The Screengrab : quantum of solace

Trailer Review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Paul Clark — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:00:00 GMT

I recently read an interview with G.I. Joe director Stephen Sommers in which he said that this movie would probably the closest he would get to fulfilling his dream of making a James Bond film. To which I can’t help but think… what? Sure, there’s a baddie bent on world destruction and a whole lot of snazzy technology on display. But up until Quantum of Solace anyway, the Bond series was distinguished by a certain amount of wit, and a charismatic hero whose roguish nature and appetite for danger helped him to bring down dozens of villains. Where can you find anything like that in the G.I. Joe trailer? In the ragtag band of buffed-up B-listers who play the titular team? In the wholesale destruction of the Paris skyline’s most recognizable landmark (the 007 adventures use their locations as settings, not simply monuments to be toppled)? One could argue that the brute-force efficiency of the G.I. Joe team is the American equivalent of British sophistication, but if that’s the case, we got the fuzzy end of the lollipop, cinematically speaking. Then again, this is the guy who legitimately thought that Van Helsing was a tribute to classic monster movies, so what the hell does he know?

DVD Digest for March 24, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week brings plenty of good news for both 007 fans and lovers of classic Hollywood, and plenty of other goodies besides.

This week’s DVD of the Week is Criterion’s much-awaited release of Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro. In this 1980 film, Truffaut for the first time addressed explicitly the subject of the French Occupation during World War II, seen here through the prism of a struggling theatre whose Jewish owner is hiding in the basement, leaving his leading-lady wife (played by Catherine Deneuve) to run the day-to-day business. There’s a great deal of intrigue in the film, not only involving a cocky young actor played by Gerard Depardieu, but with any number of Nazi sympathizers, informers, double-crossers, and sneaky Occupation types. But what comes through most clearly on this DVD release (and even more so on the Blu-Ray version) is how gorgeous the film is- how handsomely Truffaut re-created the period without letting the aesthetic concerns overwhelm the narrative ones. Likewise, this may be the most gorgeous Catherine Deneuve was on film- no mean feat, that.

The week’s other major classics release is the third volume of Warner’s Forbidden Hollywood Collection, this one featuring six films from director William Wellman- Other Men’s Women, The Purchase Price, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale, and Wild Boys of the Road. Other classics releases this week include: Lemmon and Matthau (but not Randall and Klugman) The Odd Couple Centennial Edition (Paramount); Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief Centennial Edition (Paramount); Lilo & Stitch 2-Disc Big Wave Edition (Disney); the unofficial 007 adventure Never Say Never Again Collector’s Edition (Fox/MGM); and the Fast and the Furious trilogy (Universal, also Blu-Ray), with standard DVDs of the films available separately.

The recent releases for this week are highlighted by: Daniel Craig’s second James Bond opus, Quantum of Solace (Fox/MGM, also Blu-Ray); the animated adjunct to the Watchmen universe, Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter (Warner, also Blu-Ray); John Travolta as a talking dog in Bolt (Disney); and Anne Hathaway in Passengers (Sony, also Blu-Ray).

In TV on DVD news, this week brings: The Venture Bros. Season 3 (Warner, also Blu-Ray); Star Wars: The Clone Wars- A Galaxy Divided (Warner); The Riches Season 2 (Fox); The Life and Times of Tim (Warner); and Big Stan (HBO, also Blu-Ray).

This week’s biggest Blu-Ray only release is James Bond Blu-Ray vol. 3 (Fox/MGM), which includes Goldfinger, Moonraker, and The World Is Not Enough, also available separately. If you’re still looking for more action, you can always pick up The Matrix (Warner). And on the more dramatic side of things, this week finds Paramount release three of its artier films of recent years, A Mighty Heart, The Kite Runner, and Things We Lost in the Fire. I admit I would be more enthusiastic about these releases if they were films I actually liked, but I do like the idea that studios are actually attempting to spotlight more than just loud action movies on Blu-Ray. Hey, it’s a start.

Finally, I leave you with the Synopsis of the Week, this week courtesy of the FUNimation Entertainment release Fruits Basket Box Set. Here it is:

“The Sohma family is cursed; however, this is no ordinary family curse. When a member of the family is embraced by a person of the opposite gender, they transform into an animal of the Chinese Zodiac! The Sohmas have managed to keep the curse private for generations, but when a young girl stumbles upon their secret, life in the Sohma household changes forever. Conflict erupts as zodiac rivals clash in this most unusual household. Young Tohru Honda must promise the secret will remain her own - or face the consequences!”

