Bond back in action

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The teaser trailer for SKYFALL will reportedly be attached to the most pointless sequel to a pointless sequel of all time, MEN IN BLACK 3.
 
EDIT: Image has been replaced.

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Teaser trailer will debut tonight. I'll post a high-quality version as soon as I can find one.
 
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Here to enjoy every moment...

I am surprised that they are airing the trailer online rather than saving it for MIB3. Then again, I shouldn't be that surprised considering that the third The Dark Knight Rises trailer bypassed the Theaters all together for the most part and was hosted on Youtube of all places. This will save me about $7.50. Thanks for bringing it to my attention mate.
 
It is believed that a title theme exists!

There's no word on who is performing it, but the producers have announced that Daniel Kleinman, who worked on the title sequences from 1995 to 2006, will be returning to SKYFALL. Kleinman has gone on the record in the past to say that he likes having a song to work with before he starts doing anything, because he likes the visuals to match the music, which suggests that the SKYFALL theme at least exists in some form.

Adele is the current favourite to perform it, though that is totally unconfirmed, and nobody else has really been mentioned much. But then, Amy Winehouse was the favourite to perform the QUANTUM OF SOLACE theme, and nobody suspected Jack White and/or Alicia Keys were even considering a theme before they were announced as the performers.
 
It is believed that a title theme exists!

There's no word on who is performing it, but the producers have announced that Daniel Kleinman, who worked on the title sequences from 1995 to 2006, will be returning to SKYFALL. Kleinman has gone on the record in the past to say that he likes having a song to work with before he starts doing anything, because he likes the visuals to match the music, which suggests that the SKYFALL theme at least exists in some form.

Oops, sorry, misread part of the post for a second. To clarify, this Kleinman character is doing the opening video sequence to Skyfall? Because that is what I am reading here.

Adele is the current favourite to perform it, though that is totally unconfirmed, and nobody else has really been mentioned much. But then, Amy Winehouse was the favourite to perform the QUANTUM OF SOLACE theme, and nobody suspected Jack White and/or Alicia Keys were even considering a theme before they were announced as the performers.

Personal opinion: All of these performers shouldn't be considered in favor of an instrumental. Yes, I know that David Arnold wasn't given the snub, but it will appear to fans that he was given one, due to Mendes preference to use his own guy, but there hasn't been an instrumental opening theme since OHMSS, and I feel that it is time that one returns to the series.

It should be considered a great honor to perform a Bond theme, and with John Barry and Sherry Bassley performing three each and everyone else performing one, it has become a chronicle of pop music, and that is something that every Diva, male or otherwise, appears to have taken advantage of.

Do you remember who leaked that she was performing Skyfall's theme, but it ultimately proved false?
 
Oops, sorry, misread part of the post for a second. To clarify, this Kleinman character is doing the opening video sequence to Skyfall? Because that is what I am reading here.
Yes. He's going the part with all the dancing girls that is shown while the theme song plays. It will be interesting to see what he comes up with, since unlike Maurice Binder - who did most of the early sequences - his scenes tend to reflect the themes of the film.

Personal opinion: All of these performers shouldn't be considered in favor of an instrumental. Yes, I know that David Arnold wasn't given the snub, but it will appear to fans that he was given one, due to Mendes preference to use his own guy, but there hasn't been an instrumental opening theme since OHMSS, and I feel that it is time that one returns to the series.
Actually, Arnold made it pretty clear that he had already chosen to provide the score for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. Danny Boyle backed him up, saying that Arnold had committed to the project months before Thomas Newman was announced as SKYFALL's composer.

It should be considered a great honor to perform a Bond theme, and with John Barry and Sherry Bassley performing three each and everyone else performing one, it has become a chronicle of pop music, and that is something that every Diva, male or otherwise, appears to have taken advantage of.
EON generally know what they want and who they want for a theme before they take someone on-board. It's only a problem when they back themselves into a corner. They wanted Madonna for DIE ANOTHER DAY, but by the time she agreed to do the theme, she was able to get full creative control over it because she knew EON had no-one else at the ready. So EON were basically stuck with whatever she gave them, which might have fit in with her American Life album, but was totally wrong for Bond.

