E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

James Bond was, up until a day ago, always produced by the Broccoli family - all of the many canonical films since the early 1960s... for better and worse. Their control was legendary, and often, usually, yielded good or superior results. Their choices for Bond have been a few times inspired, and their attempts to select villains who had won Oscars was notable. They also tended to be loyal to British writers, directors, and actors, and kept the franchise stable, ongoing, and reliable. The worst James Bond is still worth a telly rewatch on a lazy Sunday afternoon; the greatest are some of the best action movies ever made. Now, it is in the hands of Amazon MGM - an American company not known for its quality control... it has hits and misses, but plenty of cash. Fans are anxious; I am, as a fan, very concerned. I am unsure the new films will remain firmly-rooted in the canon, or be as British - with all the eccentricities and potential flaws that entails. Lee Child has gone on record as...

Cold Sweat turns 50 this year, and is a movie hardly anyone knows or loves. B-movie fetishists are a perverse lot, and I am one of them. I can genuinely revel in a well-made, odd, quirky, forgotten second-rate flick, with few if any pretensions, seeing it with great affection and respect for what it is; whereas many a pretentious, 'bigger picture' can leave me cold. Cold Sweat is actually, in its way, a great film, but because the director Terence Young has almost no auteurist-following, it's been neglected; the reviews it does get are perfunctory and mainly indifferent - it's seen, if at all now, as a toss-offed Charles Bronson actioner, one of the cheap Euro-trash movies he made as his violent vigilante career went supernova. It's out on DVD, and easy to find online. I'd recommend it to any fans of the crime/thriller genre, and, for the reasons I mention below, it is separately fascinating for being an example of how a film can gather incredible talent...

SPOILER WARNING - THIS REVIEW CONTAINS INFORMATION YOUR EYES MAY NOT WANT TO SEE JUST YET.... North Americans have to wait for November 6th to see the 24th official James Bond film, SPECTRE , released - however, it has now been playing since Monday in British cinemas, so it is hardly reasonable, after hundreds of online media reviews, for Eyewear to hold back any further, especially given a) our longstanding history of engagement with the Bond franchise which we take seriously and b) since the film itself is about intelligence gathering (and leaking). The series was rebooted in 2006 with Casino Royale , after the Pierce Brosnan age, which, in retrospect seems a sunnier, more upbeat time, more like the Roger Moore films, and turned over to the ruggedly (even lopsidedly) handsome Daniel Craig , who brought a Rugby player's physique to the role (and, as the series developed, a surprising humanity). Casino Royale introduced a shadowy cabal of villains out to get Bond, a...

Vicky MacKenzie reviews God Loves You by Kathryn Maris and The Last Temptation of Bond by Kimmy Beach   Kathryn Maris’s poetry is of the slippery, unstable variety: it is witty, self-conscious and often flippant, but sometimes leaves the reader uncertain as to what’s really being said and even less sure what’s meant.             In the second section of the book, Maris parodies the language and rhythms of the bible, using numbered verses, anaphora, and her own version of the Lord’s Prayer. A desperate need to be loved by God recurs throughout but it’s echoed by a need to be loved by men, bringing these masculine figures to the same level: that of the desired but neglectful lover. However it doesn’t feel like religious faith is Maris’s target, so much as the godless state of contemporary society, which substitutes religious worship with celebrity worship.         ...

A few days ago, Eyewear 's film critic offered yet another rave review of the new Bond film, Skyfall .  I duly posted it, because I respect my critic's film-making expertise, and he is the film critic here.  But I too have opinions, and, on reflection, have to say I think the 50 year Bond has not matured well.  I saw the movie on its release in Montreal, on an IMAX screen, with my mother, my wife, and a dear old friend.  I was in a great mood.  I wanted to love this movie.  The first film I ever saw on the silver screen was a Bond - Diamonds Are Forever, which my mother had brought me to.  It remains a formative experience of my life (likely for good and ill - I don't want to be cremated, for instance).  My problems with the film are many.  My first issue with it is, it is stuck in a homage/reboot rut.  Bond is eternal - there is no need to constantly explain why he is contemporary - as with Dr. Who , just update and get on with the adve...

