Day 6489: DOCTOR WHO: The Woman Who Rose to the Challenge

Sunday:

The name is Bond… Jane Bond!

Don’t knock it. This week Doctor Who went where no man has gone before. And about time. And she did it in “Casino Royale” style with a little more of the WooWho theme added each time she stepped closer to remembering just Who she fully was.

Fearless confrontation with aliens… build a new sonic… heroic action sequence… turn their own weapons against them… never cruel, never cowardly, always there to help… and you’re really going to wear that?

The Doctor’s back baby, she’s back.

And so are we. Here’s Daddy’s new Who review.

“All of this is new to you, and new can be scary.”

The first impression was that this was very new. The cinematography was more sweeping. The pacing was more measured. The focus more on the ensemble cast – like the opening of “Rose" but paced like Broadchurch not a pop video. The music was less frenetic. The colour palette was more naturalistic, at least for the daytime work.

Let’s hope that “naturalistic” means “grim up north and dark” for one episode only, and that alien planets will be different. The posters for this season have been so vibrant and colourful, and Doctor Who should look different to anything else on TV (again!).

There are clearly two ways to handle the transition from Doctor to Doctor: the companions to hold your hand approach as you experience their shock, bewilderment and acceptance with them – “Power of the Daleks”, naturally, but also “Robot” or “Deep Breath”; and the all-change method, where the whole team are new and you experience the Doctor brand new for the first time all over again: “The Eleventh Hour”, “Rose” or “Spearhead from Space” or even arguably “An Unearthly Child”.

But in a lot of ways this was also a step back to something hugely “trad” – not exactly 20th Century Who, but what that might have evolved into along the lines of other British drama.

We’ve had ten seasons of New Who with emphasis on the “New”, both Russell Davies era of fast-cutting, high octane, high contrast based on American series like “Buffy”, and the Steven Moffat’s puzzle-box genre, in darkness and actinic blues. Right now, something old-school is the radical departure.

And I’m reminded of Sir Humphrey’s advice in “Yes, Prime Minister” – if you’re going to do something really radical, Prime Minister, announce it from the most traditional wood-panelled library with leather chair and mahogany desk. Everything you can do to comfort people and tell them it’ll all be fine.

Because holy crap the Doctor is a woman and half the Internet have lost their minds.

“I’m looking for a doctor”

Which of course is absurd, because the Doctor is still the Doctor and Jodie Whittaker is brilliant.

(Mind you, for a series that defines itself by change, we are talking about a fanbase that has difficulty recognising “the Welsh series”, who thought “The Deadly Assassin” was the death of the magic, that colour was maybe a step too far, or that it was all downhill once those two schoolteachers appeared…)

Of course, it’s early days, and we’ve got the excuse of post-regenerative discombobulation to handwave any cuts and trims as writers and actor find the performance. But what we saw on the first night was, let’s quote the trail, glorious.

We acknowledge the gender swap with “Why are you calling me madam?” but it makes no difference to the Doctor taking charge like she owns the place, same as the Doctor has always done.

A defining scene was aboard the train, as Yas tries to assert her authority as a police officer (or cadet PCSO), and the Doctor effortlessly takes charge, not by bullying or physical threat but by posing the pertinent questions and showing she’s the one with the answers.

Jodie’s performance gave me a bit of Tom in, say, the “that nap did me the world of good”, and some lovely squidgy-faced expressions as emotive as Sylv, but most reminded me of Matt, with the physical discoordinations and the eccentric distractedness. And the complete confidence in the dress-sense. Which is also very Colin.

But played, and I think quite rightly, with an absolute confidence in her own authority, not arrogance, but certainty.

And kindness.

The seventh Doctor went to the funeral in “Remembrance of the Daleks” but only the thirteenth would stay.

And thankfully after the “am I a good man” gloom that beset the twelfth Doctor, Jodie felt like a Doctor unburdened. Able to offer a helping hand and stand up for fair play because she’s – literally – got the spoons now to do so.

“There’s echoes of who I was, and a sort of call towards who I am.”

Possibly unsurprising given that this is Chibnall, he’s chosen to sample some of his favourite Who moments, made a montage from some of the series’ quintessential touchstones: the Doctor’s speech about family from “Tomb of the Cybermen”; the forging of the new sonic – from spoons and a bit of alien spacepod – harking back to the third Doctor’s gadget building, if way more epic; the crane reminiscent of Sarah Jane climbing the Thal rocket in “Genesis of the Daleks”, or the Doctor and friends teleporting between adventures as in “The Ark in Space” or again from the end of “Genesis…” with added floating in space effect; the Doctor looking for “a doctor” as Peter Davison was in “Castrovalva”; possibly a nod to David Tennant in “The Christmas Invasion” as the Doctor recovers on the sofa exhaling artron energy; even the first glimpse of the new female companion is in police uniform like Amy (thank god this time she’s not really a stripper!). “Will he ever call me grandad” was a line given to Graham, but was planting a flag for the series’ roots right back to “An Unearthly Child”.
But Chibnall wasn’t afraid to subvert the expectations either: two aliens arrive – one tentacle-y one in armour – the Doctor guesses two alien races at war… immediately I’m thinking Sontarrans vs Rutans… but no, he’s not afraid for the Doctor to guess wrong, and the aliens – on the same side after all – turn out to be the Jem’Hadar… no, sorry the Stenza.

Well, there’s a whole new meaning to “toothy grin”, that Terrance Dicks can’t have thought of. Possibly Chibnall has been studying too many serial killers for writing “Broadchurch” (yes, I know they didn’t actually do serial killer) with their gruesome souvenir-collecting habits.

The tentacle-y thing, meanwhile, was wonderfully Cthuloid. We wondered if it had assembled itself a form from train cabling, incidentally, and might it have build different, more industrial bodies later at the crane site.

And as an aside, I thought it was good that Ryan was able to own his mistake in “granting access” too.

The Woman Who Fell

So, let’s look at the supporting cast, who I thought were great.

Of the non-Time Lord regulars, it’s interesting that Ryan (Tosin Cole) is clearly the audience identification figure, starting from his vlog as we do. That also makes him the voice of the author for part of the story. And it’s his action that incites the incident.

I’m slightly less sold on Bradley Walsh’s Graham yet. He’s no Wilf. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt if only for the gleeful expression as he detonates an explosion in the season’s trailer.

But of the three, I’m favouring Yas as the stand-out, Mandip Gill bringing a bright intelligence and curiosity to the role. Though something that makes Yas a Moffat-style companion (something else other than she’s wearing a police uniform – she’s earned that uniform!): she knew Ryan in childhood and suddenly finds him again because of the weird stuff he shows her and she doesn’t believe!

Not joining us on voyage, Karl Brian Wright, crane operator and “valuable person” was sweet in his own way, and I liked that he said thank you and left (yes, like Derek from “Survival”), though the plot demanded that – like, Alex tells me, the book of “Survival” – the monsters come after him in the end. Nice that the Doctor gave him a ticking off for booting the beaten villain off a crane (though not the full Harriet Jones destroy his life!).

But my favourite was Grace, for all that – curse you the spoilers of pre-publicity – knowing she wasn’t a series regular was as good as hanging a “doomed” sign around her neck. She was funny and brave and curious and had as much character as the other three put together. Basically, she’d have been a great companion in the Evelyn Smythe tradition. Several times, I thought she was about to buy the farm, so making it to the last act was almost an achievement, but then it was “No Graham, let me go sticking the probulator into the electric death-ball up the crane”, and fate was sealed.

Grace’s fall give the episode title poignant double meaning – in retrospect highlighted by Ryan from the beginning telling us that the woman we think this is about isn’t the woman who this is about.

Chibnall here strikes a balance between Russell, having people challenge the Doctor afterwards on consequences, and Moffat saying if you wish hard enough there are no consequences at all, (so if you die you just can’t have been special enough); he’s learnt from writing a long and harrowing detective show (and maybe from reading some PD James) that when people die it has a massive effect on other people, rarely beneficial, sometimes catastrophic, because every person is the centre of their own story with their own web of connections and consequences.

And if Grace is the point of the first episode, is this an author’s nod to the US remake of his Broadchurch called Gracepoint?

Next Time

The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy tells us that the probability of being rescued from the vacuum of space is 2 to the power of 276,709 to 1 against, which as we all know was a telephone number in Islington in the late ’Seventies. So will someone with an Infinite Improbability Drive be along in a half a minute to rescue our heroes?

And looking longer term, are we going for a “quest for the TARDIS” season story-arc (what, the show-runner might have fibbed about all separate stories?!)

And the big question: Will we get a title sequence?

Day 5535: Show A Little ReSPECTRE

Friday:

So, Spectre. Not SpECTRE, apparently. Which is a shame. Love a good acronym, we do.

