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Thursday, October 4, 2012
This is a very special year for James Bond fans everywhere. Not only are we celebrating 50 years (!) of 007 on screen, but there are now just weeks to go before the 23 rd Bond movie hits our screens, with Daniel Craig back as MI6’s best operative. At one point, it looked as if this would never happen. But Bond, as they say, is well and truly back. As part of the special celebrations, Friday October 5 has been made Global James Bond Day. The special day will see a series of 007-related events around the world, including a global online (and live) charity auction (organised by Christies in London), a global survey to discover the favourite Bond film of people on a country-by-country basis across the world, a film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, a special music of Bond evening in Los Angeles, and the opening of the ‘Designing 007: 50 years of Bond Style’ exhibition in Toronto, after its highly successful run in London recently. Other events on the day include, for James Bond fans in the UK, a chance to see the new James Bond documentary ‘Everything or Nothing’ at selected Odeon Cinemas. This documentary provides a detailed history of the creation and evolution of Bond on screen, and contains a host of new and rare archive material. 
Many Bond fans will know by now that the award-winning British artist Adele will be singing the theme song to ‘Skyfall’. The song will be released via her official website on Friday October 5, the anniversary day of the release of the first 007 film ‘Dr. No’ in 1962. It is also, of course, Global James Bond Day. The rumours about Adele had been around for some time, and were fanned even more when Adele appeared as a special guest on the Jonathan Ross Show some months back. When mischievous Ross hummed the James Bond theme, Adele was placed in a very difficult position! The JBIFC first got wind of the fact that it was officially Adele a few weeks ago, when an insider at the recording studio became a bit of a bigmouth (as the English would say). We should have fed him to the sharks, or called the Spectre assassination branch. 
The November issue of the popular British sci-fi magazine SFX, which hit British news-stands in late September, contained some excellent coverage of ‘Skyfall’, together with an interview with Danny Kleinman (the man charged with designing the title sequences for the new Bond movie), and a rare piece by screenwriter Christopher Wood, who wrote the screen treatments for ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (1977) and ‘Moonraker’ (1979). Wood also wrote the special tie-in novels that were issued for both movies. In the magazine’s ‘Skyfall’ coverage, there was some interview material with Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. At one point, the producers made some intriguing comments about future possible Bond movie plotlines. Responding to a question about why the ‘Quantum’ organisation was not used in ‘Skyfall’, Wilson revealed that they have not abandoned the organisation: ‘No, I think it’s still out there, but we just don’t refer to it in this particular film’. And tantalisingly, as SFX also noted, Wilson revealed that they have the rights to bring back Blofeld and Spectre, which played such a big role in the Bond movies of the 1960s before legal issues with Kevin McClory stopped EON utilising them. Wilson added: ‘We believe we can use them. They’re a little dated at the moment. We went for the Quantum organisation, which was more business oriented, trying to corner the market on scarce resources, rather than a criminal organisation that did blackmail and bank robberies’. 
Some interesting comments were made by the showbiz columnist Baz Bamigboye in the UK’s Daily Mail on September 21. Bamigboye, who has broken various items of news about ‘Skyfall’ over the past year, said that we should expect to see Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and Ralph Fiennes in future Bond films. Bamigboye claimed in his gossip column: ‘It’s already known that Whishaw is the new Q and this page revealed a while back that Naomie is the new Moneypenny. The Skyfall trailer hints as to what Fiennes’s involvement might be, but I’m not going to give it away – though I’ve known for more than a year, and there are rumours galore on the internet’. Bamigboye continued: ‘All three actors have options in their deals to return in other Bond films (the 24 th in the series will start shooting in the next 18 months)’. Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes has been making an impact as Magwitch in a new big screen version of ‘Great Expectations’, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. 
