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The Behind the Scenes Pic of the Day was counting on you being an insubordinate bastard, Palmer.
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s Behind the Scenes Pic!
Early on in Michael Caine’s career he got the offer of a lifetime. Harry Saltzman helped launch the James Bond series and decided he wanted to take another popular spy book series and bring them to the silver screen. The character was Harry Palmer and the movie was The Ipcress File. Imagine Michael Caine’s elation at being essentially the new James Bond!
While successful, the Harry Palmer films never quite caught on like the Bond films did, but they’re really damn good, especially Ipcress, which has some legitimately stressful torture sequences. Caine is brilliant, as usual. Young Caine had the swagger and the cool to pull off the character. Hell, he even looked great in those thick-rimmed glasses!
If you’ve never seen any of the Harry Palmer films make sure to start with the one featured today, The Ipcress File… I’m also particularly fond of the weird sci-fi craziness of The Billion Dollar Brain.
Anyway, here’s Caine on the set of The Ipcress File. Thanks to Pat Barnett for sending it along!
If you have a behind the scenes shot you’d like to submit to this column, you can email me at quint@aintitcool.com.
Tomorrow’s pic is out to get you and might share something in common with today’s pic.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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Click here to visit the complete compilation of previous Behind the Scenes images, Page Two
Readers Talkback
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Thanks Quint...on the "To watch" list.
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Caine!
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oh well
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that he wore as Austin's dad in "Goldmember"?
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May 1, 2012, 5:36 p.m. CST
Veru few people can rock those British National Health Service glasses
by mdk
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmloIFVceeU
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Classic Caine
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"Funeral in Berlin" was one of the best Cold War movies I have ever seen. "Ipcress File" was good but a little too 60s psychedelic. It seems the plot from an Avengers episode mashed into a good spy story. . But, .... The Billion Dollar Brain was the biggest piece of crap it has ever been my misfortune to see. I wish I had seen it on Mystery 3000. The film is so cliqued and over the top Austin Powers would be ashamed by it.
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...and I would walk 500 miles...
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..Hey thanks for thinking about it though.
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May 1, 2012, 6:27 p.m. CST
Ipcress File is interesting in that he is more like
by Bedknobs and Boomsticks
a real spy, than an ass-kicking assassin adventure hero.
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May 1, 2012, 6:30 p.m. CST
Hate the sequels. But the region free UK Blu-ray of The Ipcress File...
by Jay
Is one of my most cherished discs. I love that we live in a time where I can watch these wonderful, and often forgotten, movies at home through my projector, and it looks nearly as good as it did in the theaters so many years ago. And I'm so glad it wasn't DNRd or mucked with in anyway. Unlike Zulu & The Italian Job, which had the grain stripped away. How can they do that to 70mm?
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Sounds like a real wanker.
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Look like people who wear thick-rimmed glasses.
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A refreshing mix of lemonade and spody.
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As people are mentioning, stylistically they're very different. Ipcress is serious with some psychedelic elements. Funeral In Berlin is a straight spy story; to this day it has one of the most complicated plots I've ever seen that still holds together and plays fair; that's a compliment. The Billion Dollar Brain is a total acid trip. They have to be taken on their own terms, but I think all three are wonderful.
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but on the bright side. new movie to check out. love caine, and i've never heard of this.
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Great movie, absolutely great.
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May 1, 2012, 11:20 p.m. CST
QUINT, when do we hear the results of Cabin in the Woods contest?
by Donald Trump
i wanna know how close I got to winning!
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was so good; Ill always remember him in Zulu as the Sgt Major and in Jason and the Argonauts. Read someplace he killed himself in the early 70's.
