From Russia with Love

Sebastian Peill-M
11/15/15

As promised, the second James Bond film: From Russia with Love. This film was released 1963 and made 24 million dollars in the USA alone. It stars Sean Connery, Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, and Lotte Lenya.

Bianchi

Bond has returned and this time he is after a coding machine, a Lector, which would help out the British government immensely. He has been partnered up with a defected female Russian agent Tanya (Bianchi) who helps him get the device, all the while dodging Russian agents and an agent from the Criminal group SPECTRE (Shaw). Eventually they get the device onto a train and start heading to safety, although the SPECTRE agent is on the train with them. Eventually Bond dispatches of the agent, although barely and they head towards the England. In their final a stop, a hotel room, they are ambushed by the SPECTRE agent who was leading the whole operation Klebb (Lenya). Of course she doesn't stand a chance and she is dispatched by both Bond and Tanya. The film ends with them sailing away on a Venice canal.

Shaw

The camera angles in this movie are very interesting. To a person who is not paying attention they seem very simple and there. However this is not true, almost every scene that takes place in a building or outside shows Bond in the middle ground, the bigger the area the more he is present. When they are inside confined areas Bond is fore ground, on the train when Bond and Grant (the agent) fight you see Bond and Grant up close, but in the background you can see Tanya sleeping. Conversations are always portrait, up close and not many things in the background are present. Many scene that show Bond walking in buildings are shot so that there is part of an object in the way, i.e. someone peering around and object. They use a few landscape shots to help the setting. The boat scene was filmed so that you can always see Bond's face, except when the villains are talking.

The music is this film is very similar to the first with much of the music being repeated throughout the film. Although they did have a singer preform the opening song they used an instrumental and used the sung version when they first show Bond. They use a lot of music when there is a very tense situation which helps keep the adrenaline pumping and makes sure you can't fall asleep. The music is almost all done by orchestra again. The music doesn't start to change until the next film.

Opening credits

Finally the acting skill, many of the actors in this film don't appear in too many movies I have seen except Sean Connery, who is a great actor and just gets better as the franchise progresses, the actor for Klebb did a good job although a scene in which she is talking to Tanya is quite creepy. Grant doesn't talk much and is a killing machine so he fits that perfectly. Tanya does a decent job, she may have a been a Russian agent but she is very wimpy.

All in all this is a great film and one I could watch again and again. My dad calls this the romantic James Bond film and I agree with him as Tanya wasn't supposed to fall for Bond, but he is Bond so it is to be expected.

Interesting Fact: When then President John F. Kennedy listed Ian Fleming's book among his top ten favorite novels of all time, a list published in Life Magazine, March 17, 1961, the producers decided to make this the second James Bond movie. According to the book "Death of a President" (1964) by William Raymond Manchester, this was the last motion picture JFK ever saw, on a private screening in the White House, November 20, 1963.

Dr. No

Sebastian Peill-M
11/8/15

     There are many movie franchises for people to love, Marvel, Fast and Furious, and even the Twilight series. I however love James Bond films, they are my favorite movie franchise and I could watch any of them again and again (except maybe Quantum of Solace, that one was kind of bad). So I will start reviewing James Bond films and I am starting with Dr.No, the first Bond film. It was released in 1962 and had a budget of 1.1 million dollars, despite the lower budget the film made 60 million dollars world wide.

     Sean Connery stars as James Bond, one of the top spies for Mi6, he is called down to Jamaica to investigate the murder of a fellow agent. When he arrives he teams up the the CIA's agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and they begin to work to together to solve the mystery and what it has to do with a man called Dr.No. Bond eventually is noticed by Dr. No, he is almost killed by a tarantula and decides to take action. He and a local man sneak onto Dr. No's island laboratory (very classic villain), where they meet Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) a local girl who is collect conch shells. She tells them that if they don't tell authorities about her illegal conch gathering she will sneak them around the island. As they slowly make their away around the island, the dreaded "dragon" which has kept locals in constant fear. It turns out to be a tank with a flamethrower, but that doesn't stop it from killing Bond's guide (not Honey). They are captured and taken to Dr. No who gives his whole, "I am a villain dialogue". Then he takes Honey to slowly be drowned by the tide and takes Bond to his area of evil activities where Bond against all odds escapes and kills Dr. No and rescues Honey all before the island explodes.