John Patterson, writing in the Guardian newspaper’s weekly ‘Guide’ magazine on September 29, paid generous tribute to Bond producer Harry Saltzman. He opened his article by saying: ‘When it comes time to celebrate 50 years of the James Bond franchise... I hope we recall the half-forgotten man of the whole enterprise: the man who, after reading Goldfinger, discerned the potential movie fortune lying dormant in the novels of Ian Fleming; the man who made Sean Connery a star, and sealed Michael Caine’s fortune by giving him his own spy franchise...’. Patterson noted that Harry Saltzman was, by all accounts, the ultimate caricature of the movie producer: warm, loud, crass, and a consummate gambler, with a keen eye for the main chance ‘and a tight fist around the purse strings’. But for all that, ‘Saltzman ended being behind some of the most important movies in 1960s British cinema’. According to Patterson, Saltzman was part of the large and largely undocumented influx of creative Canadians that landed in London in the late 1950s and early 1960s and, after a few failures, caught the fleeting zeitgeist of the times with the movie ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, a gritty kitchen-sink drama which made a star of a young Albert Finney (who, coincidentally, is in ‘Skyfall’ as the Bond ancestral home gamekeeper). Moreover, Saltzman pushed for Sean Connery to be Bond, along with Broccoli, against the demands of the studio bosses in America. Without Saltzman, wrote Patterson, ‘British cinema of the 1960s – and ever after – would look decidedly different, and a lot less fun’. 
You have to hand it to Sam Mendes: he went all out to get some really talented stars for ‘Skyfall’. One of these was actress Helen McCrory, who has a small but important part in the new Bond movie as a British Member of Parliament. She has been in the UK’s newspapers quite a bit recently because of her role in the ITV-1 drama ‘Leaving’, and also for her part in ‘The Last of the Haussmans’, a play at London’s famous National Theatre, which has received high praise from the critics. Married to ‘Homeland’ actor Damian Lewis, 43-year old Helen is, primarily, a stage actress, but has also played various acclaimed parts on TV, such as Cherie Blair in the dramas ‘The Queen’ and ‘The Special Relationship’. McCrory was persuaded to take a part in ‘Skyfall’ by Sam Mendes, who personally asked her. And she is very loyal to Mendes: various journalists have tried to prise some details out her concerning ‘Skyfall’, but she has not succumbed. Although she has remained very tight-lipped about her Bond role in media interviews, she clearly thoroughly enjoyed being in the movie. Back in April, she told the London Evening Standard newspaper, for example: ‘It’s great, and I am enjoying it tremendously. I can’t reveal too much about my part but I think there is a lot of writing now for women who are in their sexual prime in their forties’. She also told the Sunday Times, which conducted a lengthy interview with her recently, that: ‘It’s a Bond movie. Everyone wants to be in a Bond movie’. But she refused to add any detail: ‘They are more secretive than the real MI5’. She joked that she would be ‘abducted’ if she said anything more! 
The BBC’s TV and radio listings magazine Radio Times was something of a James Bond special on September 8, and featured an attractive image of Craig, Connery and Moore on its front cover. Inside the magazine, readers were able to peruse an article by the BBC film expert Barry Norman, who at one point revealed that his father, the film director Leslie Norman, had been on the short list to direct the first 007 movie ‘Dr. No’. Norman also gave recalled some memories of the time when he interviewed Roger Moore in Rio de Janeiro, during the making of ‘Moonraker’. At the time, said Norman, Roger was at loggerheads with Cubby Broccoli over his pay for Bond and whether he would make another Bond movie. Just before the interview began, Cubby apparently said to Norman: ‘Ask him – ask him if he’s going to do the next movie’. So Barry Norman did ask Roger, only to get an evasive but smooth answer which could be interpreted either way! Broccoli was not best pleased. The magazine also contained an article on the music of 007 (to tie in with a BBC Radio 2 special live evening of Bond music on September 14) and a survey asking readers ‘Who is the best Bond?’, with a boxed set of Blu-ray ‘Bond at 50’ discs as a prize, something guaranteed to put somebody in 007 heaven. 
Sir Roger Moore, who was featured in the hour-long programme ‘Piers Morgan’s Life Stories’ on the UK’s ITV-1 on Friday September 14, was also profiled in the September 8 edition of the ITV magazine TVTimes. The article, by David Hollingsworth, looked at Sir Roger’s illustrious TV career, his charity work, his four marriages, and, of course, his long service as Her Majesty’s Secret Servant 007. On TV, Sir Roger was in ‘Ivanhoe’ (1958-59), ‘The Alaskans’ (1959-1960), ‘Maverick’ (1959-61), and ‘The Persuaders’ (1971-72). More famously, he was also Simon Templar, otherwise known as ‘The Saint’ (1962-69). In fact, as well as being the 50 th anniversary of the James Bond films, 2012 is also the golden jubilee of ‘The Saint’. ‘Ah, yes, Simon Templar is getting old, too’, said Roger. On James Bond, Roger recalled particularly enjoying filming ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (1977). He said: ‘I think, perhaps, we reached the right level of humour’. He also repeated something he has said on previous occasions: that he would still love to play a Bond villain: ‘They get all the best lines’. Sir Roger, who was knighted in 2003, also reflected on his hard work for children’s charity UNICEF: ‘I’d say it has become a full-time job. There’s a great deal to do and it’s hard to know when and where to stop’. 