Released on the daddies' wedding anniversary, we saw it in the cinema, in IMAX in fact as a special indulgence. Yet this review's haunted us until the DVD release. There might be a clue there*…

The opening extended tracking shot following a Faction Paradox-attired Bond through Mexico City's Day of the Dead has been rightly praised. Not just an extraordinary visual achievement, it sets up the film's themes of Bond as a living dead man, haunted by his ghosts: Vesper, M, and ultimately… spoilers – Blofeld.

(Yes, I'm going to use the name. We all knew who Christoph Waltz was playing; and it's liberally sprayed over the end titles. So we might as well get used to it.)

In fact the whole pre-title sequence is amazing. Bond's shooting the terrorists' explosive – is it deliberately? – and bringing the house down on himself reminds us of the Venice conclusion of Casino Royale even as it introduces the plot point of using terrorism not the old fashioned way to threaten and bully, but more subtly to panic governments into jumping the wrong way, into bed with "C" and his (i.e. Blofeld's) global intelligence network.

The fight in the helicopter is a particularly visceral stunt that outshines the helicopter stunt in "For Your Eyes Only" that it is clearly referencing (for obvious cat-lover related reasons). It's especially bold that the death of the assassin Sciarra (and of his pilot) is essentially off-screen as Bond just unceremoniously boots them out of the chopper and they are gone, as forgotten by the film as they are by our emotionally closed-down hero.

After the deliciously skull-topus-y title sequence, we cut to a grey London and the corpse of Bond-world's MI5 headquarters at Vauxhall. And thence to a funeral in Rome, that has the eternal city looking like one vast marble tomb – and of all the churches in Rome, they pick the one that looks most… Stalinist. With Monica Bellucci's glamourous widow, who does not expect her life-after-death to last long; along with the ghoulishly almost-undead appearance of Mr White, clinging to life through his thallium poisoning; and above all a message from M from beyond the grave this serves to reinforce the motif of the dead being with us.
That the person pulling the strings is the ghost of Judi Dench's M, drawing the threads of Daniel Craig's previous Bond films together in order to uncover the Spectre, makes for a satisfying answer to the questions left open that had made "Quantum of Solace" and even "Skyfall" feel like they were only an opening chapter, almost unfinished.

But we are also setting ourselves up for where the film starts to go wrong.

Before that, Bond's encounter with Mr White leads him to Madeleine Swann, White's estranged daughter who is currently working at a suspiciously Piz Gloria-a-like clinic on top of a mountain. There follows a kidnapping and a gloriously retro car versus plane chase sequence, as magnificent as something out of the Roger Moore era, with the added bonus of seeing Ben Wishaw's Q get to do "in the field" the way dear Desmond Llewellyn used to. And smartly hiding in a cupboard to escape the baddies shows his brains can be as good as Bond's brawn.

Mind you, I'm pretty sure that DNA on the Spectre ring really doesn't work like that. Somehow connecting everyone in the plot and revealing that Oberhauser is still alive. I mean it's Sciarra's ring, not Blofeld's, so you can't even make it a kiss-the-papal-ring pass your DNA along that way thing.

And now of course we arrive at the fatal flaw. The film itself insists that all the clues lead us here.

And the problem is this. The head of the organisation and apparently ultimate author of all that has happened to Craggles over the course of four movies turns out to be someone from his childhood who he thought was dead.

And is also Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

So why all the coy messing with the name? In context of the Bond films, of course we in the audience all know what Blofeld means. But it means nothing to this Bond.

The "(adopted) brother we never knew he had" is such a daytime TV cliché, but it is the real thrust of this film, that knife to the heart of Bond from the moment in Rome when he recognises the erstwhile Franz Oberhauser.

Blofeld? It means nothing here. It's just a throwaway about being "my mother's line", and Bond makes a half-hearted witticism (he doesn't even manage a "What, your mum was called Ernst Stavro?").

The name Blofeld ought to have been haunting at least this if not all four recent Bond films. The reveal that Oberhauser is Blofeld ought to come as the conclusion.

Blofeld brings up the very unpleasant and not-very-Bond-toned eye-gouging scene from the earlier Rome meeting. Yet, when he talks about Mr Guerra (the victim) as "not being there any more"… well, that moment just wasn’t there in the first place. Plus Blofeld was about half a mile away at the other end of that really long table. And that indeed is the problem with this movie – it needs to make references to moments that aren't there.

(Or maybe Blofeld just routinely gets Hinx to gouge people's eyes out; after all he does have his own skull-drilling suite in his own secret base.)

So we get to the secret base in the middle of the desert. Possibly the crater is supposed to remind us of the spectacular hollow volcano of "You Only Live Twice", but how does it fit with our themes of the dead alive? The meteor is sort of impressive, maybe, but doesn't appear to mean or connect to anything.

And we get to the political crux of the movie: information is power. And Blofeld has a lot of it (somehow) so he's very powerful. Here's a video of Mr White shooting himself to show I can see and know everything.

The problem with "knowledge is power is bad" is that we really don't see the application of that power. "Extortion is my business" said Donald Pleasance's incarnation of Blofeld. The "E" in Spectre might no longer stand for "Extortion" but we really do need to see that the ability to pry into people's privacy can be monstrously abused – we need to see those government officials being blackmailed into allowing arms sales and people smuggling. "C" for example could have been being forced to work for Spectre, rather than just Andrew Scott doing his Moriarty thing. Again. We need to see identities being stolen and lives being broken. The invisible tentacles are all too invisible, here. As in "Quantum of Solace", the threat becomes so large and nebulous it ceases to be dramatic.

The one instance of Spectre using this power to know it all – at least we presume this is how they know where Bond is – is that they must, as Ralph Fiennes' M guesses, use MI6's own knowledge of where Bond is (by way of the "smart blood" with which Q has injected him). And yet, that's left as an exercise for the viewer to work out. Mr Hinx just turns up on the train… and that's the sort of thing that Bond villains just do. It's too easy to miss that it's a clue to Spectre's power, because the baddies don't usually need to show how they find Bond when it's time for the next attempt to kill him.

Also, did Spectre buy their HQ from the same people who supplied Quantum with the exploding hotel two movies ago?

What's missing, ultimately, is the twist.

Alex pointed out to me how the film is full of the noir trope of mirroring: Bond and Madeline on the train mirroring Bond and Vesper on the train; Mr White's hidden room at l'Americaine mirroring his (literally behind the mirror) room in Austria; the helicopter stunt at the start mirroring the helicopter at the end.

Madeline is coded as a noir femme fatale… but without ever achieving fatale status. Not that Lea Seydoux is bad, but you've got Monica bleedin' Bellucci in the film (wasted in what amounts to an extended cameo).

(Just as Fiennes' M has all the coding of being the double-agent, too good to be true and perfectly placed to take over as M after "good" M is killed in "Skyfall". But no, there's no twist; he too is just another goody.)

So, I would have made one tiny, tiny change. The end of the movie. Bond has been diverted from the mission to prevent "C" from turning on Spectre's private panopticon into the ruin of the MI5 headquarters – I love the spiderweb of bomb fuses, though it is a switch of metaphor from octopodes to arachnids – and Chuckles has given him three minutes to escape and/or rescue the dame. He ends up in the shell of M's office.

Way Out?

Here's the change: instead of Christoph Waltz watching in a helicopter… it's Madeline. And she is finally revealed as Blofeld. A black Swann not a white one. The real cause of her split with her father.

Then Franz Oberhauser is just Franz Oberhauser. Instead of a coincidence too far, actually it was an ingenious double bluff. His jealous obsession with Bond another tool that the real Blofeld has used as a blind and a cover. And she gets clean away. Leaving her catspaw to face the music and whether or not Bond decides to shoot him.

(Even that – Alex used the term "peremptory" – exploding secret base becomes redressed as another bluff.)

And a movie that was running out of adrenaline after the Austria chase gets a much needed final surprise, a shock ending to leave you leaving the cinema with a surge, not a slow coming off the boil.

Watching it again I think it's not a bad flick. The good bits are really good: the opening Day of the Dead; the sinister menace – de trop eye-gouging aside – of the Spectre meeting; the chase through Rome, particularly the way Q has gaffer-tapped his improvements to the dash of the three-million pound DB10; the old-fashioned-and-revelling-in-it mountain-top chase. Craig continues to be excellent. And he gets to be funny, in moments, in his quiet understated way; often unexpected physical comedy, as when he manages to survive a building collapsing by landing on a convenient sofa. Naomie Harris is terrific as Moneypenny, even though she has less to do than in "Skyfall" and deserves more (at least she gets to mirror the "partner in bed" gag that "Casino Royal" did with M back in the day). Whishaw is, of course, wonderful in everything he does. Fiennes brings gravitas and, appropriately, ennui to M, and is clearly channelling his inner Bernard Lee. Though you do slightly wish he could have dropped "C" off his tower with an, "Avada ke-bloody-davra".

