'Golden Gun' Kung Fu Actress

January 1, 2005 - APP.com

Smoking is good for you? Smoking is bad for your health, but it was good for Hong Kong martial arts queen Yuen Qiu's acting career.

Yuen, who appeared in the 1974 James Bond film, "The Man With the Golden Gun," landed a role in "Kung Fu Hustle," which opened in Hong Kong last week, because the director liked the way she smoked, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday.

Yuen, a popular stunt woman and kung-fu actress in the '70s, said she was accompanying a friend to an audition when director Stephen Chow saw her smoking. He was looking for someone who smoked the way she did and urged her to join the cast, she told the newspaper.

Chow, who directed and starred in 2001's "Shaolin Soccer," asked her to play a landlady in his new comedy about gangsters who try to take over a neighborhood full of kung fu masters disguised as ordinary residents.

Yuen recalled her role in the Bond film.

"I remember the film producers coming to Hong Kong looking for a girl who could fight," she said. "I went to the audition, got the gig and was flown to Thailand to do this part, which involved me and this local schoolgirl rescuing Roger Moore." She added: "I had one line, I think -- 'Hello' or something. I forgot what it was."

An embarrassing moment in Bond film history.

Connery Bashing In New Biography

January 5, 2005 - Scotsman.com

A new biography claims a leading film-maker and novelist was disappointed when her daughter brought Sean Connery home. Jill Craigie, who died in 1999, is reported to have been unimpressed when her 21-year-old daughter brought the then unknown Connery to tea. But her photographer daughter Julie Hamilton ignored her mother’s warnings and began a passionate relationship with the actor.

However the pair broke up when Connery fell for a co-star in a musical. A relieved Craigie, who was married to Labour politician Michael Foot, thought the Edinburgh-born actor had poor manners and did not want him as a son-in-law. She also claimed she gave furniture to the future James Bond star but he never gave it back.

In John Parker’s biography, Arise Sir Sean Connery, out on January 31, Craigie says she didn’t think the actor would have made her daughter happy. But it was Connery’s poor manners and rough edges which really offended her.

She added: "He had very rough manners and great tattoos up his arms. My daughter had terrible trouble with her spine around that time. She had been in hospital for a serious operation and I remember he let her carry heavy suitcases."

I detect just a slight case of snobbery.

James Bond To The Rescue Of Tsunami Victims

January 13, 2005 - Yahoo

"Heroes aren't found just in the movies ... In the world we live in, YOU are called upon to be the hero." So says Sir Roger Moore, who played one of the big screen's greatest heroes, James Bond, in calling on Americans to support the efforts of UNICEF to help child Tsunami victims.

Sir Roger and Starz Entertainment Group LLC (SEG), the country's largest premium television movie service, announced today that they are teaming up to create and run a series of public service announcements urging Americans to help UNICEF, for which Sir Roger serves as Global Goodwill Ambassador.

The spots urge Americans to provide financial support for UNICEF as it works to help hundreds of thousands of children affected by the Tsunami. Starting January 18th, the PSAs will run on teen-oriented channel WAM!, on Starz Family and on Encore, the most widely-distributed network in the SEG family. Approximately 24 million U.S. homes subscribe to the Encore channel. In addition, SEG said it will make the spots available for free to all its affiliates, cable and satellite, to run on other channels. SEG also made a corporate contribution to UNICEF.

In expressing appreciation to SEG, Sir Roger noted, "At UNICEF we see tragedy all the time. We also see hope, and it is the generosity of individuals and corporations such as Starz Entertainment Group that brings us hope."

SEG President and CEO Robert Clasen said, "Like all people everywhere we have been deeply moved by the Tsunami disaster, and particularly its impact on children. We have been searching for a way to use our medium and the creative talents of our employees to help the storm's victims. So we are delighted that Sir Roger brought us together with UNICEF to focus our efforts on the need to help children impacted by this disaster."

Sir Roger and SEG had been working together to promote their "Ultimate Bond" festival running on Starz On Demand in the first part of January. The festival allows Starz subscribers in cable systems with on demand service to watch 17 Bond movies whenever and as often as they wish with all the features of a DVD -- fast forward, rewind and pause -- at no additional charge.

Contributions to UNICEF can be sent to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, 338 E. 38th St., New York, NY, 10016.

Teaming up with OO7.

Bond In Peril

January 13, 2005 - Ireland Online

Whoever replaces Irish star Pierce Brosnan as the new 007 - the battle between wannabes still rages - they will have to wait until the row between producer Barbara Broccoli and top studio MGM blows over. Barbara wants to return to the more serious, plot-driven stories of the original films, but MGM is anxious to keep the James Bond stories packed with special effects, gadgets and jokey asides. The new film is planned for a 2006 release, but that is now in doubt.

Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

Brosnan: 'My Wife Helped Me Through Bond Let-Down'

January 22, 2005 - Ireland Online

Pierce Brosnan turned to his wife to help him through the disappointment of being dropped as movie superspy James Bond. After the success of 2002's Die Another Day, the 51-year-old was asked to play 007 for the fifth time - but film bosses changed their minds and axed him from the role without explanation.

Brosnan insists the shock and disappointment would have got on top of him if not for the support of his wife Keely. He says: "No one contacted me to tell me anything. No reason. Nothing. What do you do in circumstances like that?

"I was disappointed because I'd put so much of myself into the role. And it would've been nice to get an explanation as to why and how it was coming to an end. I don't mind admitting I was hurt and a bit mystified, but Keely said: 'You have nothing to prove to anyone. Just move on.' I'm one of those guys who believes that you need a good, strong woman in your life. I take advice, so I've got no regrets."

Time to reinvent yourself. Connery did it. So did Moore.

Latest On SilverFin

January 22, 2005 - Compiled by Sharil Dewa for The Star Online

SilverFin is author Charlie Higson’s examination of the world’s most famous spy – James Bond – when he is a boy. James’s childhood is filled with adventure passed on to him from his father who teaches him the pleasures and satisfaction of fishing.

One of Bond Sr’s dreams is to catch Iteairgiod, a Scottish folklore about a giant salmon whose name in Gaelic meant SilverFin. It is what he talks about with James before his death. And it is at his father’s death that James, at the age of 12, finds himself the head of the household.

He also is enrolled at the prestigious school of Eton, where he tries to fit in with the other boys who are determined to freeze him out of their activities. However unhappy that he is with his life in Eton, James – along with his friend, Pritpal – decides to make something out of his stay in Eton. He has determines to find the fabled SilverFin of his father’s tales and catch it.

At first I was not too sure about a novel featuring James Bond as a young teenager, but the premise of this information is very interesting. I'm now looking forward to this new incarnation.

Electronic Arts Announces New James Bond Video Game

January 25, 2005 - Spong.com

We can reveal today that Electronic Arts is underway with the latest game to carry the James Bond 007 license, though from the information we received, recent chat regarding Free Radical’s involvement - triggered mainly by IGN guesswork - is entirely bogus.

The game is titled James Bond 007: From Russia with Love, and will be developed at EA’s Redwood studio.

The game will see an offering for Xbox 2, with Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2 versions to follow. All versions are expected to hit stores in time for Christmas 2005.

The game had carried the title Bond 6 internally at EA, with work commencing on the project in the summer of last year. It would seem that the game was too advanced to be handed across to the UK team behind TimeSplitters, with development remaining in the US. It was confirmed that the game will feature a likeness of the mummy-pleasing Sean Connery and will remain faithful to the 1963 movie original.

The film is a classic but I wonder how this will play as a game. Although, it would be cool to fight a CGI version of Red Grant.

Auction To Benefit UNICEF And Tsunami Victims

January 25, 2005 - by Athena Stamos for CommanderBond.net

We’re all aware of the effects the tsunami has had on Asia... and because of this Jeff Marshall and CBn have teamed up in an attempt to raise a "little something" for the UNICEF: 2004 Tsunami Relief Fund. 100% of the money raised by this auction will go directly to the “United States Fund for UNICEF: 2004 Tsunami Relief Fund”. Thanks to MissionFish you can be assured that this is in fact the case, they take the money directly from the E-Bay auction and pass it on to UNICEF.

Jeff Marshall (James Bond artist extraordinaire) has donated his own personal copy of The Spy Who Loved Me lithograph which has been hanging in his office. This litho has been signed by Roger Moore, Richard Kiel and Caroline Munro!

"The litho is one of my favorites, and I was thinking if it could raise a little something - the money could then go over to UNICEF and help those children who so need care" said Jeff Marshall.

Included in this auction, Jeff has also graciously offered an original pencil sketch that he did when creating the art work for The Spy Who Loved Me lithograph. He’ll sign it and if you wish, personalize it too.

Bidding starts at $200 US (auction ends February 3, 2005). Please VISIT OUR AUCTION at http://www.commanderbond.net/Public/Stories/2646-1.shtml and help make a difference.

A fantastic way to make a difference in this world.

The Death Of James Bond OO7?

January 25, 2005 - The Sydney Morning Herald

Last week James Bond was fired. His nuclear pencil gathers dust beneath Whitehall. There is no news of 007 number six and the production of Bond film 21, due this November, has stalled. There is trouble at MI6, minister: the martini-quaffing sexoholic is suffering an existential crisis and it can't be cured by an intelligent Rolex or a gondola that can drive on land.

Eon, which produces Bond, and MGM, which finances his capers, are bickering. It is rumoured MGM wants an action-movie franchise - Spiderman in a tux - that sprouts money. As Bond said to Dr No: "World domination; same old dream; our asylums are full of men who think they are Napoleon." Eon, however, is fighting for the Cold War relic, the "sexist, misogynist dinosaur" and gentleman spy who flowed from the pen of Ian Fleming.

Why is Bond in crisis? He is a corpse; the hero of a dead time and a dead place called postwar Clubland. Fleming was an Eton-educated journalist who worked in British naval intelligence during World War II, where his professional apogee was evacuating King Zog of Albania from Nazi-occupied Europe. Bond was his fantasy alter ego, a libidinous killer who thought women were "for recreation". Bond slapped bottoms and peered at his watch during sex; he killed women he had slept with and, worse, he told one dewy-eyed poppet: "I never miss."

This was acceptable in 1952, when Bond was born on the pages of Casino Royale; but feminism castrated Fleming's hero. Today, any responsible GP would refer him to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. We know, though Fleming didn't, that Bond won't be polished off by Soviet crocodiles, but by AIDS. He had a weird predilection for girls with silly names. He had an Electra, a Honey, a Christmas, a Pussy and an Octopussy. He probably had a Decapussy, or did I dream it?

Fleming created two villainous organisations to wound his baby Bond. The first was Spectre (Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), a gaggle of freelance megalomaniacs who wanted to take over the world for fun. Today they would be politicians. Spectre grins on the news every day. You voted for it.

Fleming's other nemesis, Smersh (aka Death to Spies), was a mutant strain of the KGB. Smersh is as frightening as eating toast. Bond always has a vodka martini and a chuckle with the Reds at the end, because, for Fleming, the Cold War was just a disagreement between Western gentlemen.

At the end of The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond escapes into a tented pod with a beautiful KGB agent. He boasts to M that he is "just keeping the British end up, sir". Recent Bonds have experimented with a psychotic heiress, a renegade British agent and a media baron. The authentic candidates for modern Bond villains are, of course, Islamist fundamentalists but it's hard to imagine even 007 peeling back a burka or keeping the British end up with an al-Qaeda operative.

Our tolerance for snobbery has withered. When we hear James musing to a baddie "Red wine with fish; that should have told me something" and explaining that "certain things just aren't done - like drinking Dom Perignon '53 above a temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit", we don't fawn and sputter onto satin sheets. Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, clinging to his final (crystal) marble.

