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Posted: 28 Oct 2012 01:19 AM PDT

ALL the Bonds. All the girls. All the action. All in high-definition. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment mark James Bond's monumental golden anniversary with the release of Bond 50, the complete Bond experience showcasing all 22 classic films on Blu-ray together for the first time ever, neatly packaged into one cool, sleek collectable box-set.

Bond 50 marks the debut of nine James Bond films previously unavailable in high definition Blu-ray and comes with a dossier of more than 122 hours of bonus features.

Bond 50 offers a look at the latest Bond film through videoblogs shot with the cast and crew. The collection also provides two all-new pieces – The World Of Bond and Being Bond – that spotlight the history of 007.

The World Of Bond takes a look at the style and attitude that is signature to Bond; pulling together the cars, the women, the villains and the music that have been a staple of these films for the past 50 years.

It also takes the viewer through the best of five decades worth of classic James Bond in one thrilling montage. The World Of Bond showcases the fascinating and entertaining interplay among unforgettable moments of danger, seduction, adventure and a dash of that distinguished humour that fans have cherished from the beginning up until now.

To add to the experience, The World Of Bond featurette will also offer a Pop-Up Trivia option to challenge even the sharpest of fans with little known facts and interesting trivia from the Bond Universe

Being Bond profiles the six distinguished actors that have had the honour of portraying 007. Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig each reflect on the impact and importance of taking on such a famous role. With this piece, gain insight into what each actor brought to the character and discover how they shaped the world's most timeless secret agent.

Additional bonus content in the Bond 50 collection includes cast and crew commentaries, the behind-the-scenes making of each film, in-depth interviews with every actor that played Bond, a closer look at the exotic locations as shot on-the-set, the women of Bond, the villains of Bond, Bond's cars and gadgets, music videos and more.

The box-set is now available in local video stores.

Licence renewed

Posted: 28 Oct 2012 01:19 AM PDT

Skyfall aims really high and promises to re-energise James Bond.

SITTING on actor and director's chairs respectively at a soundstage at Pinewood Studios, just outside of London, are Daniel Craig and Sam Mendes. The nattily dressed Craig (in the iconic James Bond suit, of course) looks composed and reflective, while the casually dressed Mendes (wearing jeans, a white shirt and jacket, with a messy beard to boot) was more animated and presumably eager to resume the shooting of Skyfall, which was, at the time of this interview sometime in April, into its 99th day.

But first, Craig and Mendes must field some questions about the 23rd Bond film from the international press – via satellite link – gathered at a hotel in Cancun, Mexico. During the 15-minute hook-up, Craig let Mendes do most of the talking, becoming cagey when touching on anything about the film but expertly coming up with one-liners like "I dress like this all the time" when complimented on his sharp outfit, or just adding "that's great" to whatever Mendes has just said.

Mendes smilingly shares that the 44-year-old actor is not so chatty as "he spent all day doing a four-minute dialogue scene. He's talked out whereas, as you can tell, I have hardly started."

Skyfall marks Craig's third outing as the MI6 agent with a licence to kill, and Mendes' first foray into the long-running franchise. Both are fans of Bond films, which is something they've discovered in the course of their friendship, which began when they first worked together on the 2002 film, Road To Perdition.

As a matter of fact, when Skyfall producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli were looking for a new director to take on the latest movie, it was Craig who suggested Mendes. This long-standing relationship between them may very well be the reason why Craig feels he is in good hands when it comes to playing and talking about the famed British agent.

Craig says: "I've got an awful lot to worry about when making a movie like this. There are just all sorts of things that I have to concentrate on and get right; it's just the nature of making a Bond movie. What working with Sam has allowed me to do is just forget about that and concentrate on the job, which has made it just a complete pleasure. I've managed to remember why I love doing the job and an awful lot of that is down to Sam."

Skyfall is especially significant as it marks 50 years of Bond films, which started in 1962 with Dr No. Things were not looking so bright for a while, though – in April 2010 to be specific – when production was suspended owing to uncertainty over the future of film studio MGM, which owns the rights to the Bond film franchise.

While deals were being struck over who and how the studio's debts would be settled, Mendes and his team of writers (Robert Wade, Neal Purvis and John Logan) weren't sitting idly by – they revisited the ready script and made it into what Mendes describes as a fully-realised one.

According to the director, Skyfall features all the things a Bond film is known for: Exotic locations, cool gadgets, clever lines, sexy girls and great action sequences, the classic Aston Martin DB5 that first appeared in Goldfinger in 1964, and a little something else.

"(There is) a variety of tone throughout," says Mendes. "We have two incredible women who bring sex appeal to the film. We've got new characters introduced. And something that Daniel and I have tried very hard to do, is bring a lightness of touch, wit and some of that (Ian) Fleming irony into the movie. It goes to some dark places and that is exciting too."