George On Bond The Glasses Man Cometh So here we have it, the best Bond film to date, with the best embodiment of James Bond to date. On its fifty-year anniversary, this film is both an homage to its predecessors and a bold blueprint for the franchise. The film is as elegant as it should be, as funny as it needs to be, as extravagant as is tradition and yet takes a lot of risks new to the series, perhaps since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service . The difference of course being that where that was once hated, this is adored. Quantum of Solace had a story as thrilling as basket weaving and nowhere near as solid; at least with most action films as boring as the plots may be we know where we are. So who better to call in than  Sam Mendes , director of acclaimed dramas American Beauty, Road to Perdition and Revolutionary Road , to name a few. James Bond is getting old and suffering from more than a few bruises. His struggle is real, he is real, and although it’s very hard to d...

  James Bond theme songs are a genre unto themselves - often overblown, or silly, or somewhat contrived ( Thunderbal l faintly comical though sublime) - the best of them such as the Shirley Bassey s, especially the all-time great, 'Goldfinger' - are crowd-pleasing classics, timeless.  Adele has been selected for Skyfall , and, given she was the best-selling British female singer of all time, and the currently most popular, this was the right commercial and artistic choice, rendered faintly ironic by Adele's figure and down to earth humanity, which nicely cut across the sexist imperatives of the Bond opening trailers.  If you live in the UK you have already bought the song today or heard it, likely - it's the top song currently at iTunes.  So what do you think?  Well, it's a little Carly Simon , and a lot Bassey.  That suits this being the Bond 50th year.  It has the usual nonsense lyrics (what is Moonraker for instance?).  I like "you can h...

Sad news.  Syd Cain , the art designer behind Q's gadgets for the Bond films, and Blofeld's alpine HQ in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (one of the best of the series), has died.  He also worked with Kubrick and Hitchcock, among others.

50 years ago today, Sean Connery was announced as the actor to play Bond in Dr. No .  Today, the 50th anniversary film, due out in October 2012, was announced - title: Skyfall .   Javier Bardem will play the main villain.  It better be good.  Quantum of Solace was lacklustre.

Sad news.  My favourite film composer (along with Bernard Hermann ), John Barry , has died at the age of 77.  Barry was the genius behind the best of the James Bond scores, as well as Born Free, Dances with Wolves, Midnight Cowboy , and many others.  His lush and romantic harmonies and melodies helped to establish the unique soundscape of the 60s and 70s.  His sound style will live forever.

Sad news.  A super screenwriter, Tom Mankiewicz , has died.  He wrote the screenplay for Eyewear's favourite Bond, Diamonds Are Forever , as well as Live and Let Die , and several others.  He also created and directed the kitsch classic TV series Hart to Hart .  Mankiewicz was related to the writers of Citizen Kane , and All About Eve , and as a script doctor became legendary in Hollywood, salvaging, for instance, Mario Puzo 's Superman script.  He will be missed.

Sad news.  The singer, actor and pitchman Jimmy Dean has died.  He touched my childhood in two ways, though I never knew his name, or connected the dots to the two pop phenomena he was involved with.  He sang the song "Big Bad John" which I recall playing non-stop on the car radio when my family drove down route 66, from Montreal to California, in 1974.  That was the summer when Mama Cass died. A few years before, he had starred in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), which, perhaps oddly, my mother took me to as a six-year-old.  It was my first film, and I loved it.  It made a huge impact on the rest of my life I confess, and I particularly enjoyed the utterly-weird (and Pinteresque) aphorism-quipping queer hitmen  Mr Wint and Mr Kidd  - "if God had wanted man to fly he would have given him wings" -the brutal fight in the lift (I have never looked at a fire extinguisher the same way since), the cremation scene , and Jimmy Dean as the mysterious H...

The BBC premiered a new six-part crime series last night: Luther , starring Wire star Idris Elba (who should be the first Black Bond) as the eponymous DCI. Elba has extraordinary charisma, and his star power can keep even the flimsiest vehicle afloat, such as Obsession , but this is actually a good show, though not quite as smart as it wants to think it is. Starting with the Hitchcock trope of a man falling - this time a serial killer of small children dressed in a retro suit that makes him look like Attenborough from a noir - Luther has a breakdown and goes away for 7 months to deal with the fact he let the killer fall. Returning to applause, his first case involves the murder of a husband, wife and family dog - the father is summed up (slumped at his desk) as "published poet, small press" - which got a laugh in my household. The villain ( Ruth Wilson ) is a sexy Oxbridge physics researcher with genius-level IQ (goodness!), icily promiscuous and apparently so narcissistic ...

