December 29, 2009 - by ScreenRant.com
Actor James McAvoy is being pursued to play legendary author Ian Fleming. The project, currently being referred to as simply Ian Fleming, is being developed by both Palmstar Entertainment and Animus Films. McAvoy is attached to the lead role, and the film will reportedly focus specifically on the years of Fleming’s life in which he got the inspiration to create the James Bond character.
Fleming’s life is prime material for a biopic: Years before creating Bond, Fleming struggled under the shadow of his family name (his father was a member of parliament, and others in his family – namely his brother, Peter – were really affluent), while Ian himself was little more than an “aimless playboy.” That was up until his experience in WWII changed his life, and it was those experiences that inspired the character of James Bond. Supposedly the character was, at least in part, based on Fleming.
The biopic – which has financing in the amount of around $40 million – will be based on the book, Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond by author Andrew Lycett.
A better title would be THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TYPEWRITER.
August 9, 2009 - by Stuart Basinger
Robert Dix may not be a name that stands out among the many actors who played in Bond films but that really does not matter. What really matters is the life and careers of both his and his father, Richard Dix, now revealed in a new book titled: "OUT OF HOLLYWOOD".
Richard Dix was a famous actor from the 1920s through the 1940s and a personal favorite of Roger Moore's mother (see the Live and Let Die DVD special features) who would take young Roger to see those movies at their local British cinema.
Dix starred in numerous films including the Academy Award for Best Picture "Cimarron" in 1931. Towards the end of his career he would star in The Whistler series.
Dix's son Bob met Roger Moore, while both were under contract at MGM Studios, in the 1950s and the two would become lifelong friends. In fact, it was Roger's suggestion that Bob ended up playing the ill-fated second victim to Dr. Kananga's crime syndicate on the streets of New Orleans.
Stuart Basinger and Robert Dix in 2008
Now the book has received a major endorsement from Sir Roger himself. He wrote:
You can order OUT OF HOLLYWOOD by clicking your mouse on this link. Cost for shipping Internationally will be substantially higher plus the price of the book, $24.95. Paypal is accepted.
July 3, 2009 - by Matthew Moore for The
Telegraph
Fabergé has won the right to sell a "From Russia With Love" jewellery range, after a legal battle with the James Bond copyright holders. The firm hoped to use the title of the 1963 Bond film, which starred Sean Connery as 007, to highlight its Russian roots in a new marketing campaign.
The British quad version of the 1963 movie poster
But the trademark application was challenged by Danjaq Ltd, which owns the copyright for all the James Bond films. It claimed that shoppers would presume that the jewellery was official Bond merchandise, and said that the application undermined its own From Russia With Love computer games trademark.
Now the International Property Office (IPO) has ruled that Fabergé can go ahead with its plans in Britain after deciding that the public can tell the difference between film references and official products.
"Being seen as a reference to the film is not the same as the sign representing to the public that the goods are licensed goods," said Oliver Morris of the IPO in his adjudication.
He also ruled that the Fabergé jewellery would not be in direct competition with the branded video games, and said that a range of officially-licensed "From Russia With Love" Swatch watches were not sufficiently well known in the UK to justify blocking the application.
"In my view the goods for which the mark is said to be well known are not similar to Faberge's goods," he said.
"The nature, purposes, methods of use, distribution channels etc. are different and I can see no competitive or complementary relationship."
Fabergé, which was founded by Gustav Fabergé in St Petersburg in 1842, is famed for creating more than 100 jewel-encrusted eggs for the Russian Tsars. The brand was bought by a Cayman Islands-based investment group in 2007. Mr Morris also ordered Danjaq to pay Fabergé Ltd the sum of £2,300 towards its legal costs.
I wonder what would have happened if they had taken "The Property of a Lady"?
Christopher Lee, whose sonorous voice and burning black eyes made him a memorable arch-villain in films from "Dracula" to "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," was given one of Britain's highest honors Saturday by Queen Elizabeth II.
Lee, 87, who made his name in Britain's low-budget Hammer Studios horror films, is one of cinema's consummate bad-guys, appearing as everything from Bond villain Scaramanga in "The Man With the Golden Gun" to the disreputable Russian mystic in "Rasputin, the Mad Monk."
