond as purely a fantasy figure (rather than a real character who enters borderline fantasy scenarios). Watching it, it is easy to see why Connery grew disenchanted - but as soon as he left, the producers went back to basics for the truly excellent OHMSS. The only weakness of that film is Lazenby, and watching it, you can't help but wonder how Connery would have responded to the acting challenge of giving us a real, vulnerable Bond in love. For the next film they got Connery back - but made Diamonds Are Forever, a dreadful mishmash that totally ignored the events of the preceding film and built to a climactic scene of death rays from space. And Connery quit again. It's unlikely that Daniel Craig will be another Lazenby - while we won't know for sure until the film comes out, he seems to have been chosen to put a "proper actor" in the role, a la Timothy Dalton in 1987. And that's a promising sign going into Casino Royale, which turns on Bond's relationship with a fellow intelligence worker named Vesper Lynd. In the novels, she is the other love of Bond's life, and the conclusion of their relationship is another key moment in Bond's history. I hope the producers do have the courage not to jazz it up too much (the later portions of the novel give way almost entirely to character based drama), and look forward to seeing Craig's take on Bond. But just like Connery back in 1969, Brosnan deserved a shot at it. Unlike Connery, Brosnan was ready and willing, which just makes it more puzzling. It has been rumoured that he asked for too much money, but it's difficult to believe he wasn't worth it. Brosnan isn't an actor of the calibre of Connery (who was spectacularly good in the first few Bonds, before he got bored of the role) but he had managed the difficult task of being fully accepted by the public as Bond. That's a tricky thing to do, and being good in the role isn't enough: Timothy Dalton was an excellent actor, but he never caught the public's imagination. That kind of identification between actor and role is a rare thing, and the series hasn't enjoyed it since Connery. (Despite the length of tenure in the part, Roger Moore always violently divided opinion, and simply isn't Bond to many: he's just Roger Moore doing Bond schtick). Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, and something tells me that Bond fans will be left dreaming of the Brosnan Casino Royale in much the same way that they rue the missed chance of the Connery OHMSS. For more on my views on the decision to adapt Casino Royale as the next Bond film, see this earlier post. Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Friday, September 30, 2005
A Difficult Man
As a very belated postscript to my Willy Wonka / Charlie review, I thought it was worth expanding on my comments about the tantalising collaborations that almost happened throughout Roald Dahl's life. Dahl was a very difficult and in some ways a very solitary man. It's probably telling that the only really protracted creative collaboration he had while alive was with the illustrator Quentin Blake. That was a partnership founded on a lack of direct interaction: while Dahl and Blake were a perfect fit for each other, they didn't really work together. Dahl would turn over his writing, and Blake would illustrate it. Generally, the more directly Dahl worked with someone, the quicker the relationship would founder. Dahl chewed through a number of publishers and editors. He wrote a Bond film (You Only Live Twice, the worst 60s Bond movie, but arguably the most iconic - it's the one with the hollowed out volcano and the Dr Evilesque Blofeld) and was not asked back for another (although he did subsequently work on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the same producers). He fell out with Mel Stuart, director of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, even before his script was finished, and publicly called for people to boycott Nicholas Roeg's film of The Witches. The most successful Dahl collaborations, as I've suggested before, generally came after his death, as those who liked his work could finally attempt adaptations without having to deal with Dahl himself. Examples of such posthumous Dahl "collaborations" include with Henry Selick (James and the Giant Peach); Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory); Danny De Vito (Matilda); Wes Anderson (reportedly working with Selick on a version of Fantastic Mr Fox); John Cleese (who has co-scripted a version of The Twits); and Quentin Tarantino (whose segment of Four Rooms is based on Dahl's story "Man from the South"). Yet despite his thorny personality he was a partygoer and raconteur who moved in influential circles, both in his own right and as the husband of actress Patricia Neal. So he came into contact with, and caught the imaginations of, lots of exceptional people. The story of Dahl's career is therefore full of collaborations that didn't quite come off - but which are nevertheless intriguing. Several of these are film related, which is enough of an excuse for me to write about them. Roald Dahl & Spike Milligan / Peter Sellers Okay, this is a beat-up. As I noted in my review of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory adaptations, Dahl wanted either Milligan or Sellers as Wonka. It's an intriguing idea, but it doesn't seem as if anyone got as far as approaching either man: the producers were set on an American name. Dahl