If anything can make you forget the disappointment of Quantum of Solace, it's the news that James Bond 23 has taken the first big steps into production. No, that's not casting Bond girls or plotting explosions, but writing the script. Not surprisingly, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have looked again to the cream of Britain's film crop and hired a man who's gotten some attention at the Oscars lately: Peter Morgan. Few of his scripts have gone wrong (The Other Boleyn Girl is one mark on an otherwise impeccable record .. and even then, it's not that bad) and he'll definitely lend a lot of gravitas to the project. A lot.

Morgan won't be penning 23 solo, however. He's got some old hands in
Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (the pens behind both Quantum and Casino Royale), who are returning to the franchise ... and well, so long Paul Haggis. I guess he's taking the fall for Quantum.

So, now to find that new director. Rumors swirled that Danny Boyle had been offered the job, but that was quickly shot down by Boyle in an e-mail to EW. While it's always possible he could duck in once the script is done, we need to look to the rest of the United Kingdom ... and possibly to Morgan himself, who is about to make his directorial debut with The Special Relationship.

Green Lantern fans have had to endure a long and painful slog for their comic to see its way to a big screen adaptation. It's not over quite yet, but we might be inching closer to the finish line.

The latest man to contend for the director's chair is Martin Campbell, who's still coming off Casino Royale and just completed Edge of Darkness, also known as Mel Gibson's acting comeback. The previous candidate for the job was screenwriter Greg Berlanti, but Warner Bros. most likely chickened out of giving a tentpole comic book project to a guy with only The Broken Hearts Club to his name as a director. Berlanti's screenplay is still the one Warners is working with.

Campbell, by the way, is possibly the most inconsistent filmmaker in the business. Not only is he capable of making films that are fantastic (Casino Royale), and mediocre (Vertical Limit), and dreadful (Beyond Borders), but he can go from hugely entertaining to ass-boring within the same franchise. (I'm thinking, of course, of The Mask of Zorro and The Legend of Zorro). At least the anticipation won't bore you: you really don't know what you're gonna get.

Of course, one possibility is that Watchmen comes along and ruins all other superhero movies the way The Wire ruined all other cop shows, and then I'll care about Green Lantern about as much as I care about CSI (uh, not at all).

Based on some comments on my box office post and on Scott's review of Quantum of Solace, people want to talk about this. I want to talk about it too. So would someone who saw Quantum over the weekend please explain to me why this random action movie was released under the "James Bond" banner?

You know, there was that scene in Casino Royale where Bond, asked if he would like his vodka-martini shaken or stirred, replies: "Does it look like I give a damn?" At the time I -- and most others, it seemed -- thought this was actually pretty cool, part of Bond's facelift for the new millennium. The franchise retained its essence in that terrific film, but Bond was a little different: a little grittier, a little tougher, a little less studied and exaggerated in his suaveness. Besides, this was supposed to be a prequel. Bond is still learning the attitude and affectations that will eventually make him Bond, James Bond. Not to mention the fact that he ordered that martini after losing a fortune in poker.

After watching Quantum, I think back to the Casino Royale martini scene, and I'm dispirited. Because the truth is, his one petulant outburst aside, James Bond does care how he takes his martini. And I'm worried that the people behind this new, fantastically successful incarnation of the franchise really -- wrongly -- believe that he doesn't.

(In anticipation of Quantum of Solace, we're rerunning some of our favorite Bond posts alongside a few new ones. Enjoy!)

By: James Rocchi

Now that there's been a matter of, you know, 24 hours since the release of Quantum of Solace, enough time has passed for an assessment of the canon -- out of the James Bond films, which are the best? Well, it's easy to name the best seven -- and in doing so, draw our week of Bond pop-culture coverage here at Cinematical to an end. Bear in mind that this list is only worth noting as a source of minor-scale arguments -- which is exactly why it's fun. And now that my inner Rob Gordon is ready, let's talk about the best Bond films of all time ... In no particular order, except for number one.

7. Casino Royale

Yeah. It's in there. In the top third, most definitely. There's more in my review, but there's not a single part of this film I didn't enjoy -- or, if I wasn't enjoying it, I was at the very least respecting it as part of the plot, as an attempt to set mood or build character, to tackle the backbreaking stoop labor of thriller-style exposition. Craig is a great Bond, and it felt real -- like the sort of thing that may, in fact, happen in something like the real world. Well, not the kick-ass free-running sequence, but still. Oh, and also: There are computers and cell phones in Casino Royale, and only one piece of gadgetry was essential to the film. Everything else? Guns, knives, fists, phones. It's down-to-the-ground stuff, and it's amazing to watch.

