Friday, March 31, 2006

Bond update


I'm increasingly bothered by the anti-Bond hysteria found on various sites--The Superficial, Egotastic, and the like. Something about Daniel Craig really seems to irritate the morons who write those sites. I actually like Craig. I'm not too familiar with his other work--though, according to IMDB, there's quite a lot of it--he was very good in the Guy Ritchie-esque "Layer Cake" (which also had a very sexy Sienna Miller, as well as a preposterous ending), and I don't think he's demonstrably less handsome than, say, Timothy Dalton. Anyway, there was an interesting short essay in the New York Times Sunday Style supplement from a few weeks back. Some interesting Bond sociology here.

Suzy Menkes reminds us that, while no one who has come since has quite filled Sean Connery's shoes, it wasn't clear at the outset the Connery was so perfect:

[Ian] Fleming himself had early doubts that Connery, the son of a working-class Scottish family, would cut a classy enough figure. And look how that worked out. Craig's edgy, wolfish common touch should be fine in the "Casino Royale" remake. (After all, he briefly ensnared Kate Moss, who'd make a suitably kissable Bond girl, ripe for the killing.


The fact that Craig is blond is a particular irritant. But Menkes notes how vague the books are about what Bond really looks like, apparently intentionally so:

Fleming left almost everything to the imagination, as he told the journalist Ken Purdy in a 1964 interview. "I quite deliberately made him rather anonymous," Fleming said. "This was to enable the reader to identify with him. People have only to put their own clothes on Bond and build him into whatever sort of person they admire. If you read my books, you'll find that I don't actually describe him at all."


There's some more interesting stuff there. Check it out.

Posted by jwb at 4:43 PM   

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said:

I just wanted to show my appreciation for the continuing Bond coverage, and to express my satisfaction over the choice of Eva Green as the next 'bad' Bond girl. In the posting where you mentioned her selection, though, you overlooked her most significant film credit, as the Queen of Jerusalem in Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of Heaven'; a role in which she was totally hot.

On the subjects of Bond girls, I have to say that, generally speaking, the lesser known they are going into the film, the better they are in it. My personal favourite: Maryam D'Abo as the somewhat naive, but gorgeous, intelligent and cultivated Slovak cellist in 'The Living Daylights'.
at 10:53 AM     

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