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Tuesday, December 23, 2014
The JBIFC would like to wish all our readers, members and supporters a very Merry Christmas and a ‘Spectacular’ New Year. 
After months of speculation, Thursday December 4 at 11.00am GMT saw Sam Mendes take to the stage at Pinewood Studios, where he revealed to the world that Bond no. 24 in the long-running EON franchise was titled SPECTRE. Mendes explained, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘Those of you who have some knowledge of the Bond franchise and the legend of Bond will probably have some idea what that refers to, but I couldn’t possibly comment!’ 
Mendes also went into a little more detail about the reasons for the title. He told the press: ‘I was able today to say that the title of the 24 th movie is SPECTRE, and for those who know their Bond – which is quite a lot of people – SPECTRE is the name of a criminal organisation that featured in Ian Fleming’s novels from a very early stage. Beyond that, I can’t really say much more, but I love the fact that it’ll lead to endless speculation and it also is going to feel as if some big shadows from Bond’s deep past are going to resurface’. The SPECTRE organisation, of course, as many Bond fans are aware, has played a prominent role in the Bond universe, first appearing in Ian Fleming’s novel Thunderball (1961), which had been based on a screen treatment the 007 author had originally worked on with Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham in the late 1950s. In one sense, ‘SPECTRE’ had been the Bond author’s replacement for ‘SMERSH’ (‘Death to Spies’), the ruthless Russian intelligence and assassination organisation which Fleming had previously used in his writings. Whereas SMERSH had been ideological and a product of the Cold War, SPECTRE was more about private profit from crime, and also about the villainous ambitions of a single individual. Instead of having a murderous state-sponsored organisation (as with SMERSH), the new concept (so to speak) in Thunderball was now an enterprise called the ‘Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion’ (or SP.E.C.T.R.E. for short), a private-sector criminal syndicate based at a secret HQ in Paris, and run by arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. 
The SPECTRE crime syndicate’s managerial executive in Fleming’s fictional Bond world consisted of 21 main members, each known by their number from 1-21. According to Fleming, SPECTRE was staffed by a combination of people from a variety of previous outfits: ex-members of SMERSH, the Nazi Gestapo, the Mafia and the Chinese Black Tong crime network of Peking. The concept of SPECTRE, of course, was also used in the early EON Bond movies (starting with Dr. No in 1962), together with the character of Blofeld (who first appeared - in profile only - in From Russia, With Love in 1963), but both the organisation and the character of Blofeld later became the subject of a complex legal tussle between Kevin McClory and EON/Danjaq in the mid-1970s. Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, who had by then taken on the role of solo producer when Harry Saltzman departed after The Man With The Golden Gun, had originally intended to have Blofeld return in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). But the legal objections and claims to ownership of the character of Blofeld being made by McClory at the time had forced a reluctant rethink by EON, much to Cubby’s frustration. However, Cubby Broccoli was able, in a sense, to still make a point about the character and have a subtle dig at McClory: Blofeld appeared in all but name in the pre-credits to For Your Eyes Only in 1981. McClory finally realised his vision of a rival Bond movie with Never Say Never Again (1983), when Blofeld was played by the respected actor Max von Sydow. However, a number of critics noted how von Sydow’s interpretation lacked menace, possibly the result of severe pruning of the script during production on a movie that was fraught with creative differences and financial and other difficulties (one version of the script had Blofeld dying as a result of being scratched by the poisoned claws of his own white cat). Ever the showman, McClory also continued to harbour dreams of a rival Bond franchise, and regularly announced new titles to keep himself in the movie news. At one point, ironically, McClory even announced that he intended to make a Bond film titled ‘Spectre’! 
