Spectre.

Daniel Craig, as I suspected he would be, is the best of all the six actors who have portrayed Ian Fleming’s Secret Service Agent with the licenced to kill code number - James Bond 007. Agreeing to take up the role in 2005 his first outing as Bond was in Casino Royale (2006), which was the beginning of a reboot of the Bond franchise. This was followed two years later with Quantum of Solace (2008) and then what was to my mind the best of the Bond films to date, Skyfall (2012) bringing in Sam Mendes to direct proved to be an ingenious move, as it became the highest grossing film in the complete series. Keeping Mendes on as director for Craig’s fourth outing as the MI6 agent was certainly the right decision. 

Some nice product placement....

As fans are aware the previous M (Judy Dench) died at the end of Skyfall and we met the new M in the form of Ralph Fiennes. Also returning are Naomie Harris as Eve Moneypenny and Ben Whishaw as the technical wizard Q whose relationship with Bond is just one of the films many highlight’s.  The movie starts with what has got to be one of the best pre credit sequences of any of the bond films. We are in Mexico City and The Day of the Dead carnival is taking place, 1000’s of people are on the streets dressed as various characters associated with the yearly event. Bond, dressed in a skeleton suit, is off to a hotel room with a beautiful woman but before she can hang up her frock he is out and across the rooftops attempting to assassinate Marco Sciarra, suspected of being involved in a terrorist bomb plot. What follows is as an exciting action sequence ending with a fight in a moving helicopter over the heads of the vast crowd. This sets the tone for the remainder of the movie.

.... a  beautiful woman who can use a weapon....

The film cleverly harks back to previous Bond movies and as well as explaining the origins of international criminal syndicate and terrorist organisation Spectre (Special Executive for Counter Intelligence, terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) and its evil mastermind Ernst Stavro Blofeld, there’s reference to Bonds only real love Vesper Lynd, an appearance of Mr White (Jesper Christenson) but this time we also get to meet his daughter Doctor Madeleine Swann played by the French actress Lea Seydoux. Also involved in the mayhem are Andrew Scott as C, Christoph Waltz as Franz Oberhauser and not forgetting Monica Bellucci as the widow of Marco Sciarra.      

 

....and not forgetting a villain.... 

Lets hope that Spectre (2015) is not Mr Craig’s last outing as Bond and that perhaps the Craig/Mendes partnership can be persuaded to give it another go. As with the best of the Bond movies this latest outing does not take itself to seriously and the only real demand it makes of its audience is to sit back and enjoy, and enjoyable it certainly is.   

....all goes to make a great Bond film.

The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend this weeks Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club screening as I was attending a concert performed by the Dutch-Belgian band Gare du Nord at the De La Mar Theatre, but I did manage to get to the RBC on Thursday evening to see the screening of Wes Andersons latest comedy drama The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

The present owner relates his story to ....

....The Author.

The Film Club’s host for Monday evening was Pat Pickering who was kind enough to e-mail me her presentation that began with a short introduction on the director who not only produced the film but also co-wrote the story and wrote the screenplay. Anderson admits that the story was partially inspired by two books written by the Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s[1], namely Beware of Pity (1939) and The Post Office Girl published posthumously in 1982. The Houston Texas born film director is known for his distinctive visual and narrative style with a meticulous attention to detail and as Pat pointed out is considered one of modern films most original directors. His body of work, eight feature films to date, have included The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007) and his best received to date Moonrise Kingdom (2012) all of which have quirky formats and include flawed but uniquely detailed characters often with a father figure in some guise. Pat’s introduction goes on to say that his main cinematic influences have been Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski. But Anderson also admits a massive influence on his life was when his parents divorced when he was only eight years old, an event he describes as the most crucial of his and his brothers' early years. It was during childhood that he began writing plays and making super-8 films.

