346 replies to this topic

[Shrublands]

If Bardem were Blofeld he would have to stick around.

Like the new "M"...

Blofeld transformed utterly from book to book, so not necessarily.
But I don’t think he’s Blofeld. No. I don’t think that. I must not think anything like that. No.

[MattofSteel]

Yeah, if that's really Fiennes talking to Judi (brown hair), then it can't be him in the airport (grey hair) unless all the underground bunker stuff is a flashback (possible?)

But that guy at the airport does really look like an older Ralph Fiennes.

[Vauxhall]

I'm more struck by the relative lack of Chinese people in a scene set in Shanghai airport!

[Pussfeller]

Maybe it's a different Shanghai.

[Mr_Wint]

"Incremental steps". This fella knows what he is doing. That fact that he is also a Bondfan (which is now confirmed) should be enough to silence all of you naysayers.

[Single-O-Seven]

I'm more struck by the relative lack of Chinese people in a scene set in Shanghai airport!

It looks as though it's the baggage carousel area, so we're likely seeing a lot of tourists just arriving who would naturally swamp the area more so than the natives.

[Mr. Blofeld]

The older fellow is not Fiennes; the nose, mouth, and eyes are all wrong. The other shot with Fiennes clearly shows that he has taller hair than the Shanghai airport bloke.

Also, Bardem's name: Jack Spang?

[The Dove]

Eh?? Where did you spot the clue to Bardem's character, Mr. Blofeld?

[Mr. Blofeld]

It's supposed to be a short name, 4 to 5 letters each; I figured there was a reason they weren't revealing it...

[Bryce (003)]

I just lightly throw this one in as theory.

Bardem's character *could* be a relation to a future Blofeld...If perhaps his name is "Stravro"...Just a though but since they've been keeping such a tight lid on things.....Yes, that's six letters, but how solid is that leak of intel per a call sheet we have no confirmation of?

Good God...As I look back at all the ideas and thoughts we've shared in all the Skyfall threads, CBn is almost (Hell, IS to a point) an intelligence service.

We see and read everything, we dismiss nothing completely and we never give up. As an old spy saying goes "We speculate, we investigate and then we instigate when the action is right."

Damn it's good to be a Bond fan!

[The Shark]

Brothers Spang makes more sense.

[Bryce (003)]

Brothers Spang makes more sense.

It does and it is a bit of a long shot, but it's not too far off. I wonder how deep they (Eon) did go back to Fleming in crafting this in some way.

More food for thought.

[MattofSteel]

Jaws.

[Matt_13]

Curiously, "special effects teeth" is on the IMDB page (or something to that extent). That'd be something else, wouldn't it?

[Captain Tightpants]

I'm certainly getting blue-balled for Bardem. I can understand why they're withholding the character's name. It would reveal his nationality and that would expose something of the plot. But I want something. He's the biggest name to play a Bond villain since... Christopher Walken? If not the character name, it would be nice to have some clue about what kind of villain he is: terrorist, renegade general, corrupt politician, gangster, plutocrat, assassin, rival spy, etc. Right now it's a total vacuum around Bardem. As a result, we have nothing to talk about. I want some little scrap of information about Bardem's character, so that we can start speculating and arguing in earnest.

I seem to recall him saying something at the November press junket. Something about his character being very unique in the Bondverse because of his motivations and that the audience may not see him as being totally evil because of it.

[Captain Tightpants]

Anyone knows chinese?

Chinese can be a very complex language. The meaning of individual characters can change based on the placement of strokes, and also based on the other characters that form the word. I can have a go with the basic characters, but they won't necessarily be representative of the actual word. Even then, the characters in the image might be stylised to appear more modern. I have, however, found this website, which groups Chinese characters visually, and provides a range of definitions for them. Using that, I'll have a crack at it.

The first character is very difficult to read. It might be "six", or "exchange".
The second character looks like it is based on "strength", or possibly "knife".
The third character is also tricky. The best I can do is a diminutive of "otherwise"; "flag" might be the best fit.
The fourth character is the clearest, but hard to place. It might be "industry" or "office".

So, if we run them all together, we get something along the lines of "exchange strength flag office", which we could interpret as (possibly) being "Head Office of National Foreign Exchange"; this in turn sounds like it could be the equivalent of Universal Exports - either a local branch operated by MI6, or the cover for a substation of Chinese intelligence.

However, I have to stress that everything in this post is sheer guesswork.