But still the ending is disappointing. Loaded with expectations that just don't deliver. In a way, I think, they are hamstrung by the possibility that this is Daniel Craig's last Bond outing, and the need to give him an ending that is both resolution and upbeat, meaning he gets the girl, and throws away the gun.

I think, perhaps, we'll have a better feel for this film when we can see what happens when it's not the end.

James Bond, after all, will return.

[*sinister chords by Thomas Newman, shadow of tentacles at the end of the mirrored paragraph]

Day 5533: 1% - A Decade of Millennium

Wednesday:


T'was ten years ago, I first opened my VERY FLUFFY DIARY and shared my GENIUS with the World.

How many things have changed in that time!

There have been three* James Bond films; four** Doctor Whos; and for five years the Liberals ran the country. A bit.

And I used to think that IMPORTANT things needed to be EMPAHASISED and so I used a lot of ALL-CAPS!

Nowadays I realise that in the Internets this is considered VERY FUNNY and should be ENCOURAGED!

So if you think YOU feel old remember… next year THE FLUFFY ELEPHANT GETS THE VOTE!

Daddy's Little Spectre

*also "Quantum of Sausage".

**Dr Dave, Dr Mat, Dr Hurt and Dr PeterC (Dr Chris just missed).

We've see the Rise and Fall of Prime Monster, Mr Frown...

From the resignation of phoney Tony... and the Government of All the Goats... to the election that never was.

From Stalin to Mr Bean. From economic crisis to 10p tax debacle to the Expenses Scandal.

Through the plottings of Milipede Snr to the Coup that Collapsed.

To I Agree With Nick.

We've lived through The Coalition...

From the decision to go into government…

…to the first 100 days that no commentator would have predicted the government would survive…

…through the difficult middle years…

…to the last Coalition budget (where I spot that Milipede Jnr has spotted his forthcoming defeat).

We've discovered it really IS the economy, stupid

And I've told you all about MONEY and WEALTH, the ECONOMIC CYCLE and the CREDIT CRUNCH and QUANTITATIVE EASING.

We've seen what happened to Northern Rock and the fall of Bear Sterns (who even remembers them!).

We've seen why Ed Miliband was wrong about the "myth" of Labour overspending …and fisked of a Labour Troll who tried baiting me!

And recently we've asked what does a Cobynite Labour economic policy actually MEAN?

and what should a Liberal Economic Policy Look like?

We've watched a LOT of movies…

Some old favourites GLORIOUSLY reinvented...

...and some that would have been better left alone!

Some Harry Potter and some Pirates and some More Pirates

Superman and Batman (good) and Batman (not so much)

Star Wars (cartoon version) and Star Trek (likewise)

Narnia and His Dark Materials




And VERY OCCASIONALLY some JAMES BOND. And some JAMES BOND. And some JAMES BOND!

…and we've watched some REALLY bad television

Bottomkickers...

Robbing Hoodie...

and, Crotchwoot


With special mention for The Amazingly Awful Mrs Pritchard (hang on, that's Daddy Alex's!)

We've had a few Christmases...

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells

Fluffy All the Way

Oh What Fun

It Is to Ride

On a One ELEPHANT

Open Aston Martin...

And we may even have touched upon religion

When I may have occasionally disagreed with The Beardy-Weirdy of Canterbury. Once or twice.

Not to mention the Cardinal arch-bigot of Westminster

or Ruth Kelly and the Elder God Delusion!

But here are my absolute top ten favourite things about my diary for the first ten years…

#10 Mr Balloon Cartoon

OK, the silly names.

Over the years, I've had my little, er, misunderstandings about people's names, whether it was calling the leaders of my own Party Captain Clegg (as in the notorious Pirate Clegg) or Sir Mr the Merciless (as in the notorious Emperor Ming) or those of the (Hard) Labour Party Lord Blarimort, Mr Frown or Mr Milipede.

…or there are the ever changing adjectives to describe the perma-tanned pestilence that is Mr Peter Vain, er Hain. He been:

An Orange-hued apostate

A Tangerine-toned Turncoat

A Satsuma-skinned surrender monkey

A Clementine-Coloured Catspaw

A Peach-painted preener

A Sepia-stained stool-pigeon

A Fuchsia-finished old fraud

A Beige-Basted Bumbler

A Ridiculous russet rogue

A Terracotta-tinted twit

and a Heliotrope-hued hole in the head not to mention firebrick-brushed fraud!

…but from very early on – okay, in fact from my VERY FIRST diary – I have called the then leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and now (as absurd as it may seem, and with whatever culpability for it that the Liberal Democrats may have) Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Rt Hon David William Donald Cameron… Mr Balloon.

He just LOOKS like a Balloon. An empty pink bladder with a smile painted on it.

So OBVIOUSLY I was delighted when a national newspaper cartoonist came to the same conclusion!

see also my favourite "interview" with the Rt Hon Dave Balloon.

#9 Coining the term "Unpology"

The era of New Labour came and went like a bout of gastric flu, but it left behind a legacy of political spin doctoring – ironically usually reduced to just "spin", when the whole point of Labour's news management strategy as run by Mr Alistair Henchman was to counter the "spin" that the (mostly right-wing) press were already putting on their stories about the non-Tory Party.

Terms like "remaining on message", sticking to "the grid" and "burying bad news" have all added to the public feeling that politicians – ALL politicians – are manipulative, deceptive even downright deceitful.

But the apogee (or nadir) of this technique comes with the dark art of appearing to deliver an apology while actually not doing so, and often managing to blame the person to whom you should be apologising for their misinterpretation of your perfectly acceptable behaviour being the only reason for taking offence.

Mr Frown's Hope Secretary Jacqui Smith delivered a particularly fine (by which I mean un-fine) example.

#8 Millennium on the Moon

Labour under Lord Blairimort quite quickly gave up any pretense of Civil Libertiies and started playing the SECURITY card left, right, and centre… tell more like right and far-right and even further right.

Quite early on, I had to go ON THE RUN from the Stormtroopers of the Labour Government after they mistook my SINCERE ADMIRATION for JAMES BOND for GLORIFICATION of TERRORISM. Fortunately, I was able to apply for political asylum on the Moon. Here's the full saga…

In hiding!

In Space!

I was NOT driving!

Monster!

In the Soup!

Nose Trouble!

Escape… to Danger!

(In tribute to our dear friend Dr Nick, every title ends in a !)

#7 Defeating Mr Frank Luntz

Another early victory was the time we had a run-in with Republican Push-Poller and semi-resident "expert" on Newsnight, Mr Frank Luntz.

He had presented what he called a focus group on the telly. Clearly a sensitive soul, he posted comments on a lot of Lib Dem blogs… but obviously it was MY piece, suggesting how a STAGE MAGICIAN could have arrived at a VERY SIMILAR outcome that most troubled him.

Here's how he might have done it…

…and here's me replying to him replying to me!

He tried his hand at "predicting" again, with the thankless task of suggesting someone other than Mr Frown might succeed Lord Blairimort (and how did THAT work out, again?)…

…then made an appearance on the Comic Relief Apprentice…

…before buttering up our own Capitan Clegg.

Pleasingly, Newsnight stopped billing him as "pollster" and started crediting him as a Republican. Full disclosure is good.

#6 Defeating the "Liberal" Conspiracy

I never REALLY took to the project launched by Mr Sunny Hundal and dubbed (not JUST by me) as "Labour Conspiracy", seeing it as at best a well-meaning BLACK HOLE that would suck in and swallow up non-Labour blogs into supporting that tired old Party, and at worst a front organisation.

But then Mr Sunny Delight's munchkin Aaron Murin-Heath went a little bit, er, over-defensive in response to this little piece putting a sore Green loser in his place…

For once read the comments, and Mr God Bless the Liberal Blogosphere for riding to the rescue of a soft toy under fire!

Of course, once Hard Labour went back into opposition, it was safe for Mr Sunny to have his moral high ground cake and eat it, so he slunk back into the party and his fabulous media career™ was quietly wound up.

Meaning my Diary has outlived his PROJECT. So yay!

#5 Defeating the Mr Master

Then there was that time when Doctor Who's the Master would have taken over the Fluffy Diary (and the World) but for one elementary error…

#4 Nick Clegg, his hand on my bottom

It remains a source of GREAT PRIDE in this LIBERAL Liberal Democrat Party that no matter how silly or bizarre it might have seemed to have a soft toy in their midst passing satirical comment on their goings on, at every level up and down the Party from grassroots to grandees they have been so willing to talk and listen and take part in bloggers' conversations.

And no one moreso than the Party Leader, Nick Clegg, who really took to the bloggers interviewers and talked to us on many occasions.

Here are two of my favourite, first from early on when he'd just been elected leader and made time for us and our doughnuts between the "serious" press…

…and second just a few years later from inside the Cabinet Office as Deputy Prime Minister.

