Onetime Bond girl Carey Lowell and Bond villain Robert Davi — respectively, Pam Bouvier and Franz Sanchez from Licence to Kill — were among the celebrities who came out to celebrate the 50th anniversary of James Bond at the EPIX and Vanity Fair-hosted premiere of Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 on Wednesday night in New York. Mr. Big was also there — not Yaphet Kotto from Live and Let Die, but rather Chris Noth from another die-hard franchise, Sex and the City. more »
In many ways, James Bond laid the template for what a modern-day action hero would look like: handsome, cool, badass, but most importantly, witty. The tradition of tough-guy one-liners may not have originated with 007, but it certainly had a good run within the franchise, and has continued to thrive across all genres of action today. Here’s some of the best of Bond’s zingers over the years.
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James Bond is not going all emo on us. In a new Vanity Fair cover story on 007 actor Daniel Craig, the actor defends the tear his character shed over the death of the girlfriend who betrayed him, and says Bond is not getting soft. “He didn’t sob. There was, like, a tear in his eye. No snot coming out of his nose, you know,” Craig says in the magazine's November issue, which is out this month. more »
The Game’s Bond. James Bond. Which means that you will be Bored. Majorly Bored. Agent 007 should be perfect video game character. “Kicking ass with the latest fun gadgets” is his actual job description. So it’s a shame that almost every Bond game sucks. Not even Blofeld got to betray Bond this many times and come back to do it again. more »
Bond villainy is demanding work. Evil genius and a lust for world domination are crucial, but future Blofelds of the world take note, a way with words — steeped in wit and curare, or whatever neurotoxin the cool kids are using these days — is essential. Given that inevitable defeat and death are occupational hazards of obsessively pursuing the world's greatest spy, one of the few ways a Bond villain to distinguish himself from the other loser Bond villains is by delivering some of the most memorable lines of the movie. Sometimes it's the little victories that count. more »
Is there a name more tattered in the annals of big-movie casting choices than George Lazenby?
Notice I say “choice” rather than “mistake,” because for all the static about the admittedly somewhat wooden Lazenby’s shortcomings, he managed to hold his own as the steady center of what James Bond fans have gradually come to recognize as one of the hidden highlights of the series, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
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Despite the silliness, sexism, and let’s face it, more than a handful of bad movies, James Bond has endured as a franchise for 50 years because deep down inside, all of us, at one time, wanted to be spies, and as anyone living vicariously through the movies knows, a good spy needs a great theme song. For better or for worse, presented below are all 22 James Bond title songs and sequences, ranked in order from worst to best. Get your martinis and Walthers ready, ladies and gentlemen…
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Almost as enduring as James Bond himself, Ernst Stavro Blofeld was a supervillain caricature even before Mike Myers turned him into Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels with a skull cap as Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers franchise. more »
In an industry where success is often measured by a movie's performance over a single (opening) weekend, the James Bond franchise is that rarest of things: a long-distance runner. At 23 movies — 22 if you don't count the independently produced Never Say Never Again — and counting, Ian Fleming's Agent 007 has managed to be mostly relevant at the box office for 50 years and, according to filmsite.org, while earning more than $1.5 billion. That's third only to, respectively, the Harry Potter and Star Wars franchises. Even more so than Bob Dylan records (especially the recent ones), Bond movies are very much products of the times in which they are released. The campy 1980s sex-fluff of the Roger Moore 007 movies would probably not fare so well were they released in today's economically fraught kill-or-be-killed world. Daniel Craig is the right Bond for this era, and, if you ask me, in a dead heat with Sean Connery for the best Bond of all time. But, actually, I'm more interested in your opinion.
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