Listen To Bits Of The Skyfall Score If You Like

Snippets of Thomas Newman's score for Skyfall have made it as far as YouTube today. I got about four seconds in then punched myself in the face for attempting to spoil it for myself, so if you do listen to this, keep your thoughts to yourself. I don't want to know.

BlogalongaBond / Quantum Of Solace: [Insert Lazy Bourne Pun Here]

Quantum Of Solace is not a great Bond film. There, I've said it. I've defended it for nearly four years, citing Daniel Craig's performance and David Arnold's score as its most outstanding features, but on fifth viewing it's now clear to me that - and I take no Amount Of Comfort from saying this - Quantum Of Solace is in fact Not Great.

One of the reasons many people seem to think it's Not Great is its weak villain, and it's fair to say that - as short French Bond baddies go - Mathieu Amalric's Dominic Greene is even less terrifying than Hervé Villechaize's Nick Nack from The Man With The Golden Gun. But to suggest that Quantum Of Solace has a weak villain is not true; in fact Bond faces two enemies besides Greene, and they're among the most formidable foes the series has ever seen.

The first was the Writers' Guild Of America strike of 2007-8, which struck at just the wrong time for Bond #22. Paul Haggis handed his Quantum Of Solace rewrite in just two hours before the strike began, and it shows. Several scenes and stretches of dialogue make little sense; it's taken me five viewings and some heavy use of the pause and rewind buttons just to decipher what's going on in the early scenes in Haiti between Bond, Camille, Greene, Mr Slate and the dead geologist*. It's the kind of thing that should have been tidied up with a script polish that never happened.

Meanwhile, moments of potential tenderness such as the deaths of Mathis and Agent Fields are bungled by confusing waffle: clearly set up as opportunities to explore Bond's psyche, these scenes end up raising more questions than they answer. Mathis, for example, who was arrested at the end of Casino Royale and later imprisoned and tortured, is revealed to have been innocent all along by a minor character in an easy-to-miss throwaway line. When, with his dying breath, he mutters something about "Mathis" being his cover name, confusion reigns. If anyone can fully explain exactly who the guy was or his precise role over two films (apart from Head Of Exposition: Poker Rules Dept. in Casino Royale) then, like Daniel Craig, I'm all ears.

The second agent of evil to attempt to destroy Bond is second unit director Dan Bradley.

He's still at it.

Fresh off the back of two hyper-kinetic Bourne films, Bradley came to Quantum Of Solace with the specific intention of editing Bond to death. Orchestrating several potentially terrific set-pieces as if they're happening inside a washing machine that's been pushed down a flight of stairs, Bradley is the diabolical mastermind of the incomprehensible action sequence. The blocking, shooting and cutting of the scene in which rogue MI6 agent Mitchell helps Mr White escape is so baffling that it's impossible to tell who's shooting who and who's running where; at one point it appears that M's been shot, only for her to reappear unhurt in the next scene without explanation. You have to literally watch it frame by frame to see that the bullet fired at her actually ricochets off Mr White's drip stand:

Bradley might argue that his style is intended to reflect the real confusion Bond himself might experience in that situation, and that as such, scenes like these lend Quantum Of Solace an air of cinéma vérité hitherto unseen in the canon. I would just argue that it's balls.

Thanks in no small part to these two nefarious villains, the film clumsily clatters through its brief running time (at 106 minutes, it's the shortest Bond film), always desperate to race to the next location or skip over another bit of bewildering dialogue. It all happens so quickly that Bond doesn't even get time to shag Camille, the poor bastard.

Fortunately, however, there's one thing at the axis of the Quantum Of Solace centrifuge which just about stops everything spinning out of control, and that's Daniel Wroughton Craig.

Yes, "Wroughton".

Having already kicked the doubters in the face with his performance in Casino Royale, Craig perfects his Bond in only his second film. Like Timothy Dalton, he doesn't attempt to emulate any of the previous occupants of 007's tux, instead creating a character so much his own that some complain that it barely resembles James Bond at all. That argument is clearly ridiculous; Craig's an actor, not an impersonator. Once you surround him with all the tropes of the series - the cars, the girls, the stunts, the music, the villains - he's free to do his own thing, safe in the knowledge that Bond will emerge around him, as happened with his predecessors. And it's hard to deny that, slimmed down from Casino Royale's hulking physique and beautifully clad in Tom Ford suits (far more appropriate than the Brioni clobber he sported in 2006), he absolutely looks the part.