     The music of Bond films are one of my favorite things about every film, except Dr. No, features a famous singer preforming a song named after the movie title. You also have every Bond films' beginning with the famous theme which was written by Monty Norman. Up until recently all of the the other music in the films, was done almost entirely by an orchestra, this adds a really nice effect to the films and gives the film the classic feel.

     The camera angles in Dr. No aren't anything majorly special, mainly they are portraits when characters are speaking or landscape for transition. However the opening sequence (as shown above) is a first person point of view, and shows someone being shot in the eye which did cause some problems at the time of release. Of course as the film franchise continued there were many different angles utilized.

As for acting skill, I thought hat the acting was great. Sean Connery is often said to be the perfect James Bond (him and Pierce Brosnan). Honey Ryder is one of the most famous Bond girls and the picture of her coming out of the ocean is an extremely famous movie scene. Dr. No did a good job, I cant judge his acting skill as well as I have only seen one movie with him in it and Dr.No is it. All in all Dr. No was the start of one of the best movie franchises of all time and is certainly not a film that will be forgotten any time soon.

Interesting Fact: Sean Connery is morbidly afraid of spiders. The shot of the spider in his bed was originally done with a sheet of glass between him and the spider, but when this didn't look realistic enough, the scene was re-shot with stuntman Bob Simmons. Simmons reported that the tarantula crawling over Bond was the scariest stunt he had ever performed. According to Steven Jay Rubin's 1981 book "The James Bond Films", this tarantula was named Rosie

The Bourne Ultimatum

Sebastian Peill-M
11/2/15

     The Bourne Ultimatum is the third film in the Bourne series and is the last one starring Matt Damon. It was released in 2007 and made seventy million opening weekend.

     Jason Bourne has returned, this time he chasing after the man who made him the man is. He has no allies and has the CIA still after him despite him proving his innocence. He finally finds someone who has an informant who knows about Bourne and how he came to be. When he finally catches up with the man, the man is shot by the CIA. Then it becomes a race between the Bourne and CIA to get to the informant a man who works for the CIA. When the the informant realizes that he is danger he flees. Both CIA and Bourne meet at the informants house and fighting happens. Bourne escapes with the help of one of his old handlers. Both CIA and Bourne rush to the informant, CIA gets there first and the informant is killed. Then Bourne and his handler then part ways and Bourne proceeds to make his way back to the place he was trained and ends up incriminating the people who created him and escaping.

    The film director and writer did a great job keeping the story fresh, between each film so each is equally as entertaining as the the previous. The acting is good, I mean it is Matt Damon and he is not a bad actor. The head of the operation, David Strathairn, is supposed to be a good actor, according to me grandmother that is. Other appearing characters all have  decent skill skill as well.

The music isn't anything special, it is mainly just the type of music in action movies. High paced, with electric guitar and drumming. The music, despite not being very special, does do a good job at keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat and makes sure that no scene is too dull.

The cinematography in this film are what really make up the the film's greatness. They consist of a variety. One of the most recurring is where the camera is peering around a corner, you have a wall or some other object blocking a portion of the screen and all of the characters and action happening in the middle ground. Then they used what I like to call really shaky filming, it is used often during action or chase scenes and the filming is really shaky, sometime so much you cant even tell what is going on. They really use a lot of the shaky camera when they film what I think is one of the longest chase scenes I have ever seen. Seriously there is like 15 minutes if nothing but people chasing each other. During the chase scene there is so much shakiness I actually started to get motion sick and had to close my eyes for a bit. Besides those 2 major different styles of filming the rest were straight forward, portrait shots for talking, landscape for transitions and birds eye, for people walking.

Overall this film is a great action movie, the story isn't very original as it is almost the same as the first 2 movies but that doesn't take away from its entertainment. Unlike many action films, the main character can actually sustain damage and is often hurt in some way. I enjoy the film and would watch them again.
Interesting Fact: This is the only Bourne movie to win an Oscar. It won 3 Oscars when the other two weren't even nominated
Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT2ZxjUjSo0