Goldeneye – Blood and Porridge

October 24, 2022November 21, 2022

Coltrane’s sweetest notes

© BBC

Actor and comedian Robbie Coltrane, who died on October 14^th, seemed part of the furniture in British TV shows and films when I was in my late teens and twenties. His performing talents, gallus manner and considerable physique made him impossible to ignore.

Also, as someone who’d grown up mostly in Scotland, I – and everyone I knew – appreciated the fact that he was a Scottish lad. Originally, he’d been one Anthony MacMillan from Rutherglen, with his stage name inspired by the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. It’s fair to say that Scotland did not get much attention in the London-centric media of 1980s Thatcherite Britain, except when it fleetingly made the news as the site of yet another factory or colliery closure. (Admittedly, things are only slightly better in 2022.) Thus, seeing Coltrane on popular, national telly or in movies reaching international audiences, and seeing him be unashamedly Scottish too, felt like a victory.

Anyway, here are a dozen of my dozen favourite TV and cinematic moments involving Robbie Coltrane.

The Young Ones (1984)

Coltrane made three appearances in the groundbreakingly anarchic BBC comedy show The Young Ones. I remember him best in the episode Bambi, which may have been the first time he registered on my radar. Bambi is the one where Rik (Rik Mayall), Vyvyan (Ade Edmondson), Neil (Nigel Planer) and Mike (Christopher Ryan) appear on University Challenge (up against a snooty team from ‘Footlights College, Oxbridge’ comprised of Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Ben Elton), while Motorhead play The Ace of Spades in their living room. Observing the shenanigans through a microscope is Coltrane as a genteel, old-fashioned Scottish doctor (“Absolutely amazing! Human beings the size of amoebas!”), possibly modelled on Dr Finlay in the 1930s stories by A.J. Cronin. Coltrane brings the episode to an abrupt end when he accidentally drops an éclair on the specimen slide, burying Rik, Vyvyan and co. in creamy goo.

Laugh??? I Almost Paid My Licence Fee (1984)

During the early 1980s, Coltrane featured in three TV comedy sketch shows, Alfresco (1983-84), which also featured the afore-mentioned Fry, Laurie, Thompson and Elton; A Kick Up The Eighties (1984); and Laugh??? I Almost Paid My Licence Fee (1984). In the latter, Coltrane made several memorable appearances as a West-of-Scotland Orangeman called Mason Boyne. With his imposing bulk and craggy features, and wearing a black suit, bowler hat and sash, Coltrane certainly looked the part. Laugh? was produced by BBC Scotland and this was one of the very few times when the broadcaster was bold enough to have a go at the Orange Order and its paranoia about all things Popish. “It’s all here, Matthew Chapter 2, Verses 1-10,” says Boyne, citing the Bible in support of his assertion that the Pope is the Antichrist. “All you have to do is… jumble the words up a bit.”

© BBC

Caravaggio (1986)

Throughout the 1980s Coltrane had supporting or minor roles in many British or made-in-Britain films. These include, incidentally, several forgotten fantasy and science-fiction ones: Death Watch (1980), Flash Gordon (1980), Britannia Hospital (1982), Krull (1983) and Slipstream (1989). Okay, Flash Gordon hasn’t been forgotten – unfortunately. Anyway, in Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, he gives a performance that’s stayed in my memory more than most. He plays Scipione Borghese, the 17^th century cardinal who becomes the patron of the turbulent Italian painter. As usual with Jarman, there’s striking set design, deliberately littered with anachronisms, and the film sees the debuts of Tilda Swinton and Sean Bean.

Mona Lisa (1986)

Coltrane also provides good support in Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa. He plays Thomas, a garage-owner who offers sanctuary for the movie’s main character, old friend and harassed ex-convict George, played by the incomparable Bob Hoskins. Thomas has no bearing on the film’s plot, which sees George employed by a gangster (Michael Caine) to drive around and look after high-class prostitute Simone (Cathy Tyson), whom he gradually falls in love with. But the friendship Thomas offers George is one of the few specks of light in a bleak film. His best line comes when he walks in on George while George is watching a dodgy video he’s obtained – discovering to his horror that it features his beloved Simone in some hardcore porn. Innocently, Thomas asks, “Channel 4, is it?”