With his Bond having failed to save Vesper from drowning in a sinking lift, Craig has learned his lesson and rescues Quantum Of Solace from a similar fate simply by being completely ace in every scene. Observe the gusto with which he throws himself into the action scenes; how he convincingly fails to convince M that Vesper wasn't important to him; his impatience with M's chief of staff, Tanner (slight niggle: Ian Fleming wrote Tanner as Bond's only friend in MI6, and has never been satisfyingly portrayed as such in the films); the casual manner with which he waits for Mr Slate to bleed to death, or his nonchalant escape from MI6 agents in the La Paz hotel.

Craig is a magnetic presence on screen, and his ability to salvage a mediocre Bond film is the best reason to be jazzed about what he might do with a truly great one. And that's why it's impossible for me not to soil myself with excitement that at last, it's October 2012, and BlogalongaBond is about to end with an almighty bang.

David Arnold's score

 

David Arnold's fifth (and possibly final) score for a Bond film is far and away his best; it elevates an otherwise muddled and disappointing film into a thrilling experience by virtue of being absolutely fucking ace on every level. The score's menacing opening tones set up a mood that permeates the entire movie, while the subtlest hints of the Bond theme and the Casino Royale score laced throughout connect Quantum to its prequel. The title song may well be rubbs but check out its opening notes and compare them to Casino Royale's theme song: they're identical, but in a different key. They don't just throw this stuff together you know.

And finally: I don't even understand how this works.

Bond and Agent Fields are in a hotel room. They met about ten seconds ago.

BOND

I can't find the, um... the stationery.

Come and help me look.

I tried this line on a sexy lady working in WHSmith the other day and all I got was directions to the stationery.

BlogalongaBond will return with Skyfall

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

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

* As far as I can tell: Camille is a (possibly ex-) Bolivian Secret Service agent using Greene to get to General Medrano for personal reasons. At the same time, she tries to buy a report from a geologist to uncover Greene's dirty deeds. Greene finds out and kills the geologist, then pays assassin Mr Slate (using Quantum's tagged banknotes) to act as the geologist and set up a fake meeting with Camille at which he will kill her. Unfortunately for Mr Slate, Bond gets to him first and Bournes him to death in his hotel room before taking his place: that's why Camille thinks Bond's a geologist. Obvious really.

Global James Bond Day: The Incredible Suit vs. Empire

As part of the ongoing celebrations of GloJayBoDay, The Incredible Suit was invited to join forces with three of Empire magazine's finest journalists to talk Bond on their podcast. Sadly they had to drop out, so instead Dan Jolin, Chris Hewitt and Nick de Semlyen stepped in to graciously humour my constant trivia dribble and borderline-racist George Lazenby "impressions". Sadly they wouldn't let me spray my newly-acquired 007 aftershave around in the windowless podbooth, the fascists.

So set aside 89 minutes (yes, really), ensure a constant flow of vodka martinis in order to deaden your senses against the onslaught of inane banter, and wrap your listening tubes around this. Or, you know, don't.

Global James Bond Day: Happy Birthday, Mr Bond

Adele's official theme song is fine, but if there's a better way to celebrate GloJayBoDay than by listening to Roger Moore appearing to enjoy some first class fellatio while famous Bond girl Irka Bochenko breathes "Happy Birthday, Mr Bond" in his ear, then I don't want to know what it is.



What's that? You've never heard of famous Bond girl Irka Bochenko? Anyone would think you don't remember that iconic scene in Moonraker when Bond goes to that place and sees that girl that time. Apparently her character's name was "Blonde Beauty".

No? Maybe you remember her better from French seventies soft-focus wankfest Bilitis, in which her nipples were on screen for longer than her face was in Moonraker?

Oh yeah, possibly NSFW. Happy Birthday, Mr Bond.

Global James Bond Day: Adele's Back!

