Double O Countdown: Skyfall

We made it to the end. I don't know how my fellow bloggers who post on a daily basis manage to find time to do so. It has been an exhausting four weeks. Everyday I have been scanning the films, compiling a list, capturing shots, finding images to share and it was always so much because I wanted to look at everything. It has all been worth it. This post is going up the morning of the day I will be seeing the new Bond film "SPECTRE".  I hope it has helped wet your appitiete as much as it has mine.

"Skyfall" is just about perfect in my mind. I have seen haters out there who have had the audacity to say it is a bad film, they have no idea what they are talking about. This movie is packed with things that action film lovers will want to treasure, that Bond fanatics like me will geek out over, and it has qualities that film professionals have honored in numerous ways. Here are the Double O Seven ways it did it for me.

001  Adele gives Shirley Bassey a run for her money.

The title song is lush, mysterious and romantic. It kicks in with a chorus that is dramatic and brings the intensity level up very effectively. That it is played over some spectacular title images adds to it's luster.

002  Judy Dench Classes up the film like you can't believe

This was the biggest role for Dench in the series, she plays it tough and has just the right amount of vulnerability in the key scenes. She gets to participate in the climactic battle at Bond's ancestral home and she is completely believable. In the opening, she is unsentimental in risking Bond's life in pursuit of the Macguffin.

When the HQ of MI 6 is attacked and a half dozen are killed, she is a isolated figure with the world against her.








She has to defend herself at a public hearing where she will be humiliated for political reasons, still she does not give an inch.

As she and Bond flee London to draw their nemesis into a fight away from others, she is not alone, but still feels the weight of the world and the isolation with 007 at her side.

003  Let's Hear it for the Movie Magician Roger Deakins

He makes beatiful images even more beautiful, see the reds pop in this image.

The lighting and shadows in some scenes recall the glory days of post war film noir.

Shadows that tell the story as well as the pictures and words do.

Backlighting for effect and hiding the face of the character in the bright red light from a fire, awesome stuff.

Composition is another of the arrows in his quiver.

I know "The Life of Pi" was beautiful, but Roger Deakins was robbed at the Academy Awards this year.

004  Once again, the villain makes the movie.

Javier Bardem as the betrayed and bitter ex-agent Silva, is all quirky body movement and lilting articulation when he speaks.

The story he tells of his Grandmothers Island and the rats is creepy, but watch the way he tries to get to James by delicately manhandling him.

Of course Jame's response was classic bravado with a twist of humor.

Even when he is captured, Hannibal Lecter-like, we know that he is a snake that is too dangerous to let live. A terrific character matched by a terrific performance.

005  Fan Service from Aston Martin

I'm only slightly kidding when I say I may have peed myself when the lights go on in the garage. "Goldfinger" is my favorite Bond film, but this one proves there is always a chance it could be replaced. At least as long as a car with Machine Guns and an Ejector seat in in the mix.

006  The New M

Ralph Fiennes is well cast as a younger but mature new head of the Secret Service. He also know how to handle himself as he shows in the attack on the public hearings.

He starts off in the film as an uptight prig but turns into the wise and knowing heir to the Evil Queen of Numbers.

As he and Bond meet in the very last scene, and Bond addresses him as "M", my heart soared and I anticipated the new film every day for the last three years.

007 The Perfect Summary of 007

He kicks ass, chases the bad guys around town on every kind of vehicle you can imagine, shoots a bucket load of bullets, and still cares about how his clothes drape properly.

If you don't jones on this shot, why are you reading any of this?

James Bond Will Return in "SPECTRE"

007 Double Feature At the Egyptian

For the second week in a row, I made it down to Hollywood to catch a classic on the big screen at the Egyptian Theater. Actually there were two classics, both James Bond films from the heyday of the 1960s. These are the two films that most turned 007 into a a massive popular cultural phenomenon and the most consistently successful film series of  all time. The pairing was irresistible to me and although I could occassionally hear the snickering of hipsters in the audience over the costumes in the movies or a piece of plot line that seems a little fantastic, the general response was one of love from the hundreds of us who managed to make it there and see the first and greatest James Bond, Sean Connery.

