Best 007 Movie In 50-Year Bond Franchise

By now, almost every single review I've read on Skyfall is beyond excellence. Having watched the first show in Canada, I cannot but agree! Not only is it engaging, exciting and sexy, it's visually stunning and as close to reality and logic as a movie on James Bond could ever get.

Kudos first go to director Sam Mandes whose training in classical theatre, including Shakespeare, probably explains why this is the first Bond movie that's poetic not only in storyline and screenplay, but also in its visual glory and structural perfection. This is the first Bond movie that is not related to any previously-published Ian Fleming James Bond short story or novel. In fact, Mendes said that Skyfall does "not connect" with the two previous Bond movies - Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. That's why the film is so much more creative and full of pleasant surprises.

Second to the director, credit should go to the script and screenplay writers - award-winning Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) and John Logan (RED, Hauptmann and Never The Sinner). The screenplay is so witty that in spite of all the tensions created between Bond and the villain, the sense of humour makes you laugh throughout the movie and marvel at the writers. In an interview with CNN, Daniel Craig revealed that he had a lot of input on the screenplay and the writers actually listened to him and took some of his suggestions.

A lot of questions have come up about where the 25th Bond movie was shot. Well, the correct answers are Glen Etive, Highland, Scotland; Smithfield Market, Holborn, London, England; London, England; Shanghai, China; Surrey, England; Adana, Turkey; and Istanbul, Turkey. The rest were either studio shots or digital recreations. This is also the first time that a Bond movie has filmed in China.

If anybody has doubts about the cast, let's take a look at the number of individual Academy Awards from this film's cast and crew. Sam Mendes won an Academy Award from American Beauty; Javier Bardem who plays an impressive villain (Kevin Spacey was offered but turned down the role) has two nominations and one win (No Country For Old Men). Ralph Fiennes as M's new boss has two award nominations while Albert Finney and Judi Dench each has five nominations. This leaves only Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw (as Q) with the thinnest resume. Everybody raves about Bardem as the villain Raoul Silva in this movie, but I actually think we should give both Craig and Whishaw their deserving credit. The latter was proclaimed by many critics as one of the best young actors of his generation and I thought his performance as Q is funny, cute and outstanding!

I read that Daniel Craig was worried about the delays in the film's production as he feels that, at the age of 43, he is already getting too old for the challenging physical demands of the stunts. Well, not only should he not have anything to worry about, but I thought he's, by far, the best Bond ever. I've not seen any other actor in as excellent a shape as he's in. Apart from wearing his Tom Ford suits well, Craig's six-month pre-film preparation and the daily two-hour workout put him in absolute top form!

Among all the actors in the movie, talented Ralph Fiennes and the two Bond girls are disappointments. The former has considerably aged and his character really doesn't need the skills of such a gifted actor. The latter two continue to play sex objects to men - what's most disturbing is that in this day and age, shouldn't they find a Bond girl who is both attractive and intelligent? Perhaps CIA Director David Petraeus's mistress Paula Broadwell (minus her jealousy) could be considered for a future role?

What's most impressive about Skyfall is that Bond is portrayed realistically as an aging and vulnerable spy in the 50-year-old film franchise instead of being the ultra-invincible and indefatigable MI6 star agent. Relevant to our times, Bond is now sensitive, vulnerable and even tormented from his childhood pains! But because of this evolution of his character, we, the audience who grew up with him, tend to relate to him even more! The flick is definitely worth an ecore for me at the IMAX theatre before it retires from the big screen.

Joaquin Phoenix Will Win 2013 Oscar

I'm making a bold prediction after watching Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman - Phoenix will win the Best Actor Award at the Oscars next February. For a seasoned actor like Hoffman to say at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that Phoenix was "scarily intense" to work with sums it all up. After a four-year hiatus from his film career, Phoenix is back in outstanding form portraying a twisted sailor from World War II Freddie Quell.

I've always been a huge fan - from Gladiator to Walk The Line to We Own The Night to Two Lovers. For a while, I thought we're going to lose this talent forever. In 2008, he announced that he had retired from acting to pursue a rapping career. In early 2009, who could forget his eccentric and incoherent interview on the Late Show with David Letterman? Although he later claimed that his 'retirement' and strange behaviour were for a mockumentary I'm Still Here (which very few people watched), the damage was already done.

But it's worth the wait to see him in The Master. In fact, even though both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Phoenix co-won the Best Actors Award in the Venice Film Festival this year, 60 percent of the film focuses on Phoenix rather than Hoffman. Phoenix plays the tormented sailor Freddie Quell with such fierce intensity - whether he's screwing around with his women; going through a psychiatric session with his Master and mentor; or acting out his pain via his violent bouts - we, the audience, are totally mesmerized by his emotions or the lack thereof in his eyes, his lack of coherence and his physical contortions.

By now, everybody must know that this is a movie about The Cause (possibly Scientology) and its charismatic founder Lancaster Dodd. The omnipresent and always convincing Amy Adams plays Dodd's wife Peggy who has a huge influence on the Master. But about an hour into the movie, I was looking at my watch. The movie is only two hours long, but it felt like three. I'm not sure what is the key message Anderson wants to convey to his audience - that all religious cults are based on some fake idolization of manipulative individuals? Or you can choose to believe in whatever suits you, even though it's a perpetual lie?

