Casino Royale movie tie-in

Penguin's official paperback movie tie-in edition of Casino Royale is currently all over the shelves at your local bookstore. Strangely, it doesn't feature Daniel Craig movie artwork, like the British edition. It's just the same (excellent, in my opinion) Richie Fahey artwork as the regular Penguin paperback, with the addition of a circle that says "Now a major motion picture!" (Why are book blurbs the only thing that still talk like a 40s Hollywood executive? Who says "major motion picture" anymore?) The intersting thing is, it's a mass market paperback, priced at only $7.99 and much smaller than the $14 regular tradepaperback version that's been available for the past few years. What's significant about this is that this is the first time an Ian Fleming title has been in print in a mass market edition in America in quite some time. (Since the "silhouette cover" Bantam editions in the mid '90s, I think... or maybe the last Signet editions of TMWTGG and Octopussy came a little later.) Penguin's current line (the best looking American editions in decades!) is in trade only. So, it's of interest. Frankly I'm surprised Penguin passed on the opportunity to put Daniel Craig on the cover, and really brand the book like the movie. It probably would have sold a few more copies. And that original Style A teaser poster, with Craig at the poker table, would have made a great paperback!

The Quiller Memorandum

Today Fox releases its batch of "Classic Spy Films" to coincide with the Bond release. This includes The Quiller Memorandum, The Chairman and The Ultimate Flint Collection. All the discs come in very nice packaging utilising stunning original poster artwork. Boy, I really sound like a studio press release there, don't I? I can't help it. I like original poster artwork. I like it a lot, and I can't understand why other studios DON'T use it! (I'm looking at you, MGM, with your lousy photoshop Bond covers!) Furthermore, each disc (or discs, in the case of Flint) is housed in a glossy cardboard slipcase with the same artwork. Sure, it makes it a little bulky, but it looks very classy. And Quiller even features alternate poster artwork on the back!

This is the first time on DVD in the US for The Quiller Memorandum. Quiller was written by playwright Harold Pinter based on a novel by Adam Hall (the pseudonym of Elleston Trevor) and stars George Segal, Alec Guiness, Max Von Sydow and Eurospy favorite Senta Berger.

I'll post my thoughts on the movie tomorrow. As for the features, apparently we get less than was offered on Network's Region 2 release earlier this year. I believe that release had some original on set interviews with the stars, among other things. What Fox offers is the original trailer and a commentary with "film historians" Eddie Friedfeld and Lee Pfeiffer. Spy fans will probably be familiar with Pfeiffer as the co-author of such books as The Incredible World of 007, The Essential Bond and The Films of Sean Connery. I'm naturally dubious about any commentary tracks from "film historians," especially when talent from the movie is still alive. (Where was George Segal? Where was Harold Pinter??? That would have been some commentary!) However, I'm happy to report that Pfeiffer and Friedfeld do a good job on this one. They do go off on tangents and make some of those annoying jokes that "experts" tend to make, but they know the material and they're clearly friends and have a good chemistry with each other. There's rarely a pause on the track, and they sometimes cut one another off or finish each other's sentences. What makes their track really interesting is that they disagree about the movie. One of them (I'm afraid I can't recall which) really admires it and the other is more ambivilant. They debate Segal's somnambulent performance and Pinter's refusal to ever give us any information about his characters. Both make good points. It's definitely worth a listen.

Overall, I'd say the movie is more a Pinter movie than a spy movie, but it still belongs in any thorough Sixties spy collection.

Review: James Bond/Moneypenny Short Story "For Your Eyes Only, James"

New James Bond Short Story!

The November issue of British magazine Tatler is finally hitting US newsstands! Why is this of interest to spy fans? Because it contains the first new James Bond short story in seven years!*

The story is (rather unoriginally) titled "For Your Eyes Only, James" and credited to Kate Westbrook. Of course, we all know that "Kate Westbrook" is really Samantha Weinberg, author of the clever and entertaining Moneypenny Diaries series of Bond continuation novels. It runs 4 two-column magazine pages (but might just make 10 in book form) and features three cartoonish illustrations by Mick Brownfield.

Since the story is so brief and basically hinges on a gimmick, I’m not going to reveal any of the plot in my review. Instead I’ll focus on the details and remain as spoiler-free as possible.