On Tuesday September 18, at 8.00pm, the cable and satellite channel Sky Arts 1 screened the first episode of its new series on ‘British Legends of Stage and Screen’. The subject of the first programme was Sir Christopher Lee, well known to Hammer Horror fans as Dracula but also to the 007 fanbase as Francisco Scaramanga, the ruthless assassin with the golden gun, who charged a million a shot. Directed by Anthony Fabian, and narrated by Sue MacGregor, the special Sky Arts profile of Sir Christopher inevitably touched upon his role as a Bond baddie in 1974-75. When he was offered the role and read the script, Lee said of Scaramanga: ‘He had three nipples. When I read that I thought it’s a bit odd. I asked my doctor and he said, oh no, it’s quite common’. Reflecting further on the character, Lee pointed out that Scaramanga ‘had a sense of humour, was very polite, but also deadly’. He also referred to the fact that Bond author Ian Fleming was Lee’s cousin, and revealed that Fleming was at Eton school with a boy named Scaramanga who he ‘disliked intensely’. It was left to viewers to draw the obvious conclusions! Sir Christopher also gave some thoughts on his award of a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours List in 2009 (he was Knighted by Charles, Prince of Wales). He also reflected on his award of a BAFTA Fellowship in 2001, and said he felt ‘so emotional’ at the audience’s reaction to his appearance on stage to accept the BAFTA award and, with it, the recognition of his film peers. He said he had felt ‘so overwhelmed’. You really earned it, Sir Christopher! 
Charlie Higson as James Bond? Surely not? Yes, it’s true, but not quite in the way you might have expected. The author of the ‘Young Bond’ book series has penned the screenplay for a new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s popular story ‘A Caribbean Mystery’, made for the British TV channel ITV1 and to be screened in 2013. Higson has included a small role for himself in the plot as ‘James Bond’, the real-life American ornithologist, whose name author Ian Fleming ‘borrowed’ for his new secret agent in his debut novel ‘Casino Royale’. The real James Bond, who sadly died in 1989 (aged 89) was author of ‘Birds of the West Indies’, one of Fleming’s favourite books, which often lay on the coffee table at Fleming’s Jamaican home Goldeneye. 
Sunday, September 2, 2012
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On the eve of the 23 rd official James Bond movie, and Daniel Craig’s third adventure as 007, former Bond Sir Roger Moore has lavished praise on the current holder of the double-0 status. Writing in the UK’s Mail newspaper, Sir Roger offered his reflections on the Bond franchise to help publicise his new book Bond on Bond, and said at one point: ‘I loved Casino Royale and Daniel Craig. He is a wonderful actor, certainly the best actor to play Bond’. The former Bond also wrote: ‘I believe that Skyfall is going to have a lot more humour in it than Quantum of Solace did, something I’ll be pleased to see’. Sir Roger’s exciting new book, which helps celebrate 50 years of the official Bond franchise on screen, also promises a good range of material on the evolution of the 007 series, the key characters behind the scenes on the movies, and Moore’s own personal reflections on some of the experiences he had during his seven-film tenure as 007. At one point, Sir Roger revealed that his old producer friend Sir Lew Grade, reacting to the news that Moore was to be the new 007, said (with tears in his eyes): ‘Roger, don’t do it. It’ll ruin your career!’ According to Roger, Sir Lew ‘could not have been more wrong. I had such fun with James Bond’. 