I'm particularly grateful to Ming Cambell who, when HE was leader, was the first to talk to the bloggers, and to Chris Huhne who, during that leadership contest, was so easy to persuade to talk, perhaps because he as the insurgent was as much the outsider as we were. They got us going, and thanks to them Nick saw how important it was to open up a channel to talk to friends inside the Party. And Danny and Vice and Ed and others all followed.

#3 The Day of Meeting the Doctor (and all his chums)

But it's not ALL been about the politics. In fact there's been quite a bit of Doctor Who over the years, what with the telly series actually coming back to the telly pretty much in sync with my Diary. Obviously.

The highpoint for many a fan was the fiftieth anniversary and the Day of the Doctor, which we celebrated – of course – but by remembering ALL the eras of Dr Woo and all the many starts big and small who have given us so much to enjoy and think about over the first fifty years.

Some of whom even got the pleasure of meeting ME!

#2 I am Blogger of the Year. Oh yeah!

And so, obviously, the first thing the Liberal Democrats did on getting into government for the first time in EIGHTY years was to give a prize to a stuffed elephant. I was, I have to say, taken somewhat by surprise.

Of course, it didn't QUITE work out first time around… or second… or third or fourth… but, as the saying goes, if at first you don't succeed… throw a TANTRUM!

So this is ME winning Blogger of the Year in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, (FINALLY!) 2010!

#1 Daddies Get Married

Because THIS is why I write my Very Fluffy Diary. This is why I keep telling you all this Liberal stuff.

Big Gay Wedding

Because The Liberal Democrats changed the World. For the better.

Remember that. Always.

Day 4317: JAMES BOND: Skyfall

Friday:

Hooray! I have a new THEME SONG to sing along to!

"We've got Trifle...
"We've got crumble..."
"We've got pies full...
"To eat all...
"Together!"

Yes, it's celebration time. And not just my Daddies' anniversary. You didn't think I wouldn't get in to see the newest James Bond film, did you?

The thing is, before I can tell you all about it, there's a fairly MASSIVE SPOILER (no, not the one about Naomie Harris; the REALLY big one).

So what CAN I tell you?

M drives a Jaguar XF in British Racing Green. I mention this for no reason...

Yes, we have an ejector seat.

OK, spoilers-ho! You have been warned.

There's something very odd going on with time in Bond's continuity.

For a start, the familiar set up at the end of this film – M, Tanner, Moneypenny, the wood-panelled office – all feels as though this is bringing us back to the beginning, and the start of Dr No. Which makes Bond's timeline into a weird Möbius loop in which he goes on to have the adventures we've seen earlier, until ultimately the new M is replaced by a woman who sees Bond as a sexist, misogynist dinosaur.

But then there's the car. The DB5, the most famous car in the world. It would make sense for the Aston Martin that Craig's Bond uses to make his escape with M to be the one that he won from the short-tempered Dimitrios in "Casino Royale". But then it's got the ejector seat. For that matter it's got the machine guns! Are we supposed to understand that this is the car that Q (Desmond Llewellyn) gave to Bond back when he was Sean Connery? Does that mean that all of the adventures that happened to "earlier" Bonds have now happened to this Bond between "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall"? And, as an aside, if he's ditching the Jag because it's a company car... isn't the Aston Martin just as much of a company car? Or are we supposed to conclude that he's read the files from the Connery era and been... tinkering... with the car from "Casino Royale"? Well, as he says to this year's in-every-sense-fabulous villain Silva, everyone needs a hobby.

In fairness, it seems very odd that after "Casino Royale" was about Bond's origin story, his first mission, and the "Quantum of Solace" took place immediately afterwards, starting literally minutes after the point where "Casino Royale" finished, meaning that they both take place over a course of a few weeks at the start of Bond's double-oh career, then suddenly "Skyfall" is talking about him as a washed up, out of date, past-it old man.

Of course, in part, that's because this film is discussing Bond – and the Secret Service in a wider sense – as to whether they still have any relevance in a post-Empire, post-Cold War world. There's some irony there, in that Judi Dench's M came in in "Goldeneye" describing Bond as a relic of the Cold War and here she is now defending the service and the double-oh section on the grounds they are more needed than ever.

Does the world need an Empire to look after it? Does it need Britain? We certainly don't seem to have done that good a job. Just as Bond, old, tired, half-broken is a symbol of what we think we still are, Silva is emblematic of all the sordid little compromises we've made just to get along. Your sins will find you out, indeed.

"Fiat justitia ruat caelum"

"Let Justice be Done, though the Sky fall"

This is the dilemma presented at the conclusion of Moore and Gibbons' seminal "Watchmen": the World has been saved from nuclear armageddon by a grand deception, but that deception itself was a crime that cost millions of lives. Justice – personified by the vigilante Rorschach – demands that the perpetrator of that crime be exposed and punished, even though the inevitable consequence will be the unravelling of the fragile, new-formed peace and almost certainly the end of the World.

"Skyfall", the twenty-third James Bond film, starts from a similar choice. Not, admittedly, on the same scale, but coming from the same place. M commits an injustice, handing over one of her own agents to the Chinese, knowing he would go to torture and death, in return for six other agents and a peaceful hand-over of Hong Kong. One of those dirty little diplomatic compromises that see innocent people chewed up and spat out by the system in the name of the greater good.

M justifies this – to Bond, to herself – by picking an agent, Tiago Rodriguez, who was exceeding his brief, doing a little work for himself on the side. But recall her first scene, her very first scene back in "GoldenEye" with an older, more cynical Bond:

"If you think I haven't got the balls to send a man out to die, then you're dead wrong. But I won't do it on a whim."

With hindsight (or retcon) she's not talking about what she might do (to Bond) but what she has already done.

Rodriguez however survives to reinvent himself as cyber-terrorist Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), an alarmingly-what-have-you-done-to-your-hair-bleach-blond ambisexual with a topical penchant for revealing the innermost secrets of the Secret Service – in the memorable phrase of the Metro's reviewer "half Julian Assange, half Julian Clary".

Silva's pronounced accidie – not to mention sexual ambivalence – is a reflection of Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, and many of the characters he wrote, especially the villains, where sexual deviancy as much as ethnicity was linked to moral corruption, charming old bigot that he was. Bond's response – "what makes you think this is my first time?" – is a "fifty-seven academics just punched the air" moment, reflecting the oft-asserted suggestion that Bond himself may be an over-compensating closet homosexual (again, allegedly, like Fleming himself).

In the movies, Bond Villains tend to fall into one of two categories: the charismatic "masterminds" like Drax ("Moonraker"), Stromberg ("The Spy Who Loved Me"), Goldfinger (hazard a guess) or, of course, Blofeld (five out of the first seven movies); and the "anti-Bonds" such as "Red" Grant ("From Russia With Love"), Colonel Moon's alter-ego Gustav Graves (in "Die Another Day"), or Alex "Janus" Trevelyan from "GoldenEye".

Silva clearly falls into the latter category (though, actually, the "anti-Bonds" have become much more common in these days when we expect baddies to do their own physical brutality without the need for henchmen).

"Skyfall" hinges around the scene in the middle, literally and metaphorically at the heart of the film, where Bond is tied to a chair and introduced to Silva, his opposite, for the first time. Not so much a clash of personalities – or even a homoerotic seduction – as a presentation of two mutually-exclusive worldviews.

"Mommy was very bad," says Silva.

"She never lied to me," asserts Bond.

Did she lie, when she said Bond passed his MI6 assessments? Or did he lie to the assessments, faking his low scores in the knowledge that the Service had been penetrated by someone easily capable of discovering his results? Either that or Bond stages a truly remarkable recovery once back in the field, eliminating six of Silva's men in as many seconds before holding the man himself at gunpoint while the helicopter cavalry arrive.

Of course, she tells lies to him all the time. But that's not the point.

From the very beginning, the relationship between M and Bond, that is between this M and this Bond, has been characterised by deception. He has repeatedly shown the ability to penetrate her defences, to her flat, to her computer, to her real meaning behind the words she uses. His talent is either impossible or something in which she has connived. Similarly, she has repeatedly given him orders to do one thing while anticipating that he will do what she really wants instead. She gives him purpose. He gives her deniability.

What Bond is saying is that there is a deeper truth to his relationship with M, one they have not, possibly cannot have, acknowledged. M has never misused Bond. Not even when she gives the order – "take the bloody shot!" – that sees him knocked off a train and believed drowned. He's aggrieved that she didn't trust him to do the job on his own, but he also implicitly understands that "licence to kill" means "licence to be in the line of fire".

A brief digression: during the fight in the lair of the Komodo Dragons – yes, Komodo Dragons are this year's piranha fish – when Bond effects his escape by using one's back as a step, it occurred to me, "hey, isn't that the alligator scene from 'Live and Let Die'?" and I began to wonder if there aren't references to all the other Bond films, a game played as recently as "Die Another Day", the twentieth in the sequence.

