9 posts tagged “itc”

I was, of course, referring to Simon Templar, or at least the TV incarnation of him as played by Roger Moore. For today I spotted the following down the road from the office:

It’s a beautifully maintained Volvo 1800S from 1967 (and yes, I could tell without looking at the registration certificate).
   A few hours before there was this beautiful 1959 MGA hardtop on the other side of Latimer Park:    Earlier today, I also spotted a Karmann Ghia Typ 3 and yesterday, a 1972 Volkswagen Typ 4.
   Christchurch seems to be the home of many a classic car—two months ago, I came across a beautiful old Ford Falcon Wagon. These Cantabrians seem to love their classics.

Chambers & Partners did a few opening titles to ITC shows and TV movies in the 1960s and 1970s. There was the original Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (the remake employed Tomato, which also did a great job), but I really love this one for Department S. It shows what a difference design can make, and Chambers had a nice, modernist approach here. The Century Expanded Bold type suits the style of the series, and the titles have aged rather better than Peter Wyngarde’s hairstyle.

   The spin-off, which had Wyngarde on his own in Jason King, felt cheaper, and the titles seem to have lost their sophistication. The Laurie Johnson theme tune was quite cool and was one of the few things that were better about the new series.    However, there are folks who are out there with their own ideas on how the Department S theme can be improved. Groovy!

For me, Vox is fixed. The ‘Compose’ screen comes up reasonably quickly, and I can add stuff quite easily (books aside).
   On that note, here is a video. I don’t know why, but this has been in my head all day. From the cult TV series Department S, which was far more baffling than The X-Files ever was.

Share a scene from a movie that uses music perfectly.
Submitted by nohablo.

This is a great scene for movie music, but the movie itself was Sir Lew Grade’s star-studded mega-turkey of 1980, Raise the Titanic. I do not like this movie but this following scene with a musical score is well done.
   Composer John Barry’s lyrical composition works well with and without the picture and unlike his many modern counterparts, he knows when to stop the music.
   The central part of this clip has no music, but wait till the Titanic bubbles up toward the end after 5.59 (music at 6.57). It is, sadly, cut badly toward the end.
   I knew this really conveyed the nautical sense when I drove around Oriental Bay one day and saw one of the Interislanders go out. Even though that ferry is not very large, this music suited the idea of a ship on the seas.

   A second clip has the opening theme as well as the raising.

What fictional character do you relate to most and why?

Let’s see: what Chinese fictional character had to operate in the west, deal to the establishment, drive a rare two-door car, impersonate others, and have his adventures chronicled?
   Simon Templar.
   Pity he was always played by Caucasians on the screen, but I always thought he was Chinese, since his creator was. A new pilot is being made now, which, inter alia, Sir Roger Moore and his son Geoffrey are producing.

   TV trivia buffs might notice John Steed’s Rover SD1 from The New Avengers in the last car chase, reused here. It was also George Cowley’s Rover SD1 in the first season of The Professionals. Stingey British Leyland!

There’s now a second video from the documentary The Saint Steps in … to Colour on YouTube, detailing how scriptwriter Terry Nation would rehash his scripts for different series. This would be fine years apart, but one week he got caught out on US television when The Saint was rerun with a new episode of The Baron.
   Goodness, de Vere before he met Audrey!
   Ian Ogilvy provides the narration.

Again, from YouTube poster ZillakYT, are the first few minutes from another documentary revisiting an ITC classic—in this case, the colour episodes of the Roger Moore series The Saint. Ian Ogilvy, who succeeded Moore in the 1970s in Return of the Saint, narrates.
   The pre-title bit is hilarious, with the title card reading ‘Monte Carlo / not Elstree’. This was a nod to the fact that almost all Saint episodes, despite being set in Roma, Paris and other exotic locations, were filmed in England. What is interesting is just how angry Saint creator Leslie Charteris got with the producer, Robert S. Baker, and script supervisor Harry W. Junkin. A memorandum is read out by Ogilvy—and Charteris was pretty pissed!
   Sadly, Mr Ogilvy is cut off in mid-speech but I assume he was nearing the end of Charteris’s letter.

   (In case anyone is wondering why this post is in the Asian and Chinese groups on Vox, Leslie Charteris was originally Singaporean Chinese.)

I found these two videos on YouTube and those who love those old ITC TV series may enjoy them. It’s a pity The Persuaders’ one is so short, but the full thing is on the new DVD set. Boy, octogenarian Tony Curtis looks like he’s smoked a bit too much pot over the years, but Sir Roger Moore looks remarkably good (he was 78 when the documentary was filmed). The clip from We Were the Champions, a reunion of the stars of The Champions, is a bit longer and shows Damon, Bastedo and Gaunt seeing each other for the first time since their series ended in the late 1960s.
   I wish these were available as on separate DVDs or even as a chargeable download, since I already have a set of The Persuaders.

Regular visitors may have noticed two renditions of ‘Avenues and Alleyways’, the theme from The Protectors, by Mitch Murray and Peter Callander and originally sung by Tony Christie, on this blog. One is from jazz singer Rinaldi, and presented here in full, and the other is a shortened version performed by Chris Moyles on The X Factor—Simon Cowell’s other show.
   I’m not sure if non-Brits know of X, but here’s their chance to see Simon being less of a prick—and realize he does heap praise when the performance is good. Moyles sounds like he fudged the shortened chorus a tad (I believe it is meant to be a mixture of the first and second choruses, and the backing vocalists seem to be singing something different toward the end), but I prefer this key to Christie’s original, plus the arrangement is rather nice.
   Rinaldi lacks the oomph, but the visuals—a parody of The Saint, Get Carter and swinging London—more than make up for it. He delivers a more loungey version, which is very pleasant on the ears.
   It shows that a lot of these old Brit themes are still in the public consciousness after all these years—‘Avenues’ was more of a hit for Christie when he revived it in 2000, and it certainly was a hit for Moyles and Rinaldi. I remember when 1969’s ‘We Have All the Time in the World’ from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service caught on again in the 1980s after it was used for UK TV advertising.
   Interestingly, as I discussed with my Brit friends, the Athertons, after they moved down to New Zealand, I seem to have more in common with them than many of the locals, in sense of humour and tastes. The former is down to the similarities between Cantonese and British humour, but the latter could only have come from being brainwashed by Lew Grade and his TV shows in my formative years. And I still carry a wee passport with Dieu et Mon Droit on the front.