GoldBlendEye: A review of Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself !

Like most people, I was expecting this Wednesday to be just another run-of-the-mill, bog standard Wednesday: get up, go to work, get cross about Brexit, come home, get cross about Brexit again, go to bed. But, as it turned out, this Wednesday was no run-of-the-mill, bog standard Wednesday at all. This Wednesday was Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! Wednesday, a Wednesday so packed with incident that I only had time to get cross about Brexit once.

Now you might think that a mildly amusing Instagram video by a famous actor that went viral for a few hours wouldn't be worth lavishing 1,600 words on two days later, but that, my friend, is where you are wrong. I have spent the last 48 hours rewatching Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! because it is a work that demands that level of commitment and analysis. It certainly didn't take me this long to write an excessively wordy and pointless blog post about Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! because I thought of the idea about a day and a half later than I should have done, so you can forget that crazy notion right now.

* THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PIERCE BROSNAN'S
I ASKED FOR A COFFEE AND I GOT MYSELF ! *

*ALTHOUGH IT ALSO CONTAINS THE VIDEO IN FULL, SO IT'S PROBABLY NBD *

The specific time is a bit of a blur, but at some point on Wednesday 27th February 2019, former James Bond actor and star of some other films Pierce Brosnan dropped a video on his Instagram feed without any warning whatsoever. Like a surprise Beyoncé album or a trailer for another fucking Cloverfield film, the video just appeared from thin air. For those of you who are tragically unfamiliar with it, here is Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! in full:

View this post on Instagram

Good morning one and all ...❤️😎yep! I asked for a coffee and I got myself ! thank you @Jetex Dubai ... camera work and laugh by the beautiful @jamiejchung ❤️

A post shared by Pierce Brosnan (@piercebrosnanofficial) on Feb 27, 2019 at 4:57am PST

I mean, wow. I'll just let that sink in. Maybe rewatch it a few dozen times to really absorb the wonder.

Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! was shot by actress Jamie Chung, who, like me, you may not remember from Grown Ups, The Hangover Part II or Sucker Punch. Chung is currently filming The Misfits, directed by Renny Harlin and starring - yep - Pierce Brosnan. Perhaps you're beginning to see how the intricate workings of the universe, like a cosmic collection of cogs, levers and other doohickeys, have manoeuvred with a divine grace to bring the right people together at the right time to create genuine magic.

Jamie Chung, yesterday. Possibly Wednesday

Shot in a single, fluid take at the luxurious Jetex Private VIP Terminal at the Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! is eight seconds of glorious, Bronhommy goodness that this world simply doesn't deserve. And yet, despite all the odds, it exists, like one of those animals that's so amazing it almost proves the existence of God. A butterfly or some shit, I don't know.

Chung opens her masterpiece in unforgettable style: there, in full frame, is Pierce Brosnan's face staring into camera, his head nonchalantly propped up by the index finger of his left hand (the other fingers remain casually relaxed, but clearly ready to provide backup should the index finger require it). His shirt is unbuttoned and his tie is loose, but no suavity is lost. The hair is, as ever, impeccable, and the hint of a smile can be seen forming at the corners of Brosnan's beautiful mouth. And yet something's not quite right: the first sign that there's more to Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! than meets the eye.

FAO @OnePerfectShot

For it isn't Brosnan we're looking at here, but a facsimile: a monochromatic rendering, which appears to be floating on the surface of a cup. And not just any old cup - a cup with a silver rim and handle (plated or solid? My heart yearns to know), balanced delicately on a saucer of indeterminate material. It could also be silver or it may be glass, but the bubble effect on its surface reminds one of the tears of an angel, delicately shed around the face of Pierce Brosnan.

With no warning, a hand wielding a teaspoon (silver, naturally) enters frame and the unthinkable happens - Pierce Brosnan's face is rent asunder, shattered by the deliberate penetration of the image by an unseen assailant's ludicrously expensive teaspoon. And yet that isn't even the most dramatic thing to happen at this early point in Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself !. As the Brosnan visage is irreparably and literally defaced, a female voice (we later discover it's that of Jamie Chung herself) utters a single, spine-tingling word:

"BOND".

Stirred AND shaken, right guys? Guys

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Are we watching an early scene from the new 007 film? Is Brosnan somehow back in the tux after a 17-year hiatus? Or is he, in a devilish twist of casting, the villain? It is all, as yet, a mystery, although Bond fans around the world have by now accepted that Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! must be canon.

Pierced Brosnan

Not content with opening a gaping wound in the image of Pierce Brosnan's face that takes that hinted-at smile and carves it into a Joker-like grin, the hand continues its wanton destruction with a delicate but merciless stirring motion. Brosnan's face swirls into oblivion and the camera slowly pulls out, revealing a stunning truth: all this time we've been looking at a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee with Pierce Brosnan's face on it. Gradually we get a tantalising glimpse of the party responsible for the caffeine-based carnage: a man (presumably) in a smart blue suit, the warmth of which contrasts with the clinical whiteness of the surroundings. Whoever it is, they had better have a damn good reason for smooshing Pierce Brosnan's chops into a creamy froth.

Running out of joke captions now

And then, the kick in the guts none of us could have prepared for. A rug-pull of such intensity that it makes Iron Man Three's Mandarin twist look like Spectre's reveal that Christoph Waltz is actually Blofeld. Everything we thought we knew about Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! has been turned upside down and inside out, or at least it would have been if he hadn't given away the plot in the text of his Instagram post.