It's quite possible that once you start looking for these things, then you end up reading them in whether they are there or not, so when Bond's response to Ben Wilshaw as the new Q is "You must be joking" (as Connery to Desmond Llewellyn in "Goldfinger") or you see the unlikely return of the signature gun from "Licence to Kill" you think you're onto something, but then you find yourself thinking is Sévérine armed with a Beretta as a reference to the gun M takes off Bond in "Dr No." and then you're reduced to bluffing "didn't Silva mention something about redirecting a satellite" as a nod to the central plot of "Tomorrow Never Dies".

In spite of that, Alex felt that there were particularly strong echoes of the Pierce Brosnan years.

And that's quite appropriate because those are also the Judi Dench years.

So, in particular, as a former SIS agent, literally burned by the Service, scarred and obsessed with (from their point of view) betrayal, Silva is an almost exact match for the villain of her first movie, Sean Bean's two-faced 006; while the personal history with M brings to mind Sophie Marceau's Electra in "The World is Not Enough".

The repeated theme of the post-1990 Bonds has of course been "what is the point of you any more"; "GoldenEye" very strongly playing the before/after the fall of communism card, while the New World Order, particularly the rise of China, is the backdrop of both "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "Die Another Day". While, again, "The World is Not Enough" uses a wounded shoulder as a repeated reference to Bond's aging and the damage that his life does to his body.

Though if we're speaking of thematic similarities, the other Bond film that comes to mind is "For Your Eyes Only", with "Skyfall" resonating thematically with the 1981 film's motifs of revenge and an older Bond.

"For Your Eyes Only" saw Roger Moore's Bond placing flowers on the grave of his wife Tracy, not only a part of that film's recognition that Bond was a man with "a past", but also the first time the series had made even an implied statement that Moore's Bond was the same man to whom the events of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" had happened. (In contrast with "Live and Let Die" which had gone out of its way to suggest Moore's agent could be a different man, drinking whisky instead of martini, armed with a huge Smith and Wesson rather than the Walther and so on.) Similar intimations of mortality are shot through "Skyfall", starting from the foreshadowing of Bond's concern that a wounded fellow agent will bleed to death before medical help can arrive, through his bearded reappearance – like his own ghost – in M's house, and via the word in passing that M's husband (seen – ish – in "Casino Royale") has died, to the graves at the chapel on the Skyfall estate in Scotland.

That progression reminds me just how long this movie is. At 143 minutes it's technically a minute shorter than "Casino Royale". But it's a lot longer than the 108 minutes of "Quantum of Solace".

And while "Quantum of Solace" felt like little more than an extended pre-title sequence, "Skyfall" feels like at least three Bond films in one: the pre-titles that does the now-traditional Craig era free-running escapades but bigger and bolder (as with the trip to Venice in "Casino Royale", this chase round Istanbul seems to suggest that you can't go wrong when returning to the locations of "From Russia With Love"); the trip to Macau and Shanghai and then by junk to Silva's island, which is very much "The Man with the Golden Gun"; Silva's "he wanted us to catch him" plot, which is a mash up of "Silence of the Lambs", "Day of the Jackal" and, as almost everyone has spotted, the Joker's twisty-turny plot from "The Dark Knight"; and then the final "Home Alone" section. (Somehow I'd guessed from Adele's lyrics that "Skyfall" – like "Goldeneye" in the real world – would be the name of a house.)

The colour tones for each section are quite distinct too, the bright sunlight of Istanbul (before the fall); the super-saturated lighting, be it neons in Macau, fireworks in Shanghai or over-bright sun in the Island, all suggesting an unreal, exotic, other world; giving way to the greys of rain-soaked Britain. As night comes in in the last third it feels cold and oppressive in a way that it didn't in the Far East parts.

Pastiche of Nolan (Silva's island, like something devastated by a tsunami, is as reminiscent of "Inception" as the later plot twists are of "The Dark Knight") is clearly the new pastiche of Bourne. But about that plot-within-a-plot. The Joker, in "The Dark Knight" has an endgame beyond the exigencies of getting himself locked up so that he can get into the secure prison cells of the Gotham PD. That's all just one more step on the way to making himself top dog of Gotham's criminal underworld (and putting that underworld back in charge, the way it was before Batman).

Silva has no such overriding aim. His motives appear to begin and end with taking revenge – or, from his point of view, seeing justice done – by having M humiliated and killed. Which makes the whole business seem ridiculously overcomplicated. For goodness' sake, he's got a bomb planted set to derail a passing tube train just on the off-chance that someone manages to work out how he's got out of MI6, decrypt his computer map, work out where he's going and chase him through the tunnels and the tube to get there. That's serious planning in depth.

(And was I alone in being surprised – and a little disappointed – that that tube train wasn't as full of commuters as every other tube train and platform we'd seen up to that point?)

I kept expecting the other shoe to drop, for there to be a reveal of the "diabolical mastermind" behind the scenes, pulling Silva's strings.

In that scene on Silva's island again, the villain explicitly describes his cyber-terrorism as picking his own secret missions "for the highest bidder" which led me to expect him to be acting as an agent or a catspaw for someone else.

At this point you might rightly be thinking of a final-scene cameo from Jesper Christensen as "Mr White", although after the perceived critical failure of "Quantum of Solace", we're sadly unlikely to be seeing him or his SpECTRE-lite buddies again. Sadly, in my view, because SpECTRE would be the final part of re-creating the original "classic" Bond set up.

But the real "obvious suspect" was Ralph Fiennes (here playing Lord Voldemort in a very grumpy mood in spite of getting his nose back – actually, his character's name is Mallory, but I kept thinking of him as a Marlow. As in Kit.). His backstory places him in charge in Northern Ireland and even "Spooks" uses that as code for "a bit dodgy" whenever they want Harry to be a bit more shades of grey. Plus, he ends up with M's job – how is he not obviously the villain?

The fact that he saves M's life, and gets shot in the shoulder for his pains, seems like exactly the sort of "appears to be the hero" Xanatos Gambit you'd expect from a master manipulator.

In fact, Silva bursting into the inquiry, guns blazing, doesn't appear to serve any purpose other than giving Mr Fiennes his "I know an awful lot about intelligence and I can save you from terrorists" moment.

(And to show that, for all their supposed brilliance, when it comes down to it neither Silva nor Bond can shoot a moving target from three feet away.)

For the first half of the movie, the McGuffin – oddly forgotten in the second half – has been a list of all NATO agents embedded within terrorist cells (initially on the hard drive Bond and Eve struggle to recover in the pre-titles; later in possession of M's mysterious enemy whom Bond seeks to trace). Cheekily, this is clearly the "NOC list" plot device of the first "Mission: Impossible" film. But also, as M's debriefing with Lord Voldemort stresses, it's a list that the Secret Service shouldn't have ought to have had, and that our allies do not know we possessed.

This is the sin that will bring M down – something that the film doesn't properly emphasise – that she will be exposed for spying on our friends, an act of betrayal.

Silva's discovery that MI6 have acquired this list must precipitate the events of the film. His possession of the list is what gives him the leverage to precipitate the public inquiry.

But, given that he can and does blow up M's office whenever he likes, he doesn't need to do that just to "draw her out". If he just wants to kill her, he could have done that at any time. So he must want the inquiry to judge her and find her guilty.

So doesn't attacking M at the inquiry rather undermine his aim to see her humiliated and fired by that inquiry?

Rather he makes her point for her: that enemies can spring out of the shadows anywhere.

(Rather like the Doctor in "The Trial of a Time Lord", this is the sort of thing that usually ends up with the accused being cleared of all charges in spite of clear evidence of wrongdoings on the grounds that the baddies have proved them to be sort of right. About something or other.)

But what happens here? Cui bono?

After terrorist gunmen attack a Parliamentary inquiry and a disastrous attack on the London Underground (even if there isn't anyone but the driver on that tube), it would be astonishing not to see a huge increase in funds to our first and possibly only line of defence: the Secret Service. Just look at what happened post-September 11. Or Post-July 7. With M herself forced to retire by revelations – or even killed by the terrorists – surely it's all going to fall into the lap of her successor.

And indeed it does. It's just there's never that moment of revelation when he "does the evil voice".

(Actually, as Alex remarks, Fiennes spends most of the film in the nice three-piece suit he wore as Steed in the "The Avengers" movie. No, not the one that's taken more than a billion dollars at the box office. The other one. Along with M being taken for an "Emma"; the same psychiatrist, Nicholas Woodeson (playing Dr Darling/Dr Hall), along to do the evaluations; and the coda beginning with Bond on the roof of Whitehall in just about the place where Mother takes tea with Steed and Mrs Peel at the end of "The Avengers" it's kind of hard not to think of this as a takeover of one British spy franchise by another, rather more stylish, one. And "M" could stand for "Mother".)

Also, isn't Bond's ploy to lure Silva to Skyfall with "a trail of breadcrumbs that only Silva could follow" a bit redundant given that to the best of his knowledge only Silva is following them?

