The Screengrab : casino royale

Morning Deal Report: Green Lantern Powers Up

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Casino Royale director Martin Campbell is in negotiations to helm a live-action version of the DC comics staple Green Lantern for Warner Bros. The power ring-wearing superhero is now “at the top of DC properties being set for movie treatment by WB,” Variety reports. “While the studio is hoping director Chris Nolan will follow its 2008 smash The Dark Knight with another Batfilm, DC projects such as Superman and Justice League were expected to happen quickly, but have stalled.” Aquaman – dissed again.

While we’re talking superhero movies, it looks like Ben Stiller and Tina Fey have joined Robert Downey, Jr. for another one – and it’s not Iron Man 2. The trio is “in negotiations to lead the voice cast for DreamWorks Animation's superhero lark Master Mind…The satiric film, with a screenplay by Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons, concerns a brilliant superhero villain who loses his life's purpose when he accidentally kills his good-guy nemesis,” per The Hollywood Reporter.

While Ridley Scott is allegedly interested in bring Monopoly to the screen, another board game has beat the venerable classic to the punch. Yes, it’s everyone’s very first board game, Candy Land. Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) will write the script and Kevin Lima (Enchanted) will direct. I’m still holding out for Scorsese's Don’t Spill the Beans: The Movie.

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Screengrab Review: "Quantum of Solace"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Now that we've established for you once and for all which are the greatest and which are the worst James Bond movies of all time, this is the moment to ask: where does the latest 007 epic fit on that continuum? Well, for one thing, we're predicting opinions will wildly vary. In fact, as you probably noticed, even our Screengrab staff was more or less split, unable to decide if Daniel Craig's first crack at the venerable franchise was a long-overdue and genuinely successful reboot, or a failed attempt at breaking the mold that went nowhere.

I got a chance to see Quantum of Solace this week, and I'll say for the record that I'd be much more inclined to put it in the 'best of' column than in the 'worst of'. Then again, I thought Craig's Casino Royale was terrific, so it's not surprising that Quantum of Solace, which is quite solidly more of the same, hit home for me. Those less charitable toward the first Craig reboot will likely find as much to dislike in the follow-up as I did to like. As in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace begins with a dynamite action sequence that the rest of the movie can't top, though it's not from lack of trying; and like its predecessor, it takes a more dark, 'realistic' approach to the concept of Bond as a superspy/assassin, flying in the face of the flippant, adventurous tone of previous incarnations. The direction, by Oscar nominee Marc Forster, is tight and powerful, which gets it over the occasional rough patches in the script, and the cast is generally excellent; Judi Dench continues to excel as M, and Mathieu Amalric is gripping as lead villain Dominic Greene. The biggest disappointment, though, is that the movie doesn't cast its nets any farther than it has to; it's content to be as good as Casino Royale, but fails to stretch to the degree that it would have been better. Good as these movies have been, an unwillingness to press forward will result in them becoming as formulaic as the ones they were meant to replace.

There were two tendencies I noticed in Quantum of Solace that may become trends as the Daniel Craig era rolls on -- one negative and one positive. On the good side, there's a sense of continuity -- it picks up right where Casino Royale left off, and in addition to the return of Mr. White, who may become the best recurring villain the Bond series has ever had, there's generally a feeling that the filmmakers want to engage the audience, to give them a stake in paying attention and reward them for being loyal to the franchise by carrying over characters, plots, and mysteries. That's a good thing. The bad thing is that Quantum carries on the overall grim, humorless feel of Craig's first go-round. It's not that I don't generally enjoy the dark take on the character, or applaud the move away from the camp levels of seriousness that plagued the franchise in the late '70s and early '80s, but with so much emphasis on grimness -- this time carried over into the movie's Bond girl, who's as vengeful as 007 himself -- the series threatens to lose one of the most important elements that set it apart from the books. Hopefully the producers can find a happy medium.

The Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films of All Time! (Part Four)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

THE BEST:

8. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967)

One of the biggest hits and best-received films in the series, and deservedly so, even though it's now underrated, partly because of the sequence in which Sean Connery, as Bond, is supposed to pass for Japanese by means of eye makeup and a modified Beatles wig. Actually, the location shooting is a pretty good commercial for Japan, and in Connery's last appearance as Bond before his first official retirement from the role, his relationship with the Bond girls is sweeter-spirited than ever before. Roald Dahl did the script, which has some nifty lines, and Little Nellie may be the niftiest of Bond's gadgets to date. This is the first in the so-called "Blofeld" trilogy and the first film that lets us get an actual good look at the SPECTRE uber-baddie. Here, he is played by Donald Pleasance with a scar, an accent, and a pussycat; only the pussycat would be adopted by any of the actors who would pick up the role in the films to come.

7. DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)

Although some felt it went too far over the top with its invisible car and ice palace and whatnot, Die Another Day, after three bland and disappointing efforts by Pierce Brosnan, was not only the best James Bond picture in years at the time of its release, but also a reminder of how much fun Hollywood blockbusters can be when they're smart, cool and light on their feet. Filled with clever 40th Anniversary references to past 007 adventures, Brosnan’s special agent swansong featured no bimbo nuclear physicists, but rather a taut, ripping yarn with some dark, topical undertones (a North Korean villain, the capture and brutal imprisonment of our hero in the opening minutes of the film, a bizarre opening title sequence featuring sexy girls and, uh, “enhanced interrogation” techniques), as well as a pretty cool old-school evil henchman (the diamond-faced Mr. Kil!), the best Moneypenny scene ever, a wicked pissah ice field car chase (with not one but two fully-loaded, weapon-packed spy cars) and a creepy CGI character that looked unnervingly like Madonna. (As for Halle Berry’s performance as Jinx, well...let’s just say it fell somewhere between Oscar-worthy and Denise Richards.)

6. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (1981)

Arguably the best 007 movie of the Roger Moore era (and, this being the Screengrab, there probably will be plenty of argument), For Your Eyes Only scores on numerous counts: (1) not the best theme song ever, but certainly more hummable and memorable than, say, “Tomorrow Never Dies” or “You Know My Name” (Huh? What? Exactly!) (2) but definitely one of the best chase scenes ever, featuring skis and motorcycles on a bobsled track (!!!!) (3) the pre-credits death of Blofeld! (4) a relatively coherent, relatively un-winky storyline, including perfectly respectable performances by Topol, Julian Glover and Carole Bouquet as the lethal, crossbow-wielding Bond babe Melina Havelock (5) again...crossbows!!! (6) a breathtaking ascent up a pants-shittingly scary mountain followed by one of the all-time great bad guy fortress battles (7) an uncharacteristically ambiguous ending where Bond doesn’t exactly lose but doesn’t exactly win either, and finally (8) for all the abuse he gets for being old and cheesy and not Sean Connery, Moore was nevertheless the James Bond of my formative moviegoing years -– my Bond -– and these, in my opinion, were his finest two hours.

5. DR. NO (1962)

The first James Bond movie. (Though the first screen version of Bond appears in a 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale, in which Barry Nelson, as "Jimmy Bond", goes up against Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre -- part of it can be found on the DVD of the 1967 Casino Royale adaptation. The TV show was supposed to be the first of a series of small-screen productions for which Ian Fleming actually whipped up a number of original story outlines, but nothing came of it.) Looking at Dr. No today, it's remarkable how many of the key personnel were in place from the start: the director, Terence Young (who also did From Russia with Love and Thunderball, and, more importantly, the editor Peter R. Hunt and the production designer Ken Adam, the composer John Barry, Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny, and of course the producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli. (They would produce the films jointly until 1975, when Saltzman dropped out; after Broccoli died in 1996, his daughter Barabara took over the franchise.) The screenplay is credited to Richard Maibaum, who would work on another dozen Bond movies as well as another lavish Cubby Broccoli production based on Ian Fleming material, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. (The script reportedly also included significant contributions from the playwight-screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz, who asked that his name not be included in the credits. Oddly enough, he had no problem with his name being included in the credits of the 1967 Casino Royale.) The movie also introduced several of the gimmicks and gambits that would define the series, not the least of which was the way it managed to simultaneously stroke and defuse the audience's Cold War tensions by introducing the sinister organization, SPECTRE, which, it was explained, was always trying to start some shit between the East and the West; presumably, if James Bond could ever wipe these bozos out once and for all, the East and the West could just ignore each other while quietly going about their business. The list of potential screen Bonds reportedly considered is said to have included Cary Grant, James Mason, David Niven (later the star of Casino Royale), and a twenty-eight-year-old male model named Peter Anthony who was selected the winner of a talent contest the producers threw for the sake of the publicity, and also maybe because they didn't have any better ideas. Sean Connery, who could just barely act at this stage of his career, is said to have given an audition that wowed the filmmakers, not with his technique or talent but rather with an undefinable but undeniable quality that clearly marked him as having been put on this Earth to play the part. Another look at the movie suggests that the quality might be defined thusly: he radiated the insolent, arrogant confidence that Bond was supposed to have by virtue of his class and superior breeding, yet at the same time was such a rough hewn bruiser of a male animal that the sheer power of his presence beat the snobbery out of that conception. And he looked good in a tux. The movie also starred the twenty-six-year-old Swiss actress Ursula Andress as the shell-collecting, knife-wielding heroine Honey Ryder, and here the filmmakers' genius may show through even more than it does in the casting of Connery. At the time, Andress' English was in such a sorry state that she required dubbing by two other women, Nikki van der Zyl to provide her speaking voice, and Diana Coupland for her singing. Clearly, it was worth it to get that iconic image of Andress emerging from the surf like Venus reporting for duty on a Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover shoot. As Matthew Barney, who cast Andress in his 1997 Cremaster 5, has said, that scene represented the birth of a new kind of female sex symbol, doll-faced and curvaceous but in an athletic, physically assertive way. That's why there may be no better way of appreciating the seismic effect that the Bond films had on the culture at large than to go back and read some of the original reviews of Dr. No and goggle at how many (male) critics expressed their bewilderment at why that awful butch creature had been allowed into the movie.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Five

Contributors: Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films of All Time! (Part Three)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:00:00 GMT

THE BEST:

13. OCTOPUSSY (1983)

Okay, to be honest, I’m the only one at Screengrab who voted for Octopussy as one of the best James Bond films of all time. But even though it’s been a long time since I saw it, I’m pretty sure I can safely stand by my vote. First of all...it’s frickin’ called OCTOPUSSY! Newspapers and TV stations across the United States (in the Age of Reagan, no less!) had to advertise what sounds like the dirtiest, freakiest porn flick of all time...how great is that? And to think many of those same newspapers and TV stations balked at revealing the full title of Zack and Miri...I only regret the MoviePhone Guy wasn’t around back then to say, “You’ve selected...Octopussy!” My friends and I would have called twenty times a day! Uh...but I digress. So anyway, aside from that bitchen title, the film also featured a pretty cool, well-paced story featuring an elephant chase, knife-throwing circus performers, a sweet fight on the wings of an airborne jet and a weird lady cult of acrobatic assassins. True, Roger Moore was really showing his age (and would retire after his next Bond adventure, the dreadful View To A Kill), and sure, the movie is goofy as hell...but, for me at least, goofy more often than not equals fine entertainment value.

12. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)

The apotheosis of Roger Moore; as you might expect, the secret was to build a hell of a show around the smirking old thing and give him something to react to. After the comparatively low-tech Man with the Golden Gun and the ugly-looking Live and Let Die, the producers decided to kick out the jams a little, and Ken Adam, the legendary production designer who'd worked on most of the Bond films of the 1960s and '70s, was encouraged to just go nuts. In addition to the sets, the movie boasts perhaps the most succulent and wittiest of the Bond babes -- Barbara Bach, a.k.a. Mrs. Ringo -- as well as a villain for the ages in Richard Kiel's hard-to-finish-off Jaws, and even a theme song (written by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager and performed by Carly Simon) that you can still hear on the radio without throwing up in your mouth hardly at all.

