mi6 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

[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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With Casino Royale coming out on DVD next week, rumors abounding about Bond 22 everywhere, and a general love (on our part) for all things having to do with that certain British secret agent, we're bringing you our very first Bondcast. Filled with news, rumors, speculations, stories ... and co-hosted by the lovely and talented Athena Stamos from CommanderBond.net. We'll have a new episode every two weeks in which we'll bring you interviews, reports, and more news on the next Bond film.

Plus, be sure to let us know what you'd like to hear. Got a favorite Bond flick? We'll break it down for you. Want the skinny on a particular gadget and its background? We'll dig it up. One of the Bond girls really tickle your fancy? We'll interview her. The sky's the limit. A big thanks to Athena for co-hosting, and to CommanderBond.net for letting us poach her, and for having such a great website devoted to all things James Bond. Swing by and check them out.

Be sure and swing by Moviefone's Casino Royale page which is jam-packed with trailers, interviews, and a great Unscripted where Daniel Craig and director Martin Campbell interview each other.

Corrections: I mistakenly refer to Vesper's boyfriend as Argentinian, not Algerian, whoops. Hopefully he won't be coming after me. Also, the Wal-Mart Casino Royale DVD set does come with a deck of cards and a poker chip, but sadly no briefcase.

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With all the hoopla surrounding the release of the latest James Bond film Casino Royale -- wherein MI6 agent Bond drives fast cars, blows things up, beds a bevy of beautiful women and generally saves the world from sure destruction -- did anyone ever think to ask the real men and women of MI6 what they think about their fictional counterpart? I, for one, would be very interested in what they had to say. Fortunately, BBC radio was just as curious as I am and managed to snag a rare interview with two MI6 agents during a recent broadcast.

Even though the agents choose to keep their identity secret (and you can't really blame them, can you?), the station did manage to extract a few key bits of intelligence on their thoughts about 007 and his exploits. According to the interview (Via Yahoo News) working for the real MI6 is not like being James Bond, but the real service does have some similarities to its Hollywood-ised sibling. "There is certainly action, there is a lot of adventure and it's also quite glamorous - depending on what you mean by that exactly," said a female agent during the radio interview "For me, glamor has to do with contrast - one situation you might find yourself in and then being transported into something else."

As for "M", the tough-as-nails female leader of Bonds' MI6 and famed gadget master "Q", the agents said: "He is `C' and that's what the chief of the service has been called since it was established in 1909. We also have a `Q' figure whose team is responsible for innovative technology and gimmicks and gadgets and things like that." And what about that infamous "license to kill" Bond seems to use so frequently in the movies? "The job of the service is to obtain intelligence to inform British government policy and help prevent, for example, terrorist attacks, and in doing that we work under U.K. law," said one of the agents. "The work of the service is overseen both politically and legally, so there's absolutely no room in that for killing people."

So, if you expect your MI6 agents to kill for Queen and Country (and to save the world) you'll just have to be satisfied with the fictional variety. Fortunately, Casino Royale opens today so you don't have to wait too long.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock or working on an off-world colony for the past several months, then you know that the 21st James Bond film, Casino Royale, will be hitting theaters this Friday. It promises all the explosions, car chases, fistfights and gunplay that you've come to expect from a Bond film, and an even more emotional Bond, which we might have to get used to.

In preparation for Friday, we're summing up all of the previous Bond movies by capsulizing the plots and picking out our key favorite moments. Oh, who am I kidding, these are my favorite Bond memories. I grew up on these films, reading the novels, playing the role-playing game, obsessively reading the Q Branch Manual to find out about Bond's gadgets. I also must have played GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 a trillion times, so I like to consider myself somewhat of a Bond-o-phile. Roger Moore was the reigning 007 when I was growing up, but I watched the Sean Connery Bond films on tape, and was sold on his coolness vs. Moore's. This led to an enormous rift between me and my best friend, who idolized Moore (and his dad kind of looked like him). Although we both agree that the latest Bond films are a lot of fun, I think we still want to butt heads over who is the best Bond.

Luckily, you don't have to have seen any of the previous Bond films to "get" the next one, but this little history can help you appreciate all of the effort that has gone into the series. We're serving it up to you shaken, of course ... never stirred.