Author: Mark O'Connell (Page 32 of 33)

PLAYBOY.
GAMBLER.
SPY.

Sky Atlantic and Ecosse Films / BBC America have revealed an early look at their new 2014 series, Fleming.

Filmed in the UK and Budapest, the mini-series is set during the Second World War when Ian Lancaster Fleming (Dominic Copper) was heavily involved in mounting special operations against the Nazis and others.

Mat Whitecross (The Road to Guantanamo) is directing from a script by John Brownlow and Don Macpherson (based on John Pearson’s work on the life of Fleming). Laura Pulvey (Fleming’s wife Ann), Annabelle Wallis (Muriel Wright), Rupert Evans (Fleming’s brother Peter) Samuel West (Admiral John Godfrey), Anna Chancellor (Lieutenant Monday) and Lesley Manville (Fleming’s mother Evelyn) co-star.

The four part mini-series will air on Sky Atlantic later in early 2014.

Check out the new teaser trailer, Fleming.

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going be a bumpy night”

(All About Eve, 1950)

With King of the Tangent himself Pedro Almodóvar on duty as chief flight recorder, pilot, trolley dolly and navigator, I’m So Excited! is a boisterous stopover of a film. Less long-haul than the melodramatic Volver, clever Live Flesh or the masterly All About My Mother, Almodóvar’s nineteenth feature is a short-haul hen-night of a movie, as quick to get into as it takes to blow up one of those canary yellow safety vests.

Welcome to Peninsula Airlines Flight 2549. You will be cruising at an altitude of 32,000 feet. Literally. And if nothing excites you on the duty-free cart, there will be enough in-flight entertainment and emergency grandstanding to keep children of all ages (and predilections) entertained.

This plane is like a sunlit backroom – floating on clouds of mescaline, passion and resignation. Neither bitter or moral, this is Almodóvar as chief pilot of a Mile [very] High Club. Never mind the fuel the plane suddenly has to burn off before an emergency landing. Almodóvar’s own script is more concerned in his motley passengers jettisoning absurd amounts of tequila, vodka and Valencia cocktails. Pilots, co-pilots, stewards, ground staff – everyone’s necking a quick shot to take the edge off. Before having another. An Easy Jet flight to Sitges packs less booze than this. Yet, as such happy-hour excesses soon replace characters inhibitions with much needed action (Lola Dueñas’s virginity status is quite cheekily – and anonymously – downsized at 30,000 feet), the weight of everyone’s emotional ballast nearly drags the flight into the sea. A mostly empty business class section and a disgraced banker speaks volumes about Spain and Europe’s economy – with the stricken Peninsula 2549 flight struggling to find an airport that is manned, let alone not cash strapped. But that is as political as Pedro gets. His world is one where men are already in marriages to each other (be it sexual, spiritual or actual), mistresses are afforded perceptive back stories and empty control towers are manned by a husband and wife and their packed lunch.

Just as the theatrical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) pitches itself in a farce-like apartment, its nearest sibling I’m So Excited! relishes the proscenium confines of this Peninsula flight – affording Pedro his trademark backstage wranglings, curtain twitching, character hierarchies and story-centric phone-calls. It is certainly Almodóvar’s simplest effort for a while, jettisoning the masterful twists of Live Flesh and The Flowers of My Secret for an unabashed pantomime of an in-flight movie that unfurls as if Airplane had a quick knee-trembler in the disabled toilets with Carry on Emmanuelle and Shortbus was the result.

Gone for now are the masculine pulses and of The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces. Here they are replaced for the mescaline ones of a cabin-fevered cabin-crew led by self-destructive, yet puppy-eyed steward Javier Cámara (Talk To Her, Bad Education) and Pedro newcomers Raúl Arévalo (granted a Pedro tache on his first outing) and portly Carlos Areces. If this work-weary triumvirate steal the movie, then it is the scene-chomping Areces who gets the ‘Peninsula Employee of the Month’ award with his dour queen Fajardo forever hand-fanning his magnificent cow-lick fringe amidst his random urges to pray into a brassy pop-up altar.