Everywhere, Fleming's fastasies are dust. We've seen the faces of intelligence operatives because they flog their books at literary festivals. We know from Spycatcher that the British secret service spends its time watching Irish grandmothers and destabilising Labour governments - and faking dossiers for Downing Street. The spying game has been demystified.

But Bond's final bullet didn't come from feminism, the government, or the poor entertainment possibilities of modern terrorism. In the end Sean, Roger, George, Timothy and Pierce were vanquished by just one man - Austin Powers. Bond's satirical twin, who danced and shagged and bit his way through three blockbuster Bond spoofs, finally achieved what Smersh could not. Austin's silly ruffled shirts, his encounters with Dr Evil and the Fembots and, most particularly, his plaintive cry, "Do I make you horny, baby?" did for the straight man. Some things just can't withstand satire, least of all a crumbling spy who puns badly. MGM will find a new aspirational hero for us, one who won't make us hurl into our popcorn: a gay Bond, a black Bond, a paraplegic Bond, an obese Bond, a Welsh bond. Any Bond but James Bond.

Has anyone told this person that it is most likely Austin Powers who is through and not James Bond.

James Bond Convention #8

February 1, 2005 - Matt Sherman

The dazzling BCW8 is Thursday night to Sunday, August 25-28, 2005 in New York City! What's up in the Big Bonded Apple in the biggest weekend ever? Bond INSIDERS and celebrities are attending... guided tours of LIVE AND LET DIE locations downtown between the Brooklyn Bridge and Ground Zero... more tours of Bond hotspots in Rockefeller Center.

Bond in Times Square at night. Bond in Midtown. Bond in Central Park and more.

Eat like Bond. Sightsee like Bond.

Still MOORE and more sights from Live and Let Die and (believe it or not) New York locations from Diamonds Are Forever, Goldfinger and Die Another Day. Our annual "COSTUME/COME AS YOU ARE BASH", a MEMORABILIA SWAP/SALE and BOND AUTHOR BOOK SIGNING. More Tri-State 007 locations from 1,000 feet above the city atop the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING... partying and GROUP DINING. Talking shop and horse trading.

Come join the fans who've gotten on board to date from nearly every state in the Union and 5 countries to Bond, Bond, BOND with us!

To make reservations contact:

ALLSPIES PRODUCTIONS
2711 NW 42 PL
GAINESVILLE FL 32605
352.372.5094
info@007Forever.com

Looking forward to it.

And the Next James Bond Actor Is...?

February 2, 2005 - DSBG

One does not need to look too hard if spring is coming when the first buds on a tree begin to sprout. Nor does one need a college education to observe night is falling when the first rays of sunlight begin to fade behind the horizon. These of course are simple tell-tell signs. Perhaps these same signs can be applied to the announcement of the newest actor to play James Bond.

Recently Pierce Brosnan posted at his website these words:

"I would like to thank all of you who have supported me over the last year or so in regard to my playing Bond. It was a decade of my life that I will always hold dear to my heart and a time that will never be forgotten. And you dear friends stood by me throughout. Many, many thanks! But everything comes to an end, and one must accept this decision which cannot be dealt with in any other way but with some kind of grace and knowledge that I did the job to the best of my ability."

Why would Pierce choose this time to write on his website that James Bond is now behind him? Unless, he had to clear some legalities between him and Eon. With this final comment (and we all know that Pierce has been saying this publicly for months) the door has been left open for the next actor to don a tux.

Dougray Scott and Pierce Brosnan

The latest James Bond rumours have actor Dougray Scott taking over the lead role in the long-running movie franchise. Fuelling the speculation around Scott, who has appeared in movies like Mission Impossible II and Ever After, is the decision by British betting house William Hill to stop taking wagers on the actor. William Hill closed its book on Scott on Friday, January 28th, after it received a number of large bets on the Scottish performer.

"In the past, gambles like this have often been right," Rupert Adams, a spokesman for William Hill, told the Daily Mail newspaper.

So with these 'signs' hovering in the background of internet blogs, bookies and tabloids, could it be possible that Bond fans around the world will soon wake up one morning to surprising news that a new OO7 has been chosen?

I would say sooner than later.

Bond 21 Is "CASINO ROYALE"

February 3, 2005 - MGM-Eon Productions

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the James Bond films, and MGM announced today that Martin Campbell will direct CASINO ROYALE, the 21st film in the 007 franchise.

This is Campbell's second time as helmer of a James Bond film. In 1995 he directed the hit GOLDENEYE which introduced Pierce Brosnan to the role of 007 with great success.

Wilson and Broccoli said: "We are thrilled that Martin has accepted our offer to direct CASINO ROYALE. He is an extremely talented director and we believe he will help take our films in a new and exciting direction. He is currently finishing filming 'Legend Of Zorro', the sequel to 'The Mask Of Zorro', and will be joining EON Productions shortly to work on the development of the script with our writers, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade."

MGM Vice Chairman and COO Chris McGurk said: "Martin is an incredibly exciting filmmaker. GOLDENEYE was a wonderful movie and helped reinvigorate the Bond franchise. We're thrilled to have him back to direct the newest Bond."

Born in New Zealand, Campbell moved to England in 1966 and made his directorial debut on the popular TV series' 'The Professionals' and 'Minder'. He moved to America in 1986 to direct 'Criminal Law' and 'Defenceless'. Following GOLDENEYE, he went on to direct 'The Mask Of Zorro', 'Vertical Limit' and 'Beyond Borders' and is currently directing 'Legend Of Zorro'.

CASINO ROYALE will be released in 2006 and distributed world-wide by MGM. No decision has yet been made regarding casting for the role of 'James Bond'.

Thank you Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson for giving the fans what they have wanted for years. And it's great to see Martin Campbell back in the director's chair.

John Barry Rails Against Successors

February 11, 2005 - by Charlotte Higgins for The Guardian

The film composer John Barry - whose stellar 50-year career has encompassed scoring the great Bond movies, Out of Africa and Dances With Wolves - has lashed out against his musical successors. "[The composers] have nothing to say. They are just messing around with notes. I'm at a loss," he told the Guardian. "I walk out of the cinema bewildered these days. I think, what was the producer or director thinking of to allow 45 minutes or an hour of music that doesn't mean a damn thing?"

On Saturday, the 71-year-old Yorkshireman receives the Academy Fellowship at the Baftas for an outstanding lifetime contribution to cinema, an honour previously awarded to Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and, last year, John Boorman.

Talking about the generation of Hollywood composers such as Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann, many of whom were exiled from central Europe in the pre-war years and ended up defining a golden age of film music, Barry said: "They were my heroes. The people I adored and learned from. But today I don't see there's anything to learn. Today it's very empty. There's a whole thing of loading films up with songs - it's a commercial choice. The composers seem to ignore what's going on on screen. I look at movies; in the old days you knew what the composer was about. Today you don't - the scores are like a filler."

Asked whether he could be tempted to write a score for Casino Royale, based on Ian Fleming's first 007 novel and due for release in 2006, he said: "It would depend. Films like From Russia With Love and You Only Live Twice were based on an old tradition of moviemaking. They were great stories - the idea of raiding Fort Knox is a great story. But the Bond movies have totally changed. They don't have any stories any more.

"Sean [Connery] was marvellous. George [Lazenby] - well, we won't talk about that. Roger Moore was good. Pierce [Brosnan] was fine. But the films wouldn't have made it without Sean. We don't have those stars any more. The formula has run out. It was great and it had its day. Now they are just treading water."

Barry, who is based in New York state, has recently received poor reviews for his musical version of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock which premiered in October at the Almeida theatre in London.

"When people think of musicals these days they think of Mary Poppins," he said. "When there is murder and deceit they are confused. But I think that's wrong. Think of West Side Story, which is very dark."

The four-times Oscar winner, born the son of a cinema-owner and a pianist, recalled his earliest memories of film. "My father had eight movie-theatres in the north of England. I remember his taking me to the Rialto in York when I was about three or four. I was taken to the back and I saw a big black and white mouse on the screen - and there was all this wonderful music and people were going crazy. I forget what I did last week but I remember this so vividly."

And I thought I was the only one who felt that contemporary film music had died. Thank you Mr. Barry for taking a stand on this issue.

Latest Casino Royale Locations

February 11, 2005 - The Guardian & Fiji Live

First there was a palm-fringed beach on a Caribbean island then there were the bright lights of Monte Carlo. Now, James Bond could be taking a gamble on one of Scotland’s most controversial buildings. The £431 million Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh could be turned into a casino for the latest James Bond movie, it was claimed today.

The film Casino Royale is set to go into production this year and bosses at Eon Productions are not ruling out the home of Scotland’s politicians as a possible location. The building, designed by the late Spanish architect Enric Miralles is understood to be one of several secret locations being mooted by film chiefs, according to the Daily Record newspaper. However, Ann Bennett, director of publicity at Eon Productions, who are making the film, was staying tight lipped.

She would only say: “I can’t tell you anything. We are not even in pre-production. No locations have been chosen at all. But we wouldn’t rule anything out in Scotland.”

The paper quotes an insider at Pinewood studios, where the Bond films are made, saying the Parliament was a “stunning building” which could be turned into a casino. But a Scottish Parliament spokeswoman said today: “We haven’t had any approach by Pinewood and are not entirely convinced about turning the Parliament into a casino, but we would never say never.”

Meanwhile other locations have cropped up from the other side of the world. The Fiji islands is the first of location rumours, primarily the port capital city of Suva. Exactly what this location will be used for is anyone's guess. But as past examples of Bond films have shown it most likely will have some beautiful and shapely forms rising from it's wake.

Both Scotland and Fiji do not appear as locations in Ian Fleming's novel of the same name.

Jill St. John Has Surgery After Ski Accident

February 11, 2005 - ABC News

Former James Bond girl Jill St. John fractured her hip in a skiing accident and was transferred earlier this week to a Los Angeles hospital, family spokesman Alan Nierob said Thursday.

St. John was hospitalized at Aspen Valley Hospital after the accident Saturday and then transferred Monday, Nierob said. The name of the Los Angeles hospital was not disclosed. The 64-year-old actress, whose screen credits include the 1971 classic "Diamonds Are Forever," underwent successful surgery Tuesday. She is married to actor Robert Wagner.

Get well soon, Jill.

COMMENTARY: Bond Back To Basics

February 14, 2005 – Stuart Basinger

James Bond fans were heard throughout cyberspace cheering as the announcement came declaring Bond 21 to be Casino Royale. This was Ian Fleming's first OO7 novel, written in 1953 and introducing the world to a young secret agent. Pitted against the evil Le Chiffre, a French undercover paymaster of the Russian-controlled trade union in Alsace. Recently Le Chiffre carelessly appropriated funds to finance a string of brothels for his own profit. Now, he must repay his debts back to the Soviets. His target is the baccarat table at Royale-les-Eaux. The very place Bond plans to break him, and the Soviets.

Many things have happened in our world since the first printing of Casino Royale and many fans fear that the producers of this most successful movie franchise may end up botching the job. After all, Casino Royale has been produced twice before - once for the live TV drama series CLIMAX on CBS in 1954, and twice theatrically in 1967. Both versions have never given the novel its overdue respect.

One could easily be forgiven for not knowing the reasons why Casino Royale was not the first OO7 film. I could go into great detail but the simple reason is the rights were sold early to many different owners. When Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman bought the rights to the James Bond novels in 1960, both Casino Royale and Thunderball were not available. Thunderball was caught up in a court battle between producer Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming - but that's another story.