The story is dated "September 1956" but, other than that, does not read like a diary entry. It features no slang or shorthand, as the Moneypenny Diaries do, and no footnotes. It reads like a short story (narrated in the first person by Moneypenny), and is structured as such. It reminds me most closely of Fleming’s "007 in New York" (originally published in the American edition of his non-fiction Thrilling Cities) or Raymond Benson’s "Live at 5" because if its brevity and structure. All three of those are almost vignettes more than short stories, and in all but the last, the actual action of the story is related quickly in the final paragraph by an omniscient narrator. (Fleming in the case of "007 in New York," presumably "Kate Westbrook" [supposedly Moneypenny’s niece who "discovered" her "diaries"] in the Tatler story.)

I quite enjoy Ms. Weinberg’s writing, and it’s a treat to see her cut loose from the constrictions of the diary format, however briefly. While I might not have pegged Miss Moneypenny as one to go in for Flemingesque prose, the author has fun with variations on Fleming’s own language and style in describing the casino at Royale-les-Eux. (Yes, that casino!)

Try: "The atmosphere was heavy with barely suppressed tension, almost sensual in its intensity: for the first time I understood what made men into gamblers."

Or: "As he passed us, I caught the scent of sweat merged with stale smoke."

While the latter is about as direct and obvious an homage to Fleming’s famous opening line of Casino Royale as Charlie Higson gave us describing Eton at the beginning of SilverFin, the former is first rate pastiche. It’s not distracting in its context, but it might well be a lost Fleming passage! Well done, Ms. Weinberg.

As with The Moneypenny Diaries, it is clear that the author has done her research. There are plenty of Easter eggs for readers familiar with Fleming, including a nice reference to a certain dress in Casino Royale. The character of James Bond is even a bit more spot on than in Guardian Angel, the first Diary. He exhibits the same easy charm with Moneypenny that he does with many of Fleming’s Bond girls, and the lines sound right (with the possible exception of one that follows the bit about the dress). Then he switches abruptly to business. Moneypenny’s reaction ("The switch from pleasure to business was a jolt, yet I couldn’t let it show") could easily be that of Vesper Lynd, Tatiana Romonova, Honey Rider, or any of the other women who have witnessed 007's sudden transformation. Vesper in particular makes similar note of it in Casino Royale.

Bond uses Benzedrine, as he does when preparing for his epic card battle against Hugo Drax in Moonraker and on several other occasions in the midst of a mission. (Strangely, in Casino Royale it was villain LeChiffre who popped the drug, and at that point 007 saw it as a disgusting habit. Guess he changed his mind!) Surprisingly, he carries a revolver instead of his trusty Beretta. Since this takes place before Doctor No, when he received his one-time use Smith & Wesson snub-nose (along with his famous Walther PPK), I guess we’re to assume it’s the long-barrel job he keeps in his Bentley.

My only nitpick with the story involves its gadgets. Q-Branch issues Moneypenny with a dictaphone wristwatch capable of playing back twenty minutes worth of conversation. Could such technology exist before microchips? (Maybe it could; I’m certainly not an expert.) Also, the main gimmick hinges on the use of "heat cameras," presumably infra-red technology. Did this exist in 1956? Perhaps it did; I think the OSS used some variation on the technology in WWII. Still, something about it just didn’t sit right with me.

Overall, though, "For Your Eyes Only, James" is a fun and fully legitimate James Bond short story. I’d recommend every fan of the literary exploits of 007 track down the November issue of Tatler. It’s a bit hard to find in the US, but better newsstands and some bookstores should carry it. At $8.99, it’s a more affordable taste of Ms. Weinberg’s take on James Bond than importing the Moneypenny Diaries from Amazon.co.uk, since the books have yet to see publication over here. And, as a bonus, you get that sexy Kirsten Dunst cover!

*The last one was "Live At 5" by Raymond Benson, published in an issue of TV Guide with Pierce Brosnan on the cover around the time The World Is Not Enough hit theatres in 1999. Benson published three Bond short stories all told, the other two both appearing in Playboy. None have been collected. The last collection of Bond short stories was Octopussy and The Living Daylights, published posthumously in 1966 collecting those two Fleming stories. The American paperback also included "The Property of A Lady," and the most recent edition adds "007 in New York."

