Casino Royale 1967 Blu Ray Review
Casino Royale (1967) review. Director: John Huston, Ken Hughes, Val Guest, Joseph McGrath. Link on Blu-ray. As Casino Royale draws on, the plot becomes. Casino Royale on DVD (12) from MGM / UA. Directed by Martin Campbell. Staring Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench and Daniel Craig. More Action, James Bond and Spies & Secret Agents DVDs available @ DVD Empire.
Casino Royale (1967/MGM DVD)
Picture: C+Sound: C+Extras: B-Film: C-
Sometimes a feature film production goes so out of control behind the scenes that it becomes as noted for its off screen antics as does the content of its narrative, especially when the result is not the big home run hit (critically and commercially) that should have happened.We have seen this with epic productions that nearly bankrupted (Fox’s Cleopatra) or more or less did bankrupt (United Artists’ Heaven’s Gate) an entire studio, no matter how much talent was involved.Charles K. Feldman was at the peak of his producing powers when he had secured the rights to the only James Bond novel not owned by the producers of the still-huge feature film series.Casino Royale was the first Bond novel and though parts of it sort of surfaced in the first few actual Bond films, it was not (at the time) part of the books Fleming sold the rights to for the series.
Originally, Feldman approached the series co-producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, but when Feldman wanted 4/5ths of every dollar earned, they passed, in addition to being weary after issues with co-producing Thunderball with Kevin McClory.Sean Connery passed in being in the film when Feldman would not pay him $1 Million, an amount he did oddly pay Peter Sellers and when Feldman saw his film go overbudget, he realized that was a mistake.Unfortunately, it was only the beginning of the long road of endless mistakes he and many other would make as the long road to getting the film made wound its way into history.
Feldman then decided to make it a comedy.Then he decided to have several characters play James Bond.Then in the middle of production, decided it should be a psychedelic counterculture trip film somewhere within the many incompatible plots he greenlit.With over a dozen writers (often uncredited, often big names) working on hundreds of pages of script, he then deiced to make it a larger-scale version of his big hit What’s New Pussycat? while still retaining the other ideas.He also thought having a huge cast ala It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World would help and was going to spend whatever money he felt should be spent to make it.That included getting a good director to handle it all.
This may very well be the biggest high profile production to sport the most directors including John Huston, Ken Hughes (The Trials Of Oscar Wilde), Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish (classic Twilight Zone episodes), Richard Talmadge and Val Guest (the original Quatermass films) all unknowingly helping to chop it hopelessly up.All around, people were hired and kept on for longer periods of time than they ever expected.As well, it had more than one big star permanently walk off of it never to return to shoot another scene.Even post-production as still being funded as the film played in theaters, reportedly including model work for a scene that was never made.
The cast includes Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Joanna Pettet, Deborah Kerr, Daliah Lavi, William Holden, Charles Boyer, George Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Barbara Bouchet, Terence Cooper, Angela Scoular, Anna Quayle, Ronnie Corbett, Bernard Cribbins, Vladek Sheybal, Jacqueline Bisset and John Huston.No, they or other star cameos cannot save the film either, though some of their scenes in microcosm show possible directions the film could have gone into, i.e., into coherency and Peter Seller’s performance singularly inspired Mike Myers’ Austin Powers more than any other element in this or any other film.
So what is the film about?Well, it is not about the young agent James Bond and his tenuous relationship with Soviet spy Vesper Lynd.It is not about a SPECTRE plot to take over the world, as they did not own the rights to that material and it is not about telling a story of any kind.Instead, it is about waiting for something good to happen in 131 minutes and becomes about failed expectations, seeing how many stars (big & small) you can spot and identify.It is about jokes that are hardly ever funny or amusing.It is also, in the most pandering way, about every intertextual reference Feldman could stuff into the script to anything James Bond, the films, books and anyone connected to either.That is called a hack job and this is called a mess.
However, like any big budget train wreck, you have to suffer… see it to believe it and as you watch, a few thoughts will cross your mind, like “what a wasted opportunity” or “what an amazing waste of talent” or “this is all they could come up with” or “how much did this all cost (in adjusted dollars) or “could this have been stopped” or “boy, this looks like a bad Austin Powers movie” or “what were they thinking” or one that recently expired: “imagine if they did this as a serious film.”
Yet, the actors do give some good performances when they can cut through the clutter, the music score is a classic (the classic the film should have been) and as much as ever, it is one of the all-time film curios.Well, don’t have any expectations and make sure you are very awake before you try to sit through this, because sitting through it is a challenge and it remains one of the poorest James Bond features, though Die Another Day and The World Is Not Enough remarkably managed to succeed it as winners of The Worst Bond Film Of All Time award showing how unambitious they were.They were also big hits, but at an artistic price to the series.
