BlogalongaBond / Tomorrow Never Dies: The Pryce Is Wrong

From Russia With Love, The Man With The Golden Gun, Licence To Kill: all difficult second albums for Pierce Brosnan's predecessors, all improvements on their first efforts. As was by now customary, the actor playing James Bond had relaxed into the role, the writers understood his strengths and weaknesses and audiences knew what to expect. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Right?

Well. Let's be positive: Tomorrow Never Dies undeniably delivers some standout moments. The pre-titles "terrorists' supermarket" sequence is thrilling (although nobody seemed to take advantage of the BOGOF offer on Kalashnikovs and Bond totally failed to redeem his clubcard points on the way out), the set-pieces are fantastic, Brosnan is excellent and there are some mighty fine one-liners, not least of which is Moneypenny's award-winning "You always were a cunning linguist, James".

There are also a couple of relatively interesting Bond girls who are, for once, more than just somewhere for 007 to park his cock. Bond's former squeeze Paris Carver (Teri Hatcher) lends his character rare depth, suggesting an interesting history in a few tender and touching scenes. Most of her lines are razor-sharp critiques of Bond's inability to settle down, and are the kind of things GoldenEye's script should have been saying instead of all that floppy-fringed pouting into the sunset. Meanwhile, Michelle Yeoh's Wai Lin is a formidable ally, amusingly aloof and disinterested in our hero until the inevitable final-scene cock-parking. What's more, both actresses are only about ten years younger than Brosnan, which comes as some relief from the usual borderline kiddy-fiddling that goes on in these films.

Sadly, that's about it for the good stuff. Like You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me, Tomorrow Never Dies races along with typical Bondian gusto, skipping over plot holes and underwritten characters so deftly that it's only when you check your pockets at the end that you realise your wallet's been nicked by an inane story, an embarrassingly weak villain and a director with a CV that includes Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Despite director Roger Spottiswoode's previous indiscretions, it's hard to blame him for what makes Tomorrow Never Dies such a below average Bond film. Rushed into production by a recently-sold studio desperate to impress Wall Street with boffo Bond box office, the film started shooting before either the bad guy or one of the Bond girls had been cast and with a script that was changing daily.

The biggest casualty of this chaotic production was that everyone forgot to write a decent villain. Media mogul Elliot Carver looks like an ineffectual economics teacher who's accidentally come to work in his jim-jams and spends the entire film titting about his various HQs bashing away at a magic keyboard that can somehow make sense of the nonsense he's randomly hammering into it. He's so useless at villainy that he requires at least three henchmen (also rubbish) to do his various dirty work, and he's so cripplingly dull that it's actually hard to tell who has the most charisma between the character and his "action" figure.

Fully poseable!*
*Only one pose included: "Lacklustre"

Roger Ebert's mantra "Each film is only as good as its villain," applied so dramatically in Licence To Kill, is tragically forgotten here; even the writers acknowledge how ponderously yawnsome Carver is, having 007 continually treat him like the most boring guest at the party. Audience identification with Bond hits a new high when he almost fails to stay awake through one of Carver's rambling monologues, shooting a nearby flunky just to keep everyone (in the scene and the audience) from nodding off.

What's more, Carver's grand plan to instigate World War III by pitting two super-powers against each other has already failed in at least two previous Bond films, and even in these Leveson Inquiry times the idea that a media magnate would commit mass murder in order to sell a few more papers is just stoopid. For him to then alert the authorities by publishing news of said murders before anyone else knows about it is so incompetent you can almost hear the embarrassed facepalms of seventeen previous Bond villains.

Of course the one mistake everyone makes in relation to Carver is his supposed similarity to a real-life insane media baron, who for the purposes of avoiding a lawsuit I shall call "Rooput Merdock". I've carefully investigated these apparent parallels, and while there is definitely some correlation between Carver and "Merdock", differences begin to emerge upon closer inspection:

ELLIOT CARVER	"ROOPUT MERDOCK"
Is a billionaire international media mogul intent on dominating the world's press both in print and on television	Is a billionaire international media mogul intent on dominating the world's press both in print and on television
Has close ties to British PM, according to head of MI6	Has close ties to British PM, according to everyone
Has an enemy called James	Has a son called James
Was attacked by a scary Chinese lady	Is married to a scary Chinese lady
Owns 24-hour news channel which tragically went off air on its first night	Owns 24-hour news channel which is tragically still on air
Wears pyjamas to work	Wears custard pies to Parliamentary committee hearings
Recalls quotes by William Randolph Hearst	Can't recall anything that happened while in charge of best-selling Sunday newspaper
Disposes of underlings when they've outlived their usefulness	Turns underlings into cyborgs and programmes them to take the fall when they've outlived their usefulness
Engineers war between UK and China in order to sell more newspapers	Bites the heads off live kittens and drinks their blood in order to remain alive
Is a fictional character	Is Satan

I'm glad I've been able to clear that up harmlessly and without any need for litigation. Moving swiftly on...