Morning Deal Report: An "Arrested" Development

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Twilight was gleaming at the box office this weekend, staking its claim to $70.6 million. (Gleaming! Staking! Can you believe Variety hasn’t hired me yet?) Those are Harry Potter numbers, so it’s no surprise that the Twilight sequel New Moon has already been greenlit. Bolt and Quantum of Solace finished in a virtual tie for second place, each taking in roughly $27 million. Bolt was a bit of a disappointment by Disney standards, but Quantum has already crashed the $100 million barrier, so you can bet James Bond will return.

How about that Arrested Development movie? Apparently its development is no longer arrested, as creator Mitch Hurwitz and producer Ron Howard are close to signing on for a feature film continuation of the cult series. Per The Hollywood Reporter, “Speculation has been fueled by cast members of the show, including Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Jeffrey Tambor, who have been frequently quoted in interviews that a feature adaptation is in the works.”

Vera Farmiga has joined George Clooney Up in the Air. “Story centers on a human resources exec whose only joy in life comes from the prospect of notching his millionth frequent-flyer mile, a goal he pursues with zeal as the rest of his life falls apart because he is constantly on the road,” Variety reports. “Farmiga will play a businesswoman who develops a romantic relationship with Clooney's character through meetings in airports and hotels around the country.”

Related:
Your Thursday Afternoon "Twilight" Roundup
George Clooney Leans In, and Other Insights

Yesterday's Hits, 007 Edition: Thunderball (1965, Terence Young) and Moonraker (1979, Lewis Gilbert)

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Quantum of Solace was released in U.S. theatres a week ago today, but I’m still jonesing for that old Bond feeling. Perhaps it was the decidedly un-007-like style of the latest movie in the series, but I for one found myself missing some of the reliable, even cheesy, touches of the old installments. So for this week’s column, I decided to look back at two of the biggest hits of the series to date, one starring Sean Connery (Thunderball), and one starring Roger Moore (Moonraker), thereby making this my first Yesterday’s Hits double feature to date.

At first glance, the two movies wouldn’t seem to go that well together, but a closer look finds a number of similarities beyond the usual Bond clichés. For one thing, both films were the top-grossing Bond titles for their respective stars. In addition, each was the fourth film in which they appeared. Both movies were a great deal more expensive than the films that preceded them. And by some strange coincidence, both movies build to action scenes in which dozens of characters are seen floating- in Thunderball’s case, the scene is underwater, whereas in Moonraker, they’re in space. But perhaps most importantly, neither film is especially well-regarded by devotees of the series. In last week’s list of the best and worst Bond movies of all time, Moonraker was voted the second-worst of the series, while Thunderball was the only “official” Connery title that didn’t get mentioned as one of the best.

Following the smash international success of Goldfinger, it was clear that moviegoing audiences couldn’t get enough of Ian Fleming’s super-spy. So production was quickly begun on the biggest Bond adventure yet, a $9 million spectacular called Thunderball that would once again star the suave, wry Scot Sean Connery. With the Bond formula more or less established from the previous three adventures, it was more or less guaranteed that Thunderball would be an even bigger hit than its predecessor. However, it ended up doing so well at the box-office that it remained the highest-grossing Bond adventure for nearly fifteen years.

The movie that would eventually dethrone it was, of course, Moonraker. Released only two years after Star Wars changed the face of blockbusters, the film was EON Productions’ attempt to cash in on the space opera craze- after all, what locale is more exotic than space? Moore was no Connery, but by 1979 he’d been accepted as Connery’s successor, and placing him against the backdrop of the so-called final frontier was a winning proposition. Despite mostly negative reviews, Moonraker raked in the money, the already tempting deal sweetened by the return of fan-favorite Jaws, played by the one and only Richard Kiel. Moonraker had the highest gross of any Bond movie until Pierce Brosnan assumed the role.

So, do they still work? As it turns out, Thunderball holds up pretty darn well, Moonraker… eh, not so much.

Coming so soon after two nearly perfect examples of the Bond formula done right, Thunderball’s flaws must have seemed especially glaring to fans of the series. Much of the supporting cast is bland and forgettable, with the most egregious offender being Claudine Auger as the principal Bond girl, Domino. In addition, a good deal of the wit that distinguished the previous entries in the series was cast aside here in favor of expensive action sequences. But with action sequences as good as the ones in Thunderball, it seems churlish to complain. Especially great is the extended underwater fight/shootout that comes at the end of the film, in which Bond and dozens of agents take on Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his henchmen for minutes on end, without a shred of dialogue. This scene remains a high-water mark of the series- no pun intended, of course.