For the diabolical mastermind behind the opening scene of facial devastation is none other than Pierce Brosnan himself, smiling directly into camera as if he's actually enjoying the damage he's inflicting on his own mug. What are we to make of this Brosnan-on-Brosnan butchery? What parallel cinematic universe has opened up before us? As Brosnan delivers the subtlest of pouts (a clear nod to Daniel Craig's signature Bond look) and a brief but unmistakable eyebrow raise (ditto Roger Moore), the answer - one possible answer, at least - comes from Chung again, with the words we'd already begun to form in our minds but never really expected. With a whisper of love, a whisper of hate, she lets the name slip out from between her lips like cigarette smoke escaping from a femme fatale's mouth in a 1940s film noir...

"James Bond".

Yeah, nothing, sorry. Think I peaked with "Stirred AND shaken"

This is almost more than I could take. I don't know where I am any more or what my name is, let alone who the figure before me, rendered in an otherworldly square of pixels from across the globe, can be. And yet that name is unmistakable. It's James Bond. Hold me.

But that's not all. Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself !'s final, unexpected act piles another layer of possible meaning onto the metatextual lasagne that has already filled me up and given me Brosnan-flavoured gas. James Bond, for it is now definitively he, appears to break character, his face creasing into a laugh that makes a mockery of everything we've seen, as if it was merely a gag; a throwaway moment of mischief tossed off to fill time while waiting for a luxury jet. Chung, too, cackles maniacally from behind camera, as if the two of them have been in on this baffling piece of performance art all along. And who knows, perhaps they have?

Is this the last one? Oh thank fuck for that

And then, perhaps reflecting the inevitable circularity of all things, Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! begins again, the face rebuilt, ready for another massacre at the hands of its own, er, hand. How Pierce Brosnan's face got onto his own cup of coffee is never explained: was it painstakingly created by the world's greatest barista? If so, did Brosnan request it himself? Or did the image, as was suggested to me by Empire magazine's Helen O'Hara (a woman whose steadfast anti-Bond stance was demolished in the eight seconds it took her to watch the video), appear there organically, like the face of Jesus in a tortilla? Quite rightly, Chung has remained silent on the subject. The mystery must remain intact, unlike the coffee-froth Brosnan we were introduced to so long ago.

More than that I cannot add. Pierce Brosnan's I Asked For A Coffee And I Got Myself ! is open to so many interpretations that there simply isn't room on the internet for them. Whether it's a splintering of the James Bond franchise, a sophisticated experiment in social media or simply a man stirring a cup of coffee, I doubt we shall get to the bottom of the enigma in our lifetimes. Hopefully these words I have recorded may provide some context for future generations studying the 21st century's most formidable achievements. If that's you, then I hope you find the truth. You deserve it. PS Sorry about Brexit.

James Bond will return, maybe, who knows, whatever

The future of the James Bond films hangs in the balance. Sony's distribution deal has ended, so MGM and EoN are currently jiggling Bond in front of a selection of suitors, all of whom are desperate for the rights while simultaneously nervous that Daniel Craig might not stay on board to guarantee boffo box office for the next film. It's a delicate situation, and one which could affect the very DNA of the franchise for the foreseeable future. And I, a lifelong Bond fan, couldn't give a hoot.

This is a problem. Mainly for me, to be fair, unless Barbara Broccoli is overly concerned about my devotion to her baby, in which case it's her problem too. But it's emblematic of how I've been feeling about the Bond films since Spectre dribbled onto screens nearly eighteen months ago (in that time I have rewatched maybe three Bond films, which is a dangerously low level of Bondery in my house), and I need to address it in the form of a rambling blog post, if only for my own mental wellbeing.

It seems inevitable that Babs will hand distribution rights for Bond 25 back to Sony, if only because she and Michael G Wilson seem to fear change right now (although Sony's pitch, apparently held on a recreated set from Dr. No, would have sold them to me in the time it takes Sean Connery to order a black man to fetch his shoes). The sooner that happens, the more likely Craig is to get back in the tux, and Christoph Waltz and Léa Seydoux can clear their schedules for Spectre II: Blofeld Boogaloo. Well, sorry if my enthusiasm isn't so much brimming over as struggling to fill a martini glass.

Don't get me wrong, I love Daniel Craig. He's made two Bond films I absolutely adore and one that I - and about three other people - like very much. And he's easily the best thing in Spectre, despite the fact that he still can't fit into his bloody suits. But his excitement levels for another outing seem about as high as mine are right now - obviously I can't read his mind, but my biggest fear for a fifth Craig film is that he snoozes through it like Connery did in the autumn of his Bond years. Compare his performances in Casino Royale and Spectre: the former boasts a wired, barely concealed hunger to make the role his own (partly fuelled by the epically stupid press campaign against him), while the latter has him mumbling monosyllabic retorts and reacting to cinema's biggest explosion as if a cat had broken wind in the distance.

Then there's the Purvis & Wade factor. I firmly believe the writers' contribution to the last six Bond films has been mostly brilliant - even Die Another Day's kitesurfing scene probably looked good on paper - but when they were revealed as the architects of Bond 25 my heart sank. More of the same looms large, and an entire generation of daring, brilliant writers has grown up while they've been at the helm. Casino Royale was a tremendous surprise - as was Skyfall, to some extent - but it feels like Bond needs to regenerate again to stay relevant.