After teasing us with a suspiciously "leaked" preview of her theme song for Skyfall on Tuesday, Adele has now unleashed her song on an iTunes-funding public. She's also very kindly provided a karaoke video of sorts, with all the lyrics included. The silly billy forgot to take her own voice off it, but you can still play SingalongaBond in the middle of the office and annoy literally everyone in the world. Headphones on, volume up:



Let the sky foal when it crumbowls indeed. As usual for a Bond theme the lyrics make almost no sense, but who cares? That orchestra is on fire (not literally), and when blasted out of a cinema's speakers alongside Daniel Kleinman's title sequence this is going to make your* nose bleed with excitement. Bring it on.





*my

Here Are 89 Underwhelming Seconds Of Adele's Theme Song For Skyfall

To make up for it, here's a photoshopped picture of her without a nose.

UPDATE: Or rather here were 89 underwhelming seconds of Adele's theme song for Skyfall, before they were removed from Soundcloud. Well you can take my music, but YOU'LL NEVER TAKE MY NOSELESS ADELE PHOTOSHOP, YOU FASCISTS!!

UPDATE UPDATE: I found it somewhere else. All this is making me look silly.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: It's gone again. That's it, I'm boycotting the film.

Everything Or Nothing

This is a tricky one for me. As a certified Bond obsessive who can barely get through the day without whistling the James Bond theme or having sex with a beautiful, treacherous lady half my age (the former more often than the latter, to be fair), you'd think I'd be naturally predisposed to spraying loving review juice all over this new documentary about the history of the Bond films without a moment's thought. As it happens though, I expected very little from it: I knew I'd already be familiar with all the trivia and anecdotes and thought it would be little more than a throwaway attempt to cash in on 007's 50th anniversary celebrations. Turns out I was as wrong as a 53-year-old Roger Moore shagging a 23-year-old Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only.

Everything Or Nothing is a straightforward, no-frills doc which probably could have been shown on TV or included as an extra in the new Bond 50 Blu-ray box set, were it not for the fact that it's so bloody well-made that it deserves nothing less than a constant theatrical run for at least the next two years. It takes us from James Bond's literary origins in Ian Fleming's novels of the 1950s and '60s right through to Skyfall, via every crucial touchstone in the character's cinematic history: the live US TV dramatisation of Casino Royale; the meeting (and eventual split) of producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman; the intrusion of Kevin McClory which led to Thunderball and its tragic remake, Never Say Never Again; the advent of each new actor and the circumstances in which they left the role, and every significant detail in between. And it's all illustrated with a perfectly-judged amount of clips, archive footage and new interviews.

In fact, for Bondoholics like me, it's the interviews that provide the most wank-worthy material. As well as various key players from the series' past fifty years, the likes of Christopher Lee, Mike Myers and even Bill Flipping Clinton pop up to chip in. But Everything Or Nothing's trump card is its brand new talking heads with all of the Bonds - except, of course, Sean McGrumpychops, who's notable by his grudge-bearing absence.

To see George Lazenby talk candidly about blowing the chance of a lifetime by becoming a fanny-happy drunk, or Roger Moore chuckle about the ethics of a UNICEF ambassador pushing a little Thai boy into a Bangkok river, or Pierce Brosnan recount the unbridled joy he felt when he finally secured the role ("I'm James bloody Bond!") are entertaining enough, but when Timothy Dalton - who, as we all know, is the best Bond ever - bubbles over with passion about his unique approach to the character, well, I almost wept.

For the rest of you normals, I suspect it won't be quite as emotional. But if you're the kind of person who's easily swayed into watching a Bond film when it pops up on ITV2 on a wet Saturday afternoon, then there's SO MUCH here for you too. You'll leave feeling like an expert, and you'll have had a bloody good time to boot. You'll even get to see Brosnan mock Die Another Day's kitesurfing scene, despite wholeheartedly endorsing it a decade ago.

Everything Or Nothing isn't a groundbreaking documentary. It's not The Imposter. But what it is is a fascinating, revealing, massively entertaining hour and a half, and a treat for anyone who's ever seen a Bond film. And for me, it's practically porn.