The Screengrab : pierce brosnan

Morning Deal Report: Megan Fox Crosses the Border

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Megan Fox will star in the “border thriller” The Crossing. “Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi penned the pic, in which a couple returning from a Mexican vacation is carjacked and the husband kidnapped. The wife (Fox) must smuggle heroin across the border in order to spring him,” per The Hollywood Reporter. A spokesman for the film claims that Fox is “ideal for the role of a woman who must be both victim and hero,” which I think is his way of saying she’s hot.

Eighteen years after the ill-fated The Dark Wind, Errol Morris is taking another shot at directing a narrative film. Currently known as Untitled Cryonics Project, it’s the true of Robert F. Nelson, “a TV repairman who in the 1960s joined a group of enthusiasts who believed they could cheat death with a new technology: cryonics. But freezing dead people so scientists could reanimate them in the future turned out to be harder than Nelson thought,” Variety reports. It’s described as a dark comedy, and Ira Glass is among the producers.

Catherine Keener has joined Pierce Brosnan and Uma Thurman for Percy Jackson, a Christopher Columbus adaptation of a fantasy series by Rick Riordan. “The books, which put Greek gods in modern times, involve Poseidon's half-human son, Percy, who is on a quest in modern America to prevent a war among the gods.”

Related:
Megan Fox Goes Deep
When Good Directors Go Bad: The Dark Wind

Razzies Honor “The Love Guru,” Paris Hilton

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Lest we forget, another set of awards were handed out in Hollywood this weekend. Actually “handed out” is probably a poor choice of words, as it implies that someone actually showed up to receive their Golden Raspberry at the 29th Annual Razzie Awards. That has happened before, but as far as we know, not this year. The Love Guru was dishonored as the Worst Picture of 2008, and its star Mike Myers named Worst Actor. Myers shared Worst Screenplay with Love Guru co-writer Graham Gordy.

Other big losers include:

Worst Actress: Paris Hilton, The Hottie and the Nottie

Worst Director: Uwe Boll, 1968: Tunnel Rats, In The Name of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and Postal

Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton, Repo: The Genetic Opera

Worst Supporting Actor: Pierce Brosnan, Mamma Mia!

Worst Prequel, Remake, Ripoff or Sequel: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Morning Deal Report: Polanski and Belushi, Together at Last

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:30:00 GMT

Apparently some sort of awards nominations were announced this morning. I think you can find the details elsewhere at the Screengrab.

Scorsese and De Niro. Hitchcock and Stewart. Polanski and…Belushi? JIM Belushi? Yes, it’s true, according to The Hollywood Reporter: "Tom Wilkinson and Jim Belushi have joined the cast of Roman Polanski's The Ghost, which begins filming in Berlin on Feb. 4. The movie stars Pierce Brosnan as a former British prime minister and Ewan McGregor as his ghostwriter.”

Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) will direct “The Spectacular Now, a coming-of-age dramedy based on Tim Tharp's book,” per Variety. "It's somewhere between Sideways, Catcher in the Rye and Ferris Bueller's Day Off," said producer Tom McNulty. Well, that narrows it down.

Mark Ruffalo’s directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious, is back on track following the shooting death of Ruffalo’s brother. “The story, written by Christopher Thornton, follows a paralyzed DJ, struggling to survive on the streets of L.A., who turns to faith healing and mysteriously develops the ability to cure the sick -- although not himself. The DJ then decides to cash in on his gift in exchange for his rock 'n' roll dreams,” per THR.

Related:
Roman Polanski Sees a Ghost
Movies We Missed: My Life Without Me (2003)

Screengrab Live Blogs The Golden Globes

Andrew Osborne — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:39:00 GMT

(All times TiVo approximate)

7:33 - Nice silly bow tie, Brad.

7:35 - Way to step on your annoying daughter’s dress, Billy Ray.

7:38 - Good Lord! Marisa Tomei is wearing the puffy shirt! Is her next movie The Pirates of Penzance?

7:41 - Brangelina blow off Ryan Seacrest...heh-heh-heh...

7:46 - My lovely Polish bride Amy acquaints me with the Golden Globes dinner menu:

APPETIZERS
California organic field green salad with white asparagus
Crisp apricot dill goat cheese in phylo and poached pear
Maple syrup apple cider vinaigrette

ENTREES
Grilled prime tenderloin of beef with green tea pearl and sautéed aromatic Asian spice marinated sea bass
Sherry wine yuzu pepper sauce
Grilled king oyster mushroom
Jicama, Romanesco and potato onion croquette

DESSERT
Golden chocolate Globe with organic yogurt pistachio mousse

7:49 - The E! Channel breaks out their "Star Tracker" technology, wherein video arrows point out the stars to us in wide shots of the red carpet. Note to E! - Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.

7:50 - Jeremy Piven appears on the red carpet. Apparently his mercury levels have returned to normal. Thank you, baby Jesus!

7:53 - Amy is sick of all the sand colored couture. Her favorite gowns of the evening: Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate. Me, I could eat me some Anne Hathaway with a spoon.

8:02 - Amy thinks J. Lo is wearing one of Cher's Bob Mackie gowns from a 1970s time machine.

8:04 - Okay, I haven't seen The Reader and I love Kate Winslet, but...really? Best Supporting Actress? She must give really good Nazi.

8:06 - Damn, that Kate Winslet is adorable. Meanwhile...um...is Sting in that production of Pirates of Penzance with Marisa Tomei?

8:10 - BROOOOOOOOOOCCCEE!!!!!

8:11 - I'm trying to figure out who or what Darren Aronofsky looks like in his funny weaselly moustache. A villain in a Preston Sturges film? The Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta? Meanwhile, Amy thinks Rumer Willis (in the background as a Golden Globes girl) may have had her chin shaved, since her big square potato head is no longer quite as prominent and she actually looks kinda cute. From a distance.