Daniel Craig's Infamous Hair Color

What does this, the infamous "second Capote movie," have to do with spies? It co-stars new Bond Daniel Craig, that’s what. The producers of this movie decided to dye Craig’s infamously blond hair and eyebrows black for the part of In Cold Blood killer Perry Smith. And it works. He looks believable as a brunette. So I don’t know why the Bond producers opted not to. Well, maybe I do: in some shots the darker Daniel actually looks a bit like Sean Connery. (A, er, "rougher" Sean Connery, at least...) Maybe they consciously kept him blond to avoid, or at least lessen, the inevitable comparisons. In some shots he even has something close to the comma of hair Fleming describes 007 as having.

But enough about Daniel’s hair color. How is he? He’s pretty good in this decidedly un-Bondlike role. Craig’s Perry is very different from Clifton Collins Jr.'s Perry in Capote. Whereas Collins played up Perry’s sensitive side more, Craig more embodies his temper-prone, deadly side. Actually, the two performances together add up to accentuate Smith’s dichotemy. Sure, Dan does sensitive, too, like the much talked about kissing scene. He even sings. But you’re always aware that this man harbors the capacity to kill. He’s dangerous. That instinct comes to the surface most in a scene where Perry confronts Capote about the title of his book, In Cold Blood, which he feels will de-humanize him. In the other version, as I recall, Perry was mad but mostly kind of cried about it, pouted, and refused to talk to Truman. Craig’s Perry seizes Capote, shoves a rag in his mouth, puts him in a strangle hold and very nearly kills him. I’m curious which account, if either, is true, but the differences in those scenes ably demonstrate the differences in the two actors’ approaches.

The Devil In Amber

I received my copy of The Devil In Amber from Amazon.co.uk the other day, a few days ahead of its scheduled Nov. 6 release date. Unfortunately, there’s no way I’ll have a chance to read it any time soon (with the second Moneypenny Diaries sitting next in my queue already) but I should at least have a review up well before the book hits American shelves in January!

The Devil In Amber is the second Lucifer Box adventure, a follow-up to Gatiss’s highly entertaining Vesuvius Club. It takes place some twenty years after that book, and again the book’s design and illustrations reflect the period. This time the endpapers are filled with blurbs for other (fake) books from the same publisher with titles like Dead Man's Sock and The Mauve Teapot by authors like Emelia Roundfoot and Carter Dick-Johnson, each with a hilarious description. It runs 248 pages, a little longer than The Vesuvius Club.

"You Know My Name" single?

As has been widely reported on the web, the Casino Royale soundtrack album will feature only score music by David Arnold, and not the title theme, "You Know My Name," performed by Chris Cornell. This is a first for a Bond soundtrack, and an unfortunate one, in my opinion. Good or bad, the song belongs on the album. And I happen to like this song quite a bit. Sure, it took time to grow on me, but it's definitely very Bondian.

Anyway, there's been a lot of online speculation that the song will not even be released as a single. However, new Casino Royale posters clearly say at the bottom score album on Sony and "You Know My Name performed by Chris Cornell, single on Interscope." So it looks like there will be a single yet, which is good news! Of course, I suppose "single" in this day and age could easily just mean iTunes download, but I really hope there's a physical CD of it too, hopefully containing all the different mixes of the song that have turned up so far.

You can see details of the Casino Royale soundtrack CD at Amazon, but be forewarned if you haven't read the book, the tracklist contains HUGE SPOILERS!!!

Pulp's unused Tomorrow Never Dies song

A recently issued 2-disc Deluxe version of sublime 90s Britpop band Pulp's album This Is Hardcore features a "rough mix" of their rejected title song for the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies. Pulp worked with Bond composer David Arnold on his essential 007 tribute album Shaken And Stirred (a top-notch collection of Bond song covers by the likes of Aimee Mann, Iggy Pop, David McAlmont and more which spawned the popular Propellerheads single "On Her Majesty's Secret Service") and presumably tried to parlay that relationship into recording the theme song for the next movie. Clearly, they were barking up the wrong tree since Arnold didn't even have enough clout to get his own theme song in the title slot. Instead, it ended up as "Surrender," the closing credits song performed by k.d. lang. Sheryl Crow got the title song, "Tomorrow Never Dies," despite Arnold's "Surrender" theme recurring throughout his score. (I happen to quite like both songs, even though many Bond fans dismiss the Crow one.) Anyway, Pulp's version was re-recorded as "Tomorrow Never Lies" and ended up as a B-side on the single Help the Aged. Now, for the first time, we can finally hear how it sounded in its original Bondian version as "Tomorrow Never Dies."