never did warm to Wilder's portrayal of Wonka, despite its popularity with audiences. Roald Dahl & Maurice Sendak Maurice Sendak, the writer and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, is one of the few children's authors with a vision as dark and compelling as Dahl's own. He achieved fame when he published Where the Wild Things Are in 1963 - but in 1962, he was a relatively unknown candidate for the job of illustrating Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dahl had seen and liked Sendak's illustrations for Robert Graves' The Big Green Book (which was part of the same project to get well known adult writers to write a book for children that spawned Dahl's The Magic Finger), and suggested that Sendak would be worth a try. However, Sendak wanted a share of royalties rather than a fee, which would have cut into Dahl's share from the book. Dahl quickly lost his enthusiasm for Sendak, and another illustrator was found. Roald Dahl & Robert Altman Dahl met Robert Altman in Honolulu in 1964. Altman at this point had directed his first feature film (The Delinquents) but was still an unknown, mostly working in television. Altman approached Dahl with a screenplay called Oh Death, Where is Thy Sting-a-ling-a-ling? and the two began working on it together. Yet the project fell apart in nebulous circumstances. The Dahl-approved version of events, recounted in Chris Powling's imaginatively titled 1983 profile Roald Dahl, is that Dahl secured a price of $150,000 for the script but the project fell through when Dahl loyally insisted that Altman had to direct it. More thorough biographers later on questioned this version: Jeremy Treglown's equally imaginatively titled 1994 biography Roald Dahl suggests that Dahl argued with Altman over his share of the money, and ownership of the story-line. Ultimately, says Treglown, Dahl managed to get Altman dumped off the project (despite the story being Altman's idea) and the project fell through. Ironically, much later (in late 2004) it was announced that Altman would produce a series of television adaptations of Dahl's adult short stories (presumably along the lines of the 1970s Dahl-based series Tales of the Unexpected). Presumably, if Altman was soured on Dahl as a person, it didn't effect his regard for his work. Roald Dahl & Walt Disney This is probably the best known of the near-miss collaborations: it is also the most intriguing. In 1941 Roald Dahl had been discharged from active duty in the RAF due to ongoing medical problems, and ended up working in the British Embassy in Washington. While there he started writing on the side, and one of his first pieces was a children's story originally titled Gremlin Lore, about mischievous creatures that, in RAF mythology, caused malfunctions and technical problems in fighter planes. Dahl had to get it cleared by the British Information Services, and the person in charge of approving it was Sidney Bernstein, a friend of Walt Disney's. He saw the story's potential and passed it on to Disney in mid 1942. During the war, the Disney studio, hit by the loss of much of its European market (which was a major factor in causing Pinocchio and Fantasia to flop) had moved heavily into government-backed propaganda filmmaking. Dahl's Gremlin story therefore fit well with the kind of film they were making at this time, and Disney brought him out to Hollywood as a consultant on a filmed adaptation. Artists went to work, preparing conceptual art and two alternate scripts (one for an extended short, one for a feature). Disney - notorious for sinking development money into projects, many of which never materialised - spent $50,000 on The Gremlins in 9 months. Throughout the latter half of 1942 and early 1943 they started laying groundwork for the release of the film, publicising and popularising the legend in the press. Treglown writes that Dahl was popular at the studio, including with the Disney brothers, but the problems with the project started to mount up. Firstly, a children's fantasy about the RAF began to seem in poor taste as the war dragged on and casualties mounted. A contrasting concern was that the war could end: as development continued into 1943, Disney started to fret that the feature might be out of date before it was completed. Perhaps most serious, though, was the fact that others were stealing the studios limelight. Disney and Dahl had done much to raise awareness of the Gremlin legend, but they hadn't invented it, and they couldn't stop others publishing Gremlin-related stories. Disney pressured some not to proceed, but he couldn't dissuade them all, and many of those rivals worked to much shorter production schedules than Disney. (Even in animation, Disney couldn't keep up: Bugs Bunny was fighting Gremlins by October 1943, in Bob Clampett's Warner Bros. short Falling Hare). By late 1943, plans for a film had been shelved. What did eventually appear was a picture book: The Gremlins, by "Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl," and illustrated by Disney artists. It was Dahl's first published children's book. Labels: bond Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, February 26, 2005
Casino Royale with CheeseAs a follow-up to my post about Casino Royale early in February, some of Martin Campbell's views on the new film have featured in a story over at CommanderBond.net (apparently pretty much lifted verbatim from The New York Daily News).