The main biographers of James Bond creator Ian Fleming have argued that the 007 author ‘borrowed’ the name ‘Blofeld’ from Tom Blofeld, a Norfolk farmer who was chairman of the Country Gentleman’s Association in England and also a fellow member of Boodle’s, the London club where Fleming often went to eat. Tom Blofeld had also been a contemporary of Fleming’s at Eton public school in the 1920s. Tom Blofeld’s son is the famous English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who is now retired but is still in demand on the lecture circuit to talk about his favourite sport (something no doubt the cricket-loving Sam Mendes is well aware of!). There has also been some interest in Ian Fleming’s evident fascination with certain words, or variations of the same word, in his Bond novels, including the word ‘spectre’. In Fleming’s fourth Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever (1956), at one point Bond’s cover as a diamond smuggler is blown and he is kidnapped by Serraffimo Spang, of the ‘Spangled Mob’, and is locked up in ‘Spectreville’, a ghost town outside Las Vegas. And in a variation on the word, in Fleming’s adventure From Russia, With Love (1957), Tatiana Romanova offers to defect with the coveted ‘Spektor’ coding machine. 
Principal photography on SPECTRE commenced at Pinewood on Monday, December 8, 2014. In the same week, set construction in preparation for some London location shooting also began, with a small crew building some platforms on scaffolding on a section of the Regents Canal at Camden Lock. Week 2 of principal photography thus began with some central London filming and, in a sense, Bond returned to some very familiar territory – the famous River Thames (which was previously used heavily for the pre-credits of The World Is Not Enough in 1999). Monday, December 15 thus saw some sequences shot on the UK capital’s main river which involved both Daniel Craig and Rory Kinnear (who plays the MI6 chief-of-staff Bill Tanner). In what appeared to be a water-borne trip to the MI6 headquarters, which is located near Vauxhall Bridge, the two actors were filmed travelling as front passengers in a speedboat as it sped along the river. They were taken at some speed to the area directly outside the real-life MI6 HQ, with the boat at one point going directly under Vauxhall Bridge itself. Along with Craig and Kinnear, the speedboat was manned by two extras in helmets, who were piloting the boat as 007 and Tanner stood in front of them and looked straight ahead as the boat whizzed along the river. A camera crew, with Mendes on board, travelled alongside the speedboat in their own special boat, filming from a short distance. Both Bond and Tanner wore dark overcoats over suits, with Bond also in black gloves and a scarf (which was undoubtedly needed on a bright but crisp morning on the breezy Thames). After filming the trip up to the MI6 HQ area of Vauxhall, the two actors were then given an even speedier ride back down the river, much to their delight. Both men were in high spirits, swapping jokes and comments with each other as they took in the sights along the embankment. The MI6 building and Vauxhall Bridge also featured, of course, in the previous 007 adventure Skyfall. Dame Judi Dench, as ‘M’, and Rory Kinnear, as Tanner, were seen being stuck in heavy traffic on the Bridge and then witnessing a dramatic explosion at the Secret Service HQ. 
Later that same day (Monday, December 15), the London location shooting continued in the evening, but this time in another part of the capital. This involved Craig as Bond and another key member of the MI6 HQ support team, the ever-loyal Miss Moneypenny (played once again by the lovely 38-year old Naomie Harris). The night-time shooting took place at a plush apartment located in the more up-market area of London’s Notting Hill. A small team of crewmen, arc-lights, cameras, cranes and trailers had arrived in the relatively quiet and exclusive W11 area at the weekend, and took up temporary positions in the residential parking bays outside various townhouses in the nearby streets. Filming then commenced on Monday evening inside an upper-floor apartment in a large former townhouse located on the corner of Stanley Crescent and Ladbroke Gardens, and also outside in the adjacent street. The scenes involved Miss Money penny in the street below, while Craig (as Bond) could be seen through the large window of the apartment. At one point he was filmed looking out of the window, wearing a coloured dressing-gown and gazing down into the street outside the flat. The residents of the elegant townhouses in the area have become quite used to seeing film-makers over the past few years, as a number of movies have made use of the streets. Ironically, in early 2014, Naomi Harris herself shot some scenes in the very same street used by the SPECTRE crew when she filmed for another spy movie, Our Kind of Traitor, which is based on the best-selling espionage novel penned by John le Carre. Harris stars in the gritty film alongside Ewan McGregor. It is understood that the scenes Naomi shot with Craig on the Monday evening are connected with some interior scenes shot at Pinewood in the first week of filming. 