8:13 - Robert Downey Jr. apparently stuck his toe in the same electrical outlet as Drew Barrymore.

8:18 - Tom Wilkinson has apparently been drinking since noon.

8:20 - Hooray for Laura Dern! Amy's happy she kept her original nose, and I'm happy David Lynch used his mysterious powers of transcendental meditation to help her win.

8:25 - What happened to Don Cheadle's hair?

8:27 - Amy does not care about Eva Mendes. Even if she is a proud Cuban-American. (But we both love whoever that guy was she introduced...I missed what he said because I was Googling Eva Mendes and found this great shot of her plumber's crack while Amy drools over Hamm, John Hamm:

8:31 - Both my mother and Amy's mother call to express outrage over Hamm getting robbed. Amy dubs it Hammgate.

8:36 - Ricky Gervais = hilarious. Tells Kate Winslet, "See? I told you...do a Holocaust movie and you'll win awards!"

8:39 - The hobbits from the Fellowship of the Ring...sorry, I mean, the Jonas Brothers, present the award for Best Foregone Conclusion...I mean, uh, Best Animated Feature. Amy says the middle Jonas Brother looks like the guy she lost her virginity to (although I saw the guy recently and he no longer has that silky Jonas hair...or any hair, really).

8:41 - Amy wants Johnny Depp, meanwhile, to simply wash his hair.

8:43 - Sally Hawkins wins Best Actress for Comedy! I couldn't be happier! Amy is also happy for Sally, but wants to feed her skinny ass some brie.

8:45 - Sally Hawkins is full of love. And, possibly, nitrous oxide.

8:54 - Cheadle: good bald. Ralph Fiennes: not so much. (Amy, meanwhile, loves loves loves Drew Barrymore's dress.)

8:58 - Ledger wins. Universal sadness.

9:03 - Meanwhile, over on CNN, they're interviewing Priscilla Presley, who apparently got some cut-rate plastic surgery that left her looking like a Dick Tracy villain.

9:07 - Colin Farrell has that weird Aronofsky moustache, too! Trend alert!

9:10 - Waltz With Bashir guy: best acceptance speech of the evening.

9:11 - Maggie Gyllenhaal wears my aunt's drapes. Shirley Maclaine is either stoned or just got hit in the face with a frying pan.

9:13 - Paul Giamatti, for some reason, decided to come dressed as Judah Friedlander.

9:18 - Mmm! Look at that sexy Seth Rogen! Amy prefers fat Seth. Either way, Mickey Rourke is probably gonna kick his ass for that coke-snorting joke.

9:21 - What did David Duchovny mouth to the camera while blowing a kiss? Amy's guess: "I love hookers."

9:23 - Alec Baldwin thanks his vile pig of a daughter. Awwww.

9:31 - Giamatti!

9:36 - I don't have any little snarky comment to make, but I must just pause here to acknowledge the comic brilliance of Tracy Morgan, edging past the Waltz With Bashir guy for best speech. (Lorny Mikes!)

9:41 - Didn't mention it at the time, but controversy breaks out here in Somerville over Glenn Close's outfit. Amy says age-appropriate. Her mother, phoning in from New Hampshire, says early '80s Boca Raton.

9:43 - "Mmm...Pierce Brosnan," quoth Amy. "Nothin' wrong with that." She also likes him because he has a fat wife.

9:46 - P. Diddy and Kate Beckinsale step down off a wedding cake to present a nice Indian man with the award for Best Soundtrack (for Slumdog Millionaire).

9:48 - Nice boobs, Tina Fey!

9:54 - Scorcese!

9:58 - Much whispering about the awe-inspiring wonder of Steven Spielberg and his gift to the art of cinema. Bathroom break!

10:06 - All right, snark aside: (A) Spielberg throws some love to Scorcese, which is nice, but (B) that montage of Spielberg movies reminds you...damn, Steven Spielberg sure made a bunch of good-ass movies. (And, y'know, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). This speech sure is going on, though.

10:09 - Spielberg: still talking.

10:13 - Is it more that Emma Thompson's really big or that Dustin Hoffman's really small?

10:15 - Danny Boyle wins Best Director. Again, the toe-in-electric-outlet hair. Trend alert!

10:19 - Amy says Colin Farrell looks less like a pubic hair with his hair cut short. And I'm happy to see the Bruges love: rent it now! (By the way, I didn't realize when I put In Bruges on my 2008 Top Ten list that the movie's writer/director, Martin McDonagh, is also the playwright responsible for The Lieutenant of Inishmore, the bloodiest play (and one of the most entertaining) I've ever seen on stage. If you get a chance, be sure to check it out!) I have plenty of time to write about all this, incidentally, because Colin Farrell will apparently never stop talking. "You're not Steven Spielberg!" says Amy, who hates him. Me, I thought his speech was kinda sweet.

10:29 - Hayek, Johansson and Cruz all enter my consciousness at once. Amy breaks out the smelling salts.

10:31 - Borat!

10:32 - Really? The Golden Globe audience boos a Madonna joke? Hmm. While I ponder this strange development, Vicky Cristina Barcelona wins best comedy/musical, which makes me think of Salma, Scarlett and Penelope again...mmm...

10:36 - Oh, wait...add Freida Pinto to that fantasy...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

10:39 - Kate Winslet momentarily forgets that Angelina Jolie was also nominated for Best Actress. Angelina Jolie: not happy. Mark Wahlberg says hi to my mother for me.

10:45 - Mad Men? Rules.

10:49 - All the people who wouldn't return Mickey Rourke's calls last year are now very happy for Mickey Rourke.

10:50 - Mickey Rourke thanks David Unger for his balls.

10:52 - Darren Aronofsky flips the bird on national television. "Nice, real nice," says Amy's mother, phoning in from New Hampshire. "John Ford would never do that."

10:54 - Mickey Rourke thanks Scott Franklin for breaking his balls. Somehow Axl Rose was also involved with The Wrestler, making it the New Jersey-est movie of all time. Finally Rourke thanks his dogs. "That's the kinda shit you wait up all night for," says Amy.