As Almodóvar’s gayest film for quite a while, there is very little room in the aisle for any straight manoeuvring. Like most of Almodóvar’s efforts, even the straight women behave like gay men. And possibly vice versa. Not that every persuasion doesn’t get a chance to “check in” on this voyage. Everyone is at it. From the hot straight couple fresh off a three day wedding bender (and a curious affliction the sexy groom is milking to the hilt) to a bi-curious co-pilot, a horny security officer and a veteran soap actor juggling a suicidal ex and a shrewd new squeeze via misplaced cell phones. So far, so very Almodóvar.

With crew and passengers pitched as types culled straight from 1970’s Airport, Almodóvar has early fun churning out the disaster movie character tropes (the disillusioned suit, the veteran fun-time girl, the cabin crews in mid-affair, the family man pilot’s bit on the side, a concerned psychic and a potential killer). Yet, as much as Almodóvar lets the film party with this entertaining bunch, he still takes the time to surprise, to charm and regret. Just as Airport 1975 had the real Norma Desmond in the guest-starring likes of Gloria Swanson, I’m So Excited! gets its own Norma in the guise of the fabulous Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother) as society dominatrix and potential government-toppler Norma Boss. This Anna Wintour fringed ice-maiden is the most familiar from Pedro’s oeuvre. We are told this is a character that – like the director himself – emerged onto the scene in the late 1980s, ruffled the establishment’s feathers and subsequently hit her stride in her 50s.

One of the utter joys of an Almodóvar film is how he lets you go ahead of his story and characters, allowing the audience to curve off with their absurd notions and plot predictions. You kick yourself for thinking that wildly or crudely. But then suddenly Pedro takes you by the hand and ‘goes there’ for you with a day-glo aplomb that is forever liberating and – most vitally – honest. The director’s CV is on show throughout. From key Pedro icons Penelope Cruz (Volver, Broken Embraces, Live Flesh) and Antonio Banderas (Matador, Laws of Desire, The Skin I Live In) playing consequential ground crew to the point of almost giggling on-screen at the fun of it all to the lies men tell of Laws of Desire, the drug dependencies of What Have I Done To Deserve This and Norma Boss’s sado-masochistic day job echoing Tie Me Up Tie Me Down.

Like a trashy airport novel, I’m So Excited! is a wondrous, crazy holiday distraction. Never meant to outstay its welcome, it is a rude jaunt farcing about its tight running time. Pedro purists might want this frothy baggage reclaimed immediately, but he still carefully peels back the motifs of character like the cling-wrap on a Stansted Airport beef casserole. This is a deliberate inflight meal of a movie – easy to get into, tastes better than it looks and will perfectly suffice until you touch down. As a comedy it is possibly more successful than Women On The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown – which now pales when compared to what Almodóvar did next. He is now a genre all of his own, one that has re-pointed people’s opinions and views on Spanish cinema and culture. As fun goes and the summer blockbusters start circling the skies, I’m So Excited! deftly proves Pedro Almodóvar can still drop a big block of blue toilet ice onto his rivals. Just when does this “seatbelt” sign disappear?

With thanks to Pathe UK for the screening.

I’m So Excited! lands at UK cinemas from May 3rd 2013.

SAW MISGIVINGS
Written by Mark O’Connell
Directed by David Lilley
Starring Vicky Album & Steve McNeil

Being the perfect housewife can kill…

“A bizarre, yet funny as hell mix of twisted humor….Seriously, this thing’s full of funny (the beer opening gag = genius) and not a one note joke…Damn fine acting, damn fine filmmaking, damn fun time.” – AIN’T IT COOL NEWS

SAW MISGIVINGS has featured very successfully at the LUND INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL 2012 (Nominated – Méliès d’argent), the Three Corpse Circus Film Festival 2012 (USA), SAN SEBASTIAN HORROR & FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL 2012, COFILMIC 2012 (Nominated : Best Comedy Short), LEEDS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Nominated – Méliès d’argent), SCREEN STOCKPORT FESTIVAL 2012 (Special Mention), THREE CORPSE CIRCUS FILM FESTIVAL, LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2013, the LONDON COMEDY FILM FESTIVAL 2013, the SKEPTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, the DETMOLD INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2013 and more.