Dual of the British knights. Christopher Lee and Roger Moore in 1974's THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.
More recent turns include the evil wizard Saruman in "The Lord of the Rings" movies and fallen Jedi Count Dooku in two of George Lucas' "Star Wars" prequels.
In descending order, the main honors are knighthoods, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and Officer of the Order of the British Empire, OBE, and Member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE.
Knights are addressed as "sir" or "dame," while recipients of CBEs, OBEs and MBEs have no title but can put the letters after their names.
The honors are bestowed twice a year by the monarch, but recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public.
Although sportsmen, politicians, and artists regularly top the list, more than two-thirds of the honors go to people out of the limelight, especially civil servants and those with long service to their communities.
Congratulations from this website, Sir Christopher.
It amuses Toby Stephens to see himself occasionally mooted as a successor to Daniel Craig as James Bond. "God knows, I could use the money, but it won't happen," the 40-year-old actor says. "They had enough problems with a blond Bond. The idea of someone with reddish hair getting the part would cause insurrection."
The son of Dame Maggie Smith and the late Sir Robert Stephens has a nice line in self-deprecation. He has, however, notched up some fine performances over the years: Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre for the BBC, the title role in an RSC production of Coriolanus, and, more recently, King John in Robin Hood.
His one brush with Bond – as the baddy in Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan – was, he says now, something of an aberration. "I have no idea how I got the part. I remember meeting Lee Tamahori, the director, and asking him about my character, as they had only sent me three pages of script. He said, 'Well, in a nutshell, you are playing a Korean who has been genetically modified into being a westerner', and I must say he lost me somewhere in that sentence. I had a lot of fun making that film, but honestly it wasn't where I came from or what I was a part of, and I subsequently just got on with what I had been doing before."
Rosemund Pike and Toby Stephens in DIE ANOTHER DAY
Stephens is about to open in a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, and it is clearly his stage work – along with his family – that mean the most to him. Anna-Louise, his New Zealand-born actress wife of the past eight years, has just presented him with an 8lb 4oz baby girl whom they have called Tallulah. They already have a boy named Eli, who was born in 2007. Toby says Dame Maggie took a sharp intake of breath at the name of her granddaughter.
"She thought of Tallulah Bankhead, a Hollywood actress of some repute. 'I love the name, of course, but you must understand she was a very naughty woman,' she told me. 'She was addicted to cocaine and had, among other things, a huge lesbian following.' "
One can imagine his mother delivering the lines with her customary relish, but then she is – as Sir Robert once was – a larger-than-life character. There was a time when Toby resented all the questions about his parents, who starred together in the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. But now he understands the fascination that they both continue to garner, and it makes him feel proud. Sir Robert was still married to his second wife when he met Maggie while working at the National Theatre in the mid-Sixties, and, after a torrid affair, they became man and wife in 1967, 10 days after the birth of their first son, Christopher.
Toby eschews the glamorous life that they lived, and one suspects there is a somewhat studious normality about his family life in north London. He says he seldom, if ever, goes to showbusiness parties. He has clearly learnt the lessons from his parents' stormy eight-year union: the rows, the ceaseless media attention and his father's drinking and philandering.
Ten years ago, Stephens realised he had inherited his father's addiction to alcohol, and, as it was beginning to take its toll on his work on stage, he decided never to drink again. Sir Robert died at the age of 64 in 1995 after liver and kidney transplants, but would have been furious if anyone had ever suggested he was an alcoholic.
"Of course he was an alcoholic in the same way that I am, in that he had no control over his drinking. If I were to have one drink now, I would want another and it would be agony if I couldn't. I simply decided to spare myself that by not allowing myself the first glass. People go on about me inheriting my father's demons and so on, but I think where the booze is concerned it is actually a boring biochemical thing that has been passed on to me.
"I associate my alcoholism with diabetes as both Robert and his sister had that disease. I have a friend who has been through the same thing. A lot of alcoholics who give up drinking then become addicted to cakes, chocolate, dessert. I really do believe it stems from the same imbalance within us."
