Roger Ebert’s last 007 film review

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic, died on April 4 at the age of 70. Many publications and Web sites published obituaries about his life and his commentaries about movies.

His final review for a 007 film was, naturally, 2012′s Skyfall. You can read the entire piece BY CLICKING HERE. Here’s an excerpt:

In this 50th year of the James Bond series, with the disappointing “Quantum of Solace” (2008) still in our minds, “Skyfall” triumphantly reinvents 007 in one of the best Bonds ever made. This is a full-blooded, joyous, intelligent celebration of a beloved cultural icon, with Daniel Craig taking full possession of a role he earlier played well in “Casino Royale,” not so well in “Quantum”–although it may not have been entirely his fault. I don’t know what I expected in Bond #23, but certainly not an experience this invigorating.

(snip)

M is not quite ready to retire, and “Skyfall” at last provides a role worthy of Judi Dench, one of the best actors of her generation. She is all but the co-star of the film, with a lot of screen time, poignant dialogue, and a character who is far more complex and sympathetic than we expect in this series.

(snip again)

During the early Bonds, did we ever ask ourselves about 007′s origins in life? The movie even produces a moment designed to inspire love in lifetime Bond fans: A reappearance of the Aston Martin DB5 from “Goldfinger,” which remains in good operating condition, if you can guess what I mean.

Ebert had been the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967 and a lover of movies long before that. For years, he and his rival critic, the Chicago Tribune’s Gene Siskel, had hosted television shows devoted to movies.

Here’s the opening the Siskel-Ebert At the Movies programs in 1983, 30 years ago, devoted to 007:

Siskel died in 1999 and Ebert penned A TRIBUTE to his long-running adversary in 2009. They may not have been exactly friends but nor were they enemies. Their “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” verdicts on films were the dreams of the marketing departments of film studios. You can read the Sun-Times’s obituary of its long-time film critic by CLICKING HERE.

The balcony is now closed. It’s two thumbs down because we’re not likely to see the likes of either critic again.

Skyfall breaks 007′s 47-year Oscar drought

Skyfall’s poster image

RECAP (11:55 p.m.): Skyfall won two Oscars, the first 007 film to win more than one. Goldfinger and Thunderball won one apiece. It broke a 47-year Oscar drought for the Bond series. The highest profile win was Best Song by Adele and Paul Epworth, finally giving the series a win after three previous Best Song nominations.

UPDATE IV (11:20 p.m.): Skyfall finally broke the 007 Best Song jinx, winning the Oscar for Adele and Paul Epworth (Best Song Oscars go to the songwriters, not the performer). Adele thanked producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

007 films had been nominated for Best Song three times with no wins: Live And Let Die, Nobody Does It Better from The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. Classic Bond songs such as Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and Diamonds Are Forever were never nominated.

A few minutes earlier, Skyfall’s Thomas Newman lost to Life of Pi’s Mychael Danna. Skyfall ends the evening with two wins out of five categories.

UPDATE III (11:03 p.m.): Earlier Adele performed Skyfall. Reaction was mixed in our quick survey of social media. Some fans felt she nailed it, others felt there were too many backup singers or other flaws. Afterwards, two musicians with ties to the 007 series made the “In Memoriam” segment: Hal David, who wrote lyrics for the 1967 Casino Royale spoof, 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and 1979′s Moonraker; and Marvin Hamlisch, who scored 1977′s The Spy Who Loved Me. Hamlisch was nominated twice for Spy (score and for “Nobody Does It Better”) but didn’t pick up any wins that night.

UPDATE II (10:20 p.m.): Skyfall broke 007′s 47-year Oscar drought by tying with Zero Dark Thirty for sound editing. Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers picked up Oscars, though they started to get shooed off the stage as the orchestra played the theme from Jaws.

It was the first win for a Bond movie since John Stears won for special effects for 1965′s Thunderball. Just before that, film lost the sound award to Les Miserables.

UPDATE I (9:28 p.m.): Halle Berry introduced the James Bond tribute segment, comprised of clips from the movies accompanied by the James Bond Theme and an instrumental of Live And Let Die.