10:58 - And...Slumdog! The guy accepting the award jumps the Aronofsky train with a verbal finger flip...trend alert!

Anyway, thanks for playing along at home! And now, to recap...the complete list of winners:

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler (2008)

Best Television Series - Drama

Winner: "Mad Men" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

Winner: Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road (2008)

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Colin Farrell for In Bruges (2008)

Best Director - Motion Picture

Winner: Danny Boyle for Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Tina Fey for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Original Score - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - A.R. Rahman

Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Paul Giamatti for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Alec Baldwin for "30 Rock" (2006)

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture

Winner: Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - Simon Beaufoy

Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Linney for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Vals Im Bashir (2008)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight (2008)

Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: "John Adams" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

Winner: Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Best Animated Film

Winner: WALL·E (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Anna Paquin for "True Blood" (2007)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Drama

Winner: Gabriel Byrne for "In Treatment" (2008)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Laura Dern for Recount (2008) (TV)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Winner: Tom Wilkinson for "John Adams" (2008)

Best Original Song - Motion Picture

Winner: The Wrestler (2008)("The Wrestler")

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture

Winner: Kate Winslet for The Reader (2008)

Thursday Poll for November 27, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Last week, we continued our Bond-fest with the eternal question, “who was the best 007?” But much like the Vesper martinis that Daniel Craig’s Bond enjoys so much, this quiz came with a twist- Sean Connery wasn’t one of the candidates, a choice we made with the goal of keeping the poll competitive. However, you had other plans, with Craig (if nothing else, the first Bond since Connery who could convincingly kick some serious villain ass) bringing home a cool 56% of the vote. Trailing him by a wide margin was the #2 choice, Roger Moore, with 19%, followed by Pierce Brosnan with 13%. As usual, the unloved Messrs. Lazenby and Dalton brought up the rear with a mere 6% apiece. And while we received a number of write-in votes for unofficial Bonds ranging from Corey Burton to Operation Kid Brother’s Neil Connery, I was a little disappointed that nobody chose my favorite fake Bond, the diminutive Weng Weng in For Your Height Only.

This week, we move from high-octane action to high-caffeine spectacle by spotlighting the one and only Baz Luhrmann, whose latest film, Australia, was released yesterday. Whether his films leave you dumb with wonderment or simply dumbfounded, it’s hard to find a movie lover who doesn’t have an opinion on the guy. So, what’s your favorite Luhrmann film?

What is your favorite Baz Luhrmann film? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is opening. Have a spectacular spectacular Thanksgiving, and we’ll see you next week!

Yesterday's Hits, 007 Edition: Thunderball (1965, Terence Young) and Moonraker (1979, Lewis Gilbert)

Paul Clark — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Quantum of Solace was released in U.S. theatres a week ago today, but I’m still jonesing for that old Bond feeling. Perhaps it was the decidedly un-007-like style of the latest movie in the series, but I for one found myself missing some of the reliable, even cheesy, touches of the old installments. So for this week’s column, I decided to look back at two of the biggest hits of the series to date, one starring Sean Connery (Thunderball), and one starring Roger Moore (Moonraker), thereby making this my first Yesterday’s Hits double feature to date.

At first glance, the two movies wouldn’t seem to go that well together, but a closer look finds a number of similarities beyond the usual Bond clichés. For one thing, both films were the top-grossing Bond titles for their respective stars. In addition, each was the fourth film in which they appeared. Both movies were a great deal more expensive than the films that preceded them. And by some strange coincidence, both movies build to action scenes in which dozens of characters are seen floating- in Thunderball’s case, the scene is underwater, whereas in Moonraker, they’re in space. But perhaps most importantly, neither film is especially well-regarded by devotees of the series. In last week’s list of the best and worst Bond movies of all time, Moonraker was voted the second-worst of the series, while Thunderball was the only “official” Connery title that didn’t get mentioned as one of the best.

Following the smash international success of Goldfinger, it was clear that moviegoing audiences couldn’t get enough of Ian Fleming’s super-spy. So production was quickly begun on the biggest Bond adventure yet, a $9 million spectacular called Thunderball that would once again star the suave, wry Scot Sean Connery. With the Bond formula more or less established from the previous three adventures, it was more or less guaranteed that Thunderball would be an even bigger hit than its predecessor. However, it ended up doing so well at the box-office that it remained the highest-grossing Bond adventure for nearly fifteen years.

The movie that would eventually dethrone it was, of course, Moonraker. Released only two years after Star Wars changed the face of blockbusters, the film was EON Productions’ attempt to cash in on the space opera craze- after all, what locale is more exotic than space? Moore was no Connery, but by 1979 he’d been accepted as Connery’s successor, and placing him against the backdrop of the so-called final frontier was a winning proposition. Despite mostly negative reviews, Moonraker raked in the money, the already tempting deal sweetened by the return of fan-favorite Jaws, played by the one and only Richard Kiel. Moonraker had the highest gross of any Bond movie until Pierce Brosnan assumed the role.

So, do they still work? As it turns out, Thunderball holds up pretty darn well, Moonraker… eh, not so much.

Coming so soon after two nearly perfect examples of the Bond formula done right, Thunderball’s flaws must have seemed especially glaring to fans of the series. Much of the supporting cast is bland and forgettable, with the most egregious offender being Claudine Auger as the principal Bond girl, Domino. In addition, a good deal of the wit that distinguished the previous entries in the series was cast aside here in favor of expensive action sequences. But with action sequences as good as the ones in Thunderball, it seems churlish to complain. Especially great is the extended underwater fight/shootout that comes at the end of the film, in which Bond and dozens of agents take on Largo (Adolfo Celi) and his henchmen for minutes on end, without a shred of dialogue. This scene remains a high-water mark of the series- no pun intended, of course.

