My Crime Beat Column: Seeing 'Spectre'

I saw the new James Bond film Spectre yesterday.

The film was not as bad as I thought it would be, or as bad as Skyfall, the previous Bond film.

But I thought the film was too long and had a thin and undramatic plot. I also didn't care much for the phony total surveillance versus 00 license to kill debate. And despite some fine action scenes, I thought the film's pacing was a bit slow. The film could have used the editing skills of the late Peter Hunt, who edited the early Bond films and directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

The film could have also used a better music soundtrack to provide the proper thriller atmosphere, like the late John Barry's Bond soundtracks. Thankfully, Barry's famous 007 theme was used prominently throughout the film.

The Bond film makers ought to end the endless homage to earlier Bond films and just go with a straight story. And call me traditional, but I think that M, Q and Moneypenny belong in the office setting of headquarters and should not be traipsing around in the field with 007. Who was running the rest of British intelligence?
     
Like most old-school Bond fans and Ian Fleming aficionados, I still have trouble accepting anyone other than the great Sean Connery as James Bond, but I have to admit that Daniel Craig did a good job under the circumstances.

Craig does not look anything like Ian Fleming's James Bond (Fleming thought Connery looked like his character), but I thought he carried himself throughout the film like Bond and he did the fight and the action scenes well.

Spectre is no Dr No, From Russia With Love or Goldfinger, the classic Bond films I grew up with, but if you are looking to be entertained by a well-made thriller with a good cast, then go see this film.

Secret Agents, From Babylonian Tablets To James Bond: How Ian Fleming’s Series Reflects The Real Spy World

British/American historian Amanda Foreman, author of World On Fire, offers a defense of Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers for the Wall Street Journal.   

James Bond may have won the hearts and wallets of audiences world-wide—“Spectre,” the latest movie in the series, opens Friday after shattering box-office records in the U.K.—but armchair experts have always grumbled that Ian Fleming’s world of spies is too exciting to have any relationship to reality or history.

The critics are wrong. Fleming, who died in 1964, packed his books and plots with real historical allusions, beginning with the secrecy classification “for your eyes only.” The origins of the term go back to the Mesopotamians.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-agents-from-babylon-tablets-to-james-bond-1446654155

Note: I highly recommend Amanda Foreman's book on the British role in the American Civil War. 

Britain’s Top Fictional Spy Also Its Greatest Intelligence Asset

Peter Apps at Reuters.com offers a column how Ian Fleming's iconic James Bond character is the United Kingdom's greatest intelligence asset.

In the 62 years since James Bond first appeared in print, there's no doubt he has helped boost the reputations of his real-life counterparts in British intelligence.

Now, Daniel Craig - the truest to author Ian Fleming's original vision since Sean Connery, if not ever - is back on screen in "Spectre." The franchise is as strong as ever.

In reality, however, the decades since Fleming first penned "Casino Royale" have been distinctly mixed for the United Kingdom and its spies.

For sure, the Secret Intelligence Service - traditionally known to its members as SIS and to the rest of the world as MI6 - and its sister service MI5 retain a world-class reputation. They are in good company. The reach and skill set of those two agencies - responsible for foreign and domestic intelligence, respectively - are more than equaled by signals intelligence specialists Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Britain's special forces - the Army's Special Air Service (SAS) and Royal Marines' Special Boat Service (SBS) are also legendary.

They have, however, been far from infallible. Even as Fleming wrote of their prowess in the early 1950s, some stellar embarrassments loomed.

Throughout the late 1950s and 60s, Whitehall (one-word shorthand for the UK's version of the State Department, the Pentagon and CIA and FBI headquarters) was torn apart by slow-burning scandal as news emerged that some of Britain's most trusted intelligence officials had in fact been spying for the Soviet Union. More recently, there have been controversies over officials' complicity in torture and rendition, as well is the small matter of their intelligence-gathering related to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Bond and his fellow fictional British operatives, however, allow UK intelligence to project an image that goes well beyond the niggling issues of reality.

It might have only the most tangential relationship to what really happens, but it still has real-world impact.

A couple of years ago at a drinks reception in Washington, a former CIA official told me he believed neither he nor anyone else in the U.S. government would ever turn down a briefing from British intelligence. It wasn't just about the quality of the material, he said - good though it often was.

