The news came in on the local CP24 feed earlier this morning. Sir Sean Connery, the very first James Bond on the movie screen, passed away at the age of 90. As I was telling commenter Scott an hour or so later, I knew that my favourite 007 was ailing for some time but still it was very sad to hear that he finally left this mortal coil. Eerily enough, yesterday Connery popped up in my memories for some reason and it was the scene in "The Untouchables" when his character of Jimmy Malone is brutally assassinated by Frank Nitti.
As a Bond fan, I will always remember that first scene where he introduced himself as "Bond, James Bond" in "Doctor No", the huge fight in the train compartment between him and Red Grant in "From Russia With Love" and him on that slab with the laser beam threatening his second-most lethal weapon in "Goldfinger". As you can deduce quickly, three of my favourite 007 movies were those first three with Connery.
In another example of a slight coincidence, I found out about Tomoyasu Hotei's（布袋寅泰）theme for the 2014 live-action version of "Lupin III" being compared to the early pieces of music from the Bond franchise, according to TV Tropes.
I had a chance to see this live version with Shun Oguri（小栗旬）as the charming titular thief via TV Japan, but that night I had my student online so didn't quite make it. I'll have to PVR it next time although I heard that reviews were rather mixed. According to the J-Wiki article on the movie, Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, the composer of the iconic anime theme, was simply too busy to participate in this particular project, so apparently that theme was nixed in place of Hotei's "TRICK ATTACK". The official guidebook (via J-Wiki) mentions that Hotei still wanted to pay some respect to Ohno when creating this new theme that comes out in the nifty closing credits (was shocked to see Nick Tate [aka Alan Carter] from "Space:1999" in the cast).
For me, I could pick up on the respect to Ohno but aside from that ending strum on the guitar, I didn't really hear any of that "love letter to James Bond" that TV Tropes was writing about. Still, it's 100% Hotei with the rat-a-tat horns and of course, his own guitar. Good try but it won't make me forget about Ohno's original or Hotei's own "Kill Bill" theme.
Will miss Sir Sean...but at least, he and Lois Maxwell are back together again.
Always great to hear more Hotei! I haven't had a chance to see the film, but I hope an English release rolls around at some point. I, too, heard the reviews were mixed, to put it mildly.
ReplyDeleteThe theme is quite nice, and I think it compares to the Bond themes more in the amped-up feel of the piece. Other than that, I agree I don't see the parallels.
Hi RagnarXIV. Good to hear from you again. It's been a while.
DeleteYeah, "Trick Attack" is not bad and perhaps Hotei was aiming for some of the more intense passages in the Bond discography such as the machine-gun horns that start off the instrumental version of "From Russia With Love".