Category: Uncategorized (Page 10 of 11)

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….!

Thanks to director David Lilley and his Loonattik & Drinks team, a comedy spoof written by me is gaining great festival prowess and has already been shortlisted and nominated in various international short film festivals including the Leeds International Film Festival (screened as part of the Méliès d’Argent competition), the San Sebastian Horror & Fantasy Film Festival (nominated for the Golden Melies Award), Cofilmic, the London Comedy Film Festival and the London Short Film Festival.

Naturally inspired by the SAW franchise, SAW MISGIVINGS is the simple tale of how being the perfect housewife can kill…

http://vimeo.com/40823416

If you need a little something for a loved one on Valentine’s Day that will not wither and die or put the pounds on then CATCHING BULLETS could well go straight to the heart (no, Valentine’s sentiments and strap lines are not going to be my thing).

The team at Splendid Books and I would like to congratulate CATCHING BULLET’s Prelude “co-star” Barbara Broccoli as well as Michael G Wilson and the whole Eon Productions team for the 5 Academy Award and 8 BAFTA nominations for the golden bullet, SKYFALL.

“The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success” – TOMORROW NEVER DIES.

It was thirty one years ago when Lancastrian screenwriter Colin Welland infamously declared “the British are coming!” at the 1982 Academy Awards upon collecting Best Original Screenplay for Chariots Of Fire. It had just scooped up four Oscars – including Best Picture – for being the best film in the 1980s featuring a jog along a beach not involving Bo Derek. Welland’s comment instantly brought at least nearly ten years of bad luck and bad support for the British film industry at the global box office. With the scant exception of the Edwardian obsessions of Merchant Ivory, Nuns on the Run and Michael Winner’s award-ignored Bullseye, it was suddenly down to the likes of James Bond 007 to keep a great many British creatives and crews in work for those cinematically penurious times. Pinewood Studios almost healed over as Vangelis’s Chariots Of Fire theme echoed through empty studios like a Bontempi-powered phantom picking through the carcass of what could have been. Of course it was not Colin Welland or Chariots fault. It is a fine, polished and rare British film about the psyche of sports deserving of its success and musical inclusion every ten minutes during the London 2012 Olympics.

But how life now comes full circle. Not only has 007 producer Barbara Broccoli just produced a stirring West End hit with a stage adaptation of Chariots Of Fire (in partial tribute to the late Dodi Fayed, longtime friend of the Bond producer and executive producer himself of Hugh Hudson’s soaring sprint through British athletics first heyday), but maybe – just maybe – it is not that the British are coming, but possibly some British agents are. Or rather just one.

Skyfall is not only the first Bond film to top a billion dollars at the global box-office. It is now the highest grossing film of all time at UK cinemas and is potentially poised to get nominated at this year’s Academy Awards. The recent Producer’s Guild of America nomination for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson’s efforts is testament to Skyfall’s creative and financial successes and how the 23^rd 007 opus has really clicked with the far reaches of the cinema-going public (not something every Bond film manages to pull off).

With the fiftieth anniversary benchmark looming large in 2012, creative house Eon Productions took a considered decision to cherry pick the best creative team for Skyfall – director Sam Mendes (Best Director Oscar for American Beauty), designer Dennis Gassner (Best Art Direction Oscar for Bugsy and three time nominee), composer Thomas Newman (ten time nominee), writers John Logan (three time nominee), Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, singer Adele (multi Grammy winner), cinematographer Roger Deakins (nine time nominee), editor Stuart Baird (two time nominee) and a truly stellar cast including Daniel Craig, Judi Dench (Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Shakespeare In Love and six nominations), Javier Bardem (Best Supporting Actor Oscar for No Country For Old Men and three time nominee), Naomie Harries, Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes (two time nominee) and Albert Finney (Best Actor Oscar for Tom Jones and four time nominee). For no other reason, Bond could do well in Los Angeles’ biggest excuse for a finger buffet as 90% of the 6000 voters all appeared to work on Skyfall.

