Salma Hayek Goes Rambo in EVERLY !!

Salma Hayek plays Everly, a young woman who was kidnapped into sexual slavery and who now sees a moment of opportunity to get out and start her own life. In order to do so, she has to rise to the occasion and defeat a great many heavily armed crooks, as well as what looks like a Yakuza Boss.

EVERLY is directed by Joe Lynch and is made on what can be considered a minuscule budget (for films these days). Nevertheless it packs a wallop and is well worth a visit when Dimension Films will still release the film in theaters in February 2015.

No Shades of Grey for Charisma Carpenter in BOUND !

No Grey, Just Bound !

BOUND is a low budget erotic thriller starring Charisma Carpenter (whom we all love and know as Cordelia from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL as well as from THE EXPENDABLES, in which she played Jason Statham's girl friend), Daniel Baldwin and Bryce Draper. The film is produced by THE ASYLUM so you know you don't have to expect quality but this film was quickly made to beat the upcoming notorious film version of 50 SHADES OF GREY to the punch. Charisma Carpenter plays Michelle, the daughter of a business man in trouble, who gets involved with the wrong kind of man at a crucial time.
Like I said, this is no great film but for fans of Charisma Carpenter, it is a treat because Charisma has the guts to show a lot  of skin. Nudity has not really been a problem for her, as she has done a PLAYBOY pictorial as well in the past but in film roles you don't often see ladies of her age bear all. Charisma was born in 1970 and is no spring chicken anymore but she is still very beautiful. I would consider myself lucky if I had a lady friend like her. Thanks for your chutzpah, Charisma, I am looking forward to your next film !!

Composer Profile : Elliot Goldenthal (1954)

Elliot Goldenthal (born 1954) was born in New York, where he also studied at the Manhattan School of Music with composer John Corigliano (famous for his score for Altered States). Goldenthal is not per sé a film composer, he also works in theatre and for the concert hall.

As a composer for film music, he has been called 'the thinking man's composer' because he is willing to use very unorthodox techniques to experiment with his music. Fine examples of this can be found in the films ALIEN 3 and TITUS.

Interview With The Vampire was also a major effort for Goldenthal's career. His score for Michael Mann's film HEAT also provides an effective example of very unusual orchestration which adds a great deal to the excitement of the film.

When Tim Burton stepped down from directing the Batman movies in the 1990s, Joel Schumacher invited Elliot Goldenthal to come in and take over the duties for Danny Elfman. Elliot created a musical atmosphere that was unlike any ever heard before.

The science fiction film Sphere, based on a novel by Michael Crichton, about an alien ship that crashed on Earth, allowed Goldenthal again unlimited freedom to explore fear and madness in diverse orchestrations. He received an Oscar (see picture above) for the drama Frida, a film directed by his girlfriend Julie Taymor.

Elliot Goldenthal is a composer whom I would love to see in a concert. Unfortunately, his concerts mostly remain stateside. Care to come to Europe, Elliot??

Elliot Goldenthal and Julie Taymor

Composer Profile ALAN SILVESTRI (1950)

Picture courtesy and copyright The Hollywood Reporter

Alan Silvestri started working as a composer for film music for the low budget 1972 film The Doberman Gang. Later in the 1970s, he worked on the popular cop show CHiPs (starring Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox) for a few years, before returning to a promising career in film.

Director Robert Zemeckis asked him to write music for Romancing The Stone and the Back to the Future films. In the 1980s he also scored both of the Predator films, which have since then been considered excellent examples of action/science fiction scoring with superlative suspense motifs. 

Where the first Predator film presented action star Arnold Schwarzenegger in a life to death battle with an alien in the tropical jungle, Silvestri was able to retain the jungle motifs in his music for the second film, which was situated in an urban jungle. One of his most prominent scores of the late 1980s is for James Camerons The Abyss. Forest Gump, Contact, Volcano and Cast Away are some very fine examples of his work in the 1990s. 

 

In later years, Silvestri has continued to create rousing scores for The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Currently he has also been active for MARVEL in composing music for Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers.

 

Alan Silvestri has also worked for television series of late: he composed the theme for Cosmos : A Space Time Odyssey. I personally would very much like to see Alan Silvestri score a James Bond film. I think he would be really good there but that is something I can only dream of, I am afraid.