Of course the most surprisingly overlooked suspect is... Bond himself. With his own "death" as motive, and his previously established ability to walk in and out of M's secrets giving him means and opportunity, it's a shocking oversight that it isn't even mentioned that he might be the one doing this. Even if it was only for him to raise the issue and M say that she'd already thought of that.

It will take time, and a good many more viewings, before I can decide whether this, like "Casino Royale", is a truly great Bond movie. (Though I can tell at once that it's a huge improvement on "Quantum of Solace".) As with "Casino Royale", they've concentrated on telling an emotional story about Bond's relationships, and in Daniel Craig they have an actor well able to portray those emotions through minimalist quirks. They've also allowed him to have a little more fun with the character, and unlike Timothy Dalton in "The Living Daylights" (who you can see wince every time he has to deliver one) Craig clearly enjoys the occasional quip.

He also has a brilliant chemistry with his "Bond Girl", Judi Dench, who obviously steals the show and all of the expletives. She gets to write Bond's obituary, closer to the original book of "You Only Live Twice" than the Roald Dahl-penned movie (and doesn't this make it thrice if he's supposed to be the same Bond?). There's a case to be made that that big spoiler at the end here is as big a trauma for this Bond as the death of Tracy was for his earlier incarnation in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

Both of the other women – Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe – get to play a mix of strong and vulnerable, and also sexy, without (I hope I'm right) being demeaned by this. I found myself, against expectations, warming to Ben Whishaw as Q – I'd not liked him in "The Hour", though I had in "Richard II" – with a larger part than I'd expected too. (Madam!) Though only a moron would connect a known cyber-terrorist's laptop to the SIS mainframe and not expect what happens to happen. Javier Bardem as Silva is terrifying and also hilarious, often both at once (though I bet people thought the same of Mr Wint and Mr Kidd in "Diamonds are Forever" at the time too).

This is Daniel Craig's third decent Bond film... assuming you count "Happy and Glorious". Apparently, rumour has it, he has signed up for another two Bond flicks, possibly a two-parter. In which case, on the strength of this, I am delighted to agree with "Skyfall's" closing caption:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN
.

Day 4297: BOND GOLD: From Russia With Love

Saturday:

From Russia With Love (1963)

Staring Mr Sean Connery as Ian Fleming’s James Bond

The One With: The fight on the Orient Express (fighting fish!)

Beautiful direction from Terence Young, some lovely clean establishing shots such as the introduction to Istanbul with a view of the Blue Mosque, and beautiful sweeping John Barry soundtrack, especially his pounding Orient Express theme and of course the “alternate” Bond theme “007”, carry us away on an Oriental Mystery Tour.

What a lot of people say is that “From Russia With Love” is a great spy film, but not that great a Bond film. But Daddy Alex points out that the first quarter of an hour or so are in fact a CRACKING Bond movie: the pre-title mini-adventure, the title sequence which really gets it right this time, both discovering Maurice Binder’s style of projecting the credits onto women’s bodies (even though it isn’t actually Maurice binder this time) and the music that combines the “exotic” themes of Eastern Europe with the Monty Norman James Bond theme without the handbrake turn of Dr No’s calypso; then there’s the introduction of Kronsteen (Vladek Sheybal) and Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), the lizard and toad of SpECTRE; then the visit to SpECTRE Island; and only THEN do we get the REAL Mr Bond in a charming scene with M and the new Q (Desmond Llewelyn).

Oddly, “From Russia…” is already SUBVERTING the James Bond tropes, often BEFORE they’re even established. That pre-title adventure is actually GRANT’S adventure and sees Bond “killed”; the “gadget” scene is SpECTRE’s lethal training ground rather than Q’s rather more sedate laboratory. In this context, the Bond/Q relationship – joking and friendly, rather than acerbic – seems a deliberate reversal rather than not yet having been established. (It won’t be until the next movie, when Llewelyn waspishly takes Connery to task in character, that everyone realises that OF COURSE Q would despise this man who spends his life destroying everything Q creates.)

It’s very brave of Connery to appear with the exaggerated make-up of the first sequence, it’s enough to make him look slightly… off, so that the reveal that it’s a mask and a training exercise for Grant comes as an “oh that’s what’s going on” rather than a total cheat.

But speaking of brave, Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb is quite awesome. Her first scene, with the faceless cat-fancier (Blofeld, the titles admit) sees her fawning and crawling, the defector who knows she’s not to be trusted. But as soon as she’s out of his presence, she completely dominates any scene that she is in.

More subtly, Robert Shaw as the anti-Bond Donald “Red” Grant, is carefully woven through the film. In fact, it’s possible to watch “From Russia…” without taking in the significance of the little cut-aways to Grant – watch out particularly to catch him loitering outside the meeting between Rosa Klebb and Tatiana – but once you notice him you realise just how carefully he is masterminding everything that occurs. The difference between “Dr No” and “From Russia…” is that where the first film is very much a sequence of set-pieces, the second is a sequence of set-pieces where you can SEE Grant setting them up in advance.

For example, Bond arrives in Istanbul and is met by one of Kerim Bey’s sons (Neville Jackson – “The Androids of Tara’s” Prince Reynart). They are tailed to Kerim Bey’s headquarters by Bulgarians working for the Russians. “It’s an understanding we have”, explains the chauffeur. But after Bond’s meeting, we – though not Bond – see that the Bulgarian’s Citroen has been hijacked by Grant, who now tails Bond to his hotel. Later, Grant drops the Citroen outside the Russian Embassy, where the commissionaire discovers one of the Bulgarian agents dead.

Now in itself that’s just a shock moment set-piece. But it’s also a clever reference to the scene in “Dr No” where Bond leaves a dead body outside Government House with the quip “See that he doesn’t get away”; thus we’re establishing Grant’s Bond-ish credentials. But on top of that, it’s the murder of the Bulgarian that triggers the Russian limpet-mine attack on Kerim Bey, and in turn the escalation of the fight between the Bulgarians and Kerim’s Gypsy allies, and the assassination of Krilencu. In fact the whole middle third of the film.

(British vanity puts the limpet-mine attack down to Bond’s arrival, and they later link it to the return of Kerim’s old enemy Krilencu. So they never properly pause to investigate why the truce is so unexpectedly broken, and so fail to detect SpECTRE’s hidden hand – or tentacle – behind events.)

That that middle third of the film is a gorgeous travelogue and a complete distraction from the main business of stealing the LEKTOR decoder is glossed over almost entirely by the quiet understated charisma of Pedro Armendáriz as Ali Kerim Bey, head of section T, Turkey. Cheerfully staffing the secret service in Istanbul with members of his extensive family, while referring to keeping his mistress satisfied as “another day down the salt mines”, his honour and good humour are the backbone of “From Russia With Love”. All the more astonishing when you learn that Mr Armendáriz was suffering from terminal cancer throughout the filming (and took his own life shortly afterwards), it makes his on-screen death, murdered by Grant, all the more poignant.

Favourite line of the movie, Kerim to the bound and gagged Russian spy Benz: Did you know I have had a particularly fascinating life. Would you like to hear about it?

Benz: Mmmm

Kerim (surprised and delighted): Oh, you would?!

You do have to say it’s not a terribly FEMINIST movie, though. Whether it is the way this film’s Bond Girl Tatiana (Daniela Bianchi) declines from assertive Russian signals officer to passive Westernised trophy wife, or the frankly bizarre scene with Kerim’s mistress where she seems to exist only as an object to desire him, or the overt lesbian = evil coding of Rosa Klebb it’s rather too much about “putting women in their place”. Even Klebb, as we observed earlier, has to be odiously subservient to Blofeld. Which is a shame after the surprising strong showing for the women of Dr No.

(Given “that thing that’s going to happen with Pussy Galore at the end of the next movie”, we did think that there was a case for “From Russia…” being a better THIRD movie, and playing on Bond’s growing reputation as Britain’s premier gigolo. Which would make Fiona Vulpe’s line in “Thunderball” even more of a payoff. But we will have to wait to see those in turn.)

SpECTRE are even more ingeniously woven into the plot of Fleming’s novel here than they were in Dr No, though in both cases they serve to magnify something that could be almost mundane into something really very special.

Grant is defeated by a combination of Bond’s tenacity, Q’s gadgetry and his own greed (if he hadn’t stolen the cash from Bond’s pocket, Bond would not have known Grant would be susceptible to the gold sovereigns in the Q-case), and that is remarkably satisfying. As is Kronsteen’s well-deserved comeuppance. (“What is Bond compared to Kronsteen,” he wheezes in an attempt to shift the blame when the plan has failed. Well, he’s the man who beat your fool proof scheme, you moron! No wonder Blofeld has him offed.)

