Sam Mendes takes on Bond

Question: Is Sam Mendes the right director for the next Bond film?


Answer: Possibly...





So, Sam Mendes is in line to direct the next instalment of the Bond franchise, the release of which will presumably coincide with the 50th anniversary of the first 007 film, Dr No. The logic behind this apparently counterintuitive decision must have been that the last unlikely choice, Marc Forster, another arty European film-maker specialising in emotionally intense dramas, wasn't a total misfire, although it was really a qualified success. Admittedly Quantum of Solace did manage to rake in over half a billion dollars at the box office, but it was a confused, confusing film, at times all but dull - it was the first time that it was possible to be bored, bewildererd and a touch alienated by a 007 movie half-way through reading the title. There is more to the decision than this connection between the two directors of course, with Mendes having over his few films to date shown a gift not just for intimate, painful stories of crumbling relationships, disintegrating families, of ordinary people suffering existential/psychological pain (American Beauty and Revolutionary Road) but also for complex examinations of violent men (Jarhead and Road to Perdition). Significantly it was on the latter that Mendes worked with Daniel Craig in a film that showcased Craig's greatest screen asset (aside from his talent perhaps), his eyes - and with Paul Newman as his screen father Road to Perdition featured four of the greatest eyes in movie history. Sadly - and let's hope this isn't an omen in terms of its mismatching of talent and material - it was also a film with a fatal flaw with the unignorable miscasting of Tom Hanks as the central character, a cold-blooded, but-still-somehow-underneath-it-all decent hitman. It was an interesting idea - to cast perhaps the most fundamentally sympathetic and well liked American film star of the last 25 years as a killer, and there were precedents for this kind of anti-type-casting. The obvious one, possibly an inspiration for Mendes/Hanks, was Sergio Leone's decision to cast Henry Fonda, for 20 years and more Hollywood's embodiment of the decent everyman, as the brutal Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West. Fonda himself demurred, but was eventually persuaded, and Leone clearly saw something sinister in those famous baby blue eyes (Fonda himself laughed when recalling seeing his face in close-up as his character went about doing despicable things on screen) and Once Upon a Time... only makes you think what a great and versatile actor Fonda was, how different his career, as distinguished as it was, could have been if his range could have been exploited more fully. Fonda is a sensational villain, Hanks isn't. You just don't quite believe that he'd do what he does. So will Mendes be similarly out of place as an all-out action director? He will surely bring psychological depth and complexity to the film and will collaborate well with his star and he has a strong, innate sense of narrative and pace, something notably missing in Quantum of Solace. He's an intriguing choice and the film will if nothing else surely be interesting, but will it be as interesting or as fun as a Bond film directed by more obvious candidates like, say, James Cameron or Quentin Tarantino?





The answer to the question in the last posting was, as all Allen fans will know, Annie Hall, the working title of which was Anhedonia (the term given to the psychological condition in which a person is unable to experience pleasure), which co-starred Allen himself (original name Allen Konigsberg) and Diane Keaton, nee Diane "Annie" Hall.





Q: What is the (at least) double Fleming connection between the following: Albert Broccoli; Ken Hughes; Roald Dahl and Richard Maibaum; Ken Adam; Gert Frobe; Desmond Llewelyn?
A: coming soon...