What does Daniel Craig get right in his new outing as James Bond? What does Quantum of Solace get wrong? Can Marc Forster really direct action? Is Olga Kurylenko really the "hottest Bond girl ever?" Which directors could and should take on Bond's 23rd outing? And above and beyond all these topics, what does this week's guest Kevin Kelly, of Joystiq and Spout, think needs to happen to save Bond from both his corporate overlords and world-destroying villains? You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

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...

I guess he'll die another way, to paraphrase Madonna's lousy theme song for the 20th Bond movie. Bond's survival of baroque death traps has been mocked on screen all the way back to 1965, when the noted character actor Robert Easton had the following line as a fruity-accented Bond type in The Loved One: "I think it could be dicey if he decides to use the giant squid." There was a giant octopus in the novel of Dr. No, though no villain ever actually employed sharks with laser helmets as in the Austin Powers films. However, there had been a planned robot shark in the kinda-non canonical Bond adventure Never Say Never Again. Our hero has dealt with seven especially exotic murder weapons over the years:

1. Death by giant yo-yo: Octopussy (1983) Resting after an exhausting shag with Maud Adams, Commander Bond (Roger Moore) is awakened by the sudden arrival in his bed of a razor-ended steel yo-yo as large as a family-sized pizza. This must have been the invention of co-screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser, who was always menacing his hero Flashman with just such stuff. I can't nail down the exact first use of strapping a heroine to a log and sending her into a sawmill, though this was considered so essential to the silent serials that it was parodied in the titles of TV's Fractured Flickers. This particular flying guillotine, some sort of cousin to this ancient sawmill gag, brings the circle around from silent movie heroism to modern day pulp.

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.

(In anticipation of Quantum of Solace, we're rerunning some of our favorite Bond posts alongside a few new ones. Enjoy!)

By: Jeffrey M. Anderson

One of the pleasures of anticipating a new James Bond film is considering which singer or band would be most appropriate to add themselves to the long and diverse list of James Bond themes. (Wouldn't a Radiohead theme song be just great? Or the Pixies?) It's almost like winning some kind of award. These songs will likely be revived and re-packaged for generations to come. Not all of the choices have been particularly timeless ("The Living Daylights" by A-ha), and many others are not without a cheeseball flavor (Tom Jones strutting through "Thunderball"). It's also obvious that a great song does not guarantee a good movie, and vice-versa. Hence, as terrific as Casino Royale was, the song by Chris Cornell was only so-so. But no matter what anyone thinks of Quantum of Solace, the new song "Another Way to Die" (by Jack White and Alicia Keys) rocks!

In choosing my seven, I decided to omit Monty Norman's original, instrumental theme, written for Dr. No (1962), but used again in various forms throughout the series.

1. "Goldfinger," by Shirley Bassey
Bassey and the Sean Connery era go together like "martini" and "shaken, not stirred." She had that bold, brassy voice that sounded not unlike the wah-wah horns or the twangy guitar that accompany all that 1960s music. It's the most instantly recognizable song, and the most closely associated with its specific film. Plus how can you not love those bizarre rhymes, like "Midas touch" with "spider's touch" and "Goldfinger" with "cold finger"? Pure genius! Bassey returned to record "Diamonds Are Forever" (1971) and "Moonraker" (1979), the latter for an undeserving Roger Moore.

If you lived in England, you could have seen Quantum of Solace, like, six times already. Did you know that? How does it make you feel? Is it inappropriate, at this historic juncture, to say that I'm kind of outraged about this? Worse: it will open in fifty-seven (57) new markets this week, while we wait for November 14th. Casino Royale opened in a few countries a day or two ahead, which was mildly pride-rankling, but this is ridiculous.

My (largely tongue-in-cheek) America-centrism aside, Quantum of Solace made $39 million last weekend in the U.K., France and Sweden. According to Variety, that's comfortably a record for a film opening in so few territories. In the U.K. alone, Quantum topped Casino Royale's first-weekend take by 35%.

In America (U-S-A! U-S-A!), Casino Royale opened to $40.8 million around the same time of year in 2006. A UK-type spike domestically would put Quantum at around $55 million in two weeks, which actually seems about right. Casino Royale came on the heels of a bunch of Pierce Brosnan installments that many people considered middling (though I should note that the series' grosses nonetheless rose steadily through the Brosnan years). Bond is back now, and everyone knows it. Quantum of Solace will be the biggest Bond yet.