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May 2, 2012, 12:26 a.m. CST
Coincidentally, I'm reading his autobiography (first one)...
by The Bear
He talks about how strange he thought it that the director of "Ipcress File" kept directing with objects in the foreground. And that there was grave concern that if the spy, Harry Palmer, was seen on screen cooking for his date, he would be mistaken for gay. (Some Fifties bias bleeding into the Sixties, I guess.) For "Funeral in Berlin," they filmed near the Berlin Wall, and the damned East Germans kept shining reflected light into their camera so they couldn't get the shots. For "Billion Dollar Brain" (with a tiny, early part for Donald Sutherland in the control room), he mentions how the sets and their scenes kept sinking as the "frozen" lake they filmed on began to melt. Very entertaining autobiography, by the way. Plenty of humor and behind-the-scenes stuff.
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Make sure you get his recent follow up when you're done. Audiobook is even better with Caine reading it himself.
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...was by John Barry and possibly one of the most atmospheric pieces of music for a film ever, superb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCqP7R42K0 It was the antithesis of Bond. In the opening sequence Palmer is making breakfast and choosing horses to bet on in 'The Sun'! If you like The Ipcress File check out The Quiller Memorandum for cold war goodness or the theme to Get Carter by Roy Budd: http://youtu.be/YRZwcw9R6x8
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May 2, 2012, 5:41 a.m. CST
I just watched THE MAGUS on the weekend with a young Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn & Candace Bergen
by Rebel Scumb
really weird movie
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Love this film - the music, cast and photography are excellent. Funeral in Berlin was good too but a bit more down to earth style wise (Harry Saltzman hated Sidney Furie's use of strange camera angles) and Billion Dollar Brain was mad fun but what do you expect with Ken Russell trying to do a Bond type movie? Apart from a small role for Donald Sutherland (who in a few years would be sharing billing with Caine in The Eagle Has Landed) it also has Susan George as a girl on a train. Tomorrow is either Get Carter or that bloody awful Jaws movie Caine did.
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Worth it just for the terrific opening montage. Starts with scenes of happy, busy people in the bustling, 'modern', rebuilt West Berlin, then segues to the still-wrecked, wretched East Berlin with the trigger-happy guards along the barbed wire-topped Berlin Wall. Nearly jerked neurons loose taking in the startling change from one to the other. And the change in soundtrack was just as effectively jarring.
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inquiring minds wanna know
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The Ipcress File and Funeral In Berlin work well together but Billion Dollar Brain is a bit of a freak and is definately the weakest of the three ,there were also two later films in the 90s starring Caine as Palmer ..Midnight in Saint Petersburg and Bullet To Beijing but both of them had more of a TV feel to them and seemed out of character to the earlier films...
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This sounds like a Harry Potter novel.
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May 2, 2012, 10:35 a.m. CST
"Billion Dollar Brain" !! Harry Palmer goes Ken Russell crazy!!!
by darthliquidator
Nothing...but nothing equals Ken's screwball climax,a wacky tribute to "Alexander Nevsky", in which a crazed right-wing Texas loon (Ed Begley) and his private army try to invade Russia by driving tanker trucks and snowmobiles across a thin-iced frozen lake......Ken Russell must have been out of his mind...a Texas wacko invading a country just for the sheer hell of it?? I mean..come on...who's ever going to believe that crap?
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May 2, 2012, 10:36 a.m. CST
Anyone see The Trip with Steve Coogan and his pal doing dueling Michael Caines? Looks hilarious.
by openthepodbaydoorshal
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I ain't goin with Windows.
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May 2, 2012, 11:50 a.m. CST
Was all Bond growing up, so never actually viewed an entire Harry Palmer (hairy palmer?! Can't believe I never noticed the masturbation reference before..)
by openthepodbaydoorshal
But I remember them being very noirish, as opposed to the rather straight forward Bonds.
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Saw it in the theater last year. It was hilarious if you really liked the clip of them doing the Michael Caine impressions. The other guy, Rob Brydon, spends most of his time doing Caine or Pacino. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It gets surprisingly dark at times though. If you like Michael Winterbottom's movies, you'll probably dig The Trip.
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May 2, 2012, 1:04 p.m. CST
senatorjeffersonsmith - thanks, I'll check it on video.
by openthepodbaydoorshal
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why are you telling these assholes about them?
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