I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Anderson's. Except for Boogie Nights, I did not like Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. Nevertheless, the writer/director has been compared to Francois Truffaut and Martin Scorsese. The Master was beautifully shot on 70mm film (if you're willing to pay two dollars more to see this version) which produced a masterpiece on a resolution so high that digital can only dream of getting there in about 10 years or so, as I was told by tech geeks.

What strikes me most is the musical score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. It's both haunting and beautiful. No wonder The Rolling Stone calls the film's music "haunting and hypnotic." Other musical contributions from Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford and Patti Page are all music that boomers grew up with. Greenwood's talents obviously go far beyond just being the guitarist for Radiohead.

Thirty-seven-year-old Joaquin Phoenix has never won an Oscar even though he was nominated many times - including his roles in Gladiator and Walk the Line. I really hope the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will do him justice next February!

Marie Antoinette From A Different Perspective

Fans of period drama would love the new French movie Farewell My Queen which was featured at both the Berlin and San Francisco Film Festivals this year. The film was adapted from the novel by Chantal Thomas and director Benoit Jacquot was also responsible for the screenplay.

Many big-screen and TV movies have been made about Marie Antoinette, but this film took a very different perspective. It focuses on the final months of the decadent queen's life before she was beheaded. It also dwells on her lesbian affairs instead of her numerous other relationships with men. The entire film was made from the perspective and the eyes of the queen's reader Sidonie Laborde played by Lea Seydoux (Gabrielle in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris). Not sure why the 27-year-old Seydoux is the darling of the French movie world at the moment - her performance in the film is quite flat in my opinion!

Diane Kruger gives a wonderful performance in her portrayal of the tormented and bored queen. At 36, Kruger is more or less the same age when Marie Antoinette was beheaded. The face that launched a thousand ships (Kruger also played Helen of Troy in Troy) is equally magnificent in Farewell My Queen. With her German descent, Kruger is convincing as the young queen from Austria. But the most winning performance comes from Virginie Ledoyen who plays the queen's lesbian love interest Gabrielle de Polignac. With her Spanish blood, Ledoyen is both dangerously beautiful and heartlessly cruel in the movie.

This film ultimately succeeds because it takes a different path in depicting the last days of a decadent empire. Even though we've caught glimpses of the splendour of Versailles every now and then, most of the film takes place in dark corridors and the quarters of the ladies-in-waiting. We get a sense via all the whispers, gossips, scandals and back-stabbing that the French Revolution is lurking close by to clean up the act of the aristocracy. The other key message from the movie is that like all other relationships, lesbian love can often be unrequited and heartbreaking.

Plummer's Words Are Intoxicating

Canada has many national treasures, but Oscar-award winner Christopher Plummer must be one of the most gifted ones! Fresh from his Oscar laurels as Best Supporting Actor in the movie Beginners in February, Plummer gave a bewitching performance in a one-man show A Word Or Two at this season's Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

At 85 and still dapper, Plummer gave a performance of his lifetime this past weekend when I was there at the Avon Theatre. I like it even better than his other successful one-man show Barrymore because this one is almost an autobiography delivered by the master himself on stage. Against a very simple but stunning and symbolic staircase of hardcover books, Plummer walked, danced, recited poetry, referenced Shakespeare and other literary greats, sat in the elegant Director's chair, read behind a podium and laughed and cried (teary-eyed) with the audience in English and French.

Spanning a career of over 60 years, Plummer celebrates the beauty of language via this 90-minute performance. In the fast-moving tech world of the internet, smartphones and social media, he's showing us the impact of the written word while he's growing up in Montreal. We, the audience, strolled with him through his most favourite literature - from the Bible to Shaw and Wilde to Coleridge and Marlowe; from Shakespeare and Byron to Nash and Leacock.

As a result, I found myself savouring every word he said and, like enjoying a bottle of vintage red wine, became totally intoxicated at the end of the show. My friend and I both concluded as we exited from the theatre that the performance inspired us to go back home and read more poetry!

Plummer wrote in the introduction to the program guide that he wants to show what impact the written word can have on impressionable youth. Unfortunately, like other Stratford Shakespeare Festival performances, there was hardly any youth in sight among the audience yesterday. It's depressing to see a sea of seniors as the primary audience. Perhaps it's Plummer's age which mainly attracts an older audience, but to preserve and cherish our other national treasure, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival itself, the Festival's marketing department ought to do more to attract more multicultural and younger audiences. According to The Globe and Mail, the audience at Stratford has been declining in the last 10 years. This is certainly not a good sign - we don't want Plummer to pass and move on, but as he said, this will come one day. The Festival itself should be a different story - It's time that they start filling the seats with younger bums!

 

Facing Old Age And Mortality With A Sense Of Humour

I'm now convinced that the entire movie industry, not just Hollywood, is finally realizing the power of baby boomers. This is another movie about the inevitable lifestage of aging and passing, this time from France in French - Et Si On Vivait Tous Ensemble? (And If We All Lived Together?)