The very next morning, on Tuesday, December 16, the London location shooting returned to the waterways when Sam Mendes oversaw some SPECTRE filming with the speedboat seen on Monday, but this time on a section of the Regents Canal, at Camden Lock. The scenes once more involved Bond star Daniel Craig and MI6 Chief-of-Staff actor Rory Kinnear. A large section of the waterway was closed off for the day as Craig and Kinnear were filmed standing once again in the front section of the speedboat, in a sequence where their boat went across the canal water at (what is known locally as) West Yard and then travelled under an arched bridge, taking them under a large building on the canal-side. Both actors wore dark overcoats over suits, with Bond again in black gloves. While some parts of the canal have good light, other sections do suffer from shadow at certain points in the day. A large back-screen had been put in place to help reflect light, and large floodlight had been suspended from a crane on the opposite bank of the canal. 
Christoph Waltz, who is Franz Oberhauser in SPECTRE, was briefly associated with the world of Bond once before. He played the role of a German spy in the Anglia TV movie Goldeneye (1989), which was a carefully-observed and largely faithful biographical study of Bond author Ian Fleming. The movie was based largely upon the biography of the Bond author written by his former journalistic colleague John Pearson in 1967 (Pearson had first met Fleming back in 1954). The well-received 1989 TV movie starred Charles Dance as Fleming. Ironically, Dance himself had also had a small role as a ‘heavy’ in the Roger Moore 007 adventure For Your Eyes Only (1981). Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Colinmafia @ The Golf Club cmarriott2.blogspot.co.uk
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There are strong indications that the next James Bond movie will at one point make dramatic use of the beautiful Austrian Alps for some snow-bound sequences. Since the last JBIFC Newsletter, various exciting news items have emerged about the possible themes and locations for the upcoming Sam Mendes-directed 007 movie, and it was recently suggested that a 3-day shoot has been scheduled in the small Austrian village of Obertilliach, with sets for another ‘village’ to be constructed nearby. Snow and ice have regularly played a big role in previous Bond movies (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, The World Is Not Enough). Moreover, in Ian Fleming’s 007 books, the author gave the orphan Bond an interesting family history: Bond’s parents had been killed in the Alps. Fleming also described 007 as an expert skier. So, in a sense, Bond 24 will be tapping into some traditional Bond angles with a snow-bound location. Interesting rumours have also emerged (warning: possible spoiler alert here!) that a chase sequence will be shot in the area, involving skidoos (one-person snowmobiles). 
As many Bond fans are aware, news emerged in the early summer that EON’s producers had hired the veteran screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had stepped aside from Bond script-writing duties after Skyfall, to carry out some work on John Logan’s script for Bond 24, and provide it with more ‘punch’ and some extra interplay between 007 and the other characters. Although we have been unable to verify this, the JBIFC has been led to understand that Logan’s main focus in his original treatment had envisaged 007 lying low in a north European country after a mission had gone wrong, but the producers, along with Daniel Craig and Sam Mendes, felt the storyline needed to be widened out and given more action. Purvis and Wade, who worked in close collaboration with Craig and Mendes, have now finished their work on the Logan treatment and have delivered the script, and everybody is now said to be ‘very happy’ with the reworked treatment. 
Since the rights to screen the James Bond films on TV in the UK were recently transferred back to the ITV network, after a brief spell with Sky, ITV have certainly been making the most of its screening opportunities, with regular showings of the movies on ITV4. And this has inevitably led to some interesting reviews and reassessments of the series by various film critics. One veteran writer on 007 is the BBC film critic Barry Norman, who has taken a close interest in the franchise ever since 1961-1962, when he first got to know the then relatively unknown young actor Sean Connery. Norman’s love of the franchise was on display again recently, when he penned one of his typical appreciations of a Bond film, Goldfinger, when ITV screened Connery’s third entry on Saturday August 2. Writing in the BBC’s listings magazine Radio Times, Norman argued: ‘Dr. No was a good start, From Russia With Love a strong follow-up. But it was the third 007 movie Goldfinger that truly established the never-ending franchise because it was here that most of the elements that characterised so many of its successors were first introduced’. He continued: ‘For a start there’s the pre-credits sequence with Bond performing heroic and sexual feats that have little or nothing to do with the action that follows. Then there are the gimmicks, the technological gadgets. The first two films were relatively free of those, but this time around Bond is equipped with such things as an Aston Martin with radar, machine guns and an ejector seat for unwelcome passengers. Add to that Oddjob (Harold Sakata), the Korean valet with a decapitating bowler hat, Shirley Eaton slain by being painted gold and a lethal laser beam that threatens to end 007’s womanising days for good, and you have the quintessential, albeit 50-year-old, Bond movie’. 
