UK only: Daily Mail 'Live' mag has 50th Bond anniversary thing
Napoleon Plural
LondonPosts: 10,486MI6 Agent
This weekend, not sure what day, there is a Bond Special in Daily Mail, ?:) must be Saturday if it's not Mail on Sunday (my brain is like Ali's - as he is now, sadly).
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
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@merseytart
It's OK. Some nice photos. But this made me facepalm. An interview with the two new Bond Ladies in which any actress before 2006 is dissed. So Ursula Andress, Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, for my money the strongest Bond girls, are all dismissed as being merely decorative. The only real surprise is the Mail didn't include their customary Sean Connery cameo crap they've been publishing since 1995. Anyway here's the interview.
'Ever since Ursula Andress emerged from the sea in a skimpy white bikini in Dr No, the world’s most beautiful actresses have been a key ingredient in all of Bond’s 22 films.
But things have changed since the days of suggestively named femme fatales such as Pussy Galore and Plenty O’Toole.
Casino Royale, the powerful 2006 re-boot of the Bond franchise, saw Eva Green handed a more substantial and challenging role as 007’s romantic interest, an evolution that continued with Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton in Quantum Of Solace.
With the latest film, Skyfall, the process moves on still further with director Sam Mendes referring to Naomie Harris and Bérénice Marlohe not as Bond Girls but Bond Ladies.
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British actress Harris is best known for her roles in 28 Days Later and the second and third of the Pirates Of The Caribbean series.
In her first interview since the announcement of her part in the film, she explains that her character, field agent Eve, is anything but a one-dimensional action girl.
‘To be honest, I don’t think I’d be very good at such a role,’ insists the 35-year-old. ‘What drew me to this was the opportunity to play a new kind of Bond Girl.
'We are Bond Girls who are multi-faceted, intelligent and capable,' said Naomie
‘It’s not just the women who have changed. James Bond himself has changed and Daniel (Craig) has been a very big part of that.
'He’s brought depth and humanity to the role.
'He’s so layered in a way that other Bonds just weren’t, because nothing seemed to touch them. Daniel’s Bond is very much touched by his relationships.
‘In 2012, there’s a need to have female characters who are equal to that. Otherwise it would be totally imbalanced and no one would care about the relationships Bond has. I love the way it’s developed in that way.
‘Those Bond Girls in the Sixties and Seventies might have been good back then but they wouldn’t be seen as very PC now.
'I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we’re going for a feminist take on the Bond Girl, because that has so many connotations to different people. But I would say that we are Bond Girls who are multi-faceted, intelligent and capable.
‘In the past, the Bond Girls were all over Bond and didn’t have a life outside that relationship. That’s not the case in this film.’
Despite speculation that she was to star as Miss Moneypenny, Harris reveals exclusively to Live that this was never under discussion.
‘The idea of me being Moneypenny was a good, racy rumour. But Eve is not remotely office-bound. She gets to see plenty of action. That meant a lot of gun training.
‘I’m such a pacifist that I never thought I’d be excited about guns, but I absolutely loved it.
'The weapons training I’d done on Miami Vice was with real bullets, but this time I was shooting blanks. I did two hours three times a week for three months, mostly working with a Walther PPK, a very light, very beautiful, ladylike gun.’
The forthcoming outing for James Bond has been shrouded in the kind of secrecy and financial intrigue that could have been lifted straight from an Ian Fleming novel.
After months of speculation about the potential demise of the world’s most iconic secret agent, the new film was finally confirmed just before Christmas.
But Bond’s 23rd official movie very nearly didn’t happen, as production was suspended for a year after the studio, MGM, filed for bankruptcy in 2010. It looked like the global recession, rather than any dastardly villain, had brought an end to 007’s illustrious career.
Luckily, new management came to the rescue, joining forces with long-term producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson to make sure Bond retained his licence to pursue the world’s most devious criminals.
‘It’s top secret all the way with Bond,’ explains Harris. ‘You don’t get sent scripts. Even at the audition stage, I didn’t read from the actual finished script but a much earlier version. When I was in the running to get the part there was a period of a few months when I was allowed to tell close family members, but not friends. Luckily I’m a good keeper of secrets. But it was very frustrating because, naturally, I wanted to tell the whole world.’
'He's brought depth and humanity to the role,' said Naomie of Daniel Craig's James Bond
Skyfall will be released in October this year, four years on from Quantum Of Solace. Other than tantalising details about shooting locations (South Africa, China, Turkey, England), few clues have emerged about what to expect from the new film and the actors are trying to remain tight-lipped about the plot.