To say Feldman was lax as a producer is an understatement and the failure of the film artistically is his fault 100% but because he believed (shockingly correctly) that I would be a hit no matter what they did set the worst possible precedent for the kind of overblown, shallow mall movies and Action garbage we have been getting today made for a quick buck and is as soulless as it is disposable.It hurt You Only Live Twice a little at the box office by coming out a few months before, but Twice was the bigger hit and this was 1967, a watershed year for the arts and entertainment.
Feldman, all involved and Columbia Pictures simply avoided disaster with their off-screen timing.
The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image was shot in anamorphic Panavision by Jack Hildyard (Anastasia (1956), 55 Days In Peking, Battle In The Bulge, Hitchcock’s Topaz) and mixes several styles, in part because of the changes in the script, in part because of some very talented camera people (including no less than Nicolas Roeg, Alex Thomson and Anthony B. Richmond) added to the pallet.The money is often on the screen and sets are much imitated and very 1960s.This is the first James Bond film of any kind to have 70mm blow-up prints and it was issued in three-strip dye-transfer Technicolor prints like all official Bond films until 1971.You can see that color quality in many shots here, but this transfer is still too soft and has too many moments of softer footage.Hildyard took his time doing many of his shots, which made the producers unhappy, but may have helped save the film in the long run commercials.When it looks good, though, it looks good.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is a little better than the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono versions, but not my much.The problem is that the cleaner, clearer music audio is too much in the center channel, as if the source material was mis-transferred and/or the five behind-the-screen channels were folded down to three the wrong way.Being blown-up to 70mm, it is also the first Bond of any kind to feature multi-channel sound; 6-track magnetic stereo (five speakers behind the screen, as is always the case then with the older Todd-AO configuration) likely sounded good.As noted in the commentary, the Burt Bacharach music soundtrack (with lyrics by the also-great Hal David) was a sonic landmark recorded at higher levels than any recording had been before.That includes The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, Motown or The Rolling Stones.
It should sound better, but I still like it over the Mono and for the record, the information on the commentary is correct about its audiophile status as a big favorite, especially stereo first pressing of the vinyl LP 33 1/3 album.Yes, the master tape is fading, but missed a new series of audiophile versions on the market that Classic Records has issued on vinyl and 192 kHz/24bit HDAD (High Definition Audio Disc DVD) that audiophiles are comparing favorably to the original stereo vinyl and even reel-to-reel stereo tapes!More on that soon.
Extras include repeats of extras from the 2006 DVD except the unfortunate omission of the 1954 TV version that was made for the CBS-TV dramatic series Climax! with Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond and Peter Lorre.You do get a five-part making of featurette, still galleries, a long widescreen original theatrical trailer (though many others, including teasers that exist, were not added) and an amusing and usually informative feature-length audio commentary by Steven Jay Rubin and John Cork is also included.An error (one of a few) on the commentary says Ian Hendry, who was cut from this film, had Honor Blackman as a co-star on The Avengers. That is wrong.Blackman, who was Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, replaced him on the show instead.They also seem to be forcing themselves to praise the film at times in a “look at the bright side” way that is obvious.This film could use another commentary.The DVD case included card-sized reproductions of posters featuring each of the lead actors.
For more on Bond, try these links:
Casino Royale (2006)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5088/Casino+Royale+(DVD-Video+++Blu
James Bond Blu-ray Wave One
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7716/James+Bond+Blu-ray+Wave+One:+Dr
Austin Powers Blu-ray Trilogy
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/7973/Austin+Powers+Trilogy+(Warner/New
-Nicholas Sheffo
Casino Royale Collector's Edition on Blu-ray Disc Review
The Film
This is the film that was meant to reboot the flagging James Bond franchise, exposing the origins of Bond's career as a '00' -- a secret agent with a license to kill. In order to do this, producers went back to Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, Casino Royale, a story that the 'official' Bond team had been wanting to gain the rights to for many years.
Through a series of serendipitous events that began several years ago when Sony obtained Columbia Pictures and a share in MGM, the team was finally able to negotiate a deal that would bring them the rights to the story, bringing it to the screen with all the grandeur it deserved. In order for an origin story to make sense, the film-makers needed (another) new Bond. It wasn't that Pierce Brosnan was incapable of carrying the franchise, but he had been saddled with silly scripts and storylines that just kept getting more and more outlandish. It was time for a fresh start.