The title sequence

I know I mentioned Daniel Kleinman's title sequence last month, but get used to it because he made five fantastic ones and they're all getting their moment in the BlogalongaBond sun. This one is like swimming down a fibre optic cable with a bunch of sexy ladies and some guns and possibly some diamonds too although I'm not sure why. I'm probably also one of only four people on Earth who quite like Sheryl Crow's song; it's no 'Surrender' by kd lang, but on the plus side it's no 'All I Wanna Do' either, and for that we must be grateful.

David Arnold's music

'Hamburg Break Out'

Former interviewee and great friend of The Incredible Suit (great friends in the sense that we had an email conversation once, we don't hang out or chat or really know each other at all in fact) David Arnold's first Bond score is an absolute stonker, livening up the occasionally ropey action no end and enhancing the film exactly as a good score should. It's also ridiculously of its time, all techno and drum loops and phat beats or whatever that stuff's called. Not only that but the aforementioned end credits song 'Surrender', which he co-wrote with David McAlmont and Don Black, is the greatest Bond theme that never was.

The handcuffs

Tomorrow Never Dies was stunt legend Vic Armstrong's first Bond film as second unit director, and the stuff he delivers here is phenomenal. The film's set pieces have to be amazing to wipe out the tedium of the plot, and this one in particular does so with cock-waggling bravado. As close as Bond gets to a Jackie Chan film, the inventiveness of having the leads handcuffed sets up some insane action, and Brosnan does well to keep up with Michelle Yeoh's kung fu skillz.

And finally: Tomorrow Never Dies stars a young Julian Rhind-Tutt as a yeoman on the doomed HMS Devonshire. His character's name?

Unless of course wardrobe just forgot to take the actor's scribbled name tag off his costume.

BlogalongaBond will return with The World Is Not Enough

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

Further BlogalongaBondareading here


Thanks to The Shiznit, from whom I stole the subtitle for this post. It's OK, everyone steals their stuff. In fact they actively encourage it.

Random Genius: Daniel Kleinman

In a destined-to-fail attempt to say nice things about all my movie heroes before they die rather than in a half-hearted obituary when their best work is long behind them, I thought it might be time to show some love for Daniel Kleinman, director of music videos, commercials and, most importantly, James Bond title sequences.

While there will always be a place in my Suit for Maurice Binder, who designed all but two Bond titles from Dr No in 1962 to Licence To Kill in 1989 (as well as the legendary gunbarrel opening), his sequences do tend to be a bit samey. I suppose when you've seen one silhouette of a naked chick stroking a gunbarrel in a way that suggests she's thinking about something else entirely, you've seen 'em all.

Anyway, after Binder passed away in 1991, the Broccolis hired Kleinman to design the opening for the next Bond, GoldenEye, after seeing his video for Gladys Knight's Licence To Kill theme song.



And by crikey he did a bang up job. The sequence is clever, innovative and relevant to the story (check out the statues of former Communist legends which crop up later in the film) but remains faithful to the traditions of Binder's work. It's also been blocked on YouTube by MGM on copyright grounds. So thanks for that.

Kleinman went on to do the title sequences for the next four Bond films, all of which tied the themes of each movie to his striking imagery in an eye-popping explosion of style. The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day have also been yanked off of the YouTubes by an overzealous, bankrupt studio, but here (for now at least) is Kleinman's title sequence for Tomorrow Never Dies, complete with Sheryl Crow ruining everyone's day:



Kleinman saved his masterpiece, though, for 2006's big Bond reboot, Casino Royale. The titles are everything his others were but adds a retro touch to reflect the fact that it's an origin story for 007 (despite taking place in the present. And, er, with the same person playing his boss. Don't get me started).



For reasons I haven't been able to fathom, Kleinman didn't do the titles for the last Bond film, Quantum Of Solace - director Marc Forster used his favourite titles designers MK12, who farted out a lacklustre effort with some nice sand but not much else. The Incredible Suit crosses its fingers that if we ever get another Bond film, Daniel Kleinman will be back fondling our eyeballs with his cheeky fingers.