And then, there was Connery, still the overwhelming favorite of 007 fans everywhere. By now firmly established in the role, Connery was able to inhabit the character with an easy authority, so much that his successors have all been measured against him. What’s surprising here is that he was actually able to find some new wrinkles to the character even after three previous performances in the role. By this point in the series, Bond has begun to show a little more self-awareness about the demands of his job. There’s an early scene in which Bond has to leave on his mission, and one of his conquests runs after him and asks him to write to her, and all he does is give a stiff little smile and say to himself, “another time, another place.” He also had room for ambiguous gestures, as in the scene where Largo’s agent Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) gets shot. Does Bond intentionally use her as a shield to save himself, or does it just happen that way? Connery never lets on one way or the other, and the character is more fascinating as a result.

By contrast, there was no room for ambiguity in Roger Moore’s conception of Bond. Moore’s version of 007 was less a hard-nosed secret agent who got his hands dirty than the archetypal “gentleman spy” as a straight-up hero. As a result, his performances were entertaining enough, but didn’t make the character particularly interesting. Also uninteresting here is Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead (yeah, I know), another in a line of interchangeable pretty faces who were uneasily shoehorned into doctor roles in Bond movies. With two uncompelling leads, my attention quickly shifted to the villainous Drax, played by the great Michael Lonsdale with the perpetually annoyed bearing of a man who’d prefer not to trifle in the affairs of lesser intellects. With better material, Lonsdale could have made for one of the series’ best baddies, but he’s still pretty darn good.

And then there’s Jaws. I’ve always been a fan of the Jaws character, both in concept and execution. After all, here’s someone who has a limited number of job prospects- for an indestructible giant with metallic teeth, I’m guessing “hired killer” pays quite a bit better than “nightclub bouncer,” with greater travel opportunities to boot. But in spite of these limitations, Jaws makes the best of the hand he's been dealt, and it’s hard to hate the guy even when he’s beating the hell from Bond. Plus Kiel, with hardly a line of spoken dialogue, gives Jaws personality to spare, and it’s nice to see him finally get his own little romantic subplot in the story, even if it’s marred by a cheeseball music cue.

But all in all, Moonraker is pretty shoddy goods. James Bond travels from one exotic locale to another trying to save the world, but there’s no urgency to it, and the formula had become so comfortable that the filmmakers didn’t dare diverge from it (Quantum of Solace has precisely the opposite issue- it diverges from the formula so much it barely feels like Bond). Consequently, it comes off less as a thriller than an inconsequential romp, with such silly scenes as Bond’s Venetian gondola turning into a hovercraft, complete with a bird doing a double-take. Even the once-ballyhooed outer-space scenes look dated and cheesy nowadays. Moonraker might have gone over well with the audiences of the time, but it just doesn’t work today. Thunderball, on the other hand, is still pretty great.

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

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

THE BEST:

4. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969)

Okay, stop laughing. Yes, we realize this is the one with George Lazenby. But have you actually watched this lately? It holds up a whole hell of a lot better than most Bond movies, including some of Connery’s classics. But while Lazenby doesn’t have the same 007 magic as Connery did, fortunately the movie realizes this and makes it work to its advantage. By the time he hung up the tux for the first time, Connery was beginning to look a little too superhuman, so OHMSS begins with the new Bond getting a serious beatdown and quipping, “this never would’ve happened to the other guy.” From there, the movie gets really interesting, as the more vulnerable 007 is sent on one of the character’s best-written adventures to date, leading him to a remote Alpine clinic that could have been inspired by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain if not for the bevy of nubile patients found therein. Likewise, the film contains its share of spectacular stunts, with special mention going to an impressive ski chase. But while Bond’s lustiness and flair for action are fully intact, OHMSS sees him do something he hadn’t done onscreen before -- fall in love. But then, with the object of his affections played by Diana Rigg, who could blame him? This revelation of Bond’s romantic side makes this installment more human than most, giving its hero a greater emotional stake in his mission, capped by a shocker of an ending that the series has yet to top. It’s tempting to wonder whether the film would’ve worked even better with Connery, but no matter -- even with a former Australian underwear model, it’s still bloody great.

3. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963)

For a long time, From Russia with Love – the second 007 movie – was considered the best. It later fell into a long battle with Goldfinger, and nowadays it’s often surpassed even for second place by some critics. It’s hard to see why: From Russia with Love is a roaring, energetic success from first frame to last. It cranks up everything from the first movie – the action scenes are wilder, the sexy scenes are sexier, the dialogue is wittier, and most of all the villains are top-shelf foes worthy of Bond. The opening scene is a killer, a fake-out that still packs a punch even after you know what’s coming, and it introduces all of the bad guys that make From Russia so juicy: the chess grandmaster Alexi Kronsteen, who hatches the movie’s plot; the vicious torturer Rosa Klebb (played by opera singer Lotte Lenya, slumming divinely); the brutal defector/assassin Red Grant, played by a stone-faced Robert Shaw; and, as the bait, Tatiana Romanova – played by Daniela Bianchi, one of the most gorgeous Bond girls. There’s also the usual dynamite set-pieces (including a raucous fight at a gypsy camp) and memorable weapons (Klebb’s poisoned shoe-blades), and one of the most enjoyable endings of any Bond movie. And it was JFK’s favorite!

2. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971)

This begins with a terrific sequence showing Bond on the warpath, tracking down Blofeld so that he can pay him back for having killed Tracy (Diana Rigg), who Bond wooed and wed in the previous installment, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It also marked Connery's okay-but-just-this-once return to the series after sitting out OHMSS, and he plays this pre-title section with the controlled fury of a man who just missed out on his chance to get paid nine figures to make out with Diana Rigg. This is also the movie that proved that, no matter how many gadgets and goils are in place, it matters who plays the lead role. In a lot of ways, Diamonds is subpar Bond: it was the first film in the series made without the participation of Peter R. Hunt, who as editor and second unit director was integral to the look and feel of the action sequences on the earlier films, and who left after taking over as director on OHMSS, and the car chases and beatings lack the fluid aesthetic charge they once had. (At some points, they rival the Las Vegas setting itself for sheer tackiness.) But Connery, at forty-one, was just hitting his stride as an actor after almost ten years as a movie star, and he endows Bond with an ironic awareness and some vulnerability that are beautiful to see. It's probably the best performance he, or anyone else, ever gave in the part.