The film, which is based on an original script rather than a Fleming story, showcases the best of British film-making: from the new director – Oscar winner Sam Mendes, the man behind American Beauty and Revolutionary Road – to Craig, back for his third Bond outing, while Judi Dench reprises her role as M and fellow Brits Albert Finney, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw join the cast.
Bérénice Marlohe was a surprise casting decision for the role of Sévérine. Indeed, Skyfall marks the first English-speaking part for the little-known French actress and model.
‘When I heard there were going to be auditions in Paris I switched on my computer and tried to get contact details for anyone involved in this project – emails, phone numbers, whatever I could get hold of.
‘I managed to track down Sam Mendes’s agent but nothing came of that. Then I met Debbie McWilliams, the casting director, which led me to Sam and the producers, then finally to Daniel Craig.
'At that stage I was so focused on my performance that there was no room for nerves. I also reminded myself that I was meeting Daniel Craig, not James Bond.
‘My character is glamorous and enigmatic,’ says Marlohe, 22, who has appeared in a medical drama on French TV.
‘I get to see less action on screen than Naomie but I wanted to get the feel of guns in order to find my way into my character. I love guns – I have fake ones at home – so I grabbed the opportunity to hold a real one on the set. I got to handle a Beretta 70. It’s a nice gun.
‘I definitely see myself more as a Bond Lady than a Bond Girl,’ she adds. ‘The idea of a Bond Girl can be very confusing.
'As an actress, I know it can be a trap because you’re not sure what people expect. I think it’s quickly changing direction now. You’re more at liberty to develop a real character rather than something abstract. There is more scope now within the Bond movies to create a strong, independent woman.
‘Earlier Bond Girls were very dependent women. But I loved what Famke Janssen did in GoldenEye, in the way she portrayed a funny psychopath. In my character I’ve tried to bring a different kind of complexity.
‘If I get recognised more when this movie comes out, I’ll deal with it. If someone says, “Hey, there’s that Bond Girl” I’ll correct them and say, “No, I’m that Bond Lady”.
‘As to the question that everyone wants answered: do I get to kiss Bond? Well, my friends, you’ll just to have to wait and see.’
Honey Rider was NOT your typical girl of 1962, by UK standards at any stretch. Then we had a KGB attache, lesbian gun-totting jet pilot, then an assassin, an MI6 agent and a vengeful sister in Thunderball, a Japanese agent a SPECTRE agent in YOLT, Dame Diana Rigg - Mrs James Bond - and Irma Bunt, the only one that got AWAY... Seriously, these women were dolly birds that fainted at the utterance of "Oh, James"? Give me a break.
Agreed! It wouldn't be Bond Silly Season without a bit of "Our Bond Girls Are Better"
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
‘It’s not just the women who have changed. James Bond himself has changed and Daniel (Craig) has been a very big part of that.
'He’s brought depth and humanity to the role.
'He’s so layered in a way that other Bonds just weren’t, because nothing seemed to touch them. Daniel’s Bond is very much touched by his relationships.
‘In 2012, there’s a need to have female characters who are equal to that. Otherwise it would be totally imbalanced and no one would care about the relationships Bond has. I love the way it’s developed in that way.
‘Those Bond Girls in the Sixties and Seventies might have been good back then but they wouldn’t be seen as very PC now. "
She's right, James Bond has changed, but not for the better. It also goes to show she hasn't seen many Bond films, Diana Rigg, Luciana Paluzzi, Carey Lowell, Barbara Bach and Izabella Scarupco, to name a few, were more multi-faceted, iltelligent and oh by the way far better looking than you Naomi. Damn right Bond wasn't PC, nor should it be.
Articles like the above really annoy me. X-(
Where's the green sick smiley gone when you need it? ... What is wrong with these people ??
The interview was just annoying and the whole 'our bond 'ladies' are better than the old ones' nonsense is just the same old drivel spouted with every new Bond film ....
Maybe they could be really revolutionary and think of something new to say :v
DB5 BMT214A - The car here is one of two Eon-commissioned replicas, (reference to Goldfinger) which disappeared for a while in the late Eighties before surfacing in Holland. This vehicle is usually kept at the National Automobile Museum in the Netherlands. Do you think they know?
And did you know that Molly Peters appeared in FRWL - I wonder if she got paid for it?