'The Battle For Bond' Coming on 18 June 2007
Qwerty
New York, USAPosts: 73MI6 Agent
This has definitely become one of the big literary 007 releases for me this year.
Some cool new photos from it: http://commanderbond.net/article/4350
Anyone else planning on picking it up?
Some cool new photos from it: http://commanderbond.net/article/4350
Anyone else planning on picking it up?
~ Nobody Knows Me Like You Know Me ~
Comments
Already have this on pre-order, should be a great read on what is, a fascinating story.
Really good James Bond Journalism.
I really recommend it.
http://www.tomahawkpress.com/tomahawk.html
It's a good read, I like the relating of the shambles of Never Say Never Again. Kirshner says that in every scene he had to compromise his vision. He agreed however that script doctors Le Frenais and Clements should change the intro, which had seen Bond in a medieval jousting tournament go after a hitman and kill him in the car park, saying "You've got Connery, a great leading man, but he's hidden behind a tin mask for the opener, you only see him when he kills the assassin and takes the mask off..." So they rewrote it as is in the movie, but had in a mind a stopwatch ticking over the opening. They later said: "It had tension when they did it like that, but they went and killed it by putting a song on it... We couldn't believe it... " (I'm paraphrasing).
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
All it is apparently, some of the photos in it hadn't got clearance form the publishers, who are now counting the cost. I thought it was some juicy legal contention about the content.
Anway, three copies left at Cinema Store in St Martin's Lane, London, for those interested. Price now gone up to £25.
* Edit: though according to CBn, it's the Ian Fleming Trust that's banned it, over content of never-before-published material.
http://commanderbond.net/article/4905
Roger Moore 1927-2017
~Pen -{
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That link is brilliant reading! Though perusing BFB, can't say I noticed too many typos. At times the author can't decide it seems whether he likes NSNA or not, realising that if he is too negative, it might evoke a 'So what am I reading a book partly based around it then?' response from the reader.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
USA...
~Pen -{
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
Anyhow, this has made me wonder how much the author would earn for his effort. I mean, he's put in a lot of time, research, etc... But if he was only going to earn, say £10,000 I'd question whether we'd want to go to all that trouble, it's hardly life-changing. I know money isn't the only motive for such a project, but all the same...
It also seems odd that such a book would have to go to an independent publisher, I mean, it got some decent reviews in The Sunday Times Culture section, it's hardly totally obscure as a subject matter. Is it really that hard to get published, with so much other dross you see in the shops? Or am I missing something here?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The book about Thunderball, by Robert Sellers, was published last autumn. In January the publisher, Tomahawk Press, was accused of breaching copyright for including a number of court documents from the plagiarism case.
The Fleming Will Trust, which was set up to look after the interests of the author’s family and headed by Kate Grimond, Fleming’s niece, demanded the book be pulped.
“We’re just a very small publisher with no money to fight a big legal action,” said Bruce Sachs, Tomahawk’s managing director. Olswang, the solicitors acting on behalf of the Fleming Will Trust, claims that under English law the full documents could not be published.
On Thursday Sachs had to order a warehouse in Lancaster to hand over 300 copies of the book for pulping. Bookshops that already have copies are not being forced to remove them although Amazon, the online retailer, has decided to withdraw the book.
The idea of "pulping" a book just makes me heartsick. I hope Sellers and Tomahawk can remove the documents themselves--they should, of course, allude to the court materials--and get a revised second edition out. The book sets many things straight, such as who created SPECTRE and Blofeld, and it should be read.
well, yes I can
gonna go try and find this book on amazon or beg the local Barnes and Noble to order it for me...'cause now I reeeeeally wanna read it
~Pen -{
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
I did read that the book is gonna be reissued in May anyway without the offending legal documents, so are you sure you really want to buy this edtion Pendragon?