1. GOLDFINGER (1964)

The third James Bond film is close to being a consensus pick as the favorite. It was the first one to be considered a blockbuster success, making back its then-hefty $3 million budget in record time, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s really the first 007 adventure that has every single element of Bond greatness in place. It begins with the unforgettable theme song, performed by Shirley Bassey; it features a memorable villain in Gert Fröbe’s meaty precious metals enthusiast Auric Goldfinger, and one of the best henchmen of all time in Harold Sakata’s Oddjob, whose razor-brimmed fedora set the tone for future gimmick weapons. It had a clever plot, a solid script, lots of great action set-pieces, and a memorable deathtrap for Sean Connery’s 007, who must bluff his way out of being castrated by an industrial laser. Honor Blackman, fresh off The Avengers, plays Pussy Galore, one of the few Bond girls who aren’t total pushovers, and there’s lots of fun action from M and Q, as well as the full introduction of Bond’s tricked-out Aston Martin. Why is Goldfinger the best? Simple: it’s the quintessential Bond movie, containing everything a Bond movie should have in perfect order.

HONORABLE MENTION:

And finally...three Bond films that were disqualified from Best and Worst consideration for being close but not exactly actual Bond films at all...

OK CONNERY (1967); FFOLKES (1980); THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (2001)

Any association with a role like James Bond can result in an actor being typecast, but sometimes it's up to the actor to decide what to do with that. By 1980, Roger Moore was all but hermetically sealed in the role of 007, so much so that his only way to take a paid vacation was to accept the lead in a lame action-adventure movie, ffolkes, that was marketed to theaters with an ad campaign that tried to sell it as a Bond movie in all but name. The funny thing is that Moore latched onto the movie as a chance to escape Bond; the title character, a nautical-rescue-mission specialist who is prevailed upon by the British government to prevent Anthony Perkins from blowing up an oil rig, is an "eccentric" brainiac more in the Sherlock Holmes mode of antisocial superheroes, with a full beard and a pathological distaste for the fairer sex. The film didn't get much play, but Moore is said to prefer it to any of his Bond films.

The Tailor of Panama, directed by John Boorman and based on a John le Carre novel, provided Pierce Brosnan with a more direct route to giving his most iconic role an extended middle finger. Brosnan plays a horny total cynic of a secret agent whose compulsive womanizing inspires his bosses to ship him off to Panama to get him out of their hair. Incapable of behaving myself, Brosnan hires a tailor (Geoffrey Rush) to slip him information about his powerful clients; Rush, who can't find out anything but needs the money Brosnan is offering him, begins cooking up wild tales that Brosnan, who couldn't care less if they were true, is happy to send back to the home office. Between the two of them, they almost create an international crisis that is narrowly averted when the moviemakers had their budget slashed.

The booby prize in the Almost-Bond Sweepstakes goes to a 1967 movie that is alternately known as OK Connery, Operation Kid Brother, and Operation Double 007 -- that last being the title under which it was shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Made at a time when Sean Connery was already inching away from the role that had made him a star, this semi-spoof stars Connery's non-actor brother Neil as the little brother of an unidentified master secret agent who is unavailable for an important assignment. For the benefit of those very slow to get the point, any point, producer Dario Sabatello hired Bernard Lee and Lois Maxwell, the "M" and Miss Moneypenny of the regular Bond series, as well as Daniela Bianchi, of From Russia with Love, Adolfo Celi (who basically reprises his villainous role from Thunderball), and Anthony Dawson, who played a minor baddie in Dr. No and whose hands played the hands of Blofeld in a couple of later films. The role didn't led to much, though in 1984, Neil did contribute a cameo to a Hong Kong 007 spoof, directed by Tsui Hark, whose cast also included Richard ("Jaws") Kiel and Harold ("Oddjob") Sakata.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three & Four

Contributors: Paul Clark, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent

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 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

Morning Deal Report: Please, No "Bucket List" Jokes

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Production on the indie The Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was scheduled to start next month, but that may not happen for a reason you’ve probably heard about by now. Morgan Freeman, who was set to co-star in the film with Pierce Brosnan and Danny De Vito, is scheduled to undergo surgery for injuries suffered in a car accident late Sunday night in Mississippi. Freeman was reported to be in serious condition yesterday, but the latest reports suggest it’s not quite time for the actor to start making out his bucket list. (I know I promised I wouldn’t make that joke, but as it turns out, I’m completely shameless.) According to his publicist, Freeman “has a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage, but is in good spirits.” Variety reports, “None of his other projects are expected to be affected. Freeman will star in The Human Factor, the Nelson Mandela bio that Clint Eastwood is directing for Warners, but that shoot isn’t skedded to begin until early next year.”

When selecting news items for the Morning Deal Report, sometimes a title alone is enough to catch my attention. For instance, Drink, Play, F@#k. Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to the book of that title, described by the Hollywood Reporter as “the provocatively titled comedic male retort to the femme-centric best-seller Eat, Pray, Love. The soon-to-be-published Play, by comedy writer Andrew Gottlieb tells the fictional story of Bob Sullivan, a man who, seeking solace after his wife leaves him, goes on a bender in Ireland, takes a gambling jaunt to Las Vegas and a embarks on a sex-tourism trip to Thailand.” This should create some challenges for the marketing department. How exactly do you pronounce that last word anyway?