Goldfinger

It was just last June that I saw Goldfinger on the big screen along with another Sean Connery feature "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". I can and do regularly watch this film. It is as entertaining as any movie you are likely to see and it is in my opinion the greatest of all the James Bond films. I won't relive the entire countdown to Skyfall that I did in 2012, but there are a few posts that you might enjoy here.

This first is a memory piece and review that I did early in the year leading up to Skyfall.

This is the KAMAD Video Blog that I posted after the Father's Day visit to see 007 and Dr. Jones together.

I did notice something a bit odd in last night's screening. The end credit did not list the correct movie coming up next in the sequence.  Here is the way it looks in the DVD remaster from a half dozen years ago:

It properly lists "Thunderball" as the next film. On last night's print the film listed was "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Amanda and I talked about this and she is of the opinion that this was the original listing because they did not know that "Thunderball" would be next due to all the legal issues surrounding the property. I tended to agree with her except that "You Only Live Twice" came before "OHMSS" and "Thunderball" was released the year after "Goldfinger" so they should have been in production at the time they did release the third film. The answer according the IMDB is:

 In the original end title credits, which featured the famous "James Bond will return in..." teaser, the next film advertised was On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). However, when the producers began pre-production, they were unable to secure the Swiss locations needed for the film and decided to make Thunderball (1965) instead. The end title teaser was later changed to advertise "Thunderball".

 So that mystery is solved for the moment.

Thunderball

I don't think I have a previous post exclusively on "Thunderball".  I do however have this section of a post that I have copied over for you:

The original "Thunderball" was one of the biggest blockbusters of the 1960s. When adjusted for inflation it stands as the most financially successful of all the Bond movies. The audacity of Goldfinger was multiplied by a bigger canvas for the story telling. More exotic locations and bigger set pieces are put into place. As a kid I wanted the 007 lunchbox with all the frogmen fighting underwater. It was an image that sold all of us on the adventure we had coming. As far as I know, this is the first story to exploit the idea of nuclear terrorism. It was not of course the last. Here was SPECTRE as a real organization, with a board of directors and a chairman presiding over crime and doling out death as a punishment for failing the company. In a way, with all of the numbers, and secret locations and passwords or codes, it is the mirror image of MI6, and the bureaucracy that Bond actually represents.
There are great sequences in the picture and some real imaginative gizmos in the story. The jet-pack is just so outlandish that it gives the ejector seat a run for it's money as the most over the top toys of 007 in the early films. The miniature breathing apparatus looks like it could be practical for emergencies. Bond gets taken for a ride in an early Mustang, he has an underwater version of the jet-pack, and he gets yanked into the sky forty years before Batman uses the same technology in "The Dark Knight". The problems with the film have to do with pacing. A slog through the stuff at Shrublands, hide and seek in the Mardi Gras like parade in Jamaica, and the underwater battle looks cool but needed some editing. "Thunderball" is like one of those great Thanksgiving meals with so many choices, that are so rich and you want to try them all. When you do, you feel a little sick afterwards. "Thunderball" doesn't exactly make me sick, but my blood sugar is usually a little high after I watch it. I should get up and go for a walk, but I usually just fall asleep contentedly. Another blogger El Santo, did a fantastic piece on the music from "Thunderball', that goes way beyond the theme song. I hope he is OK with my linking it here, you should read and listen.

I will also mention that this film was one from my youth that I know gave me a nightmare or two. When Angelo Palazzi playing the doppelganger of Major François Derval gets stuck in the seat belt in the plane he just hijacked and landed in the ocean, Largo cuts his air hose and he drowns flailing away for help and oxygen. It gave me the creeps watching it and I dreamed about that death on more than one occasion. 

Sometimes there are little things that might slip by on the television screen that will not escape your attention on a screen thirty feet high and seventy feet wide. Last night I remembered one of those weird little details when the image came up for just a brief couple of seconds. There is a dog, taking a leak in the middle of a scene, and it either was too complicated to shoot it over or the editor just thought it was a lark and left it in. I went in search and fopund it on my DVD of the film and thought I'd share it with you here.

 As Bond is trying to escape in the confusion of the parade, two of his pursuers are bisected in this shot by a random animal lifting it's leg and letting it out. Amanda missed it but I have now made sure that none of you reading this will ever miss it again. 

We have a long wait until the next James Bond film, but with a rich 50 year history and opportunities like this screening at the American Cinematique  at the Egyptian, we will always have plenty to talk about.