RogerMoore Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I've been a bit of a lapsed Bond-ophile as the series has evolved over the years. I grew up with Roger Moore's slightly more campy Bond, and as an adult I worked my way through the Connery years for a little historical perspective...and yes, I even gave Timothy Dalton a try. But by the time Pierce Brosnan had stepped in I had tuned out. The arrival of Daniel Craig as our new Bond was the chance to reignite a franchise, and say what you will about Casino Royale, (and there is plenty to complain about, which for the purposes of time and brevity, I won't get into here) Craig proved that he could hold his ground as 007. But no matter what I may have thought about Royale, by the time the credits rolled on Quantum of Solace, all was forgiven.

So today's Credits Report might be a bit of a cheat because really, it's about two scenes: the opening car chase, and the iconic Bond theme by Alica Keys and Jack White. So first let's get to that car chase. Well, you can't have Bond without a little vehicular mayhem and Forster delivers with expert uses of sound and stunts. We even get Bond delivering a rare moment of cheekiness before those opening chords of Solace's theme.

After the jump; a few words about Keys and White's 'Bond Song' and two worthy additions to Bond's canon of car chases and snazzy credit sequences...

Even as the franchise began to shed staples with 2006's Casino Royale and tomorrow's Quantum of Solace, the James Bond series is still known for several keystones across twenty other films: girls, gadgets, guns, martinis, silhouettes of female figures thrusting about during the credits, and so on. Some would say that these were the traditions that helped lead James Bond down the path that would end in 2002's Die Another Day, which some would say made them want to take a top hat to their own throats. (Me? I didn't hate it.)

Among these recurring touches were the last lines, often cheeky turns of phrase that seemed to suggest that everything was going to be just fine between Commander Bond and that chick who we'd never see or hear about ever again. So, out of twenty-one films, I humbly offer up my picks for the seven best of the bunch. I'll leave you to find out if Quantum ends more along the lines of Royale's "The name's Bond... James Bond", or with something a bit sexier...

At this point, the most dangerous threat James Bond faces does not shoot from the barrel of a gun or glimmer from the lens of a laser but instead springs from the tightly-coiled engine of the audience's expectations. Any new Bond film has to not only compete with the films that have come before but also the other high-end entries in the action genre; any political or moral ideas in the film have to compete with the political and moral landscape of the world we live in. Quantum of Solace, the 22nd Bond film, is Daniel Craig's second outing as James Bond, and the blunt, brutal and brisk Casino Royale set the bar very high; if Casino Royale marked a return to greatness for the Bond franchise, Quantum of Solace represents a return to adequacy.

Directed by Mark Forster, Quantum of Solace has the basic bones of a Bond film -- globe-trotting settings, cars and chases, hair's-breadth escapes, nefarious plots. It does not, fortunately, have much of the fat that the worst Bond films have larded onto the series -- there's a minimum of high-tech gadgetry, no skiing sequences, no invisible cars, no henchmen with metal teeth. While Casino Royale brought Judi Dench's gruff spymaster M back to the series from the Brosnan era, it also brought Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion back to the franchise; in the new Bond era, cars crash and buildings break with thundering, shuddering force as Daniel Craig's Bond smashes, crashes and grunts his way through a hard, painful world. In the film's opening car chase, on the winding coastal roads of Italy, there are a number of moments where the crunch and thud of the action catches you up in a two-fisted grip of exhilaration and terror. Part of that's the stunt work, but a big part of it is Craig's Bond -- who you believe as being capable of executing a perfect shift-and-skid turn while firing an automatic weapon out of what used to be his car window with shards of glass lacerating his face.

James Bond -- when played by Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan and now Daniel Craig (and a bit less so when played by Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and George Lazenby) -- has long been the gold stanard by which all other cinematic spies have been judged. He's smooth, aloof, quick-witted and charming. Guys want to be like him and women with names like Pussy Galore want to sleep with him. But these days, 007 has some serious competition from a more reserved, grittier and -- dare we say -- more likeable amnesiac spy named Jason Bourne (Matt Damon).

When The Bourne Identity came along in 2002, it pretty much reinvented the action-spy genre, placing its hero, Jason Bourne, squarely in the real world (where things like Bond's invisible car do not exist) and dealing with the unheard of (in the Bond world, at least) issues of moral accountability, character metamorphosis and even vulnerability. Clearly influenced by his neophyte rival, a new Bond was born in 2006's Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig stepping into the tux of a more down-to-earth, relatable and gadget-free 007. Even so, the gap between these two men remains enormous.

From the cars they drive to the villains they battle to the way they fight to the women they bed, Moviefone compares the two most badass spies ever to grace a movie screen in a Jason Bourne vs. James Bond gallery. Check it out and then tell us: Who do you think is the more super spy?

[Update! We had some problems with our RSS feed and iTunes subscription links below. All has been fixed. Happy listening!]

Bondcast is back! This episode Athena Stamos of CommanderBond.net and I talk about the aftermath of the Casino Royale DVD release and head to a screening party. We also cover our favorite Bond girls, although we both learned that it is very hard to choose just one. Athena takes us through the list of actors that were considered for the role before the mantle went to Daniel Craig.

Since they didn't include one with the recent release, we'll soon be bringing you our own feature-length Casino Royale commentary that you can play along at home with your copy of the film (or without it, if you have an extremely active imagination.) Upcoming interviews on the show include actress Lana Wood who played Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds Are Forever, and John Cox, who runs YoungBondDossier.com, a great source for James Bond news and information in the literary world.

