Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Craig’

Boldly going…again

Reboots – they’re all at it. Following the very successful relaunch of the James Bond franchise with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008), and some 43 years after Captain James T. Kirk first boarded the USS Enterprise, he’s back!

Read the rest of this entry »

Passion gap

It’s a curious thing – while there’s no doubting the talent of director Edward Zwick, he followed his film The Last Samurai (2003) with Blood Diamond (2006) which seemed largely bereft of passion and the same, unfortunately, must be said of Defiance (2008). Despite its inspiring source material (Nechama Tec’s true-life account of the struggle against the Nazis, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans) this doesn’t quite deliver.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, the joy of finally using Picturenose as a bag to swing around my head, as others frequently do with their own blogs (we’re a website, actually, but the point stands) – namely, to bang on about something that has got on my wick, big time.

I am talking about the Daily Mail, or, more precisely, its sister paper The Mail on Sunday, as published on 2 November 2008 – now, the reasons as to why these Nazi-tastic print abominations should be removed from God’s Earth would fill the BBC’s website, but I am here today only to take issue with one of their cinema ‘writers’, Matthew Bond, and his thoughts on a certain film.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quantum leaps

So, that’s it then. With this movie review, Picturenose lays its cards on the table. Long live the new king – Daniel Craig, in just two portrayals, has wrested the ‘Best James Bond Ever’ title from one Sir Sean Connery (remember him?) and, in Quantum of Solace (2008), director Marc Forster and writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have delivered the first direct Bond sequel. Boy, have they delivered…

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that magical time again – since star Daniel Craig and director Martin Campbell blew their genuinely Ian Fleming-style Bond into the 21st century, with the simply marvellous franchise reboot that was Casino Royale (2006), 007-ites the world over have been waiting, with expectations understandably heightened, for Quantum of Solace (2008), the first Bond sequel ever (and it’s also the shortest film in the series to date, at a mere one hour 46 minutes).

Read the rest of this entry »

‘Butcher’s hands, gentle souls’

Feeling slightly guilty about tearing into Steven Spielberg’s latest, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (not because I’ve changed my mind but because normally I love Spielberg’s work, it being one of the reasons why it’s great to critique film), it seemed an appropriate time to go back to his previous, Munich (2005), a troubling work from a director (just about) at the top of his game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sing-along-a-Bond?
Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The bad? OK. Amy (‘Look at me! Look at me!’) Winehouse was reported by the BBC to be involved in the production of the latest Bond outing Quantum of Solace. The good news? A couple of days later, her producer, Mark Ronson, was quoted as saying that Ms Ooh-Aren’t-I-Controversial is “not ready to make music”. Hardly surprising, really. My theory is that she’s either being a bit heavy-handed with the Columbian marching powder, or she simply can’t think of anything that rhymes with ‘solace’. Let’s face it, she’s no Sheena Easton, is she?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bourne loser

It’s official, then – everyone’s out of step but me. Now, don’t get me wrong – I had no intention of being deliberately reactionary about Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum, and I’m aware that it has been cited by many critics as the cynosure of big-screen action.

Read the rest of this entry »