As we count down to this year’s Oscars I can’t help but sigh that the Academy fails to recognize the powerful performances and amazing talents behind 2012’s big sci-fi and comic book (I’m including James Bond because I love him and why not) based films?
Here are my films, stars, creators that should be nominated plus some of my own geeky categories:
Best Picture: The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Skyfall
Best Actor: Christian Bale, The Dark Knight Rises
Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Rian Johnson
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine, The Dark Knight Rises Javier Bardem, Skyfall Michael Fassbender, Prometheus
Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, The Dark Knight Rises Emily Blunt, Looper
At the end of 007 movies the final line is “…James Bond will return.”
Will Skyfall director Sam Mendes return for duty on Bond 24?
Here’s the mission briefing:
John Logan (who wrote the Skyfall script with Robert Wade and Neal Purvis) is writing the script for the next film. Early reports were that Continue reading SKYFALL Director Will Return?
James Bond may love ’em and leave ’em (or they end up dead) but you can give the action movie fan the ultimate Valentine’s Day gift!
Skyfall is out on Blu-ray February 12th. It seems like just a week ago I was seeing the latest 007 film for the fourth time!
Here’s what I said after I saw it the first time:
Skyfall may be the best 007 movie ever. Sam Mendes has crafted a passionate homage to 50 years of Bond films while creating his own epic that propels the super spy into the future. This adventure is thrilling and emotionally gripping.
Skyfall celebrates 50 years of the James Bond film franchise with clever lines and out-and-out brilliant homages to previous films. Director Sam Mendes packed the new Daniel Craig Bond film with influences from the series while making an entirely modern 007 movie.
Mystery woman Severine, the Macao casino and the voyage to the Dead Island of the villain Silva (Javier Bardem) took me back to The Man With the Golden Gun starring Roger Moore and Christopher Lee. You can see a huge influence on Skyfall from Ian Fleming’s later novels You Only Live Twice and The Man with the Golden Gun. The death of rebirth of Bond is seen in Skyfall and the aforementioned Fleming novels.
I wanted to share this insightful article by Neill McNally for MI6.Com. The author examines the parallels between the new film and shows how Ian Fleming’s vision of James Bond is alive and thriving in the Daniel Craig era.
Skyfall may be the best 007 movie ever. Sam Mendes has crafted a passionate homage to 50 years of Bond films while creating his own epic that propels the super spy into the future. This adventure is thrilling and emotionally gripping.
A list of deep cover agents is lost. M and MI6 are humiliated then attacked. Bond is left for dead. The spy resurrects himself when the mission gets personal.
Daniel Craig completely owns Bond now. His 007 is a cool, confident, clever killer with a ruthlessness in the field and in the bedroom. The creators let Craig take Bond into his past to see what made him the perfect recruit for MI6 and explore a part of Ian Fleming’s creation we’ve never seen on-screen.
Let’s just crown Javier Bardem as the new ultimate Bond villain! Silva brushes aside Auric Goldfinger, Doctor No and Rosa Klebb. The cyberterrorist has an M obsession and a fatal attraction to Bond. You can see shades of Red Grant, Hannibal Lecter, Anton Chigurh and the Joker madly swirling into Bardem’s performance. Just when you think you know Silva’s next move he violently switches stalking like a predator towards his endgame.
Let’s move on to the Bond girls.
Judi Dench is the silvery queen of steel as Bond’s boss. The villain’s plot is not grounded in destroying the world or money. It’s personal. M is under fire from an obsessed terrorist, an arrogant superior (superbly played by Ralph Fiennes) and an onslaught of bureaucrats who want her to hang. Dench is perfection whether giving orders to leave an agent for dead, staring down government investigators or dodging bullets from the unhinged villain.
courtesy 007.com
Naomie Harris and Daniel Craig share some of the best on-screen chemistry since Sean Connery and Honor Blackman in Goldfinger. Eve is a gorgeous, resourceful field agent who is not just 007’s eye candy. She is crucial to his survival and future.
When 007’s adventure takes him to Shanghai and exotic Macao he encounters the exquisite Berenice Marlohe as Severine. The stunning French actress portrays the mysterious bad girl perfectly. Bond peels away the gorgeous layers of this haunted women tied to the villain.
Skyfall marks the welcome return of Q to the Bond series. This is not your father’s Quartermaster with an arsenal of impossible gadgets. Ben Whishaw portrays a young, snarky, brilliant computer genius with echoes of the Mark Zuckerberg seen in The Social Network and the biting wit of the classic Q (the late Desmond LLewelyn.)