Here are a few tidbits that, even with our vast Bond knowledge, we didn't have at our fingertips during the podcast. When we refer to the post, you can glance here for the points we're talking about.

• England got the Region 2 DVD release of Casino Royale earlier this week (3/19), while the States got the Region 1 discs last week (3/13). Sort of ironic that we get Britain's superspy in our homes before they do.
• CommanderBond reports that after battling with The Secret, Casino Royale has indeed ended up as #1 on the DVD sales charts.
• Pussy Galore's bevy of flying beauties is the eponymous 'Pussy Galore's Flying Circus.' An interesting fact is that while the group is comprised solely of women, it was actually men wearing blonde wigs. Yow.
• Robbie Coltrane portrayed Valentin Zukovsky in both GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough. Plus, he also plays Hagrid in the Harry Potter films. The guy is versatile.
• The Tudors actually premieres on Showtime on April 1st.

Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to join us for the next Bondcast!


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If you are a die hard fan of everything Bond, it would probably thrill you to walk in the footsteps of Ian Fleming and frolic in the surf footsteps where Roger Moore hopped over those crocodiles. USA Today reports that Ian Fleming's famous Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, where he dreamed up his lady-killing secret agent, will now become something much more impersonal...the Bond aficionado's ultimate vacation destination. Fleming owned the retreat in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica in the mid-forties and the area is rife with Bond history; both Live and Let Die and Dr. No were filmed nearby. One of the stranger factoids about the retreat was that another former owner was reggae legend Bob Marley, who sold the property to current owner Chris Blackwell.

Hotelier Jason Henzell is involved in the project and said that Blackwell was looking to "develop a new niche in Jamaica called residential tourism, where people buy land, visit and ultimately promote the island." The spot is also home to plenty of Bond memorabilia from Fleming's personal items and the various film productions. The renovation is set to begin in June, but there was no word on cost for the entire project. I would think that a total revamp on 100-acre property isn't going to come cheaply. For the truly devoted though, no price tag could keep them away. Oh well -- so much for Fleming's untouched paradise.

I won't keep it a secret from anyone: I couldn't care less about James Bond. Maybe I'm not a man's man. Maybe I'm not a proper film critic. Maybe I just don't have the time to watch all the 007 movies in order to convince myself that they're not all the same. Whatever the reason for my disinterest in the series, the painful truth is that I'm completely lost when it comes to discussing Bond. This could be why I don't hang out with a lot of movie geeks. Or, more likely, why they don't hang out with me.

It would make sense for my disinterest in Bond to extend to the films that parody the character and the series. Sure, I appreciate a good spoof, but there's not much enjoyment for me in a joke I don't get. So, just as I don't have a desire to watch the Scary Movie franchise because I don't watch the horror movies it makes fun of, I probably wouldn't like a concentrated spoof of the Bond franchise. Luckily for me, most Bond parodies aren't strictly a series of specific jokes and gags that I don't understand. They typically have something more to offer. And those that I can appreciate and enjoy are due to my having a general, pop-cultural knowledge of Bond films, a taste for simple satire and a preference for liberal, anarchic and random humor.

So, I've made a list of ways in which Bond has been spoofed that are accessible to the non-Bond-fan. There are others out there, from pornographic parodies to obscure foreign takes on the character, but I'll let the real 007 aficionados seek out every spoof out there. ...

Wayyy back in 2005, we reported that Dreamworks had picked up the rights to re-make the 1971 action series The Persuaders. The series starred Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as a mismatched pair of crime fighters, with Moore as an uptight Englishman and Curtis as the sassy American; it was genius, right? I mean, imagine the wacky possibilities ... actually, on second thought, don't.

Well, no studio will let even a mediocre TV property go to waste, so here comes The Persuaders (2007). Variety reports that David Dorfman is now attached to write the script for the film version. Dorfman is best known for penning Anger Management and My Bosses' Daughter; which could be considered a pretty dubious distinction.

I've never really seen the point of TV-to-movie adaptations -- I mean, is the idea to improve on the show? If so, the only successful example I can think of was Miami Vice, but most of them are just kind of pointless. You have to wonder what Dreamworks was thinking resurrecting this one.

[via Empire]

Perhaps in an effort to place himself above what might just be a fairly crappy movie, Ben Kingsley has demanded that he be billed as "Sir Ben Kingsley" in Lucky Number Slevin's UK promotions. It doesn't appear, however, that the film's lack of quality is totally to blame for Kingsley's idiocy, since he once reprimanded a German reporter who had the nerve to call him "Mr. Kingsley" with "It's Sir Ben. I've not been a Mr. for two years." Ouch.

Happily, his fellow knights have climbed all over him for such ass-tastic behavior, thus restoring the world's faith in fake royalty. Sir Roger Moore, by far the coolest ex-Bond, weighed in with: "It's a load of pretentious bollocks." Meanwhile, Chariots of Fire producer (Lord) David Puttnam, said "I think Ben's barmy and I wish I could just get hold of him and say 'wake up'. It's a silly thing to do." Finally, though he didn't speak on Kingsley's demands, we can easily guess at the feelings of Sir Michael Gambon, who threatened to hit anyone who called him "Sir" when he was filming Angels in America. Michael Gambon rules.