I despise articles called things like "Here's What We Think Should Happen In The Next Bond Film" with an unquenchable passion, but Here's What I Think Should Happen In The Next Bond Film: Play around. Fuck about. Mix it up. Do a period Bond film set in the 1950s at the height of the Cold War, like when Michael Fassbender skulked around Argentina in X-Men: First Class, only for fuck's sake don't let Matthew Vaughn direct it. Do an Old Bond story, with Timothy Dalton (as we all know, the best James Bond) as a 70-year-old 007 who might just be losing the edge he's maintained for years because he doesn't know how not to (watch 2015's criminally underrated Mr. Holmes to see how to do something new and self-reflexive with a pop culture legend). Do an anthology film of three faithful adaptations of Fleming's short stories in tonally diverse styles. Just do something unexpected, for fuck's sake (but not so weird that I don't like it, that would be terrible. Don't forget this is all about me).

I don't know, maybe Purvis and Wade are currently beavering away at exactly one of these things, but I doubt it, because despite the evidence of successful franchises splintering off in unexpected directions (the MCU, Star Wars) it feels like Bond would never dare. I'm not saying the series has to become an entirely different beast forever - God knows its familiarity is the comfiest of comfort blankets at times - but there are 24 near-identical films that everyone can watch at the drop of a steel-rimmed bowler hat if they want to; would a couple of experiments be that bad for the series?

As a tediously vocal proponent of Serious Bond (Licence To Kill is still the best, don't fucking @ me) I'm going to sound like a massive hypocrite now, but you know what I also really want from the next Bond film? A bloody good laugh. An air-punching, howlingly brilliant stunt that's almost - but not quite - too outrageous for Bond. The other evening I drank a bit too much gin and began tearily reminiscing over Brosnan-era daftness like the time he rode a motorbike off a cliff and freefell into a falling plane. I'll never forget my reaction to that the first time I watched GoldenEye: my heart leapt out of my chest and I had to look around to confirm that everyone else in the cinema had seen what I'd just seen. I even miss things as potentially terrible as a smash cut to Brosnan in a Hawaiian shirt strolling through some Spanish backwater while David Arnold tosses off an almost culturally insulting salsa riff and a caption says "Havana, Cuba", because Brosnan looks amazing in a Hawaiian shirt and that salsa riff is KICKING and it's all just so wonderfully silly. I miss silly Bond. I think the Fast & Furious movies might have stolen him.

People who know me as The Boring Bond Guy are always asking me who I think should replace Daniel Craig, but what they don't understand is that I know far more about people who have already been Bond than I do about people who haven't but might. Glancing at random articles speculating on the next 007 fills me with the fear because I haven't even heard of half the names, and if I have I wouldn't know some of them if I fell over them in the street. Jack Huston? No idea. James Norton? Isn't he a TV chef? And you can fuck right off with your Toms Hardy and Hiddleston: the last thing a new Bond needs is baggage. If cornered, I will vigorously fly the flag for Dan Stevens, and anyone who disagrees needs to watch The Guest on a weekly basis like I do. He can do lean and mean, he doesn't take himself too seriously and anyone who doesn't have special thoughts about him is emotionally dead.

So that's what's going on with me right now. I'm a bit sad about Bond and I don't know if it's because the last one was upsettingly bad, or if I'm still recovering from two years of self-imposed watching, thinking and writing about Bond for no other reason than to see if I could, or if I'm just getting old and grumpy. But spunking all this self-indulgent bollocks onto the internet might help, although not as much as if Barbara Broccoli reads my spunk and fertilises her Bond egg with it and we make the perfect Bond baby together. Though frankly that's unlikely, not to mention worryingly inappropriately phrased. Anyway, my apologies if you've got this far expecting there to be some informed critical thinking, or at least the merest hint of a point, because there are none of those things to be found here. Just a picture of Roger Moore having his nose adjusted to remind us how much worse it could be.

I.T., aka Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore

It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to announce that Pierce Brosnan's remarkable run of incomprehensibly bad films continues with alarming implacability. This week sees the unwelcome incursion into selected cinemas (fingers crossed yours isn't one of them) and VOD platforms of cyberturkey I.T., or - if we are to follow the widely accepted convention of referring to films by their on-screen title cards - Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore.

Directed, in a way, by A Good Day To Die Hard's John Moore, Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore is a '90s home invasion thriller with a 21st century upgrade, which is that the bad guy is one of those new-fangled Computer Hackers. We know this because, in one of cinema's most nuanced depictions of Computer Hackers, he lives in a dimly-lit tech dungeon with an enormous bank of monitors and spends his time listening to deafening EDM while green text is projected onto his naked torso as he ogles pictures of sexy waitresses which he took on his technologically advanced mobile phone which - wait for it - is also a camera.

But more about him later. Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore's notional hero, Mike Regan (a peculiarly-accented Brosnan, although there appears to be no other type of Brosnan these days), is a self-made aviation tycoon about to release an app allowing the super-rich to hire private jets in much the same way that lower lifeforms use Uber. None of this is remotely relevant; all that matters is that Regan is rich enough to own a house kitted out with top-of-the-range smart technology although he himself is a complete luddite, as is explained in an early scene which sees him outwitted by his own coffee machine.