But let’s not run away with ourselves like Sally Field at an Oscar acceptance speech. Bond HQ did not set out to make an Oscar-bating 007 movie. After twenty-two films and half a century Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson do not need the headlines or increased box office. They simply want to make the best movie with the best artists and skills they admire, respect and want to work with. The process is important to them. Besides, the very word “nominee” can only be said in that mid-Atlantic voiceover voice. It is a both an honour and redundant cliché. Trailer makers love an Oscar nomination. It gives them a chance to use that big bold font with the capability to fade in and out. Maybe Skyfall will ultimately see our man James become the first character to get that treatment. Admittedly, “Academy Award Nominee James Bond 007” slapped over the trailers for Daniel Craig’s next outing is worse than the notion of Denise Richards reprising her role as Festive Smith or whatever from The World is Not Enough. But the Oscars are a vital marketing tool. Not that a billion dollar box office tally (and rising) really needs a marketing push. But perhaps cinema-going itself does. And AMPAS recognises that.

“You like me”, beamed Sally Field, “you really like me!”. Well maybe 2013 is the time for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS for short, empasse for its detractors) to really like James Bond 007. Because as ultimately redundant any award for anything can be, getting Oscar recognition (even at nominations stage) is indeed an honour. Any hat-tipping from the highest body of your chosen industry equals respect and esteem. The Oscars are derided for being a load of old Givenchy-attired tosh. And they are. Of course they are. They give work to bad British entertainment correspondents and allow For Your Consideration adverts to paper the world like Hollywood glory recipe sheets. But cinema itself can be old tosh. I still believe the Academy Awards are still a benchmark of some notion of filmic quality and achievement. Apart from the billion TV viewers and the alleged bong fumes coming from Jack Nicholson’s front row seat, there is a reason folk cry at the Oscars. It’s the biggest Scout badge pinned to any film creative’s sleeve. And whilst it can ring-fence many an acting career to the point of detriment, you find me one actor, editor, writer or art director who did not jump to add “Oscar nominated” to their CV when career-nomination-announcer Mira Sorvino is taken out of storage once more to reveal this year’s Oscars contenders.

Bringing together top artists and talents is something the Bond movies have done since their debut 51 years ago with Dr. No. But the stars of fortune particularly aligned with Skyfall. It has received monumentally good reviews across the world and that vital word of mouth that money – and Oscar campaigns – cannot buy (yet still try to). Twitter is awash with folk saying “I’m not normally a Bond fan but…”. Nans can be overheard chatting about seeing Skyfall “at the pictures yesterday”. Builders are whistling Adele’s theme tune in grocery store queues and a lot of folk’s only annual foray into cinemas to see a Bond has been doubled as non die-hard fans are nipping back again.

As much as the Academy and its voters love a Holocaust and a wheelchair, they really like longevity and box office success. There is no better Oscar-baiting campaign than seeing the dollars swell the allegedly ailing fortunes of The Bank of Hollywood. You can hurl gongs like Frisbees at a hundred Readers, Nazis, Schindler’s and their lists, Iron Ladies, Rain Men, Miss Daisies and Private Ryans if their stories have bought in the cents. The eleven Oscars awarded each to Return of the King (2003) and Titanic (1997) are testament to how big bucks please Hollywood. Titanic did not equal Ben Hur’s Oscar record by being better than Ben Hur. It just made more money at the end of a decade where indie studios and titles ousted the big boys. And more cash implies safer jobs, happier filmmakers and thankful voters checking their Price Waterhouse voting sheets. All this – for good or bad – will work in Skyfall’s favour. Return of the King won for the whole trilogy. Not that Bond needs one (and certainly not if it intends a future) but in terms of awards, why shouldn’t Skyfall be 007’s crowning glory.

Skyfall reminds the audiences why going to movie theatres is still vital and popular in an era of home cinema and diminishing ticket sales. Cubby Broccoli was an ardent supporter of the audience’s experience versus their cash and their time. He saw both had to be rewarded with spectacle, style, sex, glamour and matinee escapism – the basic touchstones of Hollywood’s onscreen origins. But there is also the suggestion that after fifty years of getting audiences into cinemas, Eon Productions and the Bond team maybe deserve a bit of awards recognition. Skyfall’s success has played its part in the US particularly seeing a rise in cinema attendance in 2012 – a trait repeated in the UK with Daniel Craig’s third Bond outing scooping up more than former box-office behemoths like Avatar, Titanic and that boy wizard and his chamber pans of fire or whatever. Whilst no awards body should be obliged to thank anyone (and Cubby himself was very humbled by receiving Hollywood’s ultimate Producers Prize at the 1982 Oscars in the form of the Irving Thalberg Award), the Oscars do like a back pat.