The actor/director/producer Gregory Ratoff bought the rights to Royale after surviving a potentially dangerous plane trip and swearing that the first novel he spotted in the airport gift shop would be produce by him. Ratoff bought the rights and proceeded to find a studio to film it. Unfortunately, Ratoff died a few years later and the rights were transferred from his widow to producer (and former associate to Cubby Broccoli) Charles K. Feldman.

Feldman knew he was sitting on a hot property after the success of the first four OO7 films. Unfortunately for him he was unable to convince Broccoli and Saltzman to make the film with him. Rejected by United Artist and pressured by Columbia Studios, Feldman did the unthinkable - Casino Royale became an uneven and over-budget comedy. Not only spoofing James Bond films but also making fun of the psychedelic 1960s craze as well. Years later the film eventually made its money back, but the damage was done to this classic novel.

After four decades, James Bond is about to get the 'Royale' treatment. But how will it translate to the silver screen? If the last four James Bond films is any hint to what Casino Royale will be, then fans of the original novel are going to be greatly disappointed.

Gone will be a terrific and down-to-earth spy story. Gone will be the human part of the story where the misogynistic James Bond falls for a beautiful double agent only to lose her to a suicide. And gone will be the last Ian Fleming novel to be made into a Broccoli produced film.

In late 2006 or early 2007, the new Casino Royale will most likely open up with an overlong pre-credit sequence. Followed by an uninspired title song, over-the-top explosions, CGI stunts and an evil plot that will have so many holes in it you could drive Dr. No’s fire-breathing tank through it. Sadly, after experiencing two hours and twenty minutes, the audience will leave the theater remarking that the 1967 Peter Sellers version was better.

There is of course a chance that Eon Productions will surprise us. Taking Bond and retro him back to the 1950s and 60s. Placing him in the correct timeline of Cold War history, when the world needed a super secret agent. When men were men and women were playthings. When villains were mysterious and sinister and their threats of world domination were real. When car chases were done without computers, and life saving gadgets were visible to the naked eye.

But that would be wishing for too much.

Today, Hollywood is too concern with the bottom line and whether a film can do well in foreign markets. The contemporary Bond films have become nothing more than a two-hour techno-commercial for numerous clients who are willing to get their product shown. Dropping millions of dollars into the studio’s back pockets. Why should the investors throw easy money out the window in favor of a simple outdated spy story?

Perhaps I am being too harsh to the producers. There is a chance that Casino Royale might turn out to be a great film. After all, they went to great lengths to buy back the film rights. That should be a good sign that they are serious about getting Bond back to basics.

One can only hope.

Sean Connery's Street

February 14, 2005 - by Brian Ferguson for The Scotsman

He is Edinburgh’s best-known son, a cinema legend who remains a pin-up at the age of 74. Sir Sean Connery has picked up a knighthood in the Capital, was awarded the freedom of the city and is patron of its world-renowned film festival. Now the former James Bond is set to be honoured by having a street named after him in a multi-million-pound new development in his former stamping ground.

Developers behind the transformation of a former brewery site in Fountainbridge have unveiled plans to pay tribute to Sir Sean to mark the fact he was brought up in the area. The 900,000 sqaure foot site was once home to the tenement building where Sir Sean grew up. A humble plaque to mark the spot was erected on a wall beside the main road by Scotland’s national film agency in 1997 as part of celebrations to commemorate 100 years of cinema in Scotland.

But the developers of the Fountain North want to line up a more fitting tribute to Connery and plan to approach him personally to seek his seal of approval. Strict city council regulations on the naming of streets mean there is a presumption against using names of people who are still alive - although it can happen in exceptional circumstances.

The rules were softened following an embarrassing dispute over a luxury homes development near Murrayfield which was planned to be named after rugby legend Gavin Hastings but had to be re-named after an obscure 16th-century paper maker. City council leader Donald Anderson today threw his weight behind a new tribute to Sir Sean, saying he had "no problem" with celebrating people while they are still alive. Councillor Anderson last year unveiled plans to mark the achievements of the city’s "modern-day heroes", like J K Rowling and Dame Muriel Spark.

He said today: "The most important view will be Sean Connery’s and it will be important to have his backing for whatever is planned. We should celebrate Edinburgh’s successes and he is the city’s most famous son."

The naming of a street is believed to be the favoured option of the consortium behind the development, which includes Grosvenor, AMA (New Town) Limited and the Royal Bank of Scotland. But they have promised to consult local residents to see if another form of tribute would be more appropriate, including naming a major new public park in the development after him or commissioning a sculpture of the star. The development - work on which is due to start next year - will see the former McEwan’s beer-kegging and distribution plant transformed by 160,000 sqaure feet of office space, 650 new homes, tree-lined boulevards, shops and a park. Up to 2500 jobs are set to be created.

A spokesman for the consortium, Fountain North Limited, said: "Of course, Fountainbridge’s most famous resident was Sean Connery.

"The development presents us with a wonderful opportunity to celebrate his association with the Fountainbridge area and we’ll be writing to him to inform him of our plans."

Sir Sean, though, seemed less keen to turn up for the unveiling of the plaque marking his birthplace in the tenement building at 176 Fountainbridge. He even joked about it last year, saying: "You would have to be ten feet tall to see it."

A spokeswoman for Connery today said she did not believe he had been officially approached about the offer. She said: "The key to the city of Edinburgh is his proudest award."

If the city council is smart, they would name a golf course after Sean. That way he'll show up all the time.

The Man with the Golden Library

February 14, 2005 - Times Online

Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, amassed a big collection of rare books, covering golf to Einstein. Andrew Lycett leafs through his treasures.

James Bond composed a passable haiku in the novel You Only Live Twice. But otherwise the suave secret agent is known for capabilities other than literary. His reading matter tends to be mundane “how to” guides, such as Scarne on Cards (in Moonraker) or Tommy Armour’s How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time (Diamonds Are Forever), although, to give him his due, he was once (as reported in From Russia with Love) seen on a flight to Istanbul turning the pages of Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Dimitrios.

His creator Ian Fleming had similarly utilitarian tastes in literature. When, as a young man, he started a book collection, he asked his friend, the rare book seller Percy Muir, to buy him first editions not of Keats or Shelley but of books which “made things happen”.

This little-known aspect of Fleming’s diverse career is featured in a sale at Bloomsbury Auctions later this month. The highlight is a copy of his first novel, Casino Royale, which he inscribed for Muir, with a wry comment on its contents: “To Percy, who guided my early steps in literature — but not down these dark corridors! Affectionately, Ian.”

In an accompanying letter, Fleming thanked Muir for the gift of another copy of Casino Royale. He acknowledged “a very fragrant thought of yours”, and added, “Incidentally, I think it is the only Fleming first worth having as I think the first edition was only 3,000 copies.”

Fleming had a canny professional sense of Casino Royale’s potential. It is now by far the most collectable of James Bond first editions. Bloomsbury Auctions’ estimate for its admittedly special copy is £30,000 to £40,000 (up 1,000 per cent from a decade ago). With the recent announcement that Casino Royale will be the next 007 film, that final price may well be higher.

Fleming’s own career in the book business started long before James Bond. As a youth in 1929, almost a quarter of a century before Casino Royale was published, he was attracted by an unlikely item in a Mayfair bookshop window — D. H. Lawrence’s controversial volume of poems, Pansies.

The manager Percy Muir became his friend. When he moved to Elkin Matthews, another fashionable antiquarian bookseller, Fleming followed with his custom. He enjoyed the business enough to help Muir oust the controlling Gathorne-Hardy brothers, and he himself became a director.

By then Fleming was working in the City as what was described as “the world’s worst stockbroker”. Having made £250 on a deal, he asked Muir’s help in collecting “milestone books”, covering science, medicine, philosophy and politics, as well as practical inventions and even sports and pastimes.

A bill dated June 18, 1935 (now at Indiana University), records Muir’s initial purchases and gives a good sense of what Fleming had in mind. Among this first lot was a set of nine books by Albert Einstein, including his Nobel prize-winning treatise on the photo-electric effect, Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt, published in Leipzig in 1905, together with Friedrich Accum’s A Practical Treatise on Gas-Light, published in London in 1815 and, a Fleming touch, the original 1909 edition of Fred T. Jane’s All the World’s Airships.

To house these acquisitions, Fleming commissioned more than 50 expensive black buckram boxes. Muir thought his young client spent too much on such trappings. Nevertheless, Fleming had identified a new area, books were cheap, and over a short period Muir ranged widely to buy everything from a very rare first edition of the Communist manifesto, through scientific tracts such as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species to Francis Galton on the use of fingerprints in criminology and the first books on rackets and golf.

Fleming’s spending spree lasted only a few years until the start of the Second World War. Then he busied himself in the serious business of serving as personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Admiralty job which gave him the material for James Bond.

His affair with books resurfaced in the late 1940s when he was working as foreign manager for The Sunday Times. Lord Kemsley, the paper’s proprietor, owned a small publisher, the Dropmore Press, which also printed a magazine for bibliophiles, The Book Handbook. Knowing Fleming’s interest, Kemsley put him on the board. Fleming got friends such as Muir and the scholarly John Hayward, who shared a flat with T. S. Eliot, to contribute.

Fleming had little real input until 1952 when he married Ann, the ex-wife of another newspaper magnate, Lord Rothermere. A literary snob who enjoyed the company of writers such as Evelyn Waugh, she was dismissive of her new husband’s fictional output. She also complained about the sombre effect his buckram bookcases had on a succession of marital houses.

So when Kemsley revamped his publishing interests and offered to let his foreign manager take charge of his new imprint, the Queen Anne Press and the re-named Book Collector, Fleming flew at the opportunity, as much to impress his wife as anything. He commissioned his (or rather Ann’s) friend Paddy Leigh Fermor to write the Queen Anne Press’s first title, A Time to Keep Silence. He co-opted Muir and Hayward as directors of The Book Collector.

When, three years later, Kemsley tired of these loss-making concerns, he offered them to Fleming who, after some bluffing, bought control of The Book Collector for £50. (The magazine is still published and highly regarded.)

Bloomsbury Auctions is also selling letters and documents which chart Fleming’s relationship with Muir, particularly relating to The Book Collector. He complained to Muir, for example, when their fellow director John Hayward treated a meeting to discuss some typically loss-making accounts “as if it was the Annual General Meeting of Imperial Chemicals and is now much put out because I tried to hasten proceedings”. As ever he berated Muir about the high price of any books still acquired for his own account.

But the high point of Fleming’s book career was still to come. In 1963 an important international exhibition — Printing and the Mind of Man — was held in London. Through Muir’s offices, Fleming was proud to be called upon to provide 44 books; more than any other private collector, and second only to King’s College, Cambridge. In a telegram he congratulated Muir on his “wonderful catalogue particularly on having elevated our collection to these fantastically proud heights. I truly blush with embarrassed delight and warm with memories of those days when you took me by the hand.”

A year later James Bond’s creator was dead at the untimely age of 56. His widow later sold his books to Indiana University in the American Midwest. There, in the grandly named Ian Fleming Collection of 19th-20th Century Source Material Concerning Western Civilization, you will find at least one book consulted by James Bond — Ely Culbertson’s revolutionary Contract Bridge Blue Book (New York, 1930). In Moonraker, 007 used a Culbertson hand to defeat the dastardly Drax at Blade’s. At least this showed more respect for books than his use for The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature, which provided a neat case for his Walther PPK in Goldfinger.

And now we will link to Ebay to see how high the bidding has gone.

Pierce Brosnan is 'The Omega Man'

February 14, 2005 - Indo-Asian News Service

Hollywood actor and Omega brand ambassador Pierce Brosnan will visit Mumbai later this month to unveil the new Omega Seamaster in India. Brosnan, who has been enthralling audiences across the world as the charismatic James Bond and has to credit a number of Hollywood blockbusters, has been Omega's global brand ambassador since 1997. As a prelude to the visit, the company has planned a Pierce Brosnan film festival here. A specially designed contest will also be run wherein the winners can win a chance to meet with Pierce Brosnan himself.