Even the mere proximity of data cables gives Bronhom the heebie-jeebies

When the launch of Regan's app is beset by a technical glitch, temp I.T. guy and closet EDM-loving, tech-dungeon-dwelling psychopath Ed Porter (James Frecheville, unrecognisable from 2010's Animal Kingdom, which is probably in his best interests) steps in to fix things. By way of thanks Regan immediately gives Porter a permanent job and, naturally, invites him to his home to fix his wifi despite a) having only just met him and b) describing himself as a man who values his privacy above all else. From there it is but a few short and inanely written steps to Porter overstepping the boundaries of polite social interaction and targeting Regan and his family for a prolonged campaign of aggravation via the aforementioned smarthouse system.

Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore initially balances out its improbable character behaviour, gaping plot holes and unlikely story developments with a series of unintentionally hilarious scenes in which Frecheville seems unsure whether his one-dimensional maniac is a cool, calculated home invader like Michael Keaton in Pacific Heights, or a scenery-chewing loon like Cape Fear's Max Cady. John Moore doesn't appear to know either, so we get a sequence for the ages in which Porter - having been booted out of a Regan family party - conveys his rage in the time-honoured fashion of driving home while screaming, heavily exhaling and angrily miming to 1982 new wave non-chart-topper Words by Missing Persons. Later on Moore will display further depths to Porter's madness by showing him lifting weights in his tech dungeon in between abstract shots of a rotating pill and a drop of blood trickling past an Instagram logo on a smartphone. One can only hope there is still a chance for the Academy to change their mind about this year's Best Picture one more time.

Makes u think

What drags Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore down from mildly entertaining two-star trash to offensive one-star bullshit is its explanation for Porter's actions, which I am about to wilfully spoil because I'm hoping that by now I've dissuaded you from watching the film. Did Regan do some terrible wrong to Porter or his family, for which vengeance must be sought? Nope. Is there a sly commentary on the politics of wealth, who's really in control or the inherent dangers of technology? Nah. Porter's problem, according to Michael Nyqvist's character (a ludicrous combination of a tech-savvy Leon from Leon and Psycho's exposition-dealing psychiatrist), is that he has "mental health issues" and is "a bad man". That's literally it. So having squeezed every last drop out of the already bone-dry cliché of socially awkward IT guys, Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore puts the boot right in by asserting that being the reckless millionaire CEO of an environmentally catastrophic multinational company qualifies you as A Good Guy, while being mentally ill means you are A Bad Man. Quick reminder: it is 2017.

All of which means it doesn't matter a jot whether anyone in Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore is any good (clue: Brosnan's angry face - with which I am painfully familiar - gets an extended workout here, with predictable results) or whether the script is in any way laudable (clue: Regan's wife, played by Anna Friel, chastises their daughter for consorting with a man eleven years her senior; a bizarre stance given that Friel is 23 years younger than Brosnan). All that matters is that the film is ignored by audiences and forgotten by the world as swiftly as possible. Let's just all agree never to mention the name Colon Backslash Backslash i Dot t Dot Greater Than Underscore ever again.

David Arnold: The Qs and the As

Unless you're blind or have just been ignoring me (understandably), you'll have seen me wanging on about doing a Q&A with five-time James Bond film score composer David Arnold at London's Prince Charles cinema last week. The evening came and went without any major disasters (although I wore a waistcoat in an attempt to smarten myself up and promptly spilled olive oil down it just before the interview, and that shit does not budge) and Mr Arnold was in fine fettle, spilling a small amount of beans regarding his work on Casino Royale - a screening of which followed the Q&A - and other films.

If you weren't among the many millions of people who crowded into the 285-seat auditorium that evening, I've handily reproduced most of what Mr Arnold had to say below; I had to edit out all the bits where he went on at length about how much he loves The Incredible Suit because it got embarrassing.