Awards recognition is not sought after by the Broccolis nor is it the end goal when your film has already topped one billion at the world’s box office. But these may not just be technical award gestures for sound and costume editing. Skyfall now stands a solid chance of being nominated for Best Song (Adele), Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench), Best Score (Thomas Newman), Best Art Direction (Dennis Gassner) and now – yes – even Best Picture. The latter is buoyed up by how the Producers Guild nominations are usually a good hint at Oscar glory as they share Oscar voters. And of course producers pick the Best Film Oscar contenders which all the 6000 plus Academy voters can mull over with their free DVDs and “pick me” freebies. Bardem has already been earmarked as a Best Supporting Actor in the Screen Actors Guild (the body that allegedly helps vote too for Oscar’s acting gongs), the Grammys love Adele and if the latter is not singing Skyfall with a 007@50 montage ebbing around her to a billion TV viewers come February 25^th then I will eat Odd Job’s hat. AMPAS has already announced the 85^th Academy Awards show will honour and mark James Bond’s fifty year reign. On the Adele thought, I wonder if its rival at the Oscars and Globes (Hugh Jackman’s Suddenly) will quite cut the French mustard in a category that is always dominated by Glee-friendly songs called Suddenly, Be Mine, Evermore and Suddenly Be Mine Evermore.  Les Miserables’ slightly cynical attempts to get a song gong in a category it shouldn’t really have a look in (all Best Songs need to be original work, not adapted) may just be superseded by the fact that after fifty 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. It is a travesty that John Barry or Shirley Bassey never got an Oscar for their Bond efforts. It is wrong that designer Ken Adam did not win for You Only Live Twice. And why did A View to a Kill did 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).

Yes, Bond has already had a presence at the Oscars. 1964’s Goldfinger won Best Sound Effects Editing and the next year’s Thunderball got Best Visual Effects. Fair enough. Quite right. And the songs for Live and Let Die, The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only got earmarked as did Marvin Hamlisch’s composer efforts, Ken Adam’s work on Spy and the Visual Effects prowess of Moonraker. Nominations for Skyfall would be great (and don’t think entertainment headline makers are not crying out for a different angle to covering the Oscars). But does Skyfall have a Blofeld’s cat chance in hell of having a tipsy Goldie Hawn read out its name for any category? Yes. I think it does. Javier Bardem’s take on a Bond villain was literally jaw-dropping. He has been nominated by the Screen Actors Guild and is one of those actors which other actors really like. Adele is one of the world’s biggest selling draws at the moment. Like Bardem, she is fondly regarded by her industry. Judi Dench has won awards for bolder material but performers and voters know it takes a lot to make mainstream fare really work. Both Dench and Bardem also have the curve ball factor. The Oscars love to throw an early shock into the mix. It keeps the all important TV audiences interested and gives presenting work to Marisa Tomei and Alan Arkin. In fact, most of Skyfall’s possible Oscar nominations could turn into real gold because they are not historical, worthy, judicial and tear jerking. Okay, yes Skyfall could be possibly classed as exactly that. But there are no pious life-affirming sports coaches, ex country singers, CIA whistleblowers and drug-addicted teachers in Bond’s latest. It doesn’t have “For Your Consideration” seeping through its very DNA nor does it court headline-grabbing controversy on the very eve of its release like Coke Zero Thirty. It might just be apt to give Best Cinematography to a film that takes its time to make modern-day London and Shanghai look as lush and transluscent as any WWII adaptation of atoned love. Perhaps that underground bunker set, Shanghai skyscraper and Skyfall Lodge were indeed fantastic examples of art direction because they didn’t have the the magnitude and drama of the Civil War or French Revolution doing half the work. Maybe Sam Mendes has actually done a grand job choreographing the Bond production circus whilst maintaining coherent story and emotional arcs without the life-jacket gravitas of an Iranian embassy seige or the slave trade.

With the second album dilemma hanging over each new 007 episode, with Skyfall Eon Productions continued doing what they always have done – to make a decent film that rewards the audiences time and money, showcasing the moviemaking talents they have honed since 1962, but particularly since Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson have been steering the series through newer, revived waters. Founding producers Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman would be most proud. 2013 could well be the year the Academy and Hollywood finally admit “we like Bond, we really like Bond”.

So as we are playing the Oscar punditry game, I [conservatively] prophesize that Skyfall “might” get six Academy Award nominations – Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench), Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins), Best Song (Adele & Paul Epworth), Best Sound Mixing, and Best Picture (Barbara Broccoli & Michael G Wilson).

Goldfingers crossed.

The Academy Award nominations are announced on January 10^th 2013. Skyfall producer Barbara Broccoli has provided the Prelude to Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan.