22 posts tagged “james bond”

At least I no longer have to wait hours, but I do have to wait minutes and several reloads to begin composing on Vox.
   I have never traded DVDs before, but after buying that fancy Casino Royale set from Real Groovy, I didn’t need my old two-CD one any more. I also bought a five-movie James Bond set (left) a while back, which meant I had doubled up on one of my favourite Bond films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I took them in to Real Groovy.
   How it works: one goes to the trades’ counter at the store and hands them over. The store gives you an option of store credit or cash.
   The two DVD sets, which cost me around NZ$60 to buy to begin with, were worth NZ$12 used as store credit; NZ$6 if I wanted the money.
   As I buy from Real Groovy all the time, I opted for the former, to which they issue a credit note, redeemable on a future purchase.
   Sony has still done well out of me. While I only paid NZ$5 for the new Casino Royale boxed set—because of Real Groovy’s loyalty scheme—that’s still NZ$34 overall (NZ$35 purchase price for the first set, NZ$5 for the new one, minus NZ$6 for the trade). The five-movie set was NZ$39—let’s round it up to NZ$40 for easy calculation—which means each DVD was NZ$8. The original On Her Majesty’s Secret Service DVD was c. NZ$25, so that’s NZ$27 out of my pocket for the copy I have today.

   Since I have all the Bonds I want out of the 22 Eon ones made, I am in no hurry to plug the gaps, but it seems these boxed sets are the way to go. I buy them when I see them on special, but I am not sure if I will buy the remaining two (I also have vol. 4), so Moonraker is the next to head to Real Groovy—I forgot to take it today. If it also nets NZ$6, then an NZ$18 credit on the sixth season of Mission: Impossible (below) will make it worth buying here rather than via Amazon.com. I await its arrival—we are somewhat behind the US when it comes to these sets’ release.
  

I managed to get NZ$20 credit thanks to the Real Groovy loyalty card, meaning that I paid a grand total of NZ$10 for these two purchases today:

   I already had the first Casino Royale set, but it lacks a director’s commentary and many of the features one would expect for the NZ$35 I originally paid. I refused to buy the collector’s edition originally because I felt Sony would be getting my money twice. But for NZ$5, why not? Well worth it for all the extra stuff, deleted scenes and fascinating documentaries about the connections Ian Fleming had with the Bahamas (which many Bondphiles would not even know).
   There is even a documentary about the 50-year journey of the novel to this version of the movie, and clips from the first James Bond (with Barry Nelson) and the first time Casino Royale hit the big screen (in 1967, with David Niven—and we do get clips of Barbara Bouchet, Jacqueline Bisset, etc., too).
   Given how basic the Quantum of Solace DVD set is, my bet is that Sony will do this again.
   Secondly, this CD was on special anyway (NZ$5), and it has a few John Barry tracks, plus one Chet Baker one. It’s not the special album that Barry and Baker put together for this film, but considering that was never released in New Zealand, it’s the next best thing. A bit “1990s” in some respects (the Moby track in particular), but it has been ages since I treated myself to some music.

What if James Bond were an American?
   It’s happened before: the first screen Bond, Barry Nelson, was American, in Casino Royale on CBS:

But it nearly happened two more times, with John Gavin being contracted to be the new Bond for Diamonds Are Forever before United Artists got Sean Connery back, and James Brolin was considered for Octopussy before Roger Moore agreed to return.
   Brolin’s screen tests are below, the first with Swedish actress and Bond girl Maud Adams. I wonder how they would have worked in the American accent. Adams was asked to be in Octopussy after the screen tests.

I had no idea that the love theme from The Godfather, ‘Speak Softly Love’, was originally used by the same composer, Nino Rota, for a 1958 film called Fortunella. Apparently, Mr Rota was nominated for an Academy Award for The Godfather and it was withdrawn when it was discovered the theme had already been used. (Strangely, he went on to win one for Part II and that had the same theme, and he did win a BAFTA for the first film.)
   I don’t think it’s uncommon to see composers reuse work but it is a little out of the ordinary. Monty Norman maintained that ‘The James Bond Theme’ was based on work he did for a musical; John Barry, who went on to compose and score most of the Bond films in the 1960s to the 1980s, reused a traditional tune from Zulu in Cry, the Beloved Country, and I understand a rejected theme for The Prince of Tides appeared in Across the Sea of Time. Then there are those confusing things like the Grange Hill theme on Give Us a Clue …
   Here is the Fortunella tune, which was interesting to hear—this would have been the first version some people heard of this theme, and the treatment is very different to that of The Godfather.

This one is more professionally recorded: a nice instrumental cover of John Barry’s ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, another great 007 theme. Great way to waste a few minutes on YouTube.

I can play by ear but nowhere nearly as well as this YouTuber, with John Barry’s ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ on keyboard:

Bear in mind this was recorded at the person’s home, but still, I am impressed.

Sir Roger Moore is interviewed by Wossy—and despite my misgivings about Jonathan Ross, this is a very good interview. Far, far better than what Sir Roger was subjected to about his book, My Word Is My Bond (incidentally, it is excellent), when he visited New Zealand. It was apparent that Ross’s staff actually read the book. In New Zealand, the only evidence was that TV One and TV3 staff had flicked through the pictures and both Close-up and Campbell Live asked Sir Roger about a scene with Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die—which they garnered from a single caption. It was embarrassing.
   Jonathan Ross usually annoys me by going on too much but here he strikes the right balance and allows Sir Roger to tell his very entertaining yarns. Part 1 discusses Sir Roger’s childhood and his MGM days with Lana Turner, and Part 2 takes the story from The Persuaders on.

I don’t recall reading about this in Sir Roger Moore’s autobiography, though I did read a news report on it in 1983:

James Bond’s choice is not an Aston Martin or a Lotus Esprit, but a Toyota Corona.
   The idea was that SPECTRE agents would be bored to death when they were locked inside the interior. And as Japanese cars are generally well made, it would ensure that Mr Bigglesworth, the cat, could not claw his way out through gaps in the panels.

After chatting with Pete about Von Ryan’s Express and the late Adolfo Celi on his blog, I found this photograph:

The library does not give a caption other than ‘Sergio Fantoni, Frank Sinatra and Adolfo Celi, Von Ryan’s Express, 1965’ but an appropriate one might be, from Signor Celi, ‘Hey, Sergio, can you lend me your eye patch for my next film?’
   If he didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have had Emilio Largo in Thunderball:
which in turn means we would not have had Number Two in the Austin Powers films:

At home or in the theatre: what’s the last great movie you watched?

First, I find popcorn ghastly. I have no idea why people consume it in cinemas. Here in New Zealand, Jaffas (the link was incredibly hard to find, incidentally—I never found it in Google but had to investigate who now owned the trade mark, so a lot of work goes into these posts!) are the main thing to have in a cinema, probably stemming from the old days with wooden floors when we used to roll them down the steps and hear them go. I probably only ever wasted one. The tradition stopped when most cinemas introduced carpet—or maybe I grew out of it around that time.
   And they served us Jaffas as part of the charity screening for Quantum of Solace that I went to last Monday, a few days before the New Zealand release, which I covered at the time.