Your score for Casino Royale is a lot more organic and less electronic than previous Bond scores… That's correct. So how did that decision come about? Was that you, or the producers or the director? It was me. I think with Die Another Day, someone said that some of the music was a bit over the top, and I was thinking, 'would that be for the scene where the guy who was a DNA-changed villain who became Korean – no, he became western, he was Korean – tried to kill James Bond with a space laser operated by a remote controlled arm-device while they were escaping from a melting ice palace?' That film had levels of extremity of all sorts of things in it, and the music has to react to what we're seeing. Really can't see why people found this silly When I read the Casino Royale script we hadn't cast Daniel, so it was really interesting reading the script and thinking 'I've got no idea who James Bond is going to be'. With Pierce, you kind of knew the inflections, you knew his mannerisms and the style and you could kind of picture the way it would be. I was on set while they were filming Casino Royale, and [my music] was largely informed by the way Daniel moved. He's a very physical, alpha male James Bond, not as eloquent and educated – you know, the idea of knowing which wine would go with what sort of fish – slightly less of that, more that you believe that if he hit you it would really hurt. And he wasn't James Bond yet: obviously he had the name but he hadn't become the character, so it was really doing away with the comic aspect of it and trying to make it a bit more muscular, as he was, and to make it a little more aggressive, but organic, because the refinements didn't come till later in the film. So you couldn't write the same kind of music for Daniel as you did for Pierce? Well you sort of can in a way because he's still James Bond. This is part of the problem with coming back to the series again and again, it's the same character in very similar situations: there's conflict that he has to resolve, you know there are going to be chases, you know there are going to be fights, you know there's going to be action and even though you have to believe he's in jeopardy, you know that at the end of the film he's not gonna die. So it's a matter of trying to take what people know and expect of the character, moving it on a little bit and introducing other aspects of it, as the films do. The Bond theme is hinted at throughout Casino Royale but doesn't appear in full until the end credits. Was it hard to resist sticking the Bond theme in? I've always said that a James Bond film without the James Bond theme is just an action movie; there's something you're missing at the heart of the character. With Casino Royale, Sony were quite worried about not having the Bond theme in the score because they were worried it'd be like watching Star Wars without the theme: there's an expectation that you want to hear it. But my argument was that he wasn't James Bond yet, so if you play any of that music when he's doing any of the things he's doing – you know, he makes a lot of mistakes in this film – then he becomes the Bond that we know, but he hasn't done that yet so you can't get ahead of the audience. So there were a few sequences in Casino Royale that tried to create a balance we thought would work: every time he acquires something of the Bond canon that we knew and recognised, I put in a hint of the Bond theme to start sowing the seeds of it as we go through. So when he wins the Aston Martin DB5 in the game of cards you hear it for the first time; when he tries on the tuxedo in the hotel room and we see him adjusting himself in the mirror, that's the second time, and so on until you get the iconic phrase right at the end of the movie. By that time you're so ready to hear it at full pelt, that's when we cut to black and shabam, it seems incredibly exciting. In terms of the theme songs, how much say would you or any composer have in the choice of song or singer? Ideally the composer of the film would be involved in the composition of the song, because I think the DNA of the score should be in the song and vice versa. That's not always possible though; there might be an artist that says "I've always wanted to do this, I've written a song and this is what it's going to be," and that happens more often than not. But they let me have a crack at a couple of them. The decision about who does the song is made between the producers, the director and the studio but the composer does get involved. It's a bit like casting: I think you should cast the singer as you would cast the character, so it always felt like if we had people who could almost be in the movie it would work. In trying to find someone for Daniel's James Bond, I was thinking about male singers: was there a contemporary Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant? Singers with bollocks really, people like Paul Rogers, who sound the way that Daniel was, that James Bond is in Casino Royale. Chris Cornell has a very masculine voice but also an incredible gift for melody and words, so it was a really easy choice to make. Also writing the song with him was really easy and quick; we sort of wrote half a song each. We met up and talked about it and I'd got some ideas and he'd got some ideas so we sketched our ideas out, and two or three weeks later we played each other our ideas and kind of went from one to the other. It sort of became the song without having to do much else. It's quite odd; we'd both written one half of the same song. Would you consider doing another Shaken And Stirred album? Because there are plenty more Bond songs that could be covered there. Well there was a bunch of songs that I ended up not doing: I did Goldfinger with Skunk Anansie and I started talking to Debbie Harry about doing it as well, and I did You Only Live Twice with Björk but didn't use it because she wasn't happy with it, she didn’t think it was better than the original. There are a whole bunch more songs - I mean there's been another six since that album came out - but I think that's a record perhaps someone else should make, because I feel like I've done it. You must have written a load of potential themes that never saw the light of day – you started a song called I Will Return for Die Another Day… Sometimes you don't always know if you're going to get the gig actually writing the song, but I always start off by writing a song, because I like to have some sort of thematic material to base the score on. Sometimes if another artist is writing the song, like in Die Another Day, I didn't hear it until I'd almost finished writing the score, so you've really got no way of incorporating it. I thought what would be interesting is that at the end of every James Bond film it says "James Bond Will Return", so I thought, well, how about calling the song I Will Return, basically saying that exact same thing. How far did that song