Walter Gotell, who would later create M’s opposite number, General Gogol of the KGB, here appears as chief SpECTRE henchman, Morzeny. Clearly he’s SUPPOSED to be the same character who is in charge on SpECTRE Island, AND dealing out the death kicks on Blofeld’s yacht in Venice AND in charge of the SpECTRE speed boats that pursue Bond and Tatiana in the Adriatic. But it’s terribly tempting to think that SpECTRE just have a half-a-dozen clones of the head of Russian intelligence working for them.

Bond Quips #3: (after Bulgarian killer Krilencu is shot escaping through the most outrageous Bond-film product-placement until Moonraker: a billboard for Henry and Cubby;s own movie starring Anita Eckberg) “She should have kept her mouth shut”

Bond Quips #4: (on the death of poison-boot-wielding Rosa Klebb) “She’s had her kicks”

Other things to watch out for: The use of cigarettes to suggest sexual knowledge. At the start of the film, when Bond is called in from his picnic with Sylvia Trench, he uses a carphone to speak to Moneypenny. Here the film contrasts Sylvia who clearly wants Bond in a sexual way, with Penny who has a more worldly “been there, done that” attitude. What is striking is that, very unusually, Moneypenny is seen toying with a cigarette, as if it is a symbol of her greater knowledge.

This is mirrored at the end of the film when we see Tatiana smoking for the first time only once they have got safely away to Venice, implying Bond has finally “fulfilled” her as a woman. Note also, that she discards her cigarette – the symbol of her sexual awakening – when Rosa Klebb turns up and takes charge over her again.

The Bottom Line: Bond on the brink of becoming super-human, nevertheless tells a tale of spy intrigue, blood feuds and cross and double-cross. Probably the best fight-on-a-train scene ever!

Day 4296: BOND GOLD: Dr No

Friday:

It is the Fiftieth Anniversary of the release of the first JAMES BOND film, "Dr No". It's also the fiftieth anniversary of the first Beatles single too. And it is also also Ms Cathy Gale's BIRTHDAY. So it is OFFICIALLY fifty years since the day the SIXTIES started.

To celebrate this, and the forthcoming NEW James Bond film about the phone hacking scandal "Sky Fail", ALL of my top twenty-five favourite Bond films have been released in a new blu-ray box. (Except for the "other" Casino Royale and the "other" Thunderball. And "Skyfall" is currently represented by a GAP!)

You KNOW what this means though... twenty-two days to watch twenty-two Bond films! Excellent! And what could POSSIBLY go WRONG!

Dr No (1962)

Starring Mr Sean Connery as Ian Flemming's James Bond

The One With: Ursula Andress in THAT bikini. That bloke with the metal hands.

The picture LOOKS beautiful, from the "Le Cercle" club where Sylvia Trench first introduces us to "the line": "Bond, James Bond", to the highways of Kingston Jamaica, and that's really Connery there in the car, no back-projection for the first car chase (not something that can be said about that hearse following him on the mountainside). Jack Lord exudes cool as Felix Leiter, but Connery still blows him off the screen so you can see why he wouldn't be back to do that again.

Daddy Alex particularly remarks on the way that the movie makes no concessions at all to coming in halfway through the book series, with M casually referring to Bond's berretta jamming on his last mission ("From Russia With Love" resulting in him being kicked by Rosa Klebb's poison boot-knife), and later telling Bond and Moneypenny to "skip the usual repartee". This isn't just skipping the "origin story" but expecting you to have done the reading. And all the better for it.

(Actually, this IS an origin story... but it's SpECTRE's origin story, not Bonds!)

Also, Major Boothroyd calls Britain's top assassin "a woman". No wonder HE'S not back for the sequel!

The plot, such as it is, is no more than a series of set pieces. Bond's investigation is perfunctory at best, since pretty much everyone he meets is working for Dr No already, and Professor Dent might as well be wearing a tee-shirt saying "I've got a Guilty Secret, please shoot me!". But each follows logically from the last and the pace and charisma keep the excitement mounting, so who cares!

The film escalates through Bond's series of encounters with Dr No's organisation, with Bond suavely taking everything from fluffy spiders to femmes fatales in his stride until we get to Dr No's island of Crab Key where things start to get a bit hairy. Finally, he confronts Dr No himself in the electrifying dinner scene. And then the movie slightly loses its way for ten minutes before the climax in Dr No's private nuclear reactor.

The book sees the evil Doctor put Bond into his Deathtrap Dungeon. For laughs, mainly. It seems like the filmmakers thought that this might be a bit silly. Or they didn't have faith in their ability to do the giant octopus attack at the end. So instead we get Mr Bond sort of escaping through the oversized air-conditioning, which for some reason has some lite deathtrappage built in. And fortunately he escapes the far end just in time to catch the one guy who works the nuclear furnace exploder controls on his way back from a late toilet break. Which is handy.

Oh, and the movie avoids all mention of GUANO. But the source of Dr No's power is STILL his undoing as, instead of being buried in bird poo, he is boiled-in-the-bag by his own reactor. Icky!

There're a LOT of women in it, which is unusual for a Bond. To be fair, a lot of them are there to stare AT Bond and go "sigh". But Miss Taro (Zena Marshall) and the unnamed photographer "Freelance" (Marguerite LeWars) are both strong pro-active women; as, for that matter, are Miss Moneypenny and Miss Trench. There are a lot of minor roles – Strangways secretary; the woman who takes the message from the radio operator to the comptroller of signals – that would just be omitted from any later film. It's completely unsentimental about killing women too – the secretary getting the same treatment as her boss. A particular favourite moment though is the woman Bond approaches at the harbour when looking for Quarrel. "Him!" she says and points. It's a completely charming moment.

The recurring motif of copper everywhere in Dr No's fortress base is both elegant and reminds of electricity and ultimately Dr No's nuclear reactor again. Odd that it's not aluminium, given that they've swapped the guano for a bauxite (or aluminium ore) mine. But I suppose copper is more visually distinctive. It does make Dr No's guest suite one of the WEIRDEST hotels anywhere – number three has the en suite, the adjoining bedrooms, the coffee bar; number twelve has the manacles and the inlet from the sea and the giant crabs(!) Ken Adam gets to do at least one signature set – the room where Professor Dent receives his instructions from Dr No's disembodied voice. The reactor room set is rather functional though. Though you've gotta love an "Abandon Area" sign that lights up when the reactor's going to blow!

Bond Quips #1: (on delivering the body of one of Dr No's agents to Government House) Sergeant, see that he doesn't get away.

Bond Quips #2: (reflecting on the crashed hearse) I think they were on the way to a funeral.

Other things to watch out for: Pussfeller's nightclub where the cosmopolitan crowd are all dancing with partners of the same skin tone to get around the American censor's rather twitchy attitude to mixed race couples.

Bottom Line: This is ALL about Connery. From the moment he delivers "the Line" he on a trajectory to superstardom that no toppling can prevent. What a magnificent bad-word!



Now check out this interview with the rather wonderful Ms Moneypenny. Can't SHE by the next James Bond when Mr Craig is done?

Day 3680: I'm Looking at Day 14611

Daddy's Birthday:


Daddy Richard is trying to convince me that he is NOT REALLY OLD, but I'm sure he is WELL over the hill!

Honestly! He is SO doddery that he has tripped over and fallen on the SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON for the SECRET VOLCANO BASE! What a NUMPTY!



(And yes, that really IS the one from James Bond!)

Still, there is HOPE! We have been listening to Ms Betty Driver on the Desert Island of Discs and SHE has been pulling pints on Consternation Street since longer than Daddy has been ALIVE!

Happy Birthday Daddy!
.

Day 2861: JAMES BOND: A Quarter of Sausage

Friday:



A SINISTER organisation making DEALS for squillions of dollars and euros and pounds with foreign DICTATORS to manipulate the British Government… and it’s NOT Barclays Bank!

This sounds like a job for my BESTEST HERO, Mr James Bond!

Yes, my Daddies have taken me to the cinema to see the latest DOUBLE BRILLIANT James Bond movie: “Quantum of Solace”. I LOVED it, even if it is less of a story of its own and more like an extra hour-and-a-half of “Casino Re-al”. Or a REALLY extended pre-title sequence for the next one!

This IS the second one, isn’t it?

It is a 12A which means that people under 12 have to have a responsible adult with them, but the cinema people kindly said that I counted as a responsible person to look after my Daddies!

Daddy’s review, with spoilers, follows… Roll titles!

At 106 minutes, this is, I’m told, the shortest of the James Bond films. It’s the next evolution of the pared down, grim reality Bond that we saw in “Casino Royale” (and, er, several Jason Bourne films), and it works to make a taut, fast-paced thriller. It works magnificently almost to the end, though I would have to say that the explosive climax is probably a touch over-edited, jumping directly from villain closing his deal to all hell having broken loose. Just occasionally less is really not more. The coda though makes a satisfying conclusion to what is, essentially, the story that began before the titles of “Casino Royale”.

