No Time to Die - 2021 film review

No Time to Die is the latest James Bond film, long-awaited and much-delayed as a result of the pandemic. Was the wait worthwhile? Were expectations met? For me, the answer is yes. You know what you are going to get with a James Bond movie and the key question is: how well does it deliver the goods? This is Daniel Craig's final appearance as Bond and as always he does a good job. I was a fan of Sean Connery, but on the whole I think that the Cheshireman is my favourite 007.

It's a long film, and making an action thriller that sustains interest for almost two and three-quarter hours is a major challenge. However, No Time to Die rises to that challenge, which is probably just as well given that apparently the total budget for the film was in the region of $350 million. Some of the action takes place in Matera and I visited the town on holiday just after most of the filming there was done. A brilliant location, for sure, and that is true of several other stunningly atmospheric backgrounds, including the frozen lake in Norway which features early on in the story.

The premise is that Bond has actually retired from being a secret agent. There's a new 007. Five years have passed since an attempt to kill him in Matera failed, and he left Madeleine Swann because he thought she'd betrayed him. He is persuaded to resume active service following the kidnap of a scientist who has developed a bioweapon (the script was written pre-pandemic, but perhaps this aspect of the story makes a greater impression now than it might otherwise have done).

There are some pleasing performances from Lea Seydoux (Madeleine) and those terrific actors Ralph Fiennes and Rory Kinnear, but naturally Craig is dominant. He will be a tough act for someone to follow. And I liked the fact that the film included one of my favourite songs of all time, the Bond classic 'We Have All the Time in the World', written by two greats, John Barry and Hal David. When it featured originally in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the song didn't receive the acclaim it deserved. But it stands the test of time, and so - perhaps unexpectedly - does James Bond.  

Crime and Romance - Melodies for Valentine's Day

Forgotten Books will be back next week, but I thought it would be fun to mark Valentine's Day with a few words about some of the finest romantic songs that have been written for..crime and thriller movies. This idea came to me the other day when I was watching a televised concert of James Bond music, conducted by Carl Davis. One of the singers, Mary Carewe, gave an excellent performance of what is possibly the most under-rated of all Bond themes, Moonraker.was at one time going to be sung by either Frank Sinatra or Johnny Mathis but at the last minute Shirley Bassey was brought in to record it. I felt Mary Carewe's version was actually better than Bassey's. (My plan, by the way, was to link to Youtube versions of the songs in question, but here, I'm afraid my techno-incompetence has let me down - for reasons that escape me, none of the links seem to work. Perhaps those who are wiser than me can advise what I'm doing wrong, please? Anyway, all the songs are easy to find on Youtube, and are well worth it.)

The same concert included a much more famous song, performed by Lance Ellington, the classic from On Her Majesty's Secret Service that was originally recorded by Louis Armstrong, shortly before he died. This is We Have all the Time in the World, one of the very best love songs ever written. The music for both those Bond songs was composed by the great John Barry. His many brilliant soundtracks included a notable score for Deadfall, and the striking (if little known) song sung by Shirley Bassey over the credits. This is the memorable My Love Has Two Faces, a song that has grown on me the more I've listened to it..

Returning to Bond, some of the other great songs from the series include The Spy Who Loved Me and Skyfall, but even better is the soundtrack from the spoof movie Casino Royale, and the highlight is Dusty Springfield's The Look of Love. The lyric was written by the late, great Hal David, who also wrote Moonraker and We Have All the Time in the World, and whose gift for expressing romance in a lyric was matchless.

David also collaborated briefly with Michel Legrand, but Legrand's best songs mostly had lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. The finest, perhaps, is the original version of The Windmills of Your Mind by Noel Harrison, who died not long ago. It appeared in The Thomas Crown Affair, an enjoyable film full of Sixties touches and starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. And finally, memories of a brilliant comedy thriller, The Italian Job, with a great song that opened the film,,;On Days Like These, by Quincy Jones and Don Black. The romantic words and melody contrast very cleverly with the murderous finale to that opening scene..

The Craft of Writing - Short and Simple?

Last week, in discussing Julian Barnes' The Sense of Ending, I expressed my appreciation of the book's concision. He achieves so much in such a short space, and the unstated points and ambiguities contribute to the powerful overall effect of the story. Reflecting on the many heartfelt tributes paid to Hal David, I've also given more thought to the lyricist's flair for saying so much in so few words. Very often, more quality is packed into something short and - at least, superficially - simple than in some vast, sprawling tome. Yet I sense that over the past decade or so, there has been pressure from publishers (nnd one assumes they are responding to consumer demand, though with some publishers, you never know) for books to become chunkier.

One best-selling writer confided in me a few years ago, for instance, that her latest three-book contract had upped the required word limit per novel by 20,000 words. She wasn't impressed, not seeing any good literary reason to write longer books, and neither was I. I've read so many excellent books that would, in my opinion, be even better had they been shorter. Yet quite a few of them have been best-sellers, so perhaps I'm in a minority. And I vividly remember my shock when a colleague once told me that, faced with a choice between two books at an airport, he'd always buy the fatter one. Looking for value, you see.

