G'Day everyone,
I just made a video about my opinion on the next Skyfall movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MlXyqHOEoc
Specifically about James Bond now drinking beer and will be shown in iMax cinemas even was not originally shot in that format but will be post converted
What do you reckon? Is the James Bond franchise losing its cool? or it just does not matter?
Cheers
Carlos

I don't get why people would care about the "drinking beer" thing, and the IMAX thing is irrelevant for me since I live nowhere near an IMAX theater.

Thanks for the feedback!

I am beer drinking myself but not a sophisticated drinker like Bond who likes from Vodka Martinis to the very finest champagnes part of his cosmopolitan classy personality. In fact, his signature drink is a Martini derivated drink that he dubbed "Vesper" and likes "Shaken not stirred" . The movie producers are doing this as part of a product placement advertisement deal with Heiniken beer which is so odd for a Bond movie that Heiniken had to pay 45 million to get it done

For viewers that have IMAX, Hope the post conversion is good in IMAX otherwise will be making a disservice to a normally cool franchise

Cheers

Bond is also essentially a thug of the British government. His epicurean tastes in food and drink are based more in hedonism than class, so I can easily see him knocking back a beer. Besides, crass product placement is hardly new in the 007 movies.

Different beers for different Bonds.

It would have been a suprise to see Roger Moore do this as he was more about the often comic depiction that the thuggish elements of the British Government were somehow being enforced by upper-middle class gentlemen in their 50s. In a way it pandered to foreign depictions of British stereotypes for comic effect.

It's perfectly acceptable for Craig's Bond to knock back a few beers though. In fact I would say the reason why Craig makes such a good Bond is that his social position is kind of equidistant between the upper- Oxbridge (or Ivy League in America) echelons and base level street-thuggery. An intelligent man who yet favours brutal, shock tactics. A deep, educated accent spoken from a boxer's face. The most telling part for me was the scene in Casino Royale where Eva Green correctly guesses that he was the recipient of a prestiged upbringing, but at someone's charity, and he wears his collars with such distain because of it.

Going back to the difference between Craig and, say, Moore - the former prepeared for his first Bond role by spending 3 months straight in the gym, the latter by playing a round of golf and knocking back a few glasses of Gin & Tonic. The perfect metaphor for the changes that occured between 1970 and 2006.

So yeah, in conclusion Bond can have a beer. Splendid.

Regarding IMAX conversion, I will have to check the tech specs. I think from now on this is a non-issue since movies are less and less shot on real film. It all depends on the in-camera resolution and how it is retained during the digital editing stages. 35mm was usually digitally scanned to a 2K resolution for the typical multiplex screens. That would be too low for IMAX. "Red" are working (and most likely have it done by now) on an in-camera resolution over ten times that, which is far superior (!) to the original IMAX 70mm horizontal standard. IMAX is digital by now anyway, but yes: if the movie was shot and edtited to 2K or even 4K resolution, it must be converted to IMAX, which means nothing than smoothening out the pixels and adding sharpness/enhancement, think PhotoShop. Not the same as true IMAX. Will check on that and come back.

EDIT: just checked and to the best of my knowledge this is the first Bond (as I guessed correctly) to be shot in digital. The Arri Alexa (same as used for filming "Drive" - not too shabby) camera is used, which would yield just a standard 2K of resolution, so yes, for IMAX it will have to be converted. It might go a little smoother with more recent algorithms though. Still I think it's cheating.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer in relation to the IMAX. I will be nicely surprised if it turns out good this post conversion. It should have been shot in IMAX to begin with.

HaHa I enjoyed this reply! My view thou is that Craig was brought to compete with the roughness of Jason Bourne in 2006 but by now Jason Bourne is very diminished (box office wise) due the absence of Matt Damon and I personally miss the old suave James Bond of the Martinis and Q

The previous product placement that I remember were BMW and Rolex , still expensive taste. Now, Fleming was a Vodka drinker and a few other authors that I have read on the net infers that he wrote Bond with his drinking habits. However as others have pointed out, it does not seen too awkward to see Craig as Bond drinking beer. Connery and Moore would have looked as fools indeed doing it

True enough. I recall the Siskel and Ebert review of Moonraker on their Sneak Previews PBS show slamming the blatant product placement there (7-Up anyone?) wondering if they were watching a movie or an extended commercial. And that was 1979.