11. LICENSE TO KILL (1989)

Timothy Dalton never got much love as James Bond, and with good reason: his interpretation of 007 was humorless and constipated, and one of his two at-bats in the role was 1987’s snoozer The Living Daylights, one of the dullest Bond films in the entire series. And while License to Kill played more like a feature-length Miami Vice episode than a spy caper, it was nevertheless a pretty good action movie. The villain (Robert Davi’s evil drug lord Sanchez -- based, at least according to Wikipedia, on real-life supervillain Pablo Escobar) gets his goons to feed ageless, indestructible CIA agent Felix Leiter to a shark (after raping and killing the poor bastard’s wife on their wedding night...a plot twist WAY too dark for any Bond film to carry), after which Dalton’s character goes rogue, resigning from M16 to get himself some payback. Once it gets past the gruesome downer of a set-up, however, the film introduces Carey Lowell as drug courier and CIA informant Pam Bouvier, one of the smartest, most charismatic “Bond girls” of all time, then continues to improves with a compelling cat-and-mouse battle of wits between Sanchez and Bond, featuring a peculiar Wayne Newton cameo (as a shady televangelist!) and climaxing with the best tanker truck chase this side of The Road Warrior.

10. LIVE AND LET DIE (1973)

Granted, this is something of a nostalgic choice. As I mentioned in the Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs list a couple of weeks ago, Live and Let Die was the first Bond movie I ever saw, and it took many years for me to get over the idea that Roger Moore was the 007. I'm aware that almost anything positive I say about the movie can also be held against it. For example, I could give it credit for having the most racially diverse cast in the series, but then I'd have to admit that some of the characters do not represent the most, er, enlightened portrayal of African-Americans on film. My theory is this: after the failure of George Lazenby, the producers weren't taking any chances in launching their new Bond, so they raided American cinema for all the trendiest action movie trimmings. The story pits Bond against a voodoo-dabbling heroin magnate and his Harlem drug ring, a convenient excuse to plunder the then-hot blaxploitation pictures for wild afros, gaudy cars and the latest in jive talk. When the action shifts to the American South, the movie just as shamelessly embraces the gators, speedboats and cottonmouth drawls of hixploitation. It almost turns into Smokey and the Bandit for awhile, with the arrival of peckerwood Sheriff Pepper. I can understand how the purists would object to all this, but I've always gotten a kick out of the voodoo vibe, Yaphet Kotto as the exploding villain Kananga, luscious Jane Seymour as the fortune teller Solitaire and Roger Moore running across a bunch of crocodiles.

9. CASINO ROYALE (2006)

For all its continued bankability, the Bond series was in a creative rut after four decades. Given the self-parody of the late Moore adventures, the lean Dalton years, and the diminishing returns of the Brosnan movies, how could the producers of the Bond films rejuvenate their cash cow? Why, with a reboot, of course! And what better way to do so than to double back and adapt Ian Fleming’s first 007 novel in the process? A new take on the series would require a new leading man, and Daniel Craig was just the man for the job -- younger, leaner, and meaner, here was a guy with bigger things to worry about than how his martinis were made. Casino Royale makes it clear from the outset that this is a whole new ballgame, when we first see Craig’s Bond undertaking the missions that earned him his license to kill -- filmed in stark black and white, no less. And through Craig’s steely blue eyes, we experience a fresh take on the usual Bond story -- no nifty gadgets, no villains bent on world domination, and no convoluted methods of torture (in a decidedly lo-fi touch, the captured Bond gets whacked in the tenders with a knotted rope). Of course, the action scenes are still pretty kickass, especially an early parkour-style foot chase. But what really makes Casino Royale special is Craig’s relationship with Vesper Lynd, played by the luscious Eva Green. Vesper is Bond’s equal in many ways, and the closest the character has come to finding his match since Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And this makes her eventual betrayal all the more effective -- not simply because of how much it messes our hero up, but also the lengths to which he must go to steel himself against the pain in the future. Essentially, Casino Royale finds James Bond becoming the 007 we all know, and when he finally states his name at the end of the film, we have no trouble believing him.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Paul Clark

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films of All Time! (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:30:00 GMT

THE WORST:

5. CASINO ROYALE (1967)

By 1967, the James Bond franchise was so fully entrenched as an iconic series that it was begging for a smart, funny satire to deflate its growing gasbaggery. Unfortunately, Casino Royale wasn’t it. The best Bond spoof of the era was on television, in the form of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry’s terrific Get Smart series, while Casino Royale – a one-off production of dubious legal status – proved to be a sprawling, unfunny mess. It’s too bad, too; it wasted one of the best 007 novels (the first, in fact), with a great villain and some excellent set-pieces, and worse than that, it wasted a fantastic cast including Peter Sellers, David Niven, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, William Holden, Deborah Kerr and John Huston. What’s the problem? The direction is a total mess which tries to cram far too much plot (and far too many jokes that don’t work) into far too small a space. The script, likewise, just isn’t funny enough – the rapid pace of the gags can’t conceal the fact that they mostly don’t work, and none of the great actors are given much of a role to chew on. It’s fortunate that the Daniel Craig era of 007 did so much to rehabilitate the Casino Royale name; for nearly forty years, it had been associated with one of the crummiest Bond films ever made.

4. GOLDENEYE (1985)

Here was a (pardon the pun) golden opportunity to re-invent the James Bond series: a new leading man (Pierce Brosnan, succeeding the poorly received Timothy Dalton) and a new era (following the collapse of the Soviet Union) should have added up to a new 007 ready to take on the 21st century. It was not to be. GoldenEye is about as rote as the series gets, plodding joylessly through all the usual Stations of the Cross. If not for the presence of Famke Janssen at maximum hottitude as femme fatale Xenia Onatopp, it would easily be the dullest of all Bonds. Certainly Sean Bean, as a fellow MI6 agent turned traitor, is the most boring Bond villain ever. The only real innovation is the casting of Judi Dench as M, but aside from one throwaway line about Bond being a misogynist and a Cold War relic, the potential sparks never fly. The movie's highlight is the obligatory Q scene, which plays like a Get Smart outtake. Not a good sign.

