We've been expecting you - Skyfall reviewed

I shouldn't have been, at my age, but I was giddy. Like a child on Christmas morning. I was even queuing an hour before kickoff, but then when I saw what passes for queuing in Paris, I was wise to be early.

A packed cinema served to remind, if a reminder was needed, that this wasn't just an opening night screening but part of a global event involving a cinema marque as magnetic, as universally understood, and as powerful as any of the brands who pay handsomely to have their wares displayed within.

11 months since a London press conference confirmed the production of 'Bond 23', I found myself in an aggressive scrum anxiously squeezing through the single set of doors of a Champs-Élysées auditorium for, what is appropriately named in French, a séance of Skyfall.

In principle, a 23rd of anything doesn't sound good. 23rd helping of tiramisu? 23rd series of Celebrity Big Brother? Now That's What I Call Music 23? You wouldn't willingly stand in line to watch a 23rd outing of Police Academy or the Twilight franchises, none of which should ever be allowed out of the single digits.

Bond has, however, proven the exception to the rule, quite rightly reaching 23 instalments in half a century by doing 'Bond' better than anyone or anything else, on average earning more than $500 million a film. Something it is still doing after 50 years.

Bond has seen off the imitations like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Matt Helm, and spoofs like Get Smart, Austin Powers and Johnny English. While no imitations, the first three adaptations of Len Deighton's Harry Palmer novels, starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, provided an antidote to Bond, while Jason Bourne has, since, come along to inform Bond how he should appear in the post-9/11 age.

Bond has proven indestructible, onscreen and off. Not even the MGM studio's serious financial troubles proved fatal. But when 'Bond 23' was announced just 51 weeks ago, the talk was of what a Bond directed by a 'serious' actors' director like Sam Mendes would end up like. The suggestion was that it could be a dour, thesp-fest, restrained by both budget limitations and a director not known for action on the scale (both in terms of expectation and execution) of 007.

When producers later announced the title, Skyfall, there was further consternation, mixed with curiosity. If the film stank, critics and headline writers would be gifted variations on "Awfull". And with a cast bringing Daniel Craig and Dame Judi Dench together with Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes and Albert Finney, and the ever-so slight disappointment of Quantum Of Solace in the not-too distant past, a lot would be resting on Mendes' shoulders. An awful lot.

Quantum was, scriptwise, a blip. But despite its lack of narrative, and an over-reliance on the Vesper Lynd revenge arc, it was still a good Bond, and a great, modern spy thriller (and there are others in the series that you could aim harsher criticism at - Die Another Day comes straight to mind...).

So, Skyfall. It is good. Exceptionally good. It has been talked of as the best yet. Maybe. But it is very good. In fact, the last time I came out of a cinema that exhilarated I'd just seen Christian Bale and Heath Ledger pitted against each other in The Dark Knight. Yes, that good.

Without revealing anything you haven't read already, there is so much to admire in this film. Stuff that just puts a smile on your face in near-incredulity at moments you've just seen. Firstly, Skyfall feels like a new kind of Bond film, and that has everything to do with Mendes.

'New' usually unnerves Bond fans - remember when the idea of a blond Bond had the fanboys up in arms? The Daniel Craig era has been notably different from its predecessors - mostly bereft of gadgets and an avoidance of epic final battle scenes in hollowed-out volcanos and submarine-swallowing oil tankers.

Skyfall seems scaled down: the "exotic" locations are still there - like Istanbul and Shanghai  - but  plot-pivotal scenes in Scotland and, for probably the first time in 50 years, a London-centricity, the story has more to do with Bond and M's respective histories than carousing gratuitously from destination to destination.

There is, as a result, a strong parallel to The Bourne Ultimatum, and not just the appearance of Albert Finney. Amid the action, Skyfall takes us into M and Bond's past, with ultra-camp villain Javier Bardem as the tour's brilliant guide. It's tempting to compare his Silva to Heath Ledger's Joker, though for pure psychopathic terror, the latter would win on points.

Mendes has a wonderful sense of photography. His Road To Perdition won an Oscar for its cinematography, and it is noticeable how rich the imagery in Skyfall is, using colour, light and artistic composition in a manner you don't expect in an action movie. Scenes in Shanghai, for example, reminded me of Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights. Not the normal reference point for some camp old spy dust-up.

But, don't worry. This is still a Bond film. The opening scene is breathtaking, probably the best Bond opening scene ever. At its end, as the screen fades into the title sequence and Adele's dreary theme song (the only real disappointment of the film), I actually felt that I'd just seen an entire film in its own right. I could understand how this scene took two months to shoot in Istanbul. It is simply stunning.

There was something oddly theatre-like about Skyfall, in so far as you felt you were watching a series of filmed acts from a play, such was the temptation to applaud certain scenes at their conclusion. Indeed, the appearance of Bond's Aston Martin DB5 prompted spontaneous applause from my fellow Parisian patrons. A lovely moment.