As a student, I wrote song lyrics, and in fact a couple of songs of mine were recorded (one on a vinyl LP which I still cherish) but I never mastered a very demanding craft. All the same, the experience did teach me the value of brevity, just as it taught me that Hal David's skill was sublime. Paul Gambaccini has spoken of the cleverly conversational nature of the words to 'I Say A Little Prayer', written against the backdrop of a unusual melody. And the universal appeal of the song is shown by that scene in My Best Friend's Wedding, where everyone at the reception joins in - Elvis Costello once pointed out, it works because it's credible that they all know the words.

David Hepworth says in a ,good article in The Independent today that most of the people who could sing Hal David's "songs in the shower don't realise that they already know the best poem about going home a failure. It's called Do You Know The Way To San Jose? and we all know it by heart, which is really the only way." He did the same thing in "Message to Michael". "Paper Mache" is a neat skit on the consumer society, and the marvellous, under-rated lyric for "The Windows of the World" was a comment on the Vietnam War which gained fresh resonance after 9/11.

With novels, the challenge is different - but some of the best crime fiction offers phrases which stick in the mind in much the same way as great lines from lyrics. Think of some of the memorable lines from the Sherlock Holmes stories or the Raymond Chandler novels. Conan Doyle and Chandler didn't pad out their best stories, and we like them all the more because of it.

Is there any likelihood of the trend in favour of chunky blockbusters being reversed? Well, maybe digital publishing will encourage people to look more closely at the quality of writing instead of being so attracted by the sheer size of the book. If so, I'd say it's one more reason to welcome the rapidly growing popularity of ebooks.

John Barry R.I.P.

John Barry has always been one of my favourite musicians and the news of his death today saddens me. I've mentioned Barry several times in this blog and given that he won five Oscars,I think it can safely be said that he was Britain's finest ever writer of film music.

John Barry will forever be associated with the music for James Bond, and rightly so, but he achieved so much more. Working with a variety of lyricists, including Don Black and the great Hal David, he produced some of the finest songs of the 60s. My personal favourite is 'We Have All the Time in the World', co-written with Hal David and sung by Louis Armstrong, of all people, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And the best tune might just be 'The Girl with the Sun in her Hair', from You Only Live Twice, even though most people associate it with a TV commercial.

There's a drama and a dynamism about Barry's music that sets it apart. He's associated with lush, romantic sounds, but it's no coincidence that he wrote music for classic crime films and TV shows. His music is truly exciting.

Think of The Ipcress File, The Persuaders, and the magnificent score to that brilliant film Body Heat. All of them gain a great deal, in different ways, from Barry's music. There are plenty of other examples of his gifts from the crime genre, even before we come to Midnight Cowboy, Born Free and Dances with Wolves. A little while ago, I tried to find a DVD of one of his concerts - but there are none available. Astonishing. John Barry was a superstar among modern composers.

Forgotten Music - Loneliness Remembers

My latest entry for Scott Parker’s series of Forgotten Music is an evocative song which is one of the more obscure entries in Dionne Warwick’s extensive catalogue. It was subsequently recorded by Stephanie Mills on her debut alburm, but for some reason it never made any real impression on anyone other than the keenest fans of Bacharach-David songs.

Dionne Warwick has always been my favourite female singer and I’ve seen her in concert several times. Her voice was, in the 60s, quite incredible for its range, and although age (and smoking) have not improved it, she still sounded pretty good when I heard her perform in Manchester a couple of years ago. Burt Bacharach recognised her special gifts when she was a young background singer, and she became the definitive interpreter of his work.

Loneliness Remembers is no Walk On By, or Anyone Who Had a Heart. Yet I think it’s a good song, and it did feature in a very interesting segment of a television special about 40 years ago. Happily, the clip has now cropped up on Youtube and it’s still interesting as a portrayal of a composer introducing his muse to his latest creation. Enjoy!

Forgotten Music - On the Flip Side

In my quest to find something else of interest and great obscurity for Scott Parker’s monthly series about Forgotten Music, I’ve tracked down some very rare footage from a genuinely forgotten musical written in 1966 for television called On the Flip Side. The musical featured former teen idol Ricky Nelson, who sought to mark his transition to entertaining a more mature audience by the cunning device of changing his name to – Rick Nelson. Joanie Somers co-starred.

The musical was written by (you guessed it) Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and, although a few of the songs – notably the excellent ‘They Don’t Give Medals to Yesterday’s Heroes’) - survived and were covered by the likes of Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson and Jackie De Shannon, the musical itself promptly disappeared from sight and even diehard Bacharach-David fans were mostly unaware of it until its rediscovery a few years back. The soundtrack is now available on CD, and the music is enjoyable, as you might expect from two songwriters who were at their peak. Some years ago, a friend sent me a grainy VHS recording of the show, and it has to be said that the performances (let alone the clothes) have not stood the test of time as well as the music.

But it’s a curiosity, and I’ve now discovered a link to a good quality Youtube
clip which features three of the songs. Enjoy!

