{"id":1866,"date":"2012-10-30T23:04:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T22:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=1866"},"modified":"2012-10-30T23:04:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T22:04:37","slug":"skyfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2012\/10\/30\/skyfall\/","title":{"rendered":"Skyfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a rare trip to the cinema, I’ve just got back from Skyfall<\/a><\/em>. (Before you start, I know a blog is rarer than a film viewing for me but why not break two habits at once?)<\/p>\n

The new Bond film<\/a> is all over the place at the moment, and rightly so. For anything to survive 50 years is a huge\u00a0achievement, let alone a franchise which it can be argued has seen better days. Recent films have had money thrown at them and, in my view, not been all that great. Alongside this, I really hadn’t warmed at all to Daniel Craig<\/a> in the lead role. If I’m totally honest, I found both Casino Royale<\/a><\/em> and Quantum Of Solace<\/a><\/em> fairly forgettable and I doubt I could tell you a lot about either film.<\/p>\n

Coupled with this is the revelation that, apart from a mild obsession with Bond music, I don’t really care for it and Skyfall<\/em> is the first Bond film I have seen in a cinema.<\/p>\n

Having said all this, I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish – there isn’t a moment that doesn’t feel polished, and I urge you all to see it. Yes, it’s a diversion from the classic films, but things have moved on – watching Day Another Day<\/em> recently, it felt very old even though it celebrated 40 years of Bond on its release. Yes, Craig is a very different Bond – one who is older than most, one who appears weary at times – but for me, this is his film. This is where the role becomes firmly his, in the same way that it took a good series and a half before Matt Smith<\/a> became The Doctor for me… I just hate change.<\/p>\n

Back to Skyfall<\/em> though.<\/p>\n

There are four things to look out for when you watch it, three of which I feel are fairly spoiler free (avoid point four if you wish):<\/p>\n

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  1. There is a section of the film which is basically a London Underground<\/a> version of Where’s Wally?<\/a> – the films are known for their humour and, while that particular part of the film isn’t really intended to be\u00a0humorous, that’s all I could think of throughout that scene.<\/li>\n
  2. I enjoyed the Scrabble reference… that’s all I can really say about that without ruining a little moment for you.<\/li>\n
  3. A good use of music throughout, in particular John Lee Hooker’s<\/a> Boom Boom – although, again, I could only think of the Levi’s<\/a> advert that used that back in the day to start with, and Now That’s What I Call Music 23<\/em>, on which it appeared and the cassette version that I pretty much wore thin throughout the mid-1990s\u00a0(if you can find a list of songs on the first part of that compilation, check it out on Spotify or similar).<\/li>\n
  4. Finally though, I couldn’t help but feel shades of the Harry Potter series<\/a> all the way through. There are echoes of plot, which I\u00a0won’t\u00a0divulge, but also in the way it was produced. I’m convinced that a colour map of the film, a graph showing light and dark sections, periods of differing colour, would reveal vast similarities. This is no bad thing. I’m not known for a love of Harry Potter, but I have seen all 8 films – the last two, 7A and 7B, at the cinema. The more memorable moments of them haunted me while I watched Skyfall<\/em>. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Well, no, I don’t think so. Skyfall<\/em> is Bond in a modern era and is fabulous for it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    One final thing. Over the twenty-three films only two of them, Goldfinger<\/em> and Thunderball<\/em>, have received Oscars. With few other huge films out this year, surely Skyfall<\/em> deserves to add to that tally? For my money at least, Judi Dench<\/a> deserves a nomination, for she gets to do more work than any other M since a child at school tried to tell me that, “My mummy makes me muffins on Mondays.”<\/div>\n
    <\/div>\n
    A very good film.<\/div>\n
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