Overall, it's an interesting curio for a Bond fan, and an essential purchase for a Pulp fan. I love Pulp, and I really like the song (though I prefer the B-side version to the sparser demo offered on the new set), but ultimately the song just lacks the Bond sound essential to any Bond theme. Lead singer Jarvis Cocker is more of a whisperer than a belter, and that just doesn't work for 007, in my opinion. (Although I do actually prefer his Shaken And Stirred version of "All Time High" from Octopussy to Rita Coolidge's original version. Go figure.)

New Bond Magazine Covers

Daniel Craig makes the cover of Empire Magazine for the second time this year! Check out the new cover here.

Also, Caterina Murino is on the cover of the American magazine High Roller. I'll post an image soon.

Moneypenny Diaries

The Moneypenny Diaries Vol. 2: Secret Servant by Samantha Weinberg is now shipping from Amazon.co.uk! Order now! My copy arrived this week, and I can't wait to read it.

Don’t be put off by the incredibly lame chick-lit cover. The Moneypenny Diaries isn’t derivative chick-lit, as I had feared when it was first announced. It sounded like such a blatant attempt to cash in on another successes. First IFP announced their Bond version of Harry Potter (Young Bond), then their Bond version of Bridget Jones (which just seemed like such a weird combination to begin with, and missed the "diary" craze by about two years). But just as Charlie Higson defied expectations and made his Young Bond so much more than a HP ripoff, so has Samantha Weinberg (writing as "Kate Westbrook") done with The Moneypenny Diaries.

The first volume, Guardian Angel, may not have been perfect, but it was a highly enjoyable read set distinctly in the world of Ian Fleming’s Secret Service. Ms. Weinberg had clearly done her research well (although some purists insist on nitpicking about a few little continuity details she gets wrong... but then Fleming wasn’t so good on the continuity either, was he?) and I found myself fascinated to see Fleming’s incredible supporting cast (Moneypenny, Tanner, M, Goodnight), who made such indelible impressions in their brief recurring appearances in his books, fleshed out into leading roles. With the slight exception of 007 himself, the characterizations seem dead-on to me. Like the Young Bond series, which asks us to go along with the shaky concept that James might have stumbled into all these incredible adventures serendipitously as a child, you’ve got to buy into the notion that Moneypenny actually got out of the office from time to time and had a more active role in the Secret Service. But if you can swallow that (which isn’t too difficult, once you start reading), Bond fans are bound to enjoy these books. The best part is that they’re set in the early Sixties, and fit in between events in Fleming’s own novels! This one begins when Bond is presumed dead following the events of You Only Live Twice. So presumably we’ll get to see his less-than-triumphant return (from The Man With the Golden Gun) from the point of view of Moneypenny and the MI6 staff, which should prove especially interesting!

I have no idea why the publisher is marketing them as chick-lit. Maybe IFP was hoping to expand Bond’s readership, but that obviously didn’t work (based on the undeservedly poor sales of the first entry). Now they should focus on the core audience and cater to them. Once again, don’t go by the cover. These are legitimate Bond novels!

Unfortunately, there are currently no plans for publication in the US.

Nick Fury Mini Mate

Aw, isn’t he a cute little tough guy? The latest line of Marvel MiniMates (lego-like figures) is now in stores. They’re packaged in two-packs for about $8, and one of the two packs is Captain America and NICK FURY!!! Even though Marvel cranks out hundreds of action figures in all shapes and sizes every year (dozens of them variations on Wolverine alone!) Fury figures are pretty rare. The only other ones in recent memory are the amorphous Hero-Clix game piece which looks nothing like the one-eyed super-spy, and the definitive Fury figure in the 8 inch Marvel Legends line, which is now out of print. If you prefer your action figures more adorable, this is the Fury for you! Check your local comic shop.

Intellipedia

U.S. Intelligence Czar John Negroponte's office announced a new "spy's version" of Wikipedia, and supposedly it's the future of intelligence. Officers at dozens of different agencies in the Intelligence Community can contribute to entries (as the general populace does to Wikipedia), and also view those written by others. It seems like another good step towards getting some famously combatative Intelligence agencies to cooperate.