Finally, Mark Ruffalo will make his directorial debut with Sympathy for Delicious. I’m thinking it’s either about a dog or a drag queen, but I’m wrong on both counts. Per Variety, it’s the story of “‘Delicious’ Dean O'Dwyer, a paralyzed DJ struggling to survive in his wheelchair on the streets of L.A. He turns to faith-healing and mysteriously acquires the ability to cure the sick -- although not himself.”

Related:
Clint Eastwood Would Like Spike Lee to Shut His Face
Will Barack Obama Be America's Next Great Black President?

Fitting Farewells: The Top Ten Great Final Films (Part Two)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Desmond Llewelyn, THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH (1999)

Despite a pretty decent theme song, The World Is Not Enough hardly qualifies as a great film (or even a particularly great Bond film), but it earns a spot on this list for one perfect scene. Desmond Llewelyn first appeared as the cranky go-to guy for state-of-the-art British spy paraphernalia in 1963’s From Russia With Love and returned in every subsequent 007 installment (except for 1973’s Live and Let Die) thereafter, outlasting Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton before finally teaming with Pierce Brosnan for three late ‘90s adventures. In his final big screen appearance, the aging Q is seen schooling his protégé (and eventual replacement) R, played by John Cleese, before disappearing from view with the classic exit line, “Never let them see you bleed, and always have an escape plan.” Sadly, Llewelyn died shortly after the production wrapped, not of old age (he was 85), but in a car crash, on his way home to his beloved wife of 61 years after dinner with a friend...not, as my dad pointed out, the worst way to go, especially after spending your life as a beloved cinema icon (who once said he’d play his signature role “as long as the producers want me and the Almighty doesn't").

Robert Mitchum in DEAD MAN (1996)

Most of Robert Mitchum's contemporaries from the Golden Age made their onscreen farewells as frail shadows of their former selves (as we'll explore in-depth next week). Not Big Bad Bob. There could be no greater contrast between the classic Hollywood tough guys and the man-children of today's cinema than Mitchum's brief scene with Johnny Depp near the beginning of Dead Man. Even pushing 80, Mitchum looks like he could snap Depp in half like a breadstick. As John Dickinson, owner of a steelworks in the Old West town of Machine, Mitchum has a mane of white hair, an ever-present shotgun, and a life-sized self-portrait lurking behind him as if he is already in the process of passing into legend. When he hires a band of bounty hunters to track down Depp's William Blake, he can hardly bring himself to acknowledge their existence, instead addressing his initial remarks to the stuffed grizzly bear mounted in the corner of his office. It's as if he can only relate to the one other larger than life creature in the room.

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977)

Born in 1977, the legendary great director and provocateur Luis Bunuel cashed out with this minor classic, in which the rage and audience-baiting tricks of his early work seemed to have been replaced by a serene but sly playfulness. He gives the impression here that he's just enjoying the company of one of his favorite actors (Fernando Rey) and a couple of beautiful women (Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina) as he uses them to jauntily illustrate his story about a gentleman who is driven half mad with frustration by a young woman who alternately invites and repels his advances. (The women is played by both of the lead actresses; a great deal of ink has been spent by critics speculating on what this device means, though it could have been something as simple as Bouquet having quit or been fired from the production and Bunuel deciding that he didn't feel like reshooting her scenes.) Having enjoyed one final round of good reviews and hossanahs, Bunuel settled in for a few years of drinking, studying insects, and working on his autobiography, My Last Sigh, which appeared not long before his death in 1983.

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Click here for Part One and Part Three

Morning Deal Report: Roman Polanski Sees a Ghost

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The controversies of his past are back in the headlines thanks to a recent HBO documentary, so what better time for Roman Polanski to get back to work? Polanski will adapt the Robert Harris political thriller The Ghost, with Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton and Pierce Brosnan, Variety reports. “Cage will play a ghostwriter hired abruptly to finish the memoirs of an ex-British prime minister after the first scribe turned up dead. The ghostwriter's research leads him to uncover skeletons in the pol's closet that put the writer's life in danger.” Alas, this doesn’t mean Cage’s Bad Lieutenant remake has fallen through; Ghost will shoot after he completes his work with Werner Herzog this summer.

William Hurt and Zach Gilford will be fishing in The River Why, adapted from the novel by David James Duncan. Per the Hollywood Reporter, this “coming-of-age tale centers on a young man named Gus Orviston (Gilford) and his quest for an elusive rainbow trout, which is a metaphor for the man's internal search for self-knowledge.” Or maybe he’s just hungry.

Finally, that sequel to The Host you’ve been waiting for is on the way. According to Variety, Chinese director Ning Hao will helm the follow-up to the Korean horror film. The sequel “will have to tread carefully to avoid criticizing the Chinese government. Story will concern a calamity caused when people ignore a monster due to their desire for money.” Sounds like another one of those metaphor thingies.

Related:
The Roman Exile: 30 Years and Counting
Werner Herzog's Very Bad Idea

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."

That Guy!: Jonathan Pryce

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Almost as deadly for an actor as a face made for radio is a style made for theater. An actor who is thought of primarily as a stage presence will often be considered either too overblown and theatrical for film, from years of playing to the back row, or too subtle and mannered to have the kind of dynamic charisma one looks for in the image-intensive medium of motion pictures. Occasionally, though, a highly praised stage actor breaks through in film and establishes himself as the class of his field, and if Wales' Jonathan Pryce lacks the good looks and intensity of a Laurence Olivier, he has at least managed — largely due to his longtime association with the troubled, talented director Terry Gilliam — to become one of the most skillful and reliable character actors working today. A veteran of RADA (on an acting scholarship) and the former artistic director of the celebrated Liverpool Everyman Theater, Pryce's stage credentials are impeccable, but he's also a stalwart movie veteran who's appeared in everything from James Bond movies (he played the main villain in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies, opposite Pierce Brosnan) to summer blockbusters (he's been the Don Knotts-esque governor of Jamaica, Weatherby Swann, in all three installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise). But despite these occasional gestures at superstardom, he's most at home assaying highly distinctive and memorable character roles, even imbuing his occasional lead performance with a nervous energy and sublime competence that comes straight out of his theatrical training and perfectly feeds into his on-screen persona.