"It was imperative that we honour our distinguished customers and give them exclusive access to one of our leading international brand ambassadors," said Omega International president Stephen Urquhart.

Omega will also run a nationwide contest on Star One and Star World, giving winners a chance of either winning an Omega Seamaster or meeting with Brosnan.

Facinating that Omega has not dropped Brosnan from advertising their line of watches. You would think they would try another campaign after hearing the news that Brosnan was no longer playing OO7. Could it be possible Brosnan is still in the running to play OO7 in Casino Royale and that all the negative news is just a ploy?

COMMENTARY: Bond Fans Should Be Angry

February 15, 2005 – Stuart Basinger

James Bond fans should be rearing backwards in disgust after hearing the latest news of why Pierce Brosnan is not returning to play Agent OO7. He lost the role because he wanted TOO MUCH MONEY!

For nearly a year Brosnan had been badmouthing the producers by saying they were "opaque" and "they have reached an impasse."

Brosnan had also added: "They don't know what to do. They don't know how to move on. A sense of paralysis has set in. So, for me it's business as usual. I shall just carry on with creating work for myself. I certainly would love to do a fifth Bond and then bow out, but if this last one is to be the last one, then so be it."



Brosnan also expressed his desire for a more character-driven aspect to the Bond films, in the vein of the classic From Russia With Love. He said: "It's frustrating, really, because they feel they have to top themselves in a genre which is just spectacle and huge bang for your buck. For me, I think you can have your cake and eat it. You can have real character work and real storylines and a thriller aspect and all the kind of quips and asides and explosions and the women." (source: March 23, 2004 - Itv.com)

Now the truth can be said that Brosnan wanted $42 million dollars to play James Bond one last time. Ridiculous and I stand behind the producers on their decision to look for another actor to carry a 'license to kill'. Actors today make far too much money to play a part when there are men and women throughout the world saving lives and fighting for good causes who earn only 1% of that sum.

How many Disco Volantes do you need to water ski behind, Mr. Brosnan? Or better still, how many whales do you need to save?

The late Cubby Broccoli was absolutely right when dealing with previous Bond actors in saying that "there have been 13 Tarzans" when asked what he was going to do after losing Sean Connery.

He also commented about Roger Moore's mega salary during filming of For Your Eyes Only by saying, "Roger's a nice guy, I like him a lot. But let's say greed reared its ugly head."

And let us not forget the notorious George Lazenby. Broccoli commented, "Lazenby would have been all right, if it weren't for his personality. Suddenly, he wanted a bigger salary, a bigger dressing room, and a bigger limo. He blew it." (source: THE STAR - September 30, 1980)

To add insult to injury, Mr. Brosnan, you blew it too. Here was your chance to play OO7 based on a bona fide Ian Fleming novel. It does not matter how close the film version will be to that novel, but it would have had Fleming touches throughout.

Personally I have not felt a total loss with this series since Sean Connery left in 1967. Many fans wonder to this day what 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have been like if Connery had performed in it. Now, history seems to be repeating itself. Within this year there will be an announcement of a new actor playing the part of James Bond. Chances are he will be an unknown. He will undoubtedly have an uphill battle trying to get people to stop comparing him to Sean, George, Roger, Timothy, and Pierce. And ironically, act in a film that could end like Fleming's novel with the heroine's death and a distraught Bond.

Those who do not learn from history, are condemned to repeat it.

Matthew Vaughan Turned Down 'Bond' For 'Uncle'

February 21, 2005 – New Kerala News

Matthew Vaughan has revealed that he turned down the offer to direct the 21st James Bond movie 'Casino Royale' because he wanted to bring 1960s TV series 'The Man From Uncle' to the big screen. Vaughan had almost finalized the talks to helm the project, which is now being directed by Goldeneye' director Martin Campbell, but dropped out when the production was delayed by a year.

"I came very close to doing it - as close as you can get. I was offered it by the studio, but then circumstances meant it was pushed back by a year," femalefirst quoted Vaughan as saying. "We're writing it at the moment. We're totally trying to reinvent the whole genre. I'm a real Bondaholic, but I think 'The Man From Uncle' will show Bond a few things," he said.

This is total garbage. I refuse to believe this guy was even considered to direct any Bond film. He has only directed one film and the rest of his career has been as a producer - and not a very good one either. Compared to Martin Campbell this guy looks more like Ed Wood.

Liam Neeson Spurned Bond

February 21, 2005 – Ireland Online

Hollywood star Liam Neeson turned down the chance to play James Bond, because he has never been interested in starring in action movies. The actor was approached to replace Timothy Dalton as the suave super spy in 1995's Goldeneye, but film-makers settled for fellow Irishman Pierce Brosnan after Neeson spurned their advances. The 52-year-old says: "I was approached very heavily, but I wasn't really interested."

Mr. Neeson, if you do not like action movies than why did you do Star Wars I?

Ex-Mrs Bond In Airline Scare

February 21, 2005 – The Courier Mail

A Buzzing noise from the suitcase of a woman once married to James Bond star, Sean Connery, caused a stir at Brisbane airport today. But the sound from Diane Cilento's case was only her battery-operated toothbrush.

Ms Cilento, 71, was on board a Virgin Blue flight due to leave Brisbane at lunchtime today when baggage handlers became alarmed by a buzzing noise coming from her baggage. The Oscar-nominated actress, who was Mrs Sean Connery in the 1960s, said she was seated on the aircraft waiting for takeoff when she was asked by members of the crew to disembark. A shaken Ms Cilento, who now operates a playhouse near Port Douglas in far north Queensland, got off the plane.

"It was rather a shock actually," Ms Cilento told AAP from her home. "I was called off the plane and they had my bag there and they knew my name and they wouldn't go near it because there was a terrible noise coming from it. They made me open it and it was my (electric) toothbrush. I don't know what they thought it was, but no-one was going anywhere near my bag. There was a moment there when everybody thought I was going to be turfed off and I don't know, maybe they thought there was a bomb or something."

Ms Cilento said after identifying the source of the noise and turning off the toothbrush, she and her bag were allowed back on the plane, which took off late for Cairns.

"The whole thing was a bit of a shock because you know somehow I have a bit of a habit of attracting trouble....but not this time," the actor said.

A Virgin Blue spokeswoman said she was unaware of the incident, which was handled by security staff at Brisbane airport.

You could say she made it by the skin of her teeth.

8 Minutes With Brosnan

February 22, 2005 – by Nandini Raghavendra for The Economic Times

Eight minutes is a lifetime for James Bond, given that in those 8 minutes he can defuse bombs threatening to blow up the world, crack a few snappy one-liners, bump off the villain and still find time to romance a svelte, sexy heroine.

It is not every day that you get to meet the most successful and long-standing Bond hero since Roger Moore and Sean Connery created and built the legend of 007. So what the heck if he is only willing to give you eight minutes. You take some time to admire that off-white linen jacket that sits so well on him and look into those Irish blue eyes which have mesmerised audiences across the world. You realise now that seven minutes have elapsed and that it is time to cut to the chase with the man for whom ‘The World Is Not Enough’. The huge red backdrop, filled with the Omega sign for which he is Brand Ambassador seems to blur, as he starts to talk. While Brosnan, who will no longer play Bond, is trying to shed the Bond image, he is fully aware that the 007 tag is hard to drop.

“I have actually seen the power of it first hand. I have seen men buying an Omega watch because James Bond wears it. That’s good business and it worked because it suited Bond’s lifestyle — the cigars, the martinis were all put in by Ian Fleming into his character,” says the actor who admits to having a good collection of watches and more than one brand for sure.

That he is not obsessed with the Bond persona is evident when we ask him about his choice of drink. He makes it clear that while Bond may have made the “shaken not stirred” martinis, the legendary Brosnan has no great affinity for them. Off-screen, the Irishman would prefer a “glass of wine and a bowl of pasta or a great beer and some fantastic curry to go with it”.

Time, it seems, has flown by and a quick glance at Brosnan’s watch reveals that there are only four minutes left. It’s time now to move into fifth gear. We ask him if there are any other brands that he has used as James Bond which he also uses as Pierce Brosnan. He flashes the Bond smile and tells us that he does own an Aston Martin Vanquish 2002 which he asked for and received as payment in exchange for some work he did for the brand.

“People always try to race when they see an Aston Martin next to theirs. When they turn and identify me, it only adds to the accelerator as everyone wants to race with Bond. It’s a beautiful car, a wonderful piece of sculpture, an excellent piece of engineering,” says the man who let many young drivers win a race against him.

The two-minutes-left sign goes up. A quick flashback to Remington Steele. The Irishman’s first taste of fame as the sophisticated, charming detective. “I just saw myself as 25 and saw some bad acting in it,” says Brosnan having seen the series which is being put together for a DVD release.

Seeing the surprise, he smiles and adds, “I am hard on myself. There was a lot of energy in that role and I did make myself laugh as Steele.”

So what does tomorrow hold? Brosnan has just shown Irish Dream Time’s fifth film, The Matador, at The Sundance Festival, which we read has been well-received.

“If I believe everything I read, then I’ve cracked the mould of James Bond. Who knows? There are a number of projects on, from Thomas Crown 2 to Lochinvar. Let’s say I have work and till I have longevity, I will always work.” As Bond would say Tomorrow Never Dies.

Sorry Mr. Brosnan, your time is up.

Doctor Sues Sean Connery for $30M

February 23, 2005 – Fox News Channel

NEW YORK — A downstairs neighbor of debonaire James Bond actor Sean Connery has filed a $30 million lawsuit alleging he's a bully who's trying to force the family out of the townhouse they share.

"Notwithstanding the cinematic James Bond image of consummate finesse, the defendant Connery, in true Dr. Jekyll-Mr. Hyde fashion, acts the part in real life of a bully who ignores norms of neighborliness and decency," the court papers say.

Dr. Burton Sultan, an ophthalmologist, lives with his wife and daughters on the lower four floors of a six-story Tudor townhouse, built in 1869, on Manhattan's East Side. Connery and his wife live on the top two floors.

Court papers claim the Connerys' renovations, which began in September 2001, are a source of constant noise, foul fumes, water leaks and a rat infestation. The lawsuit claims damage to the Sultans' home extended to their collection of Victorian and early 20th century wicker furniture. The lawsuit also claims the famous upstairs neighbor is harassing the Sultans "by playing loud music at all hours and stomping about." On April 7, 2002, one of the Sultans' daughters knocked on Connery's door and requested quiet.

"Connery's appearance and behavior was that of a rude, foul-mouthed, fat old man," court papers say. "Cursing and otherwise using indecent language Connery demeaned Marla's father, refused to lower the noise and slammed the door in her face."

The court papers say the Connerys also owe $15,747 in maintenance and utility payments — another ploy "to harass the Sultans into leaving their home."

The lawsuit includes a letter, purportedly from the Connerys' lawyer, Robert P. Lynn Jr., stating: "I think if we tie him up in several lawsuits, hopefully this will either permanently subdue him or drive him out of the building."

Lynn did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Connery should just say Doctor NO!

Casino Royale Update: James Bond Begins

February 24, 2005 – by Henry Cabot Beck for New York Daily News

Director Martin Campbell is going back to the beginning for "Casino Royale," based on the first Bond adventure written by Ian Fleming in 1953 - a novel that has nothing to do with the 1967 spoof starring David Niven and Woody Allen.

"There are things that will have to be changed from the original novel," says Campbell. "The Cold War elements will have to be reconfigured, for example, but 'Casino Royale' will be a grittier, tougher and more realistic Bond movie. We'll be getting away from the huge visual effects kind of films." Bond's last movie, "Die Another Day," featured an invisible car and a killer satellite. In the new film, Bond is essentially starting out in his career, and has just recently become part of the double-0 section," says Campbell, who is finishing "The Legend of Zorro," the sequel to "The Mask of Zorro."

"The idea is to put a bit of the dash back in Bond. By the end of the movie, the character will have been forged into the wiser, harder Bond we know."

In the novel, Bond falls in love with Vesper Lynd, the agent assigned to help him defeat Le Chiffre, a KGB agent who has a weakness for gambling. But Lynd is a double agent and Bond's world is shattered.

"The door is open for Bond, emotionally," says Campbell. "He's in love with Vesper and he sees there's another side to all of this, that life might be far more pleasurable, more gratifying, than being a secret agent. And ultimately that door is slammed in his face, which makes him the tempered steel kind of guy that we know."

At one point, Le Chiffre captures Bond and attempts to torture information out of him. The gruesome scene has Bond at the very brink of castration.

"I don't know what we're going to do about that," says Campbell. "It ranks up there with the teeth-drilling scene in 'Marathon Man.' I'm looking forward to humanizing Bond a bit. In the novel, Bond smokes 70 cigarettes a day - unbelievable. And he gets a little drunk."

This is the best news I've heard in a long while.

Roger Moore Returns To The Big Screen

February 24, 2005 – Contact Music

Former JAMES BOND star ROGER MOORE will star in his first big screen lead role in 13 years. The 77-year-old actor has agreed in principle to appear in a sequel to 1953 comedy GENEVIEVE, playing LORD BROADHURST who takes part in a vintage car race from London to Brighton, England.

Moore has made a number of movie appearances in recent years, none more memorable than his performance as a gay aristocrat in flop comedy BOAT TRIP. But filmmakers are confident the movie will be a hit - as soon as all the paperwork is out of the way and shooting can commence. Screenwriter BEAU DARE says, "Funding is in its final stages."

Welcome back, old friend.

COMMENTARY: Beware Of Bond Rumors

February 28, 2005 – by Stuart Basinger

You have to hand it to those PR representatives who go to extremes to get their clients recognition. Waking up to the news that Julian McMahon is on the short list to play OO7 raised the proverbial eyebrow from this observer.

Mr. McMahon is currently starring in Nip/Tuck and will be seen this summer as the evil Dr. Doom in The Fantastic Four. But that is where one should read between the lines. What better way for the PR experts than to cash in on an Internet rumor that McMahon is the next James Bond.

The truth is HE'S NOT!

One does not need to look too far into Bond movie history to see how Eon Productions conducted auditions and publicity for their actors. Take for instance George Lazenby's announcement. Harry Saltzman told George to disappear for a while until he and Cubby Broccoli prepared the news presser. George kept hidden for a week and nearly blew it with one ambitious reporter. He escaped out the back door of the hotel he was staying at.

The Broccoli family has always been private when it came to publicity. When the time came to reveal their film or actors, they would do it with all the bells and whistles and not before hand.

Whenever an actor announces that the Bond producers are looking at him, don't bet on it. Most likely it is a publicity stunt to get them noticed and in the case of Mr. McMahon, he needs all the help he can get since The Fantastic Four has a great deal of competition at the box office this summer.

Sorry Mr. McMahon, your fifteen minutes is up.

Silverlining In SilverFin?

February 28, 2005 – by David Robinson for The Scotsman

The fan are worried, angry, upset. "James Bond for kids?" spluttered Jonathan Ross when Charlie Higson told him about his next project. "Shame on them and shame on you!"

On the Bond websites - there are more than 100 - Higson’s novel SilverFin, about a 13-year-old James Bond at Eton - is arousing deep suspicion ahead of its publication this week. "Messing with Bond is like messing with Superman," says a typical entry on commanderbond.net. "It touches a nerve." "I’ve got a bad feeling about this," warns another fan with bad memories of the sheer awfulness of The Young Sherlock Holmes.

John Gardner, the English thriller-writer who wrote 14 Bond novels after Ian Fleming’s death in 1964, also scorns the whole notion of Bond as a children’s hero. "It’s just the last desperate attempt to draw in a new audience," he says. "The films have little to do with the Bond we used to know, and now the books are going the same way."

Over to you, Charlie Higson.

At first sight, the 45-year-old across the table from me, whose thick-framed glasses make him barely recognisable from his appearances in The Fast Show, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer and Swiss Toni, might seem an odd choice to write a series about James Bond in his early teens. Look, 007 purists could say, here is a man whose track record on writing about the world’s greatest fictional spy is to reduce him to ironic irrelevance.

And they’d have a point. Consider Swiss Toni, the bouffant-haired garagiste for whom everything in life can be compared to making love to a beautiful woman. If he could have done a Sean Connery accent, says Higson, that’s how we would have first heard him. "Because for Swiss Toni, Bond is his ultimate idol, a perfect aspirational figure - a suave, sophisticated ladies’ man who knows all about fine wines and Belgian chocolates. It’s no accident that in the first series, the bar they go into is called Fleming’s and it’s James Bond-themed."

Highlighting the disparity between the James Bond dream and life’s grim realities - in Swiss Toni’s case, a dead-end job in a grotty car showroom - was something Higson had already done before in his first novel, King of the Ants. "I wrote it in my twenties, after I’d just finished reading a lot of Bond novels, and the plot mirrors theirs, although it’s a grimy thriller set in London. In the book, the character reads James Bond, and he’s also called Sean because his mother named him after Connery - so, yes, there were quite a few echoes."

At this point, if I were in charge of the Ian Fleming estate and picking which writer would win the millionaire-making franchise of writing about world’s best-known spy, Charlie Higson would be talking himself out of a job. On this evidence, I might have judged, he wouldn’t take Bond seriously enough. Yet I’d be completely wrong.

Because this time Higson writes Bond completely straight. He tested it out, a chapter at a time, on his own three sons (aged 12, ten and six) and, apart from his middle son always wanting Bond to kill everyone in sight, it passed the test. I’m not surprised.

His Bond isn’t too knowing, not a mini-me version of the film Bond, always ready to deflate tension with a cool quip or a deadly pun. Nor is he, like Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider - the nearest contender to the Bond title on the young adult shelves - a whizz with hi-tech gadgets. Instead, Higson’s Bond takes us straight back to Fleming’s books - and an altogether different kind of superhero than the one we know from the multiplexes.

"The Bond of the books is a far more interesting and complex character than he is in the films," says Higson. "He is more real in his motivation, more vulnerable. He has thoughts about death, gets hurt, gets cross, and knows that he has to keep himself separate from other people because of his job. I wanted to put all of that in a book, and for it to be a proper book, not a jokey spin-off."

Instead of something like Spykids, in other words, SilverFin takes us straight back to the old-fashioned physical adventure stories of the 1930s. His 13-year-old James Bond is more like a young Buchan hero or a proto-Bulldog Drummond than a Superman-in-waiting. There’s even a bit of depth and flashes of humanity - not normally qualities anyone readily associates with Bond.

SilverFin begins as Bond starts his first term at Eton. His parents have died in a climbing accident and - just like that other orphan confronting the mysteries of Hogwart’s - James has to work out his place in a particularly eccentric parallel universe. This Eton is a place which is so cold that pupils wear gloves in the classroom, where there were all kinds of strange rules about collars never having to be turned down or umbrellas rolled, and which direction certain streets can be walked down.

"I’ve read as much as I can about Eton and the 1930s, but in a way I’ve had to create my own versions of both, because a real 13-year-old boy like James Bond would have had attitudes that were completely insufferable to today’s children. So, it’s a kind of fantasy Eton. We can all relate to starting at school, but this is a particularly weird, interesting place."

At Eton, Bond is bullied by George Hellebore, whose father turns out to be the villain of the piece, with a Scottish castle at which he conducts horrendous genetic experiments. Some of these involve eels, but their main purpose is to breed aggression. And, without giving away too much of the plot, it is sufficiently frightening to hold the interest of young readers. My 12-year-old son adored it.

Even if he hadn’t met Paul Whitehouse at university in Norwich in the 1970s; even if he hadn’t met Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer through mutual friends there; even if he had never gone on to be a key figure in British TV comedy, Charlie Higson would always, he says, have been a writer.

Whatever else he has done - which includes being the lead singer in the Higsons, a "poor man’s Talking Heads" in the 1970s, as well as all his Fast Show roles - writing matters most to him.

"At university I specialised in American Gothic literature and started writing all these dense, post-modernist novels that were completely unreadable. I’d always been quite snobbish about reading popular fiction, but a friend turned me on to American crime fiction. The turning point came when I thought why, instead of all these bits of fake genre thrillers I was writing, don’t I just write a straight thriller instead?"

It worked. Writing thrillers instead of flash po-mo magic realism meant that his books had a powerful running motor, instead of disappearing up their own exhaust pipe. The trick was to learn how to tune up the plot while still fleshing out the characters. "In The Fast Show, that’s what we were always trying to do too. Some of the characters, like the ‘Suits you, sir!’ guys [two camp tailors with the most annoying catchphrase of the 1990s] we couldn’t do much with.

"But with all the other characters, at least we gradually tried to show a personality behind them."

Indeed, by the end of The Fast Show, with characters such as Ralph, the tongue-tied aristocrat unable to express his feelings for his Irish gardener, had established a humanity that transcended the limits of a rapid-fire gag show.

Sometimes, the more limits there were on a project, the more fun it became to work on. "The worst thing is someone coming up and saying - Can you write me something, anything at all, and we’ll do a film deal. Paul and I get that quite a lot. But with Swiss Toni, it was the opposite: probably the most constrained writing it is possible to get. You’ve got the same set every week, and everything has to happen within it. It only makes you more imaginative."

So look again at SilverFin. It has another person’s character. More than 100 million people have bought books about him, millions more seen the films. They know what to expect. No writer could have greater limitations than that.

Higson’s triumph is that he both meets those expectations and yet surprises his readers. It’s a tough act to pull off, but on this occasion at least, perhaps nobody does it better.

I am actually looking forward to this book. I cannot help feeling that this crazy idea might just work.

Thunderball: Fact Or Fiction?

March 1, 2005 – by Dominic Casciani for BBC News

So how much truth was there really in Ian Fleming's James Bond? Was it all the over-excited imagination of a writer - or did he let us in on things that really happened? Ian Fleming spent World War II in naval intelligence - and biographers have charted how his experiences inspired him to create many of 007's finest adventures. But today MI5 has declassified secret documents shedding further light on the real history of James Bond.

The papers at the National Archives document the secret war to defend Gibraltar. They are a story of brilliant impersonators, femme-fatale agents and exploding fountain pens. What's more, they provide the full story of how an Italian plan for human torpedoes inspired Fleming to write Thunderball, made into one of the earliest Bond films.

During WWII, General Franco's Spain was nominally neutral - although hardly a friend of the Allies. And thanks to a personality clash of epic proportions between Franco and Hitler, Gibraltar was surprisingly spared direct assault. But with the Germans, Spanish and Italians all wanting to prise the British from their Mediterranean colony, a secret war of spying, sabotage and smuggling began.

Fighting the British corner was the Security Intelligence Department, led by David Scherr. His personal history, declassified after 60 years, provides today's fascinating glimpse into counter-espionage. Spanish workers continually smuggled items in and out of Gibraltar for the Axis powers. The key was to seize the weaponry without the Germans or Spanish catching on - but also to use some of it in bogus explosions to convince the enemy the saboteurs were getting through.

Gibraltar was a hotbed of spies and informers and Scherr's team knew it. At one point he paraded Field Marshall Montgomery in public - or rather his double - to confuse the enemy over British plans for the colony. On other days, German double-agents would get the upper hand: false tip-offs would exhaust British agents as they searched market stalls for bombs hidden in vegetables. But while the British generally kept a lid on the Germans and Spanish - foiling 70 attacks in four years - Scherr records the Italians were harder to crack.

The Italian secret weapon was the Tenth Flotilla MAS - frogmen who successfully hit 14 merchant vessels in three years. The Italians had created special torpedoes that could be piloted by frogmen to their target, either from the beach oR submarines.

"The normal method of approach was to travel on the surface until 80 to 100 yards from the target and then to submerge," Scherr records. "Under the hull of the ship the MAS men would then leave their detachable warheads [and incendiary devices] and then escape to the Spanish shore using the torpedo to carry them to safety."

In true James Bond style, the saboteurs would then come ashore on the Spanish beach, strip out of their wetsuits and blend in until they could be picked up from a safehouse.

Growing in confidence, the team secretly adapted a 5,000 ton tanker, the Olterra, which had been partially scuttled on the outbreak of war. Cutting doors in the ship's bow, the Italians created flood chambers from which the human torpedo missions could be launched.

According to Ian Fleming's biographer, Andrew Lycett, the fledgling writer was so inspired by the idea when it passed over his desk at Naval Intelligence, he used it in his novel Thunderball. In this story SPECTRE baddie Emilio Largo uses underwater doors and human torpedoes as the means to smuggle stolen nuclear weapons off his naturally luxurious yacht, the Disco Volante.

Back in the real world, the British were initially baffled by the attacks, thanks to some cunning disinformation put about by the enemy. But the Italians unfortunately had no idea how good the British double-agent network was to become. One of the key double agents was a woman - one who more or less resembled Fleming's concept of the Bond girl. Codenamed the Queen of Hearts, David Scherr describes their first encounter:

"This was a woman in her 30s whose dress, mannerisms speech and general appearance made her a rather seedy but not unattractive imitation of the seductive female spy of the thrillerette type," he recalls. "She sat down, crossed her legs (adjusting her skirt to reveal them to the best advantage), slowly lit a cigarette, inhaled, breathed out the smoke in a furtive fashion, looking down her long aquiline nose at the same time, and then smiled across at her interrogator: 'I am the Queen of Hearts. Who are you?'"

A serendipitous tip from the Queen linked the frogmen to the Spanish authorities and a villa on the mainland. It was only a matter of time before the entire plot would unravel.

The grand Italian plan was to hit the Royal Navy hard in the winter of 1942. Three torpedoes, each with two men onboard, would be launched from the Olterra. Lieutenant Lino Visentin would lead the attack against HMS Nelson, a battleship, and aircraft carriers HMS Furious and Formidable. But it was not to be. Two of the torpedoes malfunctioned and had to be hastily repaired. As they again headed for their targets, naval gunners picked them up. Five of the six frogmen died in the hail of fire and depth charges. The survivor escaped by diving the torpedo early - meaning he would not have enough air to complete the mission. Although David Scherr's team would only later discover the Olterra's real role, the operation had essentially failed and the fleet was safe from attack.

I wonder if producer Kevin McClory has read this?

SILVERFIN: James Bond Is Back . . . In Time

March 3, 2005 – by Neil Smith for BBC News

After 34 books, eight short stories and 22 movies, you would think that we would know all there is to know about secret agent James Bond. But Charlie Higson - who plays Ralph and Swiss Toni on the BBC's Fast Show - knows different. This mild-mannered father-of-three has been given a licence to write five new novels about 007's teenage exploits. And on the evidence of Silverfin, the first instalment in Puffin's Young Bond series, Ian Fleming's legendary hero is in safe hands.



"Originally the Fleming estate wanted a different writer for each book in the series," reveals Higson. "But that seems to have changed because I'm doing the lot. I'd been wanting to write a children's book so my kids could read something I've written, so when I was approached I was naturally quite excited."

Higson is not the first writer to continue Bond's adventures in print. After Fleming's death in 1964, further novels were penned by Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and Raymond Benson.

Silverfin finds James Bond at Eton, Ian Fleming's own alma mater But this is the first time readers will encounter 007 before he joined Her Majesty's Secret Service.

"He's not a spy, just an ordinary teenage boy," explains the author, who has written four other adult thrillers. When we meet James Bond in Silverfin, he is a 13-year-old orphan newly arrived at Eton in the early 1930s. He soon makes a mortal enemy in George Hellebore, the son of a wealthy arms dealer whose castle in Scotland hides sinister secrets.

Hints of the man Bond will become are present in his steely resolve, curiosity and fiercely competitive nature. But Higson says he avoided including more obvious nods to Fleming's originals or the films they spawned.

"I want to show how he becomes who he became, and where some of his attitudes come from," he says. "But we didn't want to go as far as having him meet a teenage M or a bald bloke at school called Blofeld. The great thing about going back to the 30s is you can strip away all the clichés. It's good not to have to worry about ridiculous gadgets, for example."

There are elements, however, Higson did have to address - namely, the "sex, sadism and snobbery" memorably attributed to Fleming by the critic Paul Johnson.

"The sadism's fine because kids love nastiness, torture and death," laughs Higson. "But sex is a tricky one. The books are written for 8 to 12-year-olds, and they don't want to read about someone going round kissing girls."

Higson also admits he has toned down some of Fleming's more elitist opinions.

"A lot of his pronouncements about foreigners and whatnot are quite outrageous, so I didn't want to go down that route."

With a second novel already written and a third on the way, there is little room for comedy in Higson's busy schedule. That said, he is discussing a new sketch programme and film project with Fast Show colleague Paul Whitehouse. So - to borrow Swiss Toni's catchphrase - is writing a Bond novel like making love to a beautiful woman? Charlie isn't saying, though he admits one of Silverfin's saucier passages will be removed from the US edition.

"I think it's the bit where the girl clamps him between her strong thighs!" he says with a smirk that would make Swiss Toni proud.

Congratulations from this website on a new bold beginning in the James Bond lore.

New Bond Author Calls Fans 'Mad'

March 8, 2005 – by Hannah Stephenson for The Journal

In an article for The Journal, the new author of the Young Bond book 'SilverFin', Charlie Higson has gone on record saying Bond fans are 'mad'.

"The announcement of the creation of a teenage Bond has outraged legions of fans, says Charlie, who has followed their comments on fan websites.

"When it was announced, the James Bond websites - and there are a lot - were completely furious. Their attitude was, `You can't make James Bond a kid - he's a drinking, smoking, womanising assassin. Ian Fleming would turn in his grave'. They are very protective of the whole thing but I hope when they read it they'll change their minds."

In his defence, Charlie has logged on to the chatlines of some of the Bond websites under a pseudonym to suggest that they ought to give the book a chance.

"They are all mad collectors, so they all say, `I will of course buy a book but I won't like it'."

The young Bond isn't as self-assured, suave and sophisticated as the older character made famous by the likes of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan. Charlie has set the first book in the 1930s when Bond is 13 and there is no trace of M or Moneypenny.

Ian Fleming's family had definite ideas of what they wanted - a straightforward, approachable style which wouldn't alienate kids.

"They didn't want an in-joke, parody-type, knockabout book. Some of the people they approached wanted to take it down that route and possibly make it too much their own thing."

In SilverFin, the young Bond is a vulnerable character who is initially victimised by this American bully but soon shows the inner strength that is to see him through.

"In the Fleming books he's a more interesting and more complex character than in the films. He does get hurt, upset and cross and he's always getting captured and tortured and beaten up and he doesn't like it. I wanted the boy to be the same. I wanted to show how the boy became the man, how events in his childhood shaped how he was when he got older. In the adult books he's quite a lonely man because his job is going out killing people. He can't get too close emotionally to women because he might be called away at any moment and have to face death. I wanted to show in my book that, while he has lots of friends, there's something quite private about him and he's a bit of a loner."

While it's billed as a book aimed at nine to 12-year-olds, there are several gruesome and graphic scenes, including one in which a body covered in eels is dragged from a lake. Charlie, who lives in London with wife Vicky, a graphic artist, dismisses the suggestion that such scenes might not be suitable for children. He read every chapter to sons Frank, 12, Jim, 10, and six-year-old Sid as he wrote them.

"They had lots of suggestions. They always wanted it to be more violent and horrible. Frank just wants everyone killed off all the time. Strange things will upset kids. My kids will happily sit through Jaws, but one of them wouldn't watch the film Matilda for years because something about the school teacher freaked him out. The trigger is not necessarily the most gruesome or violent thing."

Vicky also reads his work but doesn't criticise. "You can't rely on your spouse to be any form of critic or genuine sounding board," he smiles. "It's their job to say you're a genius."

He consulted Fleming's nieces but says he wasn't party to the inner workings of the Fleming estate. "They are very protective of what they do and are quite secretive. They have various other James Bond projects on the go and it's all quite hush hush."

Charlie has already completed the second book in the series, due out next year to coincide with the new Bond film.

Interesting, the second Young Bond book will coincide with Casino Royale. Is there a slight hint of continuity here?

The Coolest Cats To Ever Grace The Big Screen

March 8, 2005 – MTV

James Bond tops the list of the 'coolest cats' to ever grace the big screen. MTV went on to say about our favorite British spy:

The essence of cool: Unruffled in any situation, a dry sense of humor, cultured, swanky, in possession of the most cutting-edge gadgets and rather popular with the most glamorous/ dangerous/ beautiful/ enticingly named women in the world. People pretend to argue over the best Bond, but actually the discussion should be "Who's the second-best 007?" since anyone who says anyone other than Sean Connery is lying for the sake of being contrary. While George Lazenby was great in his one, underrated turn as the superspy in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," #2 has to be Pierce Brosnan, who got better with each film. He shall be missed.

The other nine characters were:

2. John Shaft
3. Danny Ocean
4. Bugs Bunny
5. Axel Foley
6. Wolverine
7. Rick Blaine
8. The Bride
9. John Robie, A.K.A. The Cat
10. The Man With No Name

Facinating list. Missing from the list is Dirty Harry, Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Nick Charles, Bulldog Drummond, and Kato. But it is nice to know that OO7 is the epitome of cool.

Higson Says: "Shoot The Film In Scotland"

March 21, 2005 – by Brian Pendreigh for The Sunday Herald

Take the silver screen’s most dashing spy, add a touch of Harry Potter and mix with the unique atmosphere of the Highlands … and you could have the recipe for a hugely successful film franchise. A new book which traces the adventures of the teenage James Bond has already attracted the interest of major film companies and now the author has urged them to film any movie in Scotland.

Charlie Higson, who was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write the young Bond’s first adventure, told the Sunday Herald yesterday: “I thought I should take James Bond to Scotland, because Ian Fleming said in the obituary that his father was Scottish and the family was from Glencoe.’’

The author, who co-created The Fast Show with Paul Whitehouse and plays the series character Swiss Toni, added: “I just thought it made sense to send him up there and show a bit of that world, particularly as I think it’s a fantastic bit of the world. It is such dramatic, bleak, empty countryside, it lends itself perfectly to the kind of action adventure that James Bond goes on. Scotland is so photogenic and fantastic.”

Higson’s book, SilverFin, was published in the UK only a fortnight ago, but has shot up the bestseller lists, sparking major interest among film companies. The novel picks up on biographical details from the original Ian Fleming books. Set in the 1930s, it follows the 13-year-old Bond from school at Eton to his uncle’s house in the west Highlands, where Bond stumbles upon a megalo maniac American laird and sinister genetic experiments with killer eels.