“A ‘cute’ piece (if cute even sounds appropriate) … the perfect spoof short film for horror audiences. You’ll want to seek this out and take 6 minutes out of your day to enjoy the fun!” – HORRORNEWS.NET

“…a rock solid and humorous tribute to the Saw franchise, successfully lampooning the iconic traps as well as the kinetic style found in the series. All of the jokes perfectly hit their mark” – HORRORMOVIES.CA

Little and Large. Autumn 1988. Studio One. That was the first time I set foot in the hallowed halls of the BBC’s Television Centre. My dad had got tickets to a Little and Large recording. It was a Sunday night and I was 13. The night’s recording was okay at best. Sid Little fluffed some lines and I was mesmerised by how shiny the set was. Actually, it was only the off-screen machinations that I can only remember now – those Dalek sized cameras all emblazoned with a faded italicised “BBC” and the unseen faces from the gallery controlling every moment like Greek Gods whose chess pieces resemble now two comics from the tail end of the Northern club scene’s heyday.

Of course I had sort of been in TVC for years before that. Mentally I had been imagining myself making a chocolate sponge with Janet Ellis in the Blue Peter studio, playing with Goldie’s puppies on the Blue Peter lawn (in a pre-euphemism age that was something ten year olds could actually do), dancing with Nik Kershaw in the Top of the Pops studio, being one of those million tapdancers Roy Castle Bonnie Langforded with on Record Breakers or at least being on the phone to Sarah Greene shouting “left, left, splat” as Saturday Superstore foresaw the XBox generation with some then nifty graphical interactivity with Five Star’s latest album as a prize incentive. I may have even have penned a letter to Jimmy Saville so that some classmates and I could visit a haunted house. On that less salubrious note it turns out that possibly TVC itself was indeed the house of horrors (for some at least). But for the rest of us who can now say with relief that Jim did not fix it for us, the nearest we got to White City’s gleaming beacon of broadcasting was getting the engaged tone when trying to phone a question into The Boswell’s from Bread on Saturday Superstore. Actually, my eleven year old self did get on the BBC’s daily TV magazine show Open Air. I asked Julia Smith (EastEnders creator) whether it had been her favourite show to produce. She was as clearly disappointed in my soul searching mode of enquiry as I was that Open Air was not actually broadcast from Television Centre, but – heaven forbid – Birmingham.

Television Centre always felt like a second home, a sort of televisual embassy bound by political neutrality and a creative haven for all lost souls and fans of Points of View. If something horrible should happen to my home or family, I imagined I could at least get on a train to London, find my way to Wood Lane and TVC would shelter me amidst Sue Cook’s blazers, Selina Scott’s knitwear and Simon Groom’s sheep. And if that didn’t work, I could at least phone up. I knew the number. 01 811 8055 was not just Going Live’s phone-in number and the Children In Need pledge line. It was the only phone number every kid in Britain knew – before of course it was cruelly re-cast as 0181 811 8181, 0207 811 8181 or heaven forbid 0845 Give Us Your Views Now.com.

TVC was as much a character in the BBC’s ouevre as Basil Fawlty, Del Boy, Gordon the Gopher, Claudius, Russell Harty, The Two Ronnies, the Doctor and that odd couple with the matching anoraks from No Place Like Home (look it up). TVC denoted home from school and weekends. It was a babysitter you didn’t mind being stuck with. Saturday mornings were Sarah Greene and Mike Read frollicking about the forecourt of TVC all in the name of kids television. The Two Ronnies would dim the lights on a Sunday as Barbara Dickson would lean against a Studio One lampost to sing Another Suitcase in Another Hall. And on slow news days The Six O’Clock News would let some militant lesbians in so that Nicholas Witchell could sit on them and make the world just that bit safer for us impressionable kids as Blue Peter‘s Mark Curry traversed TVC’s corridors on an errant quadbike or penny farthing as crew members raced for cover.

Flash-forward a few years and I return to TVC as “staff” with a BBC pass and everything. Working for BBC Comedy, I was able to experience all those BBC jokes and cliches, all those BBC canteen jibes and over-judicious concierges giving Basil Brush so much grief (though it was a recent thrill to drive through those hallowed gates, let alone be let through them). However, what I encountered was still a thriving hub of production, a busy and industrious environment knuckling down and getting on with it – despite an evident “media course” mentality and vile sense of “accountability” kicking at the heels of content and production. But why does everyone of a certain generation want to work in “media”? Because Television Centre made us. It beckoned us in every day. It forever told us where it lived (“Wood Lane, W12 7RJ”). It took great pride to showcase its studios, dressing rooms, switchboards and broom cupboards. It was both Oz and White City – with roads paved not with yellow bricks, but Blue Peter badges, Food and Drink recipe sheets, Points of View correspondence and Russell Grant’s knitwear patterns. But the TVC I experienced was also creaking round the edges. Parts of what Terry Wogan affectionately christened “The Concrete Doughnut” were falling apart. It was cheaper and easier for shows to rent out Pinewood Studios rather than nip downstairs. And just like the alleged Golden Age of British television of the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps TVC too was not meant to last. Cliché aside, it was impossible not to get lost. Or it was impossible for me to not get lost when trying to find BBC Comedy Room 3167 a (South Wing). And the Blue Peter garden was not actually that big nor possibly even a garden.