According to the Reuters story, "[Intelligence officials] also said it could lead to more accurate intelligence reports because the system allows a wider range of officials to scrutinize material and keeps a complete, permanent record of individual contributions including dissenting points of view. That might help avoid errors of the kind that led to the widely criticized 2002 national intelligence estimate that said Saddam Hussein possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction."

On the downside, they also acknowledge there is a greater risk of sensitive intelligence data being leaked when so many people have access to it.

Get Smart on DVD

TVshowsonDVD.com has posted pictures of the full, impressive box art and packaging for Time-Life's feature-filled Get Smart DVDs. They're releasing the entire series at once in nifty phone booth packaging, but it will only be available by mail order for a year. Next November you'll be able to buy individual seasons (or, I think, the megaset) from all your favorite retailers, presumably at a better price. But the packaging sure does look nice!

Top (00)7 List

As I explained in my very first entry, I decided to commence my spy blog with a somewhat random list of the top seven people in the world of spy entertainment on my mind at the moment, in late October of 2006. You can now read that list in descending order below.
I’m still experimenting with my regular format, but overall I’m fairly pleased with how that list went. I like using a specific person, book, movie, etc. as a headline and starting point and then going off on (mostly) spy-related tangents from there, cramming in as much information and opinion, and as many links, as I can. It may not be the most organized method, but hopefully it makes for a fun read. Plus, the graphics and bold words should be able to key you in to what you’re missing if you’re skimming!

So I think I’ll continue in this fashion, mixed in with more timely news items and current reviews. Below, the initial list, which serves as a basic primer for what this blog is all about. Above and to come, probably more of the same! (But without numbers.)

7. Elke Sommer

Goddess. Spy goddess! Elke is the ultimate Bond girl who never was a Bond girl, for some reason. (Maybe Pink Panther girls couldn’t be Bond girls?) She epitomizes Sixties glamor and sex appeal. She turned up in quite a few non-Bond Sixties spy movies, and therefore I’ve chosen her to represent those movies on this list. Elke was in both Hollywood spy flicks (the final Matt Helm movie, The Wrecking Crew and the Paul Newman North By Northwest ripoff The Prize, among others) and European ones, like Deadlier Than the Male. Deadlier Than The Male is the very best of all the Sixties Bond knock-offs, and the best of the genre known as "Eurospy."

This term refers to the glut of 007esqe flicks shot quickly and on the cheap on the continent, mostly Italy or Spain. They tended to feature heroes with names like "James Tont," numbers like "077" and enemies like "Goldginger." (In fact, many of them had the word "gold" somewhere in their title, usually as part of a compound word that made no sense.) Even though they are knock-offs, they should not be dismissed by spy fans. Many of these movies are immense fun. And while they’re hard to find, they’re also enjoying a bit of a resurgence amongst a discriminating fanbase.

First, there’s the excellent Eurospy Guide, a book that belongs on every spy fan’s shelf. Even if you’ve never seen or never intend on watching a Eurospy movie, you’ll enjoy learning about them and reading descriptions of some of the outlandish plots. It’s an excellent primer if you’re just getting into the genre, and a fabulous guide of where to go if you’ve seen some of the more famous ones and want to dig a little deeper. No one could hope to ever become as well-versed as authors Matt Blake and David Deal, so I’m very grateful to them for sharing their knowledge. In some cases, they’ve sat through these movies so you don’t have to. Read a negative review and don’t waste your time tracking down that elusive title. But read a positive one, and it can be very frustrating trying to find a copy to watch! Most of these Eurospy movies are long out of print, many never released at all on video or DVD in the United States. Fortunately, that brings us to the second part of the current Eurospy Renaissance: Dorado Films.

Dorado Films International, a small boutique DVD distributor, seems to have specialized in spaghetti westerns until quite recently. Now, they’re branching out into the Eurospy genre and releasing some much sought-after titles. They’ve put out a few of the Ken Clark "077" movies, including the stellar Special Mission Lady Chaplin starring Bond girl Daniella Bianchi. If the trailers included on that disc are anything to go by, they’ve got a slew more Eurospy titles up their sleeve, including some I can’t wait to see on DVD like Danger Route and Assignment K.