3. LIVE & LET DIE (1974)

In a series that has spanned more than three decades, a big part of the trick of keeping the Bond franchise alive has been finding the right balance between stubbornly maintaining its own identity and incorporating enough elements from a changing world to keep Bond from seeming like an anachronism. Never did the series lose its footing more disastrously than in the first installment starring Roger Moore. For a start, it was the first Bond movie to feature a theme song by an out-and-out rock band instead of a jazz singer or lounge crooner -- and make no mistake, if the song itself is no great highlight of Paul McCartney's career, better him than Duran Duran or A-Ha. But at a deeper level, it's the "blacksploitation" Bond movie, a real historical artifact and a pretty embarrassing one. First-time viewers who had barely begun to start adjusting to the new, male-mannequin Bond of the Roger Moore era were subjected to the sight of this smarmy British cracker sauntering into a Harlem restaurant called "Fillet of Soul" and mixing it up with the confused-looking brothers inside, who might have thought they were waiting for John Shaft. Yaphet Kotto, as great an actor as ever got assigned the job of trying to think up an amusing death for 007, got stuck with the lamest super-villain role in the series to date: his name ("Mr. Big"), his mission (to dominate...not the world, but the heroin trade), and his death scene, which is reminiscent of the time that the Pink Panther balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade ran amok, all are pitifully unworthy of him. The movie, which is set in a world where every black person in North America (including Gloria Hendry as the first black Bond girl) seems to be in on Mr. Big's conspiracy to blanket the cities with horse, and in which these wretched lost souls are kept in line by their primitive susceptibility to voodoo, tries to balance things out by including a stereotypical big-bellied Loozianna sheriff (Clifton James) who co-stars in an endless back country car chase that would have been beneath the dignity of Hal Needham.

2. MOONRAKER (1979)

This post-Star Wars meld of Bond with sci-fi space opera finds the series sunk deep in its decadent phase. The film cost a reported $34 million, twenty million more than its predecessor, The Spy Who Loved Me, and while the investment paid off at the box office, the strain shows. No other Bond film surpasses it in terms of the number of exotic locations, huge sets, and beautiful women for Bond to beat off, but it's short on energy and wit, which were once the defining qualities of the series -- and which the producers, and maybe audiences hooked on the formula, now judged to be superfluous. Most of the cast, including Moore, Lois Chiles as the heroine, and Michel Lonsdale as the supervillain Drax, look ready to join a crowd scene in a George Romero zombie movie; the movie's only charm comes from Richard Kiel, reprising his role as a lovesick Jaws before being consigned to join Sheriff J. W. Pepper in Recurring Character Limbo.

1. A VIEW TO A KILL (1985)

Considering how easy it is to get fans to start arguing about most aspects of the Bond series, the general consensus that this is without a doubt the sorriest Bond movie of all time is so solidly formed that it's almost uncanny. Aside from the fact that, at 57, Roger Moore looked readier than ever to be put out to pasture, it didn't necessarily look doomed on paper. The title theme by Duran Duran is so howlingly, garishly wrong that it's kind of right, it was sweet of them to give John Steed, i.e. Patrick McNee, a role as one of Bond's doomed helpmates, and whose ears didn't perk up at the suggestion of Christopher Walken as a Bond villain? Walken, his hair artificially lemon-flavored, plays a psychopathic ex-KGB agent who was created by a Nazi mad scientist; now rich as the owner of a microchip-manufacturing company, he is meant to be such a cool killer as to be devoid of human emotions -- which turns out to be not such a hot idea, because when Walken applies all his considerable Method intensity to being devoid of emotion, he's da void, all right. Also not helping out are Grace Jones, who packs surprisingly little personality inside her outre exterior but whose bedroom clinches with either Moore or Walken can still give you nightmares, and, as the heroine, Tanya Roberts, who actually does less for this movie than she did for her starring gig the year before as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Click Here For Part One, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Screengrab Salutes: The Best & Worst James Bond Films Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Oh, James Bond, why do we love you so? Batmen and teenage wizards and swashbuckling archaeologists may come and go, but film after film, decade after decade, 007 never dies.

Maybe it’s because the character has no real end or beginning: despite the so-called origin story “reboot” of Daniel Craig’s 2006 Casino Royale, Bond is timeless. Though technically the agent was born sometime between 1918 and 1924 (to Andrew and Monique Delacroix Bond...thank you, Wikipedia!) and went on his first official mission circa 1954 (in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang creator Ian Fleming’s literary Royale), Bond movies are always happening right now, reflecting the tastes and mores of their time, from the swingin’ sexist hedonism of the 1960s to the gritty post-Bourne “realism” of the Craig administration.

Bond, after all, is more of a concept than a character, a periodic excuse for hacks and auteurs, Oscar winners and supermodels, giants and dwarves, skiers, skaters, scuba divers, Wayne Newton, Madonna and everyone in between to make big, stylish, international action flicks, swill cocktails and blow stuff up real good, like the Olympics and the Cannes Film Festival crossed with a monster truck rally and New Year's Eve at the Playboy mansion...and who the hell can say no to that?

And so, in honor of the upcoming Quantum of Solace, the supervillains of the top-secret organization SCREENGRAB gathered in their hidden mountaintop fortress to compile a plan for world domination and, while they were at it, the following list of THE BEST & WORST JAMES BOND FILMS OF ALL TIME!!!!!