[Luigi Ferrari]

Last night I went out at the bar for drinking my usual Vodka Martini - shaken not stirred, of course.
To tell you the truth, besides the pleasure of sipping a drink, I had in mind a specific purpose: to ask the Chinese bartender at the bar I usually frequent what is the meaning of the characters that appear in the background of this image.
I must admit that the evening turned out to be profitable in both aspects. This is what I found out.
In the picture you can clearly see 3 characters:
the first, on the left, has the meaning of "light, ray";
the second,in the center, is partially covered by a moving man - however the bartender was pretty sure to translate it into "electricity" or "telegram";
the third, on the right, means "letter" or "message".
At this point I asked him what meaning could have the whole stuff, since It was not clear to me. I was told that the words in Chinese are made of more than one character, that the word was shortened here, and that it was difficult to say. However, in his opinion it had got to do with optical fibers and telephone companies.
Perfect! I didn't need to hear nothing more.
I had already said in one of my previous posts that I managed to read clearly enough the word "optic" written under the Chinese characters. I still had to figure out what was meant by the second word. I was able to roughly read only the end of it and it seemed to be "......tions".
So, when I got home I puzzled about the mistery . In a fairly complicated manner I managed to put the chinese letters into Google translator and I got the following translation: optical telecommunications.
I finally found out what's written in the picture: optic communications.
Strange? Not at all, if you consider that the scene is most likely set in a Shanghai skyscraper which is home to a telecommunications company.
In telecommunications, for transferring data along the optical fibers it is currently used the laser and and those that you see in the video where Michael G. Wilson welcomes on 007.com are probably optical fibers.
What has this to do with Skyfall? One must recognize that a laser has many other applications: for example, if carefully pointed at the sky, can destroy a satellite, or at least blind its sensors. To blind or to shoot down telecommunications satellites, could be the first stage of an attack against a country.
Do you see what I mean?

Edited by Luigi Ferrari, 26 February 2012 - 01:01 AM.

[DominicGreene]

^ Nice work!

[007jamesbond]

yeah nice work..........that rumour of the Satellite is becoming more and more true it seems like? if that building what it is....

[Captain Tightpants]

If SKYFALL's plot involves an optical laser being aimed at satellites, I don't think the building will house it. For one, it's too conspicuous. And more importantly, it's a fixed position. Optical lasers do not bend to follow the curvature of the earth, so a laser based in the building would only be able to target satellites in a geosynchronous orbit over Shanghai. No, I'd say that the laser would be set on a train, which could easily move it and conceal it. The office would simply be an intelligence substation, designed to locate and identify target satellites.

That said, I still have my doubts. None of the primary cast are Chinese, and it doesn't explain why MI6 is attacked or what M's secrets have to do with the story.

[Luigi Ferrari]

If SKYFALL's plot involves an optical laser being aimed at satellites, I don't think the building will house it. For one, it's too conspicuous. And more importantly, it's a fixed position. Optical lasers do not bend to follow the curvature of the earth, so a laser based in the building would only be able to target satellites in a geosynchronous orbit over Shanghai. No, I'd say that the laser would be set on a train, which could easily move it and conceal it. The office would simply be an intelligence substation, designed to locate and identify target satellites.

That said, I still have my doubts. None of the primary cast are Chinese, and it doesn't explain why MI6 is attacked or what M's secrets have to do with the story.

The laser being placed inside a skyscraper in Shanghai - wasn't even my idea. Rather, I was thinking that a telecommunications giant in the 'Bond universe' could easily dispose secretly of a technology capable of altering or shooting down telecommunications satellites.
Regarding the cast, the notion that none of the principal actors are Chinese might be only half true.
Back in August 2011,long before the shooting start, it was rumored that one of the two bond girls would play "a beautiful Asian woman" named Severin.
http://www.comingsoo...ws.php?id=81220
Recently it has also been added to the cast a Chinese actor who plays the role of a member of the Chinese Mafia. If Berenice Marlohe is really playing an Asian Lady in Skyfall, then she might be the film's element that leads Bond to China. Oddly enough, 7 months later, we still know very little about her role. Wait and see.


@DominicGreene,@007jamesbond : Glad you liked it ,guys!

[Captain Tightpants]

Berenice Marlohe will not be playing an Asian character.

Why not?

Because this is Marlohe:



And this is an Asian lady:



Berenice Marlohe is clearly not Asian. You might as well be casting Daniel Craig as Barack Obama.

