One of the most eagerly awaited films of the year, Casino Royale takes Bond back to the beginning, with a reboot of the whole series.
Daniel Craig is 007 before his epic career begins and director Martin Campbell has promised a darker, more dangerous Bond, one who is far closer to the secret agent of Fleming's books.
However, fans are worried that a radical take might destroy the world's most long lived film series and new Bond actor Craig is not universally popular.
In order to assuage these doubts and garner some free publicity, Sony have released a video podcast detailing the production of the film.
They say:
Nothing. Not a single soul has written a review of this podcast, despite it reaching the top six in iTunes top 100 podcast charts.
We say:
The podcast gives a behind the scenes look at the film. The two episodes we've seen take us through an element of the production process, complete with small interview snippets with the director, the stunt coordinator, the producer and Craig himself.
The two minutes of video are very fast paced and never linger on any one thing for very long, which gives each episode the feel of a skimpy DVD feature. We're rushed through far too quickly and you get the feeling that each bit of film started off life as ten minutes worth, before being chopped right down for the podcast format.
You see lots of nice shots of Craig shooting and being shot at, but you come away with the strange sensation that no tangible information is actually broadcast in the two minutes of video.
However, as a marketing message, the podcast is doing its job. Craig looks convincing as a hard man and the shootout which you see snippets of appears vintage Bond.
The producer talks about how the film will be "closer to Fleming's original vision" and the energy of the stunts and filming seems to back that up.
Overall, each episode is too short for you to gain a good impression of the film and it feels too much as though the podcast is only spoonfeeding you the marketing line, rather than giving you anything you could base an opinion on.
Not compulsive watching, unless you're a compulsive Bond watcher.
AVERAGE EPISODE RUNNING TIME
2 mins
PRICE
Free
POSTED...
Sat 5 Aug 2006 at 8:34pm