And in the case of QUANTUM OF SOLACE, they kept trying to get Amy Winehouse involved. While Winehouse was keen to do it, she was having a lot of problems with the song itself and there were constant delays. EON humoured her for a while but when she had her meltdown on-stage in Serbia, they looked elsewhere. Dame Shirley Bassey was briefly considered (and even released a song called No Good About Goodbye which was intended to be a theme), but the situation gave Sony a lot of power because of the way the theme contracts are structured - basically, EON retain full control over the rights to the song, which is released through the label of their choice (usually Sony) regardless of which label the artist is actually signed to (most labels are okay with this, because they know the announcement that one of their acts will perform a Bond theme will give them a boost in sales, and EON generally let them include the track on the artist's next release provided that release comes after the theatrical run of the film is complete; a good indicator of who is being considered is the sudden and unexplained delay of an upcoming album release). However, because they were short on time for the release of the film, EON had to bring outsiders into the process of narrowing down a shortlist of acts, and that meant ceding some creative control to Sony. Sony then got even more control by doing a deal with Coca-Cola to use the song to promote Coke Zero, as Coke was already paying for product placement in the film. In the end, it still came down to David Arnold's choice, but by all accounts he only had a handful of options. He rationalised the choice of White and Keys because it was quite an experimental track, and his score was really quite experimental (it's easily his best), so at least there was some intrgrity in the decision-making process.

EON learned a lesson with that episode, so don't expect them to make the same mistake twice - just as they won't willingly give full creative control to an artist and their producer, as they did with Madonna.

Do you remember who leaked that she was performing Skyfall's theme, but it ultimately proved false?
Her name was Jelena Mihailovic, and she is a Serbian cellist. She claimed that SKYFALL - then known as "Bond 23" would be an adaptation of the Jeffrey Deaver continuation novel Carte Blanche, and that he would be performing the theme and composing the score.
 
An exclusive trailer has debuted with IMAX screenings of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. I haven't actually seen RISES in IMAX - there isn't an IMAX theatre for five hundred kilometres here - but I have read a few brief (and, admittedly, disjointed; RISES is a long film and a hell of a lot happens in it) recaps of the trailer on other forums, so I'm going to repost what I've been able to decipher from them:
It appears that M has become the subject of a formal review after losing control of MI6's active case roster. The identity of every single agent that has been covertly inserted into terrorist organisations has been compromised, and so Gareth Mallroy (Ralph Fiennes) has been assigned to monitor M's performance. It is unclear as to whether this leak forms the basis of the main plot; a video was leaked onto YouTube, and judging by the way it is shown - as a kind of photo montage - it may have been posted this way to show MI6 that their case roster has been compromised, but without actually revealing the identities of the agents to the organisations they have infiltrated. In this case, it is probably an attempt to blackmail MI6 into doing something. On the other hand, dialogue in the trailer said it happened some time previous to the events of the film, so it's possible that MI6 dealt with the problem, but the government decided to review the agency as a result.
There have also been some massively positive responses to Berenice Marlohe as Severine. She's styled as a throwback to the Bond Girls of the 1960s (in a production diary about the Aston Martin DB5, the producers state that the third act was deliberately modelled on the films of the 1960s), and from what I've seen and heard, she sounds a lot like Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle in that she is equal parts detached and amused by James Bond.

So it all sounds very positive. Once an official trailer is uploaded, I'll be sure to post it here.
 
TV spot that premiered with coverage of the Olympics:



Full trailer expected with TOTAL RECALL next week.

EDIT - Just found some stills from the trailer/TV spot:

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The scene with the excavator looks bonkers.
 
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The Sun Confirms Adele Will Sing the Skyfall Theme

According to The Sun(I found this via IGN), it has been increasingly likely that Adele has been selected to sing the theme to Skyfall after she was seen being spotted at the legendary Abbey Road studio where the soundtrack is being recorded under the supervision of producer Paul Epworth and soundtrack composer Thomas Newman.

Adele confirmed that she was asked to record the theme late last year on the Jonathan Ross Show, and apparently hit the studio shortly thereafter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HBlfT0ij5i4#!

Skip to the six minute mark, please...

Source
 
The Sun Confirms Adele Will Sing the Skyfall Theme
The Sun is tabloid trash. Nothing it prints can be believed. The tabloids love Bond films almost as much as they love the Royal family, because Bond films give them a chance to up sales an circulation.

As an example of this, look back to QUANTUM OF SOLACE. During filming in Panama, there was an industrial protest elsewhere in the city. The tabloids reported this as a gang war that production had inadvertently started, and that the principal cast and crew were using prop guns to try and scare street gangs into backing down.

Adele never confirmed that she had been asked to record a song on The Jonathan Ross Show. She simply said she would be back in the studios later in the year, and that she could not say much about what she was doing there. Given the already-intense public speculation that she would be performing the SKYFALL theme, the evasive and non-committal nature of her answer, and previous comments that she would not be recording a new album for some time, a lot of people interpreted her remarks as confirmation tat she would be performing the theme.
 
I just heard it. I would withhold judgement on the overall film if I was going by the theme music alone. In other words, if you asked me to judge the film based on the opening theme music, I would tell you to shove off.

As a solo piece of music, it is pretty good, even though I don't listen to much music past 1980.
 
When was the last canon Bond film that was crap with a great theme - or great with a crap theme?
 
When was the last canon Bond film that was crap with a great theme - or great with a crap theme?
That's a tricky one.