Skyfall fulfills every expectation. Daniel Craig has warmed into the Bond role nicely. This his third. Remember Connery in Goldfinger. While Craig will never have Connery's balance of charm and brawn, but he is still miles above most of the other Bond actors, and Skyfall

"Men want to be him, women want to be with him" runs the usual journalistic cliche. Craig displays more vulnerability than any previous Bond but, that aside, the formula has changed all that much. The haircuts, tailoring, cars and budgets may have changed over the last 50 years, but fundamentally James Bond on screen is still the same character who first appeared two weeks before the Cuban missile crisis  erupted.

Around him, the supporting cast has been allowed to evolve. Dame Judi Dench continues to play M with stern dryness befitting of the character's seniority, though the humour between M and Bond is cleverer by far than in the days of Bernard Lee and the three Bonds who served under him (Connery, Lazenby and Moore).

Indeed, the jokes in Skyfall are, rather than the sometime crass affairs of Bonds past, delightfully weighted. Encounters between Bond and Q have always been the main source of laughs, and in Skyfall, the first meeting between Craig and his Q (Ben Whishaw) is superbly unforced, like a number of knowing gags throughout the entire film, suitably self-depreciating in the manner we Brits revel in.

When you audit Skyfall it checks more or less all Bond boxes. There are gadgets, there are girls (the excellent Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe returning 007 to the traditionally un-PC habits of being somewhat discarding of his conquests) and there is villainy and suspense. Listed like that, I know, could be the formulaic description of any action franchise produced to order by studio marketing executives.

Bond may be like be a simple, anyone-can-do-it recipe - like Spaghetti Bolognese (onions, garlic, celery, carrots minced beef, can of tomatoes, oregano, salt and pepper served over spaghetti), but there is finesse in the cooking process that makes a Terence Young Bond subtly different from a John Glen Bond. This Sam Mendes Bond is different once again. And it is utterly, utterly brilliant. And worth queuing up for a second time. At the very least.

A big deal - in celebration of James Bond theme music

When you're a child everything lacks the correct perspective. That is why Marge Simpson has a huge blue ceiling-dusting beehive: because to The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening that's what his mother's hair looked like from the floor-height perspective of being a small boy.

When I was a child, small deals were big deals. Like, for example, the mother of the bass player in Mud worked in my local Sainsbury's. Or that Sally James from Tiswas lived in the area (just Google her...). The Eurovision Song Contest was another big deal, along with who won It's A Knockout and its mad continental cousin, Jeux Sans Frontières.


Doctor Who was - and, I believe, still is - a very big deal indeed. The 'appointment' of a new Doctor (yes, pedants, I know he's "regenerated", but let's live in the real world, eh?") was an enormous deal. But for me, the grand daddio of big deals is, was and always will be Bond, James Bond.

From the first time I saw clips of the Live And Let Die boat chase on Michael Rodd's groundbreaking movie quiz Screen Test, I knew Bond was going to be a big deal for me.

It was, though, a while before I actually saw a Bond film all the way through. This was the era when children actually went to bed at bedtime, and not just slope off to watch TV on their own set (in our house "the television" referred to just that - a single, living room television).

Today Bond films are available to watch at anytime on DVD or Blu-ray Disc, but then, the premiere of a Bond movie on TV was an event, and an evening event at that. As a result, I'd be lucky to watch up until the first ad break before being dispatched upstairs. My, them '70s were harsh...

Thus, the first Bond movie I saw at the cinema was The Spy Who Loved Me in July 1977. This was my tenth year, and with Star Wars also coming out that summer, it was my first immersion in proper cinema (for the record, school holiday visits to see Disney's Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Herbie Rides Again did not constitute the all-senses assault cinematic experience).

Being PI (pre-Internet), too, cinematic big deals were different. Films were marketed by tie-in toys and special edition cereal packets. Movie 'buzz' was something within the film industry, not gossip inside any old Starbucks. The Bond films, however, were - to me at least - a breed apart (and still are). Their original producers, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, developed their own formula for hyping up a new Bond film, and it was built around creating the same expectation each time - starting with the film before ("James Bond will return in...").

Firstly, fans would get excited about the film's opening scene. Since Dr No, released 50 years ago, a Bond movie must have it's opening 'gag', a scene that either informs the remainder of the film, or at least gets it underway with a spectacular stunt.

In the case of The Spy Who Loved Me, it was Bond being chased off a mountain by Russians angry that he'd just been shagging Ringo Starr's wife (long story). This culminated in one of the most famous stunts in film history, the ski jump by stuntman Rick Sylvester (filling in for Roger Moore) who releases a Union Jack parachute and lands to safety.

