Focus Of The Week: Marco Ange Draco

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Imposing, charismatic with a slight tinge of menace, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s (1969) Marco Ange Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti) is head of the Union Corse, the biggest crime syndicate in Europe. He operates legitimate business concerns including construction, electrical supplies and numerous agricultural holdings as a front for his nefarious activities. He bonds with 007 (George Lazenby) over similar passions — good food and drink (he is partial to Corsican brandy) and a sharp cynical sense of humour — a friendship that becomes stronger when 007 marries his only daughter Tracy (Diana Rigg) — before tragedy strikes on their wedding day.

Bond comes onto Draco’s radar after he saves Tracy from a suicide attempt. The next morning, Bond is kidnapped and taken to Draco’s office. Draco reveals that Tracy is his only daughter and reveals her troubled backstory. Draco was a bandit hiding up in the mountains when he met a romantic English girl. The two fell in love, married and had a child Teresa (Tracy). Twelve years later, when Draco had become the head (capo) of the Union Corse, his wife died, sending Tracy off the rails without parental supervision. Draco watched Tracy run wild but, while he cut off her allowance, he instructed his men to follow her and ensure her safety.

Draco believes Bond is the perfect match for Tracy and offers him £1million if he marries her. Bond refuses but he agrees to keep seeing Tracy in exchange for info about his nemesis Blofeld. Tracy sees through her father’s motives and tells Draco to give Bond the information or she will never see her father again. With his hand forced, Draco reveals Blofeld’s contact is a Swiss lawyer named GebrüderGumbold (James Bree). However Draco’s wishes come true as Bond and Tracy gradually fall in love. 

Later, when Blofeld kidnaps Tracy, Bond enlists Draco’s help to mount a helicopter attack on Blofeld’s alpine hideaway, Piz Gloria. Storming Blofeld’s HQ, Draco and his men rescue Tracy, Draco personally knocking his daughter unconscious to stop her staying behind to help Bond.

At Bond and Tracy’s wedding, Draco presents 007 with a £1million dowry for marrying his daughter but Bond politely refuses. Draco acknowledges that M (Bernard Lee) was the “man who cost me three of my best operators”. M replies “Yes, November 1964 — the bullion job” — a possible reference to the events in Goldfinger. 

Tragically Draco’s time as a father in law is cut short. Leaving on honeymoon, Bond and Tracy are attacked by Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) on a roadside, leaving Tracy dead and Bond bereft. 

Focus Of The Week: Nick Nack

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The Man With The Golden Gun’s (1974) Nick Nack (Hervé Villechaize) is the impish, conniving servant of world class assassin Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). Residing on Scaramanga’s private island in the South China Sea, Nick Nack performs numerous duties (butler, chef, occasional assailant), arranging hit-men to try and kill Scaramanga in his private fun house maze. These exercises are more than just sport for his master: they are designed to keep Scaramanga at the top of his game and sharp enough to kill James Bond (Roger Moore).

The first killer to take on Scaramanga is dark suited gangster Rodney (Marc Lawrence). As the pair are engaged in a duel in an elaborate shooting range, Nick Nack taunts Scaramanga, telling him he has locked away his arsenal meaning he has to search for his legendary golden gun which Nick Nack has placed at the centre of a maze. Scaramanga manages to outwit his opponent and kill him.

Nick Nack helps Scaramanga in his mission to auction off the world’s first solar energy system. After Scaramanga kills British scientist Gibson (Gordon Everett) Nick Nack steals the Solex Agitator (a device that harnesses the sun’s power) from the lifeless body. Scaramanga’s mistress Andrea Anders (Maud Adams) retrieves the Solex and plans to give it to Bond but is murdered for switching allegiances by Scaramanga and Nick Nack at a Thai Boxing match. As the pair depart Bond’s naïve colleague Mary Goodnight (Britt Ekland) attempts to follow them by placing a homing device in Scaramanga’s AMC Matador but she is caught by Scaramanga and bundled into the boot. Bond uses the homing device to track Scaramanga but the assassin outwits 007 when his car converts into a plane, which flies away with Scaramanga, Nick Nack and Goodnight still inside.