Pryce (the son of a Welsh shopkeeper, and originally named Price; the reason for the name change is murky and doubtless irrelevant) still keeps extremely busy with stagework, and even his big-screen roles maintain elements of the theatrical: one of the few times he broke away from his normal roles as precise and deliberate, almost timid, characters is when he played Argentine strongman Juan Peron opposite Madonna in the 1996 big-screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita. But despite the moneymaking blockbuster roles he takes, and the occasional foray into television work, he still wins his highest praise for independent or 'little movie' screen work, and in 1995, he received what he's described as one of the highest honors of his storied career, winning the Best Actor award at the Cannes film festival for his sensitive, powerful and emotional portrayal of British novelist Lytton Strachey in director Christopher Hampton's little-seen Carrington. Recently, Pryce got the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream and portray Sherlock Holmes on British television, but he's been taking less work recently to spend time with his family. He'll be appearing (as the president of the United States, no less!) in the upcoming G.I. Joe movie, although his devotees are much more excited about next year's My Zinc Bed, where he'll be playing the lead in a new David Hare adaptation. Pryce just recently turned sixty, and with a few more choice roles (and, well, a few less G.I. Joes, he's still got a good chance at following in Olivier's footsteps as a Grand Old Man of British cinema.

Where to see Jonathan Pryce at his best:

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1983)

Though it wasn't the breakout role that would come his way two years later, Pryce's performance as the sinister Mr. Dark in this spotty but entertaining adaptation of a Ray Bradbury novel is incredibly compelling. As the proprietor and ringleader of a curious and somewhat menacing circus that comes to visit a small town, Pryce strikes a perfect balance of sophistication and terror; throughout his entire time on screen, it's hard to take your eyes off of him, and he swills Bradbury's ripe dialogue around in his mouth like a fine wine, making the moments when he loses control all the more effective. A stunning performance from a nearly forgotten film.

BRAZIL (1985)

The movie that really thrust Jonathan Pryce into the public eye was his performance as the hapless and ultimately hopeless Sam Lowry, best described as Winston Smith with even more British repression. It would be the first of many collaborations between Pryce and Terry Gilliam, and while it made quite clear the reasons why he wasn't cut out to be a typical romantic lead, it was a brilliant piece of acting, aided and abetted by the clever and theatrical scripting of Tom Stoppard. Gilliam and Pryce would work together several more times, from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to The Brothers Grimm, but it would never be this magical again.

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)

As the terrified and uncertain would-be real estate investor James Lingk, Jonathan Pryce not only gets the chance to act in one of the most powerhouse ensemble casts in recent memory (including getting to play the majority of his scenes off of Al Pacino at the very last moment in his career when he did any actual acting, as opposed to just yelling at things), but he also played the unusual role of the film's moral center, getting to act like a normal human being among these amoral Type-A monsters. Curiously enough, Pryce went on to play Shelley "The Machine" Levene -- portrayed here by Jack Lemmon -- in a London revival of the David Mamet play.

Original vs. Remake: The Thomas Crown Affair

Andrew Osborne — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:30:00 GMT

So, a few months ago, my wife rearranged our Netflix queue in chronological order, from the dawn of cinema (circa Intolerance) to the present. And, despite the regrettable consequence that it will now be many, many weeks before Bubba Ho-Tep arrives on our doorstep, the experiment has resulted in a fairly interesting history of filmmaking, from silents to the French New Wave and beyond.

We’ve only just reached Norman Jewison’s 1968 hipster heist flick The Thomas Crown Affair, setting the stage for a little mano-a-mano tag-team compare-and-contrast between the original (starring Steve McQueen as the titular playboy thief and Faye Dunaway as a sexy insurance investigator) and the 1999 John McTiernan remake starring Pierce Brosnan and Renee Russo.

So which version takes "the crown"? Let’s check the scorecard!

POINTS FOR STYLE

Glossy 1990s production values are no match for the split-screens, miniskirts and go-go glamour of 1968. Plus, the Original was filmed on location in Boston, as opposed to (yawn) Manhattan. Advantage: Original.

SOUNDTRACK

The Original swings with groovy cocktail music and xylophones, though both versions are saddled with the dopey, annoying theme song, “The Windmills of Your Mind” (performed by Sting in the ‘90s and Anthony Newley wannabe Noel Harrison in the ‘60s)...but the Pierce Brosnan version features a final heist scored to Nina Simone’s insanely awesome “Sinnerman,” so there’s really no contest. Advantage: Remake.

HERO

Pierce Brosnan’s Thomas Crown is considerably more likeable than his 1968 counterpart, and Steve McQueen’s performance is marred by repeated spasms of unnerving fake laughter, but c’mon. He’s friggin’ Steve McQueen. Advantage: Original.

EYE CANDY

Faye Dunaway is certainly an iconic presence, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, but does she dance a bra-less tango in a sparkly see-through dress? No...she just fondles chess pieces and licks her flesh-colored nails. Which is also kinda hot, at least until I remember Mommie Dearest. Advantage: Remake.

PLOT

For all the style, there’s not a lot of substance or suspense in the 1968 edition: even the central heist boils down to little more than a bunch of guys in hats pointing guns, grabbing bags of loot and hightailing it out of the city in an ugly wood-paneled station wagon. Not that depth and memorable thematic resonance is one of the Remake’s strong suits, but it does feature a twisty caper that’s unpredictable, prankish and fun. Advantage: Remake.

Thus, in my first Original vs. Remake smackdown, the winner is...REMAKE!

(And stay tuned for the upcoming super-heavyweight steel cage grudge match between 1930s King Kong, fake 1930s remake Kong and 1970s remake Kong, with a very special guest appearance by The Dude.)