Saturday Playlist #14: David Arnold

You should by now have a pretty good idea of what David Arnold has done and how I feel about it. If not, may I recommend you start reading The Incredible Suit from Day 1 and do not leave your computer until you arrive back at this post. If that sounds like your idea of a slow and painful death, I suppose you could just read this non-award-winning interview I did with him in October.

Arnold is severely under-represented on Spotify, especially in the Bond department, so it falls to YouTube to provide some of his best work. Consider these Bonus Tracks, or incentives to download Spotify and get with the programme if you haven't already you pathetic specimen.

"Backseat Driver" from Tomorrow Never Dies


"Hovercraft Chase" from Die Another Day


"Time To Get Out" from Quantum Of Solace


So now that you've scrolled straight past those without playing them (yeah, I'm watching you), it's time to...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #14:

DAVID ARNOLD

An Exclusive Interview With Filmy Musicy Man David Arnold!

Regular viewers of The Incredible Suit will know of my borderline psychotic obsession with James Bond, film scores and James Bond film scores. It caused no small tremor in my basement, then, when David Arnold, composer of the last five Bond films, agreed to an interview with these very words:

Arnold is also responsible for chuffing ace music from the likes of Stargate, Independence Day and Hot Fuzz, as well as TV series Little Britain and Sherlock. However he's currently focussed on the upcoming Concert For CARE at the Albert Hall on October 18th (tickets still available!), an evening of movie tunes which he's organised, starring the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and composers including John Powell (the Bourne films), John Ottman (X-Men 2, Superman Returns) and Rachel Portman (Chocolat, Never Let Me Go). All proceeds from the concert go to aid organisation CARE International, for whom Arnold is an ambassador.

So without further waffle, here's what I asked him and, for the sake of completeness, I've also included his answers:

