Her Majesty's Secret Cashcow

*SPOILERS, SUCKERS*

Today I watched the latest instalment in the Bond franchise juggernaut.  It's called Skyfall and it's the 230th movie in the James Bond series.  Or maybe it's the 23rd, who can keep up with it all.  Bloody good flick though; back to the traditional Bond style.  And in traditional action genre style, the storyline goes a little something like this - protagonist and antagonist spend 128 minutes trying to kill each other.

While Bond creator Ian Fleming passed on in the 1960's, and other writers have continued his legacy, I think it's safe to say that during his years working for the British Government, while his fellow civil servants pretended to be engaged in superspy subterfuge while they were really just filing boring, unclassified pieces of paper and writing dull emails in that old-fashioned pen, paper and envelope retro style, Fleming's imagination was going apeshit. 

I for one am glad that he was so bored and uninspired working in an office job in the public sector, Gov'ner.  Never mind the bollocks, eh wot!  Y'allreet?  Wass goin' on?  Sorry, got distracted by British slang that no Brit says ever unless they work for Eastenders.  Circling back to topic right now, innit.

A few things I noted in Skyfall:

Everyone knows that the best special super-effect for dark movies is real-life, non-CGI dark gloomy weather, ideally so dark that the audience need to don night vision goggles to know what the heck is going on.

The inherent risk of missing one Oscar encouragement award-worthy raised eyebrow or a half-smile is that you may lose track of the entire storyline.  Although with a Bond movie it's safe to assume that if there is gunfire or mortars, someone just died, and if there is no gunfire or mortars, someone is about to die.

So, weather-wise, I was a little surprised that much of the movie was filmed in a country renowned for its fun, sunny, balmy climate.  England.  It must have been boring for the film crew to have to wait around on set until it rained in London.  Shit weather is such a rare event in England that the director must have been tearing his hair out with the stress of it all.

In actual fact, the chance of it raining in London on any given day of the whole year is literally so excellent that one would put many quids, pounds, shillings or euros on it.  Probably not euros; nobody understands euros.  That's just how London rolls, innit. 

While London's weather may be complete bollocks at the best of times, the film crew were again just really lucky with the overcast gloominess and general malaise that greeted them when the film set relocated to the cheery Scottish moors.  Casting Scotland as 007's weather antagonist is certainly not going to win any friends at the Scottish Tourism Board, what with that country's fine track record of endless, sun-drenched summer days.

For me, the movie's best kept secret was the addition of Ralph Fiennes right at the end as the new M!  As much as I loved Dame Judi in that role, I approve of his casting because I heart Lord Voldermort. I suppose now the Harry Potter cashcow has dried up Fiennes had to find a new franchise teat to milk.  It makes sense for actors to sign up to multi-million dollar movie franchises. 

It's just like the good ol' golden days of Hollywood, when actors were signed to movie studios and were therefore unable to say no when the studio said you were going to be in a movie where you were required to wear an outfit made of panels of tin sheets for months and months and your co-stars, a dog actor called Terry (stage name Toto) and a pair of red sparkly shoes became far more famous than you'll ever be. 

But Fiennes is no fool.  He has worn a prosthetic non-nose in Harry Potter, a bandaged face in The English Patient, a Tom Cruise mask to play Maverick in Top Gun, and who can forget his body of work aboard a Qantas flight in 2007.  Through those roles, Fiennes avoided becoming typecast as anything more than the guy who likes wearing rubber.