While it's good to hear Campbell wanting to do the character-based nature of the novel justice, what's with the "Bond at the start of his career" stuff? So it's not a prequel, or a period film, but it is about Bond at the start of his career? This is basically what they tried with Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears, and that basically killed that franchise (admittedly, a weak franchise to begin with). Of course, the Bond series doesn't have any real sense of internal consistency - the Bond of Die Another Day can't feasibly be the same Bond we saw in Dr No. But the slippage of the internal time has always been fairly invisible - one Bond film generally can be seen as taking pretty much right after the other, and certain aspects of the character are consistent. For example, the loss of his wife in 1969's On Her Majesties Secret Service is explicitly acknowledged as still part of the character's past in 1981's For Your Eyes Only (with Roger Moore), and fairly directly in 1989's Licence to Kill (with Timothy Dalton). The Brosnan films deliberately kept this aspect of the character ambiguous - it wasn't acknowledged, but there were occasional references dropped to losses in his past that the fans could read as references to Tracy if they wished. By contrast, an explicit disavowal of all that came before is really unusual and seems a risky move. The previous lapses in continuity have tended to involve quietly ignoring what came before. 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, for example, completely ignores the death of Tracy in the film before. The principal villain (Blofeld) was the driver of the car from which she was shot, but there is not a single mention of the incident, and Moneypenny flirtatiously jokes about marriage in the first few minutes. (As Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington put it in their book Bond Films: "Surprisingly Bond doesn't respond by shouting, 'My wife was murdered at the end of the last film you heartless cow!' at her.") That ruled a line under the very close continuity than through all the 60s Bonds, and the consistency was always much looser after that. Yet even The Living Daylights (from 1987), which introduces a much younger Bond, avoided actually acknowledging any change. What's strange about this is that "resetting" the character is an unnecessary risk from usually risk-averse producers. They would be better off setting Casino Royale totally outside the established continuity of the series - effectively quarantining it as an art Bond film, in the way I described back in the early days of this page. (Click here and then scroll down to the 23/5/04 entry to read that post.) I'll write about something other than Bond or animation next post, I promise. Labels: bond Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Saturday, February 05, 2005
Whose Casino Royale is it though?