Bond pursues Goodnight to Scaramanga’s island, Nick Nack greeting him with a bottle of Dom Perignon — in a moment of bravura marksmanship Scaramanga shoots the cork off.  Nick Nack officiates the duel which ends when Bond kills Scaramanga. 007 and Goodnight escape from the island in a junk ship unaware Nick Nack waits on board, hiding above the bed poised to throw a knife. Goodnight spots him and screams, sparking a fight which ends when Bond shuts Nick Nack in a suitcase and carries him on deck. As 007 returns to Goodnight, it is revealed he has placed Nick Nack in a wicker basket hanging from the boat’s mast as the junk heads for the sunset.

Secret Cinema Presents Casino Royale In Shanghai

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Secret Cinema, today announced its first international expansion into China, in collaboration with SMG Live. They will launch with the current UK show, SMG Live presents Secret Cinema’s production of Casino Royale, in Shanghai on 23 November 2019.  

Secret Cinema Presents Casino Royale opened in London this year to widespread critical acclaim and continues to run, drawing record-breaking crowds of over 120,000 so far; making it the largest and most ambitious production Secret Cinema has ever produced.

Focus Of The Week: The Acrostar “Bede” Jet

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The Acrostar “Bede” Jet made a stunning appearance at the opening of Octopussy (1983) to help Bond (Roger Moore) escape from an unidentified Latin American country. Invented by Jim Bede, the BD-5J Acrostar Microjet is just 3.6 metres (12ft) long with a wingspan of only 3.9 metres (13ft), powered by a single TRS-18 microturbo jet engine capable of a top speed of 514 kph (320 mph).  Obtained and weaponised by Q Branch, it’s a nifty plane that gets Bond out of an impossibly tight scrape.

Bond is on a mission to sabotage a spy plane impersonating moustachioed army officer Colonel Toro. Unmasked and captured, 007 is transported in an army vehicle but gives his guards the slip by pulling the parachutes on his captors, then jumping into a Range Rover convertible driven by colleague Bianca (Tina Hudson). Bond detaches the horse box at the back of the convertible and climbs in. As swarms of army jeeps and motorcycles head towards him, 007 emerges from the trailer in the Acrostar Jet. The folding wings descend and Bond speeds towards the vehicles, taking off just over his pursuers head.

A Rapier surface to air missile is launched at the jet and Bond tries to lose it by flying through a series of ravines and mesas. In a last resort, he decides to fly straight into the hangar housing the spy planes. Colonel Toro’s men scamper to close the huge doors at the far end but Bond’s plane zips through the ever diminishing gap. The pursuing missile smashes into the closed door obliterating the hangar and completing 007’s mission.

In the clear, Bond notices that the jet’s fuel gauge registers almost empty. He lands the plane on a deserted road, pulls into a petrol station and coolly asks the astonished attendant: “Fill her up”.

Shooting the sequence was divided into two sections. To capture the aerial action, stunt pilot J.W. “Corkey” Fornof flew his jet over Southern Utah. For close-ups of the heart-stopping moment Bond manoeuvres the jet through a hangar, special effects supervisor John Richardson mounted a plane on a pole attached to a stripped-down Jaguar. The car was driven through the hangar at breakneck speed, soldiers running in front of the car to hide the chassis. To create the effect of the missile following the plane, Richardson constructed a model plane and attached a flaming firework to it. Simple, but highly effective.

Skyfall In Concert In Toronto

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Watch Skyfall In Concert at Meridian Hall, Toronto on February 21 and 22. Audiences will experience composer Thomas Newman’s BAFTA-winning original score performed live by the Motion Picture Symphony Orchestra. Before each performance there will be a Behind the Curtain pre-show talk with Toronto Film Critic and TV Host Richard Crouse. 
Tickets on sale at www.ticketmaster.ca

Focus Of The Week: Kerim Bey

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Robust, confident and wise, Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz) is the head of Station T in Istanbul. During Bond (Sean Connery)’s mission to retrieve the Lektor decoding machine in From Russia With Love (1963), Bey becomes 007’s loyal ally and trusted companion. Bey is in many ways a mirror of Bond: both share a lust for life, a love of women and a commitment to completing a mission. It is no wonder they work so well together.

Bey enters Bond’s orbit when Soviet Army Intelligence Corporal Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) contacts him asking for his help to defect to Europe. She claims she had seen a photo of Bond in a secret file and taken a shine to him and offers to hand over the Lektor machine in exchange for Bond escorting her — and the decoding device — back to England. Bey contacts M, who sends Bond out to Istanbul to investigate.

Meeting Bond in his office, Bey reveals he believes the Russians are trying to lure Bond into a trap. As Bond heads back to his hotel, Bey narrowly escapes being blown up by a limpet mine.

