SPECTRE (2015)

"Information is all, is it not?"" 

Ok, perhaps this isn't quite as good as its predecessor, but that's a very high bar, and this is nevertheless a fine Bond film. And a highly satisfying payoff to all the long-running plot threads that have been playing out since Casino Royale. Needless to say... spoilers!

It's a huge thrill to see Bond, gone just rogue enough, chasing all the pre-existing clues to an organisation that was always going to be SPECTRE, and an end of level boss, played superbly as always by Christoph Waltz, who was always going to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The backstory is nice, though, with "Blofeld" being Bond;s childhood stepbrother who regards him as a "cuckoo". The fact that his mother's maiden name happens to be Blofeld does, admittedly, feel a little forced... but, dammit, rule of cool.

The set pieces are awesome, right from the start with the Day of the Dead in Mexico City, right through Bond's infiltration of the mysterious organisation's headquarters in Rome through to the final showdown with "Blofeld". Andrew Scott's secondary, bureaucratic baddie ("C"... yes, I get the allusion!) is fun. And there is, of course, a very real subtext to it all with us all merrily handing over our personal data to those evil, MAGA-loving tech bros. In the real world, sadly, there's no 007 to save us from our fate.

The ending is, with the very obvious difference that Madeleine gets to live, somewhat redolent of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Bond falling in love and choosing love over the job. But, of course, there's one more film of this era to go. If it's anywhere near as good as this, I can't wait.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King (Dominic Cooke, 2026)

The play is still (just!) on at the RSC in Stratford, and playgoers are being asked to keep schtum about the plot, the staging and all things potentially spoilerific, albeit not for very much longer. This, of course, presents an interesting challenge when writing a blog post about it, but it's the sort of challenge that I'm minded to accept, so here goes...

My very lovely fiancee and I, courtesy of her very generous dad, found ourselves in the best seats imaginable when watching the play last night. Whilst I'll say nothing of the details, the staging is creative and brilliant. The script and story, too, are superb, very Game of Thrones. The story, as one might guess, deals with the late reign of Aerys II Targaryen, but more than that I won't say, except that both the plot and the characterisation are deeply satisfying. The worldbuilding is, of course, also satisfying, but at its core this is a very human play that is absolutely about human emotions, relationships, choices and free will. 

One spoiler-free way to praise the play is to say that, yes, the cast is large, but it doesn't feel that way at all.