Spectre
With a worldwide box office of $1.108bn, ‘Skyfall’, in 2012, was easily the most successful title in the 23-picture James Bond franchise. It earned double the box office of the previous film, the disappointing Quantum of Solace, it won awards- Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes- and in just 40 days it became the highest grossing film of all time in the UK.
Bond’s 50th anniversary outing, ‘Skyfall’ was certainly a phenomenal success- and as if to underline the historic appeal of the series, it exceeded
Thunderball’s inflation- adjusted worldwide take ($1,047m). This of course, puts bus-loads of pressure on Bond star Daniel Craig, returning director Sam Mendes, Sony Pictures, MGM and everyone associated with the follow-up, SPECTRE. Sony has acknowledged this by jacking up the budget – reported to be $300m/$350m- expanding the range of international locations (Morocco, Austria, Mexico, Italy, the UK) and making the stunt-testing action sequences more "real" than they have ever been before.
Bond’s mettle will, apparently, be severely tested in the traditional pre-credit scenes in Mexico City; he will be required to fly a plane with no wings through a snowy forest and race a screeching Aston Martin through the busy streets of Rome. Yes, he might well "be crossing over to a place where there is no mercy" as Monica Bellucci tells him in SPECTRE.
We will know on 26th October when, within half an hour of the red-carpet premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London, SPECTRE will open in local cinemas all over the world. Booking for the film is now open.
The Martian
A space picture with a sense of humour is a rare thing- especially from director Ridley Scott but, on the evidence of the trailer, that appears to be what we have in The Martian, which opens here on 30th September. Matt Damon plays an astronaut who is abandoned, and presumed dead, by his colleagues on a manned mission to Mars. But botanist and engineer MarkWhatney has survived and he must find a way of remaining alive without food and water on the airless surface of the planet while contacting Mission Control – 140 million miles away- and convincing them to bring him home.
The Martian, adapted from a self-published novel by former AOL programmer, Andy Weir, was shot at the red-coloured desert location of Wadi Rum in Jordan (where Lawrence Of Arabia was made) and on one of the largest sound stages in the world at the Korda Studios in Budapest – Scott imported
4,000 tons of rock and dust and built 20 sets to create the alternating story line from the Mars and earth perspectives.
Before he discovered The Martian, Damon says he struggled to find anything worth committing to. "Some of the scripts were truly awful; it has hard to think that these were getting made." So he took 18 months off, moved from Miami to Los Angeles, spent some time with his four daughters and ultimately debated whether he wanted to do another space movie after Interstellar. But both projects were very different, he says - the character in The Martian is a brave, funny optimist while in Interstellar, he says he was a "nihilistic, cowardly asshole".
The Walk
On the morning of 7th August, 1974, while Manhattan was just coming to life, a French performance artist called Philippe Petit appeared on a high wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre . The wire was suspended 1,340 feet above the street and Petit had only a pole for balance. Yet when he reached the other side, rather than accept and enjoy the plaudits of the crowds gathered down below, Petit decided to turn around and walk back.
He walked the wire eight times over the next 45 minutes before the police arrived and frogmarched him down the stairs, past the cheering crowds. The English filmmaker James Marsh has already done a documentary version on Petit’s story but a dramatized 3-D version, which plays like an elaborate heist, will open here on 2nd October with Joseph Gordon-Levitt starring.
"It’s a caper film but nobody is trying to steal or destroy anything,"says director Robert Zemeckis. "It has been described as the artistic crime of the century and that’s what it is - there are no victims, it is a caper of love."