The days and hours are counting down. It is not long to go now before the 23 rd James Bond film hits the big screen, and a stark indication of how important this is to the backing studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was made plain in a recent edition of the UK’s highbrow newspaper The Financial Times (August 23). In a special article by Matthew Garrahan, the newspaper revealed that a huge amount is resting on the box-office success of ‘Skyfall’ this autumn, especially after the studio’s recent return to stability after several years in the financial wilderness. According to Garrahan, the new James Bond film could propel an initial public offering of the studio, with MGM appointing advisers to the public markets just two years after it emerged from bankruptcy. If this goes ahead, MGM will join a small and select club of standalone, quoted Hollywood studios. And ‘Skyfall’, and subsequent Bond movies, could play a crucial role in this. The company’s new management team of Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum have won much praise in the movie industry for rescuing MGM, and they are strongly looking to James Bond to help them consolidate this success. According to industry insiders, it is also one of the reasons why the Bond production cycle is being switched back to one movie every two years. 
James Bond producer Barbara Broccoli gave a wide-ranging interview to the London Evening Standard newspaper on Thursday August 16. She gave her thoughts on ‘Skyfall’, the world of 007, and on the movie industry in general. The lengthy interview took place at the Gielgud Theatre in London, which has been temporarily turned into a racetrack for the 1924 Olympics, as part of the new stage version of ‘Chariots of Fire’ (which is co-produced by Barbara Broccoli). The interview started out with Barbara reflecting on the surprise people felt when Queen Elizabeth II made her Bond debut in the short 007 film made by Danny Boyle for the recent Olympics Opening Ceremony. ‘We saw the back of the Queen and everyone I’m sure thought, ‘It’s Helen Mirren’. And when she turned around it was like a volcanic eruption. How wonderful of her to have done it’. The daughter of legendary Bond producer Cubby Broccoli also revealed that she grew up in a household where James Bond was talked about so much she thought he was a real person until she was about seven! 
Interest in the life and times of James Bond author Ian Fleming continues apace. A well-written article in the UK newspaper the Independent in May explored the food and dining habits of our favourite secret agent 007. The article, written by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, looked at the links between Fleming’s fascination with food and the dining habits he gave to his fictional creation James Bond in his spy novels. An article by Robert Ryan in the Sunday Times in early July looked at Fleming’s favourite haunts in the Austrian Tyrol and the village where he spent a lot of time in the 1920s. Fleming’s mother sent the 19-year old there to be tutored by the Forbes Dennises, who ran a hotel in the village. Ernan Forbes Dennis was a former MI6 officer, and Ryan claimed that this may have inspired Fleming’s writing imagination. There was also some interesting new revelations about the Bond author in the new issue of the UK magazine British Archaeology (September/October, 2012), which explored how Fleming developed his passion for hunting for treasure, both at sea and on land. The 007 author was apparently one of the first to recognise and pioneer the technology used for metal-detecting. 
It was announced in early August that, for the first time in British TV history, all of the James Bond movies will be made available on one special channel. In a press release issued by ‘Sky’, the company revealed that it is going to dedicate an entire channel - SKY MOVIES HD - to the full James Bond catalogue throughout October, 2012. The 007 adventures will be available in HD, without those annoying commercial breaks, and all in one place. Two non-EON titles, 1967’s ‘Casino Royale’ and 1983’s ‘Never Say Never Again’, will also be part of the package. Bond fans were also promised loads of extra material’. The new channel will launch on October 5, 2012, to help celebrate 50 years of 007 (‘Dr. No’ was released on October 5, 1962). Pure bliss! 
There is still a small window of time to see the ‘Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style’ exhibition at the Barbican arts centre in central London, but you will have to hurry: it ends on September 5, and then goes on tour. A small band of longstanding JBIFC members and their friends visited the exhibition on Sunday August 12, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The small exhibition ‘Bond Shop’ certainly did well, too. In the late afternoon, the group also briefly visited the car-park entrance to the nearby Smithfield Meat Market, where a scene was shot for ‘Skyfall’ last November. The Sunday culminated in a nice meal on the South Bank, by the River Thames, close to where key scenes for the pre-credits to ‘The World Is Not Enough’ were shot in 1999. The JBIFC is working on a possible London 007 locations walk in the future. Watch this space. 