Immediately after, Shirley Bassey appeared and did a rendition of Goldfinger, with a very traditional sounding arrangement. It was the Bond highlight so far after Roger Deakins’s loss. Twitter lit up with users commenting about Dame Shirley’s performance.

However, Ezra Klein, a political commentator, wasn’t impressed with the 007 tribute part. He wrote on Twitter: “Congratulations, Oscars, you managed to make the Bond franchise look unexciting.”

ORIGINAL POST: Roger Deakins, nominated for his cinematography in Skyfall, lost to Life of Pi’s Claudio Moranda.

Skyfall, the 23rd James Bond movie, has been nominated for five awards, the most in the history of the Bond film series. The previous 007 record was held by The Spy Who Loved Me with three nominations (and no wins).

Still to come as of 9:12 p.m. are the best song, best score and two sound categories where Skyfall has been nominated. For now, 007′s 47-year Oscar drought continues. The last Bond movie to get an Oscar was 1965′s Thunderball for special effects. A tribute to James Bond movies is coming up.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from HMSS!

Our annual holiday greeting:

Purvis & Wade: who loves ya, baby?

Robert Wade, left, and Neal Purvis, going from Walther PPKs to lollipops.

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, having concluding a run of working on five James Bond movies, have been hired to script a Kojak film starring Vin Diesel, according to the Deadline entertainment news Web site.

Here’s an excerpt:

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures is getting serious about Kojak, hiring the scribe team of Neal Purvis & Robert Wade to script a movie around the tough-talking, smooth scalped cop played by Telly Savalas on the CBS series. Vin Diesel, who just wrapped Fast And Furious 6 for the studio, will play the chrome-domed cop in the film, which he’s producing with Samantha Vincent for their Universal-based One Race Films.

The original 1973-78 series originated with a made-for-TV movie called The Marcus-Nelson Murders that first aired in March 1973. That original project was scripted by Abby Mann, an Oscar winning screenwriter, and directed by Joseph Sargent. It gave Telly Savalas, normally cast as villains (including 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), a chance to play a sympathetic role. The story was based on the Wylie-Hoffert murders, also known as the Career Girls Murders, which led to to Miranda warnings.

Director Sargent won an Emmy and a Directors Guild of America award for The Marcus-Nelson Murders while Mann was nominated for an Emmy.

The CBS series made Savalas a big star and, for a time, a sex symbol (starting in the second season he doffed neckties a lot and didn’t button the first button or two of his dress shirts). Kojak’s catchphrase was, “Who loves ya, baby?” Kojak, trying to quit smoking, frequently sucked lollipops. The cast included the star’s brother George as one of the New York City detectives that worked with Kojak. The first season of the series included Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel as guest stars. Richard Donner directed some episodes.

Savalas reprised the role in a some TV movies on ABC (part of a Mystery Movie revival that included Peter Falk as Columbo). There was also a brief revival series on cable television in 2005, starring Ving Rhames as Kojak.

To read the entire Deadline story, just CLICK HERE.

It’s tough being James Bond in real life

“James Bond? Never heard of him!”

It’s one thing to be James Bond in a movie. It’s something else entirely to be James Bond in real life. Ian Fleming, of course, “simply stole” the name of the real-life ornithologist (1900-1989) while writing his first novel, Casino Royale, in 1952. The world-famous name has caused problems for some men ever since.

That, at least is the premise of a new documentary, The Other Fellow. The film was directed by Matthew Boyer, who told us about what prompted the project.

Am writing to show you a preview of a documentary called “The Other Fellow” about real men around the world named James Bond and how the popularity of the films and the character has affected their lives. It was shot in the leadup to the release of Skyfall, a period that heavily effects the day to day life of these real-life James Bonds.

(snip)

The title comes from George Lazenby’s famous line in OHMSS “this never happened to the other fellow” – said in reference to his more famous predecessor Sean Connery. For the Bond’s in our film this seemed appropriate, living in the shadow of their famous alter ego.

We have ten Bonds from around the world who have had to deal with numerous Seinfeld-style problems (being banned from Facebook, dealing with the police, airport security and waiters) as a result of the name as well as more serious topics such as a James Bond in the Caribbean who was targeted and shot by the local police force – “the Guyana police still joke about it, they did what the KGB, the Russians, the Germans and everyone else was trying to do for years – shoot James Bond”.