Secondly, the opening gag must dissolve into an oblique title sequence by Maurice Binder, in which silhouettes of naked women float about like cruising mermaids around the apparent silhouette of a dinner-suited man carrying a gun, which he fires, wiping into the first actual scene of the movie.

That Binder more or less repeated the same sequence each time is eclipsed by the third most vital element, one which overshadows everything else at this stage of the film and, to be honest, continues to fire debate and open argument still, 50 years after the first time you heard the words "the name's Bond, James Bond".

I am, of course, talking about The Bond Song. It is so famous, so redolent, so important, that it even has its own proper noun. Because The Bond Song is a big deal. And it began with The Bond Theme, Monty Norman's fabulous string and brass arrangement first heard over the opening credits of Dr No and featuring one of the most famous guitar riffs in history, played by Worcester Park, Surrey-born session musician Vic Flick. With his Paragon Deluxe guitar plugged into a Vox AC15 amp, Flick allowed the sound to bleed into adjacent, open microphones, creating that distinct, reverbed twang. He  received a one-off fee of £6 in the summer of 1962 for the session.

Since then, the Bond song has evolved, and has become a genre in its own right. That distinctive chord progression of the string section can be performed anywhere on its own, and people will still instantly think 'Bond'. Over the years, composer John Barry (and more recently, his 'heir' David Arnold) have, mostly, kept the Bond theme within certain parameters - sweeping strings and a strong feeling of glamour, excitement and danger.

Then there's the choice of performer. This IS a big deal. The early, Sean Connery films not only benefitted from great, detail- and style-minded directors like Terence Young, Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert, but also their choice of theme songs and their singers: Matt Monro (From Russia With Love), Shirley Bassey (Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever), Tom Jones (Thunderball) or Nancy Sinatra (You Only Live Twice).

These remain - for me, at least - the quintessential Bond theme songs. With Roger Moore taking over the title role from Connery (via George Lazenby), the Bond franchise welcomed the 1970s with a change of musical direction, and Paul McCartney and Wings'  Live And Let Die. It's still a great song, with its switching of tempos from reggae to rock making it a nightmare to drive to. But then it was the first time the Bond people took a contemporary approach - something that hasn't always been a success since.

"Writing a James Bond song is a tough assignment, I should know - I've co-written one," says Sean Hannam, who when not working as a journalist is a DJ and musician. Sean is a passionate Bond fan, but equally passionate about the traditions of Bond - especially its music.

"Four years ago, after watching Quantum of Solace, I and my singer/songwriter friend Matt Hill, who records as Quiet Loner, decided to embark on a mission," Sean recalls. Together with arranger and studio wizard Will Dobson ("our very own Q!"), they set about writing their own contribution to the canon of Bond themes.

Sean explains that they'd been bitterly disappointed by the number of poor songs in recent Bond movies: "Like, for example, Jack White and Alicia Keys' blustering and bluesy Another Way To Die, which played over the opening credits of Quantum. We thought we could do much better."

Sean Hannam, Matt Hill and their studio 'Q', Will Dobson

"We went back to Ian Fleming for our inspiration - always a good place to start," Sean recalls. "Firstly, we chose the title, The Property of a Lady, from a [Ian] Fleming short story of the same name. Matt and I were attracted to the various connotations of the title: who is the lady? Could it be the Queen, could it be 'M', as portrayed by Dame Judi Dench, or could it refer to Bond himself, being the property of a lady?

"With this in mind, I penned a suitable lyric. I wanted to capture the feel of an old Bond song like Goldfinger - which is still the best Bond song by far -  but to also make it sound relevant to [Daniel] Craig's new era of 007. I thought my words should mix the camp rhymes of Goldfinger's lyricists Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, but with a touch of darkness and revenge."


The end result incorporated classic Bond song words like "danger" and "stranger'", as well as references to the deaths of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale and Bond's new bride Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service ("...those that he's loved have all withered and died...").

"If that wasn't enough to please Bond fans," Sean adds, "I also threw in some classic 007 imagery and themes –  exotic locations, girls, fire, revenge, death and destruction."

Hannam and Hill took the view that even when a new Bond actor takes over, or a new director joins the franchise, they should bring something fresh, but also tip a trilby to the past. "Judging by the reviews of Skyfall [which opens tomorrow] it manages to do this very well," Sean feels. "It pays homage to the iconic 007 films of the '60s, but also manages to play around with the formula, subverting the audience's expectations, but, ultimately, creating a very modern movie that's dark, exciting and daring, but that still captures the best of Bond."

That, Sean feels, should apply to the music as well. "It's a difficult trick to pull off. Adele's Skyfall song just sounds like one of her bland, dinner party background ballads that's been swathed in moody strings and big brass to give it some added drama. It simply isn't sexy or dangerous enough to be a Bond song. It so dearly wants to be considered as a classic, Bassey-style Bond anthem,  but, instead, it's as if someone's dressed up 007 in a cheap tuxedo from Primark."

