Skyfall

If you haven't seen this movie yet, this is a warning that there may be spoilers scattered throughout this post.

Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, opens with a lengthy sequence in which Bond and a fellow-worker (Naomie Harris) chase one of the more important and less anonymous baddies - Patrice - through one of the innumerable foreign countries that feature in the movie.  This was Turkey, by the look of it, but that was scarcely important. What was important was the wreckage of everything in sight, (some shots will have VW lovers weeping), the chasing on motorcycles and in cars - one breathtaking sequence has the two motorcyclists sweeping across the roofs of the bazaar, and of course eventually crashing down into it- and finally a struggle between Bond and the baddie on top of a train, which most inconveniently keeps going into tunnels.  This opening is not only Bond-moviemaking at its best, but superb in every sense.  Not a shot is wasted, things coming flying at the audience with choreographed ease, people get in the road (and rapidly out of the road) and all the mechanical things do their best to make a mess of all the other mechanical things.

We get a breather while the credits roll by, surprisingly casually for credits that arrive some ten minutes into the movie.  Behind the credits are animated sequences that incorporate themes and material from the movie still to come, and then we're off again.

Bond, who 'dies' rather inconveniently before the credits, turns up again (how could he not?) and sets off after Patrice in yet another foreign location; this time it's Shanghai, which looks gorgeous by night.  (The cinematography is superb throughout.)  There's a rather daft sequence in which Bond tries to get back something of considerable importance that's been stolen from M16, and he and Patrice play out their cat and mouse game against shimmering glass and enormous neon signs before someone is shot in the building next door and Bond disposes of Patrice.  Now from this point on, the structure of the movie seems to lose its way.  That's not to say that the set pieces are any less bravura (a tube train crashing through the roof is a fairly spectacular sight) but they whys and wherefores of the plotting aren't quite up to the other things that happen in the movie.

With Patrice dead we might be at a loss for a real baddie.  After all, Patrice was pretty anonymous, and spent most of his time running.  There's a kind of gap in which Bond rather off-handedly pursues a beautiful woman (played by Bérénice Marlohe), finds her, and is warned off by him because the real baddie of the film is her guardian, and she's terrified of him.  This scene is odd: Marlohe seems uncomfortable somehow - it's only as the scene progresses that we discover that under her seductive charms she's terribly afraid.  However, what comes across to the audience, I felt, is an actress who isn't confident of what she's trying to portray.  

Finally, Bond meets the big baddie, Javier Bardem, and quite honestly, he's a bit of a let-down.  He just doesn't have the class to be a Bond villain.  Admittedly he always seems to be one step ahead of everyone, and has everything planned to ridiculous perfection, but in the big climax, he drops into ranting and raving like someone who doesn't quite know what to do next.  When we first meet him, he has a long speech as he strolls towards Bond, and towards the camera.  For me, Bardem's timing is off; the speech doesn't work, and he pauses 'significantly' rather too often, losing tension.  He doesn't exude the real menace that a Bond villain should possess, and you get the feeling that as soon as Bond gets his hands untied, he'll deal with this wannabe baddie in a matter of moments.  He doesn't even have the usual Bond-film henchman to cause additional trouble.  Alongside the coterie of British actors (this film not only has the inimitable Judi Dench in it, but also Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort himself), Albert Finney (briefly at the end), Ben Whishaw as the new-look Q, and the aforementioned Naomie Harris, who has a much better romantic scene with Bond than Marlohe does, and steals the latter's thunder.   Alongside these, Bardem is a bit of a patsy.  Even the woman playing the politician, the redoubtable Helen McCroy, is a good deal more menacing than Bardem.

So much for the villain.  The flaws in the movie aren't enough to let it down, and it cracks along at a terrific pace for its full 143 minutes.  It's worth seeing for the opening sequence alone, which is much better handled than the one at the beginning of Quantum of Solace, where the editing was so irritating you couldn't figure out what was going on most of the time.