Here’s the trailer for the documentary:

Of course, 15 years ago, when Tomorrow Never Dies was coming out, Heineken had a James Bond promotion that also featured real-life James Bonds. It’s still on YouTube:

Casino Royale finishes No. 1 in 007.com fan survey

Casino Royale was the “one clear worldwide winner” in a fan survey on the official 007.com Web page.

According to THE ANNOUNCEMENT, “The film came top of the poll in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

The disclosure completes a cycle of fan surveys. Casino Royale was also the top vote getter in a survey ON THE MI6 JAMES BOND FAN WEB SITE while On Her Majesty’s Secret Service finished atop the survey by 007 MAGAZINE.

The 007.com and MI6 surveys were restricted to the 22 1962-2008 films made by Eon Proudctions. The 007 Magazine survey permitted fans to also consider Charles K. Feldman’s 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale and 1983′s Never Say Never Again, where Sean Connery reprised the Bond role in a competing 007 movie.

The whipped cream atop the sundae

Adele, the newest 007 title song performer

The kabuki dance finally came to an end on Oct. 1: Adele said over her official Twitter feed that she co-wrote and performed the Skyfall title song and shortly thereafter the official 007.com Web site issued the formal announcement.

On top of that, an excerpt showed up for a time on the Internet by by late Oct. 1 IT APPEARED TO HAVE BEEN YANKED. (Although it appears to have POPPED UP ELSEWHERE.) No matter, the song, according to the official announcement, will be on ADELE’S OFFICIAL WEBSITE at 12:07 a.m. (0:07 a.m. military time) on Oct. 5, or 7:07 p.m. New York time, Oct. 4.

The question is will this be an important part of Skyfall? Or it is just the whipped cream atop the sundae? That is, a nice topping but not a vital ingredient?

There are a number of classic James Bond title songs. Still, From Russia With Love often ranks near the top for many fans, but it had an instrumental version of the Lionel Bart-written song. The actual song ran briefly during the film (when Sean Connery’s 007 is romancing Sylvia Trench) and then in the end titles. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, ranked No. 1 007 film in one fan vote had a John Barry instrumental for its main titles. The Living Daylights, the 25th anniversary 007 film, is fondly remembered by many fans while its a-ha/John Barry title song doesn’t register among the best in the series.

On the other hand, author Jon Burlingame IN AN INTERVIEW WITH US PUBLISHED LAST WEEK noted that Bond title songs serve multiple purposes.

“From the beginning, it’s always really been a kind of crap shoot to try and create a song that would serve the film but also reach the pop charts to serve the broader promotional needs of the film and be successful on its own,” he said in the interview.

It has been awhile since a Bond title song has registered on the pop music charts, or received an Oscar nomination (1981′s For Your Eyes Only). So, perhaps the Adele song will reach the public. At this point, it remains to be seen whether Adele is the whipped cream on top of the Skyfall sundae or whether the song helps Skyfall reach a broader audience. With an Oct. 26 release date in the U.K. and a Nov. 9 U.S. release date, we’ll know the answer soon.

The dog days of Skyfall

It’s under a month before Skyfall’s world premier and about six weeks before the 23rd James Bond movie comes out in the U.S. At this point, it’s all over but the shouting. Still, perhaps because it’s the 50th anniversary of the first 007 movie, there are few more things to be endured for the dog days of Skyfall. No. 1 example: speculation about who will perform Skyfall’s title song.

Endured? That may seem an odd phrase, but in some ways appropriate. Various Web sites have had breathless stories about how they’ve confirmed that Adele will perform Skyfall’s title song.

One of the most persistent has been a Web site called Showbiz 411, which has run multiple stories saying Adele is the title song performer. The most recent was THIS ONE which not only repeated Adele would sing it but provided what is says are lyrics from the song. Meanwhile, on Twitter, a number of proprietors of 007 fan Web sites (including OUR TWITTER FEEDhave noted nothing has been “confirmed” (a word used in most of the title song stories) because no actual announcement has happened.

