Still more unanswered questions about an U.N.C.L.E. movie

“What was that about me getting the short end of it this time?”
“I may have been premature, Napoleon.”

Tom Cruise is out (if he ever was actually in) a movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. So that means one thing: It’s time to raise some more unanswered questions about the project.

1. Who plays Napoleon Solo now? The DEADLINE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS WEB SITE said Cruise, 50, pulled out to concentrate on a fifth Mission: Impossible movie.

One possibility: Robert Downey Jr., who worked with director Guy Ritchie, slated to direct the U.N.C.L.E. film, on two Sherlock Holmes films. Downey’s Iron Man Three is a big hit. Also, his contract with Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios unit has run out. Depending on what else is on Downey’s plate, he has no present commitments to Marvel.

Downey, though, might not make hard-core U.N.C.L.E. fans happy. Many complained that George Clooney (born 1961) and Cruise were too old when their names emerged as candidates. Downey, 48, isn’t much younger. Robert Vaughn, the original Solo, turned 31 during filming of the pilot episode of the 1964-68 series.

Possibility No. 2 raised by THE SCREENRANT WEB SITE is that Armie Hammer, who turns 37 27 in August, could slide from the Illya Kuryakin part to the Solo role. An excerpt referring to Hammer:

He’ll have to prove he can hold his own next to a scenery-chewing Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger, but judging by the trailers and his impressive turn in The Social Network as the Winklevoss twins, he looks to be ready for leading-man status.

Hammer seems to have a baby face in many of his roles. In the new Lone Ranger movie, he appears to be unshaven for much of the movie, perhaps an attempt to look tougher. At 6-foot-5, he towers over either Vaughn or Cruise. U.N.C.L.E. was a show that never had tall actors in leading roles.

2. Any new details? The Deadline story says that Ritchie wants to start filming this fall. So that would imply that Warner Bros. faces a relatively tight deadline to determine a leading man. It would seem to imply a release (IF the project comes together) sometime in 2014.

3. Is this the same Scott Z. Burns script that Steven Soderbergh wanted to film before dropping out in late 2011? Still unknown. Without knowing that, there’s no way to guess whether this would be a 1960s period piece (like the Soderbergh-Burns project) or set in the modern day.

4. Is this going to get made or not? Given the ROCKY HISTORY of U.N.C.L.E. revivals, I wouldn’t go banco on that.

Tom Cruise exits U.N.C.L.E., Deadline says

Tom Cruise: no Man From U.N.C.LE.

Tom Cruise won’t star in a Guy Ritchie-directed movie version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to concentrate his efforts on a fifth Mission: Impossible move, according to THE DEADLINE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS WEB SITE.

An excerpt:

Warner Bros has a script they like, and a top director who’s expecting to direct U.N.C.L.E. in the fall. The timing proved too difficult and so Cruise stepped out to focus on M:I5.

Warner Bros will now go hard looking for the lead of this movie, which is inspired by the original TV series ran from 1964-68, with Robert Vaughan and David McCallum playing Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, two agents of the United Network Command for Law Enforcement. With gadgets and their wits and charm, they fought the evil forces of Thrush. Hammer, who’ll be seen shortly alongside Johnny Depp in the Gore Verbinski-directed The Lone Ranger, is still firmly in the film.

Actually, the organization was called The United Network Command for Law *and* Enforcement. Deadline put the word “SHOCKER” in its headline, which is a bit misleading because THERE’S A CURSE that has prevented a revival of U.N.C.L.E. from getting off the ground for decades. Meanwhile, this may mean Cruise is in for a late-career boom because of The reverse Man From U.N.C.L.E. curse where actors who reject, or are passed over for, an U.N.C.L.E. movie see their careers soar.

UPDATE: The Screenrant Web site speculates (and it’s only that) that it’s possible ARMIE HAMMER MIGHT GET MOVED TO THE NAPOLEON SOLO ROLE from the Illya Kuryakin part if July’s Lone Ranger movie is a success.