get? It got a verse and a chorus written. The melody of it is in the [Die Another Day] score, the verse melody, and the bridge melody is in [a cue called] Peaceful Fountains Of Desire. [Audience question] Do you think your music has influenced current action scores like John Barry's music influenced you? Well this isn't false modesty, but I think whenever music appears in a James Bond film it ends up appearing in other films because they're so popular and the music is still a big part of it. The thing I hear more often than not is the electronic aspect alongside orchestral stuff. What's interesting with the sound of John's scores is because they were recorded in smaller spaces, and they were generally just stereo, not surround, there's much less competition for earspace in those earlier films. If I go to a dubbing theatre where Bond films are dubbed now, there are 15 or 16 ProTools stations: that one's doing dialogue A, that's doing effects 1, effects 2 – there might be hundreds and hundreds of tracks. It's incredibly easy to make a film loud, and there is an awful lot of loud in a Bond movie, whether it's cars or gunshots or punches or helicopters or building sites. So the competition for actual aural space is quite high, and John's exist in a place where there wasn't as much sound and they just allowed the music to play more out front. The tendency to do that has changed now, and music is sometimes required to perhaps energise the scene more than it was in the older films. I've listened to some contemporary scores and obviously you can hear bits of John's work and now bits of mine, but I'm really interested to see what Tom [Newman]'s gonna do with Spectre. I'm fascinated with that, as I am with the film. I've always been a fan of them and it's really nice now to be able to sit back and watch one and not worry about, you know, 'why did I do that?' [Audience question] To what extent are you constrained by the 1960s style of the Bond theme? Well the Bond theme, I think, has endured dozens of interpretations: Marvin Hamlisch's disco version, Bill Conti's and Michael Kamen's, Éric Serra did it just on timps, so it's obviously a very sturdy piece of music. There's something about that recording that John Barry did with quite a small orchestra which is so swamped with atmosphere, there's something about the energy of it and the essential ferocity of it which is impossible to match. It would be weird to think you were constrained by it, I've never wanted it to sound like it was from the sixties. I don't think my scores sound like John's scores; I mean obviously there are stylistic nods, combinations of instruments that evoke the character. It's what John created, it's the blueprint of it. It was the same when I did Shaft: Isaac Hayes created a blueprint for that character and I didn't want to ignore it, but you just sort of move it on a little bit, so I was really happy to take advantage of the brilliance of that and add to it and move along. You don't want to feel like you're treading water stylistically, so sometimes that means people really don't like it and some people really do like it, but… just keep moving. Éric Serra's score for GoldenEye is, let’s say, quite unusual – do you ever watch the film and wish you'd done it? I wish I'd done all of them to be honest! But not that one in particular, no. I thought that was the boldest move that's ever been made in a Bond movie and I don't think you can criticise him for that. You can not like it, that's fine; I do like it, I think some of that stuff was electrifying, and I know the reaction to it was mixed. Being selfish I was quite pleased, because if he'd have carried on I wouldn't have got a look in! It's really not that bad. [Audience question] Did you change the music for the increased violence of the newer Bonds? The thing with Bonds is that you never see blood in bullet holes or anything, so even though it's violent you won't see bullets going in or out or blood splattering from people due to the violence because they want to keep it a 12 certificate. So perception of what's violent and what's shown are actually slightly different things. I think the job of a film score is to kind of hold your hand and take you through the experience and hopefully explain and help to guide the film as we would like you to perceive it. The sequence where Le Chiffre has his knotted rope and, er, works James Bond's - you know - that's very violent, but a lot of that was cut, and in fact the sound of contact, the 'thwack', was turned down by about half because when we screened it for the first time it was excruciating. In fact the censors wouldn't let us have it, they said we had to turn that down because it sounds horrific. There's no score in that sequence, so the sound of James Bond's bollocks being battered was turned down because we didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities in that respect. OK, I've got a round of quick-fire questions to finish with. They're based largely on your own tweets, so I'll warn you now, you've only got yourself to blame. Is it based on my Twitter feed or is this when you asked people to send questions in on Twitter? Because someone said "What’s the circumference of a cat?", but they spelled "the" wrong so I'm not going to answer that. [Yep] No, I've had to cut all those for time. So here we go: an OBE or a lifetime's supply of Skips? [Long, thoughtful pause] Skips. Drums or a drum machine? Drums. Benedict Cumberbatch or Martin Freeman? That's cruel. I think Martin's the heart and Benedict's the brains of that combination, I think without either of them that show wouldn't work. Martin is the way into Sherlock and I think the audience wouldn't find their way in without him; I think he brings so much humanity to that, it's absolutely extraordinary. The pair of them are rock stars now, it's amazing. So I plead the fifth: both of them. They're both brilliant. CD or vinyl? Vinyl. Shaken or stirred? [Thoughtfully] Stirred. Apparently you’re not supposed to shake it. No, you're not, that would be terrible. Biscuits with chocolate content or biscuits encased in chocolate? Encased. There’s a whole VAT issue around that that's very frustrating. Jaffa cakes: cakes or biscuits? Oh, they're cakes. The clue's in the title. That's that settled then Éric Serra or Thomas Newman? Oh, that's rotten! That's professionally rotten. I love the pair of them. The slide whistle in The Man With The Golden Gun: genius or madness? Madness! Along with the double-taking pigeon. And finally: are you doing Independence Day 2? I haven't been asked, is the honest answer. But would I if they asked me? I'd really like to see the script, firstly. Would you not just say yes, if they phoned you up and said there's no script but will you do it? [Pause] Yeah. But they would have to phone me up and ask me, and as yet that hasn't happened. Well I'll tell them you'll do it. David Arnold, thank you very much!

