Bonding with James: If you could stomach what ITV’s over-zealous censors do to the Bond films, together with the numerous advert breaks, what better way was there to see in the New Year than with 007? The UK’s main ITV channel decided to see out 2020 with a screening of Daniel Craig’s Bond movie Skyfall, which was shown on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day, 2021, itself, eager Bond fans could switch to ITV2, which screened Spectre to herald in 2021…
Bondathon - ITV’s New Year Bond Season: The UK’s ITV4 channel kicked off New Year 2021 with screenings of all the EON Sean Connery 007 films, starting with Dr. No on Monday 4th January, at the rather odd time of 5.45pm. One could watch a Bond film per day. The same cycle of screenings started again the week after, starting with No again on Monday, 11th Jan. It was a great way to take your mind off all the gloomy news…
Bonding with Brosnan: The UK’s main ITV channel decided to stay with their 007 screenings by also having a Brosnan season, with all four of his Bond adventures shown at 11.05pm on consecutive Saturdays: Goldeneye was screened on 13th February, TND on 20th February, TWINE on 27th February, and DAD on 6th March...
Spying on Brosnan’s Bond: It is always interesting to read the mini-reviews of Bond films in Listings magazines whenever they are screened. The Radio Times, for example, reviewing TND, argued: ‘For the first hour or so, this 18thJames Bond movie is up there with the best of them: it has terrific pace, Pierce Brosnan’s 007 has romantic and rough-house appeal, Michelle Yeoh’s Chinese agent is more than a match for him in the action stakes, and the story has grip and even plausibility. Sadly, the second half doesn’t quite sustain the momentum, while Jonathan Pryce’s media mogul… proves to be an unthreatening villain’ (ouch!). But the review then added: ‘Flaws aside, this was at the time the best Bond movie since the heyday of Connery’…
The World Is Not Another Day: The same magazine, Radio Times, gave Brosnan’s next two films enthusiastic reviews: TWINE was called a ‘welcome return to the gritty glamour of such early outings as From Russia With Love: ‘Pierce Brosnan is clearly comfortable as 007, both in the dramatic sequences and during the spectacular stunts… Matching him every step of the way are Sophie Marceau, the best Bond girl in ages, and Robert Carlyle, who is perfect as a vicious villain’. Refreshingly (given the bad press it so often gets), the magazine’s review a week later of DAD gave Brosnan’s final Bond outing high praise: ‘Pierce Brosnan is on fine form as a betrayed and vengeful 007, combining the secret agent’s charm and throwaway wit with true toughness and a streak of venom. Such character-broadening traits ensure that the format never feels stale, while the introduction of Halle berry as an equal, if underdeveloped, female sidekick is a coup’…
Mo(o)re Bond: The ITV-4 channel of the UK’s ITV network also had in a full season of all the Roger Moore 007 films, showing each one weekly and consecutively, culminating in A View To A Kill on Friday, 28th May, 2021. It was double-0 heaven…
Bond on the Box Again: The ITV network in the UK were then back with Bond movie TV screenings during August, 2021, this time of Connery’s James Bond films as the momentum built up for the release of Bond 25. George Lazenby’s one-off film OHMSS was also included in the season, and Connery’s sixth movie as 007, Diamonds Are Forever, was screened on ITV-1 on Sunday, 26th September, in a mid-afternoon slot. Clearly, it was all timed to tap into NTTD fever…
No Time To Diet: A recent edition of the BBC Radio-4 comedy series Dead Ringers had a nice 007 sketch. After being confined to Covid ‘lockdown’, James Bond returns to work at MI6 HQ and discovers all MI6 staff are still working from home. Moreover, he finds that he himself has put on extra weight and urgently sends out a request to ‘Q’ branch: ‘Bring me some elasticated trousers!’…
Golden Touch: Fans of film soundtrack music were given a real treat back in January when, on Monday, 25th January, BBC-4 screened a special documentary, Score: Cinema’s Greatest Soundtracks. An impressive ‘Who’s Who’ of the leading film composers discussed in the documentary included – naturally - John Barry, and also the latest Bond composer Hans Zimmer. If you get the opportunity to view this, then do so. It’s a real treat…
For Your Car Ears Only: Interestingly, on 7th May, 2021, the UK’s Daily Mailnewspaper carried a profile of Hans Zimmer, and revealed that the latest 007 composer had recently been hard at work for the motor company BMW (Zimmer is a big fan of cars, and BMWs in particular). His mission? To create new soundscapes for the inside of cars. Zimmer explained: ‘We have an extraordinary opportunity to turn electric driving in a BMW into a very special experience with the help of great sounds’. The composer, who has his main studio in Santa Monica, California, had been working closely with a BMW sound engineer to create a sound repertoire for a variety of driving modes in BMW models. It sounded intriguing! Zimmer’s postponed 2021 live European music tour will now take place in 2022, and will include gigs in London, Manchester and Dublin. And, of course, there is his long-awaited soundtrack for No Time To Die which, we understand, will form part of his repertoire on the 2022 tour…