More HMSS reviews of Skyfall, conclusion

Skyfall’s poster image

Final Skyfall review originally written for a never-published issue of Her Majesty’s Secret Servant.

Robert Cotton, the HMSS senior of the Web site’s film section, decided to do something different when he wrote about Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond film.

His piece, besides being a review, is also an essay about how and why the Bond film series has evolved. It’s also part memoir: the bookends of the story provide an anecdote of how people become fans in the first place.

To accommodate the story, we created a A SEPARATE PAGE for the essay. Some excerpts:

(M)y father and I had a shared experience with each new film. It became part of our lives no matter where we were on this earth, to mark that day, to plan somehow to rendezvous for the opening day of the next Bond. And that was worldwide. No matter what happened, where we were, we tried to move heaven and earth to be there for that single event. Sometimes, we failed due to time and place and the occurrences which pull people away uncontrollably, but no matter where we were, singularly or plural, we went to see the new Bond on opening day and at minimum discussed the whole thing, shared the experience as best we could even from a distance. This was our tradition. Enough backstory. On with the review.

Right off the bat, I would like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed Skyfall. We will get to the usual review material as we go, but this is the smartest Bond film I can remember and while I still like Casino Royale more, mainly because of the sense of discovery, of a new agent learning the ropes as it were, Skyfall seems to me the most thoughtful of the series and that is where we are going to start.

(snip)

Yes, dear reader, instead of a barely serviceable plot with trademarked Nehru jacket and cat, we’ve been given revenge from the other side. Whereas last time Bond went after everyone on the planet to apparently burn off the death of Vesper, this time he has to stop an agent of his own caliber who is actually doing the same thing Bond was doing last time we saw him, seeking revenge as a rogue agent. It’s an interesting way to bring us back into the franchise storyline and I quite enjoyed it. We are given a villain who is actually an equal of Bond’s and who is out to destroy an organization (in this case MI6, in Bond’s case SPECTRE, QUANTUM, etc.) by toppling the head of that organization, which is what Bond does best. I quite liked the dichotomy and it led me far further into the story than I had expected.

(snip)

Silva’s motivation is Bond’s. The villain and the hero literally go through the same mental processes and that is where this film soars. Before Bond even got there, Silva was M’s favorite. She built him up and let him fall and now the same thing has happened to her new favorite. The difference is in the outcome. Bond returns to the service out of both a sense of duty and because he cannot exist in the outside world. Bond returns angry, filled with blame, but ready to do it again for Queen and country. Bond is searching for redemption. Silva, on the other hand turns those very same motivating emotions into a desire for vengeance and his return is in order to destroy his betrayer and the organization she heads. Ironically Silva’s return becomes the vehicle for Bond’s resurrection, a theme that plays out throughout the film.

(snip)
Try watching You Only Live Twice without keeping it within the context of the 1960s and you will see what I mean.
Writing styles change. If in the middle of Diamonds Are Forever, Bond had paused, had reflected on his mission, on what he was doing with his life, on his childhood, the audience would have left in droves. The same applies today if Craig’s Bond walked into a nightclub and started spouting Roger Moore lines while trying to keep his eyebrow cocked. The times have changed. I will always give the series immense credit for keeping up with the world around it.

To read the entire essay, CLICK HERE.

Sony considers proposal to sell piece of entertainment unit

Sony Corp.’s board is considering a proposal from a major shareholder to sell as much as 20 percent of its entertainment business, which includes the Sony movie studio, according to various reports, including BLOOMBERG.COM, THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.

The Columbia Pictures unit of Sony has released the last three James Bond movies from 2006 through 2012 and is contracted to distribute the next film, Bond 24, whenever it comes out.