Tough words indeed, but indicative of just how precious a film franchise Bond is. Remember when they announced Daniel Craig? Outcry that 007 - the quintessential tall, dark and handsome action hero - would be played by a shortish blond Liverpudlian. Most people now consider him to be the best Bond since Sean Connery...

When David Arnold took over from the late John Barry to score Tomorrow Never Dies, the self-confessed Bond fan had already shown form with his theme song featuring Björk for the thriller Play Dead, as well as his excellent compilation Shaken And Stirred, featuring covers of Bond themes by David McAlmont, Pulp, Propellerheads and others. It was clear that Arnold already had the formula.

And yet, the Bond producers have continued to tamper. "Madonna's Die Another Day attempted to drag Bond onto the dance floor, but ended up as a clunky orchestral-techno hybrid monstrosity," says Sean Hannam. All in all, Die Another Day was not 007's finest moment, given the CGI horror that it largely was.

The trouble with Bond theme songs is that, when poor, they act as a lightning rod of criticism for the film itself. Sheryl Crow's Tomorrow Never Dies was the wrong voice on the right song in a mostly forgettable Bond outing. Ditto Garbage on The World Is Not Enough. You have to go back to Goldeneye - written by U2's Bono and The Edge, and sung by Tina Turner - to get a half-decent, on-formula Bond theme.

Sean comments that while Soundgarden's Chris Cornell's You Know My Name from Casino Royale tried to toughen up the Bond sound to coincide with newcomer Daniel Craig's portrayal of 007, it also failed. "Failed miserably," says Sean. "It's an instantly forgettable soft rock song that lacks style, charm or excitement."

As we now know, Sean and Matt's Bond lost out to Adele for Skyfall. "If only we'd had the budget to be able to afford a full orchestra," he says. "Matt's vocals were definitely channeling crooner Matt Monro, who sang the theme to From Russia With Love  - my favourite Bond film."

Adele was a strong early choice for Skyfall. Love her or loathe her, her melodramatic balladeering, not to mention the phenomenal global success of her 19 and 21 albums more or less made her a shoe-in. There have been precedents: Lulu recorded The Man With The Golden Gun at the height of her 70s fame, while Carly Simon's Marvin Hamlisch/Carole Bayer Sager-penned Nobody Does It Better came out while she was the darling of the LA music scene. It's also a brilliant Bond song, fitting for the flared trousered, eyebrow-raising, scenery chewing lounge lizard era of Roger Moore.

So, who for Bond 24? Let me offer a surprise choice: Liam Gallagher. Just listen to I'm Outta Time from the final Oasis album Dig Out Your Soul. Written by the junior Gallagher, it had all the hallmarks of a classic Bond theme, even if from the last person you'd associate with anything about Bond.

Then there is Muse. "Forget them," says Sean bluntly. "They seem to be the popular choice with the general public at the moment, but their histrionic, prog-rock shrieking is far too over-the-top and cringe-worthy." I fully agree.

And so a suggestion Sean and I also agree upon wholeheartedly: Richard Hawley. "He’d be a dead cert to compose a heartbreaking ballad to rival Louis Armstrong's We Have All The Time In The World from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service," says Sean, who could see the Yorkshire crooner produce something dark, moody and dramatic to go with the Craig-era Bond. "What if he partnered with fellow Sheffielder Alex Turner, whose Arctic Monkeys side project, Last Shadow Puppets, are perfect at crafting swooning, cinematic soundtracks with twangy guitars and lush, orchestral backing?"

The name that comes back again and again, however, is the singer who has sung on three Bond songs and is probably the most associated with the form: Shirley Bassey. "For Skyfall," says Sean, "I think Shirley Bassey should have been invited back to belt out a new song, ideally penned by composer and arranger David Arnold and veteran lyricist Don Black.

"An Arnold, Black and Bassey collaboration would've been a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the 007 movies," adds Sean, "and to John Barry, who created the Bond sound, but, sadly, died in 2011. Black once said in a TV interview that he thought Shirley should sing all the Bond songs. He's got a point. When it comes to Bond songs, nobody does it better!"

James Bond: A universal export

It was a Sunday, October 14th to be precise, in 1962, when a U-2 spy plane piloted by one Major Richard Heyser took more than 900 pictures of construction work taking place at San Cristóbal in western Cuba.

The following day, analysts at the CIA poured over the photographs and discovered what they believed to be ballistic missiles. The kind of missiles that could reach - and annihilate - cities as far west as San Francisco and as far north as Washington DC, New York and Boston.

And so, the world was plunged into a 13-day crisis that it didn't know it would come out of alive. It was only 17 years before that America had ended one world war by using nuclear bombs for the first time; it was now possible that human history itself could come to an abrupt end by the appropriately constructed acronym MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction - as Washington and Moscow squared up in a game of nuclear brinkmanship. It was the closest the Cold War ever came to becoming a decidedly hot one, then or since.

11 days before Heyser's U-2 took off, a movie made its premiere, introducing a character who, over the next 50 years, would come close on many occasions to preventing the sort of global catastrophe that almost happened for real that October. The film was Dr. No and the character was Bond, James Bond.

When Dr. No premiered on October 5, 1962, Bond had appeared in 10 novels by Ian Fleming, an Eton and Sandhurst-educated writer who had worked in British naval intelligence during World War II and knew a thing or two about the high life and the low life. His Bond books - he'd go on to publish five more - became best sellers.

However, it was the film series that would turn Bond into one of cinema's most iconic characters and an icon for Great Britain, with Dr. No being followed by 22 official sequels, an unofficial sequel, one official spoof and countless other parodies, rivals and homages, plus a starring role in the London Olympics.

Today there will be little you and I don't know about Bond. He's been a part of our upbringing, his films seeped so deeply into our collective consciousness that the character is as familiar as our own family members. In the days before satellite television and DVD, Christmas and bank holidays revolved around the TV premiere of a Bond movie.

We may not remember each individual plot, but the 22 'official' films released to date have each contained standout moments that we all will associate with: Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder emerging from the Caribbean in Dr. No, Goldfinger's Aston Martin DB5 with its ejector seat and machine guns, the Union Flag-unfirling ski jump in The Spy Who Loved Me, John Barry's dreamy theme tune to You Only Live Twice, and countless stunts involving rocket packs, boats, mini submarines and even space shuttles.

When you look back over the 50 years of James Bond as an undoubted screen symbol, the formula has rarely changed. And yet as enjoyably predictable as each Bond has been - there will be corny seductions, there will be underwater scenes, Bond will visit the Caribbean at least once per film, M will get frosty with his/her star agent - we have always wanted and expected more.

Unlike no other movie series, the legend "James Bond will return in…" in the closing credits has been enough to keep the appetite whetted for whatever length it takes to bring the character back to the screen. And even though the original canon of Fleming novels and short stories has long been exhausted, for the most part, the story creativity has been maintained to a very high standard.

The Bond series has been maintained by expectation. There are few - if any - other franchises (how I loathe that inappropriately applied plop of marketingspeak…) that can draw excitement merely by being announced as a production. You're unlikely to hear someone exclaiming "They're going to make another American Pie!", and trailers for a further instalment of Resident Evil will, I assure you, illicit nothing but groans when played in a cinema.

But Bond? When 'Bond 23' - which we now know is Skyfall - was announced in November last year, its premiere was marked in more diaries than just those of the Bond geeks and film nerds. A Bond premiere is an event. Actually, it's a royal event, the tradition being that Bond movies make their debut in London with a charity premiere attended by members of the British royal family. One wonders whether the Queen herself will attend Skyfall's premiere, now she's on parachuting terms with 007…

However, let's turn the clock back 50 years for a moment. Before this day in 1962 there had been films and film heroes that featured international intrigue and daring, be it Casablanca or The Third Man, North By Northwest, The 39 Steps and Hitchcock's two versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Dr. No introduced something else. And for that, credit must go to producers Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and their choice of director, Terence Young.

Hollywood had flirted with putting Bond on the cinema screen some years before Broccoli and Saltzman acquired the rights to Fleming's books (with the exception, bizarrely, of Casino Royale - later to be made into a semi-comic film starring David Niven and Woody Allen). Hollywood seemed to hard to convince: Bond's playboy lifestyle wasn't exactly compatible with chaste American tastes - this was the early 60s after all, and the sight of Doris Day's ankle was almost too much to bear, And there was the British factor - would American audiences care for a secret agent hailing from that little island in the North Sea that, barely a decade and a half before, Uncle Sam had saved from Hitler?

Eventually a distributor - United Artists - was found, and Dr. No was picked to be the first Bond story proper to be transferred to cinema. After staging a beauty contest to find their James Bond, Broccoli and Saltzman - now under the auspices of Eon Productions - selected a 32-year-old unknown Scottish actor, former Edinburgh milkman and body builder, Sean Connery, having considered more well known candidates like Cary Grant. Grant, being British by birth (one Archie Leach of Bristol), had offered both suaveness and Hollywood bankability. However, with Eon optioning Fleming's Bond books, they wanted their star to commit to a series, which Grant would not do.

Connery, on the other hand, was an actor of little note. But he had a roughness which the producers liked. With David Niven another early candidate, Broccoli and Saltzman - together with Fleming's input - decided that their screen Bond should be tough and debonair, and not just an aristocratic playboy with a gun.