Thanks to Oliver Holden-Rea for the top photo.

Who's your favourite James Bond? SHUT UP AND I'LL TELL YOU

You know how it is: you're at a dinner party, having a perfectly good time, and conversation suddenly turns to the eternal, dreaded question, usually posed by the most insufferable twit in the room: "Go on then - who's YOUR favourite James Bond?" You panic. You don't know. You've never given it that much thought, because really, does it matter? But it does matter. The rest of the evening could hinge on this one answer.

Fortunately The Incredible Suit, in conjunction with market research firm YouGov*, is here to help. YouGov recently launched "segmentation and media planning tool" YouGov Profiles, an app designed to reveal the "quintessential" (as opposed to "typical") fan or customer of almost any brand, person or thing. Naturally my first reaction was to investigate fans of The Incredible Suit, but for some reason there aren't any. My second reaction, therefore, was to have a look at the quintessential profiles of fans of all the actors to play James Bond. Yeah, it was kind of a slow day.

So in order to find out who YOUR favourite James Bond is, simply identify yourself from the following six profiles, and then you'll be armed with all the knowledge you need to survive the next excruciatingly awful dinner party. And remember: all of the following data - including the remarkable illustrations - are the work of YouGov. I am completely blameless.

Note: George Lazenby, who played Bond just once, is apparently so unpopular that he doesn't feature in YouGov's database. I was therefore forced to replace him with the closest search result, who was BBC News presenter George Alagiah. I don't think it makes much difference to the outcome.

THE SEAN CONNERY FAN

Age: 40-59
Favourite dishes: Bread pudding, deep fried mushrooms, Bombay potatoes
Customer of: Macleans toothpaste, Olay, Black & Decker
Favourite musical artists: Rod Stewart, U2, Phil Collins
Top Twitter follow: @denise_vanouten
Favourite magazine: PC Pro

See the full Sean Connery fan profile

THE GEORGE ALAGIAH FAN

Age: 60+
Favourite dish: Apricot strudel
Enjoys: Going to museums and galleries
Customer of: BBC News, BBC Two, BBC Four
Favourite celebrities: Huw Edwards, Fiona Bruce, Dermot Murnaghan
Top website visited: ford.co.uk

See the full George Alagiah fan profile

THE ROGER MOORE FAN

Age: 60+
Most likely to say: "UKIP are just saying what ordinary British people are thinking"
Customer of: Wall's sausages, Ginsters, Matteson's
Favourite musical artists: Bing Crosby, Liza Minelli, Bette Midler
Top Facebook page: Jeremy Clarkson Is Not A Racist
Favourite newspaper: Daily Mail

See the full Roger Moore fan profile

THE TIMOTHY DALTON FAN

Age: 25-39
Favourite dishes: Blueberry pie, lemon pie, Welsh potato cakes
Describes themselves as: Knowledgeable, but occasionally miserable
Customer of: I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Flora ProActiv
Favourite TV shows: Wonder Woman, Seaside Rescue, Greatest Cities Of The World With Griff Rhys Jones
Top websites visited include: hoseasons.co.uk

See the full Timothy Dalton fan profile

THE PIERCE BROSNAN FAN

Age: 40-59
Politics: Slightly left of centre
Customer of: Wall's ice cream, Ben & Jerry's, Fabulous Bakin' Boys
Favourite movies: Where Eagles Dare, Cleopatra, Shark Tale
Top Twitter follows include: @rupertmurdoch, @dropbox
Favourite magazine: Take A Break

See the full Pierce Brosnan fan profile

THE DANIEL CRAIG FAN

Age: 40-59
Hobbies and activities: Painting, travelling, going on day trips
Most likely to say: "Fresh food is better than frozen"
Favourite movies: Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall, Cowboys & Aliens
Favourite TV shows: Trumpton, Rainbow
Top Facebook pages: Daniel Craig, James Bond 007, James Bond

See the full Daniel Craig fan profile

Didn't find yourself among those six profiles? Then you're clearly not a James Bond fan at all, get the fuck out of my dinner party this instant.

Other observations: 

• Sean Connery fans watch TV for over fifty hours a week.
• George Alagiah fans are the most current affairs-minded of all Bond fans: their top five TV shows watched recently are all BBC News programmes.
• Roger Moore fans are all, essentially, Alan Partridge.
• Timothy Dalton fans are the most right-wing of all Bond fans.
• Pierce Brosnan fans need to lay off the snacks.
• Daniel Craig fans are the wealthiest, with between £125 and £499 disposable income per month compared to all other Bond fans' measly £125 or less.

* YouGov have absolutely no idea that I'm abusing their precious data like this and would staunchly refute the phrase "in conjuction with" in this context.

If you don't follow Pierce Brosnan on Facebook, this is what you're missing

Follow Pierce Brosnan on Facebook here, you mug.

BlogalongaBond / Die Another Day: Baaad DAD

Nine seconds into Die Another Day, and something's already not right. There's the gunbarrel, there's the music, there's James Bond turning and firing at the screen: all very familiar and reassuring. And then a CG bullet fires out of Bond's gun towards the audience. This has never happened before. It's disconcerting.

Two hours and seven minutes later, it's painfully obvious that this crass, pointless and generally wanky moment is a metaphor for the whole film. Either that, or Q has equipped Bond with a gun that turns into an umbrella.

It's telling that Die Another Day remains the only one of Pierce Brosnan's Bond films not to be turned into a video game. Why bother? The film already is one, only without the fun of being able to control the characters. Imagine if you could: would anybody not have pushed John Cleese's Q in front of the Aston Martin's motion-sensitive machine guns? At one point Bond even plays a video game himself as part of a virtual reality training session which, as Moneypenny later discovers, has a secret level that allows you to simulate intercourse with a colleague. No wonder the world is constantly at threat from terrorists if all MI6 is doing is designing VR porn for sex-starved secretaries.

In the film's defence, it does have a few inspired moments. To have Bond captured and imprisoned for over a year is a phenomenally bold move, and one that promises to show us a hitherto-unseen side to the previously-infallible secret agent. The long hair and magnificent Brozbeard are to be congratulated too; it's great to see Bond properly fucked up for once, even though fourteen months in a North Korean hell-hole don't seem to have had any effect on his physique. Unfortunately Die Another Day chickens out within half an hour, having 007 back in a Brioni suit with immaculate barnet and Philishaven fizzog, keeping calm and carrying on as if he's been nowhere more traumatic than Brighton for the weekend.