Thank you, Mr. Silvestri, for some really great music !!!

James Bond: The Living Daylights 1987 starring Timothy Dalton as James Bond

A View To A Kill was received with a little less enthusiasm than usual for the Bond films. It was still successful but the reviews were not as positive as before and so it was clear for EON Productions that Roger Moore’s time as Bond was over and the hunt for a new James Bond was on.

A good number of actors were asked to audition and one very good candidate was Sam Neill (whose audition is shown on the special features of the dvd and blu ray release of this film). Dana Broccoli, Michael Wilson, Barbara Broccoli and John Glen were very positive about the actor who had previously been seen as REILLY on television but unfortunately, Cubby Broccoli was not convinced and he said no. During the preparations for Octopussy, James Brolin had also auditioned but an American Bond would not have been a good choice to begin with. After a while the actors Pierce Brosnan and Timothy Dalton were the final choices. 

 

However due to circumstances with his REMINGTON STEELE television show in the USA, Pierce Brosnan was unable to take the role. (Originally the show was to have been cancelled but at the very moment it was announced Brosnan could next be starring as Bond, the television producers wanted more episodes and Brosnan was bound by contract to do these. It was no surprise that Brosnan was very disappointed.) 

"I am sorry for Pierce but obviously the producers chose well!"

Timothy Dalton was chosen, even though Cubby Broccoli was not too enthusiastic about Dalton at first. Dalton however won him over pretty quickly when he expressed his wish for the Bond films to return to the more serious thriller fare that had been more and more discarded in Roger Moore’s tenure. Dalton said he went back to the Fleming novels to find out who Bond was and found him not the same chap that Roger had been playing all this time.

Timothy Dalton as Bond in his opening sequence at Gibraltar

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS again starts a new trend with more serious storytelling. However, the humor element would not be deleted entirely and a rather comical escape from behind the iron curtain sequence reflected this. (In my opinion this sequence is too Roger Moore-ishly silly to be consistent with the rest of the film.)

The original Poster design for The Living Daylights

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS also is one of the last times that an Ian Fleming title would be used (until the Casino Royale 2006 reboot, that is). Ian Fleming’s short story in which Bond acts as a sniper to safeguard the defection of a Russian official (played in the film with much humor by Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbe) was used as the introduction to the new Bond, with the line  “I must’ve scared the living daylights out of her” being his validation of the title.

Maryam d'Abo starred as Kara Milovy, the one single love interest for this film. (The producers had found it sensible not to have Bond go around bedding women all over in an age where AIDS was an upcoming disease and so only gave Bond one love interest here.) Jeroen Krabbe (as Georgie Koskov) was joined by Joe Don Bake (as Brad Whitaker, arms dealer) and Andreas Wisniewski (as the muscle) as the villains of this film.

Wisniewski, Don Baker and Krabbe

Thanks in great measure to the serious nature of the story, The Living Daylights, directed again by John Glen,  was celebrated as a return to form for the Bond films and was very successful. 

JB: "You see, Ms. Moneypenny, I was the right choice !"   MsM: "Yes, and you're full of it !!!!"

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS was also John Barry’s last score for a Bond film and represents one of his finest hours of music in the Bond series. (John Barry is also briefly seen in the film as the conductor of the orchestra at the end of the film where Kara is performing.) Barry scored 11 Bond films in all, (From Russia With Love, 1983, Goldfinger, 1964, Thunderball, 1965, You Only Live Twice, 1967, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969, Diamonds Are Forever, 1971, The Man With The Golden Gun, 1974, Moonraker, 1979, Octopussy, 1983, A View To A Kill, 1985 and The Living Daylights, 1987) leaving a huge musical influence behind him. Even today, John Barry, who passed away in 2011, is sorely missed from the Bond films.

John Barry in the early 1960s

Roger Moore had been driving around in a Lotus Esprit in his films The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only but for this film, Aston Martin provided Bond with a new car: the Aston Martin Vantage V8 Volante .

The vehicle was also packed with extra's but did not survive the film because it was destroyed in the escape from behind the iron curtain sequence. Still the name of Aston Martin will always be remembered together with James Bond (Daniel Craig had an Aston Martin DB5 again in Casino Royale 2006 and Skyfall 2012).