 

Monsieur Gustave H and his Lobby Boy.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is a German/UK co-production filmed on location in Germany in Gorlitz and other part’s of Saxony as well as Babelsberg Film Studio’s where between 1933 and 1945 1000’s of feature films were made including hundreds of films under the direction of Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels one of which was Triumph of the Will (1935) directed by the innovative German director Leni Riefenstahl which proved to be a prime example of propaganda in film history. 

 

Madame D.

Anderson’s latest film is set between the two World Wars in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka an ‘eastern European alpine state’ and recounts the rather risqué exploits of the grand hotels concierge Monsieur Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) and his young protégé, lobby boy Zero Moustafa (played by relative newcomer Tony Revolori). Anderson cleverly tells the story as ‘a narrative within a reminiscence within a novel’ or in plain English the film opens in the present day and we find a young girl sitting in front of a monument to a writer known only as “The Author” reading a chapter in his book about a trip he made to the Grand Budapest Hotel in 1968. It was there that The Author (played by Jude Law as a young man and Tom Wilkinson as the older version) meets the present owner of the hotel (F. Murray Abraham), which is no longer quite so grand as it once was, who relates the story of how the hotel came into his possession.  A story that includes various colourful characters like Madame D (on leaving the picture house I was asked by another member of the audience if   knew which character Tilda Swinton played?) who, although very much older, shares a deeply sexual bond with Gustave. And it is Madame D’s death that allows us to meet her son, Dmitri (Adrien Brody) and his very scary henchman (played by the formidable Willem Defoe). Lots of other characters appear but the list is too long to mention in this blog but include some recurring collaborators like Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Edward Norton along with other performers including Lea Seydoux, Mathieu Amalric, Harvey Keitel and Saoirse Ronan who all appear in scene steeling roles.

 

The Concierge is questioned by the Authorities.... 

....only to end up in custody!

A truly humorous piece of work with a stellar cast that does the ingenious screenplay proud, especially Fiennes who is in magnificent form as the concierge but the real star is the Grand Budapest Hotel described by Peter Bradshaw as a ‘superb cathedral of eccentricity’[2] The film portrays a wonderfully illusionary world but one that could so easily have existed in a eastern European alpine state between the wars? Anderson’s direction goes from strength to strength and I for one can’t wait for his next project.

---

[1] Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was said to at one time to be one of the most popular authors in the world.

[2] The Guardian 7^th March 2014.

Great Expectations 2012.

The Author.

The only problem with Charles Dickens TV and film adaptations is that the stories have become very familiar over the years. Great Expectations (2012) is certainly no exception with something in the region of sixteen versions to date starting with a silent feature film in 1917. The most celebrated film adaptation has to be the 1946 version directed by David Lean, which all other adaptations have to aspire to. It stared John Mills as Pip, Finlay Currie as Magwitch, Martita Hunt as Miss Havisham, Jean Simmons as the young Estella and Valerie Hobson as the adult Estella. But to be fair the last television version shown as a three part BBC mini-series in December 2011 was also outstanding featuring Ray Winstone as Magwitch and an excellent Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham.

Pip meets Magwitch for the first time.

Mike Newell’s 2012 film adaptation of this Victorian coming of age drama makes up for the familiarity with an absolute cracking cast with Pip played by two brothers, the younger incarnation played by Toby Irvine and the older one played by Jeremy Irvine last seen in the saccharine coated sanitised period piece Warhorse (2011), Helena Bonham Carter gives her creepy best as Miss Havisham with Holliday Granger as the grown up Estella. Magwitch is on this occasion played, with all his normal Shakespearean relish, by Ralph Fiennes, even the smaller parts are portrayed by well known British thespians like Robbie Coltrane, Sally Hawkins and Jason Flemyng, with a great cameo from David Walliams as Mr. Publechook, Joe Gargery’s uncle. The casting director is Susie Figgis whose name you would have seen in many closing credits including Harry Potter.  David Nichols (And When Did You Last See Your Father 2007) wrote the screenplay and the cinematography is in the experienced hands of John Mathieson. All in all a very acceptable and attractive adaptation of the novel, but lets hope we get a reasonable break before the next reworking.  

Pip gives Estella his best chat up line.