One of the earliest glimpses for British Bond fans of George Lazenby’s 007 for came in the September, 1969, issue of the popular movie magazine Films and Filming. In a pictorial preview spread over two pages, with five B/W stills, the magazine told its readers the new Bond movie ‘introduces a new star, George Lazenby, as Bond and this time the emphasis is on character and plot rather than the technical gimmicks of the other Bond films’. The same issue carried a rare profile of Bond producer Harry Saltzman. Tuesday, July 3, 2012
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One of the highlights of this year’s celebrations of the 50th Anniversary of the James Bond films is a new exhibition opening this July. ‘Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style’, which is about the craft behind creating the Bond ‘look’ on screen, is opening to the public at the Barbican, the famous arts and exhibition centre in central London, on July 6. The Barbican has joined forces with EON Productions to create a unique exhibition designed by Ab Rogers, curated by the Barbican, and guest-curated by fashion historian Bronwyn Cosgrave and Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming. With unprecedented access to EON’s extensive archive, the new exhibition is being billed as a ‘multi-sensory experience’ where costumes, automobiles, gadgets, graphic design, weapons and other Bond-related material will introduce visitors to the creation and development of the iconic ‘Bond style’ over its fifty year history. The exciting new exhibition will show-case the work of such Bond luminaries as Special Effects experts John Stears, Syd Caine and Chris Corbould, Production Designers Sir Ken Adam and Peter Lamont, and costume designers Bumble Dawson, Donfeld, Julie Harris, Lindy Hemming, Ronald Patterson, Emma Porteous, and Jany Temime. The exhibition runs from July 6 – September 5, and its opening times will be: 11.00am-8.00pm (Thursdays until 10.00pm). The Barbican is now taking bookings for tickets, via: www.barbican.org.uk/bond 
Since our last Newsletter in May, all the main filming on ‘Skyfall’ has been completed and the new 007 movie has entered the post-production stage. The last piece of shooting was carried out by the Second Unit in Turkey, and was ‘in the can’ by Friday May 25. The Second Unit, which stayed behind in Turkey after the Main Unit had completed principal photography in Istanbul, had continued some stunt work in Adana with Daniel Craig. The Bond star was filmed clinging on to the side of a moving train carriage and hauling himself back on to the roof. Daniel then left Turkey on the weekend of May 19-20. There was then about a week’s worth of further filming carried out by the Second Unit, which also included some location work in the picturesque Duzici district, a pretty location in the Mediterranean area of Turkey. Duzici has some spectacular landscape and, in particular, a popular waterfall. 
The filming for ‘Skyfall’ involved one of the longest-ever shoots for a 007 movie. Indeed, when Bond co-producer Michael G. Wilson appeared as a guest on BBC Breakfast TV on Monday May 21, he commented at one point in the interview that the filming had ‘been a long haul, but it’s going to be worth it’. Bond star Daniel Craig flew out of Adana on Turkish Airlines and headed straight for New York (where he has a home) for a well-earned rest. He was next spotted on May 24 in New York City, having lunch with his wife Rachel Weisz. Needless to say, some paparazzi were quickly on the scene. Meanwhile, work has started on approximately five months of post-production. One key (and eagerly anticipated) component of this process will be the movie’s soundtrack and theme song, which is now in the capable hands of new Bond composer Thomas Newman. Speaking at the recent 2012 BMI Film and TV Awards, when asked about his upcoming Bond work, Newman replied that he’s ‘just brainstorming right now’. 
Another major component of both the pre-production, shooting, and post-production of a new Bond movie is the international marketing campaign. As expected, the global campaign for ‘Skyfall’ promises to be another epic in the best Bond tradition. Even though ‘Quantum of Solace’ was found wanting by some critics after the high standard set by the acclaimed ‘Casino Royale’, the box office numbers still remained very strong, helped considerably by the massive marketing campaign thrown behind Craig’s second movie. ‘Skyfall’ will receive the same treatment but, as far the JBIFC understands it, on an even bigger scale. In fact, the campaign has already been months in the planning. In the UK, for example, the ‘Skyfall’ campaign is based on the assumption that the new Bond movie will be given a ‘12’ certificate, and the target audience (as previously) will be men and women aged 13 to 59. As well as the teaser trailer, which was released on May 21, we understand there will be a major billboard and poster campaign in the centre of London (where key parts of ‘Skyfall’ were filmed), including in London Underground stations (where 150,000 people use the tube system every hour) and in busy shopping streets, such as High Street Kensington. Media and marketing campaign experts estimate that effective billboards can adjust box office figures dramatically if you ensure there are eye-catching posters. 