In stepped Daniel Craig, the first fair-haired Bond, who rose to the challenge gracefully and rather successfully. The producers eschewed the over-the-top CG special effects and science fiction-like gadgets that came to define the franchise, reaching new heights of absurdity in Die Another Day, which saw villains genetically altering their ethnicity and manipulating death rays from space. Instead they concentrated on the man himself, his character and his raw power.
Bond and Lynd strike up a romantic relationship -- of course, this is a James Bond film after all -- which will become very important as events unfold and it is revealed that Lynd has an agenda all her own.
The film succeeds in redefining the character of James Bond for a new era and the franchise is all the better for it. There are enough arguments back and forth between Bond diehards about who the best James Bond is and most people seem to land on Sean Connery. I grew up knowing Roger Moore as James Bond and witnessed the franchise change hands three times now, going to Timothy Dalton, then to Pierce Brosnan, and now on to Daniel Craig. I was one of the people who was very unhappy with Dalton as Bond following Roger Moore and although I was pleased with Pierce Brosan's abilities and his style, the films he was given left me cold. It is far too early to jump on the bandwagon and hail Daniel Craig as the greatest Bond ever, but if he continues to make films as strong as Casino Royale and act as brilliantly in them as he did in this one, he may very well rival Connery for that crown someday.
The Picture
Casino Royale Collector's Edition comes with the same AVC/MPEG-4 1080p/24 encoding as the previous Blu-ray release and it looks just as good. From the opening sequences in grainy black and white to the lushly saturated hues of the scenes filmed in the Bahamas, the transfer looks spectacular. Though sometimes the contrast is a little hot, that is down to filmmaker's artistic intent.
The black levels and shadow detail are superb and the encoding displays absolutely no artifacts, leaving nothing but pure, fine detail and a completely film-like presentation. The film's climax underwater shows no macroblocking, and when there is so much water involved without macroblocking that's always a sign of a good encoding.
Casino Royale 1967 Blu-ray Review
The SoundFor this release Sony switched from an uncompressed PCM 5.1 (48kHz/16-bit) soundtrack to a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) losslessly encoded mix, which should theoretically result in better sound quality because of the increased bit-depth. However, they have also added +4db of DialNorm (Dialog Normalization) to the TrueHD mix and, to my ears, the new TrueHD mix sounded slightly less dynamic than the PCM. I discovered, however, that on my Onkyo TX-SR805 A/V receiver, TrueHD with DialNorm defaults the 'Late Night' mode (dynamic range compression) to 'Auto', when normally I have it set to off. So, I turned 'Late Night Mode' off and listened again, comparing the two releases, and they sounded nearly identical.
Casino Royale has a lively mix, whether it's PCM or TrueHD. Its low frequency extension is superb. The opening scenes in Madagascar at the embassy when Bond blows up the propane tanks are thunderous, as is the scene where he rolls the Aston Martin over. Engines roar, bullets fly directionally -- it's brilliantly designed. The one flaw I find with Casino Royale's sound is a slightly tweaked high end that can sometimes sound brittle and grating during some of the more active scenes, but otherwise it's flawless. Dialogue is clear, the surround channels are lush with reverberation and atmospheric sound effects and the score sounds expansive and robust.
There is also a French Dolby TrueHD 5.1 dubbed version of the soundtrack offered as an option, mais ça, ce n'est pas pour moi.
The Extras
There is one reason and one reason alone to repurchase Casino Royale on Blu-ray Disc this early and it is for all the extras that Sony loaded onto this so-called 'Collector's Edition.' The question is, is it worth it? All supplemental materials offered up are rendered in 1080p/24 high definition except the Bond Girls are Forever featurette and Chris Cornell music video. Although the extras provided do give a detailed history of the long and convoluted road to this authentic cinematic rendition of Ian Fleming's original literary vision, I am hard pressed to say that this release is worth purchasing if you already own the previous version of Casino Royale on BD.
The extras available on this release are:
Disc 1:
- BD-Live -- This is the first BD-Live enabled Sony title I have come across that actually offers some material relevant to the title. In addition to their typical previews and trailers of upcoming Sony films and Blu-ray releases, Sony offers sneak peeks of Quantum of Solace, the forthcoming 007 film, via BD-Live in both SD or HD versions:
- Start of Shooting
- Locations
- Meet the New Bond Girl -- Olga Kurylenko
- Director Mark Forster
- Picture-in-Picture Commentary with director Martin Campbell and Producer Michael G. Wilson --- This BonusView (Profile 1.1) commentary offers the usual relevant commentary and anecdotes from the filmmakers as well as some behind-the-scenes visuals of the production.
