Director Sam Mendes and screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan have done a very wily thing for James Bond's 50th anniversary: They've given 007 a midlife crisis. The trauma takes root during the white-knuckle opening of Skyfall, the best film so far of Daniel Craig's run as Ian Fleming's suave super spy and one of the best of the Bond franchise. more »
Perhaps all of the hoopla surrounding the upcoming James Bond installment Skyfall has created a bubble for all things 007, or this little piece of pop culture is really worth the thousands it recently fetched from its lucky buyer. The swimming trunks Daniel Craig wore as Bond in his first stint as the sexy agent in Casino Royale sold at auction for almost $72,000 at a charity auction in London. Judi Dench's comments on the cleanliness of the shorts may have also triggered a jump in the price.
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So maybe Daniel Craig lost last night's SNL spotlight to Big Bird. He still held his own and promoted Skyfall with fun little riffs on his James Bond persona, starting with his opening monologue — an Oscars-style In Memoriam tribute to all the poor guys he's killed over the years while dutifully serving as Hollywood's iciest action hero.
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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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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 »
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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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.
I'm going to need more than one martini — Ketel One, straight up, lots of olives — to swallow this ad. Daniel Craig appears with Bond Girl Berenice Marlowe in a new Heineken ad tied to the release of the upcoming 007 feature, Skyfall. Craig's brief appearances book-end the commercial and martini lovers will find some consolation in the fact that he doesn't actually drink from the bottle of Heineken that he orders in the clip. more »
Two very different posters emerged for November's release of the 23rd James Bond installment, Skyfall. In one, current Bond incarnation Daniel Craig looks the upright perfectly dressed 007. Sure he has a gun, but he holds it more like a martini as he stands in perfect posture with the Union Jack and what appears to be the City of London in the background. The second one ditches the British flag for a more casual James Bond hitting the dirt in action (with blazer), with a side view of Craig pointing his pistol at an unseen assailant with large 007 emblazoned in the background.
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No stranger to James Bond himself, Sir Roger Moore said he thinks the current man to hold the reins of 007, Daniel Craig, is the best actor to play the eternally debonaire British secret service agent. Eighty-four year-old Moore, who played Bond in seven films between 1973 and 1985 gave kudos to Craig's performance in his new book, Bond on Bond.
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James Bond added another leading lady under his belt after he teamed up with none other than Queen Elizabeth II in a sketch for the opening night of the Olympics in London (with what looked like Her Majesty jumping out of a plane with the eternal superstar agent). Most certainly not quite how it happened, but nevertheless a significant royal boost for 007 ahead of his next adventure. The new international trailer of Skyfall promises more action and intrigue - and of course he's once again ready for the fight, tux in tow.
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If Queen Elizabeth ever tires of the throne, she has a future in acting. Filmmaker Danny Boyle, who directed an inspired and beautifully surreal opening ceremony for the XXX Olympiad in London, told NBC's Meredith Vieira that the Royal was "a good actor" for her pre-recorded segment with current James Bond Daniel Craig. more »
Daniel Craig was at Her Majesty's Service for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. The James Bond franchise's latest 007 appeared with Queen Elizabeth and her Corgis in a pre-recorded skit that had the secret agent and the queen meeting in Buckingham Palace. more »
There could be a new cold-blooded young buck waiting in the wings to play 007 if and when Daniel Craig is over his stint in the role. Heartthrob Robert Pattinson is eyeing the future post-Twilight and has dabbled recently with roles in Bel Ami (which didn't do so spectacularly at the box office) and Cosmopolis which opens in the U.S. next month, but failed to whip up a frenzy in Canada where it opened last month. Still, the dashing actor packs some fan-base mojo and James Bond could be a place down the line and the actor has taken a peek.
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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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