There was some sad news on June 19, when it was reported that stunt expert George Leech, who performed many stunts on the Bond movies from 1962-1985, had passed away on June 17. Not only did the veteran stuntman perform numerous dangerous stunts in the EON series, but he often appeared on screen too, usually as a menacing henchman (as in ‘Thunderball’ and ‘For Your Eyes Only’), or as a member of the support staff of Q-Branch (as in ‘Goldfinger’). He was very generous with his time to Bond fans, including the JBIFC. He strongly held the view that the key to the success of the Bond movies was, as he put it, ‘superb action, good characters, good writing’. George had two daughters, and one of them, Wendy, became one of the first major stunt-women in the UK stunt industry. She is married to another Bond stunt veteran, Vic Armstrong. In Vic’s recent autobiography, ‘The True Adventures of the World’s Greatest Stuntman’, there are some interesting details about George’s role as the stunt arranger for ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, which many fans feel contained some of his best work. RIP, George. 
The UK’s ITV network started a special season of Bond film screenings in May, entitled ‘Bond: 007 at 50’. There are two reasons for the special season: first of all, of course, it is part of ITV’s own tribute to the 50 th Anniversary of the iconic Bond series. But the second reason is that it could be the last chance for British viewers to see the Bond movies on the ITV network for some time, as the rival ‘Sky’ network recently signed a deal to take over the rights to the British TV showings from ITV. The ITV season commenced with ‘Dr. No’ on Saturday May 12, followed on May 19 by ‘From Russia With Love’, and then a week later by ‘Goldfinger’ on May 26. After a short break ‘Thunderball’ was shown on June 16, ‘You Only Live Twice’ on June 23, and ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ on June 30. The JBIFC understands that ITV intend to screen the whole series during its special Bond season. Apart from the usual annoyingly frequent advert breaks, all the prints so far have been in mint condition. 
It will be the end of what has become a bit of a ‘tradition’ in the UK. The ITV network first won the right to screen Bond movies on British television way back in the mid-1970s. When ITV premiered ‘Dr. No’ on the small-screen on Tuesday October 28 th, 1975, it was something of a ‘big event’ in the UK, which at that point still only had three (yes, three) TV channels! Unsurprisingly, the film made number one in that week’s television viewers ratings in the UK. The tie-in edition of ITV’s TVTimes magazine from that week (featuring Connery and Andress on the cover) is quite sought after by paper memorabilia collectors today, closely followed by the ‘From Russia With Love’ issue (which featured a painted image of Connery on the cover). The Bond movies on ITV went on to become a regular feature at Christmas time and at Bank Holidays, and a whole new generation of British Bond fans were introduced to James Bond via the television. The latest information is that the Sky network, who take over the rights to Bond on British TV from autumn 2012, will help celebrate the Bond series with a special ‘Skyfall’ TV programme. 
Interesting news broke in May that the BAFTA-award winning British film-maker Duncan Jones, who happens to be the son of singer David Bowie, has signed up to direct a new biopic of James Bond author Ian Fleming, which is due to start production in late 2012. As the son of a major rock star, Jones knows just what it is like to live in the shadow of a famous father. Known as Zowie Bowie, he began to use his birth name Duncan Jones from the age of 18. Moreover, 41-year old Jones told The Times newspaper that he sees interesting parallels between the Bond author’s life and his own. Although he later developed a reputation as a devil-may-care playboy, Ian Fleming also struggled to live up to an illustrious, high-achieving father. As Fleming biographers have pointed out, Valentine Fleming, MP, was a war hero who was adored and admired by all who knew him, and was tragically killed on the Western Front in. His obituary was even written by Winston Churchill. His son Ian struggled at Sandhurst officer training college, and later as a stockbroker in the City, the financial heart of London. Easily bored, his heart was simply not in it. The real turning-point for Fleming actually came in World War Two, when he was appointed as a British Naval Intelligence officer and seemed to find his calling, devising elaborate ruses to fool the enemy. 
