BLOGIVERSARY: The List Revisited

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm going to revisit my spy list from a year ago and look at what's happened to those people or characters in the past twelve months, and maybe touch on some news I haven't previously covered. Naturally, I'll begin at the beginning:

1. Daniel Craig

It’s been a good year for Daniel Craig. Following rave reviews for his 007 performance in Casino Royale, he’s become one of the most in-demand actors out there. Right now he’s living every actor’s dream, alternating between big Hollywood projects like Ed Zwick’s WWII resistance epic Defiance and smaller, more personal independent films like Flashbacks of a Fool (stretching to play a big Hollywood movie star), which he’s currently shooting (alongside Spooks/MI-5 star Keeley Hawes) in South Africa for music video director Baillie Walsh. And, of course, he has Bond 22 on the horizon, slated to start lensing in January. Thanks to the tremendous buzz he generated in his first outing as the superspy, this is probably the most anticipated new Bond film in decades, leading him to an incredibly lucrative contract for three additional Bonds after that. The only film he’s yet had released since Casino Royale was the Body Snatchers remake The Invasion (with Royale co-star Jeffrey Wright and Nicole Kidman), which flopped this past summer. Luckily for him, we can’t really measure his post-Bond success from that one, as it was actually made before he landed the coveted spy role and shelved for nearly a year. The first post-Royale role we’ll see from him will be in New Line’s fantasy epic The Golden Compass, adapted from the beloved bestseller and due out this December. (Coincidentally, Craig plays the same role that Timothy Dalton played on the London stage!) The Golden Compass reunites Craig with Kidman and Bond Girl Eva Green, and looks fantastic from the trailer. It’s also spawned a terrifically detailed action figure line from Corgi, in which the actor’s plastic likeness is captured for the first (but hopefully not last!) time.