The news that Bond 23 has been delayed "indefinitely" while MGM gets its financial house in order (or not) is both good and bad news, Eyewear thinks.  On the one hand, the culturally significant British franchise is now (for better and worse - it glamorises evil; but also sends up evil and glamour) a part of the calendar, and to see it just peter out would be sad (it needs to go out with an exploding oil rig, underwater domed HQ, or erupting volcano).  On the other, the Craig series has run out of steam, and needs retooling anyway.  The Bourne trilogy demanded a response, and Bond answered, with a similar aesthetic - but an angry, avenging Bond - very Old Testament, to Brosnan 's smiling New Testament Bond. This back to fundamentals was intriguing, but quickly lost fuel, in its second installment, with a bizarrely underwhelming climax in an eco-friendly hotel.  It seems time for a new Bond - one either younger (like the new Doctor Who ) and more 21st century; or ...

Sad news. The great Montreal-born character actor, Joseph Wiseman , unforgettable as the first major Bond villain, Dr No, has died. He was also in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz , that important Canadian-American film set in Montreal.

Eyewear has seen the new Bond film (#22) at the Tricycle Theatre cinema, where a plaque notes, cinematography was nearby invented, around 118 years ago. My immediate reaction is, Quantum of Solace is one of the half-dozen best of the whole series, if not quite as good as Casino Royale . It's easily the most stylish and nuanced, with more film references than many (including to Vertigo in the bell tower). Clearly, the Bourne trilogy has made a deep impact on the choreography of the action (rooftops, and brutal fights) - and the use of mobile telephony. However, the rooftops from Bourne are, of course, really the rooftops from Vertigo . There are several elements never-before-seen in a Bond film, which artsy director Forster adds, including reaction shots from wounded, or shocked, or dehydrated extras in crowds and peasants (in Bolivia), humanising, almost de-Orientalising, Bond's previously imperialist trappings. Further, the dialogue about espionage, power, oil, the envir...

Eyewear readers know the profane calendar can be divided into years, months, and days, that do, or do not, feature a James Bond film. In one of the great pop culture moments of all time, the cult singer-songwriter Warren Zevon , dying of cancer, said it would be "a drag" if he died before the next Bond film came out. Paul Muldoon , as we know, worked with Zevon - what the world needs now is a Muldoon long poem on Bond. In the meantime, we have the new theme song (well, we did until it was removed from Youtube for copyright reasons) from Jack White (and Alicia Keys ) for the Qauntum of Solace film; the song's title is not the title of the film, which seems needlessly busy (but Bond movies do that sometimes, think of the classic Louis Armstrong ditty), but is instead, Another Way To Die . Well, okay, it isn't Duffy , or Amy Winehouse - they would have been elegantly, or at least retro-great, with the Ronson treatment. But, in the same cluttered offbeat tradition o...

The James Bond theme songs have always been hit or miss. Often avoiding super stars or iconic singers for mediocrities, and expressing left-field production choices more enigmatic than M, they have nonetheless managed to feature, among others (and famously) songs by Shirley Bassey , Tom Jones , Nancy Sinatra , Paul McCartney , Madonna , Duran Duran , Tina Turner , Gladys Knight , and even Louis Armstrong . Songs by Garbage and A-ha were perhaps missed opportunities to have selected more interesting indie or alternative bands ( U2 ? Depeche Mode ? REM ?). Why never Oasis , or, for that matter, Sting ? Perhaps the saddest news is that Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson , reported to be doing the song for 22, have been replaced, seemingly last-minute, by arguably the oddest couple ever assembled. Alicia Keys and Jack White (he penned the tune) are hardly in the same musical room, but are undeniably major contemporary American figures. What they come up with will no doubt be some, if not mu...

The new Bond film's title has been revealed , and it is Qauntum of Solace . No, really. I am impressed. This is a talking point - the weirdest title of a mainstream film since The Silence of the Lambs , and surely much weirder than that. This may be up there with "A Toccata of Gallupi's" or something quarkian from Joyce .

Good news. Bond 22 is shaping up nicely. The chief Bond girls have been announced, as has the latest villain (suitably French). Dame Judi Dench is back, too, with, of course Daniel Craig . The plot will follow on from the new-classic Casino Royale , promising some continuity in a pastiche-and-judo jumble of a series. The top Bond Girl will be Ms. Olga Kurylenko (cue From Russia With Love cliches), a model-actor, pictured, who recently appeared in actioner Hitman opposite Prison Break's favourite cornpone psycho Robert Knepper ; I have yet to see her act, but she looks the part. Keeping with the tradition of locating the villain on the continent, and in Art House, they've recruited Mathieu Amalric as the baddie. Eyewear looks forward to this one's eye-opener on 7 November 2008.