Even the phrase "British intelligence," he said, had a mystique, glamour and style that was intrinsically fascinating. He suspected British officials were well aware of it, he added, and deliberately styled themselves accordingly.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/10/27/britains-top-fictional-spy-also-its-greatest-intelligence-asset/   

Fleming Is Forever: Why You Should Read the James Bond Books

I first saw Sean Connery as James Bond when Dr No came out in the early 1960s. I loved the film so much that I went on to read Ian Fleming's novels. I was pleased to discover that his thrillers were darker and more complex than the films and I've been a Fleming aficiando ever since..

I often tell fans of the Bond film series that they ought to read the Fleming novels as well. Edward Platt at Newsweek is telling his readers the same thing.

Spectre is almost upon us. Trailers have made it clear that the 26th James Bond movie—Daniel Craig’s fourth outing in the role and Sam Mendes’s second as director—will feature some reassuringly familiar Bond-movie tropes: death in the snow, sex on the fly, one-liners by the dozen. But while Mendes appears at peace with giving audiences much of what they expect from Bond films, the Oscar-winning director is not in the Bond business just to recycle clichés. Pre-publicity for Spectre suggests that Mendes is continuing the exploration of Bond’s history that he began in Skyfall, the most recent and, so far, most financially successful film in the series. In so doing, Mendes is attempting to fill out the occasionally blank but compelling main character in British author Ian Fleming’s original 12 Bond novels, the first of which was published 62 years ago. Those novels have sold more than 100 million copies, but many of the people who see Spectre in the coming days and weeks may not have heard of Fleming. They’re missing out. Two and a half hours of cold martinis, Craig’s merciless gaze and the producers’ even more chilling devotion to product placement can give you only a limited sense of Bond. For a fuller picture, pick up a Fleming novel once you’re back from the multiplex. The author was himself parsimonious with details about the famous spy’s biography, but he fleshes out 007 with gems of dialogue and description.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.newsweek.com/ian-fleming-forever-384331

You can also read two of my Crime Beat columns on Ian Fleming via the below links:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/my-crime-beat-column-happy-anniversary.html

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html

Spectre: New James Bond Film Trailer Released

The new Spectre James Bond film trailer has been released. You can watch the trailer via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTDaET-JweU

'You're A Kite Dancing In A Hurricane, Mr Bond': Brooding 007 Confronts A Face From The Past In Dramatic FIRST Teaser Trailer For SPECTRE

Jason Chester at the British newspaper the Daily Mail reports on the recently released SPECTRE trailer showing Daniel Craig as Ian Fleming's iconic character James Bond.

You can watch the interesting trailer and see photos of the upcoming film via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3015208/James-Bond-onfronts-face-past-dramatic-teaser-trailer-SPECTRE.html
 

Welcome Us Back, Mr. Bond: Producers Announce That 'SPECTRE' Will Be The Name Of The Upcoming James Bond Film.

MI6, the James Bond web site, not the British intelligence service, offers a look at the Bond film producers' press release regarding the upcoming James Bond film. The title of the film will be called SPECTRE.

SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, is the international criminal organization created by Ian Fleming in his James Bond novel Thunderball. The organization was run by the mad, evil genius Ernst Stravo Blofeld, who appeared in the next two Fleming thrillers, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice. SPECTRE was the principal villain in the early Bond films.   

PRESS RELEASE: James Bond Producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli today released the title of the 24th James Bond adventure, SPECTRE. The film, from Albert R. Broccoli's EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and Sony Pictures Entertainment, is directed by Sam Mendes and stars Daniel Craig, who returns for his fourth film as Ian Fleming's James Bond 007.

SPECTRE begins principal photography on Monday, December 8, and is set for global release on November 6, 2015.

Along with Daniel Craig, Mendes presented the returning cast, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw and Rory Kinnear as well as introducing Christoph Waltz, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Monica Bellucci and Andrew Scott. Mendes also revealed Bond's sleek new Aston Martin, the DB10, created exclusively for SPECTRE.

A cryptic message from Bond's past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organisation. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.

You can read the rest of the press release via the below link:

http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/bond-24-spectre-title-announcement

You can also read Ryan Smith's piece in the Daily Mail and watch videos of the Bond film announcement via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2860541/Daniel-Craig-set-joined-star-studded-cast-anticipated-James-Bond-movie-Spectre-sleek-new-Aston-Martin-unveiled.html

And you can read my Crime Beat column on the Ian Fleming and the James Bond phenomenon via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html