James Bond "You Only Live Twice" on Epix, looks amazing..*

I watched the YOLT Blu-ray the other night inspired by this thread and yes it looks great! They did a very nice job. The grain mgmt. was done with TLC. This especially works fine with the optical shots.

 

YOLT is often my favorite of the Connery films because of the location and fight sequences. Having owned all the Bond films on VHS, DVD and now Blu-Ray I can say it's never looked better.

 

YOLT might have my favorite Bond theme song too. Not just because of Nancy, but for the strings as well.

 

Ah, that makes sense. Man, the 1967 Casino Royale was such a piece of crap. Even at 12, I thought, "WTF?" The only thing I really liked about it was the Burt Bacharach music.

 

That's due to mastering engineer Joe Parisella. He did excellent work for Lowry a few years ago. The MGM people also supervised and approved it, and there were months of work devoted to the dirt removal and grain reduction, particularly for the hideous opticals throughout that film. That was a heavy, heavy optical movie.

That was a beautiful arrangement, wasn't it? John Barry later said he was chagrined to discover that Nancy Sinatra couldn't sing very well, so they forced her to rehearse for two or three days and yelled at her the entire time. I think she was a wreck by the time they finished recording it, but I have to say, it's one of the best performances she ever did. The film version sounds far better than the hit single, if you asked me.

 

What does hideous opticals mean - is that lense distortion or something like that?

 

Sorry, I mean a lot of blue-screen that looks real dodgy -- lots of fringing, bad focus, tearing, looks like crap. A lot of the car driving shots are like that, and the outer space shots are very primitive, too. For its time (1967), this was a very special-effects-intensive film. There's also a ton of video monitors, which I laugh at every time I see them, because the cameras and monitors are everywhere. It's a film about a secret agent in a foreign country, and he's after bad guys who are constantly watching him on monitors, and we're watching them watching him on monitors. Start counting the monitor shots in You Only Live Twice, and you'll crack up after the first half hour.

I also love the Kobe Dock sequence where Bond throws about 119 thugs off the roof of a warehouse while running across the building, and we see the whole thing from a distance by helicopter. I think the body count in YOLT is the highest of any Bond film made up until this time, by far. As hokey and nutty as it all is, it's a fun film.

 

The soundtrack is probably my favorite Bond soundtrack - John Barry at his Bond best IMO.

 

It's a wonderfully escapist film, beautifully photographed, that certainly captured my imagination as a teenager.

The John Barry score is sublime and the Nancy Sinatra vocal just right for the mood.

To my ears the best possible mastering of this song currently alludes us on CD.

Some information I wrote a few years ago about this can be found at the very bottom of this page:
http://malonedigital.com/capsule.htm

 

It took me forever to find this link again...some good info on the recording (and drama) surrounding the theme music recording:
http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/articles/yolt_song_history.php3?t=&s=yolt&id=01583
That 45 mix sounds SO weird compared to the film version. They even double-tracked (right term?) her vocals!

Also, I was very impressed with the transfer and cleanup of this title, but it WAS a bit surprising to see some fairly large scratches running through the footage during Chapter 16 in the "Little Nellie" sequence (first big one was when the engine starts (00:54:00 and again at 00:54:36) and sprinkled here and there during the flying sequences. Not a big deal, but it was so weird to see ANY scratches in the middle of such a great transfer.

 

I mostly agree with you about the action and chase favourable 2.35:1 aspect ratio but the only thing I've ever seen move horizontally after going over a cliff was Wile E. Coyote, and even he succumbed to the vertical imperative of gravity after a moment of terrible realisation.

 

Definitely a Top Five Bond song and the string motif a Top Five Bond hook. Nancy certainly sounds tentative, and I wish they kept the big hook motif on the strings rather than the fuzzy-guitar-crossed-with-a-harmonica sound that shrouds NS's voice.

 

Thanks for the link. I really detest that 45 version. It was like someone said, let's add more strings, yea! OK, now let's add a huge choir! Yea! Well, now we need to double track her vocal. Great! Now this sounds like a Vicki Carr single! Great stuff!
like Lou Reed's character in One Trick Pony...............

 

I don 't remember the single being a hit. I think it barely got played here in the Bay Area. The film version is definitely better. Unlike Goldfinger where I much prefer Shirley Bassey's vocal on the single to the film version.

 

#44 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June of 1967, which isn't bad. It got some airplay on the local Top 40 station where I lived in Tampa, so it wasn't exactly a flop... though it wasn't nearly the hit that "View to a Kill," "Nobody Does It Better," or "Live and Let Die" were. "Goldfinger" only made it to #8, but I remember it as a huge, huge hit for 1965.

That is a weird kind of sound, but you know, I've been so used to it for 37 years, I just consider it to be part of the song. I seem to recall John Barry said that Ms. Sinatra's vibratto was very week, and he forced her to work with a vocal coach for several days before he felt she was ready to come in to the studio. I think the work was worth it, and it's one of the best songs she ever did.

I don't know what the story was there. You'd think this could've been cleaned up better, but I suspect they just ran out of time and money. What I have seen happen is they throw about 100 artists at shots like this and have them work about three days, and usually they can push the pixels around to the point where the scratches are completely eliminated. They basically use good pixels to cover up bad ones, "coloring in" the scratch with information on either side. Why this wasn't done in this case is a mystery, but this transfer happened 8-9 years ago, and most of the people involved have left the company now.

 

The only one better was On her Majesty's Secret Service, which is a terrific soundtrack. The expanded version they released about 10 years ago on CD brought back in another 20-25 minutes of great tracks.

Absolutely true. I think the film version is better, but it's much different than the single. It's interesting to note why she had to re-record it, and my guess is that UA Records wouldn't make a deal with Reprise (or vice-versa). I assume the film version was recorded first in England, produced and arranged by John Barry.

 

Man, all this talk about the title track to You Only Live Twice, suddenly makes me feel like sharing this: A photo of Nancy Sinatra recording said title track in May of 1967.

 

YOLT features one of my all time favorite fight sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BvOlwTuZxQA

Crazy editing; swords, flips; tumbles; chairs, couches and even 007 himself being tossed across the room.
This fight has it all.

 

Possibly my favorite Bond theme ever. Great score.

 

I read on Wikipedia that Barry had to cobble together Nancy's performance from 25 different takes. Which seems a little hard to believe to me - that's a lot of tape cutting.

 

It's possible.

 

Naaaa, she died of heart failure in the hospital. I was out of town at the time.

I gotta admit, people tend to believe too much stuff on Wikipedia, and more than a little of it is made up (or at least it's opinion). The best thing I can see about it is when somebody at least provides footnotes and references so you can kind of do the research for yourself and determine what the truth is.

BTW, the Wikipedia entry for You Only Live Twice is pretty good. They note what I remember: that the movie version of the Nancy Sinatra title song did get some radio airplay (contrary to the Billboard catalogue entry).

 

Memories fade and a good story is always compelling, however the two engineers that recorded the classic John Barry Bond scores certainly told me (about 10 years ago for a book I was/am working on) that the YOLT vocal required many takes to secure enough material for editing.