Skyfall is not based on any of Fleming's books. Nonetheless, it still follows the Bond mould, abiding by the rules about Bond. For one, he operates on his own with lots of style and flair. For another, Skyfall has elements that are similar to Fleming's writing like the situation in which Bond finds himself.

Mendes comments: "One of the things that's interesting about Bond is that within the myth of Bond, within all the things that you feel you know, there are still many, many directions in which you can take the story and the characters.

"The harder you push, the more possibilities there seem to be. And I think that's one of the extraordinary things about Fleming and what he created. Despite the fact (Skyfall) is not directly based on a Fleming novel, I feel the spirit of Fleming and the spirit of Bond as it was 50 years ago is hopefully alive and well in this movie. And we play a little bit on the history of Bond and on those 50 years."

Skyfall sees Bond on an assignment where things go terribly wrong and the lives of several undercover agents around the world are put in jeopardy. The threat moves closer to home when MI6 headquarters is attacked, forcing M (Judi Dench) to relocate the agency underground, in a location used during World War II.

M also has internal problems to deal with when she is challenged by the new chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee (Ralph Fiennes). Now, the only man she can trust to bring some semblance of order to the agency and deal with the threat posed by a bad man named Silva (a very blond Javier Bardem) is James Bond.

In Skyfall, Bond gets to romance two beautiful women (Bérénice Marlohe and Naomie Harris), but the main relationship that's put under the microscope is his relationship with M, probably the only person that represents authority to him.

In the film's production notes, Dench – who has played M seven times now – says: "Bond and M are two people who work well together. She's obviously very fond of him, and she's often accused of being preferential towards him, but she can also be ruthless about him. Daniel and I struck up a good relationship the first time we worked together, and the relationship has developed as each script requires something a little bit more from us. That is especially true with Skyfall."

Craig adds: "Their relationship is based on mutual respect. They both know that every time the chips are down, one of them will have to make a sacrifice – it's difficult to have a touchy-feely relationship with someone under those circumstances. But at the same time – and Sam was very keen on this – Bond's always had in the back of his mind that there's a bit more. It's something he never shows, but the connection is there – and I get a kick out of that as an actor, to play a life you can't show."

A staple in any James Bond movie are the action sequences, always thoroughly planned and (for the most part) flawlessly executed. The 12-minute opening sequence in Skyfall is no different, being the result of three months' worth of rehearsals and two months of filming.

Craig, who has always enjoyed doing physically challenging scenes, does as many of the stunts as possible. He modestly confesses that he has a bunch of magnificent people around him who make him look cool in all the scenes. Mendes, however, paints the picture a little differently.

"I think it's worth saying that one of the reasons why I was excited by Casino Royale and what happened to the Bond movie franchise at that point is that I felt like there was a real man and a real situation for the first time in a while. That's not to say that I didn't love and enjoy what Pierce Brosnan and those before had played, but somehow what Daniel brought to it re-energised it and that's partly because he puts himself through so much in the movie and you can feel it.

"And I'm here to tell you that, sparing his blushes, you know, the amount of work and the amount of sheer physical preparation that goes into it in order for him to make it, as he says, look easy, has been really amazing to me.

"But, you know, it's a real punishing schedule for someone who's in basically every scene and who refuses, because of his pride, to let too many people do stunts for him and all that kind of stuff," Mendes reveals.

■ Skyfall opens in cinemas nationwide on Nov 1.

What were they thinking?

Posted: 28 Oct 2012 01:04 AM PDT

Bond baddies are a colourful lot, but you get the feeling they chose flamboyance over common sense at Villain College.

DRUG lords, terrorist organisations, would-be world dominators, assassins – James Bond has tangled with them all, foiling plots that range from the dreary (monopolising water rights in Quantum Of Solace) to the insane (poisoning all of mankind from space in Moonraker) to the groovy (free drugs with Tarot readings and voodoo dolls in Live And Let Die).

Some of these baddies, unfortunately, must have hit the consciousness-altering stuff a little too hard in their experimental days and came away seriously addled. It was only fitting that Bond put them – and their ill-advised plots – out of our misery.

We look at some of their more Looney Tunes-ideas (and behaviour). Don't get us wrong – we love these guys, but we can't resist poking fun at stuff.

All this and world war, too

Ernest Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) wanted to "inaugurate a little war" between the United States and the (then) Soviet Union in You Only Live Twice to pave the way for an emerging superpower. Never mind that the two countries' capacity for Mutual Assured Destruction would also pretty much mess up the rest of the planet, right, as long as some other country got to call itself a superpower.