The Daniel Craig Bond movies have been a bit of a mixed bag, though Craig himself makes an excellent Bond, for my money.  He's certainly a good deal more serious than most of his predecessors (though even if he does lack the humour of Connery and Brosnan, this film takes the mickey out of the Bond series on more than a few occasions), but he exudes a tension that feels like it could explode any minute.  The sex scenes in these three movies are rather under par (although not when you look back at the embarrassing Connery ones), and in this latest one in particular, make little impact.  And there are awkwardnesses about the structure: the lengthy coda in Casino Royale seemed to be tacked on to the main film, and the best parts of this movie are in the first three-quarters, with the climax not quite hitting the mark.

But given those issues, these three films exhibit top quality film making of the blockbuster kind.  Every inch has been fine-tuned: the photography, the editing, the music, the sound effects, the visual effects, the stunts.  None of these areas let the films down.  In general the actors are strong and well-cast, and the directors take the whole schemozzle and pull all its elements into place.   For $11.50 (pensioners' price) you certainly get your money's worth!

Hectic weekend

Spent the bulk of last Saturday at the Brass Band provincial contests.  I'd mentioned in a previous post how I was supposed to be playing Variations on a Welsh Theme, and how the soloist had had to pull out.   What was the first piece I heard on arriving at the competition?  Variations on a Welsh Theme, being played (and very nicely too) by someone else.

As has been the case with most days recently, it was beautiful and hot on Saturday, and many of the brass banders would have been happy to have sat outside relaxing, I think, instead of having to perform before audiences.  Still most of them survived, and we had some good placings amongst the folk I played for, including two or three firsts.

In the evening my wife and I went to a 6 pm showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which has a cast that most directors would die for: director John Madden somehow managed to corral them all together for this relatively slight piece that's made enjoyable because of the people in it.  It concerns a disparate group of oldies who independently decide to take up the offer of a particular Indian hotel to accommodate them in what is effectively an old people's home without the use of that phrase.

Judi Dench takes a leading role, along with Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Penelope Wilton and Ronald Pickup.  Dev Patel, from Slumdog Millionaire, is the hotel's young proprietor, a man with more ambition and ideas than commonsense.   Of course all works out well in the end - for him, anyway.  One or two or the oldies come a bit unstuck in the process.  Penelope Wilton, unfortunately, is saddled with the role of a whining woman who just never shifts from that position.  It's not far from her rather petulant mother in Downton Abbey, and it would have been nice to see her in a different kind of role.

Sunday, after church in the morning, I went to the rehearsal for Grimhilda!  Things are a long way from perfection, but we're getting there.  I've been acting as répétiteur (the common name for rehearsal pianist, but used less now than it used to be) for the rehearsals, and it's interesting to find that even though I wrote the music there are times when I don't seem to be hitting the notes too well.  Of course, when the music was being written, I was playing it all the time.  Now that the writing is some months behind me, it's becoming like any piece of music does when you don't practice it regularly: a bit slapdash.  Still, répétiteurs commonly don't play all the notes, so I'm not doing anything unusual!


At the rehearsal last night I took a photo of the Parrot in his (still to be slightly amended) costume: you've no doubt already noticed the photo.  It's not the best picture, and we'll get some better ones done in due course - this is just to give you a taste of the colour of this particular costume...


On Sunday evening, I had to play for a local singer, Sarah Oliver, in a concert put on by the NZ Foundation Youth Pipe Band.   The band was doing a very quick tour of NZ (four rather scattered centres) and then heading off to Sydney for an Australian contest.  Sarah was a guest artist, as had been other singers in other centres.   The rest of the concert consisted of performances by the NZFYPB - a group of young pipers and drummers from around the country, some dancers and a local pipe band from John McGlashan College. 


Sarah and I ensconced ourselves in a small dressing room, with the door shut, because the noise of the pipes in a theatre that size was pretty loud and made its way through all parts of the building.  The pipers were a talented bunch, there's no doubt, as were the drummers.  Very sharp and accurate and in general a credit to New Zealand.  I hope they're doing well in Oz. 


I got home about 10.30 feeling as though I'd done my dash for the week....