THE WORST:

10. CASINO ROYALE (2006)

Okay, so I’m in the minority on this one (since Daniel Craig’s superspy debut also appears on our “Best” list)...and it’s not just that I think blonde and Bond don’t mix (because really...who cares?). But, c’mon...after an admittedly righteous parkour chase through Madagascar, the movie spends A LOT of time stuck in the titular casino. Gambling scenes in Bond movies usually last about five minutes, because we all know who’s gonna win...only THIS time, the poker tournament goes on and on and on...and unlike, say, the battle of wits in the similarly high stakes card game in The Sting, Bond here finally wins his tournament by flashing a straight flush. A straight flush! Dude, anybody can win with a straight flush! Winning with a pair of twos...now THAT would have been superspy impressive! So anyhow, with the snoozy foregone conclusion of the trendy Hold ‘Em showdown out of the way, director Martin Campbell lightens the mood with a scene of Craig getting repeatedly smacked in the nuts (possibly to make Pierce Brosnan feel less bad about getting booted from the franchise), and then, the big finale is...a fantastically exciting hovercraft chase? ...a massive secret agent melee aboard a flaming death zeppelin? Nope...the big finale is Bond watching his girlfriend drown. Whee!!! Sorry guys...action, drama and Craig’s scowly killjoy puss may have worked in Munich, but in the 007-verse? Not so much.

9. TOMORROW NEVER DIES (1997) & THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)

Pierce Brosnan made four films as Bond. The first, Goldeneye (1995), came out six years after the previous one, and was gratefully accepted by those who had given the series up for dead but couldn't bear the thought of living without it; Brosnan's swan song, the 2003 Die Another Day, is probably the liveliest of his short reign. Tomorrow and World came between them and are what passes for the meat in a thin sandwich. Both were directed by talented but slumming directors (Roger Spottiswoode and Michael Apted, respectively), and both are laden down with sad excuses for romantic foils (Teri Hatcher and Denise Richards) and disappointing villains (Jonathan Pryce as a power-mad media mogul and Robert Carlyle as a notorious terrorist who turns out to be merely the cat's-paw to the true villain, played by Sophie Marceau). Both movies belong -- to the degree that anyone would want them -- to Brosnan's female co-stars, Marceau and Michelle Yeoh. Brought in to supply a teensy taste of the action acrobatics of Hong Kong movies, Yeoh gets to kick up a little dust and show Brosnan up in a few scenes, though it's disappointing that she ends up being turned into a damsel in distress, calling to James for help. The spectacular Marceau is luckier; she starts out wittily pretending to be an imperiled little thing and then gets to blossom in a scene that reveals her to be a sick chick who could throw a scare into Rosa Kleb.

8. DIE ANOTHER DAY (2002)

With his suave, urbane presence, Pierce Brosnan was ideally suited to the role of James Bond, so much so that he was originally offered the role after Moore retired, only to turn it down due to his commitment to Remington Steele. It was Brosnan’s bad luck that by the time he assumed the role, the creative well was beginning to run dry. Never was this more apparent than in his fourth and final 007 vehicle, Die Another Day. Brosnan was just fine, but the movie around him -- yeesh. To begin with, much was made of the presence of recent Oscar-winner Halle Berry as the “good” Bond girl Jinx, but her performance was so bad (witty banter just doesn’t work when it’s over-enunciated, Rudy Ray Moore-style) that the studio-generated hype about a spinoff movie quickly became laughable. And who could forget those villains, eh? You know -- the, uh, English guy who was actually a Korean who got plastic surgery, and the dude with the diamonds in his face. Not exactly Oddjob or Rosa Klebb, that’s for sure. Then there’s the villain’s ice lair (which one reviewer called “Ronald McDonald’s Fortress of Solitude”), and a chase scene involving an invisible car, an idea that’s too silly even in the context of a James Bond movie. The final nails in the coffin are the double contribution of Madonna, who not only contributed the travesty of a title song -- perhaps the series’ worst to date -- but also appeared in a cameo as a British (this was her British phase, remember) fencing instructor, in which she proceeded to suck all the energy out of the room simply by showing up. But don’t cry for Brosnan -- all the money he made from playing 007 has allowed him to appear in films in which his looks and charisma have been put to much more interesting use. Put it another way -- if sitting through Die Another Day was the price we had to pay to get The Matador, it was worth it.

7. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN (1974)

The title character -- Scaramanga, the master assassin with the island hideaway, the pet dwarf manservant (Herve Villechaize), and the superfluous nipple -- is played by Christopher Lee, who clearly enjoyed one of his first prominent roles where he didn't have to bite his co-stars on the neck. Lee is the only thing this one has going for it, though; it's a dull son of a bitch. This was Moore's second time out as 007, and he seems to have responded to the discovery that he hadn't been fired after his work in the first one by switching to autopilot. The Bond girls here are Britt Ekland, a once-promising starlet on her way to a career as tabloid and tell-all memoir fodder based on her relationships with Peter Sellers and Rod Stewart, and Maud Adams, who would return to the franchise nine years later to play the title role in Octopussy. (If you'd given the performance that she gives here, you'd want a do-over, too.) And, oh, joy, Clifton James is back as Sheriff J. W. Pepper, an act of hubris on the moviemakers' part that rivals George Lucas' refusal to flush Jar Jar Binks. Even John Barry fell down on the job; he would later say that the score here was "the one I hate the most," though at least the producers declined the title song offered to them by Alice Cooper, thus giving Alice one more thing he has in common with Johnny Cash. For topicality, there's an energy crisis theme, and no movie better illustrates a dwindling of reserves of energy than this one.

6. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS (1987)

As soon as A View to a Kill hit the street, it was clear that something had to give. So the producers eighty-sixed Roger Moore and attempted a newer, more serious approach to the character. The man chosen to embody that new approach, Timothy Dalton, has been trying to live down the results ever since, but Dalton is a good actor with a handsome shell and a dashing presence, and it's not the worst thing you can say about someone in his position here that he let his contempt for the material show. (After twelve years of Roger Moore, it was kind of reassuring to see someone who had it in him to feel contempt for any material at all.) The producers also scaled back on the harem girls, the feeling being that the age of AIDS demanded a Bond who was at least serially monogamous. The problem is that the villains -- the hedonistic Jeroen Krabbe and the rampaging Joe Don Baker -- now seemed to be the only people having any fun. Then movie may perhaps be most notable for a sequence that plays very strangely today, the one in which Bond, in Afghanistan, lends a helping hand to the heroic, scrappy forces of the Mujahideen.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four & Five

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Paul Clark

Quantum of Vodka: James Bond’s Top 007 Cocktails

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Everyone knows “shaken, not stirred,” but as S. James Snyder reports in Time magazine, James Bond’s taste in adult beverages is not limited to the vodka martini he first ordered in 1962’s Dr. No. Fans of Ian Fleming know that wasn’t Bond’s original drink anyway, a point the 2006 reboot Casino Royale picked up on. “Reverting to the original recipe from Fleming's first Bond book, Craig's 007 ordered a drink he dubbed the Vesper — a hybrid martini that is three parts gin and one part vodka, mixed with a half-ounce of Kina Lillet. Ordering the drink, Bond's words in the film were an exact echo of the dialogue in Fleming's 1953 Casino Royale story.”