But you would also nip in a lift and help a newsreader balancing her toddler and scripts. You would see the enthusiastic queues of “the public” waiting in the rain to get into a recording of Never Mind The Buzzcocks or Last of the Summer Wine. You would see actors and presenters necking a latte with their make-up protectors still in place. You would clearly see the retro-cool 1970s fonted signage and BBC livery.You would hear news academics discussing the future of the Middle East in the gents. You would see panel show presenters perched on the stairs apologising to the guests they were about to annihilate. It was what all of us imagined a television centre to be.

TVC was about coming home from school and knowing you were watching the same kids TV show from Studio Two that your mates were watching, rather than some syndicated 28-part cartoon on CBBC you can choose when you catch it. TVC was the epitome of broadcasting to the nation – with the nation watching as an engaged mass. For good or bad, shows like The X Factor get such solid ratings as they operate on the same notions of mass engagement – of knowing everyone is watching at exactly the same moment as you. As much TVC forever showcased its corridors and studios, its output was not yet reduced to forever demanding we all text in with our views, our opinions, our reactions. The “public” were not yet a tiresome co-star and cost-cutting alternative. Yes, we had Nationwide and That’s Life carefully balancing decent content and human inanity. But now the dinner wallpaper that is The One Show will have Tony Curtis or Michael Caine on the sofa and have no qualms in interrupting tales of Marilyn Monroe in order to “roll some VT” on what The One Show thinks is the nation’s favourite litter tray. And if we are not being forever asked to Watch Again, the only corridors we now see are not in TVC but corporate and laminated ones full of wannabee gastro pub owners nervously awaiting Masterchef’s verdict on a duck breast their dying nan advised them to make. The streets of West London are no longer the haunts of The Good Life or Dennis Potter dramas, but Rogue Traders Caught On Camera Driving on a Duel Carriage-way Without an MOT. As a viewer, it now sometimes feels like prime-time slots which once dripped with sitcoms and fierce dramas now resemble the back-pages of Loot with an exhausting obsession with family trees, antiques and getting your plumbing done properly. TVC used to make dramas about the Borgias, not transform tower block spare rooms into vestiges of Renaissance Italy for a fiver. Yet sometimes folk who are looking for another heyday are overlooking exactly what is going right now. Would anyone even suggest the likes of White Heat, Getting On, Call The Midwife, Wallander, Last Tango In Halifax, Sherlock, Dead Boss, Doctor Who, Horrible Histories, Dancing On The Edge, Merlin, The Girl, Restless, Africa, and the superlative Olympic coverage are examples of a TV behemoth losing its touch?

In an age before branding became more important than content, Television Centre was the only media monolith we knew. Yet that icon is now about to be a gravestone, a relic of progression and a victim of the public purse that once paid for it having to tighten its strings. In the television of the future, TVC will only ever be seen when BBC Four mocks up a matte CGI shot of an actor playing Jonathan Ross entering the Stage Door for a drama about Sachsgate. But are these are gripes about output and nostalgia overlooking how the BBC is and always has been made up of many iconic homes. Its’ new London face is even its old London face. The 1930s era Broadcasting House is once again spearheading the BBC in the capital, with a new home for its News service already in place and quite a 21^st century sight it is to behold. The BBC approaching its centenary with a pride and confidence is surely more pressing than the closing of one building built over fifty years ago. And whilst moving the Blue Peter garden to a Salford rooftop holds less cache than the garden ever did and every drama and comedy seems to be over-keen on Manchester or Cardiff, time and television must move on. Whereas British telly may have once forgotten anyone north of Watford, great pockets of comedy, drama and factual television are now dotted throughout the land. The BBC Comedy of the 1970s may well have been called BBC Surbiton. But now we have BBC North and BBC Scotland producing great funny fare. The BBC is about its programmes, not its buildings. The BBC has always been made up of a rich cast list of broadcasting edifices. Alexandra Palace, Lime Grove, Pebble Mill, Bush House, Maida Vale and Elstree Studios have all housed the corporation and new hubs will emerge and old ones will get switched off. But it is the shows that came from these media stables that is why the BBC is the world’s most recognised television corporation. So why the outpouring of sentiment over TVC? Maybe TVC just represented a different era of audience engagement with television. It was more parochial, granted. But then so was the BBC. And so was Britain. However, it did have the production of content as its core DNA. And if content is to be at all part of the BBC’s survival, then any building that is not wholly necessary maybe does need an end credit “you have been watching” bugle call.