Blofeld's dastardly plan was foiled (it all came unravelled thanks to a projectile-firing cigarette), but he was not to be the last 007 villain with mushroom clouds in his eyes ...

Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens) in The Spy Who Loved Me figured that it would be fine to let everyone on land burn in the nuclear fire of World War III while he fiddled away with captive Russian spy Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) in his artificial undersea kingdom of Atlantis.

Stromberg somehow failed to factor in nuclear fallout poisoning his beloved oceans, nuclear winter, its effect on the ocean currents, and all those other nasty environs-nobbling accompaniments to mankind annihilating itself in atomic Armaggedon.

For daring to claim the Bond girl for himself, Stromberg was gut-shot through the (rather long) barrel of his own exploding-harpoon gun. There's something disturbingly Freudian about that.

Earlier, Bond survives Stromberg's attempt to drop him into his shark tank by straddling the sides of the elevator's false bottom, which may have been the incident that gave Austin Powers nemesis Dr Evil his moment of pure inspiration – sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!

Stromberg and Blofeld had grand ideas, but one baddie just wanted to be popular. Media baron Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) was one guy who probably nuked his brain from partying too hard in the 1970s.

Carver figured that triggering a war between England and China in Tomorrow Never Dies would be good for his TV stations' ratings. A conflict that could easily go global, good for your media empire? Sure, if Nielsen monitored the viewing habits of cockroaches.

For his eagerness to kill millions just for ratings and exclusive broadcast rights, and also for ordering the death of Lois Lane, Carver was shredded by a sea drill. Because Bond needed to put a hole in him to match the one in his head.

Yakety-yak, don't talk back

So, let's say that the deadly "Orchideae negra" from Moonraker really existed, and you could wipe out mankind with some super-toxic nerve gas derived from its innards. Not too bad a plan as dastardly schemes of global domination go, so hats off to deranged billionaire Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale), who planned to subsequently repopulate the world with his hand-picked "perfect specimens" once the gas had dissipated. Imagine that – a master race of humans ruled by a Tellarite from Star Trek.

But Drax had one fatal flaw – he talked too much. We all know that Bond baddies tend to spill their guts about their grand schemes. It's sad, really. Are they seeking some kind of validation from 007? Are they trying to get back at him just because he bedded their wives/mistresses/trophy captives?

Even so – as long-winded villains go, Drax was the most loquacious one of all.

He filled Moonraker with such delicious lines as "James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season", and "Mr Bond. You persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you". And let's not forget his straightfaced delivery when instructing a henchman to "Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him".

Yes, Drax was one of the few Bond villains who really appreciated a clever turn of phrase. His megalomaniacal speech to his underlings as he prepared to annihilate humanity was rather inspiring, too.

But like others before him, and many of those who followed, Drax came to a sorry end. All because he wouldn't stop talking; just shoot 007 already. At his own peril, he chose to ignore the sage advice of Eli Wallach from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly: "When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

If Drax hadn't been shot with a poison dart and blown out an airlock, we would totally give him the Blu-ray of that movie for his next birthday.

Do you have the remotest idea

As baddies go, classic Bond villain Blofeld has been played by nearly as many actors as 007 himself. And his wacky plots are legendary. After almost triggering World War III, he tried to justify the second "E" in Spectre with some outlandish extortion schemes.

First, he threatened to release deadly viruses smuggled to various parts of the world within the bodies of several beautiful women (On Her Majesty's Secret Service). Then he tried to use an orbiting laser to destroy the big powers' nuclear capability and hold an international auction for "nuclear superpower rights" (Diamonds Are Forever).

Somewhere along the line, he even found time to make Bond a widower, being the driver in the drive-by-shooting death of 007's new wife Tracy Draco (Diana Rigg) at the end of OHMSS.

Blofeld was a man who thought big, which makes the plot that led to his demise somewhat ... dumb.

His end came at the beginning of For Your Eyes Only. After visiting his wife's grave, Bond boards a helicopter only to find that it is under Blofeld's remote control. (We presume the unnamed bald, wheelchair-bound cat-stroker is Blofeld.)

Really, Mr I-once-put-together-a-giant-space-laser? A frickin' remote control helicopter is the best you could come up with after lying low for four movies to plot your revenge?

It gets better (or worse, for this one-time criminal genius). Instead of taking the chopper straight up and sending it plummeting back down to earth, Blofeld does such a self-indulgent job of flying the thing around in circles just to taunt his nemesis that he gives Bond time to wrest control of the aircraft. He then gets scooped up by the very helicopter that was to be 007's coffin, and dropped down a factory chimney.

Idiot.

With these shining examples to reflect on, perhaps an insidious conspiracy to control water rights isn't so dreary after all.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 28 Oktober 2012

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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