Tutti Frutti (1987)

The pinnacle of Coltrane’s 1980s work, the tragi-comedy series Tutti Frutti is surely the best piece of television to come out of Scotland. At the time, I remember the New Musical Express hailing it as ‘the best TV show ever’, though sadly those know-nothing kids running the 2022 online version of the NME didn’t even mention Tutti Frutti in their Coltrane obituary. Written by John Byrne, Tutti Frutti has Coltrane as Danny McGlone, who’s drafted in to sing for a vintage Scottish rock ‘n’ roll band called the Majestics after their original singer, Danny’s older brother, is killed in a car accident. The Majestics are on a death-spiral, largely due to the antics of guitarist Vincent Driver (Maurice Roëves, who died last year). Driver styles himself as ‘the iron man of Scottish rock’, but his personal life is a destructive shambles. The band’s conniving manager Eddie Clockerty (a never-better Richard Wilson) doesn’t help things, either.

One consolation for Danny is another recent addition to the band’s line-up – guitarist Suzy Kettles, played by Emma Thomson with an impressively convincing Glaswegian accent. He gradually falls for the sassy Suzy, though she has her own issues – an abusive ex-husband, who happens to be a dentist. Can Danny and Suzy get together while, around them, everything descends into a hellhole of fights, farce, humiliation, depression, knifings, suicide and extreme dental violence? Due to copyright problems over its title song, written and recorded by Little Richard in 1955, Tutti Frutti didn’t get another airing for a very long time. Happily, it’s now available on DVD and three years ago was shown again on BBC Scotland.

© BBC

Blackadder the Third (1987)

Coltrane played the celebrated lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson three times on stage and screen. His best-remembered performance as the famously irascible Johnson is in the Ink and Incapability episode of the much-loved TV comedy Blackadder, wherein the crafty title character (Rowan Atkinson) and his hapless minion Baldrick (Tony Robinson) accidentally incinerate the one and only copy of Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) prior to its publication. This leaves them with just one night to write a replacement dictionary before Johnson finds out and inflicts his wrath upon them. In the funniest scene, Johnson boasts that his dictionary “contains every word in our beloved language.” To which Blackadder offers him his “most enthusiastic contrafibularities.” He sticks the knife in by adding, “I’m anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.”

Henry V (1989)

Sir John Falstaff, a prominent character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, is actually dead at the start of Henry V. However, in this cinematic version, writer and director Kenneth Branagh couldn’t bear to leave out the portly, garrulous rogue, so he showed Coltrane as Falstaff in an all-too-brief flashback. Falstaff was a role Coltrane was clearly born to play and it’s a tragedy he never got cast in a proper adaptation of the two Henry IV plays (or for that matter The Merry Wives of Windsor).

Nuns on the Run (1990)

Nuns on the Run, which has Coltrane and Monty Python’s Eric Idle as criminals trying to escape some nastier criminals and taking refuge, and donning disguises, in a convent, is truly a one-joke film. That joke is seeing Coltrane dressed as and pretending to be a nun. It’s a pretty hilarious one, I have to admit. Though totally inconsequential, Nuns on the Run works better than another comedy he was in during the same period, The Pope Must Die (1991). North American distributors, nervous about the film’s sacrilegious title and noticing Coltrane’s girth, unsubtly renamed it The Pope Must Diet.

© HandMade Films / 20^th Century Fox

The Bogie Man (1992)

This TV film adapted to the small screen the Alan Grant / John Wagner comic book about a Scotsman with psychiatric issues who believes he’s Humphrey Bogart (or characters Bogie played in the movies) and goes around fighting crime. The TV version was panned by the critics, disowned by Grant and Wagner, and as far as I known has never been reshown. While I found it underwhelming, I enjoyed Coltrane’s performance as the lead character – occasionally, when not channelling Bogart, he lapses into impersonating Sean Connery and Arnold Schwarzenegger too. Also, Craig Ferguson, years before he became a superstar on American television, gives a nice supporting turn as the cop on Coltrane’s trail.

Cracker (1993-95)

Arguably Coltrane’s greatest role, his work in Cracker as Dr Edward ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald, a criminal psychologist helping out a dysfunctional team of detectives (Christopher Eccleston, Geraldine Somerville, Lorcan Cranitch) won him the British Academy Award for Best Actor three years in a row. Grim and intense, with the only humour coming from the arrogant, flamboyant and self-destructive Fitz, the show was at its most gruelling during its To Be a Somebody story at the start of season 2. This involves a terrifyingly credible killer (Robert Carlyle), who’s ended up the way he is largely because of trauma he suffered in the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster. It also features the murder of one of the show’s main characters.