And then, there was Connery, still the overwhelming favorite of 007 fans everywhere. By now firmly established in the role, Connery was able to inhabit the character with an easy authority, so much that his successors have all been measured against him. What’s surprising here is that he was actually able to find some new wrinkles to the character even after three previous performances in the role. By this point in the series, Bond has begun to show a little more self-awareness about the demands of his job. There’s an early scene in which Bond has to leave on his mission, and one of his conquests runs after him and asks him to write to her, and all he does is give a stiff little smile and say to himself, “another time, another place.” He also had room for ambiguous gestures, as in the scene where Largo’s agent Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) gets shot. Does Bond intentionally use her as a shield to save himself, or does it just happen that way? Connery never lets on one way or the other, and the character is more fascinating as a result.

By contrast, there was no room for ambiguity in Roger Moore’s conception of Bond. Moore’s version of 007 was less a hard-nosed secret agent who got his hands dirty than the archetypal “gentleman spy” as a straight-up hero. As a result, his performances were entertaining enough, but didn’t make the character particularly interesting. Also uninteresting here is Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (yeah, I know), another in a line of interchangeable pretty faces who were uneasily shoehorned into doctor roles in Bond movies. With two uncompelling leads, my attention quickly shifted to the villainous Drax, played by the great Michael Lonsdale with the perpetually annoyed bearing of a man who’d prefer not to trifle in the affairs of lesser intellects. With better material, Lonsdale could have made for one of the series’ best baddies, but he’s still pretty darn good.

And then there’s Jaws. I’ve always been a fan of the Jaws character, both in concept and execution. After all, here’s someone who has a limited number of job prospects- for an indestructible giant with metallic teeth, I’m guessing “hired killer” pays quite a bit better than “nightclub bouncer,” with greater travel opportunities to boot. But in spite of these limitations, Jaws makes the best of the hand he's been dealt, and it’s hard to hate the guy even when he’s beating the hell from Bond. Plus Kiel, with hardly a line of spoken dialogue, gives Jaws personality to spare, and it’s nice to see him finally get his own little romantic subplot in the story, even if it’s marred by a cheeseball music cue.

But all in all, Moonraker is pretty shoddy goods. James Bond travels from one exotic locale to another trying to save the world, but there’s no urgency to it, and the formula had become so comfortable that the filmmakers didn’t dare diverge from it (Quantum of Solace has precisely the opposite issue- it diverges from the formula so much it barely feels like Bond). Consequently, it comes off less as a thriller than an inconsequential romp, with such silly scenes as Bond’s Venetian gondola turning into a hovercraft, complete with a bird doing a double-take. Even the once-ballyhooed outer-space scenes look dated and cheesy nowadays. Moonraker might have gone over well with the audiences of the time, but it just doesn’t work today. Thunderball, on the other hand, is still pretty great.

Thursday Poll for November 20, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

With the U.S. release of Quantum of Solace last weekend, Bond-mania was in full swing, and for last week’s poll we couldn’t help but play along. We asked you to select your favorite from the Screengrab list of the Top 5 Bond Movies, and the favorite of our readers was the third 007 adventure, 1964’s Goldfinger. Taking in 38% of the vote, the Connery classic outpaced the competition, followed by my two personal favorites From Russia With Love and the ever-underloved On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (I go back and forth as to which I prefer), with 31% and 15% respectively. Bringing up the rear were Connery’s first and last official Bond movies, Dr. No and Diamonds Are Forever.

We’re still reeling from Warner Bros.’ move of the latest Harry Potter movie to next summer, which left us without an excuse to run a Potter-themed poll this week. So in a pinch, we found ourselves turning once again to Bond. By now, it’s become so widely-accepted that Sean Connery is the quintessential Bond that it’s gotten downright unfair to the other actors who’ve donned the tux. But without Connery in the mix, things get much more interesting, and more competitive. So, we ask you- who’s your favorite Bond actor not named Sean Connery?

Which of these guys made the best 007? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open for you to make a case for your favorite, or just in case you want to write in “Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond” or Barry Nelson for all you smartass classic TV fans. See you next week!

Morning Deal Report: A Double Shot of McQuarrie

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Thanks primarily to last week’s publicity boost from the Screengrab, Quantum of Solace opened at the top spot on the box office charts. (That’s our theory, anyway.) Raking in $70.4 million over the weekend, Quantum crushed the previous Bond best of $47.1 million held by 2002’s Die Another Day and proved that American audiences can live with a weird title as long as there are plenty of chase scenes. Madascar: Escape 2 Africa slipped to second place with a $36.1 million haul, followed by Role Models with $11.7 million.

Not long ago we were wondering whatever happened to Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie. Now he’s inescapable. McQuarrie is signed to write and produce two projects for UA, per The Hollywood Reporter. The Champions “is derived from a late-'60s British television series about a group of government agents who encounter a hidden civilization that grants them superhuman talents.” The Monster of Florence “tells the strange-but-true tale of popular author Douglas Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi, who began investigating a series of unsolved murders in Italy and wound up implicated in the case.”