Incidentally, although On the Flip Side was no masterpiece, it paved the way for Bacharach and David’s one and only stage musical, Promises, Promises. That show was enormously successful, and it’s just about to be revived on Broadway. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice say that Promises, Promises changed the way in which stage musicals were written. But perhaps it might never have happened but for the groundwork of On the Flip Side.

Forgotten Music - The Fool KIiller

Helen Eustis wrote a stunning debut crime novel, The Horizontal Man, a fine work of psychological suspense, but she did not attempt to build on that success by carving out a career as a novelist. She did, however, in due course write a second novel, The Fool Killer, which was turned into a film in 1965 starring Anthony Perkins.

In the 60s it was common for movie-makers to commission songwriters to produce a song to promote a forthcoming film. Often, the song did not appear in the film. A famous example is Gene Pitney’s 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance', another is Jack Jones’ 'Wives and Lovers', and yet another (though Cher’s version did appear in the US version of the movie) was Cilla Black’s 'Alfie'. Those three songs were enormously successful, and each of them was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

The duo were, it seems, hired to write a promotional song for The Fool Killer, and Gene Pitney (who recorded many of their songs, and was actually the intended performer of ‘What The World Needs Now is Love’, ultimately recorded by Jackie De Shannon) was asked to sing the song. But it was not a hit – it’s too unusual to have been a hit - and very few people are aware of it.

Yet it is an extraordinary piece of work. 'The Fool Killer' is to be found on Youtube and the observation is made in the comments that it’s a unique song. I agree – it’s a haunting melody, yet quite unlike any of Bacharach’s other tunes, just as the enigmatic lyric is far from typical of Hal David’s work. This is a song that should not be forgotten.

Forgotten Music - What Am I Doing Here?

Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books on Fridays is digressing into music today, and this gives me the chance to mention a song I really love which I’m sure few if any readers of this blog will ever have heard. And it has an indirect connection to one of my Harry Devlin novels. It’s a forgotten song because it was written for a musical, and then cut out of it. It’s common for such changes to be made to a musical, but a real shame that such a haunting ballad should be consigned to the vaults

My choice is ‘What Am I Doing Here?’ and I came across it thanks to a series of CDs called ‘Lost in Boston’ which collect songs that were cut from musicals. Liz Callaway’s version appears on ‘Lost in Boston 2’, and is quite marvellous – she is a very good singer.

The song was written for the musical Promises, Promises, which debuted on Broadway in 1968, but it was cut out at the last minute. The book of the show was written by Neil Simon, the music by Burt Bacharach, and the lyrics by Hal David. The show was based on that splendid Billy Wilder film The Apartment. If you don’t know the story, it’s about a keen young American who lends his apartment to his bosses so they can conduct their affairs. Our hero falls for Fran, who has been seduced by a senior executive, J.B.Sheldrake. In this particular song, Fran wonders why she keeps on with the affair, which she realises is hopeless.

Promises, Promises was enormously successful in its day. It won awards and yielded the famous song 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again'. However, the book is very much of its time, and the show hasn’t been seen much since (though I gather a revival on Broadway is forthcoming.) In about 1996 it was performed at the Bridewell Theatre in London, and I went to see it. I enjoyed it so much that I introduced a performance of the show in Liverpool, as a backdrop to one of the scenes in The Devil in Disguise. But although the Bridewell version did include one of the many songs dropped from the Broadway original, they didn’t find room for ‘What Am I Doing Here?’ Burt Bacharach continues to write great songs to this day, but he's never written another stage musical, and I suspect I remain destined to be one of the few people who think 'What Am I Doing Here?' is a masterpiece. A shame.

The Thriller Technique

I mentioned a few days ago that I’m becoming increasingly interested in thrillers, and so I was keen to attend one of the main events of the Harrogate Festival, an interview of Lee Child by Natasha Cooper. A special guest was Lee Child’s brother, Andrew Grant, who has just published his own debut novel, Even.

Interviews at conferences vary in quality, but Natasha is very experienced and accomplished at drawing her interviewees out, and the result was very thought-provoking as far as I was concerned. Anyone with an interest in writing thrillers would have learned quite a bit, I feel.

I was impressed, above all, by two crucial qualities that Lee Child brings to his craft, which I’d summarise as focus and simplicity. I’d guess he’s always been very focused, but it seems that being made redundant from Granada TV in the 90s kick-started his career as a novelist – the injustice of his treatment clearly still burns. As an employment lawyer, I’ve known many people who have had similarly harsh experiences, but none have responded by forging careers which were both financially successful and earned them worldwide fame.

Allying simplicity to quality, it seems to me, is one of the hardest tricks for any creative artist to pull off. Simplicity is one of the reasons why Agatha Christie’s books have lasted so well. It is one of the reasons why Hal David’s lyrics have entered the consciousness of people the world over who would not recognise his name. I once heard Hal David say in an interview that it’s too easy to make things complicated, and the more I’ve reflected on this, the more I realise, he is right. And hearing Lee Child (one of whose books is sold every second, apparently – blimey!) explain his approach to the Jack Reacher books gave me a real insight into the secrets of his success. Not easy to emulate, though if anyone can do it, it may just be Andrew Grant.