- Crew Commentary
- Know Your Double-0: The Ultimate James Bond Trivia Quiz -- This is a BD-Java based trivia game. Players can select single player or multi-player games of 10, 15, or 20 questions. The object is to answer the multiple-choice questions about James Bond before the time runs out. Some questions come with visual clues from Casino Royale.
- Previews (high definition):
- Hancock
- 21
- Vantage Point
- Coming to Blu-ray
- Deleted Scenes (2.35:1/high definition/MPEG-2/Dolby Digital 5.1) -- Four deleted scenes:
- Rescue and Recovery -- This scene picks up after the infamous torture scene and shows Bond being rescued and rushed to the hospital.
- Squandering Government Funds
- Gettler Raises Bond's Suspicions
- The Road to Casino Royale (1.78:1/1080p) -- This nearly 30-minute long featurette details the long and winding journey that Ian Flemming's novel Casino Royale has taken over the years. From its first screen adaptation for US television on CBS' Climax series in the 50s with the lead character renamed 'Jimmy Bond' through the spy-spoof theatrical version starring Peter Sellers created in 1967, Casino Royale has changed hands many times and been the subject of legal disputes.
- Ian Flemming's Incredible Creation (1.78:1/1080p) -- In this featurette, the James Bond phenomenon is examined and how Ian Flemming came to create the character is explored.
- James Bond in the Bahamas (1.78:1/1080p) -- For Casino Royale, the James Bond crew returned to one of the favorite locations for the 007 series, The Bahamas. Many locations used in Casino Royale were used in the previous Bond films Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only and The World is Not enough.
- Ian Flemming: The Secret Road to Paradise (1.78:1/1080p) -- This featurette looks at Ian Flemming's life on Paradise Island, The Bahamas.
- Death in Venice (1.78:1/1080p) -- A look at filming on-location in Venice for the film's dénouement.
- Becoming Bond (1.78:1/1080p) -- This looks at the journey to choosing Daniel Craig as the 6th actor to play James Bond.
- James Bond: For Real (1.78:1/1080p) -- In this featurette the film's special effects crew discuss filming the opening action sequences and the desire of producers to move away from much of the CG visual effects employed in more recent Bond productions towards using more practical effects in Casino Royale.
- Bond Girls are Forever (2006) (4:3/standard definition) -- This featurette narrated by past Bind girl Maryam D'Abo is all about the women of the James Bond films.
- The Art of Freerun (1.78:1/1080p) -- This is all about Sebastien Foucan, the inventor of Freerunning, which is featured in Casino Royale's opening action sequences in Madagascar.
- Catching a Plane: From Storyboard to Screen (1.78:1/1080p) -- This is a behind-the-scenes look at the storyboarding process for the big scene where James Bond must stop a terrorist from blowing up an airplane at the airport.
- Storyboard Sequence: Freerun Chase -- View the storyboard sketches for the Freerun Chase scene. Viewers can optionally select the sketches alone or a storyboard-to-film comparison.
- Filmmaker Profiles (1.78:1/1080p) -- Profiles of the director, producers and crew.
- Chris Cornell Music Video (4:3/standard definition) -- 'You Know My Name'
Final Thoughts
Casino Royale Collector's Edition is hardly worth a double-dip if you've already purchased the original Blu-ray release of this film. For anyone who missed this release the first time around, however, I say dive in. Casino Royale is one of the best Bond films to come around in decades and the video transfer and audio mix from Sony are true reference quality all the way.
Casino Royale Blu Ray Cover
Where to Buy
Product Details
- Actors: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench
- Audio/Languages: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1, French Dolby TrueHD 5.1.
- Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
- Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
- Number of discs: 2
- Rating: PG-13
- Studio: Sony Pictures
- Blu-ray Disc Release Date: October 21, 2008
- Run Time: 144 minutes
- List Price: $38.96
- Extras:
- Disc 1:
- New BonusView Picture-in-Picture Visual Commentary with Director and Producer
- Crew Commentary
- Blu-ray Exclusive: Know Your Double-0: The Ultimate James Bind Trivia Quiz
- BD-Live Enabled
- Disc 2:
- Never-Before-Seen Deleted Scenes
- The Road to Casino Royale
- Ian Flemming's Incredible Creation
- James Bond in the Bahamas
- Ian Flemming: The Secret Road to Paradise
- Death in Venice
- Becoming
- Bond Documentary
- James Bond: For Real Documentary
- Bond Girls Are Forever (2006)
- The Art of the Freerun
- Catching a Plane: From Storyboard to Screen
- Storyboard Sequence -- Freerun Chase
- Filmmaker Profiles
- Music Video: Chris Cornell 'You Know My Name'
- Disc 1:
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