Edit: Amazon aren't supposed to be selling it but there's one for sale at, er, around £150!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Bond-Genesis-Cinemas-Greatest/dp/0953192636/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205080945&sr=1-1
Roger Moore 1927-2017
~Pen -{
mountainburdphotography.wordpress.com
Well, I'm quoting myself again, but to eat my words. I've settled down to read my purchased copy at last, rather than flicking through it in the bookshop, and it's littered with typos like Rambo is littered with gunfire.
Now I must say it's brilliantly researched with lots of titbits... the account of the making of Never Say Never Again reminds me the account of the making of Bonfire of the Vanities in The Devil's Candy. There's a brilliant chapter as well, in which an actor tells how he saw producer Kevin McClory in a Dublin bar and gets chatting, being a Bond fan. McClory is all Irish blarney and charm, later calling the actor with a proposition - to fly out to Nassau and sell his home for him, (it's the home featured in the closing scene of NSNA with Rowan Atkinson). I won't spoil the tale, but it conjurs up a wonderfully eerie atmosphere of mistrust and betrayal. The actor later tries to confront McClory back in Galway, but he's checked out of his hotel, leaving a bouncing cheque.
The narrative drive is great, but typos and errors of phrasing are everywhere, even in the blurb on the back page. "Imagine a Bond film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Richard Burton... preposterous and unbelievable you may think, but it almost happened." Preposterous AND unbelievable. Okay. Then... something like: "This is a story of betrayal, litigation... and even death." Well, yes, a story covering 40 years or so might involve the death of someone somewhere along the line. All the blurb has different fonts or tracking, then there's a really waffley, gramatically incorrect recommendation by Len Deighton, which is sincere enough but may as well be scribbled on the back of a fag packet.
Inside, you have typos like "So Sean stormed out of the studio." He said.
Doesn't anyone with an elementary grasp of English proofread this? It seems a waste of the writer's effort, esp as the book is very well designed, it's an attractive-looking purchase.
Sellers (the writer) is also unable to tailor or truncate a quote. It reads best when writers Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais are talking, because they are so articulate, the same with the actor who went out to McClory's Nassau home, that it isn't noticeable. But most people waffle or repeat certain words when chatting, and Sellers can't edit it down, he doesn't use the quote to propel the narrative along, it just sits there. Kirshner talks about how NSNA "was not an organised shoot, in fact I would call it dis-organised (sic). Empire was very organised... NSNA, however, was disorganised." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the picture.
Maybe Pendragon's better waiting for the May edition when they might have ironed out these flaws.
Still, I must commend the writer's effort, and the text reads much better in the early sections of the book, dealing with the court case. Sections on NSNA are depressing whichever way you look at it... an action director tells how great footage was cut out of the shark attack, including a shark getting harpooned: "Maybe they didn't want a shark death shown on screen." I'm not 100 per cent, but it seems that a shark was actually killed for real for this scene, which seems borne out by Vic Armstrong's harrowing description of how they treated sharks out there... tied down with rope, deprived of water (their oxygen) and suffering. No one cared, complained Armstrong, because they're killers and fish, too... It's all quite horrible.
McClory's attempt to get money back from EON because he launched the original blueprint for the Bond films seemed as miguided as Heather Mills aiming for over £125 million from Macca. McClory ends his days broke.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Update: It's a very reasonable price on Ebay.co.uk, that said that's before the auction kicks in! I tried bidding for a mid-50s Moonraker rare paperback yesterday, it was £38 then jumped £20 in price in last few seconds!
http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?ht=1&from=R4&saatc=3&salic=3%26saatc%3D-1&satitle=The+Battle+for+Bond&sacat=267%26catref%3DC6
Roger Moore 1927-2017
http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/articles/literature_the_battle_for_bond_preview2.php3?t=&s=&id=01936
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Edit: It's going for only a tenner in the St Martins Lane London store, signed by the author too...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I already glanced at the introduction and, as Napoleon states, there is a massive typesetting error on the opening paragraph! I was fuming X-( I don't pay good money for shoddy work. I hope the info inside is better than the initial impression....