Publicity Shot for the film

Although the film scored well all over the world, the American Audiences felt Timothy Dalton was a little dry and said he lacked humor. This would return with the American box office reaction to the next film License to Kill. But overall, the reception of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS was very positive and the next title would be in pre-production pretty soon afterwards.

Timothy Dalton and Jeroen Krabbe promoting the film.

For me personally, Timothy Dalton was a fantastic James Bond. Dalton portrayed Bond as a human being with all the good and bad things included. In one sequence, Bond's colleague is killed and Bond gets mad and wants revenge. This also shows Bond as a human being, with all the frailties and the anger of a man living on the edge. Something Roger Moore hadn't been doing for a long time.

Timothy Dalton would be back as Bond in 1989's Licence To Kill. Next time, on this blogsite !!!

WAR HORSE : An Experience

My sister has always liked horses. So when she said that she wanted to see the theatrical show of WAR HORSE, it came as no surprise to me. I knew a little about the theatrical show because it had been heavily advertised on television, but I myself am a bit more geared towards film because it allows for a more complete visual representation of the situation in which the story plays.

I was also aware of the Steven Spielberg film but had not seen anything more than a trailer of it so far. But I felt I wanted to do my sister a favor and accompanied her to the theatrical show when it played at the CHASSE Theatre in the town of Breda. My sister was very pleased that I went along and we witnessed a very good show there. Even the dramatized Dutch version succeeded wonderfully in bringing across the points the story intends to make. I must admit it was very interesting to see the process by which the animated horse frameworks succeeded in portraying the real horses and more so, you were willing to believe them! It was very effective and yet, dramatic, even as this is clearly a drama playing during the first World War. The cast was also very good and the show very enjoyable.

Naturally, because the show is played on a stage, certain things are only shown in a symbolic way. You can not really show a real battlefield on stage but the producers of the show had found ways around that and made it all very enjoyable and very effective too. Considering however the subject matter of the first World War, I was surprised to see many young children in the audience as well. This is something that baffled me a little as I knew the Steven Spielberg film was for ages 12 and up. And here, younger children were also allowed to see this. I guess because they had maybe read the original novel by Michael Morpurgo, that was originally aimed at children as well. 

My sister enjoyed the show very much and so I considered this a very good and enjoyable day as well, even though the show in itself was not something I would do again. As I said, I prefer the realism a film can bring so a few days later I popped in the blu ray of Steven Spielberg's film. I was pleasantly surprised but considering it was directed by Steven Spielberg, it was to be expected.

The Steven Spielberg film (I will not go into specifics now on the film or its making) was very impressive. And as I suspected, the added realism of real horses, real sets and real battlefields was an incredible asset to this wonderful production. I think also that the absence of real movie stars was a good move on the part of Mr. Spielberg in the making of the film. 

As usual, Mr. Spielberg had his regular composer John Williams, famous for his music for the STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES films, compose a splendid score to support the film. Williams has proven himself to be an excellent dramatic composer and his score is fantastic, from the beautiful English Devon landscapes to the terrifying French Trench War battlefields. Mr. Williams is one of those rare composers that create music to support a movie that outside the movie theatre still manages to stand on its own. A dying breed, I'm afraid.

And naturally, where you have the artificial horses in the theatre production, the real horses in the film are incredible in their performances. Horses were killed in great numbers in the first World War so this story not only succeeds in moving the audience to tears. It also shows the audience the folly of war. The ridiculousness of men fighting and losing their lives for stupid reasons. WAR HORSE can be seen as one of Steven Spielberg's more political films (just as his SCHINDLER'S LIST and SAVING PRIVATE RYAN). Yet, the theatrical production does not lag behind in this.

All in all, War Horse is a very good film and theatrical show, that shows what the first really modern war meant to warfare. In all of the attention that the Second World War has gotten in recent years, it is sometimes forgotten that the First World War, that now roughly started one hundred years ago, was also a terrible war to have to live thru. And I hope we will not have to go thru that again.

Thanks to Mr. Michael Morpurgo for writing the book, thanks to all those involved in the theatrical shows and also, thank you, Mr. Spielberg, and everyone of your crew, for WAR HORSE, a little children's book that has grown into a worldwide phenomenon. If you are a theatre man, do go and see it. If you prefer the film, buy the blu ray and enjoy that ! It is definitely worth your while !!!!