The following piece first appeared on Out.com on 28-02-13.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFon3nRjeQE

From Oscar With Love

Ah, the Oscars. Where else do we get such introductory gems as “an actress that brings a kernel of truth to every role” to “the incomparable actor” and his“unfathomable honesty” and the “the unstoppable journey of life” we are all on? Where else do we see Hollywood’s A-list talents’ best performances as they smirk, clap, and generally pretend to get any of the gags about the Jews and the gays? Where else are the seat-fillers now more familiar than those they are replacing? But “the kernel of truth”with the 2013 Oscars was they were possibly the gayest (and longest) “unstoppable journey” for quite a while. And in Oscar’s own glittering 85 year old journey that is saying something.

The Oscars telecast is like a bespoke cupcake. Gorgeous and enticing in every bakery window or highway billboard beforehand, the best bit is kicking off with the pink icing—where every new host and their opening number make great strides to bring montage irony and cameo-ladened satire to the party with the end result being the tightest moment of the night not involving the string holding down Kristen Stewart’s smile. How on earth was the first Academy Awards luncheon a sprightly 20 minutes?! Now the Technician’s Luncheon segment alone feels like twenty minutes—with “resting” Supporting Actress winners of old beckoning us all to play Guess Who’s Coming To Luncheon. Next year my money is on a newly introduced Seat Fillers Luncheon in the newly coined Mira Sorvino Clubhouse.

But once that pink icing is gone, you are left with the annual realisation that the Oscars telecast cupcake is a bit dry and bland inside – which is why the gays tend to drink through it to numb the pain; as well as bitch at whomever is fortunate enough to sit next to Eddie Redmayne, Henry Cavill, and Channing Tatum.

Maybe if we stop making the same running-time gags Johnny Carson did in the 1970s (and Bob Hope before that), the actual running time won’t be a problem? Oscars telecast spends an age trying to sex up the arguably less interesting categories such as Best Sound and Best Hair and Make Up Not In The English Language (which Salma Hayek clearly won this year); and usually does so with some awkward routine involving whichever couple have a summer tentpole release out.

But the end result is the now traditional clock-panicking race through the Best Actor, Actress, and Picture as if Hollywood’s biggest AGM has to be out the community hall before the janitor (or Goldie Hawn) goes home. Quentin Tarantino taking his time to thank folk for his deserved Original Screenplay gong for Django Unchained is not a televisual crime akin to Janet Jackson adding her nipple to the In Memorium section. The director/producer of the Best Picture should not feel he has to race through his speech because we had a lengthy sketch two hours earlier involving Sally Field and The Flying Nun. And nothing screams “2013” more than a Flying Nun gag, eh, where you could almost hear the world’s 16-to-24-year-olds reaching for their “Who’s Sally Field?” apps. Well kids, Field was an actress the Academy once liked, they really liked. And the show could possibly shave off a good hour if the green room was not evidently in Pasadena, ensuring all presenters strut those two and a half miles from the back of the stage as the camera swings around them like Errol Flynn at the 1938 Oscars.

But wait. Am I missing the point? Despite all this pink icing, behind the Oscars telecast is an industry that needs to promote, nurture and thank itself. Like any industry, it needs to set its benchmarks and remind the cash-spending public it exists. The Oscars telecast is nothing if not a four-hour trade show for cinema.