So, back to Deadlier Than the Male. It barely qualifies as a Eurospy movie, really, since it’s an English film, but the Euro stars (Elke and the luscious Sylva Koscina) and locations qualified it for the Guide, so that’s good enough for me. It’s got a budget far higher than most of the Euro fare, but equally lower than the actual Bonds. It’s a great stepping stone between 007 and 077! And, best of all, it’s available on DVD in the USA, courtesy of a company called Hen’s Tooth. (Although the British disc offers some nice special features and comes bundled with the sequel.)
The male star is one-time Bond contender Richard Johnson (of The Haunting and Fulci’s Zombie 2), who does a nice job. But the real stars are Elke and Sylva. Case in point: the sequel, Some Girls Do, while mildly enjoyable, doesn’t come close to living up to DTM. And you need look no further than the posters to see who sold the tickets; it’s the two ladies, in bikinis and wielding spearguns.

I should probably mention that Deadlier Than the Male is technically a Bulldog Drummond movie. But it doesn’t bear much resemblance to Sapper’s pre-war potboilers. This is Drummond reinvented as a suave Sixties Bond clone, which is a bit ironic since it could be argued that Bond himself was in part inspired by the original Drummond... Anyway, it’s a movie well worth checking out and it stars Elke Sommer at her absolute sexiest. (And, yes... deadliest!) And in addition to having a great Bond Girl Who Wasn’t, it’s also got a great Bond Theme Song That Wasn’t, the title track performed by the Walker Brothers. It’s as good as any Bond song, and that’s saying a lot in my book! (Scott Walker eventually did record an actual Bond song, for the end credits of The World Is Not Enough. It’s nothing like Deadlier Than the Male, but a great track nonetheless that was sadly left out of the movie at the last minute. You can still hear it on the soundtrack CD, however.)


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

6. Mark Gatiss

Speaking of British TV comedians (See Charlie Higson below)... I have seen League of Gentlemen. (Not to be confused with the horrid Sean Connery movie based on the sublime Alan Moore comic League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) LoG is a wonderfully deranged, side-splittingly sick little British sketch comedy show that developed into so much more. But it has nothing to do with spies. (Well, that’s not quite right. There are a lot of little spy references sprinkled throughout the show, like a pair of workmen named Wint and Kidd... but it’s got next to nothing to do with spies.) But one particular member of the trio of gentlemen seems to have a lot to do with spies lately...

Mark Gatiss is the tall skinny one. If you’ve seen the show, you probably know him as Hillary, the butcher. (Who, he revealed in a radio interview, was named after Sir Hilary Bray, so there’s another spy connection.) Outside of LoG, Gatiss is a very prolific writer and fan. He wrote some episodes of the new Dr. Who series, and also wrote the novel The Vesuvius Club: A Bit of Fluff. And what a wonderful bit of fluff it is! The Vesuvius Club is the first in a planned series of novels about Edwardian dandy-cum-spy Lucifer Box. The second, The Devil In Amber, is apparently already completed and due out in November in the UK and January in the US.

According to old interviews, Gatiss plans to do a Lucifer Box trilogy. The first book is Strand Magazine style Victorian/Edwardian adventure, a (sort of) send-up of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes and Fu Manchu and all that. The second, set a few decades later, will be Gatiss’s take on John Buchan/Sapper sort of pre-war spy stories. And the third is supposed to be set in the early Fifties when Lucifer is quite old and be a Casino Royale-inspired Ian Fleming sort of tale!

Gatiss is evidently quite a fan of all of these types of story. The Vesuvius Club is not a parody, but a genuinely thrilling page-turner in its own right which happens to also be quite funny. It’s not an Austin Powers-like spoof of the genre, more a loving pastiche. (A lot like that other brilliant British TV comedian’s spy novel, The Gun Seller.) The humor doesn’t come from turning the cliches of the genre on their end, for the most part, but reveling in them. In every sentence it's clear how much Gatiss loves this stuff, and its just as much fun to read as he clearly had writing it.

The general idea seems to be that this could be an actual, long-lost book originally written in Edwardian times. Even the design of the book lovingly reflects this. The British hardcover (well worth tracking down for a book-lover) bears a dust jacket meant to look aged and creased, like the battered cover of a volume you found in a used bookstore. There’s even a bookseller’s price "pencilled" in on the inside flap. Beneath the jacket, the cloth cover itself is stamped with the period-style cover illustration. And the endpapers bear fake ads like you might have found in the Strand Magazine or "penny dreadfuls." (Strangely, Alan Moore’s aforementioned League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also did this!) Chapter headings begin with a large, ornate capitol letter. And there are a few full-page illustrations scattered throughout.