Subsequently Bey decides to spy on the Russians. Leading Bond through a hidden door and down some steps, the pair are faced with a subterranean reservoir built by the Emperor Constantine around 350AD. Bey and Bond take a small boat down to a tunnel and walk into a small cavity beneath the Russian Consulate building. Using a periscope gifted from the British Navy, he spies on a Military Intelligence meeting which includes Benz (Peter Bayliss) and Krilencu (Fred Haggerty), an assassin and old nemesis of Kerim.

Bey and Bond visit his friend Vavra (Francis De Wolff) at a gypsy camp to glean information about Krilencu. They are diverted by a battle between two women in love with the same man and decide to stay for food and raki. The fight is interrupted when Krilencu and his men attack the camp, injuring Bey who swears instant revenge. Bey’s plan for vengeance sees his sons dress up as two policemen and ring Krilencu’s doorbell, causing the assassin to escape from a trapdoor around the back. Kerim is ready and waiting with Bond’s AR-7 sniper rifle and, resting the weapon on Bond’s shoulder for steadiness, shoots him dead.

Repaying Bond’s help, Bey helps Bond to steal the Lektor by setting a bomb off under the Russian consulate. Bey and Bond, along with Tatiana, escape and board the Orient Express, Bey taking Benz captive for spying on them. Bey guards Benz but is stabbed to death by SPECTRE operative Donald “Red” Grant (Robert Shaw) who makes it look that Bey and Benz killed each other.

 

No Time To Die Is The Official Title Of Bond 25

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James Bond Producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli today released the official title of the 25th James Bond adventure, No Time To Die. The film, from Albert R. Broccoli’s EON Productions, Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios (MGM), and Universal Pictures International is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation, True Detective) and stars Daniel Craig, who returns for his fifth film as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007. Written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade (Spectre, Skyfall), Cary Joji Fukunaga, Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Bourne Ultimatum) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Killing Eve, Fleabag) No Time To Die is currently in production. The film will be released globally from April 3, 2020 in the UK through Universal Pictures International and in the US on April 8, from MGM via their United Artists Releasing banner.

No Time To Die also stars Rami Malek, Léa Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Naomie Harris, Billy Magnussen, Ana de Armas, Rory Kinnear, David Dencik, Dali Benssalah with Jeffrey Wright and Ralph Fiennes.

In No Time To Die, Bond has left active service and is enjoying a tranquil life in Jamaica. His peace is short-lived when his old friend Felix Leiter from the CIA turns up asking for help. The mission to rescue a kidnapped scientist turns out to be far more treacherous than expected, leading Bond onto the trail of a mysterious villain armed with dangerous new technology. 

Other members of the creative team are; Composer Dan Romer, Director of Photography Linus Sandgren, Editors Tom Cross and Elliot Graham, Production Designer Mark Tildesley, Costume Designer Suttirat Larlarb, Hair and Make up Designer Daniel Phillips, Supervising Stunt Coordinator Olivier Schneider, Stunt Coordinator Lee Morrison and Visual Effects Supervisor Charlie Noble. Returning members to the team are; 2nd Unit Director Alexander Witt, Special Effects and Action Vehicles Supervisor Chris Corbould and Casting Director Debbie McWilliams.

Focus Of The Week: Aston Martin V8

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The principal car in The Living Daylights (1987), the Aston Martin V8 saw the series renew its relationship with the iconic car manufacturer. After Bond’s use of the Aston Martin DBS in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the filmmaking team turned to the Lotus Esprit for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and For Your Eyes Only (1981). Despite the iconic status of the submersible Lotus, the filmmakers decided a new Bond — Timothy Dalton — needed a new vehicle so the decision was made to return to Aston Martin with the V8. But for The Living Daylights, the V8 would be winterised for a high-speed chase around the Czech-Austrian Border.

The V8 comes into play when Bond and Kara Milovy (Maryam d’Abo) flee to Vienna, pursued by both the KGB and the Czechoslovakian Police. As they approach the border into Austria, Bond deploys a number of Q Dept gadgets to give him an advantage. When a police car pulls alongside, he uses laser beams shooting from the front hubcaps to cut the chassis off a police car (“salt corrosion” quips Bond as the chassis skids along without wheels). A police band scanner radio informs 007 the Czech law enforcement are reversing a lorry across the road to block Bond and Kara’s escape. Bond presses a button to unleash a “few optional extras”: guided by a heads up display on the windshield, he fires a pair of heat-seeking missiles hidden behind the fog lights, blowing up the juggernaut before the V8 powers through.