“There has been a great deal of interest in the film rights across the board,” said Zoe Watkins of Ian Fleming Publications. The company has commissioned Higson to write a series of five “Young Bond” novels, taking Bond to the generation of readers that made Harry Potter a publishing phenomenon.

She said that if the Young Bond books sold well she expected them to be turned into films, though there was no timescale at present. “We are concentrating on getting the books out there and established in their own right,” she said.

But another source said the films were “very much under discussion” and interest could well intensify when SilverFin is released in the US next month.

James Bond is the most successful film series ever and the prospect of a movie that combines elements of James Bond and Harry Potter could spark a major bidding war. Most film production companies are keeping any possible interest top secret, but Heyday Films, the English company that makes the Harry Potter movies for Warner Bros, is a likely contender. “We have looked at it, but no decision has been made yet,” said a spokesman.

Eon Productions, which makes the adult Bond films, is not ruling it out.

Higson said he was “pleasantly surprised” at the book sales and endorsed the idea of a film of SilverFin shooting on location in Scotland. Higson took as his starting point the James Bond obituary that appeared in The Times in the Ian Fleming novel You Only Live Twice, when 007 was missing presumed dead. According to the obituary, Bond’s father was a Scot, his mother was Swiss and they died in a climbing accident when he was 11. The youthful Bond attended Fettes College in Edinburgh, after being expelled from Eton as a result of an incident with a maid.

Higson said that Ian Fleming Publications wanted to keep Bond at Eton throughout the first four books at least, for sake of continuity. The author argues the obituary may not have been entirely accurate. However he was keen to pick up on Bond’s Scottish roots. Bond spends his holidays at a cottage belonging to his uncle Max Bond, who was a spy in the first world war, and he gets mixed up in his own adventure with the villain Lord Hellebore.

In his novel, Higson mentions Fort William and Glenfinnan, and Hellebore’s castle was inspired by Eilean Donan, though Higson was unaware that it appeared as MI6’s Scottish headquarters in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough.

Scotland also provided locations for From Russia with Love, Casino Royale and The Spy Who Loved Me, but has never played a major role in any of the 22 Bond films. Several recent films and television dramas have been set in Scotland, but shot in Ireland and Eastern Europe. Higson was keen that SilverFin should shoot in Scotland. Production company Heyday are no strangers to the west Highlands, having shot Harry Potter scenes at Glencoe and the Glenfinnan viaduct. But before SilverFin makes it to the screen, there is the next James Bond film to be made – a remake of Casino Royale. Intrigue remains, however, over who will take over the role of Bond from Pierce Brosnan.

William Hill suspended betting following a series of big bets on Scottish actor Dougray Scott. They have reopened the book, with Clive Owen odds-on favourite, and have dismissed Scott altogether. The only other actors on whom the bookmaker is taking bets are Daniel Craig and Julian McMahon, the Australian star of Nip/Tuck.

Higson said however that Scott might be suitable for the role of Max Bond. His other suggestions were the Scottish actor Iain Glen or Welshman Timothy Dalton, who succeeded Roger Moore as Bond. “If one was going to be clever, one might get someone like Timothy Dalton to play Max,” he said.

The role of Young Bond is likely to go to a complete unknown. But if the film emulates the success of the book, it could create a new film star as well as being a major boost both for the Scottish film industry and for Scottish tourism.

Timothy Dalton as the 'uncle' to young James Bond? Interesting!

Christopher Lee Speaks Out

March 21, 2005 – by Sherna Noah for The Scotsman

Movie legend Christopher Lee has criticised today’s generation of younger stars for being “over-hyped”. Lee, 82, who has more than 200 films to his name, described some actors’ performances as “holes in the air”. The actor, known for playing villains such as wizard Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Dracula, told Total Film magazine: “Johnny Depp, as far as I’m concerned, is number one.

“Of his generation, there’s no one who can touch him. Some performers today, it’s like looking at holes in the air.”

The British actor, who made his name in the Hammer films, said: “You get these young, over-hyped stars with very little experience, pitched into big-budget movies in major roles and they can’t begin to handle them. It’s extremely dangerous because it means they’re not going to last long.”

Lee, who worked with Oscar nominee Depp on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, said he still did not know why his scenes had been cut from the third Lord of the Rings film. He told Total Film: “When it came out, millions of others were confused too. The reaction of the public was quite extraordinary. My point was not that, as an actor, I’d had my scenes taken out. It was the story. You can’t have a man looking frantic on a balcony when everything is being destroyed and then never see him again. The audience would demand, as they did, to know what happened to him. I just didn’t understand it. I was given plenty of reasons why I was cut out, none of which made sense.”

The Star Wars actor added: “At the time I read it, I wanted to play Gandalf. But they thought I was too old. So I played wizard Saruman, which is in many ways immensely important because Saruman is the one and only total adversary of the Fellowship. Everything that happens he’s responsible for. And that’s why it was so extraordinary that they didn’t have me in the third film.”

Lee, who was a cousin through marriage of Bond creator Ian Fleming, backed Pierce Brosnan, who is said to have been axed from the next 007 movie, as the best of the James Bond actors.

“I don’t think anyone has ever succeeded in putting Ian Fleming’s James Bond up on the screen,” he said. “The closest in my opinion is Pierce Brosnan.”

Lee was voted 16th in a recent poll of the greatest movie stars of all time.

We will be looking forward to seeing Mr. Lee as he reprises his role of Count Dooku in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Connery Ends Another Deal To Ghost-Write His Memoirs

March 21, 2005 – by Michael Blackley for The Scotsman

SIR Sean Connery’s autobiography has again been put on hold after he cancelled a deal with his ghost writer. It is the second time in six months that the Scottish actor has ditched plans for the memoirs.

Sir Sean had most recently commissioned Hunter Davies, the only authorised biographer of the Beatles, to ghost write the book. Mr Davies was appointed by Connery, now aged 74, last summer but it is understood that Connery may have been concerned by the author’s desire to write an account giving more personal detail about the actor’s life that he was prepared to accept.

A previous Connery autobiography was to be ghost written by the Scottish author Meg Henderson who was a longtime friend of Sir Sean, and who shared a similar Scottish working class upbringing. However, despite progressing through numerous ideas and spending a lot of time working on the book, Sir Sean pulled out of the deal after a dispute over money. Ms Henderson’s response was to write a fierce article in a newspaper about him, in which she said: "He isn't the man I thought he was, nor the man he likes to think he is."

She should have kept her mouth shut.

Ultimate 'Behind The Scenes' Of Diamonds Are Forever

March 23, 2005 – DSBG

Latest news on the Ultimate DVD collection of the James Bond films has a 'Behind the Scenes' segment for Diamonds Are Forever. This 1971 documentary titled CLOSE QUARTERS COMBAT shows the preparation and filming of the elevator fight scene between Bond and diamond smuggler Peter Franks. Dr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden is pleased to offer a one minute abbreviated version of this footage. Look closely and you will spot director Guy Hamilton and stuntman Bob Simmons choreographing the fight inside the lift.

The Ultimate James Bond DVD Collection is scheduled for release in 2006.

Young Bond - Book Two

April 1, 2005 – DSBG

With all the excitement bouncing around the Internet about the first Young Bond novel SILVERFIN, speculation has reached an all time high on what the next Young Bond novel is to be called. Click here if your curiosity is too much to bare.

Enjoy.

Is Brosnan Back?

April 4, 2005 – Dark Horizons

Is Brosnan back or is this another April Fools joke? You make the call. With all the speculation about "Casino Royale" and the next James Bond not over but coming towards a close sometime soon, along came this report over April Fools weekend from an apparent MGM insider named 'Artists United' which offers a potential other possibility which many may have dismissed. Like all Bond talk, take this with a grain of salt:

"So - the next Bond. The buzz is that, ultimately, the filmmakers would like Pierce Brosnan back. All the stuff we heard about Brosnan being out is just a ploy from both camps. The negotiations between Brosnan and Eon came to an end because, in the last year, things were up in the air, thanks to all the organizational changes taking place. Many things have been affected by the Sony takeover, and I must say that there are days when it feels like doom and gloom as I walk along the hallowed halls of MGM - there are all sorts of reorganizations in the works and, well, the bleakness of uncertainty surrounding our jobs. Moreover, with the delay of the Bond film and many organizational matters still being worked out, there wasn't really any reason for Eon to continue with the negotiations. And with Eon still immersed in some business matters with Sony, as well as lacking a director (at that time) and a solid script, and an initial salary request from Brosnan that they balked at, it was suddenly premature to proceed with the negotiations. Brosnan's apparent bitterness in some of the interviews (according to our sources at the publicity side) is essentially the reaction of an actor who was chumped from the first stirrings of a good deal in the making: last year, things began to look hopeful, not just in terms of salary, but in the area of story development and an agreement to move away from an excessive action-oriented/special effects kind of Bond film.

So where does this leave us? Well, what we're sensing is that the Brosnan/Eon camps are still going through the motions of bluffing each other: an echo of the old poker game that Cubby Broccoli went through with Roger Moore. Moore frequently announced that he wouldn't be back. (Geez, if he had a web site back then, he'd be plastering it with farewell messages.) It's a typical tactic of PR handlers--make your star seem aloof and distant to make the filmmakers worry and chase him--and it worked for Moore. In fact, during the days of "For Your Eyes Only," Moore wasn't even signed until about a month before shooting began. It took Cubby Broccoli's personal intervention along with top studio brass to secure a deal with Moore. Whether it will work for Brosnan remains to be seen, but the mood around here (at least for now) is that he'll be back. Hence, the reluctance of the filmmakers to come right out and announce that they have parted ways with Brosnan. If anything, they've kept the door open by not making any casting announcements in the recent press release.

So much money is at stake and the word is, SONY are not in a gambling mood. They could lose more with an unknown actor, or with an experienced but unpopular actor. They're well aware that you just can't place any actor in this role; and with Brosnan's star power and successful track record ($1 billion from four films), he's currently the strong money-maker for the Bond films. The phrase we've started to hear recently is "The Dalton Problem." Although a fine actor, Timothy Dalton just didn't appeal to the public. One co-worker pointed to an analysis by Steven Jay Rubin (author of "The Complete James Bond Movie Encyclopedia" and "The James Bond Films") in the Dec. 1995 issue of Cinefantastique Magazine, which supports the mentality of the filmmakers. In this article, Rubin states the dilemma that haunts an actor who doesn't have the "big screen" persona required for the Bond role: Dalton, he states, "lent no star-power to the character. This became increasingly difficult for the studio marketing department, because they realized that people weren't flocking to see a Timothy Dalton movie; they were going to see a Bond movie with what's-his-name" (19).They are keen to avoid the same happening with Owen and the other 'candidates' who are supposedly on a short list for the role.

So, providing Brosnan and Sony/Eon can iron out various political and financial issues - our money's on Brosnan coming back for Casino Royale and possibly even Bond 22!" EDITOR'S NOTE: One wonders if Brosnan is to return since Judi Dench is going to be in it. But how do they plan to do this film since announcing Casino Royale is Bond's first assignment unless there is to be two actors playing the part of Bond. One older - Brosnan in present time and the other 20 years younger and on seen at Casino Royale. Perhaps the Casino Royale will take place in the past as well as the present.

All speculation and taken with a grain of iodized salt.

Sean Connery Is Back!

April 5, 2005 – by John Gaudiosi for The Hollywood Reporter

Sean Connery has agreed to reprise his role as James Bond for Electronic Arts' upcoming video game version of "From Russia With Love."