James Bond jets from Istanbul to Shanghai to Macao to the London Underground to an island of the dead with thrilling chases, fights, seductions, and revelations. 007 changes the game and the action hits home when he lures the villain to the Scottish Highlands for a brutal version of The Most Dangerous Game. The climax is action and emotion packed with pitch perfect performances by Craig, Dench, Bardem and a scene stealing Albert Finney.
Let’s bow to Sam Mendes now. You can sense the director’s love and knowledge of the franchise. Mendes and writers John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade fill Skyfall with clever winks with classic lines, moments and icons of the series. You can enjoy the film as a 007 virgin but if you’re an obsessive like me you will absolutely delight in all the references to the Bond legacy. Mendes celebrates the past while creating a modern thriller that moves Bond into the future.
I can’t help but think but compare Daniel’s first and latest Bond films to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy. Casino Royale was Bond Begins. Mendes has given us James Bond Rises in Skyfall. But this is not the end. James Bond will return.
A huge congratulations to the cast and crew of Skyfall. Ian Fleming, Albert Broccoli, Bernard Lee, Desmond LLewelyn and Lois Maxwell are raising their martinis to you.
James Bond journeys to Scotland in Skyfall. Bond’s father was Scottish. Sean Connery is Scottish. You see where I’m going?
A Sean Connery appearance in the latest 007 film for Bond’s 50th Annivesary?
Director Sam Mendes tells Huffington Post that there was a possibility of a Connery cameo.
“There was a definite discussion about that — way, way early on. But I think that’s problematic. Because, to me, it becomes too … it would take you out of the movie. Connery is Bond and he’s not going to come back as another character. It’s like, he’s been there. So, it was a very brief flirtation with that thought, but it was never going to happen, because I thought it would distract.”
Did Mendes and the producers make the right call?
A Bond fan confession: My first 007 film was Moonraker. I grew up on Roger Moore and one night while waiting for the ABC Sunday Night Movie with my dad – up comes the pre-credit sequence then title sequence for From Russia, With Love. I turned to my dad and asked “Who is Sean Connery?”
From Russia, With Love is now my all-time favorite 007 film. I love all the Bonds for what they are and what meant then and now.
I hope the franchise continues for decades and a kid may one day turn and ask “Who is Daniel Craig?”
Could Skyfall mark the beginning of a new run within the James Bond franchise? Sam Mendes is winning rave reviews for the latest 007 adventure and there’s talk he may return. Co-writer John Logan is slated to return as the sole writer for the next adventure. As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the James Bond movies I wanted to look back at the stellar runs of some key directors.
The James Bond franchise is known for a director helming several 007 films. Terence Young directed Dr. No and From Russia, With Love (my all-time favorite) took a break and was back for Thunderball.
Guy Hamilton directed Goldfinger, the film that is best known for setting the formula for 007’s adventures that followed it. Hamilton didn’t return until Sean Connery’s final (yes, I’m not including Never Say Never Again) film, Diamonds Are Forever and ushered in the Roger Moore era with Live and Let Die then The Man With the Golden Gun.
Lewis Gilbert directed Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice and Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
John Glen has the longest run directing 007 with For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To A Kill, The Living Daylights and License to Kill. Glen closed out the Roger Moore era and helmed Timothy Dalton’s two 007 films.
Martin Campbell directed the James Bond relaunches Goldeneye (Pierce Brosnan’s first) and Casino Royale (Daniel Craig’s first.)
I was immediately excited and surprised when it was announced Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road, Jarhead) would direct Skyfall. Mendes and Daniel Craig share a love of James Bond films saying they discussed Live and Let Die and From Russia, With Love before starting work on Skyfall. It was a huge surprise when the Oscar-winner was named director of Skyfall. Indications are he will not return.
“It’s been a fantastic experience, but it’s been completely exhausting,” he told AceShowbix , “Do I want to do another one? I’m a shadow of my former self. [laughs] No, I don’t know. I felt like everything I wanted to do with a Bond movie, I put into this film.”
I would have to be convinced that I could do something that I loved and cared about as much if I was to do it again. I think the great risk of repeating oneself is that one doesn’t have the great store of ideas that you have when you first tackle a subject.”
Here’s hoping the producers can entire Mendes to renew his license to thrill.