Bonding with Graham: The lovely and highly-talented Rosamund Pike, who played double-agent Miranda Frost in Die Another Day, was one of the guests on The Graham Norton Show, shown on BBC-1 on 19th February. Rosamund was on the show to help publicise her new dark comedy thriller I Care a Lot, for which she had been nominated for a Golden Globe…
Another Way To Try: The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper (20th February, 2021) published an enthusiastic - if slightly late - review of The Lost Adventures of James Bond (2020), the fascinating new book by American journalist and author Mark Edlitz (the JBIFC did an item on the book in our Xmas, 2020, Newsletter). The Telegraph, perhaps inevitably, zoomed in on some of the more bizarre plot proposals that never made it on to the big screen. It’s a great read for those fans who like to speculate on the ‘what if’ and ‘lost Bond’ aspects of James Bond history…
Reporting for Duty Again: It was so good to see Daniel Craig return, even if briefly, as James Bond for a humorous sketch for the BBC’s Comic Relief charity fundraising evening, held on Friday, 19th March, otherwise known as ‘Red Nose Day’ in the UK. This can still be caught on the internet if you search carefully…
From a View To a Thrill: Fans of Duran Duran, who provided the great title song for Roger Moore’s 007th and final adventure as Bond in 1985, were able to catch ‘Duran 40’, a two-part BBC radio-2 programme transmitted on 8th May (part 1) and 15th May (part 2), presented by Claudia Winkleman to mark the 40th anniversary of the UK chart run of their single ‘Planet Earth’. The Bond dimension always gets coverage in any profile of them and it is clear the band remain very proud of their dalliance with double-0 music heaven…
Seydoux interviewed: Acclaimed actress Lea Seydoux, who reprises her role in No Time To Die, was profiled in the UK’s Guardian newspaper on 17th July. Unfortunately, she had experienced a major piece of bad luck when she was due to make an appearance at the 2021 Cannes film festival: she had tested positive for the dreaded Covid-19, and so had to spend the festival period in isolation in Paris. Her interview with the newspaper thus had to take place on the phone, and the main thing that emerged was that Lea was feeling very bored being in lockdown in her house. Bond was inevitably mentioned in the interview. On her reprisal of Madeleine Swann, Lea commented: ‘The challenge with Bond is adapting to a different genre. I’ve done more independent films in my career, so to be on a big machine like James Bond is interesting. And yes, of course, it’s an entertainment… it’s made to entertain’. She added that making Bond took her out of her ‘comfort zone’ and was also ‘fun’. It was, she said: ‘Great stunts, great locations. Something bigger than life’…
No Time To Try: The creator the best-selling Jack Reacher novels, author Lee Child, revealed in the Sunday Times on 12th September that, in the early 2000s, he was twice approached to write a Bond novel to coincide with the 2008 centenary of Fleming’s birth. He said it would have been ‘an uneconomic use of my time’ because he would have had to share royalties. Instead, Sebastian Faulks was given the challenge, and penned Devil May Care. Lee Child also commented that he couldn’t figure out how to make the Bond story ‘relevant to the modern day’. Well, perhaps something called your creative imagination was necessary, Mr. Child? Other authors have managed the challenge admirably…
Sky High: The UK’s ‘Sky Max’ cable and satellite channel screened a great documentary on Saturday, 25th September, entitled 007: The Daniel Craig Years, which looked back on his five films as James Bond as he prepared for the release of the latest movie. Superb…
Welcome Back Graphic Bond: As part of all the tie-in publicity around No Time To Die, the UK’s Sunday Express newspaper on September 26th began a re-run of the famous Express Bond cartoon strip, drawn by John McLusky (and, later, others), starting with Casino Royale. The cartoon strip first began back in 1958 and ran for many years, serialising all the Fleming books, the Kingsley Amis Bond continuation novel, and various original stories. It was pure gold and now is the opportunity to revisit an old friend, brilliantly drawn…
Bond at his Best: The UK’s ITV-1 TV channel screened a truly excellent documentary on the evening of Sunday, 26th September, two days prior to the NTTD premiere. Entitled Being James Bond, the programme enabled Craig to look back and reflect on his 15 years as 007. He was in great form, taking time to offer a range of thoughts on his long service as Fleming’s ‘blunt instrument’. And, in a great bonus for Bond fans, it included some unseen behind-the-scenes footage. It was another dose of double-0 heaven, and included interesting comments from the EON producers…