There have been three previous made-for-TV movies about the life of the James Bond author. ‘Goldeneye’ (1989), made by Anglia TV in the UK, starred Charles Dance as Fleming, while ‘Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming’ (1990), saw Jason Connery (son of Sean) starring as the young British Naval Intelligence officer. While the Charles Dance biopic was very much rooted in reality, the emphasis in the Jason Connery movie was much more on 007-style movie escapism. More recently, the BBC made ‘Ian Fleming: Bondmaker’ (2005), a more grounded and serious docu-drama which featured Ben Daniels as the 007 creator. The James Bond author has also briefly appeared in two other films in recent times, both featuring Fleming in his wartime guise: James D’Arcy played Fleming in the Sean Bean commando movie ‘Age of Heroes’ (2011), and Tobias Menzies (the actor who was Villiers in ‘Casino Royale’) played Fleming in the ITV drama ‘Any Human Heart’ (2010). Interestingly, the latter was written by the recently appointed new Bond author William Boyd. There have also been one or two other projects proposed about Fleming over the years. In 2008 and early 2009, for example, unconfirmed reports emerged that Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Appian Way’ production company had commissioned a possible screenplay about the Bond author’s life. Friday, June 29, 2012
Position The Marker in The Middle of The Fairway Using The D-Pad, Now Push The Right Stick All The Way To The Right Till The Marker Cannot Go Any Further.
Next, Use The D-Pad To Position The Marker back Into The Centre of The Fairway, Now Move The Right Stick All The Way Across to The Left Till The Marker Cannot Go Any Further,
Next, Use The D-Pad To Finally Position The Marker Taking Care To Note The Wind Strength in The Usual Way.
As You Move Back From The Left You Will Now see You have Gained at Least 10 Yards Maybe More On Your Opponent, Many Par 4's Come into Range of a Drive Now, and Par 5's Might Net You a Double Eagle.
Thats The Pro Power Drive in a Nutshell, Hope it Improves Your Game :0)
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
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Daniel Craig appeared at a special press conference and photocall held by the ‘Skyfall’ production team at a hotel in Istanbul on Sunday April 29. The main unit have been in Turkey since April 22, and have shot sequences in the seaside town and port of Fethiye, with further shooting due to take place in Istanbul itself. They have also shot some sequences on a luxury yacht called the ‘Regina’, near the port area of Fethiye. As many Bond fans know, second unit filming has already been taking place in Turkey over the last few weeks, in both the southern province of Adana and in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar. The press conference, attended by members of the Turkish and international press, was held at the prestigious Ciragan Palace Hotel, a five-star hotel in Istanbul, which used to be the Sultan’s Summer Palace and retreat during the days of the old Ottoman Empire. In beautiful baroque-style surroundings, the conference saw Craig line up on stage to answer various questions from the media, alongside Ola Rapace (who plays a cold-blooded mercenary in the Turkish sequences), Berenice Marlohe (who plays ‘Severine’), Naomie Harris (who plays ‘Eve’), director Sam Mendes, and EON producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. Sam Mendes, describing both his and Daniel’s approach to the character of 007, said he would not have made ‘Skyfall’ without Daniel Craig because of the complexity that Craig has managed to bring to the character. Mendes said: ‘What Fleming created was a very conflicted character. Some of those things are explored in this movie, because Daniel as an actor is capable of exploring them. That was a big thing for me, having a Bond who I believed in, who I felt could take the character to a new level’. 
Speaking at the same press conference, 007 star Daniel Craig said he and Mendes worked closely together to develop the story for ‘Skyfall’, and to develop the character of James Bond even further. Craig revealed: ‘We were in continuous conversation, once Sam agreed to do it. We weren’t supposed to talk to each other because MGM hadn’t done the deal. But we couldn’t shut up. It was a chance for us to re-read Ian Fleming, and we started e-mailing each other, “What about this, and what about this?”, and that’s how it snowballed’.
Speaking to the new June, 2012 issue of Empire magazine, Sam Mendes went into some further detail about what we can expect in ‘Skyfall’. He referred to his original decision to accept directing duties on ‘Skyfall’, discussed some of the basic rules on a Bond movie, and also gave some reflections on the balance he intends to have between thrills, action and emotion in Daniel Craig’s third 007 movie. The magazine revealed that Mendes and Craig, who had first worked together on ‘Road to Perdition’, had bumped into each other again in 2009, when Craig was starring on stage on Broadway, alongside Hugh Jackman, in the play ‘A Steady Rain’. In a flash of inspiration, Craig had suggested that Mendes should consider doing the next James Bond movie. Uncertain at first, the idea had quickly grown in appeal for Mendes, and he signed up: ‘It was pleasing that it came from Daniel to begin with. One of the reasons I’m doing this is because I think, like a lot of people, Casino Royale woke me up again to the possibilities of Bond. It seemed for the first time to be a real person in a real situation. It felt anchored again’. Regarding the content of the new 007 movie, Mendes said that thrills and action are necessary, ‘and that’s what I intend to supply, as well as a kind of emotional engagement that maybe you haven’t seen before in Bond’. The plan was to see Bond ‘physically pushing himself’. The new June, 2012, issue of Empire magazine, with some other Bond-related articles, is on sale in the UK now, priced £3.99. 