Tanks and armoured vehicles carrying troops force Bond off-road, driving through a boathouse, taking the wooden building with him as he speeds onto a frozen lake before leaving the structure behind just before it is hit by a shell. When an explosion blows the tyre clean off, Bond makes a huge circle on the lake, the rim cutting a hole in the ice, the chasing police car slowly sinking into the icy water. With no front tyre, Bond rolls out retractable outriggersthat act as skis and ice tyres for further grip. With the police closing in, Bond fires up a jet engine booster rocket, concealed behind the rear licence plate, and leaps to safety into a forest before crash-landing in the snow. Pressing the self destruct button, Bond and Kara leave the V8 just before it blows up.

It might have exploded in The Living Daylights but the Aston Martin V8 will return with Daniel Craig at the wheel in BOND 25.

Focus Of The Week: Renard

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Detached, psychotic and unrelenting, The World Is Not Enough (1999)’s Renard (Robert Carlyle) is an international terrorist/anarchist with almost superhuman abilities.

Bond first learns about Renard — real name: Viktor Zokas, a former KGB operative —in a briefing following the murder of Sir Robert King (David Calder) in an explosion. Renard had been the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Sir Robert’s daughter, oil industry heiress Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), who managed to escape by seducing and killing her guards when her father refused to pay the ransom fee.

Subsequently hunted down by 009, Renard was shot in the head but miraculously survived. The bullet started a slow path to his brain gradually killing off his senses. This means, although he is unable to feel pain or sensual pleasure, Renard can push his body harder and for longer than a normal person — he will grow stronger until the day the bullet severs his nervous system and kills him. M believes Elektra is Renard’s next target and assigns Bond to look after her. 007 tracks Renard to a nuclear arms facility in Kazakhstan where he is stealing a warhead but he escapes with six kilos of weapons-grade plutonium.

At the King pipeline in Baku, Bond confronts Elektra, alongside M, about his suspicions she is in league with Renard. An alarm sounds warning of trouble in the pipeline — Renard has planted the bomb he stole on an inspection car that’s travelling down the pipeline out of control. Bond and nuclear physicist Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) go to dismantle the bomb. Meanwhile, Elektra reveals her true colours to M, that she organised the killing of her father in order to bait Renard. She then takes her former confidante prisoner. Elektra’s scheming now comes into focus: she is looking to gain revenge on her father and take over his oil empire. In return, Renard exacts his own vengeance upon M, the woman who had sentenced him to death.

Bond teams up with his old enemy, former Russian mafia head Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) to find out more about Renard. The pair figure out Elektra’s plan. She will provide Renard with a stolen nuclear submarine; Renard will place the weapon’s plutonium core into the submarine’s reactor. This will cause the vessel to explode in the Bosphorous, creating a nuclear blast and ensuring Elektra’s pipeline is the only source of oil from the Caspian Sea to the West.

Renard admits to Elektra his pain and frustration in not being able to feel her touch and, with his life expectancy running out, volunteers to oversee the plan personally as both a parting gift to the woman he loves but also, by killing eight million people and throwing the world’s oil economy into chaos, as the ultimate act of anarchy.

In Istanbul, Bond and Jones are captured by Renard’s men. Renard takes Jones to the nuclear sub while Elektra tortures Bond in an antique chair that causes asphyxiation. Zukovsky and his men arrive, freeing Bond who give chase to Elektra. Stopping only to release M, Bond shoots Elektra but not before she tells Renard to carry out the plan.

Bond boards the sub as it submerges, and causes a fire that sends the sub crashing to the sea floor. Confronting Renard, 007 tells him Elektra is dead sending the terrorist into a blind fury. A brutal fistfight ensues ending when Bond launches a plutonium rod straight at Renard’s heart. As the submarine reactor is set to overload, Bond and Jones escape deploying the submarine’s torpedo launcher, moments before the submarine explodes.

Skyfall In Concert In Australia

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Audiences in Australia can see Skyfall in Concert in two cities over the course of the next calendar year. In November (22-23) the Sydney Symphony Orchestra will present the Australian premiere in the iconic Sydney Opera House Concert Hall led by conductor Nicholas Buc. In April 2020 (3-4), the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform Skyfall in Concert at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Melbourne ahead of the release of Bond 25. 

