I haven't got around to working on my next BlogalongaBond piece looking at Bond scores, but word this week that Thomas Newman could be picking up David Arnold's baton to provide the soundtrack to Bond 23, aka Skyfall, got my mind racing.

Thomas Newman? A Bond score? Thomas-American-Beauty-Newman? The guy most widely known for Any Other Name, a piece that showcases both his tinkling piano melodies and die-hard love of the vibraphone? 

It's a pretty clear indicator that Sam Mendes is making himself at home in the director's chair - after five Bond films on the trot, it takes a lot to remove David Arnold from scoring duties.

Newman, presuming he does get the job (likely, given his previous collaborations on all of Mendes' work, except for Away We Go), would be the *counts quickly on fingers* ninth person to compose Bond music. John Barry, of course, led the way, arranging Monty Norman's guitar-twanging theme for Dr. No and defining the franchise's sound. George Martin, Marvin Hamlisch and Bill Conti all tried to fill his shoes with varying pop-tinged, electro-scores that never quite fitted the bill. (The opening of For Your Eyes Only is enough to make your ears cringe like a young woman being kissed by Roger Moore.) Michael Kamen warmed down from Die Hard with some typically excellent work, while Eric Serra's Goldeneye soundtrack... erm, yeah. That also exists.

So is Newman better suited to the task? A quick listen to one of his tunes from American Beauty (Dead Already) doesn't raise hopes:

But one quick change to that riff and things are starting to sound like they're on the right track...

With Naomie Harris flying around t'internet as a strong candidate for the next Bond Girl, I think we've all forgotten about the real 007 campaign that needs our support as Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig prepare for Bond 23.

That's right, I'm talking about James Bond. And X-Men: First Class. And a certain sexy someone with two legs and one hell of an arse. No, not January Jones.

FASSBENDER FOR BOND GIRL 

If we can't get him in that tux, I'll gladly take him in a dress. Or out of a dress for that matter.

The MGM bankruptcy saga continues with a new twist in the tale: an Indian company is looking to buy them out. With calls for Michael Moore to come in and explain the facts and figures long since past, the latest developmentcomes after a deadline offered to other studios has passed with no results.

Lionsgate and Spyglass were told to have their deals on the table by Wednesday 15th of September. But rather than announce a restructure of MGM involving either of the two bidders, Sahara India Pariwar have instead walked in with a figure of $2 billion.

MGM is currently in debt to 140 odd individuals, totalling about $4 billion. There's no sign of MGM being massively eager to sell their massive catalogue of American cinema to a foreign conglomerate, who say that film and TV fall within their business remit. Then again, there's no sign of anything else happening with US companies either.

So for the moment (even with Ian McKellen's hopeful claims that shooting will start in January) we've still got no hope of seeing The Hobbit or Sam Mendes' Bond film any time soon. There must be a resolution to this at some point in the near future. Who else is willing to stump up some cash to help MGM out of this hole? I can donate about £5.

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (long-term writers for the James Bond series) have been left in the lurch since MGM's financial crisis has stalled 007's return. But the screenwriting duo have already got themselves another script to play with. One that involves terrorism, energy conspiracies and African tribes - business as usual, then.

Producers Michael Lieber and Walter Parkes thought up the basic plot, which involves West Africa's Taureg tribes, who live in a Uranium-rich area. Which obviously gets a lot interest from both major energy corporations and terrorist folks.

Into the fray steps an American anthropologist, who's trying to reach a former research subject in the Sahara, who is trapped by terrorists. Parkes explains the concept: "At its heart, this is an action movie set within a world that is morally complex, alluring and completely real - which is why Robert and Neal, whose work spans James Bond to John Le Carre, are uniquely suited to bring a project like this to life."

Before becoming a producer, Parkes was in anthropologist who spent time in Africa, so presumably the screenplay will be pretty accurate. Either way, it's nice to Purvis and Wade still in work. Even if they did write Die Another Day and Plunkett and Macleane.

Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine
Certificate: 12A
Trailers/Clips

So it's a masterpiece. Right? Right. Ok, that's the hype dealt with - the director easily meets it. It's hard to think of many film-makers who could pull off a twisting tale of dreams-within-dreams. It's even harder to name people who would think to do it in the first place. Inception is a bold concept, deftly woven into a thrilling tale, and cleverly wrapped up as a summer blockbuster. It succeeds on every one of those levels.