8 posts tagged “james bond”

This is looking very, very good. Then again, fast editing made the Pierce Brosnan Bonds look good, too. But I think Daniel Craig will pull this off very well.

A YouTube member has been posting some beautiful Maurice Binder title sequences, including those from my favourite movies, Arabesque (mysteriously not released on DVD) and Charade. I love the modernist nature of Binder’s work, and while he is best known for the James Bond gun-barrel sequence, there was a lot more to the man’s designs.
   The following two are mated to Henry Mancini scores for Stanley Donen films.

   Another favourite (again with Mancini, and Donen producing and directing) is this opening from the Audrey Hepburn–Albert Finney film Two for the Road:    A few more to round off this post. We have The Grass Is Greener, which shows that Binder could do a very cute sequence with babies. The second is Raquel Welch packing a parachute in Fathom. Ken Hughes’ Billion Dollar Brain is unusual and less pleasant, but it fits with the tone of the last Harry Palmer film. But even here, Binder’s sense of modernist typography continues.    His style continued into the 1970s and remained, in my view, current for that decade. The last for this post is from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, and is closer to what some associate with Binder (girls and Helvetica). The Marvin Hamlisch song, performed by Carly Simon, is particularly fitting. The titles to Moonraker, which I find to be very 1970s and with a John Barry-composed song, are not yet on YouTube.
   In all cases, there is a sense of timelessness, which shows just how suited the principles of modernism were to title design. These ideas are still often observed by some of the most famous designers out there, such as Wayne Fitzgerald.

Actress Lois Maxwell, who played Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond films from Dr No to A View to a Kill, has passed away in Fremantle, Western Australia, aged 80. She had moved to Australia to be closer to her son after being diagnosed with cancer, reports the BBC.
   She’ll always be the definitive Moneypenny to me, having grown up through the Roger Moore Bond years.
   What I remember from the Bond histories is that Lois Maxwell was Canadian and lied about her age to get in to the Entertainment Corps of the Canadian Army at 15. She and Roger Moore were classmates at RADA. What did surprise me from the BBC report is that Maxwell also worked as a columnist for the Toronto Sun newspaper.
   She had guest roles in The Saint (playing different characters), The Persuaders, Department S, UFO (where she also played the boss’s secretary) and other actioners in the 1960s and 1970s.
   Here at JY&A we’ll always have a reminder of her as one of the computers is named Moneypenny.
   Farewell, Lois.

My second piece from Lucire licensed to Get Frank, appeared online at the Kiwi men’s site today. For those who want to know what it was like to drive a Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet, the review is up now.
   The guys from Get Frank started with a piece on the Aston Martin V8 Vantage. I’m still really proud of that one, as it’s a Goldfinger spoof. And when I say Goldfinger, I mean the novel. I decided we’d get it on to Lucire’s site today, though it was originally in print in April 2006. Surf on over to either site and let me know what you think. Ian Fleming might not be amused, but then he might forgive me after spinning in his grave with the release of Die Another Day.
   Mitch at Get Frank and I decided I would write some new pieces rather than re-run from Lucire, so watch this space.

For those of you who support Daniel Craig as James Bond, hop over to www.nationalmovieawards.com where you can participate in a people’s choice voting for your favourite actors, actresses and films.
   I highlight Daniel as he’s up against annoying types like Orlando Bloom (who still sounds like a form of marijuana grown in Florida) and Tobey Maguire (come on, Nicholas Hammond was the better Spider-man). Vote and put in a decent actor!
   The best actor votes are near the end—before that, there are categories for best animation and best comedy. There’s also a draw for tickets to the London ceremony.

I can’t be the only one thinking this with the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Surrey.
   ‘Remember that disagreeable outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in England last summer? I shall instruct them, in very convincing terms, exactly how I arranged that. And my capacity has improved since.’
   Telly Savalas delivered the line in the film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I think SPECTRE is behind it this time, too.

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.

The World Is Not Enough: found in the bargain bin at the Warehouse for $10. I notice the reissued Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton ones are going for nearly double that.
   It’s probably because it’s relatively new in Bond terms that it hasn’t become a “classic” yet (remember how we viewed Moore and Dalton when Brosnan took over?). In it, Brosnan gives his best performance as 007, but really, it’s Sophie Marceau that brings it all home.
   The supporting cast is great: Robbie Coltrane, Bobby Carlyle and Judi Dench. Director Michael Apted describes his choice of Denise Richards (then considered the out-of-place American) as needing an actress who could cope with the athletic demands of the movie.
   As I listened to Apted’s commentary, I realized just how much work went in to this film. No wonder he had a separate audio track to the other crew (Peter Lamont, Vic Armstrong, David Arnold).
   It was a shame to go from the best Brosnan entry to the worst (Die Another Day, from my fellow Wellingtonian Lee Tamahori), but we Bond fans in New Zealand still have to wait for Casino Royale. A British colleague I lunched with yesterday tells me that she had already seen it at Tesco, for £8.
   What does seem out of place in a post-reboot era for James Bond is how the character in the 1999 film is so established as the world’s greatest secret agent. Those of us with clear memories of Daniel Craig as the new boy last year, playing a fallible 007, may find the earlier film almost odd, with Brosnan’s Bond a nearly too-confident agent.