Goldeneye: James Bond’s Birthplace

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:00:00 GMT

GoldenEye was the 1995 James Bond movie that introduced Pierce Brosnan as 007, but it was not based on one of Ian Fleming’s books. Instead the movie took its name from the beachside villa in Jamaica where Fleming made his home and wrote all of his James Bond novels. (There was also a 1989 TV-movie about Fleming called Goldeneye, starring Charles Dance as Bond’s creator.) BBC reporter Gordon Corera, who allows that it “may not have been my most arduous assignment as a security correspondent,” recently toured Goldeneye. From the videos posted on the BBC site, it appears to be about the most agreeable place to dream up superspy adventures imaginable.

“Goldeneye is still a beautifully secluded spot which provided Fleming with many of the themes that were so important to the books,” writes Corera. “The house had its own private beach where Fleming would swim and snorkel, and the love of the water would be transferred from the author to his hero. Fleming set many of his books in Jamaica and the country was used as a location for the film Dr No and others.”

In one of the videos, Corera gets a tour of the Green Grotto, a series of caves on a nearby hideout that were used as Kananga’s hideout in Live and Let Die. He also gets a look at the private beach from which Fleming did all that swimming and snorkeling, inspiring many of 007’s underwater adventures. It’s actually an awful lot like Screengrab headquarters, so I’m not envious, but if you’re looking for a spot to write your own spy series, there’s good news. “Goldeneye is now a luxury resort owned by Chris Blackwell, who grew up close to the house and worked as a location manager and an extra on the first Bond film Dr No before founding Island Records.”

We checked out the resort’s website, and it turns out that you can stay in the Ian Fleming house for a mere $2500 per night. That’s in the off-season, of course. There are more affordable options, including a villa in Goldeneye Village for $660 per night. “Deep verandas, doors and windows that open wide inviting cool sea breeze, Goldeneye offers the best kind of out door living. Our aim is to make guests feel they are being entertained in the home of a good friend.” Hey, if we had good friends like that, we wouldn’t need your stinkin’ resort.

Trailer Review: Mamma Mia!

Paul Clark — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:00:00 GMT

The Broadway smash Mamma Mia! is an example of the phenomenon of "jukebox musicals" — stage productions whose song score is comprised primarily of pre-existing music (in this case, ABBA) — which aren't to be confused with stage musicals based on non-musical movies. Personally, I'm not a fan of the phenomenon, as it feels primarily like a way of attracting tourists to spend hundreds of dollars on a Broadway show by giving them the impression of attending honest-to-goodness theatre while wrapping them in a musical comfort blanket. But while I'm not exactly excited for Mamma Mia!, I must admit that the cast intrigues me. After A Prairie Home Companion, I'm curious to see what Meryl Streep can do in an honest-to-goodness musical, especially now that she's gotten to the stage of her career where she's loosened up and is free to do whatever the hell she wants. Likewise, the rest of the ensemble, from the actors playing the would-be dads (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård) on down — is classier than one would expect from a movie like this. My enthusiasm for this project remains guarded, but I'm certainly more curious about than I'd anticipated.

Meryl Streep IS "Mamma Mia!" Deal with It!

Phil Nugent — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Mamma Mia!, the Broadway hit that is half-jukebox musical devoted to the hits of ABBA, half-unauthorized remake of the 1968 movie Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell, is coming to movie screens thus year. Granted, it could be that some of you have only a limited interest in the circa-'76 Swedish singing sensations or the comedy stylings of Telly Savalas. But even if that's the case, a couple of things make this project kind of interesting. First, while you might assume that the creation of "the most successful musical on the planet" had its genesis in some producer feeding some Billboard charts, a couple of obscure IMDB pages, and the estimated cost of his new beach house into a computer and hitting "Puree", but it turns out that it's really a labor of love by a team of three women: producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson, and director Phyllida Lloyd. Having worked together to create the stage show, they've since collaborated on the movie--with pretty much total creative control, since Craymer had the foresight to hang onto the film rights. Though Lloyd has extensive credits in the theater and directed a TV version of the opera Gloriana for the BBC in 2000, this will mark her feature film directing debut.

The other notable thing about the movie is that it stars Meryl Streep, who will make her movie musical debut tackling a part that was originated (in Buena Sera, Mrs. Campbell) by Gina Lollobrigida and performing the songs made famous by Benny, Bjorn, Anni-Frid, and Agnetha. Streep, who's done enough heavy lifting in her film career to build the pyramids, has been mixing it up with comedies (Defending Your Life, Adaptation) and even the occasional action flick (The River Wild) for a long time now, but she's still probably the classiest thing to happen to Abba since Lasse Hallstrom directed Abba: The Movie. Being very bad people, our first reaction to the news was to assume that Streep probably wanted to buy a small Caribbean country or maybe had a gambling problem. (Incidentally, I personally first learned that she was in Mamma Mia! when I went to the movies and saw her skipping about happily in the trailer. I can testify that this was definitely the best way to find out about it, assuming that you think the proper way to celebrate such news is to choke on a Milk Dud while spilling your Coke in your lap.)

But it turns out that Streep, too, is in this one for the love. According to Judy Craymer, "Our passion for Meryl and Meryl's passion for the show made it work. She saw the show on Broadway and wrote us a fan letter saying what a great time she'd had. And it all happened rather fast. We spoke to her agent, her agent spoke to her, and apparently she said: 'Mamma Mia!?? I AM Mamma Mia!?' " Streep's participation made it easier for the filmmakers to go after big game in fleshing out the supporting cast, which includes Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgård. Praising Streep's work in the film, Lloyd says, "She finds a line into a character and the way she should be like nothing I've ever seen before, and everyone else just raises their game as a result." So however badly the rest of the movies this summer might stink, at least we can look forward to the prospect of seeing what Pierce Brosnan and Stellan Skarsgard look like singing when they're Abba songs with their games raised.