The American paperback edition also maintains this spirit. The cover isn’t as wonderfully garish, but it’s still charming. The full-page illustrations are gone, but instead we get entirely new chapter illustrations by the same artist.

Of course, the book isn’t entirely an accurate artifact of its period. [Minor spoiler alert!] In an interesting twist, Lucifer Box is bisexual, something that never would have seen legitimate print at the time! [Spoiler over.]

Based on the cover image on Amazon.co.uk, The Devil In Amber will continue the period-appropriate dust jacket art. It easily looks like a 1920s or 30s book! There was also a graphic novel version of The Vesuvius Club, illustrated by the same artist who did the spot illustrations for the book. It’s a fun supplement to the novel, but unfortunately cuts far too much out. I wouldn’t recommend reading it instead of the book unless you’re just dead-set against words. There’s an abridged audio version performed by Gatiss, which I imagine would be a lot of fun, based on his radio work, but I haven’t heard it.

Mark Gatiss’s spy connections don’t end with his books. A clear lover of both Edwardian adventure (supposedly he dressed only in fashion of the period for a whole year) and Sixties British TV, it’s not surprising to see him pop up on the special features of the recent Adam Adamant Lives! DVD.

Released only in England so far, this extremely well put-together set collects every surviving episode of the BBC series on five discs. Adam Adamant was the BBC’s black and white answer to ITV’s The Avengers, and they take the formula a step further. Instead of merely behaving like an Edwardian gentleman like John Steed, Adamant actually is one! He was frozen and then thawed out in Swinging London, and paired with a young, hip female sidekick.

The episodes I’ve watched so far are hugely entertaining. I’ve heard about this series for years and always wanted to see it, and it lives up to all of my pre-conceived hype. If you like The Avengers, definitely seek out Adam Adamant. It’s by far one of the very best of the many, many Avengers wannabes that came along in the Sixties. (Avengers mastermind Brian Clemens even writes an episode!) I haven’t gotten to it yet in my viewing, but at least one episode is directed by a young Ridley Scott.

The DVD set also includes an exhaustive 64-page book by Andrew Pixley on the history of the series. Well beyond a simple episode guide, I can’t possibly call this tome a "booklet" as they do on the back of the box. It could have easily been published on its own if the market actually warranted such a book, which, sadly, it probably doesn’t. The book is illustrated with color and black and white stills. Due to the BBC’s policy of "wiping" old programs to save room in their tape vaults, about half the original episodes were regrettably lost. Fortunately, their scripts are included here as PDFs on the DVD ROM features, along with full PDFs of Adam Adamant comics, stories and annuals. And, finally, there are commentaries with the original cast and an hour-long documentary and featurette hosted by Gatiss. Great spy show!


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

5. Anthony Horowitz and Charlie Higson

Spy kids’ books! Higson and Horowitz have cornered a market I didn’t even realize existed. (I wish it had existed when I was a kid!) Both of them write best-selling adventures of teenage spies. Well, that deserves a clarification: Higson writes the adventures of a spy as a teenager; Horowitz of a teenager as a spy.

Anthony Horowitz came along first. Presumably seeing the success of Harry Potter, he hit on the idea of a Potter-like series about an orphan boy who, instead of being taken in by wizards, is taken in by a spy agency. (Although that’s an over-simplification of the Alex Rider backstory.)

Horowitz’s basic formula was to rewrite Ian Fleming Bond books replacing Bond with his teen spy, Alex Rider, and upping the outlandish action to the level of the 007 movies. His first book, Stormbreaker, is Fleming’s Moonraker, beat for beat, even down to the rosonant title.
You all know the plot of Fleming’s Moonraker, right? (Hint: it’s nothing like the movie!)

Well, here, instead of a half-English foreigner bent on revenge against his adopted homeland building a rocket called the Moonraker as a gift for England, we have a half-English foreigner bent on revenge against his adopted homeland building a computer called the Stormbreaker as a gift for England! Horowitz eschews Moonraker’s exciting-but-overly-serendipitous card game, but retains the idea of a British security man dying mysteriously on the villain’s compound. Here, that security man is really Alex Rider’s uncle, spy Ian Rider. Like Bond, Alex is sent out to the rural compound as a replacement (Cornwall instead of Dover), and, like Bond, Alex discovers that the villain is receiving a deadly extra ingredient for his project from a foreign power via submarine. (Now a deadly virus to come out of the computers instead of a nuclear warhead for the rocket.) The plots follow the same basic beats, both leading to a climax in which the villain is joined by British officials and makes a head-scratching public speech full of double-meanings only to be thwarted by the hero in his hour of triumph.