© Granada Television

Goldeneye (1995) and The World is Not Enough (1999)

Coltrane’s entertaining turns as ex-KGB man Dimitri Valentin, now a would-be entrepreneur in post-Communist Russia, are among the highlights of these two Bond movies, which have Pierce Brosnan playing 007. Valentin certainly gets the best lines. In Goldeneye, when Bond holds a gun to the back of his head and he hears the click of its safety catch, he observes: “Walther PPK, 7.65 millimetre. Only three men I know use such a gun. I believe I’ve killed two of them.” And in The World Is Not Enough, when Bond interrogates him about sultry oil tycoon Elektra King (Sophie Marceau), whom Bond has recently bedded, and demands, “What’s your business with Elektra King?”, he retorts, “I thought you were the one giving her the business.” Valentin, who runs a hellish-sounding country-and-western club in one film and a caviar factory in the other, was devised at a time when Russian oligarchs could be depicted as lovable, comic Arthur-Daley-from-Minder-type grifters; and not sinister billionaires laundering mountains of dirty money in the City of London and buying their way into the heart of the British establishment.

From Hell (2001)

Like The Bogey Man, this movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s labyrinthine graphic novel about Jack the Ripper, published in instalments from 1989 to 1998, was disdained by its original creator. However, if you can erase all memories of Moore’s From Hell and focus solely on the film, it’s decent. For one thing, it looks at the Ripper’s hideous murders from the perspective of characters commonly neglected in previous films on the subject – his female victims. Coltrane gives a solid performance as Sergeant George Godley, the loyal, capable and intelligent assistant to the film’s hero, the vulnerable, opium-raddled Inspector Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp). A scene where Godley and Abberline are filmed from behind as they approach the funeral ceremony of one Ripper victim, dressed in black suits and bowler hats, even evokes Laurel and Hardy. (In fact, at one time, Coltrane and Robert Carlyle had tried unsuccessfully to get a Laurel and Hardy movie off the ground.)

Thereafter, Coltrane achieved global popularity playing Hagrid in eight Harry Potter movies and got regular gigs doing voice-work in items like The Gruffalo (2009) and Brave (2012). None of this was my cup of tea, but good on him for securing well-deserved fame and, presumably, fortune too. It’s just a pity that a few years ago ill-health caught up with him, which deprived our TV and movie screens of his always-welcome presence.

© Eon Productions

October 2, 2021October 4, 2021

Stop getting Bond wrong! (Part 1)

© Eon Productions

When I’m browsing through a newspaper or magazine website, or a website devoted to popular culture, no headline is more likely to fill me with despair than the one ALL THE JAMES BOND FILMS RANKED FROM WORST TO BEST. (Well, maybe except for the headline FLEETWOOD MAC TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM.) That’s because such articles invariably get Bond wrong. And that’s because they’re written by young, acne-pocked dipshits with zero life experience and less-than-zero knowledge of James Bond in either his cinematic or literary incarnations. Or, worse, they’re written by someone from the older end of the Generation X demographic, i.e., they were a kid during the 1970s and believe Roger Moore was the best actor who ever lived.

Now that the latest Bond epic No Time to Die is being released – after a zillion Covid-19-inspired delays, which had me worried that by the time it finally was released poor Daniel Craig would be turning up at the Royal Premiere with a Zimmer frame, hearing aid and dentures – there’s been another rash of these hopelessly ill-informed articles, in the likes of the Independent and Den of Geek.

So, to sort out this confusion, misinformation and stupidity once and for all, here is my – and hence the correct – ranking of all the James Bond films from best to worst. Don’t even think about arguing with me.

© Eon Productions

24: Die Another Day (2002)

Winning the unenviable title of Worst Bond Film Ever is Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as 007. Because it was released in the 40^th anniversary year of the franchise, the makers of Die Another Day packed it with homages to the previous 19 films, such as bikini-ed heroine Halle Berry rising out of the sea like Ursula Andress in Dr No (1962) or villain Toby Stephens swooping into central London with a Union Jack-emblazoned parachute à la Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). But these homages, as well as seeming smug, highlight how inferior Die is in comparison. And with the film’s stupid plot contrivances (an invisible car), its derivativeness (what, another killer satellite?), its Carry On-level, innuendo-ridden dialogue and Madonna’s horrible theme song, we’re talking greatly inferior. What I hate most about it, though, is its use of Computer-Generated Imagery during the action sequences, an insult to the stuntmen in the old Bond films like Vic Armstrong, Terry Richards, Eddie Powell and Alf Joint, who did those stunts for real and made them so viscerally exciting.