It's official - Martin Campbell is to direct the next Bond film. It is to be Casino Royale. Brosnan is almost certainly out as Bond. While the Bond fans are predictably ecstatic that Fleming's first Bond novel is to get an adaptation, I feel this news raises more questions than it answers. For months now the rumours have been that Eon and the studio were at loggerheads over the direction of Bond: Eon wanted to get back to basics after the Diamonds Are Forever-like Die Another Day, while the studio was pushing for ever bigger action extravaganzas. Many fans are taking the return to Fleming source material as an affirmation that Eon are getting their way. What makes me suspicious of this interpretation is that if the book is filmed anything like a straight adaptation, then it would represent a complete capitulation by the studio. This would need to be a harder-edged, more purist Bond than we saw even in 1962 with Terence Young's superb Dr No. Casino Royale was Fleming's first Bond novel, and it is probably his best. It is built around a setpiece high stakes gambling sequence, where Bond tries to bankrupt the villainous Le Chiffre. When the mission goes wrong, Bond is viciously tortured, and escapes only to find himself questioning his willingness to go on with the job. The concluding sections focus on his relationship with Vesper Lynd, the female agent who had assisted in his mission, and builds to a really effective and shocking conclusion. It's what all the Bond books should be: a really solid thriller, pulp done exceptionally well. The problem is, it is also resolutely small and serious-minded. There is a car chase, and this could be expanded upon, but the first sections centre on a brilliantly written casino sequence, and the latter portion of the book is basically about a relationship going sour. I don't have a problem with Martin Campbell as director - my issues with his Goldeneye are mostly script-related - but his selection suggests an intention to go for a typically big action movie. If they wanted to do Casino Royale straight, they would have been better to take Quentin Tarantino up on his offer of a year or so back. He would have had the critical cachet to get away with a smaller treatment, and his suggestion to set the film after the events of On Her Majesties Secret Service showed a real instinct for the overtone of despair needed. (Peter Hunt's 1969 adaptation of OHMSS was the last attempt to do a really serious Bond film, and it remains the highpoint of the series). If they think they can just adapt the book and add some action, they are doomed to fail. That has worked before, and indeed the best sixties Bond films (Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and On Her Majesties Secret Service) got by by being faithful to Fleming but strengthening action sequences in the book, or adding them skillfully where they didn't exist before. But the nature of Casino Royale, the novel, is such that this approach wouldn't work. I fear that the best we will get is the approach taking by most of the 70s and 80s Bond films: cherry-pick a few elements, names and settings (just enough to thwart anyone ever trying to do a proper adaptation later), and then junk the rest. The Bond films long ago lost the knack of being great films (and the four sixties films I name above are truly that - great films, amongst the best action-adventure films ever made) while remaining true to the books. At the end of the day, the same old tension - between fidelity to the Fleming character, and the expectations of movie audiences - will still exist. The fact that this announcement has a bit each way doesn't do anything to resolve that underlying tension, and without a figure like Tarantino to act as circuit breaker, I'm not sure it can be done. Labels: bond Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Sunday, May 23, 2004
Mike Moore's Palme D'Or and Quentin Tarantino's Casino Royale
Mike Moore winning the Palme D'Or? It seems so bizarre that it is hardly surprising that in all the stories about Fahrenheit 9/11 preceding the festival, nobody had really suggested this as a possibility, despite the film being in competition. I can't wait to see the film: I loved Bowling for Columbine, and am sympathetic to all but the most outrageous of Moore's politics. Yet I also fear it may be terrible. Columbine I thought stood head and shoulders above Moore's other work because he successfully reigned in many of his worst impulses. Moore has a weakness for hyperbole and half-truths that has brought down many of his other films and books, but despite the best attempts of the right to discredit Columbine, nobody really poked any serious holes in it. There is plenty of scope for a really devastating attack on George W. Bush without bending the truth, but I fear Moore's anger and the praise heaped on him post-Columbine may have gone to his head. I can see Fahrenheit 9/11 descending into hysteria, conspiracy theories and factual error. Let's hope I'm wrong: for all his faults, Moore popularises the left and has the kind of cross-cultural reach that usually only the right can achieve. The jury, of course, was headed by Quentin Tarantino, who created a minor storm early in the festival by reiterating his desire to make a film of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale. His plan (as he has outlined before) would be to take the character back to the basics, sticking to the novel, and setting it straight after On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Bond still grieving the death of his wife Tracy. He's said this before, but alas I am 95% sure it will remain just a pipe dream. Eon (the custodians of the cinematic James Bond) are far too timid to let it happen. After the 60s Bond films - the best of which still await a proper critical reappraisal that recognises their enormous merits and influence - Eon have pretty much run the character into the ground by taking no risks whatsoever. They shouldn't be so afraid - it would work and could be "cordoned off" from the regular series so as not to confuse audiences. Here's my thoughts how it should be done:
The idea of such an approach is to allow the one-off to stand alone and not threaten the regular series. The amount of publicity surrounding Tarantino's involvement, plus the built in branding of this as a "special" Bond described above, would mean audiences would be clear on what was going on. Ah, to dream... Labels: bond Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. |
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