The proposal to sell a piece of the entertainment business was made last week by investor Daniel Loeb and his Third Point LLC, which holds a 6.5 percent stake in Sony. An excerpt from the Hollywood Reporter story citing Sony Corp. CEO Kaz Hirai:

“Firstly, I would like to clarify that the Third Point proposal is to sell off 15-20 percent of the entertainment division, not to spin it off as a separate entity,” said Hirai. “ We take this as an important proposal from one of our shareholders, and we will consider it thoroughly. We will discuss this fully at the board level and present our answer.”

The New York Times ran a MAY 19 REPORT about Sony Studios that said it wasn’t as profitable as other studios. The story cited Skyfall as an example. The Wilson-Broccoli family (referred to as the “James Bond rights holders”) got its cut and then Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony split the remainder 75-25, according to the story.

To view a Bloomberg Television video about Sony, CLICK HERE.

More HMSS reviews of Skyfall Part IV

Skyfall’s poster image

Fourth in a series of Skyfall reviews written for a never-published issue of Her Majesty’s Secret Servant.

By Phil Gerrard

When it comes to Bond movies, tradition is treacherous. It’s why we’ve seen You Only Live Twice four times (renamed The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, and Tomorrow Never Dies), Goldfinger twice (the execrable ‘A View to a Kill’) and why anniversaries and landmarks have been celebrated with greatest-hits exercises like Spy Who Loved Me and Die Another Day. So how best to mark the series’ 50th anniversary?

With Skyfall, EON’s answer is to nod respectfully to the past without it becoming dead weight. Most importantly they’ve borne in mind the lesson of ‘Casino Royale’, the first film of the Daniel Craig era, and of Ian Fleming’s novels, that one of the most interesting things that can be done with a recurring character is to find new things to do with (and to) him.

While there’s little in Skyfall’s narrative which owes much to Fleming, there’s everything in the atmosphere, in particular the all-but-unfilmed You Only Live Twice. There are the requisite bangs, crashes, betrayals, seductions, and air-punching moments of pure Bond, but there’s also time to reflect, to allow the narrative to breathe and scenes to play proper length. After the frantic Quantum of Solace, that’s a welcome reminder that relentlessness and forward motion are two very different things.

For some of us, Craig nailed what Fleming always intended during the opening shots of Casino Royale, but for any doubters (rather than haters) left, Skyfall should confirm that he’s the best Bond since Sean Connery. One more film as strong as this might crown him the best 007. His Bond is newly veteran and this suits Craig’s saturnine presence perfectly.

For arguably the first time, EON allow its lead actor free rein to explore Bond’s darker, more self-destructive side. This is a Bond pitched somewhere between the opening chapters of Fleming’s Thunderball and You Only Live Twice novels, rendered unfit for duty by a combination of trauma and inactivity.

Bond’s return from the wilderness and gradual recovery are paced perfectly within the context of the film, and crucially they restore the gut physicality so sadly lacking in the previous Bond film, Quantum of Solace. As in Casino Royale, the derring-do feels like it has a real potential cost: it hurts in a properly Flemingesque manner and again raises the stakes for a series which, on occasion, has been too keen to allow the audience to relax knowing that everything will work out OK.

One thing the Craig movies have lacked so far is a Bond villain of the first rank. Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre in Casino Royale was a fine creation, but like Fleming’s original he lacked a little something by virtue of the fact that the character is a desperate and cornered man with a bigger threat lurking in the shadows behind him. Quantum of Solace threw away a valuable actor, Mathieu Amalric, on a painfully underdeveloped role.

In Javier Bardem’s Silva, the Craig era has produced its first unqualified classic bad guy. A sexually omnivorous, capricious, and pitiful figure with a nice line in exasperated sighs, he’s motivated not by money or ideology but be the loss of any moral compass: he’s a borderline nihilist and all the more dangerous and unpredictable for it. Above all, Bardem’s work is both suitably big and subtly nuanced. He has fun with his villainy (as a Bond villain should) without ever tipping into the kind of pantomime performance which drains a movie of threat.

As the object of his vendetta, Judi Dench is given one of her too-rare opportunities to do something with the character of M. Often in previous films her role extended no further than barking orders and exhibiting clucking, motherly concern.