23: Octopussy (1983)

I remember seriously not liking Octopussy when I saw it because it seemed desperate to cash in on the recent success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and deposited Roger Moore in a version of India populated with palaces, turbaned swordsmen, fakirs and snake-charmers, which had only ever existed in the imaginations of Hollywood scriptwriters and looked ridiculously corny by 1983. Having worked in India several times since then, I suspect I would hate it even more now. The film’s one saving grace is the sub-plot taking place in its other main setting, Germany, which has Steven Berkoff as a deranged Soviet general wanting to knock NATO for six by engineering an ‘accident’ with a nuclear warhead. Opposing, and in part thwarting, Berkoff’s insane plan is General Gogol (Walter Gotell), who appeared in half-a-dozen Bond films as 007’s respectful adversary and occasional ally in the KGB. Indeed, I’d say Octopussy marks Gogol’s finest hour.

22: Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker also attempted to cash in on a recent hit movie, in this case Star Wars (1977). Thus, it has Roger Moore going into outer space in search of a stolen space shuttle. It piles silliness upon silliness: not just the far-fetched science-fictional plot, but also sequences with gondolas turning into speedboats, speedboats turning into hovercraft, speedboats turning into hang gliders, steel-toothed villain Jaws (Richard Kiel) crashing through the top of a circus tent, Jaws finding a girlfriend, and so on. Michael Lonsdale as the big villain Hugo Drax gives Moonraker some dignity it really doesn’t deserve. Brace yourself for the inevitable “He’s attempting re-entry!” joke at the end.

21: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Another entry in the series where the only thing going for it is the villain, the impeccable Christopher Lee as the super-hitman Francisco Scaramanga. Elsewhere, Lulu warbles the cheesy, innuendo-slathered theme song (“He’s got a powerful weapon / He charges a million a shot!”), Britt Ekland is barely contained by her bikini, and redneck comedy-relief American policeman Sheriff Pepper (Clifton James), who was so annoying in the previous film Live and Let Die, makes an unwelcome reappearance even though the film’s set in East Asia. Pepper just happens to be holidaying in Thailand with his wife when he bumps into Bond again. (He refuses to have his picture taken with a local elephant, telling Mrs Pepper: “We’re Demy-crats, Maybelle!” Surely not.)

20: Live and Let Die (1973)

And that brings me to Live and Let Die, in which Roger Moore makes his debut as Bond. From all accounts Moore was a lovely bloke and he kept the franchise massively popular during the 1970s and 1980s, but his lightweight acting style meant the character was far removed from the one imagined by Ian Fleming in the original novels. Even by 1973’s standards, Live and Let Die’s plot about a villainous organisation of black drug-smugglers, headed by Yaphet Kotto’s Mr Big, dallies worryingly with racism, although Moore’s presence actually defuses some of that. His portrayal of Bond as a posh, silly-assed Englishman gives the bad guys some gravitas in comparison. I suspect modern audiences might feel more uncomfortable with Bond’s pursuit / stalking of love interest Jane Seymour – Seymour was only 22 years at the time while Moore, already in his mid-forties, was old enough to be her dad. The film’s spectacular speedboat chase anchors the film in most people’s memories, though it’s spoilt somewhat by the involvement of the aforementioned Sheriff Pepper. The theme song by Paul McCartney’s Wings is, of course, great.

19: A View to a Kill (1985)

A View to a Kill, Roger Moore’s final film as Bond, is often ranked bottom in lists like this, but it at least has something most 1980s Bond movies lack – memorable villains, i.e., Christopher Walken’s Max Zorin and Grace Jones’s Mayday. Also, Moore gets to form an agreeable double act, for a while, with Patrick Macnee and I like how General Gogol pops up at the end to give ‘Comrade Bond’ the Order of Lenin. Still, the film contains much duff-ness. Duran Duran do the theme song and one unkind critic once described Simon Le Bon’s vocal performance as ‘bellowing like a wounded elk.’

18: Quantum of Solace (2007)

Daniel Craig’s second appearance as James Bond, in which he comes up against a sinister, secret organisation called Quantum, was savaged by the critics. When I watched the film, I remember thinking it didn’t seem as bad as everyone made out. That said, I can hardly remember anything about it now.