Most Bond fans, in fact most people, would now agree wholeheartedly that Sean Connery made Bond. Roger Moore, oddly, was another early candidate, and although he played the character longer than any other actor - too long for some - Connery shaped the role. The spoofs and spinoffs have all been based on Sean Connery. And his eyebrow.

Connery may have made Bond, but Connery's Bond was largely made by director Terence Young. Young's fastidious approach to colour, to set design and clothing - even down to the cut of Bond's suits (he felt that a Savile Row suit could not be spoiled by the silhouette of a gun carried in a shoulder holster, so Connery's jackets were made just a little too big for him) - created a film unlike any others in 1962.

The world was a somewhat gloomy place on October 5, 1962, but Dr. No with its opening of a colonial MI6 agent being gunned down in Jamaica by three blind assassins, not only launched James Bond into the world in the brightly colourful, turquoise-skied setting of his literary author's adopted home island, but set the slightly off-kilter tone that would come back again and again with characters like Oddjob, Rosa Klebb and the camp duo of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd.

50 years on, Dr. No might seem a little wooden, but compared with the convoluted CGI mess of Die Another Day many years later, it was a compelling prototype. From Russia With Love, which followed, developed the Bond concept further, introducing Q and his exploding briefcase, but not veering Bond away from the fact he was a spy first, action hero and ladykiller second.

Some might say, and I wouldn't disagree, that the Daniel Craig era of Bond owes more to From Russia With Love than any other film in the series, being slightly darker - greyer, then - and more claustrophobic.

After their misgivings at the casting of a short, blond Liverpudlian, Bond fans have rightly warmed to Craig. His Casino Royale - the first 'proper' film adaptation of Fleming's first Bond book - was a brilliantly balanced 007 outing.

Yes, there were some preposterous elements of modern film-making - not least the overt product placement from Sony, Richard Branson appearing in a Miami airport scanner to plug Virgin Atlantic, and Bond driving a Ford Mondeo, God help us. But the movie, and Craig in particular, very quickly brought the character into tight alignment with the edge created by Sean Connery in the very first Bond film of all.

Dr. No made its debut on an auspicious day and at the beginning of an auspicious period for Britain. That same day, October 5, The Beatles released Love Me Do, launching a global phenomenon that would match Bond. After decades of war and economic austerity caused by war, the 1960s started to swing. London in 1962 had already seen the Rolling Stones make their live debut. Music was emerging from the underground.

There was an awakening of youth culture. Teenagers were finding their voice and learning to play guitars.  And with James Bond, amid the spy stuff and crazed bald villains threatening world domination or world destruction (Kruschev, anyone?) from beneath volcanic craters, cinema created the perfect icon for an era acquiring glamour. Bond joined the jet set on behalf of everyone else: via Bond, those of us who couldn't afford exotic holiday destinations flew to them first class thanks to the British taxpayer. We have visited parts of the world we could only dream of, places that, even now, represent glamour and intrigue combined.

Bond has also been one of Britain's best exports. It took two distinctly American film producers to turn him into one, mind. He's been through a lot over the last 50 years, from being sliced in two by a diamond-cutting laser to the studio MGM going bankrupt and, potentially ending the entire series forever. As with all of his scrapes, Bond survived to fight another day. That day being October 23. When Bond will return...

'Tis the year of heroes and hobbits

Last Tuesday's announcement of the 2012 Oscar nominations presented a formidable, if predictable, list of the worthy and the wise, with The Artist and George Clooney's The Descendants front runners, and Steven Spielberg's Warhorse, Woody Allen's return-to-form, Midnight In Paris, and another Parisian tale, Martin Scorcese's Hugo also in the hat for Best Picture. 

Smart money is on The Artist, a silent movie. Smart money is also on Meryl Streep for her performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, which some of us might wish was a silent movie.

Anyway, enough of the anachronistic satire. Amongst the Best Actor nominees is Gary Oldman for his brilliantly understated performance as the brilliantly understated spycatcher George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Unfortunately with a real George - Clooney - hotly tipped for the Oscar, Oldman will probably leave the Kodak Theater on February 26 empty-handed. A shame as Oscar recognition for Oldman is long overdue.

Like his South-East London contemporary Tim Roth, Oldman has built a successful commercial career in Hollywood that has rarely veered from the edge of darkness. And without too much hoopla, either.  His breakthrough as Sid Vicious in Sid And Nancy and Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears established a canon of edgy characters, from the wonderfully deranged DEA agent Stansfield in Luc Besson's Léon and the equally capricious Zorg in Besson's The Fifth Element, to Count Dracula, Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series, Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, and the Russian baddie in Air Force One - a camped-up panto villain performance to rival Alan Rickman's Sherriff of Nottingham.