In Europe, TV audiences have their own Oscars telecast marathon. It is called the Eurovision Song Contest—where the gays and the non-gays (who just don’t know it is all very gay) sit for what feels like five and a half days watching the musical equivalent of a terrorist attack on a cupcake factory. The old “it’s so bad, it’s good” mantra barely applies anymore. Yet we all sit with our score sheets, pens and diminishing dignity year in, year out. But do you know what? Isn’t it nice just to watch a show like the Oscars where we are not asked to phone in or vote (curiously, the world can probably thank Eurovision of the 1960s for creating that reality-show kernel of “participation”). Isn’t it nice to have to watch a show that one night live on television rather than on a phone three days later on the work commute as everyone around you immerses themselves in season catch-ups of Game of Thrones?

But do you know what? Eurovision is already on my calendar. And the Oscars were too. In a television world of fragmented schedules the certainty of that five and a half day telecast marathon is sort of comforting. Besides, where else are we going to get Catherine Zeta Gekko donning the old Louise Brooks fright-wig in a musical tribute to what was either Chicago or A Cry in The Dark. But did we really need a tenth year anniversary nod to Rob Marshall’s Chicago? San Francisco’s Castro Theater would do that with less budget and more fun.

This year’s Oscar musical tributes were so gloriously shoe-horned and ever so random it felt like Christian Bale could hoof in at any moment with a special commemoration of Newsies. And nothing says up the revolution and save the poor more than the millionaire cast of Les Miserables singing in their Vuitton and tuxedos in the Dorothy Gale Pavilion. Pity no-one told poor Helena Bonham Bit-Parter she was onstage in two minutes as she stumbled out, clearly having been dragged backwards out of Tim Burton’s consciousness. Again.

But whereas the subject matter likes of Lincoln, Dark Zero Thirty, Life of Pi and Django Unchained are not the campest films, the chief awards show that honors them certainly was. As if underscoring every point of procedure with Forrest Gump, Out Of Africa and 19 renditions of Hooray For Hollywood is not textbook gay enough, this year’s Oscars morphed even more into its gay cousin, the Emmys—with openly gay Broadway stalwarts Craig Zadan and Neil Meron on telecast producing duties and the clearly Broadway savvy Seth McFarlane in the host’s seat (until of course time is too tight for those “kernels of truth” and a faceless announcer just throws the presenters on with scant introduction).

Is this particular gayness at the Oscars actually grossly patronising to the gay (and straight audiences) watching? Is this year’s show—like most Oscar nights—a curious bit of gay for the straights that sort of falls inbetween either camp. In a year when a President of the United States discusses gay marriage and equality rights in his inauguration might the Academy have been wiser, braver and even cooler had they taken a step out to honour all the LGBT roles that have won Oscars over the years: Philadelphia, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Boys Don’t Cry, Silkwood, Capote, Milk andDog Day Afternoon. OK, having The Muppets bob up and down with a tribute to the songs of Philadelphia ain’t going to work. Yet how detrimental would it really be to the Oscars and its all important TV pageant if a bit more honesty about Hollywood’s gay influence was popped in place? Race, disabilities and women have all had their montage moment in recent times. Why not LGBT subjects?

The Oscars are a curious mix of identities. It’s a Broadway revue show stuck in a TV closet. The show is not entirely sure what it wants to be, let alone who it wants to include. Forever harping back to the Golden Age of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood (with its set designs, fonts, ballgowns and swinging chandeliers), the show is also wanting to relive its ratings glory days of the 1960s and 1970s (with its irreverence, Carson self-mockery and use of Jack Nicholson).

So what was the best, most deserved win of the night? Well, as a self-confessed and self-penned Bond fan, it was an utter thrill to see Adele and Paul Epworth bag the Best Song award for Skyfall. Les Miserables’s Suddenly ultimately didn’t quite cut the French mustard in a category that is usually dominated by Glee-friendly Dreamworks songs called Suddenly orBe Mine or Evermore or—better still—Suddenly Be Mine Evermore. Les Miserables’s keen attempts to get a song gong may just have been superseded by the fact that after 50 years the very franchise that has single-handedly preserved the old school gesture of a signature song (something Hollywood once did all the time) has never actually won one. Cue this Bond’s fans highlight of the 85th Academy Awards.

When Dame Shirley Bassey sashayed out at the tail end of a slick 007 montage, I could see my 14-year-old Oscar-watching self peering through the glass at my flat-screen with beguiled delight (and possible slight confusion that Jack Nicholson is still reading out the Best Picture winners). Bond, Bond music, Shirley Bassey, the Oscars and those Errol Flynn camera sweeps all briefly combined into something special, glamorous and relevant – unlike those tributes to Chicago or The Flying Nun.

