Tag: James Bond (Page 1 of 5)

Casino Royale Movie Mistakes

Casino Royale Movie Mistakes

Released to wide acclaim in 2006, “Casino Royale” was Daniel Craig’s debut as the legendary British agent James Bond. The plot portrayed Bond’s early years in service and the film was so successful that it grossed an estimated $599 million worldwide and Craig has continued in the role ever since.

Nonetheless, “Casino Royale” was not entirely without its faults. There were a number of illogical sequences or filming errors which did a disservice to an otherwise excellent production. Although it doesn’t take anything away from the film as a whole, the following errors will be of interest to any diehard 007 fan.

Airport confusion: In the film, Bond thwarts a terrorist attack on Miami Airport. However, the sequence is actually filmed in the Czech Republic and in these scenes you can see numerous Czech Airlines planes. Unfortunately, Czech Airlines don’t fly to Miami at all! You can however find plenty of their planes at Prague Airport!

Montenegro or Czech Republic? Similar lapses can be seen in the sequences which are supposed to be set in Montenegro, but are actually filmed in the Czech Republic. In one scene, at the back of a restaurant, a public telephone with the Czech Telecom insignia can be seen and when Bond has a drink in the square, there is a sign in Czech for “White Horse.”

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‘Skyfall’ opens big internationally

The new James Bond film, “Skyfall,” has opened big in the UK and internationally:

Skyfall, the 23rd picture in the James Bond series, is already proving to be a smashing success. Following its $83 million opening weekend (adjusted way up from its $77.7 million estimate) in 25 international territories, the film has now officially crossed $100 million, a rep for Sony confirms to EW.

The film opens in the US next week.

Looking back on the James Bond films

Bullz-Eye.com is looking back at all the James Bond films for the 50th anniversary, starting at the beginning with “Dr. No” in 1962 and “From Russia with Love” from 1963. You can follow the site and check back as they work their way through all the films with very thorough and entertaining write-ups, along with Bond features as well. Also, here’s a handy list of all the James Bond movies.

RIP John Barry

Good film music enhances movie scenes. Great film music takes a good, bad or indifferent scene and lifts it into the stratosphere. Really great film music does that and is also enchanting to listen to in any context. By that measure, John Barry is one of the best film composers ever.

He might have lacked some of their complexity, but in emotional and melodic terms he is very much on a par with the greatest film composers of all time, including Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, and Bernard Herrmann — and their music charted much less frequently. John Barry could write a complex, soaring pop hit that might make Burt Bacharach jealous. He wasn’t afraid to be over-the-top when the job called for and embraced a certain level of kitsch where appropriate. He didn’t over-value subtlety.

Mr. Barry died yesterday in New York from a heart attack at age 77, not super young but another twenty or thirty years of his presence on the planet would have been nice, too. Even today, when many young film viewers are only barely aware that some guy named Sean Connery once played James Bond, if I ask almost anyone to think of “spy music,” they’re probably going to think of either the actual music from the early James Bond films or music heavily influenced by it. That’s just scratching the surface.

Barry evoked beauty, longing and mystery for all kinds of films. His 111 composing credits included Oscar-winning scores for “Out of Africa,” “Born Free,” the colonial war classic “Zulu,” his groundbreaking combination of scoring and music supervision on “Midnight Cowboy,” the cult fantasy-romance, “Somewhere in Time,” a now very obscure 1972 live-action musical version of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and Richard Lester’s masterpiece, “The Knack and How to Get It.” Other scores include “Dances With Wolves,” “The Lion in Winter,” and the three movies that starred Michael Caine as anti-Bond workaday spook, Harry Palmer. Barry had the spy market cornered, and he was one very cool cat.

If you’ve never heard his fascinating and funny 2004 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross where he discusses “million dollar Mickey Mouse music,” now’s a good time. As you can always bet on, there’s much more at MUBI and be sure to check out this anecdote from Sir Michael about being present at the creation of a pop masterpiece. After the flip, just a few somewhat random clips of some of Barry’s best.

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Ladies and gentlemen, we have your new Superman and, yeah, he’s British too

Englishman Henry Cavill in his ordinary street clothesSomeone wake up Lou Dobbs. I mean, Spidermen and Batmen hailing from the UK is one thing, but what’s Henry Cavill going to do, fight for truth, justice and the British way? Will Luthor try to do him in with a Kryptonite crumpet?

But, seriously, folks, the main reason I’ve decided to put off this week’s box office round-up is that the entire geek film Internet is having a fangasm because Mike Fleming and La Finke and also, possibly, la Harry, broke the news this morning that busy working English thespian Henry Cavill is the new man from Krypton.

If, like me, your first reaction to the news is “Who’s Henry Cavill?,” the answer is that he’s best known as a macho nobleman on TV’s “The Tudors.”  The assumption is that producer-director Zack Snyder and company are going with a more ultra-masculine Superman in reaction to the underrated and underseen Brandon Routh, but thats probably jumping the gun. Let’s see what he actually does with the part. If, like me, you’ve never watched “The Tudors,” Cavill also played supporting roles in the 2002 version of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and as the obnoxious Humphrey in Matthew Vaughn’s underrated and underseen, “Stardust,

I still haven’t decided just what I think of Zack Snyder as a filmmaker and I haven’t seen enough of Cavill to have a pre-opinion here though, just looking at some of his pictures, he seems a slightly better fit to me for either James Bond or Batman, both characters he was actually in the running to play. Still, my hunch is he’ll do fine. I would, however, like to remind casting directors that Americans can save producer’s substantial sums on dialect coaches. Or, let’s make the next 007 American, and in two or three years, when they decide to do a Harry Potter reboot (this time, he’ll be tougher and sexier) let’s make him a Yank as well. America’s acting superheroes needs jobs!

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