Sadly, when it comes to gongs like the Oscars, superhero franchises are rarely in the running. It becomes bread for an extinct cause to think that Oldman might be in with an Academy Award shout again next year for his third outing as trusty Gotham City cop Jim Gordon in The Dark Knight Rises, the final part of Christopher Nolan's rebooted Batman trilogy.

The Dark Knight Rises will be one of an army of superhero blockbusters due this year: assuming 2012 isn't cut short by the Four Horsemen wielding Mayan calendars we will be entertained by the return of Batman, Bond (James), Bourne (Jason - sort of) and Baggins (Bilbo). This might sound like four old prog rockers reforming for one last hurrah, but in fact they represent the sort of box office business that will have numerous residents of the 90210 zip code sizing up their next mansion.

Together with the return of Spider-Man, The Avengers, Judge Dredd and several more comic book characters brought to life, plus Ridley Scott's reacquaintance with sci-fi in Prometheus, we will not be short on fun with a capital F in 2012, even if the economic doom and gloom continues as it is.

There is a little doubt that any of these franchise additions will prove to be anything other than lucrative,  but from a creative point of view, the weight of expectation on the shoulders of those making them will be huge. None more so than Nolan.

While sniffier critics - and awards ceremonies - have been indifferent towards such popcorn fodder as comic book characters, Nolan's channelling of Bob Kane's Caped Crusader through Christian Bale in Batman Begins uncompromisingly jettisoned the frivolous levity of previous screen incarnations to create a superhero of searing darkness, lurking in ambiguous shadows between vigilante and vengeful creature of the night. The Dark Knight raised that bar even higher - the late Heath Ledger transforming The Joker from the whoopee cushion-toting popinjays of Caesar Romano and Jack Nicholson's interpretations into the greatest screen psychopath since Hannibal Lecter. It was - and still is - a film which, even after repeated screenings, takes your breath away with its portrayal of anger, madness and murderous intent unleashed.

In stopping at three Batman movies, Nolan has set an enigmatic tone for his final instalment. Little is known of the closely-guarded plot, beyond the fact that we know Batman will meet his "ultimate match" in the shape of the bludgeoning supervillain Bane, and there is a cheeky suggestion in the pre-publicity that Batman might not survive. How refreshing an act of storytelling that would be if it turns out to be the case.

Given the sheer laziness of Hollywood's current propensity to remake anything that isn't screwed down, the 'reboot' has become a clever means to continue a maturing franchise with some degree of creative merit. Christopher Nolan has been rightfully hailed for adding detail to the shadows of Batman, and the likes of Superman Returns and the forthcoming The Amazing Spider-Man do much the same to their respective characters. But for all the added weight reboots have given such franchises, they are at the end of the day no more an exercise in rebranding that Ford relaunching its Mondeo as an upscale midsize car to compete with BMW and Audi. It may be a good car, it may look nice, but it's still a Ford.

Casino Royale - which, ironically enough (and thanks to the questionable wonders of product placement) featured Daniel Craig's new James Bond briefly driving a Ford Mondeo - did something delicate but definite to the 007 franchise. The girls and gadgets were there, along with the exotic locations, but there was something else; more than just the casting a blond Bond, there was the application of an actor capable of portraying Ian Fleming's Bond, a Bond with depth and a vulnerability painfully lacking in Pierce Brosnan's cocky execution and Roger Moore's ageing frivolity.

Sean Connery has cast a long shadow over the character, not helped by Fleming revising Bond's back-story in the later novels that followed Dr. No's cinematic success and describing Bond as a half-Scottish, half-Swiss orphan. Craig hardly fits that description, being a Scouser of average height, but he has evolved Bond into a believably cold, blue-eyed assassin.

After the preposterous CGI effects that blighted the later Brosnan movies, plot returned with Casino Royale and while its sequel Quantum of Solace was not universally popular, it at least continued a story-driven arc about the Quantum organization (itself a post-modern reboot of SPECTRE) and the loss and betrayal of Vesper Lynd. QoS baffled in equal measure as it delighted which, frankly, is the sign of good film-making. If you can continue a franchise by giving the punters what they want while bending things ever so slightly in a different direction, you're doing the right thing.

Filming on Skyfall, the 23rd Bond movie, finally began last November and while its plot has also been kept largely under wraps (the Fleming books now long exhausted of theatrical potential) the fact that 007 is returning at all is an escape from calamity that Bond himself would have been proud of. When the closing credits of Quantum of Solace issued the traditional prediction that "JAMES BOND WILL RETURN", no-one quite knew when, as MGM's finances were not enjoying the rudest of health.

