Latest Bond movie sets its sights on Scotland

Columnist and film writer

Friday 4 November 2011

THE name is Skyfall, and the hero will be Bond, James McBond.

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Alison Rowat

Such is the power of the longest-running franchise in film history they hired a ballroom in a Whitehall hotel yesterday to officially unveil the title of the new movie before a select band of the world’s press, The Herald included. The name of the game here is hoopla, and lots of it.

Sam Mendes, the director of what will be the 23rd film in the series, said while it wasn’t entirely accurate to say Bond returns to his Scottish roots -- literary legend has it the character’s father hails from Glencoe -- there is a Scottish element to Skyfall, and filming will take place in “the wilds of Scotland”. One rumoured location is Duntrune Castle in Argyll.“There are lots of surprises,” said the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty.Otherwise, Mendes, his cast and producers might as well have signed the movie equivalent of the Official Secrets Act for all their determination to keep details of the new movie under wraps. With the film not scheduled to be released until October 2012, discretion is the better part of the publicity long game. The title, said producer Michael G Wilson, had already been “the worst-kept secret in London”.What we did find out is that Javier Bardem, the serial killer in No Country for Old Men, plays the baddie in Skyfall; the Bond girls, or “Bond ladies” as new man Mendes introduced them, will be Pirates of the Caribbean’s Naomie Harris and France’s Berenice Marlohe. Judi Dench returns as M; there will be gadgets and “plenty of action”, contrary to rumours Mendes might take the franchise into highbrow territory; and Daniel Craig, playing Bond for the third time, will take his shirt off. “Darn right,” said producer Barbara Broccoli.Also in the cast are Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney and Ben Whishaw, characters unspecified.As for the plot, the film will be a stand-alone story from Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. In Skyfall M’s past comes back to haunt her, forcing 007 to seek and destroy the threat to MI6.Fifty years to the day when Sean Connery was named as Bond in the first film, Dr No, Mr Wilson recalled that when the franchise started out the deal was for just four movies. “No-one really thought we were going to get to 50 years of Bond, let alone 23 pictures.” The film’s longevity was down to the public, he said.Shooting begins on Monday and will take in, besides Scotland, London, Turkey and China.Mendes said he had been a Bond fan since he was a boy. Asked if he hoped Bond might be in line for an Oscar to mark its golden anniversary next year, he said: “That’s not the reason you do any movie, and certainly not the reason you do a Bond movie. For me, Bond is for the audience.”Spanish actor Bardem, asked if he had been doing any special training, said: “Learning the English vowels.” And Daniel Craig? “Nothing as dangerous as that.” Harris had been doing yoga, stunt driving, and learning to fire a gun.

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Latest Bond movie sets its sights on Scotland

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