Guillermo del Toro and the Jim Henson Co. are teaming up for a “darker” take on Pinocchio. (Let me guess: “It’s not just his nose that grows.”) The stop-motion feature is on the back-burner while del Toro makes two Hobbit movies. But that’s not all! Per Variety, “He also has a three-year first-look deal with Universal, where he’s setting up remakes of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Slaughterhouse-Five, an adaptation of Dan Simmons novel Drood and several other projects.” I’d say del Toro is spreading himself too thin, but I’ve seen pictures of him.

Related:
Vanishing Act: Christopher McQuarrie
Del Toro on the Hobbit Trail

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Nov. 8-14, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Lazenby. George Lazenby. You know, I like to think I’m a good sport. I played James Bond once forty years ago, and I’ve never heard the end of it. How would you like to wake up at 3 a.m. to answer a ringing phone and hear “You suck, Lazenby!” Not just once, but many, many times. And just this week, the Screengrab abounds with Bond material. James Bond’s Top 007 Cocktails. Quantum of Solace review. Bondage Bloggage. And the Best and Worst James Bond Movies of All Time (Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five). And in all of that, I get only one mention – where I’m referred to as “an Australian underwear model.”

I’ll have you know I have a distinguished acting resume that extends far beyond Bond. I played Jor-El in the short-lived 1990 Superboy series, and a burglar on an episode of BJ and the Bear. I starred in The Man from Hong Kong, coming soon to Ozsploitation! And I’ll almost certainly appear in one of The Top 50 Movies of 2009.

Ah well, no sour grapes on my part. Just to show what a good sport I am, let me direct you to a few of my favorite Screengrab posts of the week:

John Belushi’s Screen Test

John Cusack: Political Poet

Unwatchable #62: “Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie”

Take 5: Character Actors Who Take The Lead

Russell Crowe Will Not Wear Tights

Yesterday's Hits, Veteran's Day Edition: The Best Years of Our Lives

Star Trek Showdown III: The Search for Shatner’s Sanity

Screengrab Review: "Quantum of Solace"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Now that we've established for you once and for all which are the greatest and which are the worst James Bond movies of all time, this is the moment to ask: where does the latest 007 epic fit on that continuum? Well, for one thing, we're predicting opinions will wildly vary. In fact, as you probably noticed, even our Screengrab staff was more or less split, unable to decide if Daniel Craig's first crack at the venerable franchise was a long-overdue and genuinely successful reboot, or a failed attempt at breaking the mold that went nowhere.

I got a chance to see Quantum of Solace this week, and I'll say for the record that I'd be much more inclined to put it in the 'best of' column than in the 'worst of'. Then again, I thought Craig's Casino Royale was terrific, so it's not surprising that Quantum of Solace, which is quite solidly more of the same, hit home for me. Those less charitable toward the first Craig reboot will likely find as much to dislike in the follow-up as I did to like. As in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace begins with a dynamite action sequence that the rest of the movie can't top, though it's not from lack of trying; and like its predecessor, it takes a more dark, 'realistic' approach to the concept of Bond as a superspy/assassin, flying in the face of the flippant, adventurous tone of previous incarnations. The direction, by Oscar nominee Marc Forster, is tight and powerful, which gets it over the occasional rough patches in the script, and the cast is generally excellent; Judi Dench continues to excel as M, and Mathieu Amalric is gripping as lead villain Dominic Greene. The biggest disappointment, though, is that the movie doesn't cast its nets any farther than it has to; it's content to be as good as Casino Royale, but fails to stretch to the degree that it would have been better. Good as these movies have been, an unwillingness to press forward will result in them becoming as formulaic as the ones they were meant to replace.

There were two tendencies I noticed in Quantum of Solace that may become trends as the Daniel Craig era rolls on -- one negative and one positive. On the good side, there's a sense of continuity -- it picks up right where Casino Royale left off, and in addition to the return of Mr. White, who may become the best recurring villain the Bond series has ever had, there's generally a feeling that the filmmakers want to engage the audience, to give them a stake in paying attention and reward them for being loyal to the franchise by carrying over characters, plots, and mysteries. That's a good thing. The bad thing is that Quantum carries on the overall grim, humorless feel of Craig's first go-round. It's not that I don't generally enjoy the dark take on the character, or applaud the move away from the camp levels of seriousness that plagued the franchise in the late '70s and early '80s, but with so much emphasis on grimness -- this time carried over into the movie's Bond girl, who's as vengeful as 007 himself -- the series threatens to lose one of the most important elements that set it apart from the books. Hopefully the producers can find a happy medium.

The Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Oh, James Bond, why do we love you so? Batmen and teenage wizards and swashbuckling archaeologists may come and go, but film after film, decade after decade, 007 never dies.