Hello David. You told me I was forbidden from introducing you with “The name’s Arnold, David Arnold”, you big spoilsport. How would you rather be introduced? Can you introduce me with “The name’s Arnold, David Arnold”? Er... OK. Let’s just skip the introduction and start with the personal stuff. You’re listed on Wikipedia under “Notable Lutonians”, along with silky-voiced ‘80s pop legend Paul Young and cricketing chap Monty Panesar. What do the three of you chat about when you’re hanging out in Wardown Park? We talk about where to get the next litre of Diamond White from, then Young starts a fight with Panesar, and while they’re at it I twoc the remaining McDonald’s that we previously rescued from the bins. It’s all over in seconds and we’re all back to normal, singing Wherever I Lay My Hat, throwing balls and writing film scores. What a lovely image. I follow you on Twitter, and you appear to have an unhealthy obsession with The X Factor. What does a witty, intelligent, handsome, talented gentleman such as yourself see in the most satanic form of televised evil, like, ever? I only do a bit of X Factor commentary when the show’s on. It’s not unhealthy. I am unhealthy but the Twitter / X Factor axis is not. I find that utterly mindless TV does me the world of good when I’ve been concentrating for unnatural amounts of time on something serious that has consequences should I not deliver what and when I am meant to. You’ve worked with some proper legends like Bjork, Saint Jarvis of Cocker and, erm, Chris Cornell. Is all this celeb-mixing just another day’s work for you or do you sometimes have to try hard not to do an accidental excited wee when meeting the likes of Shirley Bassey? I get excited at the idea of it, but the reality is usually very different, as it’s then down to me to do the gig. Most of the people I’ve worked with have been lovely and some of them have become friends regardless of work. I’m not starstruck but would admit to struggling if someone said Stevie Wonder wants to work with me. For the record, I didn’t wee anywhere near Shirley Bassey. Well that’s a relief. Your Stargate music is one of the most used pieces of movie trailer music. Does that make you swell with pride or is it a bit annoying? After all, you didn’t write it with Chicken Little in mind, did you? It’s never annoying to hear something I’ve written and recorded being used for purposes other than that for which it was created - within reason of course: I wouldn’t be thrilled if a political party used it for a recruitment drive. But I love the idea of music finding its way into other areas of life and reaching people’s ears that it may not otherwise. Where do you keep the Grammy you won for Independence Day, and why haven’t you won a BAFTA or an Oscar? Are people stupid? My Grammy is in storage, as I moved earlier in the year. At least I hope it is. Now I’m going to have to check. I’ve been nominated for BAFTAs but not Academy awards, probably because the films I do aren’t really Oscar sorts of movies, and also because I may not be any good. In my experience, most people are stupid and I include myself in that. The trick is to know when you are so you can avoid being stupid again later. I must try and remember that. You scored all the Brosnan Bonds apart from GoldenEye. Have you ever been tempted to do your own score for it and play it while watching the film with the sound off? The idea of scoring older Bonds is unfathomable. I think they’re all best left well alone, and every time we make one I, and the whole crew, spend our time trying to make the next one better. What you’re basically saying is “That’s a stupid question”, and I think you’re probably right. I suppose the next best thing is the GoldenEye game you’re writing the music for. How does writing music for a video game differ from a film score? I did that with my friend Kevin Kiner, who did all the heavy lifting on that show. He’s a very talented composer and I think the credit reads ‘Themes by David Arnold, music by Kevin Kiner’. I produced the title song, which is the old Tina Turner song sung by someone else. I’m not sure I’m allowed to say who it was yet so I won’t. Game scoring is all about writing to mood and not to picture, finding different ways of saying sad, happy, excited, dangerous etc, so they can be triggered by various things that happen during gameplay. I didn’t bother writing a theme for Bond growing wings and turning into chocolate as I knew it wasn’t going to be in the game. Which will be a big disappointment for all those expecting that very thing to happen. I’m far too old to play computer games, but I’m looking forward to hearing the GoldenEye game music. Will it be released commercially? I don’t think so, but stranger things have happened. I’m still playing that computer game where you get the computers to write “bollocks” over and over again in Currys. How browned off were you when Sheryl Crow’s song was chosen for the Tomorrow Never Dies opening titles while your (and Don Black’s) infinitely better song Surrender, sung by k.d. lang, was consigned to the end credits? Because I tell you what, I was incandescent. At that stage I was immensely grateful that they used Surrender as the closing titles. I’m more glass half full. Although I do like the idea of the glass being the right size in the first place. Are you scoring the next Bond film? Do you have the foggiest idea when it might get made? The wait is driving me potty. I never assume anything where movies are concerned. I have been talking to the producers about it, and they know how committed I am to the series and how much I care about it. We’ve done well together so far and I’ll do it as long as they keep asking me to. As far as when it’ll be made, that all depends on MGM sorting out their business situation, so all we can do is wait. I doubt if it would go on too much longer though. Let’s hope not. You’re currently working on the new Narnia film, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. Don’t be offended but I probably won’t see it, so what other projects have you got “in the pipeline”, as I think I’m supposed to say? I actually have a pipeline outside my studio and am constantly checking what’s in it. Aside from a build up of fat from restaurants and some discarded baby wipes, I can see that Made In Dagenham is coming out this week, which I scored and wrote the end title song for with Billy Bragg and which is sung by Sandie Shaw. The GoldenEye game is out in November, and Morning Glory with Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton is out in November in the US and January here. Right now I’m starting the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost alien-road-trip-comedy Paul, which is very funny. I finish that mid-December, then I am powered down and my prime directive re-programmed. So this Concert For CARE looks a bit good. How did you get involved with the charity and how did the idea for a concert come about? A few years ago I went to a fundraising event for CARE and there was a woman there talking about her experience in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. It’s the sort of detail that derails your idea of what life and people are all about. I talked to them about getting involved and they asked me to be an ambassador for them. I said yes and travelled to Rwanda to see for myself what’s going on and the work they’re doing, not only there but all over the world. My instinct was to grab a bag of clothes and stay there to help, but I knew I could make more difference by fundraising and awareness raising at home. It’s bound to raise oodles of cash already, but with this interview you have the chance to reach literally tens of people and convince them to buy a ticket. So what can they expect on the night and how will the money raised help the charity? Last year’s event at Brixton was a rock and roll one, this year at the Albert Hall it will be a little more polite. My friends from Film Musicland, where all the composers live, have all jumped on board. I would urge everyone to visit concertforcare.com to see what’s going on and come along and have a great night. It’ll be unique and hopefully really good. I don’t preach and we’ll only have a very short presentation about CARE at the beginning. CARE doesn’t spend money on advertising or mailouts - only 10% of money raised is used in admin, so you know you’re supporting someone in need rather than paying for someone to be behind a desk. Also they employ locally where possible, so the money raised can go straight to the area where it’s needed. That’s an impressive roster of composers appearing on the night. Was it a challenge to get them all in one place at the same time? Not really; there’s no touring, TV, press or other stuff with film composers. We pretty much know where we’ll be and when most of the time, so it’s a little simpler to corral them. Right, well I’ll be there so please make sure they’re all as corralled as possible. Most importantly, and because The Incredible Suit viewers demand to know (I imagine): What’s your favourite colour? The recently discovered colour equivalent of that umami flavour you find in avocados and Chinese takeaways. They haven’t got a name for it yet. I thought you’d say that. Before we finish could you just say something nice about my blog that I can pretend you casually dropped into conversation? I love The Incredible Suit so much that I actually have serious pain in my kidneys and blood is coming out, which I don’t think is right is it? It doesn’t matter, I just want to impress folk. Anyway, thanks for your time and the best of luck with Concert For CARE. Feel free to join me for an ice cream in the interval, although you’ll have to pay, the prices are extortionate at the Albert Hall. I have spat in all the ice creams which is why they’re so expensive as they’re now collectors’ items. Eurgh.