17: The World is Not Enough (1999)

A frustrating film, The World is Not Enough has much going for it, including Sophie Marceau and Robert Carlyle as the baddies, Robbie Coltrane returning as ex-KGB man / lovable rogue Valentin Zukovsky, and a plot that anticipates Skyfall (2012) wherein Judie Dench’s M is threatened by a villain whose relationship with her is more complex than one of simple professional enmity. And like Skyfall, it has scenes set in Scotland, the introduction of a new Q, and an explosion that rocks MI6’s London headquarters beside Vauxhall Bridge in London. Plus, the theme song by Garbage is the best one in yonks. But the quality stuff is cancelled out by some rubbish bits, including Denise Richards as Bond girl Christmas Jones – so-named, apparently, to allow Pierce Brosnan to crack a joke about ‘coming once a year’. Particularly cringe-inducing is John Cleese’s debut as the replacement for Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, here making his 17^th and final appearance in the franchise. Not only does Cleese clown around to no comic effect whatever, but the scene where he’s introduced is also the one where Llewelyn bids farewell and Cleese’s slapstick robs the scene of its poignancy.

16: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

Diamonds are Forever features a beyond-caring Sean Connery, enticed back into 007’s shoes by a 1.25-million-pound paycheque after George Lazenby jumped ship, in a lazy film where the plot meanders nonsensically from one action set-piece to another and the visuals are packed with easy-on-the-eye spectacle and lavishness. At least it’s pretty funny. It depends on your tolerance level for sledgehammering 1970s political incorrectness whether or not you enjoy the banter between gay assassins Mr Kidd and Mr Wint. (Sticking Connery into a coffin and feeding him into a crematorium furnace: “Heart-warming, Mr Kidd.” “A glowing tribute, Mr Wint.”) However, uber-Bond-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld is very amusingly played by Charles Gray. While he’s wreaking havoc with a deadly laser beam mounted on a satellite, he sneers: “The satellite is now over Kansas. Well, if we destroy Kansas, the world may not hear about it for years.”

15: For Your Eyes Only (1987)

For Your Eyes Only makes a noble attempt to bring the franchise down to earth again following the excesses of Moonraker. Mostly, it works nicely as an action / adventure piece, although the villain Krystatos, played by the normally reliable Julian Glover, is a bit drab. More effective is the excellent Michael Gothard as the taciturn Belgian assassin Locque. Alas, it runs out of puff towards the end. After some exciting mountaineering stunts while Roger Moore and the good guys ascend to a mountaintop monastery / villains’ lair, the climactic battle is a damp squib. Also, there’s an excruciating ‘comic’ final scene where Margaret Thatcher (played by impressionist Janet Brown) phones Bond to congratulate him on a job well done and ends up speaking instead to a randy parrot: “Give us a kiss!” “Oh, Mr Bond…”

14: Goldeneye (1995)

Pierce Brosnan’s debut as Bond, after the franchise had endured a six-year hiatus, won a lot of praise. I find it slightly unsatisfying, though. It tries a bit too hard. There’s a bit too much packed into it, a few too many twists and turns, as it tries to prove to audiences that a Bond movie can still be relevant and with-it in the 1990s. Also, its good intentions are undone by the occasional piece of Roger Moore-style silliness and a cobwebbed plot-MacGuffin – yes, it’s another killer satellite threatening the world, or in this case, the City of London. Sean Bean and Famke Janssen are cool as the main villains, though it’s a pity that Alan Cumming and Joe Don Baker are both allowed to act with their brakes off.

13: Spectre (2015)

Another Daniel Craig Bond that got a critical kicking, I think Spectre deserves a little more love. The film brings back Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played here by Christoph Waltz as a Euro-trash scumbag who commits crimes against fashion by not wearing socks under his loafers. Also back is Blofeld’s insidious criminal organisation SPECTRE. (After decades of legal wrangling, the Bond producers had by 2015 won the right to use Blofeld and SPECTRE again in the franchise.) However, Spectre’s Bond / Blofeld backstory earned hoots of derision. Blofeld, it transpires, is the son of Hannes Oberhauser, the man who looked after the young James Bond after his parents were killed in a climbing accident. Oberhauser much preferred little James to little Ernst, leaving his biological son with some serious personality issues. Yes, it sounds contrived, but I didn’t have a big problem with this, since the adoptive father-figure of Hannes Oberhauser existed in the original, literary Bond universe created by Ian Fleming and Bond referred to him in the short story Octopussy, published in 1966. The opening sequence in Mexico City, filmed by director Sam Mendes in one long, supposedly continuous take, is brilliant, but the film’s attempts to incorporate / retcon the previous Daniel Craig Bond films into its plot are clunky. For example, we learn that the Quantum organisation in Quantum of Solace is only a subsidiary of SPECTRE. Another negative is the comatose theme song performed by Sam Smith.

And my next blog-post will rank the remaining Bond movies from number twelve to number one.