Maybe it’s because the character has no real end or beginning: despite the so-called origin story “reboot” of Daniel Craig’s 2006 Casino Royale, Bond is timeless. Though technically the agent was born sometime between 1918 and 1924 (to Andrew and Monique Delacroix Bond...thank you, Wikipedia!) and went on his first official mission circa 1954 (in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang creator Ian Fleming’s literary Royale), Bond movies are always happening right now, reflecting the tastes and mores of their time, from the swingin’ sexist hedonism of the 1960s to the gritty post-Bourne “realism” of the Craig administration.

Bond, after all, is more of a concept than a character, a periodic excuse for hacks and auteurs, Oscar winners and supermodels, giants and dwarves, skiers, skaters, scuba divers, Wayne Newton, Madonna and everyone in between to make big, stylish, international action flicks, swill cocktails and blow stuff up real good, like the Olympics and the Cannes Film Festival crossed with a monster truck rally and New Year's Eve at the Playboy mansion...and who the hell can say no to that?

And so, in honor of the upcoming Quantum of Solace, the supervillains of the top-secret organization SCREENGRAB gathered in their hidden mountaintop fortress to compile a plan for world domination and, while they were at it, the following list of THE BEST & WORST JAMES BOND FILMS OF ALL TIME!!!!!

THE WORST:

10. CASINO ROYALE (2006)

Okay, so I’m in the minority on this one (since Daniel Craig’s superspy debut also appears on our “Best” list)...and it’s not just that I think blonde and Bond don’t mix (because really...who cares?). But, c’mon...after an admittedly righteous parkour chase through Madagascar, the movie spends A LOT of time stuck in the titular casino. Gambling scenes in Bond movies usually last about five minutes, because we all know who’s gonna win...only THIS time, the poker tournament goes on and on and on...and unlike, say, the battle of wits in the similarly high stakes card game in The Sting, Bond here finally wins his tournament by flashing a straight flush. A straight flush! Dude, anybody can win with a straight flush! Winning with a pair of twos...now THAT would have been superspy impressive! So anyhow, with the snoozy foregone conclusion of the trendy Hold ‘Em showdown out of the way, director Martin Campbell lightens the mood with a scene of Craig getting repeatedly smacked in the nuts (possibly to make Pierce Brosnan feel less bad about getting booted from the franchise), and then, the big finale is...a fantastically exciting hovercraft chase? ...a massive secret agent melee aboard a flaming death zeppelin? Nope...the big finale is Bond watching his girlfriend drown. Whee!!! Sorry guys...action, drama and Craig’s scowly killjoy puss may have worked in Munich, but in the 007-verse? Not so much.

9. TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997) & THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)

Pierce Brosnan made four films as Bond. The first, Goldeneye (1995), came out six years after the previous one, and was gratefully accepted by those who had given the series up for dead but couldn't bear the thought of living without it; Brosnan's swan song, the 2003 Die Another Day, is probably the liveliest of his short reign. Tomorrow and World came between them and are what passes for the meat in a thin sandwich. Both were directed by talented but slumming directors (Roger Spottiswoode and Michael Apted, respectively), and both are laden down with sad excuses for romantic foils (Teri Hatcher and Denise Richards) and disappointing villains (Jonathan Pryce as a power-mad media mogul and Robert Carlyle as a notorious terrorist who turns out to be merely the cat's-paw to the true villain, played by Sophie Marceau). Both movies belong -- to the degree that anyone would want them -- to Brosnan's female co-stars, Marceau and Michelle Yeoh. Brought in to supply a teensy taste of the action acrobatics of Hong Kong movies, Yeoh gets to kick up a little dust and show Brosnan up in a few scenes, though it's disappointing that she ends up being turned into a damsel in distress, calling to James for help. The spectacular Marceau is luckier; she starts out wittily pretending to be an imperiled little thing and then gets to blossom in a scene that reveals her to be a sick chick who could throw a scare into Rosa Kleb.

8. DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)

With his suave, urbane presence, Pierce Brosnan was ideally suited to the role of James Bond, so much so that he was originally offered the role after Moore retired, only to turn it down due to his commitment to Remington Steele. It was Brosnan’s bad luck that by the time he assumed the role, the creative well was beginning to run dry. Never was this more apparent than in his fourth and final 007 vehicle, Die Another Day. Brosnan was just fine, but the movie around him -- yeesh. To begin with, much was made of the presence of recent Oscar-winner Halle Berry as the “good” Bond girl Jinx, but her performance was so bad (witty banter just doesn’t work when it’s over-enunciated, Rudy Ray Moore-style) that the studio-generated hype about a spinoff movie quickly became laughable. And who could forget those villains, eh? You know -- the, uh, English guy who was actually a Korean who got plastic surgery, and the dude with the diamonds in his face. Not exactly Oddjob or Rosa Klebb, that’s for sure. Then there’s the villain’s ice lair (which one reviewer called “Ronald McDonald’s Fortress of Solitude”), and a chase scene involving an invisible car, an idea that’s too silly even in the context of a James Bond movie. The final nails in the coffin are the double contribution of Madonna, who not only contributed the travesty of a title song -- perhaps the series’ worst to date -- but also appeared in a cameo as a British (this was her British phase, remember) fencing instructor, in which she proceeded to suck all the energy out of the room simply by showing up. But don’t cry for Brosnan -- all the money he made from playing 007 has allowed him to appear in films in which his looks and charisma have been put to much more interesting use. Put it another way -- if sitting through Die Another Day was the price we had to pay to get The Matador, it was worth it.

7. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)

The title character -- Scaramanga, the master assassin with the island hideaway, the pet dwarf manservant (Herve Villechaize), and the superfluous nipple -- is played by Christopher Lee, who clearly enjoyed one of his first prominent roles where he didn't have to bite his co-stars on the neck. Lee is the only thing this one has going for it, though; it's a dull son of a bitch. This was Moore's second time out as 007, and he seems to have responded to the discovery that he hadn't been fired after his work in the first one by switching to autopilot. The Bond girls here are Britt Ekland, a once-promising starlet on her way to a career as tabloid and tell-all memoir fodder based on her relationships with Peter Sellers and Rod Stewart, and Maud Adams, who would return to the franchise nine years later to play the title role in Octopussy. (If you'd given the performance that she gives here, you'd want a do-over, too.) And, oh, joy, Clifton James is back as Sheriff J. W. Pepper, an act of hubris on the moviemakers' part that rivals George Lucas' refusal to flush Jar Jar Binks. Even John Barry fell down on the job; he would later say that the score here was "the one I hate the most," though at least the producers declined the title song offered to them by Alice Cooper, thus giving Alice one more thing he has in common with Johnny Cash. For topicality, there's an energy crisis theme, and no movie better illustrates a dwindling of reserves of energy than this one.

6. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987)

As soon as A View to a Kill hit the street, it was clear that something had to give. So the producers eighty-sixed Roger Moore and attempted a newer, more serious approach to the character. The man chosen to embody that new approach, Timothy Dalton, has been trying to live down the results ever since, but Dalton is a good actor with a handsome shell and a dashing presence, and it's not the worst thing you can say about someone in his position here that he let his contempt for the material show. (After twelve years of Roger Moore, it was kind of reassuring to see someone who had it in him to feel contempt for any material at all.) The producers also scaled back on the harem girls, the feeling being that the age of AIDS demanded a Bond who was at least serially monogamous. The problem is that the villains -- the hedonistic Jeroen Krabbe and the rampaging Joe Don Baker -- now seemed to be the only people having any fun. Then movie may perhaps be most notable for a sequence that plays very strangely today, the one in which Bond, in Afghanistan, lends a helping hand to the heroic, scrappy forces of the Mujahideen.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

The Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs (Part One)

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Just above these words you’ll find the music video for “Another Way to Die” by Alicia Keys and Jack White. It’s the theme from the new James Bond movie, which is not called Another Way to Die but rather Quantum of Solace. Apparently Jack White couldn’t come up with a rhyme for solace (“Let’s see…'I need a quantum of solace, so don’t call me Wallace'? No...”), so instead the song title blurs in with such recent Bond themes as “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “Die Another Day.” The Screengrab joins with London’s Sunday Times in asking the musical question, “Can nobody do it better?”

In pondering why so many Bond themes have come up short in recent years, the Times asked series composer David Arnold (who has scored the last five 007 pictures) what makes a classic Bond theme. “Arnold contends that any aspiring Bond-song writer needs both to honour the canon — and its sonic staples of brass and strings — and to throw away the rulebook, which he concedes can be a tricky task. ‘I don’t think you can completely escape the history of these songs,’ he says. ‘Not only have many of them become standards, they have been around as part of the British musical landscape for more than 40 years. It’s something to embrace, rather than dismiss, but in doing that you immediately draw comparisons with the greats.’ As for the brass-and-strings trademarks, he argues that ‘those elements are one of the things the public feel defines the sound of a Bond song’.”

So what are the classic Bond themes? I have researched the matter extensively (that is, I have been sitting here on my ass watching YouTube clips for an hour or so), and I’ve come up with my own list of the top seven…or 007, if you will. (Or even if you won’t.) Feel free to argue in the comments.