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Don Black: ICON, Apparently

Great news for dreadful amateur songwriters out there last week: lyricist Don Black will have the title of "Icon" bestowed on him by the BMI at their annual awards next month!

Don Black is, as you're all aware, the man behind the words to some of the greatest Bond themes of our time. Let's have a look at some of his work in detail:

Tom Jones - Thunderball

A cautionary tale: "His needs are more so he gives less"? I tried that in Tesco once. I needed more fish fingers so I gave the lady on the checkout less money. When she asked me what I thought I was playing at I explained that it's how James Bond goes about achieving success and that they call him the winner who takes all. She quite rightly pointed out that nobody's ever called James Bond that and if he came in here and tried that shit she'd strike him in his Thunderballs.

Lulu - The Man With The Golden Gun

Be honest Don, when you wrote that you weren't concentrating were you? I bet you were watching Yugoslavia thumping Zaire 9-0 in the 1974 World Cup. Don't worry, I think you got away with it.

Shirley Bassey - Diamonds Are Forever

Don claims that Shirley Bassey added all those extra letters in but I think he fell asleep on his keyboard and was too embarrassed to admit his mistake.

Having said all that, Don - along with The Incredible Suit hero David Arnold - was responsible for the Bond theme that never was that absolutely should have been: "Surrender" by upper-case-phobic k.d.lang, which had to be content with slouching grumpily over the end credits of Tomorrow Never Dies when it was relegated in favour of Sheryl Crow's abysmadirge ("Darling I'm killed / I'm in a puddle on the floor").

k.d. lang - Surrender


All of which gives me a good excuse to shove up this clip from one of the greatest Bond documentaries ever made, available to watch in irritating chunks on YouTube at your leisure.



So congratumalations Donald! I always said you were the best at what it is that you do.

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GoldenEye: The Music Of The Video Game Of The Motion Picture

Sticking out of my James Bond soundtrack collection like a scabby todger protruding from a crisp clean pair of boxfresh Calvins is Eric Serra's baffling score for GoldenEye:

Eric Serra - The GoldenEye Overture

I literally don't know what the Broccolis were thinking when they hired Serra to provide the tunage for the revamped, revitalised franchise in 1995, but with Cubby Broccoli on his deathbed and his daughter Barbara taking the reins of EON Productions, it must have gone something like this:

And so it was that Monsieur Serra delivered a score so bizarre that, for the scene in which Bond reduces St Petersburg to crumble topping with the aid of a tank, composer John Altman was brought in to hastily concoct something that sounded like he might have actually seen a Bond film at some time in his life.

John Altman - Tank Drive Around St Petersburg

When Serra was quietly taken out the back and shot, he was replaced with the phenomenal legend that is David Arnold, who has scored every Bond film since 1997's slightly stinky Tomorrow Never Dies, and has done so brilliantly.

I went to see Arnold chatting away at the BFI last year, and I was desperate to ask him if he'd ever considered doing his own score for GoldenEye, even if it was just for his own personal amusement. I thrust my hand in the air for so long that I had to hold my arm up with my other hand like a primary school child, but to no avail. Instead a madman a few rows behind asked stupid questions about whether David Arnold was related to Matthew Arnold, as if anybody gives a shit. Who the hell is Matthew Arnold anyway? I'm still cross about that idiot to this day.

So it was with a mild stirring of the loinular region that I read that David Arnold is writing a score for GoldenEye, but sadly not a re-release of the movie. Instead it's some kind of "video-game" for the Commodore 64 or whatever the kids are playing with these days. Which is weird, because I've never looked forward to a computer game's music before, but that's the position in which I find myself. I'd appreciate it if the soundtrack could be released on CD though so I don't have to fork out for an Atari 2600 and the game cartridge just to listen to the tunes.

That must be the longest preamble to the most pointless denouement in the history of bloggery. I should have just said "David Arnold to score GoldenEye game" and saved us all a lot of pain and misery.

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