Showing posts with label Spectre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spectre. Show all posts

10 Apr 2020

Château d'Anet - The chateau fight in Thunderball


After the fake funeral, Jacques Bouvar posing as his widow goes back to his home in a Ford Continental limousine. Bond has observed that the widow opened the car door by herself outside the chapel, and has deducted that the widow actually is Jacques Bouvar himself.


Jacques Bouvar arrives at the château from the garden while a servant opens the door 




Jacques Bouvar continues up the stairs and into the main drawing room where Bond is waiting in an armchair. These chairs and some furniture can still be found at the chateau and







Even the ceiling in the main drawing room is well recognizable from the film, seen as Bond is killing Jacques Bouvar by the fire place.



21 Jan 2018

Range Rover - the car of choice for the villain

A View to a Kill 
First generation Range Rover - 1983 year model in A view to a kill
Range Rover has played a rather significant part in the later half of the Bond series. Bond has not only himself been seen behind the wheel of Range Rovers (in OctopussyCasino Royale and Quantum of Solace) but Range Rover has been the car of choice for several of the villains in the series. Range Rovers have been useful to the villains' henchmen in not less than six films.


The tradition started with Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, in A View to a Kill 1985. After having disposed of Bond and his car in the lake near Zorin's chateau outside Paris, Zorin and May Day are picked up by Zorin's men. In the film, the Range Rover that was used is the first generation Range Rover from 1983. This first generation model was produced between 1970 and 1996.


---o0o---
Tomorrow Never Dies



In Tomorrow, Carver sends his men after Bond and Wai Lin, after they both have jumped off his skyscraper in Saigon and escaped on a BMW motorcycle. The chase, with the spectacular motorcycle jump over Carver's helicopter in the finale, supposedly set in Vietnam was actually filmed in Bangkok.


Carver's Range Rover cars feature rather prominently in the film, and consequently this was the second time in the Bond series that the villain had purchased Range Rovers for his henchmen. The assassin in The Living Daylights, who is driving a Land Rover down the rock of Gibraltar does not count as that Land Rover is stolen from the British Army.

Second generation Range Rover - 1995 year model in Tomorrow Never Dies
The Range Rovers chase Bond and Wai Lin through the streets of Saigon crashing into almost everything. This second generation Range Rover was produced between 1994 and 2002 and was replaced by the model seen in Die Another Day.


---o0o---
Die Another Day

Third generation Range Rover - model year 2002 in Die Another Day

When Gustav Graves is being knighted in Die Another Day he is being picked up by his men outside Buckingham Palace in two Range Rover cars of the third generation. The cars are only briefly seen in this scene and Graves is only seen driven off, supposedly through the gates of Buckingham, but the cars can also be seen parked in Iceland later in the film.

---o0o---

Casino Royale
This model was seen again in Casino Royale when Le Chiffre's men are driving a Range Rover Series III from 2005 alongside the Jaguar in Montenegro, parked in the picture below.


Earlier in Casino Royale three Land Rover Defenders model 110 from 2005 are also used by Le Chiffre while he is in Mbale in Africa.

The third generation Range Rover was introduced in 2002 and was produced for ten years. This model was also driven by Bond in Bolivia in Quantum of Solace.


---o0o---
Skyfall
Silva's henchmen in Skyfall have chosen a Range Rover Police car in London, before driving to the inquiry M is attending. The car is a 2011 Land Rover Discovery of the fourth generation. A Land Rover Defender Pick Up was also driven by Eve in the pre-title sequence.


---o0o---

Spectre
In Spectre, Hinx and his henchmen are kidnapping Dr Swan in the Austrian alps. The henchmen are driving off in two Land Rover Defenders Big Foot and Hinx is riding in a Range Rover of the fourth generation. The model is a Range Rover Sport SVR from 2015. Both models have been customized for an alpine drive. Blofeld himself keeps two Mercedes-Benz AMG models in the Moroccan desert.



The fourth generation Range Rover was introduced in 2012 and is still being produced.


---o0o---

Goldfinger
A bit off topic, but even Goldfinger had a Land Rover in Goldfinger 1964, as a 1958 Land Rover is seen parked on the premises of Goldfinger's factory in Switzerland. 


27 Jun 2017

Back to Tangier - Spectre


In Spectre, more than a few locations have been reused as locations for Bond, such as Austria, Morocco and the Thames in London. After finding Dr Swan in the Austrian alps, another Bond location re-used, she takes Bond to Tangier, to find her farther's hotel, L'Americain, covered earlier. In the first scene, Bond and Swan are walking up some stairs in the middle of that city.