That’s far from the first time Bond has shaken up his booze order onscreen. “Audiences noticed when, in 2002's Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan saddled up to the bar and placed an order for a mojito. Sisson says the drink was already becoming popular in Miami, where he was working at the time, but that Bond's affinity for muddled mint launched the mojito to national stardom.”

Snyder goes on to provide recipes for seven of Bond’s favorite cocktails. You’ll no doubt recall the Mint Julep from Goldfinger and perhaps even the Rum Collins from Thunderball, but Bond’s most shocking drink order comes in License to Kill: “Bond rendezvous with Pam in Bimini and both order a Bud with Lime. But before 007 can take a swig, he must fight off a henchman with a gun, knocking over the beers in the brawl. Bond's cheapest bar tab ever: $3.50.”

Related:
The Top 007 James Bond Theme Songs
Goldeneye: James Bond's Birthplace

Trailer Review: Quantum of Solace (Trailer #2)

Paul Clark — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, I said I wasn’t sure what to expect from Quantum of Solace- whether it would keep the super-sweet mix of action and drama that was introduced with Casino Royale or if it would go too far one way or the other. Well, this trailer eases some of my initial fears, largely because it gives us a good taste of both. Much of the magic is in the casting- Craig is surely the best actor to don the tux to date, and he’s backed by capable costars both old (Dame Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini, Jeffrey Wright) and new (Matthieu Amalric). As Bond’s female counterpart, Olga Kurylenko seems a step down from Eva Green, but then she’d pretty much have to be. Plus the action looks great, especially that great shot of the Bond and a baddie falling through the glass ceiling. All in all, this trailer has me relieved about the quality of the film, although even if I still had my original misgivings I’d still be there opening weekend.

Screengrab Fall Preview: Paul Clark's Picks

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Yesterday, my colleague Scott Von Doviak dared all of his fellow Screengrab staffers to weigh in on our most anticipated movies of the fall. Given my lifelong inability to resist a dare (which resulted in my eating far too many unspeakable things in my younger days) I’ve decided to answer the call. Craving an additional challenge- and hoping to spotlight the wide array of good and bad releases coming soon to a theatre near me- I’ve decided to eliminate all contenders that appeared in Scott’s preview. Here goes:

3 UP

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – for years, David Fincher has been one of Hollywood’s most gifted filmmakers, with last year’s Zodiac his best film yet. With Button, Fincher turns his camera on an honest-to-goodness work of literature (an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, fer chrissakes), but don’t expect a workmanlike Tradition of Quality-style adaptation. Button re-teams Fincher with Brad Pitt, who continues to improve as an actor by seeking out adventurous material, and this story gives him his biggest challenge yet, not only playing a character from childhood through old age, but playing him while aging in reverse. It’s the kind of story that requires a visionary to pull off, and I can think of few better candidates for the job than Fincher. Every year, there’s at least one high-profile movie that I actively root for to be great, and this year, it’s Benjamin Button.

2. A Christmas Tale – Unlike Benjamin Button, the latest film by the great French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is something of a known quantity, premiering at Cannes to almost universal acclaim. But even if it hadn’t already screened, my hopes for this one would be through the roof. In the past few years, Desplechin has become one of my favorite filmmakers, and he’s coming off his finest work yet, 2004’s Kings and Queen. Factor in that Christmas Tale re-unites four of that film’s stars- Matthieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuelle Devos, and Hippolyte Girardot- and I’m sold. That the film’s IMDb recommends the Steve Martin remake of Cheaper By the Dozen shouldn’t be held against it.

3. The Brothers Bloom – as I stated in my Trailer Review earlier this week, I’m in the pro-Brick camp, so naturally I’m excited for Rian Johnson’s follow-up project. But he’s also assembled an irresistible cast (I love Brody and Ruffalo as brothers, and Rachel Weisz is always best when she plays daffy), so I’m extra-stoked for this one. Could we be witnessing the rise of a major American filmmaker? Here’s hoping.

3 DOWN

1. Defiance – tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Ed Zwick directs a film about an outsider who aids a group of minorities in fighting about those who oppress them. That the minorities are Jews and the time period is during World War II only makes Defiance’s Oscar-grubbing even more blatant. Thanks, but no thanks.

2. RockNRolla – you know, I was under the impression that the abject failure of Revolver coupled with the divorce from Madonna meant that the moviegoing public would get a break from Guy Ritchie. Alas, that beautiful dream wasn’t to be. It was nice while it lasted though…

3. Bedtime Stories – Adam Sandler’s comic persona might be juvenile, but he’s always been at his best at unleashing his rage onscreen in decidedly un-kid-friendly ways. Less successful are his attempts to warm the heart, which makes the idea of a Sandler family comedy all the more misguided. The presence of Adam (The Pacifier) Shankman in the director’s chair doesn’t inspire much confidence either.

WILD CARD

It’s not as odd as Scott’s choice of Oliver Stone’s W. (what could be?), but I’m pretty conflicted about Quantum of Solace. What made Casino Royale so damn good is that it combined a kickass James Bond thrill ride with a legitimately compelling story. But although hiring director Marc Forster hints that the producers might be trying for that same balance of action and drama, I have my doubts that lightning will strike twice. Add to this Forster’s lack of experience in the action genre, plus the fact that unlike Casino this one doesn’t have an Ian Fleming novel to provide a solid narrative foundation, and Quantum has a lot to live up to. Sure, it might be diverting, but after Casino Royale, that just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. However, I’d love nothing more than to be wrong about this.