007. Thunderball (Johnny Cash version)

OK, this one’s a cheat. Johnny Cash recorded this title track for the fourth Bond adventure, but it was rejected in favor of the Tom Jones version. I can’t argue that Cash’s Thunderball fits in with the James Bond universe, but I’d rather listen to it than the Jones cut anyday. This is not the only time a Bond theme has been rejected, by the way – Alice Cooper originally recorded The Man with the Golden Gun (which you can find on the 1973 Muscle of Love album) and Blondie’s For Your Eyes Only appears on 1982’s The Hunter.

006. A View to a Kill

Actually, I was hoping to make a case for a-ha’s theme from The Living Daylights here. I had completely forgotten a-ha had recorded a James Bond theme, and I thought it would make me look cooler to pick one of the more obscure choices. But then, unfortunately, I listened to it again and couldn’t pull the trigger. Both Daylights and Duran Duran’s View to a Kill theme are hopeless ‘80s relics, but this one has a little more oomph. (Hey look, I’m not a music critic here. “Oomph” is about the most technical term in my arsenal.)

005. Nobody Does It Better

Some truly grotesque love ballads have attached themselves to the Bond series. Just imagine if the producers had the balls to commission a song titled “Octopussy” from Prince instead of Rita Coolidge’s “All-Time High,” which shouldn’t be theme to anything except maybe your dentist’s waiting room. And I’m confident that “Moonraker” is nobody’s wedding song. Carly Simon’s theme from The Spy Who Loved Me has a sexy femme fatale allure that sets it apart from the others, and it’s certainly the one Bond theme that has taken on a life of its own (probably because it doesn’t share a title with the movie, although “the spy who loved me” appears in the lyrics).

Part Two

Trailer Review: Quantum of Solace (Trailer #2)

Paul Clark — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I said I wasn’t sure what to expect from Quantum of Solace- whether it would keep the super-sweet mix of action and drama that was introduced with Casino Royale or if it would go too far one way or the other. Well, this trailer eases some of my initial fears, largely because it gives us a good taste of both. Much of the magic is in the casting- Craig is surely the best actor to don the tux to date, and he’s backed by capable costars both old (Dame Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright) and new (Matthieu Amalric). As Bond’s female counterpart, Olga Kurylenko seems a step down from Eva Green, but then she’d pretty much have to be. Plus the action looks great, especially that great shot of the Bond and a baddie falling through the glass ceiling. All in all, this trailer has me relieved about the quality of the film, although even if I still had my original misgivings I’d still be there opening weekend.

Screengrab Fall Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Yesterday, my colleague Scott Von Doviak dared all of his fellow Screengrab staffers to weigh in on our most anticipated movies of the fall. Given my lifelong inability to resist a dare (which resulted in my eating far too many unspeakable things in my younger days) I’ve decided to answer the call. Craving an additional challenge- and hoping to spotlight the wide array of good and bad releases coming soon to a theatre near me- I’ve decided to eliminate all contenders that appeared in Scott’s preview. Here goes:

3 UP

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – for years, David Fincher has been one of Hollywood’s most gifted filmmakers, with last year’s Zodiac his best film yet. With Button, Fincher turns his camera on an honest-to-goodness work of literature (an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, fer chrissakes), but don’t expect a workmanlike Tradition of Quality-style adaptation. Button re-teams Fincher with Brad Pitt, who continues to improve as an actor by seeking out adventurous material, and this story gives him his biggest challenge yet, not only playing a character from childhood through old age, but playing him while aging in reverse. It’s the kind of story that requires a visionary to pull off, and I can think of few better candidates for the job than Fincher. Every year, there’s at least one high-profile movie that I actively root for to be great, and this year, it’s Benjamin Button.

2. A Christmas Tale – Unlike Benjamin Button, the latest film by the great French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is something of a known quantity, premiering at Cannes to almost universal acclaim. But even if it hadn’t already screened, my hopes for this one would be through the roof. In the past few years, Desplechin has become one of my favorite filmmakers, and he’s coming off his finest work yet, 2004’s Kings and Queen. Factor in that Christmas Tale re-unites four of that film’s stars- Matthieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Devos, and Hippolyte Girardot- and I’m sold. That the film’s IMDb recommends the Steve Martin remake of Cheaper By the Dozen shouldn’t be held against it.

3. The Brothers Bloom – as I stated in my Trailer Review earlier this week, I’m in the pro-Brick camp, so naturally I’m excited for Rian Johnson’s follow-up project. But he’s also assembled an irresistible cast (I love Brody and Ruffalo as brothers, and Rachel Weisz is always best when she plays daffy), so I’m extra-stoked for this one. Could we be witnessing the rise of a major American filmmaker? Here’s hoping.

3 DOWN

1. Defiance – tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Ed Zwick directs a film about an outsider who aids a group of minorities in fighting about those who oppress them. That the minorities are Jews and the time period is during World War II only makes Defiance’s Oscar-grubbing even more blatant. Thanks, but no thanks.