These steps are called Escalier Waller and can be found on Rue de la Liberté. Bond and Swan are coming up from Rue Amerique du Sud and walk up the steps which ultimately intersects with Rue de la Liberté. The only thing that made this location possible to identify is the restaurant with the white marquis located on the right side as you look down the steps. This restaurant is called 'Restaurant Populaire Saveur de Poisson', which can be read on the white marquis. This name can namely be seen in the film as well, but on the wall opposite the restaurant.


The name of the restaurant "Saveur de poisson" can be read on the wall to the left.
I becomes evident on location that the nice view over the bay of Tangier, seen in the film, was created through CGI. You cannot see anything of the sea from these steps at this location. It is a pity since Tangier is such a beautiful city with lots of stunning locations that could have been used instead. They also added a "warm color" to the film in the scenes filmed in Tangier.


The restaurant Saveur de Poisson is a very good restaurant but very simple. There is no menu and a fixed price of approximately 200 Dirham, so you just wait at the table for the different courses to arrive, sometimes served in simple bowls with wooden spoons. But the food is excellent and there is always a queue outside so make sure to be there when they open. A visit is highly recommended.



29 Mar 2017

Bond references in Spectre - part 3

In Spectre, almost all the previous Bond films are referenced in more or less conspicuous ways. The references to the first sixteen films have been covered in two previous posts, here and here, and below I list the references to the last seven films in the series, GoldenEye trough Skyfall.

GoldenEye


Pevsner Commerzbank, GmbH
In Spectre, Q is staying at a hotel called 'The Pevsner' in the Austrian alps. Bond and Dr Swan are meeting Q in room 12. The reference to Pevsner was previously made in GoldenEye when a bank called Pevsner Commerzbank was seen on one of Alec Trevelyan's computers. Pevsner is a name that is well connected to the Bond series. Tom Pevsner worked as an associate and then executive producer on every James Bond film from For Your Eyes Only to GoldenEye. He died in 2014.

Q is staying at The Pevsner, room 12

Further, in GoldenEye, Bond changes the timer from six minutes to three during the pre-title sequence when 006 is captured by the Russians. As a favor later in the film, Alec gives Bond three minutes to escape from the missile train before it explodes.



Just as in GoldenEye, Blofeld gives Bond three minutes in Spectre to find Dr Swan and escape from Mi6 before it explodes.


Tomorrow Never Dies 

I have not yet found any obvious references to Tomorrow in Spectre, other than the fact that Monica Belluci originally was considered for the role of Paris Carver, but was turned down by the producers, called "those fools", by Brosnan.


The World is Not Enough 

The Worlds is Not Enough is referenced on several occasions in Spectre, I list two below

When Bond is trying to kill Renard he is protected by bullet proof glass in the elevator in The World is Not Enough.  



In the same way, Bond is trying to shoot Blofeld but the bullet is stopped as Blofeld is hiding behind bullet proof glass.



A boat chase on the Thames, past the Houses of Parliament, is not something new to the Bond series either. Already in 1999, in The World is Not Enough, we saw Bond riding down the Thames in Q's boat in pursuit of the Cigar girl, similar to the scene in Spectre


Bond chasing the 'Cigar girl' in The World is Not Enough

Die Another Day

There are no obvious references to Die Another Day in Spectre other than the fact that Die Another Day, as the 40th anniversary film, also referenced the previous Bond films. 

Casino Royale 

Obviously, all the Craig Bond films are more or less referenced as Spectre shows that Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall are threaded more closely together than suspected. Images of familiar faces like Vepser Lynd, Silva and Le Chiffre pop up at Mi6. However, a few conspicuous references can also be spotted. 

In the pre-title sequence of Casino Royale Bond is waiting for the section chief in Prague, Dryden, to assassinate him as part of becoming a 00 agent. When Dryden tries to shoot Bond first, Bond has removed the clip from the gun. 



The bullet-removal bluff is repeated in Spectre when M is facing C. 



Another reference is the smart blood injected by Q in Bond's arm. This scene in Spectre is practically identical to the scene in Casino Royale where M has a microchip implanted in Bond's arm.



Quantum of Solace


Just as in Quantum of Solace, we find Bond in yet another boat chase in Spectre, this time also involving the leading lady who also is given the wheel. 


Skyfall




M's death in Skyfall is referenced in Spectre with her making a cameo from the grave, in a prerecorded message to Bond, giving him one final assignment - to kill Sciarra. Jack the bulldog, M's desk ornament which ultimately is left to Bond in M's will, also make a reappearance in Spectre when it is seen in Bond's living room on the table. This reference was known already before the release of the film as the first teaser picture released by the filmmakers was a picture of Jack and a movie clapper stating the shooting of the very first take in the film.