Skyfall expands on some of the themes established in Casino Royale, most notably the necessity for M to make hard, even harsh, decisions. Skyfall brings these consequences home with a vengeance. M is beset not only by enemies but by supposed allies, and Dench makes full use of the opportunities afforded her: M has never seemed so exposed and vulnerable, nor at times quite so defiant. Dench plays the difficult transitions with aplomb, yet without ever doing the obvious and begging the audience’s pity.

Some early reviews have stressed this is M’s movie, but it isn’t just that. All of the principal characters claim sections of the film as their own, and the movie isall the richer for it. Silva is afforded not one but two show-stopping monologues, one playfully sadistic and the other wracked; the introductory scene for Ben Whishaw’s prissily youthful Q has an extra layer of debate below the smart by-play; Albert Finney, whose screen career exceeds the lifespan even of the Bond films, makes what should have been a cameo both hilarious and poignant; and the excellent Rory Kinnear as Bill Tanner registers far more than such an apparently functionary role should.

Even a character like Gareth Mallory, who could have been the standard bureaucratic-obstacle-turned-ally figure we’ve seen so often before, is given a character arc worth having. It’s a credit to the current rude health of the Bond franchise that an actor of Ralph Fiennes’ talent could be enticed to take a role which on the face of it wouldn’t necessarily require a marquee name.

The only actors whose characters don’t feel quite as rounded as they should be are Naomie Harris’s Eve, whose character is kept underdeveloped (I believe) for a specific reason, and Berenice Marlohe, whose affectingly neurotic Severine has, I suspect, ended up being short-changed by the need to keep the film down to a manageable length.

The script, by regulars Neil Purvis and Robert Wade and Bond newcomer John Logan, largely foregrounds character development and themes and leaves the plot quietly to take care of itself. For the most part this works. There are a few slightly too-neat coincidences and points glided over, but it’s hard to think of an action movie, let alone a Bond movie, which avoids these problems with complete success.

More problematic is the deliberate attempt to reintroduce humour to the series. The one-liners which the series had largely abandoned are back. It’s a mixed blessing. Craig handles them supremely well — he’s naturally deadpan and even manages a surprisingly effective bit of Roger-Moore-style physical comedy at one moment. Still, one wishes more work had been put into the gags which don’t quite hit the spot and the rest left aside. Above all, it bespeaks a surprising lack of confidence on EON’s part. The humour was already within the script (for example in the Q scenes). It shouldn’t need mildly crass punchlines to point it up.

These are minor concerns when balanced against the strength of the piece as a whole and the fact that the film’s human drama is so well shaded – something which happens all too rarely in the race to the next explosion or blatant appeal to sentiment which characterises so much modern action movie scripting.

Eyebrows were raised when it was announced that Sam Mendes was to direct Skyfall, but he proves yet again that the Bond films do themselves nothing but good by hiring A-list talent. He’s a smart enough director to know when to trust his source material, get out-of-the-way, and allow craft to prevail over tricksiness.

Where Mendes does demonstrate an auteur’s eye, it works in the film’s favour. Having shown us one brutal hand-to-hand fight between Bond and Ola Rapace’s Patrice, he understands that their next encounter has to be something quite other, and the result, silhouetted against an ever-changing neon background, is not just a highlight of the movie but of the series to date. Where ‘Quantum of Solace’ staged one frenetic action sequence after another without giving a great deal of thought to contrast, Skyfall breaks down into acts and discrete sections so perfectly that one can imagine Fleming’s chapter headings as the film progresses.

It’s also the best-looking Bond film in years, particularly when seen in IMAX, thanks largely to Roger Deakins’ cinematography. There’s an immersiveness and depth to the visuals, most in-your-face in the neon jungle of Shanghai, most subtle in the muted tones of the Highlands climax, and a subtle audacity to some of the shots which doesn’t become apparent until one thinks about them later: no straining for effect here, just the kind of quiet visual intelligence which gives a film’s imagery a resonance far longer-lived than that of many action movies. Meanwhile, the hugely welcome return of Daniel Kleinman after MK12′s mundanely generic titles for ‘Quantum of Solace’ makes one wish that imaginative and thematically rich opening sequences weren’t all but a dead art.