DVD Digest for June 3, 2008

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

With Father’s Day coming in less than two weeks, the studios begin to unveil their snazzy new editions of what TNT used to call “movies for guys who like movies.” We’ve got all the manly movies you need to keep dad happy while mom and her friends are out seeing the Sex and the City movie (seriously, how did we not see that coming?).

Before Clint Eastwood became known as an Academy Award-winning filmmaker (or a guy who co-starred with an orangutan) he was first and foremost a grimacing badass. And while some- including yours truly- have a soft spot for his Man With No Name trilogy- the most enduring character from this period would also certainly be “Dirty” Harry Callahan. This week, Warner unveils new DVD and Blu-Ray editions of all five of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, featuring all of the features from previous DVD editions plus a number of new ones. Most notably, Warner Brothers’ box set (the films are also sold separately) includes a new feature-length documentary, Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows. In addition, the memorabilia included in the box set includes a 40-page hardcover book and a map of San Francisco detailing Harry’s hunt for Scorpio.

But if dad’s looking for wartime heroism (Blu-Ray only), MGM and Fox both have something that’ll fit the bill. MGM will unveil Blu-Ray editions of A Bridge Too Far and Battle of Britain this week, although these new discs will contain no special features. So if it’s tricked out Blu-Rays (and better movies) you want, go with Fox’s war DVDs. The studio will be releasing three of its classics- Patton, The Longest Day and The Sand Pebbles- exclusively on Blu-Ray, packed with special features and all the bells and whistles he could ever hope for.

But that’s not all, folks. If dad wants some laughs with his testosterone, buy him the new City Slickers: Collector’s Edition (MGM), which gives him some Western action, male bonding humor courtesy of Crystal, Kirby and Stern, and of course Jack Palance, who even in death can still crap bigger than you. Other, more recent dudely comedies releasing this week include Semi-Pro (New Line, also Blu-Ray), Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show (Lionsgate), and for the father whose enjoyment of movies far outweighs his taste, Meet the Spartans (Fox, also Blu-Ray). And what’s a list of guy movies with James Bond? Sony will release a new three-disc edition of Casino Royale, Bond’s best big-screen adventure since the sixties (there, I said it).

Other new releases this week include: Anton Corbijn’s Ian Curtis biopic Control (Weinstein Company); the Jessica Alba remake of The Eye (Lionsgate, also Blu-Ray); Michael Caine and Demi Moore in Flawless (Magnolia); the long-delayed The Onion Movie (Fox); and Asia Argento just the way we like her (i.e. mostly naked and toting a gun) in Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate (Magnolia). The week’s most notable non-guy-movie old-school release is Jean-Jacques Beineix’s seminal Cinema du look classic Diva (Lionsgate). Finally, releasing on Blu-Ray only: Cloverfield (Paramount), Signs (Buena Vista), The Recruit (Buena Vista), There Will Be Blood (Paramount).

Why Sean Connery Never Discovered Joan Collins's Naked Body Painted Gold, and Other Dubious Claims

Phil Nugent — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

As part of its recognition of the centennial of Ian Fleming, the Telegraph had a bright idea — they turned to professional vixen Joan Collins to share her expert opinion on the evolution of Bond movies, which she never had anything to do with and which she'd never heard about until, "shortly after Anthony Newley and I became engaged, we were strolling around Harrod's when we heard a familiar Scottish burr hailing us. It was Sean Connery, who'd just been signed up to play the super-agent in Dr No. 'Congratulations,' Tony said. 'You'll be great, and I'm sure this film's going to be wonderful.' 'Oh, it'll be just another job,' Sean shrugged. 'Then I'll be waiting for the phone to ring again as usual.'...We hadn't the slightest inkling that Dr. No would be the first of a film series that was destined to become the most popular of all time and that would catapult Sean Connery to stardom." I was really hoping that the next sentence would be, "Otherwise, I'd have dumped Anthony Newley on the pavement like a hot turd and, batting my eyes at Sean, asked if he'd like to go look for the nearest linen closet," but it looks as if we'll have to chalk that up to a golden opportunity missed.

The article--which is a classic of its weird kind, as the reader follows Collins as she charts her efforts to connect herself somehow to as many dips and turns in the franchise as she can manage--establishes many a missed opportunity in Joan's and 007's shared universe. Collins turned down the Shirley Eaton role in Goldfinger because she didn't like the idea of lying around on the set with her body painted, which would indeed seem to be a deal-breaker. Her shot at appearing in the notorious rogue Bond spoof Casino Royale went down the tubes when her doctor "informed me I was in fact enceinte," which extensive on-line research has confirmed means "pregnant," no lower than eight on my list of guesses. She did feel vindicated when Timothy Dalton landed the role of Bond, because she had just been shouted down in her efforts to have him cast as her romantic partner in a TV project because the mummies in charge of the studio felt he lacked sex appeal. Here they were daring to contradict Joan in one department where she claims expert status. "Sean Connery had what's known as 'it'. I can't explain it: it's not just sex appeal, but a certain something about men that makes women go weak at the knees, and a certain something about women that makes men drool, and it's an absolute prerequisite if you're going to go anywhere in this fickle business." (Seen Anthony Newley lately?) It is Joan's informed opinion that of all the Bonds, Pierce Brosnan came closest to getting the role at precisely the right time in his life to serve as "the physical embodiment" of the character. Collins does mention that she heard that Fleming was keen on James Mason for the part--which is a new one on us, but maybe she just needed an excuse to include her story about Mason and the "small rickety plane, going through turbulence that threatened our breakfast to a repeat appearance. While Steven Boyd and I slung down copious rum punches, getting plastered to kill our fear, I noticed James Mason calmly reading his Times. 'James,' I said. 'Aren't you terrified? It's so bumpy we could crash!' Without even glancing up, James replied in his mellifluously reassuring voice, 'Oh, no my dear, I'm never frightened in planes. I fly so much, what is there to be anxious about? They're perfectly safe,' and he continued reading his paper. That's when I noticed his paper was upside down."