Then it hit us: at this point, it doesn’t really matter. Adele do the song? “That’s nice.” Jack White is back for a second time? “That’s nice.” The cast of 2012′s The Three Stooges? “That’s nice.”

Why such a tepid response? Because it’s not really going to affect the movie. After all, the title songs of 2006′s Casino Royale, 2002′s Die Another Day, 1999′s The World Is Not Enough, 1997′s Tomorrow Never Dies, 1995′s GoldenEye, 1987′s The Living Daylights, 1983′s Octopussy, etc., etc., etc. didn’t have a massive impact on those movies.

There’s a handful of “classic” Bond title songs. For argument’s sake, let’s call Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, Nobody Does It Better and For Your Eyes Only classic title songs. And not everybody would agree on all of those. Some people, for example, will discuss why, Goldfinger, is a musically challenged song. And some Bond fans say there’s absolutely nothing redeeming about any 007 film with Roger Moore.

Meanwhile, the composer of the movie’s score (Thomas Newman in Skyfall’s case) will either enhance or detract from scenes in the movie.

In fact, TWO OF THE TOP THREE 007 movies in a vote by readers of 007 Magazine, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and From Russia With Love, didn’t have songs in their main titles (while having songs later in the film). Dr. No, the first movie, led off with The James Bond Theme, some Jamaician-sounding music courtesy of Monty Norman and a short song called “Three Blind Mice.”

But the entertainment Web sites soldier on as if the selection of a title song performer represented the second coming of Shirley Bassey or Nancy Sinatra. Still, the 50th anniversary (Oct. 5 to be precise) is more than a week away. A title song announcement would be natural for the occasion. Then again, it might be anti-climatic. Anyway, until then, the dog days of Skyfall continue.

OHMSS finishes No. 1 in 007 Magazine survey

“007 Magazine? I demand a recount!”

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the sixth in the Eon Productions 007 film series, was named the best James Bond movie in a survey by readers of 007 Magazine.

The 1969 007 film was the first Eon Bond movie without Sean Connery, instead starring George Lazenby in his only Bond appearance. It was directed by Peter Hunt, who had worked on the previous Eon 007 films as a film editor and second unit director.

Here’s an excerpt from 007 Magazine’s announcement:

Readers of 007 MAGAZINE were asked to rate all 24 Bond films (including the ‘unofficial’ 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale and the rogue 1983 Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again) on a scale from 0-10. The average score for each film was then calculated, with OHMSS averaging an impressive 8.912 to finish ahead of second-placed Goldfinger (1964) – average mark 8.824, and third-placed From Russia With Love (1963) – average mark 8.802.

A similar vote was announced ON THE OFFICIAL JAMES BOND FACEBOOK PAGE though it’s restricted to the Eon series only. The result of that vote is supposed to be announced on Oct. 5, the 50th anniversary of Dr. No’s U.K. premier.

Hal David, an appreciation

Hal David

Hal David, who contributed lyrics to songs in three James Bond movies, died on Sept. 1 at age 91. He’s not really remembered for his 007 contributions because he wrote lyrics to many popular songs, especially in collaboration with Burt Bacharach. But he merits mention for his Bond film work also.

The 1967 Casino Royale spoof produced by Charles K. Feldman is an uneven movie. Still, Bacharach’s score and the songs he did with David were a highlight, especially “The Look of Love” performed by Dusty Springfield. David went on to work two times on the Eon Productions series, collaborating with John Barry on songs for 1969′s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The main Barry-David offering was “We Have All the Time in the World” performed by Louis Armstrong.

A decade later, David worked with Barry one more time on the title song of 1979′s Moonraker, whose title song would be the third, and final, performance by Shirley Bassey in a James Bond movie.

Both “The Look of Love” and “We Have All the Time in the World” are memorable (the latter revived many years later for a beer commercial). “Moonraker” doesn’t get the kudos of other Bond title songs but it’s still a collaboration of three highly professional individuals in composer Barry, lyricist David and singer Bassey.

It should also be noted that David’s older brother Mack (1912-1993) also dabbled in the spy genre, writing lyrics for songs in two Matt Helm movies, The Silencers and The Wrecking Crew. Mack David also co-wrote the title song to 77 Sunset Strip and other Warner Bros. television shows.