“Quantum of Solace” is a mix of hyper-real violence, moments of highly stylised cinema and simmering emotional undertow, all of which disguises a very traditional Bond plot. (That “exploding villain’s base™” at the conclusion is the point where the mask slips). Villainous Dominic Greene is planning a little regime change coupled with some topical environmental terrorism and a touch of extortion. Bond meets him at a swanky party, finds out his underground secret, and blows up his secret base, er, hotel.

Throw in a dash of meta-narrative though, with back-links to “Casino Royale” and nods towards the sequel, and you’re close to reinventing the wheel, or in this case: “Doctor No”.

As you almost certainly know: in “Doctor No” (the film version), Bond’s mission to uncover the murder of agent Strangways leads him to discover almost incidentally the tip of a tentacle of SpECTRE.

Likewise, in Daniel Craig’s first outing, Bond’s mission to uncover the banker to the world’s terrorists reveals that he is just the tip of a tentacle of a much larger secret organisation of which – “Quantum of Solace” reveals – the Secret Service knows nothing.

So among those many connections to “Casino Royale”, not just picking up at most minutes after the “first” movie ended with Bond’s kidnapping of “Mr White”, not just the emotional fallout of Bond’s doomed affair with Vesper Lynd and the resolution of the plot with her kidnapped lover, not even what may be a running joke about the way Bond checks into luxury hotels, we of course learn more of the organisation: “Quantum”.

Yeah, “Quantum”: that really is a rather rubbish name, and they really are just SpECTRE. Dominic even gets the “we deal with the left or the right” speech, echoing Dr No’s “East, West mere points of the compass” speech from, well, Doctor No.

Mind you, if you ARE all members of the secret “evil-gang”, one that has remained unknown to the secret services of the world, perhaps all going around wearing a lapel pin “Q” (in Neutraface font, according to the BBC) might be ever so slightly giving the game away.

Significantly, Bond does not defeat Quantum by the end of the movie. Those “nods forward” include setting up several possible villains for an “episode three” (“Risico”, perhaps? Or “Property of a Lady”? The alternatives are the bland “007 in New York” or the unappealing “Hildebrand Rarity”.) Most obvious pointers are towards the “friend of the Prime Minister” Guy Haines, caught on camera by Bond at the cartel’s meeting in Austria, and mentioned as a “big bad” by both Mathis and Tim Pigott-Smith’s deliciously slimy Foreign Secretary.

Described as a businessman and advisor to the government, my first thoughts were of Lord Mandelson, but Alex suggested Lord Sainsbury, leading to the delightful image of hundreds of supermarkets as Bond-villain lairs. Never mind “Quantum”, how about: “T”errorism, “E”xtortion, “S”abotage, “C”ounter-intelligence “O”rganisation, anyone?


Daniel Craig continues to bring to this new-era Bond franchise everything that it needs in both brutal action and subtle emotional depth. And, perhaps too easily overlooked, brilliant deadpan humour. He doesn’t have the quips of Roger Moore, but instead a very restrained wry delivery, often implicitly commenting on the absurdity of his situations through his casual cracking-wise. And this is a Bond who needs a defence mechanism as he continues to take hurts, losing friends, allies and acquaintances and, seemingly, M’s trust.

M herself is brilliant, and Judi Dench steals every scene that she’s in, which helps you to overlook the fact that the Head of the British Secret Service appears to be turning up on the front lines everywhere. Here were are in Italy, and look, here’s M; a crime scene in a London flat and here’s M again; Bolivian hotel, guess who: yes it’s M; Russia…blah blah, M again. Does she not HAVE field operatives? Okay, to be fair, she’s just learned that her organisation has been compromised to the highest level and possibly the only people she really really trusts (as opposed to fake really trusts) are Tanner and Bond himself.

But come on, even Smiley had one friend!

(Tanner incidentally – presumably Bill Tanner, M’s Chief-of-Staff – is played here by Rory Kinnear, replacing Michael Kitchen. I’ve nothing against him in the role – he’s got a charming rushing-to-keep-up air that brings some freshness to MI6’s sterile HQs – but he looks so young that it doesn’t half re-emphasise the idea that M is now surrounded by teenagers!)

But yes, it’s clear that for all her carefully placed plausible deniability Bond is the man she trusts. As in “Casino Royale”, it is all down to Dame Judi’s deft light touch, but you can be sure that she is pushing the pieces around and relying on Bond to do what she needs and expects him to do. The crucial scene is the one in Bolivia where she arrives to take him into custody. “I hope you can trust these men,” says Bond. M doesn’t say yes and Bond clearly reads that as permission to knock them all out as they escort him out via the lift; then M – cool as a cucumber – meets Bond outside the lift and effectively give him permission to go and do his job.

There are two occasions in the movie where she implies that Bond has shot someone who, in fact, we know that he hasn’t.. He doesn’t correct her; importantly, he knows that he doesn’t have to. He’s realised that when she gave him the licence to kill, she knew what that meant, perhaps better than he did. In the course of the movie, Bond explicitly links M to the role of his mother, and at the end of the film the relationship between Bond and M is stronger than we’ve ever seen it before.

(Alex reminds me: technically Bond has killed them anyway; it’s just that the villains have made extra-sure)

She also gets several of the film’s best lines; Mr White gets most of the others. My particular favourites being the one about florists and the one about “Tosca”. You’ll remember when you hear them.

The return of “Casino Royale’s” version of Rene Mathis is an unexpected pleasure. He adds a sardonic commentary that compliments Bond’s own worldview. It’s a pleasure cruelly cut short when, shockingly, he is murdered. It’s a sign, perhaps – and another may be the way we are left not entirely sure any more whether we can trust the character of Felix Leiter, Felix Leiter of all people – that this new phase of the franchise is not going to be sentimental about its recurring cast in the way that, perhaps, the Bond films used to be, with the likes of “Q” and General Gogol and even that bloke with the bottle of beer and the double take turning up again and again to do their bit of shtick.

On the other hand, it’s also about closure – Bond and Mathis make their peace after they each suspected the other of betrayal by the end of “Casino Royale” – and ramming home the message that Bond needs to forgive himself for what happened to Vesper. Which, obviously, Bond, or this reading of Bond, cannot do… any more than, say, Batman can forgive what happened to his parents.

(Incidentally, Jeffrey Wright, the other “Casino” returnee, playing Leiter gets to do a lot of interesting work in relatively few scenes, getting to show how much Felix is hating getting into bed with Greene and his organisation, but still going along with it. His boss, Bream, is clearly a jackass, though surprisingly we don’t see him get any comeuppance; we merely hear it reported that Felix has gotten his job.)

Mathis is one of those “sacrificial lamb” characters that the Bond films often use: an ally who you come to like and trust and then the villain kills them to show how, well, villainous he is. Another is Gemma Arterton but, sadly, she is wasted as agent Fields. “Just call me ‘Fields’, she says.” (“You must be joking!” Alex exclaimed on seeing her credited as “Strawberry”!) She’s really very good in the few scenes she gets and deserved to be in more of the movie. Drowning her in oil – “black gold” if you will – is clearly supposed to remind us of some iconic image or other, but I’m at a loss to know what… ahem.

Olga Kurylenko, on the other hand, gets all the screen time that she deserves as damaged anti-heroine Camille. She is both beautiful and yet subtly broken, her own mission of vengeance imperfectly reflecting Bond’s pursuit of his duty. It’s slightly a shame that the truncated-seeming ending has her jump too quickly from taking her revenge to cowering from flames. Yes, her back-story (briefly established) does explain why she would fear the fire, but there was no journey for her from one point to the other. What is nice is the ending where Bond doesn’t get the girl and the girl is left not entirely sure whether she got what she wanted either. Nicely unresolved.


There’s a lot of lovely business in the subtitles, a great many throwaway gags and – very subtly – a taxi driver who won’t shut up actually gives us the first big clue as to what Green’s diabolical plan might be. Speaking of words on the screen, though, someone perhaps needs to tell the graphic designer to calm down a little, as the on-screen location credits as we shift from Siena to London to Haiti to Austria to La Paz are, er, perhaps a little frantic as Bond once put it (in “Live and Let Die” – he was talking about ties, though).

David Arnold’s music is excellent as always, if more understated than on some occasions. I must confess though that Jack White and Alicia Keys’ title theme doesn’t work for me sounding, as it does, like an extended version of the “Never Mind the Buzzcocks” intros round. But the titles are, if not quite as good as “Casino Royale’s” playing card theme, a splendid montage of shifting sands, reflecting both the Bolivian desert that features centrally to the plot and the shifting sands of truth and trust that Bond finds himself walking upon.

And don’t panic about the opening: the classic gun-barrel isn’t missing… just delayed.

And that, in fact, sums up this movie. It’s great, fast, action-packed, very James Bond… and it’s the pre-title mini-adventure for the next Bond film. The end of the closing credits promises, as always, “James Bond will return”. Frankly, I can’t wait!