After a while you begin to wonder what the point of all the torture and facial hair was, as it's so quickly forgotten. One possible answer comes in the briefest of comments from M, and it's not a pleasant one:

"While you were away, the world changed."

Given that Die Another Day was released in November 2002, and that Bond films are usually set in the present day, that means he went missing in or around September 2001. The implication that he was absent for the attacks on the World Trade Centre may be a tenuous one, but what's the point of M's comment otherwise? Are the scriptwriters asking us to believe that Bond could have prevented the attacks, or apologising for not having 007 go after al-Qaeda because he was "a bit tied up"? We'll never know, because HOMGZ AN INVISIBLE CAR!!!!!1!

Yep, an hour in, and all pretence that this might be a serious Bond film with some grounding in reality is blown to smithereens. The aforementioned VR training sequence and the transparent Aston Martin blast proceedings further into sci-fi than Moonraker, while a nonsensical wander through Q's room full of old Bond props is painfully nudge-nudge-wink-wink wank. Before you know it you're being assaulted by speed-ramped footage to ensure the film is dated before it even comes out; a henchman whose name is Mr Kil only so that Bond can make a crap gag about it; and an embarrassingly OTT villain who speaks only in over-scripted bon mots (mal mots more like) and spends his spare time wearing an android Peter Stringfellow mask.

All of which bollocks leads us to the piss-flavoured icing on the turdcake: the kitesurfing scene. If there was ever any doubt that director Lee Tamahori thought he was making something for Nintendo GameCubes rather than cinemas, then this CG / green-screen travesty is the bitter, unwatchable proof. Not only is it absolutely fucking awful beyond words, but it didn't even need to happen. Bond drives away from the villain's lair (even though he knows his totty is trapped inside), gets involved in the series' worst ever set-piece, then comes straight back to rescue the girl. The scene exists for no other reason than to curl out a quick stunt, and it smells worse than Bond's fourteen-month-old beard. Its only redeeming feature is the absence of The Beach Boys on the soundtrack.

To detail any more of Die Another Day's faults would be too depressing, so I'll turn to the film's most genuinely enjoyable aspect: Pierce Brosnan's DVD commentary. Recorded just before the film was released in cinemas, Brosnan is heard enjoying the film immensely, possibly because he was watching it while sitting on a bean bag stuffed with his salary and a naked Rosamund Pike. He LOLs himself silly at scenes which are, at best, worthy of the faint raising of a mouth corner, and later goes to almost painful lengths to justify the catastrophic CGI. It's well worth a listen (at least until Pike pops up and starts babbling about nothing), but if you can't be arsed, here are some of my favourite moments:

On the pre-title sequence's hovercrafts:
"These things are very hard to pilot. I mean, it's like trying to drive a bar of soap"

On spotting an old friend:
"Heh! Michael Madsen, my neighbour! We live on the same beach"

On Lee Tamahori:
"Once we started shooting, Jesus, he went like the clappers"

On Fleming's choice of moniker for his hero:
"A well-known story: Ian Fleming was writing the story - Dr. No - and was trying to come up with a name for the character"
Dr. No was Fleming's sixth James Bond novel.

On Halle Berry's first scene:
"It's a classic sequence. It's an homage to... (very long pause as Brosnan tries to remember the name of the film to which the classic sequence is an homage) ...the old Bond movies... Ursula Andress..."

On the film's use of CGI:
"There's more CGI than any other [Bond] film. Lee wanted to push the envelope in that area, and quite rightly. The great thing about Bond is that the stunts are in camera. The stuntman is there, performing the stunt. I think you get a lot of that in this movie but you also get the CGI effects"
Is anyone else confused?

On the use of "London Calling" on the soundtrack:
"Great... The Clash. Classic song, classic movie"
Just to clarify, he's still talking about Die Another Day here.

As Bond picks up Rosa Klebb's shoe from From Russia With Love:
"There's Olga Klebb's shoe"

On the kitesurfing scene:
"That works, I think. I believe that"





But P-Brozzle saves his best comment for the end credits. Obviously asked by someone how he thinks James Bond should progress into the new millennium, he demonstrates a colossal lack of foresight with this analysis:

"I think the character should keep going in the same way it's been going for the last twenty years. It would be great to get darker and more to the bone of what this guy is about, but I don't think it would be as successful. But it's really not up to me."

Thank fuck it wasn't.

Peter Lamont's production design

You've got to feel sorry for the guys in the engine room of a bad Bond film, and Peter Lamont is on the receiving end of all my sympathy. His location work is outstanding - Cadiz in Spain, standing in for Havana, is remarkably convincing - but his sets are literal works of art. The sweaty, stifling Cuban cigar factory (shot in exotic Hackney) is a triumph of realism while the villain's mental, Ken Adam-esque ice palace is quite the opposite - appropriately surreal, grotesquely OTT and entirely correct for the insanity of its owner.

And finally: Not everyone hates Die Another Day. In fact, some people quite like it. Some people really like it. And some people have their entire bedroom decorated to look like it.

And before you ask: No. This is not my bedroom.

BlogalongaBond will return with Casino Royale

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here