Alluring. International. Deadly. The so-called Bond Girls are, let's face it, the fetish objects the producers hope will keep us coming back to the 007 pictures. (After the watches — the sweet, sweet watches.)
While the internet is loaded with glamour shots of Bond ladies from Ursula Andress to Michelle Yeoh, these women are more than mere pin-ups. Indeed, here are some oddball facts about the women in James Bond's life that ought to do you well at a dinner party — provided, of course, that you don't order red wine with fish.
Ursula Andress, the ur-Bond Girl (and not just because it is a pun), became an instant screen icon when she emerged from the Caribbean in her white bikini holding... something, I dunno, I never focused on her hands. But did this Swiss ingenue show any gratitude to the official EON James Bond productions? No! Just a few years after her debut as Honey Ryder in Dr. No she turned around and appeared in a legal loophole “unofficial” James Bond production, 1967's Casino Royale.
Andress wasn't the only one to make a mockery of her Bond Girl status. The woman who played Tatiana Romanova in From Russia With Love, Daniela Bianchi (who came from the Russian section of Italy, apparently), took part in the mockery known as OK Connery, also known as Operation Kid Brother. In it, Neil (brother of Sean) Connery plays a spy called-up as a replacement when his big brother isn't available. The movie has never been released on DVD.
Mie Hama, who played Kissy Suzuki in You Only Live Twice, is notable for what she did before being a Bond Girl. Prior to Hama, most of the women were European models or aspiring actresses who managed to marry well. Hama was a bus conductor. I'm not even 100% sure what a bus conductor is, but I can totally picture her in her native Japan being constructive and forward in modern society. And probably wearing a sharp outfit.
I wonder how much pure willpower it takes for Daniel Craig to look as tirelessly cool and bad-ass as he does in every second so far of Skyfall, a Bond pic whose plot I have very little knowledge of despite all the ads, other than Javier Bardem is a blonde-wigged weirdo villain, 007 bags more exotic ladies in exotic locales, and he jumps onto exploding trains while nonchalantly adjusting his cufflinks. That cufflink move gets a lot of mileage. Watch two new exciting-but-not-terribly-expository spots from Skyfall and tell me I'm wrong.
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Here's a YouTube mashup that is a little too much fun to ignore: Michael Fassbender as secret agent 007 in Christopher Nolan's James Bond (as edited together by one inspired internet film enthusiast).
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Movieline caught up with the charismatic William Friedkin last weekend at the Seattle Film Festival, where the Exorcist/French Connection director received a Lifetime Achievement award and screened his brutal Southern-fried potboiler Killer Joe. Before he held court keeping a packed audience rapt with tales from his nearly five-decade career in film (highlights below), Friedkin stopped to discuss two of the topics he’s wrestling with these days: His legal battle to win back the rights to his 1977 pic Sorcerer, and the absurdity of the MPAA, which anointed Killer Joe with an NC-17 rating.
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Get excited for the first teaser for Skyfall, which steps beyond gay-travel-brochure stylings, Heineken gambits, and Photoshop banalities into a more conventional realm of 007 viral marketing. To wit: Daniel Craig, working his wounded, blue-eyed magic as the world's most tormented superspy. Things are getting dark around here! Which doesn't mean we can't have a little fun — at least visually, right?
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While the first trailer for James Bond pic Skyfall won't hit until next week (!), official site 007.com has a treat in the form of a teaser poster for the November release. And while there's precious little to glean from the black and white composition, there's something surprisingly compelling in the simplicity of Daniel Craig, front and center, striding towards us from inside the Bond gun barrel.
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Not this again: "The eye behind such films as No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James, [Roger] Deakins takes Bond into the digital age. Mendes promises his darker tone will bleed directly over to the physical look of the movie. 'I've worked with Roger twice [on Jarhead and Revolutionary Road], so I feel very comfortable in that relationship. There's a shorthand. You look at each other and know what you're thinking. He's a true artist. Right from the start of directing, I realized the most important two relationships were with my leading actors and the director of photography. You'll see in the teaser trailer that it has a very distinct look that does have elements of noir and British '60s. It's very English — a lot is set in England.'" [Hollywood.com]
"We have relationships with a number of companies so that we can make this movie. The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn’t do it. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it is. [...] This movie costs a lot of money to make, it costs as nearly as much again if not more to promote, so we go where we can. The great thing is that Bond is a drinker, he always has been, it’s part of who he is, rightly or wrongly, you can make your own judgment about it, having a beer is no bad thing, in the movie it just happens to be Heineken." Somewhere in Hell, Frank Booth weeps. (Link NSFW, obvs.) [Moviefone via NYT]
Honestly, I can't tell which way is up with some of the news coming out of the April Fool's Day weekend. Does James Cameron want in on a Prometheus sequel? Is the Queen collaborating with 007 for the Olympics? Surely Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels aren't seriously going to shoot the long-gestating sequel to 1994's Dumb & Dumber this fall once the Farrelly brothers are done promoting April 13's The Three Stooges, right?
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In a step up from previous Skyfall publicity memes like #Banal007 and James Bond's Big Gay Resort brochure, the Daily Mail has a glimpse at Javier Bardem in character as the film's as-yet-unnamed villain. The catch: He's in costume as a police officer. Where have we seen this before?
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Here is a new-ish 60-second bit of viral video that I wouldn't mind installed in my living room: The first minute of every James Bond film, played on one screen divided into 22 parts. You won't be able to take your eyes off it. As a bonus, find an older, longer complement that may finish the mind-blowing job commenced by the more recent video.
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The latest publicity shot to come from the Skyfall set is several steps up from the Banal 007 meme witnessed a while back, though it's still pretty banal: Daniel Craig, with his back to the lens, sits on the ledge of a pool. At night. Ripped. Part movie photo, part gay-resort brochure.
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The best-known Hollywood swordsman this side of Warren Beatty passed away on New Year's Day: Bob Anderson, an Olympic fencer who once wounded Errol Flynn on set and whose subsequent swordfight choreography spanned 60 years and such franchises as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and the James Bond series, is dead at the age of 89. Wind up your day rewatching a few of his finest battles.
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Forty years ago this Friday, United Artists released Diamonds Are Forever -- the seventh entry in the James Bond series, and one that dragged founding franchise star Sean Connery out of 007 retirement in the hopes of rinsing the bad taste that his replacement, George Lazenby, left in moviegoers' mouths in the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Connery succeeded, but only by making what remains arguably the silliest Bond film to date. Enfolding globetrotting jewel smugglers, reclusive Las Vegas casino barons, effete hit men, bikinied enforcers named after cartoons, lunar-landing conspiracy bait, cosmetically enhanced villain-doppelgangers, and more one-liners than a decade's worth of White House Correspondents Dinners, Diamonds Are Forever is campier than a dome tent and almost as vacant.
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"We're equals -- aren't we, 007?" asks the disembodied voice of Dame Judi Dench, lecturing her on-screen employee Daniel Craig in a new PSA created for International Women's Day (Tuesday, March 8). "Yet it is 2011 and a man is still likely to earn more money than a woman, even one doing the same job." And what imagery has the power to combat the litany of socioeconomic inequalities that remain between men and women in today's day and age? James Bond in drag! Because of course.
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