Thus, the project known only as 'Bond 23' (until Internet chatter started turned the title Skyfall into the worst kept secret in the film world) looked like it was never going to get off the ground, potentially ending  Bond's run at 22 'official' films. However, 2012 is a significant year in the Bond timeline, and indeed in the history of cinema. In October, the film world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of a film containing two of the greatest onscreen moments ever. The movie is Dr. No and the first of these moments involves just five words - Connery uttering "My name's Bond, James Bond", and the second is the emergence of Ursula Andress from the Caribbean singing. The song, in case you'd forgotten and was only concentrating on her legendary white bikini, was Underneath The Mango Tree.

With Dr. No's 50th anniversary coming up, it was almost inconceivable there wouldn't be a new Bond movie to acknowledge it. And so, on November 3, the media was assembled at London's lavish Corinthia Hotel to hear step-brother and sister producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, declare Skyfall the 23rd Bond movie - and that money would not be an issue.

"[The budget] in the same range as the last film," explained Wilson. "We really haven’t had to change anything in the script to get what we want. In fact we keep on adding." Broccoli was even more direct on the budget issue: "Does it look like we're cutting back?" she joked, as she pointed to the principles of the movie sat alongside her - Craig returning as Bond, Judi Dench again as M and Javier Bardem as the as-yet undefined villain. Albert Finney will also appear in a role rumoured to that of a Whitehall mandarin. As for the story, that is being kept strictly under wraps, although the blogosphere has been noisy with rumours of M's past catching up with her as the core of Skyfall's plot.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Skyfall so far has been the choice of Sam Mendes as its director. An Oscar-winner, no doubt, his reputation is steeped in being a very theatre-minded, 'actor's director', rather than an automatic choice for the film world's longest-running action franchise.

Certainly we can expect a more 'actorly’ Bond movie in Skyfall, but with forebears like Terence Young, Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert and John Glen, Mendes will be expected to maintain the franchise's sharp style and wry humour without descending into a downbeat melancholy yawn. With Skyfall's so-far unexplained title just a little too close to "awful", Mendes will not want to tempt critics and headline writers taking up such a God-given gift.

That the Daniel Craig-era James Bond has been deeper and a little more pragmatic may owe something to Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne. Craig's Casino Royale was preceded by the first two Jason Bourne movies, in which Matt Damon presented a spy for the post-9/11 world: darker, brooding and well versed in the realities of a troubled world, with his own government the source of much of the trouble.

This summer sees the release of a fourth film adaptation of Ludlum's novels, The Bourne Legacy, but one crucially lacking its title character. Another movie shrouded in plot secrecy, we know that Matt Damon won't be appearing (he allegedly declined to do another Bourne unless director Paul Greengrass was on board). Instead, Tony Gilroy - who wrote the first three Bourne screenplays - is directing Jeremy Renner as key character Aaron Cross. Renner's star has risen considerably following his outstanding performance in The Hurt Locker, and his turn in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol demonstrated how adept at the action genre he is.

What's not known is where Jason Bourne will fit into the story at all (sci-fi fans will recall that the BBC's wobbly-sets-and-orange-squash-bottles-for-guns series Blake's 7 managed to survive quite happily without the titular protagonist, Blake, so I suppose it's not a prerequisite). What is known is that Renner will be joined by the always bankable Edward Norton plus the new Mrs. Daniel Craig - Rachel Weisz, together with Joan Allen as the sympathetic Pam Landy, and Scott Glenn and David Straithairn as the stressed out CIA bosses who will no doubt spend much of the film saying "People - we have a situation...", which they spent most of the previous three Bournes doing a lot.

And finally, prepare your gluteus maximus for a return journey to Peter Jackson's imagination of Middle Earth. For the first three Christmases of the new millennium, the backsides of filmgoers the world over were put to the ultimate test by Jackson's epic eleven-hour, three-part interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings. This Christmas, competing multiplexes will be no doubt playing up the enhanced comfort of their seating for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first half of Jackson's two-part adaptation of Tolkien's prequel to Lord Of The Rings. It finds members of that trilogy's cast (including Sir Ian Mackellen, Andy Serkis and Sir Christopher Lee) joining up again, along with TV's latest Dr. Watson, Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, along with his Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch, whose sounds like a hobbit to begin with.

With the first part due on December 14, and the second, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, to open on December 13 next year, it's clear that Jackson has no intention of giving us an abbreviated version of Tolkien's entertaining novel, which was written in 1937 as a children's story. In fact I doubt there's a child known to mankind able to sit through six new hours of Tolkien mythology, but for us adults it will make a pleasant revival of a challenging but entertaining Christmas outing.

As with all custodians of major film franchises, Jackson knows the ticket-buying public will have high expectations for The Hobbit. After all, the Lord Of The Rings trilogy turned over almost $3 billion worldwide. Furthermore, the third chapter - Return of the King - demonstrated that populist, fantasy adventure franchises can be critically acclaimed, winning all eleven Academy Award categories in which it was nominated, including Best Picture – and that was the first time such a film had ever won the prize.