Oliver Stone Pitches a “W”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:30:00 GMT

President George W. Bush threw out the traditional first pitch in the Washington Nationals’ home opener last night, the first game in their new ballpark. (The Nationals won on a walkoff homerun by Ryan Zimmerman, who is on my fantasy team, thank you very much.) The Prez was greeted by either a chorus or a smattering of boos, depending on your affiliation. We wonder what sort of reception was Oliver Stone hoping to hear; in other words, what sort of audience will there be for his rapidly developing biopic W?

Last week we noted the casting of Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks as Dubya and his First Lady, Laura Bush. Now Entertainment Weekly reports that “James Cromwell is in negotiations to play George Bush Sr., and Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale) is in talks for the role of Colin Powell. But at press time, it was still unclear who will take the role of Vice President Dick Cheney. A source close to the production tells EW that Stone will reach out to Oscar winner Robert Duvall, though the actor's agency says that an offer has not yet been presented.” And then there are the rumors. Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere says he has been “told about three casting ‘likes’ for Oliver Stone's W -- i.e., actors who are wanted for the George Bush biopic but not (as far as my source knows) signed. Toby Jones (who plays legendary super-agent Swifty Lazar in Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon) is being sought to play Karl Rove. They want Jeffrey Wright to play Colin Powell, and they'd like Tommy Lee Jones to have a go at Donald Rumsfeld. Again -- nothing firm, no contracts.” Paul Giamatti is also rumored as a possible Rove, per New York magazine.

Whether there’s any truth to these rumors should become clear quickly, as shooting is scheduled to begin April 21st in Shreveport, Louisiana. Stone is looking to have the movie in theaters before Bush leaves office in January – a sort of goodbye present, no doubt. It’s still not clear what the director finds so compelling about Dubya’s story, but the official line is that the film will be “the improbable story of a man who went to the White House despite getting fewer votes than his opponent; who became commander-in-chief despite having avoided military combat himself; and who became the least popular president ever elected to a second term. W will shock and surprise you and leave you questioning everything you believe to be true.” Here’s something we believe to be true: this will be another Oliver Stone film that leaves us questioning everything.

James Bond and the Five Stages of Grief

Phil Nugent — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:59:00 GMT

The British news services really stay on top of developments in the James Bond series, which figures, since it's probably the best contemporary evidence that they used to have an empire. (I expect that within a couple of decades, American news services will show the same obsessive interest in who gets cast to play Bruce Willis's two-fisted grandson in Die Hard VIII: Live Free, Die Hard, and Leave a Good-Looking Corpse.) The latest casting news is that Ukrainian model Olga Kurylenko, who recently starred with a shaven-headed, baffled-looking Timothy Olyphant in Hitman, will play the "sidekick" to Daniel Craig's Bond in what will be the twenty-second installment of the time-honored, recently re-booted franchise. The movie also stars Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as the villain and features returning performers Judi Dench (as M), Jeffrey Wright (continuing to serve as the most overqualified actor ever to play Felix Leiter), and international man of mystery Giancarlo Giannini, who was last seen in Casino Royale being dragged offscreen after being tasered at Bond's request, but who apparently holds no hard feelings, being one of those adaptable European sophisticates.

It all sounds pretty good, except for a couple of things. First, the director this time in Marc Forster, the almost talent-free auteur of Monster's Ball and The Kite Runner, a man who has proven himself capable of practically anything, so long as it blows. But with Craig and the others in place, how badly can he screw it up, you ask? Well, it's reported that the new movie "is expected to follow on from the events of Casino Royale, with Bond picking up the pieces after being double-crossed by Treasury agent Vesper Lynd. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli said Camille 'challenges Bond and helps him come to terms with the emotional consequences of Vesper's betrayal'." This has a creepy touchy-feely aspect to it that might as well be calculated to set veteran Bond fans' teeth on edge. Not that we have any problem with James Bond touching and feeling, but in his own preferred style. For instance, in the opening of Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery's Bond came to terms with the emotional consequences of the murder of his wife in the previous film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by touching the villain responsible for the foul deed, strapping him to a surgical table, and rolling it into a handy flaming pit, after which he looked as if he felt just fine. And Connery hadn't even been in On Her Majesty, which just goes to show how he was willing to go that extra mile to come to terms with something that hadn't happened on his watch. The new Bond movie is due to be released this fall, at which point all will become clear, or at least as clear as a James Bond plot ever is. But here's hoping that, even as we speak, Forster isn't shooting a scene with Daniel Craig waking up in his bed in a psychiatric hospital to discover that Dr. Phil is barging through the door. Or if he is, that there's a flaming pit somewhere in the room.

007: Oscar Bait?

Peter Smith — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:00 GMT

The next James Bond film (which is being called Bond 22 until someone comes up with an even more meaningless title to stick on it) certainly doesn’t read like a James Bond film. In fact, it reads like a movie designed to make the Academy sit up and take notice: its director, Marc Forster, helmed two films (Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland) that won Oscars and just completed a third, The Kite Runner, that may receive similar acclaim. Its screenwriter, Paul Haggis, has been nominated for five Oscars, has won two, and is generating huge amounts of Academy Award talk for In the Valley of Elah. And no less a source than Max von Sydow claims that the role of perennial Bond nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld will be played by Mathieu Amalric, who’s currently wowing the critics in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. With Forster telling the New York Times that his vision of the character is dark and tormented, and pontificating that "the most interesting place for a James Bond movie to go is inward — deeper into Bond himself," will Bond 22 be the first 007 film to court critical respectability? Or is Forster just vaporing to defend the giant paycheck he’s going to get? — Leonard Pierce

Morning Deal Report: Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well

Peter Smith — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

In the wake of Gus Van Sant's Last Days and A.J. Schnack's documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son comes the announcement that Universal will adapt Charles Cross's Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven. What took 'em so long?

Bruce Dern is directing for the first time, and better yet, Hart's Location will star him and his wife and daughter, Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. That is an all-star family right there. We're psyched.

Naomi Watts will star in the remake of The Birds from Casino Royale director Martin Campbell.

— Peter Smith