To be honest: I don't think so. Because IMAX is not just about super high res, it is also about a format which is roughly 1:1,44 (just a tid bit wider than standard 3:4 television, standard 16mm - now obsolete - and the old 35mm "academy" ratio) so you can not just look to the sides and have a nice panoramic view, but you also can look up and down. Bond movies are all about the wide 1:2,35 "CinemaScope"-type aspect ratio. Now in order to cover both aspect ratios (CinemaScope and IMAX), the framing and lensing would have to be heavily compromised. One version, or both will suffer and look off.
Cameron did something similar with the original Titanic : he filmed on Super 35mm 4-Perf. The exact same is the case with Se7en - That means: the original framing was for the 1:2,35 theatrical format, but he exposed more image information on top and bottom to allow for 3:4 VHS home video edtions without severe cropping and pan-and-scan by cropping less at the sides and adding on top and bottom. The result is that the image is simply off (= still cropped at the sides but unnecessary image information on top and bottom which is nothing than letterboxing in disguise).
One simply can't have it both ways.

Thanks for bringing this up. I watched Moonraker in 79 and I remember it vaguely. Now, I bought it in blu ray some time ago but I have had not the time to watch this edition yet which now gives a good excuse to do it and check/report on this. Hope that it was not the case that Moore as Bond was drinking 7-UP lol

Edited: I just watched the blu ray edition of Moonraker. It shows Bond getting in a car cable building (Rio de Janeiro - Brazil) with a 7-Up bill poster on front. Shows other bill posters with other brands on the road when Bond is being transported restrained prisoner in an ambulance. They were blatant product placement I suppose but none worked against the true nature of Bond as a character. Almost at the end shows Bond wearing and using a modified Seiko watch (another of his cool gadgets) as a help in a situation, this gadget was provided by Q who in other movies has provided modified Rolex watches and/or BMW cars, etc, it just shows Q taste to apply his gadgets in those cases. I would have found unnatural seeing Bond having a 7-UP as a drink for instance as I will find him having a beer (the fact that is Heiniken is irrelevant) . BTW, I enjoyed the movie again, a lot of fun but not really to be taken too seriously HaHa.

just in case, my favourite Bond was Sean Connery, I found Craig very good in Casino Royale but Quantum Solace sucked and by now I am missing the old suave Bond with his Martinis and Q

Wow, thanks again for all the explanation! I found it very illustrating. I am personally against post conversion for new films particularly to 3D. Old films are different story. We do not have IMAX in Hobart/Australia which is where I live so I did not see Titanic in this format (but I saw it in 3D (Real@3D) ). I have seen IMAX documentaries produced by IMAX in Melbourne (a big city located less than 1 hour distance by plane from Hobart) thou and I liked them very much

First teaser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24mTIE4D9JM

Looks like Deakins will live up to his name. The direction looks Fincher-ish, but better. Craig looks pretty strong here; there's a smugness on his face in the interrogation that specifically reminds me of Connery. Is Fiennes being set up as the next M? The train scene looks like something new for Bond, as does the Shanghai location. Unlike Quantum, this seems like it has potential for being novelistic, maybe with an emphasis on story and atmosphere rather than generic action. Honestly, it looks really cool.

amazing what you see in 90 second trailers...

Fixed that for you.

Excellent! Yes I agree: this looks quite like Fincher, but with more scope. Looks like there is a lot at stake this time in the story. Hard to tell by the teaser, but this definitely looks like a move into the right direction: darker, more ominous, more adult, less cartoonish. I'm starting to buy Daniel Craig as 007, an ice cold killer beneath a polished exterior, but not too suave. Someone it takes to bring down some serious villains. Maybe I'm reading too much into the trailer?

I bought him from Casino Royale. I think the bulk of those who didn't are hardcore Connery cheerleaders, who in truth will never be happy that Bond didn't die or retire in 1969.

Ebert summed it up when he wrote in his review of Casino Royale:



If I was to rank Bond actors it would go like this:

Connery
Dalton/Craig
Brosnan
Moore

As I stated previously, the primary problem with so many of the Moore Bond movies were the scripts. The first 4 Connery Bonds had a certain sense of plausibility that began trickling away with You Only Live Twice: the move in more of a cartoonish direction that reached the level of ridiculous in the Moore era was already apparent with Diamonds Are Forever. The best of the Moore Bonds worked either as pure fun (Live And Let Die) or when they mananged to let in elements of humanity (For Your Eyes Only) or both (The Spy Who Loved Me). The worst were eitehr undone by cartoonish excesses (Moonraker) or deadly boring (The Man WIth The GOlden Gun).

If Connery played him as a hardened killer, Dalton played him as a man who can be very dangerous if need be yet still has a compassionate side. In essence his Bond was a flawed human to whom anyone could relate. Craig combines the Connery and Dalton approaches.