I went and saw it not just from a boomer's perspective, but because Jane Fonda has always expressed in her recent interviews that it's on her bucket list to act in another French movie - her third in her long film career - and she's the lead actress in this flick. As reported in her interview with The Canadian Press, there are thematic similarities between her new film and Prime Time, her 2011 book on old age that covered love, fitness, food and self-analysis. She laments that Hollywood is less interested in portraying life after retirement. At 74, Fonda rarely seems hung up on her age and continues to be a trailblazer in film, writing, speaking engagements and charity work.

So the movie confronts old age from the perspective of a group of Parisien seniors - two married couples and one permanent playboy. They are all stricken with serious illnesses, challenges of mortality and relationships with one another and their younger generations. But in subtle and gracious European style, the film stares at old age with audacity, optimism and a great sense of humour. Watching Fonda's smooth acting skills and flawless beauty at her age is the ultimate pleasure for me as a lifelong fan. Even though Fonda speaks fluent French (she studied art in Paris when she was young and her first husband was, of course, French director Roger Vadim), she still worked with a dialogue coach to get her lines perfect.

The only other recognizable actor is 68-year-old Geraldine Chaplin who looks painfully old and thin when compared to Fonda. Thirty-four-year-old Spaniard Daniel Bruhl also did a wonderful job playing the dogwalker Dirk, the only younger supporting actor in a movie anchored by seniors including Guy Bedos, Claude Rich, Pierre Richard and Bernard Malaka.

The concept of a group of lifelong senior friends living together and supporting each other instead of spending their winter years in seniors homes is refreshing. It's also sad and funny at the same time. My only criticism of the movie is the choice of English-language songs throughout the movie. Why try to appeal to an English-speaking audience when the entire film is in French?

For fellow Jane Fonda fans, the movie legend's next project includes a new book on teenage sex. I also understand that her African-American adopted daughter will be coming up with a new book sharing her experience of growing up with her adopted mom.

Intimacy And Distance

Hope Springs is definitely a movie for baby boomers. I can't imagine anybody under 40 who would want to go see this movie unless they want to better understand their parents.

The movie is a bit sappy, particularly with its music, but what happens in the film is so true and painfully funny that it makes the flick totally enjoyable! The story is simple and has been approached in numerous different angles in other movies. But somehow, this one works because there are so many uncomfortable situations. After 30 years of marriage, daily boring routines set in and instead of intimacy, a huge distance has been created between the couple. Meryl Streep's character Kay best sums up the theme of the flick - you can be in a relationship but still feel lonelier than when you're alone!

I'm not a fan of Meryl Streep's, but I always think she's more talented playing comical roles (except for Mamma Mia) than her endless roles of impersonating historic characters like Margaret Thatcher or flaunting her multiple accents on the large screen. But the biggest surprise is macho Tommy Lee Jones who will probably get an Oscar nomination for his role as the husband Arnold. Not only does he have the best lines in the movie, but the 'constipated' look he puts on throughout the entire movie just cracks you up over and over again. Both Streep and Jones honestly display their aging bodies which make it more believable. And, of course, Streep's hairstyle and ghastly middle-aged wardrobe just say it all!

Steve Carell plays the unusual role of a marriage counsellor, and I was waiting for his comical role to surface, but he plays the role straight and I respect him for having successfully taken on this new challenge.

But the biggest kudos should go to Gen-Xer writer Vanessa Taylor who wrote the original screenplay. One would never imagine the writer and co-producer of popular TV series Game of Thrones could have written this movie about a stale relationship between a boomer couple!

Although Hope Springs didn't generate too many favourable reviews from professional critics, I would highly recommend this movie if you want a good laugh.

A Conundrum - To See Or Not To See?

I'm a big Jeremy Renner fan, so I went to see The Bourne Legacy on its appearance in theatres on the first day. But when asked whether it's worth seeing, my response is: "only if you like Jeremy Renner."

The plot is weak, even though it's directed by Tony Gilroy who wrote the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum. If you believe that all human beings can be engineered and programmed, including soldiers and spys, then anything goes. The movie has very little to do with the previous Bourne stories within the franchise, and it looks like a major stretch naming the movie after Jason Bourne. It becomes worst when the protagonists have to fly to Manila just to find the right medical fix for Aaron Cross played by Renner. This is just another lame excuse to shoot action scenes in an exotic city with a ton of traffic and crowds!

If the plot is weak, the screenplay is even worse. After a lot of life-threatening fighting and escape incidents, is the best line for the protagonists reduced to a plain "Are you ok?" It's insulting for Rachel Weisz (who plays a doctor) to be given such a bimbo role and weak lines in the movie. I never understood why a Cambridge University graduate like Weisz would have taken on such a crappy role. And what a waste of acting talent to put Ed Norton in his villanous role as retired Col. Eric Byer?

But watching Jeremy Renner is really the focus of the entire flick. If you like him, then it's definitely worth your while because you won't care about the length of the movie and the imbecilic screenplay and ridiculous plot. If you don't like this actor, then really there's no point. The cinematography is stunning, though, throughout the entire movie, particularly the winter scenes shot in Alberta.