He reckons it's low self-esteem that gets a lot of people into acting, the chance to escape into other characters and the quick fix of applause, and that was almost certainly a factor in his father's addiction to sex. He has not, however, inherited his wandering eye. He was linked to one or two women in his younger days, including Alison Fogg, a language graduate to whom he was engaged, but he concedes his drinking wrecked their relationship.
When in New York he was reunited with Anna-Louise at an audition – they had been at Lamda together – he was dry and therefore able to appreciate her. "We have had a settled relationship from the start. I like that as I like a settled family life now. I think I am more like my mother in that respect. I have enough insecurity in my career – I never know what I will be doing next or how I will be – that I honestly don't need any more of it."
Toby's mother and her second husband, the playwright Beverley Cross, gave him and Christopher (also an actor, with the stage name Chris Larkin) a tranquil upbringing in rural Sussex. He was educated at Aldro School and Seaford College before the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. It is Cross that Stephens calls his father rather than Sir Robert, whom he always refers to by his Christian name.
"Dad was a calming influence on all of us. My mother found the break-up of her marriage to Robert very painful because she still loved him very much, but really his drinking and all the other issues had made her position untenable. God knows what kind of an upbringing I would have had if my mother's relationship with Robert hadn't broken up when it did, but I think it was good for me and my brother that things worked out the way that they did."
He clearly reveres his mother and says her acting continues to inspire him even if, at 74, she does complain to him that she is only ever asked to play "old boots". Last year was difficult for them both with her breast-cancer scare. A tumour was removed, and she completed a course of chemotherapy. "It knocked her for six but she has overcome that, thank God, and she is now back on form. If I have strength, then I certainly got it from her. I think the grandchildren have given us a new bond: she sees me going through, with my wife, what she had to go through for me."
Inevitably, he sometimes bumps into women that Sir Robert took to his bed – it is a long and rather illustrious list that includes, among others, Vanessa Redgrave and Lady Antonia Fraser. But Stephens is not judgmental. Lady Antonia he sees quite often, because she moves in similar circles to him.
"I like her, very much. I think it would be quite wrong to let my opinion of her be informed by what has happened in the past. People's lives are very complicated and always changing. Robert was not exactly an innocent party in that situation, in any case."
He adds that his mother is "very good friends" with Sir Robert's second wife, Tarn, and that he is very close to his half-sister Lucy and her husband Mark.
"It's funny to think of all these disparate people that Robert has brought together – I think it's rather a wonderful legacy, in a way."
Gustav Graves said in Die Another Day, "I have to live my dreams."
April 5, 2009
by Stuart BasingerDr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden honors the memory of film producer Albert R. Broccoli this year which marks the centennial of his birth.
I had the opportunity to sit two rows in front of him during the Washington, DC premiere of THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS in July 1987. It was a charity benefit for VERY SPECIAL ARTS, an organization for disabled children founded by the Kennedy family. Mr. Broccoli was accompanied by actors Mayam d'Abo, Jeroen Krabbé, and Virginia Hey.
The late Cubby Broccoli and his wife Dana.
The theater was filled to its maximum and the Kennedy family introduced Mr. Broccoli before the movie began. Cubby stood briefly as he waved to the audience and to a round of applause. The best part of the seeing this film was the way the audience responded to the thrills reflected off the white cyc we call a movie screen. The worse part of the movie was when the air conditioning unit had failed halfway through the movie, making the desert scenes feel even more realistic. I can remember wearing my suit and tie and realizing how much sweat absorbed into it by evening's end.
I regret I never had a chance to meet Mr. Broccoli after the film because there were just too many politicians around him making it impossible. One cannot help the feeling of not being important in a sea of politicians who wanted their pictures taken with the cast and famed producer.
However, not too many Bond fans can say they sat near him while watching one of his films. Thank you for a lifetime of pure escapism.
For years I have wanted to put together this unique look at two classic scenes from the James Bond films From Russia with Love and The Spy Who Loved Me. Now you can see how editor John Glen created the Egyptian confrontational scene with Bond, Anya, and Jaws by copying the music and pacing from another film. Click here to link to the video.