#mediatwin

With the COMING ATTRACTIONS feature, I like to showcase the very best in movie trailers past and present.

This time around - well - not so much.

The announcement this week of SKYFALL, the new James Bond film, prompted this rather self-indulgent entry. Now, MOONRAKER isn't often to be found at the top of those "best Bond movies" lists. In fact, it's often cited as the worst 007 film (to which I say - have you never seen A VIEW TO A KILL?). Curiously, it wasn't meant to be the 11th Bond movie. At the end of its credits, its predecessor, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, promised that 007 would return in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. The success of a little film called STAR WARS prompted a rapid change in direction and soon EON Productions was jumping on the cantina band wagon and launching the star of the franchise skyward.

The teaser trailer for MOONRAKER was a neat parody of commercials. For years, it remained frustratingly hard to find but has recently surfaced again on YouTube. The quality isn't great but you'll get the idea:

Immediately prior to the film's release, the official trailer was launched. Clearly, all the imaginative effort was used up on the teaser. This version takes the lazy option: want to see MOONRAKER but only have four minutes to spare? Then just watch this trailer - it's a compression of the film with the talky bits taken out. Hardly a shining example of how to craft a trailer but from the opening shot of a space shuttle scored with Brazilian beats, it's undeniably exciting:

As a 14 year old kid in 1979, this trailer ticked all the boxes for me. OO7? Check. Outer space? Check. Big action setpieces? Check. Good-looking girls in short skirts? Where do I buy my ticket? Thirty-odd years on, I've become more critical and can see the many flaws in MOONRAKER. Then again, I'll argue there's a lot to still enjoy in the movie. There are Ken Adams' brilliantly OTT sets, Derek Meddings' crisp special effects and John Barry's atmospheric score.

From the start, The Black Hole was designed to be a game-changer for Disney. The ripples from the splash Star Wars had made at the box-office reached the boardroom in Sleeping Beauty's castle and the Disney executives were determined to get in on the action. With actors Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins and Robert Forster onboard, The Black Hole had a far from traditional Disneyesque cast. Disney had such faith in the film's potential that it put it in direct competition with the highly-anticipated Star Trek -The Motion Picture, which was opening at the same time - Christmas 1979.

For the music, they turned to a seasoned professional. John Barry had already gone into space that year with his score for Moonraker; the music he composed for The Black Hole is even better. It begins with the anthemic "Overture", played before the opening credits, like the old roadshow presentations. We then go into the sweeping, circling "Main Title", with Barry's trademark strings in full effect:

This tone is kept through the score - there are no "cute" themes for the robots, none of the chirpy melodies that would have usually been expected in a Disney release. It's powerful, stirring music, often raising the film from the numerous stumbling blocks of its plot and script.

Full disclosure: The Black Hole was the first film soundtrack I ever owned. By the time I was given the album as a Christmas present, I had already seen the film a couple of times. Thanks to continuous performances and the unallocated cinema seating of those days, I was able to duck down and sit through an additional performance, seeing in twice in one afternoon. From these viewings,I soon realised its faults - those stupid Mickey Mouse-eyed robots, the often risible dialogue and a climax that wanted to be Kubrickian in scope and meaning but failing completely. I also knew what was good about it - the production design, the special effects, Maximilian the robot... and the music.

The soundtrack I was given back in '79 had only ten tracks on it and was deleted a few months later.. An appearance on CD has been one of the most hoped-for releases amongst soundtrack afficienados and Walt Disney Records/Intrada have pulled out all the stops. As well as the ten cues from the original album, there are now an additional 14 tracks. Jeff Bond provides extensive liner notes on the making of the film and the various music cues. There's also some rare photographs of the recording sessions and Barry conducting the orchestra. Finally, producer Randy Thornton supplies a fascinating description on how the music was remastered for CD. The Black Hole boasted the first digitally recorded soundtrack in film history and, although the master tapes still existed in the Disney vault, finding the right equipment to play them on proved surprisingly difficult. The hard work has paid off - The Black Hole sounds terrific, immaculately produced and an essential purchase for any fan of Barry's or film music in general.

  With the sad passing of John Barry earlier this year, releasing one of his most-requested film works is only fitting. It's particularly welcome that his score for The Black Hole has been given such a respectful and thorough presentation. 

The 1980 film version of Clive Cussler's best-selling novel Raise The Titanic fails for many reasons - the weak script, the lacklustre direction, the lifeless acting. Despite its failings, I've always had a fascination with the huge model liner they built for the climactic sequence where the Titanic breaks through the surface of the ocean like a rocket.

Water (along with fire) has always been the perennial enemy of miniature special effects. It refuses to reduce in scale with the model, so no matter how finely detailed the miniature is, the realism of the sequence is undermined by the water. One way to address the problem is to build as big a miniature as you can afford - this was the route taken by the special effects team on Raise The Atlantic, which had a suitably blockbuster budget. They created a massive 55 foot replica of the original liner, with a slavish attention to detail that pushed the cost of construction to more than $3m over the price of the original (and full-sized) ship. It was then installed in a specially built 350 ft wide by 35 ft deep water tank in Malta, at a cost of an additional $2m.

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The shots of it emerging from the north Atlantic in the finished film are very impressive, although the "scale of water" problem still wasn't successfully defeated. The film itself had a disasterous showing at the global box-office, making far less than the budget spent on making it. The model was subsequently used in a couple of other productions but now lies derelict at the studio facility in Malta, rusted and broken beyond repair. The water tank itself has proved far more durable and is frequently used as a location and for special effects work by films, TV shows and commercials.

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