Tickets are on sale now for Sydney www.sydneysymphony.com for Melbourne bit.ly/2ZmJgq9

Focus Of The Week: Spectre

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Following Skyfall (2012) with Spectre (2015), Sam Mendes became the first filmmaker to direct two back to back Bond films since John Glen directed The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence To Kill (1989). Previous Daniel Craig adventures had reintroduced and reinvented classic elements from Bond history such as the Aston Martin, Q and Moneypenny. Now the filmmakers felt it was right to bring back SPECTRE — to reveal the bigger picture behind the criminal organisation, QUANTUM, started in Casino Royale (2006).

The script, written by John Logan, Jez Butterworth, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, sees Bond (Daniel Craig) receive a cryptic message from the previous M (Judi Dench) that leads him to Mexico, then Rome, infiltrating a secret organisation led by the mysterious Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz). Bond evades Oberhauser’s henchman Hinx (Dave Bautista) in a high speed car chase and travels to Austria to meet his old enemy Mr. White. White reveals information about Oberhauser in exchange for 007 keeping his daughter, Dr Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux), safe. 

Initially reluctant to help, Swann informs Bond the secret organisation is SPECTRE and leads him to Tangiers and they discover Oberhauser’s high tech desert HQ where he plans to take control of a global surveillance network. Oberhauser tortures 007 and reveals he is actually the son of Bond’s guardian, Hannes Oberhauser, but, filled with hatred for the man he believes usurped his place in his father’s affections, has renamed himself: Ernst Stavro Blofeld. 

Spectre began filming on December 8 2014 on B stage at Pinewood before travelling to Austria in January 15. The ice Q restaurant at Sölden in Austria doubled as Dr. Swann’s Hoffler Klinik and the Cable Car station. Sölden is now the home of the immersive James Bond experience 007 ELEMENTS. 

Austria also played host to a spectacular plane vs. car chase as Hinx kidnaps Madeleine with a convoy of Land Rovers and 007 gives pursuit in a light aircraft. A key section of the sequence was filmed in Obertilliachwith the special effects team flying Bond’s plane at a low altitude over forested hillsides, skimming across the tops of the vehicles on a high wire and smashing through a barn. When Bond is forced to land the plane on the snow at high speed, the special effects team ingeniously mounted powerful skidoos inside the aircraft’s body so that once the plane landed it could drive along the ground at high speed. 

The unit moved to Rome for five weeks, the first time the series had filmed in the Eternal City. Sequences included the funeral for assassin/SPECTRE operative Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona) — featuring iconic Italian actor Monica Bellucci as Sciarra’s widow Lucia — and a breakneck chase between Bond’s Aston Martin DB10 and a Jaguar C-X75. Mendes created a twist with Bond stealing the car before he understood the modifications and has to figure out its capabilities on the run.

With filming completed in Rome, the Spectre production travelled to Mexico to shoot the Day of the Dead celebrations for the pre-credit sequence. To seduce the audience into the world of the film, Mendes decided to open the film with one continuous shot that follows Bond as he tracks an assassin through the parade (including 1500 extras and huge marionettes) into a hotel, up an elevator, through different rooms and onto balconies and across rooftops. “I just made sure that I didn’t walk into the furniture,” laughed Daniel Craig.

Bond finally pursues assassin Marco Sciarra to an awaiting helicopter and a sequence over Mexico’s Zócalo Square, that required extensive negotiations with Government officials to gain permission to shoot. Most of the exterior shots of the fight on the helicopter were shot over the square and the barrel roll was performed by stunt pilot Chuck Aaron at an airfield in Palenque Mexico. The helicopter interiors were filmed at Pinewood with the helicopter mounted on a gimbal to mimic the movement. 

The unit returned to London to shoot the climax of the film around the Thames — having cast Ralph Fiennes as M, Ben Whishaw as Q and Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Mendes was keen to expand their roles and this sequence (and film) sees Bond gain a support team in the field. The production ended with a trip to Morocco to film the exteriors of SPECTRE HQ including an explosion that earned the Guinness World Records™ title for the Largest Film Stunt Explosion in cinema history. 

Following his work on Skyfall, Thomas Newman returned to score Spectre. British singer-songwriter Sam Smith and collaborator Jimmy Napes wrote the film’s theme ‘Writing’s on the Wall’ which became the first 007 theme to reach number one in the UK charts, the second to win an Academy Award® and the fifth to be nominated — it also won a Golden Globe. 

Spectre premiered on October 26 2015 at the Royal Albert Hall and broke box office records.