Bassey and Adele were not just highlights because of Bond. They were highlights because they owned the stage with poise and relevance. With her sparkly beatnik gown and cut-crystal vocals Adele was a welcome (albeit briefly nervous) breath of fresh air. Amidst the concerted attempts by show producers to revere old-school musicals and movie song-making, in came Ms. Adkins and wiped away any thoughts of “tribute” with a solid contemporary song that has lived beyond its film as the movie song standards of old Hollywood once did. There was something very Barbra Streisand at the 1970s Oscars about Adele’s inclusion this year. Which was most confusing when proceedings clipped 9 on the gay Richter scale as Streisand and her soft lighting glided out to sing The Way We Were in understandable tribute to the late songsmith Marvin Hamlisch. Though in a Bond-skewed year perhaps Carly Simon doing Nobody Does It Better would have been marginally more apt. But admittedly nowhere near as gay.

I could be biased, but when that Bond montage unfurled with frenetic aplomb suddenly the Oscars telecast woke up. It was contemporary all over again. For a brief moment it was not trying to ape the glory years of Bob Hope numbers with Rat Pack jazz hands and gags about Clooney the yesteryear hosts threw at Dean Martin fifty years ago. This was the Oscars celebrating a series of films that underline the very reason folk go to movie theaters. And there was not an Oscar-bating Holocaust, wheelchair, ill-fated CIA operation or Civil War in sight. The James Bond movies simply do not have “For Your Consideration” pretensions seeping through their DNA.

In a world where these things really matter (usually on the last Sunday of every February circa downtown LA), it would be a travesty that movie composer John Barry or Shirley Bassey never got an Oscar for their Bond efforts. It is wrong that designer Ken Adam did not win for his volcanic work on You Only Live Twice. And why did A View to a Kill not beat Out of Africa at the 1986 awards?! Because Meryl Streep was replaced by Tanya Roberts over an accent wrangle, that’s why (possibly). When Bassey beamed with pride as that final note of Goldfinger was the only one she had left to give, the audience got to their feet with a genuine Double O-vation. It was not just film geek Tarantino that had all his guilty-pleasure dreams fulfilled (which is seeing Bassey sing Goldfinger live, trust me), it was the Witherspoons and the Jackmans, the Therons and the Day-Lewises smiling at the films and cinematic verve that made their younger selves want to be in this fickle cupcake industry one day. In a ceremony and institution which rewards artifice, it was an authentic moment of audience pride in a 50-year-old franchise which underpins the very tenets of movie making and watching. And that was only reinforced when Adele subsequently nabbed Skyfall’s second Oscar of the night to add to her 129 justified Grammys.

So who would have thought – the most masculine, manly element in a very gay and flouncy Oscars show was not Russell Crowe, Jeremy Renner, or Anne Hathaway’s new bob. It was James Bond 007, flanked admirably by Shirley Bassey and Adele. And unlike the Oscars, James Bond is no cupcake.

Mark O’Connell is the author of Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan (with a prelude by Bond producer Barbara Broccoli) available now from all book/e-book stockists and www.splendidbooks.co.uk

To see the original article, go to Out.com

As James Bond’s 50th anniversary party poppers are finally cleared up off the box office carpet and SKYFALL is now available to be re-housed in all film fans lounges, the golden birthday invites turn to DOCTOR WHO and its own anniversary celebrations. Part of that 2013 Gallifrey gallivant is to be Mark Gatiss’ AN ADVENTURE IN TIME AND SPACE – a brand new film looking at the genesis of the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO, its hurdles, triumphs and Daleks. Mark Gatiss is a friend of CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN (having contributed our Foreword) and he now brings a sneak peek at some early morning location shooting and The Daleks attempts to avoid the congestion charge…

Big CONGRATULATIONS to CATCHING BULLETS “Preluder” Barbara Broccoli and the Eon Productions team for SKYFALL’s deserved Best British Film and Best Score success at the BAFTA Awards! It is testament to the enduring legacy of Ian Fleming’s creation and the subsequent 007 film series and the absolute dedication of the filmmakers and the globe’s film-going public to our man James.

Goldfingers crossed for the Academy Awards….!