Notes on a Scandal

Just watched Notes on a Scandal, with Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, and Andrew Simpson. Superb cast, oddball story; very intense, and rich in character detail. Both Dench and Blanchett get plenty of room to draw their characters to the max, the former showing her constant conniving on her face often without saying a word, the latter playing a woman who's foolish, and surprisingly naive. Not only does she have an affair with a 15-year-old pupil (scarily played by Simpson, who was only 17 or 18 when the film was made), but she fails to see how Dench's character is in no way a friend, but only gives the appearance of a friend. Many actresses could have made the character a total fool; Blanchett manages to convince us that this woman's behaviour is possible, and believable.

Dench has often been scary - as M for instance - but this must be Dench at her most subtly vicious. Even her Lady Macbeth from the late 70s isn't a patch on this. And she's allowed herself to be quite ugly, and almost nondescript. The sort of little old(er) lady you'd see pulling along her shopping cart in the supermarket.

In the story Dench is a near-to-retirement teacher who befriends the new art teacher (played by Blanchett) at a large comprehensive school. We gradually learn that Dench has designs for more than friendship and when she discovers Blanchett is having an affair with the pupil, she tells Blanchett that she knows about it, but that she'll keep it secret. Of course, it's a secret she can use against Blanchett in due course, when the latter doesn't play her game. Dench's character narrates a good deal of the story - she writes everything in her diary - and her cyncism about other people, and her sheer callousness (even about Blanchett's Downs Syndrome son) is overwhelming.

Not the most attractive group of characters, but absorbing all the same.

Thus Saith The Queen

We went to see The Queen tonight – not herself in person, quite, but a remarkably good imitation of her by Helen Mirren. In fact, without Mirren, the film would have stood little chance of success, I suspect. The script is moderately good, the camerawork okay, but the colour is rather washed out at times and there is little depth to the focus. The other actors, for the most part, look only a little like their counterparts. Sylvia Sims as the Queen Mother has none of the warmth that woman exuded in public, and James Cromwell brings all the nastiness he usually commands in villainous roles to that of the Duke of Edinburgh, turning that mildly unpleasant man into an impatient, single-minded character who has no warmth at all. That may be the some people see him, but it seems a little one-sided.
Michael Sheen makes a good fist of Tony Blair, producing a warm smile with frequency (a smile not often responded to by The Queen, or responded to with frostiness), but seems a little thin for the part or lacking in physical stature. I don’t know how big Blair is, but he comes across as seeming to have more presence and weight than Sheen can give him.
Diana, of course, plays herself, as only she could, through a barrage of news clips and still shots, and dozens of other clips and shots are integrated seamlessly into the movie. Only at the end, when the Royal Family attend the funeral at the Abbey, does there seem a curious distance between the real life arrivals of celebrities, and the actors posed in chairs with seemingly very few extras in the background.
That wonderful actress, Helen McCrory, who brings both a kind of seediness and some underlying grittiness to her roles (she always seems to play people who are rather too selfish for words), here plays Cherie Blair as a warm character, but one with quite a deal of bitchiness about her – especially in regard to the Monarchy. She’s been woefully underused in movies – it always seems as if the editors cut her parts down in preference to others – but she was unforgettable in a tv mini series called, The Fragile Heart, in which she played the daughter of a doctor who was himself all selfishness, and had to unlearn a lifetime of thinking of himself first. She followed in her father’s footsteps, in contrast to her brother, who, also a doctor, had gone along a more generous line. Nigel Hawthorne was the father, in one of his many great roles.
Overall The Queen is entertaining, moving, cringe-making in its presentation of the Royal Family, and a star vehicle for Mirren, who can pretty well never put a foot wrong in whatever she does. She has the Queen down pat, her speech inflections, her tone, her body language…you name it. The film is undeniably worth seeing for this performance alone.
At the same screening the theatre presented a trailer of Judi Dench’s latest movie, Notes on a Scandal. It looks like a marvellous film – anything Dench is in will have at least one great performance in it – but the trailer virtually showed the entire story, leaving out only the ending. You’d go to it now knowing almost everything that was going to happen. Why do they do that?