One letdown is Thomas Newman’s score. While efficient and by no means poor, it’s very wanting when it comes to the kinds of melodies and counter-melodies at which John Barry was so adept. Where Barry could conjure up depths of mood which the movies frankly sometimes didn’t deserve (You Only Live Twice is a better movie to hear than to watch), Newman’s work seems often too timid.

Of Craig’s three Bond films to date, where does this one rank? It’s very hard to call. Casino Royale certainly scores higher as far as its construction is concerned: it’s far more watertight than Skyfall, which has its fair share of shortcuts and plot holes. Then again, so did many of Fleming’s novels, and it was the famous “Fleming sweep: which propelled the reader past these.

The things that make Skyfall are its emotional heft, its emphasis on character, and its attempts to create a film which is fine in its own right as well as being an excellent addition to the canon. Casino Royale was a welcome step forward for a series which from time to time (most notably during the 1970s and 1990s) seemed to confuse tradition with stasis, and Skyfall continues and expands upon that approach, while at the same time reintroducing and reinventing elements of the past. To have brought that off so successfully is a hell of an achievement by any standards.

There was a sound enough reason for the repetition within some of the Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, when once they left the cinema they were gone apparently for good. By the time of the Pierce Brosnan movies, it was starting to feel like a comfortable but not especially exciting option. Literal recreations of past movies can be enjoyable but often leave one wondering what the point was (see, for example, Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Good German’).

Now that the great early Bond films such as From Russia with Love and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are instantly available, mere imitation seems increasingly futile. With Casino Royale and ‘Skyfall’ EON has embarked on a new phase, mining Fleming for what hasn’t been done yet, paying respect to the past without feeling bound to recreate it, and never mistaking the letter for the spirit.

One hopes that Fleming would have both recognised and approved. GRADE: A.

(C) 2013, Phil Gerrard

More HMSS reviews of Skyfall Part III

Skyfall’s poster image

Third in a series of Skyfall reviews written for a never-published issue of Her Majesty’s Secret Servant

By Ed Werner

Be careful in what you wish for.

Back in the dark ages of Bond in the seventies, HMSS co-founder Paul Baack and I hoped for and wondered what a truly character driven Bond film would be like. We really wanted the producers to get into Bond’s history, background, feelings and what made him tick. It only took 23 films for that to happen.

Now that it’s been done, I hope they don’t do it again anytime soon. Don’t get me wrong, I loved delving into more of his personal life, but I think maybe there was just a little too much emotional trauma going on here for a Bond movie. I felt spent after watching it, something in this series that has never happened to me before.

I think many people go to a Bond film for the escapism, to get lost for two hours and come away entertained. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from Skyfall, I tried to stay off the grid and under the radar for this one. I wanted to go into it with no preconceived notions — but I wasn’t ready for this.

This film is a grand experiment on the part of producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and I applaud the risks they took in bringing this very personal side of the character to us. However, this is also a Bond film that’s very different from all that has come before and will be debated by Bond aficionados for many years to come. Is this film the official end of the “reboot” and now will 007 go back to saving the world from Armageddon on a regular basis? One can only wait and see.

Some random thoughts:

The film itself is beautifully photographed, I haven’t seen this kind of consistently beautiful camera work in a Bond film since You Only Live Twice. The Shanghai scenes were breathtaking, from the interior shots in the building under construction where we see Bond take out a sniper, to the casino, the camera angles and the color palette are incredible. In the later part of the film, Scotland has rarely looked more grand and foreboding. The interiors elsewhere in the film were all beautifully polished wood as opposed to the Ken Adam type brushed stainless steel that has gotten a little long in the tooth. Just take a look at M’s office near the end of the movie and compare it to the metal and glass that had been the norm since Brosnan took over the helm back in ’95.