Connery will record dialogue for the game, and his likeness will appear as it did in MGM's 1963 hit movie. He will be joined by other likenesses from the original cast of the film as the game will bring to life such characters as the original Q (Desmond Llewelyn), Donald "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw), Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya), Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), Kerim Bay (Pedro Armendariz) and Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell). In addition, EA will work with Hollywood talent to round out the game.



"As an artist, I see this as another way to explore the creative process," Connery said. "Video games are an extremely popular form of entertainment today, and I am looking forward to seeing how it all fits together."

"The combination of Sean Connery, the Bond universe and 'From Russia With Love' is about the best mix you can have in a Bond game without a new feature film," said John Taylor, video game analyst at Arcadia Research.

The game is slated for release in the fall on PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, meaning it will come out before MGM and Danjaq Prods.' feature film remake of "Casino Royale," which is scheduled for completion next year. EA already has had considerable success with the James Bond franchise. The video game leader brought classic Bond characters back in 2004's "GoldenEye: Rogue Agent" game, which put players in the shoes of the villain GoldenEye.

A game even adults would probably enjoy.

James Bond Role to Be Filled by U.K.'s Daniel Craig

April 6, 2005 – Bloomberg

British actor Daniel Craig, whose movie work includes ``Sylvia,'' ``Road to Perdition'' and ``Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,'' has been picked to be the new James Bond, replacing Pierce Brosnan, the U.K.'s Sun reported today, citing an unidentified person in the film industry.

Craig, 37, will probably sign a 15 million-pound ($28.2 million) agreement to make three Bond films after being offered the part by producer Barbara Broccoli, the newspaper said. The actor appeared last month in the television version of Robert Harris's novel ``Archangel.''

Broccoli made the offer to Craig after Oscar-nominated Clive Owen, who was being considered for the role, told casting agents he didn't want the job, the Sun reported. Craig would become the sixth actor to play the British spy 007, a role first taken on by Sean Connery in the 1962 film ``Dr. No.'' Katherine McCormack, a spokeswoman for Eon Productions in London, which produces the Bond films, declined to comment in a telephone interview.

Personally Daniel Craig would make a better villain than OO7.

Grace Jones Escorted Off Train By Police

April 6, 2005 – Reuters

Actress and singer Grace Jones was escorted off a Paris-to-London express after refusing to pay for a seat upgrade and abusing staff, train operator Eurostar has said. Police met the 56-year-old at Ashford station in Kent on Tuesday night after the train manager raised the alarm.

"Celebrity or not we will not accept this behaviour from any of our passengers," said Eurostar communications director, Paul Charles on Wednesday.

Neither Jones nor her agent were immediately available for comment. The tall Jamaican-born Jones is famed for her performance as the cropped-haired evil nemesis to Roger Moore's James Bond in the 1985 film "A View to a Kill". She also acted alongside California's governor and former movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1984 film "Conan the Destroyer".

Jones had bought a first class ticket for the evening train from Paris but swore and grabbed the train manager's arm when asked to pay the upgrade price for taking a seat in the more exclusive Premium class, Charles said. Jones claimed she had no cash or credit cards to pay for the upgrade and refused to move from the seat, he added. A first class return ticket costs around 300 pounds and the one-way upgrade would have cost a further 70 pounds.

Eurostar did not press charges and Jones was picked up later in the evening from Ashford and driven to London, police said. "There was a call to report an incident on the train with the lady in question. Officers escorted her off the train -- end of story," said a spokesman for British Transport Police.

Next time take an air ship.

SilverFin Comes To America

April 7, 2005 – FSB Associates

The following is an excerpt from the book Silverfin by Charlie Higson - A special thanks to Jeffery Anderson of FSB Associates (www.fsbassociates.com) for the opportunity to bring this excerpt to our audience.
Published by Miramax; April 2005;$16.95US; 0-7868-3661-X
Copyright © 2005 Charlie Higson


James was shivering. His body felt raw, as if he'd had the skin peeled off it, like Croaker's eel. He rubbed his arms to try to get some feeling back into them, and the raised goose bumps made them feel as rough as sandpaper.

If it was this cold out of the water, what was it going to be like in it?

Well, there was only one way to find out.

It was half an hour before afternoon lessons and he was standing on a low diving board at Ward's Mead, peering at the water, which looked like some of Codrose's less appetizing soup. Cold soup. Freezing-cold soup.

"Come on, then," he said out loud. "Just do it."

He pulled back his arms, took a deep breath and flung himself forward. When he entered the water it was like being hit by a cricket bat. He was stunned by the cold and for a moment he couldn't move, but then he came alive, clawed his way to the surface and gasped. All his limbs were aching and his throbbing head felt numb. The only way to stay in the water and stop himself from jumping out was to swim. He thrashed across the Mead to the other side and fought the urge to get out and run back to his room. After a moment's hesitation, he forced himself round and swam back to the other side.

Weak sunlight was filtering through the low cloud; at least it was warmer than yesterday, but these were hardly ideal swimming conditions. Nevertheless, if he was going to stand any chance in the cup, which was only three weeks away, he knew that he would have to get used to it.

After three widths he found that his body was adjusting to the temperature and, while it could never have been described as pleasant, at least he knew that he was not going to die after all.

He swam a few more widths, and when he had had just about all that he could stand he swam over to where he'd left his clothes and prepared to pull himself out of the water. But, just as he was getting his knees up, somebody put a shoe in his face and shoved him back into the Mead.

He looked up. It was George Hellebore.

"Hey, if it ain't my old pal, Jimmy Bond," he said.

"Hello, Hellebore." James once more tried to scramble out on to the grassy bank.

"Where do you think you're going in such a hurry?" said Hellebore, pushing him back in again.

"To get changed."

"Always in a hurry, aren't you, Bond? Always got to go somewhere fast."

"I'm cold and I want to get out."

"Yeah, I bet you do. Well, I'm in charge of the river today." Hellebore knelt down and gave James a big, sinister smile. "And if you want to get out, first of all you have to pass a little test."

James looked up into George's face. His china-blue eyes were glinting with crazy amusement and there was an ugly smirk on his lips.

"Look, Hellebore," said James, holding on to the side. "You're not in charge here."

"Hey, if I say I'm in charge, I'm in charge."

There was no point in arguing, Hellebore was backed up by his usual gang of cronies: Wallace, with his big, square head and gap-toothed grin, Sedgepole, who had an extremely small head and sticking-out ears, and Pruitt, who was rather good-looking and elegant. They leered at James, daring him to try his luck.

"What do you want?" said James, trying not to let his teeth rattle together with the cold.

"You fancy yourself as a bit of a swimmer, do you, Bond?" said the American, and Bond shrugged. "Well, I've not seen anybody in this country of yours that was half as good a swimmer as me. I practically grew up in the water."

"Yes," said Bond, kicking his legs to try and keep warm. "You're supposed to be quite good."

"Quite good?" Hellebore opened his eyes wide in mock amazement: "Quite good? I'm the best, Bond. Care to have a race?"

"Not now, Hellebore."

"But that's the test you have to pass, Bond, old boy. You have to win a swimming race."

"I'm not racing you, Hellebore . . ."

"Who said anything about racing me? You couldn't beat me in a thousand years. No, you're not racing me." Hellebore whistled and a boy in swimming trunks shuffled reluctantly over from the bushes where he'd been sheltering. It was Leo Butcher, a robust, cheerful, round boy who played in the school brass band. Bond had seen him puffing away at a recent concert given by the Musical Society in School Hall.

"Hello, Bond," he said sheepishly. It was obvious that he had no more desire to be here than James.

'Hello, Butcher,' said James.

"The deal is . . ." said Hellebore. "You get to race Butcher."

Bond frowned. Butcher didn't look like much of a swimmer. What was the catch?

"What do you say, Bond?" Hellebore slapped Butcher hard across the shoulders, and Bond saw him wince with the pain. "A race against fatty Butcher here. The loser gives me . . ." Hellebore paused for dramatic effect, "let's say, their hat."

Bond glanced at Butcher, who was staring at the ground.

"It should be a fun race," said Hellebore. "But I'll warn you, Bond, Butcher's good. He's the best." The older boys laughed.

"If it's all the same to you," said James, "I'd rather not . . ."

Hellebore suddenly grabbed James by the hair and forced his head under the surface. Taken by surprise, James swallowed a mouthful of muddy water. He came up, coughing and retching.

"You race Butcher, Bond. Or me and my good friends are going to play football with your head. Understand?" Hellebore grabbed him and pulled him on to the bank. "So, what's it to be?"

James stood up; George's hands had left red marks on his arms.

"All right," he said quietly.

Hellebore clapped his hands. "Good fellow," he said. "May the best man win."

James and Butcher arranged themselves at the edge of the Mead. Butcher was shivering madly and his knees were knocking together. James wondered what threats Hellebore had used to get him to cooperate.

"Are you all set?" Hellebore called out. "Two widths, loser pays out the forfeit."

Try as he might, James couldn't understand what Hellebore was up to. He could beat Butcher easily -- the blond American must be planning some kind of trick. But what?

"On your marks, get set . . ." Hellebore stopped suddenly. Butcher was caught off guard and toppled into the water. Hellebore's pals laughed.

"Oh, I forgot, Bond," said Hellebore as Butcher clambered back out again. "One more thing."

James looked over at him. Here it came.

"You have to stay under the water."

"What?'"

"You heard me. It's an underwater race. As soon as you come up for air, you're out of the running. If you don't make it back, then whoever gets the furthest is the winner."

James looked over at Butcher, who looked away.

He'd known.

Oh, well. It wasn't the end of the world. James still had a chance. Butcher couldn't be that good, and James was pretty confident that he could hold his breath for quite a while.

"Set! Go!" shouted Hellebore quickly, and they dived in.

James was ready for the coldness this time, but it was worse having to swim underwater. He could only see about three inches in front of him; it was like trying to peer through a particularly vile, greenish-brown fog. Indefinable scraps and dross floated past in the gloom and he thought he glimpsed a pale shape far off that could have been Butcher, but it was gone before he could see it clearly. Slimy weeds brushed against his belly and the thought of the eels waiting below in the mud made him shudder.

He had no idea how far he'd gone, but he knew that it was going to be a struggle reaching the far side, let alone turning round and swimming back again.

He felt awful, as if a cold iron cage were clamped round his head; all he wanted to do was to get to the surface, stick his head out and be up in the fresh air, warmth and light. But he resisted the urge and swam harder, using a clean, strong breaststroke, deciding that the quicker he went, the less time he'd need to hold his breath. However, the quicker he went, the more oxygen he used up, and soon his lungs began to burn. He struggled on, the pounding in his head getting worse and worse. A few more strokes and he had to let some air out, then some more, until his lungs were completely empty and the pain was crippling him. Still he battled on, one more stroke, another, then -- no, it was too much, his whole body was crying out for oxygen, he couldn't fight it any longer. He bobbed to the surface and gulped in several great mouthfuls of air. Then he trod water, panting and choking. He'd drifted way off course and was nowhere near the other side, but where was Butcher? He must still be down there somewhere. Was he all right? Maybe he'd got tangled in weeds?

No, he saw his feet splashing near the far bank. He'd reached the other side, but still he didn't come up. James caught sight of him doggedly sculling back towards the start point. Bond forgot all about losing, forgot all about the cold, forgot all about the older boys jeering from the edge of the Mead. He marveled at Butcher's capacity for holding his breath. It was only when he was within five or six feet of the edge that he finally floated up and took in more air, although he hardly seemed out of breath at all.

"Well done, Butcher," yelled Hellebore. "You're a champion turtle."

James swam to them. He was looking forward to getting warm and dry but, as he reached the older boys, Hellebore suddenly grabbed him by the hair again and forced him back under the water. He had had no time to take a breath and was soon struggling, but, try as he might, he couldn't break free of Hellebore's grip a