The only conceivable way that I can think of for Marlohe to play an Asian character is for Severine to be French-Vietnamese. Severine is a French name, and the French occupied what is now Vietnam for years. If Severine had a French father and a Vietnamese mother, then it might work. Better still, her mother could be French and her father a North Vietnamese officer who worked with the Chinese in the 1970s, thereby establishing a connection to China.

This might actually work, because we believe that Ola Rapace is playing a character named Patrice, and "Patrice" is the French form of "Patrick". They may even be brother and sister in the film.

[Luigi Ferrari]

The truth isn't always black or white, Captain. Sometimes it is, so to speak, nuanced.
This is an old post I wrote months ago about Marlohe's role. I miss the good old times when I could still upload photos from my pc ...

My thoughts on the Bond Ladies (in accordance with the definition given in the press conference by Sam Mendes ). Skyfall will be a "classic" Bond film. In the classic films of the series there are are two ladies: 007 seduces both of them during the episode, one of them usually acts among the ranks of the enemy and is destined to die before the end. No doubt about who will portray the role of the baddie .
Now I want you to focus on the possible reasons for the choice of Berenice Marlohe as a Bond Lady. It has been said in the past that actress Freida Pinto was very close to get that role in Bond 23. Then, more recently, came the news that the producers were planning to shoot in India and were dealing with local authorities. We learned from Skyfall's official press conference that China will be one of the locations. How does this relate to Berenice Marlohe?
To tell you the truth,when it was rumoured that Berenice could have been the next Bond Lady I did some research on the internet and I found theese pictures:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2966102/
[attachment=11609:berenice-marlohe.jpg]
I was impressed by her beauty, but at the same time I could hardly believe that the two pictures could depict the same person!
But since it has been officially stated that Skyfall will be shot in China,everything makes sense.The press reports that Berenice Marlohe is French,but I've found on IMDB that she is Eurasian.
http://www.imdb.com/list/D0w3M_bCcFg/
At this link you will find confirmation that Severine could be Asian:
http://www.mi6-hq.co...07&t=mi6&s=news
It is plausible that the producers intended to set a part of the next episode in Asia and they were looking for an actress to play the Asian or Eurasian Severine. The first choice was probably India and Freida Pinto was the actress that may probably have been chosen, and it is not a coincidence that she is an indian actress with portoguese roots ( so Eurasian).Because of failed negotiations with the Indian authorities, MGW and BB finally opted to film in China and the natural choice was....Berenice Marlohe!
So it is very likely Berenice will have a lot of work to do when Bond will go to China...

PS: forgive my bad english, I hope I was clear enough

[Captain Tightpants]

I think it's far more likely that someone got their wires crossed. The producers were looking at filming in China, and they were trying to cast an actor in the role of Severine, and then some journalist put two and two together and got five, thinking that it meant that EON was looking for an Asian actor to play "Severin".

[Germanlady]

She could be Eurasian, but the way she told her casting story, doesn't indicate, they were specifically looking for that. She says, they were looking for a Bond girl and I chased the respnsible people to get an audition. Wouldn't she have said, they were looking for an Eurasian Bond girl?

[Captain Tightpants]

Exactly. That's what makes me question the claim that Severine will be an Asian character - the actor who was cast in the role is not Asian, and the only claims that the character would be came out at the same time as the reports about China first surfaced.

[Luigi Ferrari]

If I remember correctly when these rumors surfaced, 19th August, China had not yet been accredited as a possible location for Bond23, but there were insistent rumors of India or, as a substitute, of South Africa.
It was also rumored that Naomie Harris would play the role of Miss Moneypenny in Bond 23, while Comingsoon.net in the article I posted, mentions the role of "a beautiful English Agent" and that was later confirmed during the Skyfall's official press conference.
The source proved to be right also in attributing the role of Q to Ben Wishaw.
So I think that the source who provided the information to Comingsoon.net was reliable, but unfortunately the production didn't give us in the following months no further details that confirm or disprove the ethnicity of Marlohe's role .

Edited by Luigi Ferrari, 07 March 2012 - 02:46 PM.

[Captain Tightpants]

Except that Marlohe herself clearly isn't Asian. Surely a production company as experienced as EON would be able to get a tiny detail like that right.

[MattofSteel]

Every time I see this thread jump to the top, I think maybe there's a new video blog. And every time, I'm disappointed. :(

It's March. I really won't care who or what Marlohe is playing until November.

[Vauxhall]

Over a month since the first one of these. I had decent hopes for these being at least semi-regular, but certainly not looking too hopeful right now.