The acting was mostly first-rate this time around. Judi Dench shows once again why she is a treasure in British cinema. This time around, M’s and Bond’s relationship is much deeper than has ever been explored before and a lesser actor would have made the climax much less memorable.

The new young Q works well with this Bond, although Desmond Llewelyn’s shoes are almost impossible to fill. Still, when you think how important technology is in almost all facets of life these days, business as well as intelligence, and who is the most well versed in this field, it makes sense that Q is the age he is.

The introduction of Eve, and who she actually is, totally broadsided me. I never saw that coming. At first, Naomie Harris reminded me of maybe a more capable Rosie Carver from Live and Let Die. However, after her first few moments of screen time, I realized that this actress and character were a force to be reckoned and much more important than Rosie. At last, we have finally been shown the genesis of one of Bond’s most memorable relationships!

Javier Bardem, who plays the baddun, Silva, reminds one of the best villains of the earlier Bond films. No superhuman strength, no webs growing between the fingers, not wimpy. Just very evil, a little off his rocker and hell-bent for revenge — but not against Bond. He never goes off on a raging rant, just keeps his cool and intelligently reeks havoc. He has no desire to go all Blofeld on us with visions of world domination and the character works marvelously because of it as well as Bardem’s sublime acting.

Daniel Craig has given us a new critical standard for the character of Bond, going to places none of the other Bond actors has had the opportunity to explore. He may not exactly look, speak, dress or move like the James Bond some of us have in the back of our minds. But he gives a very credible read to the character and is probably the most important choice of actor to play the part since the 1960s.

The only character that I thought was mis-cast and poorly written, was that of Severine, the “sacrificial lamb” of the movie. Although the more I think about it, there is one much more important character that could be put into that category. But you will need see the movie to make that determination yourself. Berenice Marlohe who plays Severine, doesn’t really lend herself to sympathy because you don’t really care for or about her.

The action sequences were well thought out, well photographed and easy to follow. You could actually keep track of what was happening and who was doing what to whom. Totally unlike the action fiasco in Quantum of Solace with its hyper editing and shaky cam. You’d have thought that the powers that be would have learned from the CGI debacle in the second half of Die Another Day that the flavor of the month in cinematography doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to the world of Bond. Thankfully, the producers have gone on record saying that a 3-D Bond is definitely not in our future.

The story itself is something I think Fleming could have dreamed up had he lived longer and written a few more Bond novels. It’s really a timeless story that could have felt just at home in the ’60s as it does some 50 years later. The four-year hiatus definitely benefited the story. It’s well thought out. The pacing is right on. Let’s hope that EON can continue to pull off this kind of film..

This may not be the absolute best Bond film released to date, but it is one of the most important.

(C) 2013 Ed Werner

Star Trek’s homage to Ken Adam

Ken Adam’s “war room” set from Dr. Strangelove

This weekend, the No. 1 in the U.S. is Star Trek Into Darkness. The movie references the original 1966-69 television series and one of the movies in the franchise. We’ll avoid specifics. But it also has an homage to veteran production designer Ken Adam, one of the major contributors to the early James Bond films.

Early in the new Star Trek film, there’s an emergency meeting of Starfleet captains and their first officers. The meeting room is clearly influenced by Adam’s “war room” set from the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Do you suppose Ken Adam will get a royalty for this scene?

For the uninitiated, Ken Adam designed the sets for the modestly budgeted first James Bond film Dr. No. Producer-cirector Stanley Kubrick, upon watching the 1962 007 film, offered Adam the job to design the sets for Dr. Strangelove. The “war room” set is among the most memorable for that 1964 film.

Adam designed the sets for seven James Bond films in all, starting with Dr. No and ending with 1979′s Moonraker. He won TWO OSCARS and was nominated for another for 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me. Kubrick did some uncredited consulting work for Adam for the 1977 007 movie, according to the documentary Inside The Spy Who Loved Me.