Most fans will probably point to THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, which was received quite poorly (though I personally quite like it), but the song was very well-received, mostly because it was the one and only time David Arnold was involved in its composition enough to be able to incorporate it into the score. He had originally worked elements of k.d. lang's "Surrender" into the TOMORROW NEVER DIES score, but it was dropped in favour of Sheryl Crow's song at the last minute. That said, the title track for THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH is quite polarising among fans. Some people think it's Arnold and Shirley Manson attempting to ape Shirley Bassey.

For me, the last good film with a dud title track was THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. I used to hate the film, but it wasn't for several years that I realised it was actually pretty good, but let down by the way it doesn't really explain what the hell Koskov - the villain - was actually doing. But I still find a-ha's song to be horribly bland and lacking any kind of direction.

As for the last bad film with a good title track, that is definately A VIEW TO A KILL. The film itself is just a sub-par rehash of GOLDFINGER (which is already very over-rated) with an ageing Roger Moore not really doing anything and a director who simply didn't care about the project. But I think Duran Duran's title track is easily one of the best in the franchise. It was a perfect example of EON Productions catching onto a popular artist, and giving them John Barry and the creative freedom to come up with something that they thought would be a good theme. Hopefully, lighting will finally strike a second time with SKYFALL.
 
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, which was received quite poorly (though I personally quite like it), but the song was very well-received

I hated both. Gammy-ear ruined the film with severe overacting and the theme was a dreary dirge. I'm not doing the pun - someone else can.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES score, but it was dropped in favour of Sheryl Crow's song at the last minute

Interesting premise, good cast, ultraweak execution, "Darling I'm killed" (MUTE).

For me, the last good film with a dud title track was THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. I used to hate the film, but it wasn't for several years that I realised it was actually pretty good, but let down by the way it doesn't really explain what the hell Koskov - the villain - was actually doing. But I still find a-ha's song to be horribly bland and lacking any kind of direction.

I love The Living Daylights theme. Moreso than the film at any rate - hidesouly weak dialogue (particularly in the Hercules) and what was Joe Don Baker even doing?

As for the last bad film with a good title track, that is definately A VIEW TO A KILL. The film itself is just a sub-par rehash of GOLDFINGER (which is already very over-rated) with an ageing Roger Moore not really doing anything and a director who simply didn't care about the project. But I think Duran Duran's title track is easily one of the best in the franchise. It was a perfect example of EON Productions catching onto a popular artist, and giving them John Barry and the creative freedom to come up with something that they thought would be a good theme. Hopefully, lighting will finally strike a second time with SKYFALL.

It's interesting that you don't like TLD's theme but like AVTAK's given the similarities in style.

It has to be said that the correlations between bad Bonds and bad themes (and better Bonds and good themes) are amusing. FYEO, DAF, TSWLM at the top end, LTK and DAD at the very, very bottom end.
 
How can anyone judge the film based on the quality of the theme music?

They say that for something to be good, it has to appeal to all of the senses, not just the ones that is the primary focus(i.e. in criticizing food, not only does the food have to taste great, but it has to visually appeal and smell great as well).

There will be music lovers, who just so happen to love James Bond films, that will refuse to go see the film because the theme, which should set the overall tone of the film(and thus why all of the Connery films and Casino Royale are among the best in my opinion), is so blatantly trying to recapture the lightning in the bottle that made up the Connery films, that the composer is overlooking the fact that the film is much more darker in tone(based on the trailers) than all of the previous outings with, quite possibly, the exception of QoS.

That is what I see out of it. I see two parts, the film clips and the music clip, but I don't see them working together in a cohesive unit. I guess that we will have to wait until October to see the results.
 
I hated both. Gammy-ear ruined the film with severe overacting and the theme was a dreary dirge. I'm not doing the pun - someone else can.
I do confess that I have a soft spot for TWINE. It was the very first Bond film I saw in a cinema, so it's always going to be a favourite. I also think the plot of using weapons-grade plutonium to stage a nuclear meltdown and hijack control of the West's oil supplies is a very clever twist on the whole stolen-nuclear-weapon plot.

Interesting premise, good cast, ultraweak execution, "Darling I'm killed" (MUTE).
TOMORROW NEVER DIES makes way more sense if you consider General Chang - who is really just a background character who gets mentioned twice in the film - to be the real villain. Elliot Carver was simply too weak and hammy to pull off the villain.

It's interesting that you don't like TLD's theme but like AVTAK's given the similarities in style.
I'd put that down to the theme being too similar to AVTAK's. One of the reasons why I was worried about Adele performing the SKYFALL theme is that, this being the 50th Anniversary of Bond, there would be a lot of pressure to produce something similar to Dame Shirley Bassey's songs, and that it would end up being a weak pastiche. I like what she has come up with, though. It's got the right sound without being a cheap imitation.
 
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