Bond news came thick and fast during April. The official James Bond website, 007.com, released a new ‘Skyfall’ Videoblog earlier in the month, concentrating on the location scouting for the movie and on some of the second unit shooting carried out in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The new Videoblog contained some interesting behind-the-scenes footage of second unit Director Alexander Witt speaking about the movie, together with members of the production team scouting for Turkish and Chinese locations, preparing scenes, and shooting scenes on Shanghai’s main highways. Witt spoke briefly about shooting the arrival of James Bond at the airport, and called Shanghai an ‘amazing city’ to shoot in at night, as it is, he said, ‘amazing for the lens’. Michael Lerman, the First Assistant Director, reflected in the Videoblog on the challenges of location scouting and on trying to find the ideal spot for a sequence, and, like Witt, also praised Shanghai as a ‘special city’ with a great skyline. Similarly, Angus More Gordon, a Production Manager on the movie, also referred to the ‘rather unusual blue light’ found on the major highways in Shanghai. Another treat on the Videoblog was the inclusion of a long-shot of Daniel Craig as 007 sitting at a bar, with the Shanghai skyline in the background, a shot that was filmed at Pinewood Studios. From the brief evidence in the latest Videoblog, it is clear that Bond fans are in for a visual feast when ‘Skyfall’ hits the cinemas later this year. 
There was some major James Bond literary news in early April when, in a surprise move, the Ian Fleming estate announced that English author William Boyd is to write the next James Bond novel. He will follow in the footsteps of Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver. In a press release issued to the world’s media, Boyd called it a ‘once in a lifetime challenge’, and said: ‘When the Ian Fleming estate invited me to write the new James Bond novel, I accepted at once. For me the prospect appeared incredibly exciting and stimulating’. Boyd revealed that he plans to set the new 007 adventure in 1969, and that it will represent a return to ‘classic Bond’. Boyd, who was born in 1952, added: ‘My father introduced me to the James Bond novels in the 1960s and I read them all then – From Russia With Love being my favourite’. Corrine Turner, the Managing Director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, commented: ‘William Boyd is a contemporary English writer whose classic novels combine literary elements with a broad appeal. His thrillers occupy the niche that Ian Fleming would fill were he writing today and with similar style and flair. This, alongside his fascination with Fleming himself, makes him the perfect choice to take Bond back to his 1960s world’. 
News emerged in April of a plan by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) to play the world-famous James Bond theme tune as they pass by the MI6 Headquarters in a boat. According to the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper (April 22), a boat carrying the LPO will play the iconic Monty Norman theme tune as it passes the British Secret Service building during the upcoming Diamond Jubilee river pageant. The music will be one of 15 individual compositions, each designed to suit a particular location along the River Thames, which runs through the heart of London. The 80-minute journey will take place on June 3. The newspaper noted that crowds of as many as 2m people have been forecast to line the banks of the Thames as the Queen’s barge proceeds down the river, which will be the highlight of a procession of about 1,000 boats. The 60 members of the LPO, who will sail on the Symphony barge as part of the procession, will perform various pieces along the River, including the theme tune to Chariots of Fire, and the music will be amplified by a special sound system. The LPO will start its journey at the Albert Bridge in West London. David Parry, the LPO’s conductor, told the newspaper that the choice of the James Bond theme was ‘perfect, we thought, as the music we will be playing throughout is consciously there to stir people’. As many Bond fans know, the famous MI6 building, located near Vauxhall Bridge, was first seen in ‘Goldeneye’ in 1995, and also played a significant role in ‘The World Is Not Enough’ in 1999. It will again be a key feature in ‘Skyfall’, which includes an explosion on Vauxhall Bridge.
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