There were some further fascinating (unconfirmed) reports in late August that a leading casting agency has been on the lookout for an actor to play a key henchman in Bond 24, a character provisionally named ‘Hinx’. The agency has indicated that the Bond 24 team are interested in equipping the new 007 movie with a memorable or quirky henchman in the tradition of Oddjob or Jaws, as this has arguably been absent from the last three Craig Bond movies. The agency has been looking for a ‘physically fit male between the ages of 30 and 45’, and over 6 foot 2 inches; the successful candidate will undertake stunt training for fights and also some driving duties. It is known that both Craig and Mendes are particular fans of Live and Let Die, and some sources have suggested to us that they may be keen to have a henchman like Tee Hee (played by Julius W. Harris) – a tough henchman with a peculiar physical quirk or ability, but still very believable and dangerous and rooted in reality. Make of all this what you will. Time will tell. 
And here’s some more special Goldfinger news: to help celebrate the 50 th Anniversary this year of the iconic third James Bond movie, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment are to release an elegant Limited Edition gold Steelbook Blu-ray of Goldfinger. Available from September 22, 2014, this exciting new collector’s item will feature sketches of the Aston Martin by legendary Production Designer Sir Ken Adam on the inside of the case and will contain a variety of Special Features, some of them sourced from the archive of EON Productions. There will be Audio Commentaries by the Director Guy Hamilton and other members of cast and crew. There will also be special Featurettes on the movie’s locations, production, publicity campaign, and global impact. In addition, the Steelbook will include the Screen Tests of Theodore Bikel and Tito Vandis, an interview with Honor Blackman, and some notably rare stills. Special Interactive Features will also be available in the Steelbook. The Goldfinger 50 th Anniversary Limited Edition Steelbook will be priced £24.99 in the UK. 
Fancy a trip to Sweden? Our good friend Anders Frejdh, who runs the notably comprehensive Swedish 007 website ‘From Sweden With Love’ (FSWL), has spent the last six months very busily organising a special ‘James Bond Weekend’ in support of the charity UNICEF. There will be exclusive film screenings with Q and As, autograph signings, a Bond exhibition, a charity gala and a live singing performance by none other than Robert Davi who, of course, so memorably played the main villain Franz Sanchez in Licence to Kill (1989). Yes, while Robert Davi still acts in films (he can be seen for example, in The Expendables III, currently in cinemas), he also has another huge talent: he can sing Frank Sinatra songs! Other guests will include director John Glen and stunt coordinator Paul Weston, to name just a few. The special FSWL James Bond weekend will take place September 19-21, 2014. Full details of the not-to-be-missed event can be obtained at: 
John Cleese, former gadget master in two the last two Brosnan 007 films, speaking as his famous Monty Python team embarked on their final reunion stage shows in London in July, voiced some reservations about what he claimed has been the ‘humourless’ tone of the recent James Bond films. Cleese, who played a trainee assistant to ‘Q’ in 1999’s The World Is Not Enough and then assumed the full Quartermaster role in 2002’s Die Another Day (following the tragic death of Desmond Llewelyn in 1999), spoke to the BBC’s Radio Times magazine. The 74-year old comedy actor reminded readers of the magazine that he did two 007 films ‘and then I believe that the tone they needed was that of the Bourne action movies, which are very gritty and humourless’. He said that in his view the action sequences now go on for too long. Cleese has been hard at work recently working on his memoirs, and has just agreed to appear as the villain in The B Team, a new movie directed by Chris Cottam, which will (unofficially) reunite some of the stars from the old Baywatch TV series, but with a comedy and espionage storyline. The movie starts shooting in September. The Monty Python reunion shows took place at the 02 Arena in east London, near the River Thames; this was formerly the Millenium Dome and will be very familiar to Bond fans after it featured in the spectacular pre-credits river chase sequence in The World Is Not Enough. Monday, August 25, 2014
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Sunday, August 24, 2014
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