2. RockNRolla – you know, I was under the impression that the abject failure of Revolver coupled with the divorce from Madonna meant that the moviegoing public would get a break from Guy Ritchie. Alas, that beautiful dream wasn’t to be. It was nice while it lasted though…

3. Bedtime Stories – Adam Sandler’s comic persona might be juvenile, but he’s always been at his best at unleashing his rage onscreen in decidedly un-kid-friendly ways. Less successful are his attempts to warm the heart, which makes the idea of a Sandler family comedy all the more misguided. The presence of Adam (The Pacifier) Shankman in the director’s chair doesn’t inspire much confidence either.

WILD CARD

It’s not as odd as Scott’s choice of Oliver Stone’s W. (what could be?), but I’m pretty conflicted about Quantum of Solace. What made Casino Royale so damn good is that it combined a kickass James Bond thrill ride with a legitimately compelling story. But although hiring director Marc Forster hints that the producers might be trying for that same balance of action and drama, I have my doubts that lightning will strike twice. Add to this Forster’s lack of experience in the action genre, plus the fact that unlike Casino this one doesn’t have an Ian Fleming novel to provide a solid narrative foundation, and Quantum has a lot to live up to. Sure, it might be diverting, but after Casino Royale, that just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. However, I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about this.

Trailer Review: Quantum of Solace (Teaser #1)

Paul Clark — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Like many moviegoers, I thought that Casino Royale was the best Bond film in decades. But it still remains to be seen whether that film’s high level of quality was a fluke, or indicative of a new direction the series will take. Going solely on the basis of this teaser, results are inconclusive. But then, the advertising for 007 movies is even more formulaic than many of the movies themselves, especially when it comes to the initial teasers. After a prelude that introduces the premise of the new film, we follow with a quick-cutting montage of action sequences, scantily-clad babes, and glimpse of the new villain- in this case the great Matthieu Amalric. But then, the Bond movies are almost always popular, so why mess with a good thing? If nothing else, Daniel Craig looks as worthy of the license to kill as he did the first time he donned the tux. Still not sure about that title though.

The Spy Who Glubbed Me: Production on Next 007 Thriller Floats Towards the Finish Line

Phil Nugent — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Some dipshit drove James Bond's car into a lake in Italy while filming Quantum of Solace, the second picture starring Daniel Craig as Bond. A stuntman whose name does not appear in press reports, probably for the same reason that the Feds discourage releasing the names of the key witnesses against Tony Soprano, "was delivering the iconic Aston Martin DBS to the film scene in heavy rain when he lost control" and plowed 007's sweet, sweet ride into Lake Garda, a body of water that few reporters will be able to resist describing as "scenic." The stunt man was taken to the hospital "with a few bruises," most of them probably administered by the producers; the car, which was hauled out of the lake and is now the world's most expensive portable hot tub, was reportedly the only one of its make available for the production.

Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second "official" entry in the Bond franchise that began back in 1962 with Dr. No, has already experienced its share of setbacks. It went through a change of directors, requiring that both principal photography and the picture's release date be pushed back; Chilean politician Carlos Lopez crashed the location shoot (after the filmmakers had used the village of Antofagasta to double for Bolivia) to criticize the filmmakers' geographic sense and compare them to the Pinochet dictatorship; weather caused the cancellation of a planned shoot at Macu Picchu last month; and on top of all that, the thing's called Quantum of Solace. Is that supposed to be a rebus puzzle, or what? In addition to the sturdy, studly Craig, the cast includes new Bond girls Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton, and Mathieu Amalric (Munich, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), popularly known as "that little Roman-Polanski-looking sumbitch", as the requisite supervillain. Quantum of Solace is supposed to open in the U.K. in late October and in the U.S. the first week of November, if there are enough survivors to finish it.

Morning Deal Report: Whither The Dark Knight?

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:45:00 GMT

Heath Ledger's death this week, as many speculated, has left several upcoming films up in the air. Production on The Dark Knight is finished, with all of Ledger's post-production done, but the film's ad campaign centered on him. Meanwhile, production on The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the next film by Terry "Can't Get A Break" Gilliam, is on hold while the insurers figure out what to do. (Please, someone figure out how to make this movie. Tom Waits plays the devil.) And Ledger's directing debut, The Queen's Gambit (about a young female chess prodigy, possibly to have been played by Ellen Page) is needless to say on hold.

We can finally stop saying "Bond 22," for the second Daniel Craig Bond movie finally has a title. And it's. . . Quantum of Solace? Pardon?

Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Wilkinson join Clive Owen and Julia Roberts in Duplicity, Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial follow-up to Michael Clayton.