The second Alex Rider book, Point Blanc, whose clever pun of a title was changed for the American edition (Point Blank) to no longer be clever and no longer be a pun, is based on Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. With Moonraker, Horowitz could likely assume that his young adult audience would be familiar only with the movie, which had a completely different plot, and not with the book. He took a slightly bigger gamble with OHMSS, since the movie follows the book quite closely, but probably wisely assumed that not many of his readers would have seen Lazenby’s sole outing.

I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Horowitz by implying he borrowed his plotlines; I suspect that he would be the first to admit it. Rather, I think it was an ingenius idea. Fleming generated wonderful plots; why not reuse them in kids books for readers not yet old enough to graduate to the real thing? Both Stormbreaker and Point Blanc are fun, ultra-fast reads, but Point Blanc is far better. I’ve read as far as the third book in the series so far, Skeleton Key, and Horowitz seems to have abandoned his formula. Skeleton Key isn’t based on a single Bond book, but certainly incorporates elements from Doctor No, Live And Let Die, and lots of the movies.

Another thing I should mention about the Alex Rider books is that they’re surprisingly, refreshingly dark at times. Alex doesn’t choose to be a spy; instead he’s basically blackmailed into it by MI6, like Harry Palmer. And Horowitz doesn’t shy away from death and violence. Sure, this is fantasy, but not of the Spy Kids variety. Even though Alex’s superiors refuse to arm him for his missions, he does find a way to actually shoot a gun by the climax of Stormbreaker.

Anyway, Ian Fleming Publications, the current literary rights holder to James Bond, seems to have seen the success of the Alex Rider series and gotten a bit jealous, wondering "Why didn’t we think of that?" The regime had changed since their days as Glidrose Productions, and a new continuation author hadn’t been named since Raymond Benson stopped writing new original Bond novels in 2002. Also influenced, no doubt, by the publishing phenomenon that is Harry Potter, they decided to take 007's literary adventures in a new direction and hire someone to write a series about young Bond. Like many others, I cringed when I first read about this. It sounded like a bad idea through and through. Sure, I love the Harry Potter books, and they’ve made me realize that good children’s fiction still exists (something I’d long ago given up on, having sold hundreds of Goosebumps titles while working at Borders during high school and college). But that’s not right for James Bond!

Well, then the details got more interesting. IFP’s Young Bond series would be set in the 1930s! So they’d be about Fleming’s Bond as a boy, not "young Pierce Brosnan"! Very promising. After apparently going after Horowitz to write the series and being turned down, they announced Charlie Higson as the writer. Since his most famous TV work, The Fast Show, had never been broadcast in America, I was completely unfamiliar with him.

When SilverFin, the first adventure of young James Bond, came out in 2005, I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed it. Then, the next year, I enjoyed the second one, BloodFever, even more! Charlie Higson seems to have been the perfect choice. He’s made it clear in interviews that he and IFP were on the same page in that Young Bond should be set in the ‘30s when the future 007 was at Eton and that under no circumstances should Young Bond be a teenage spy. (Thank goodness!) So we’re not asked to believe that Bond was already working for the secret service as a boy. (Although I guess that would make some of Fleming’s ever-changing continuity make sense!) We are asked to believe that the teenage James Bond happens to stumble into amazing adventures on his own every school break, like the Hardy Boys, but let’s write that off as a conceit of the genre.

Higson really writes the best stories about a Young Bond we could possibly hope for. He gets Fleming. Fleming’s books are, after all, Boys’ Own Adventures for grownups. And Higson’s books have the same exact feel to them. Best of all, he really, really gets the character of James Bond! I actually do feel like this boy could grow up to be the same man whose adventures I’ve read of in Fleming. It was the chapter in SilverFin that deals with the orphan Bond’s feelings about his parents’ deaths that really won me over. Furthermore, Higson really does his best to make these books work within established Bond continuity. He elaborates on just about every scant detail Fleming provided about his hero’s youth. (Although I can’t imagine he’ll be able to keep the bit about Bond losing his virginity and his wallet to a Parisian hooker at 15!)

Yes, the sex is certainly toned down quite a bit (though Higson still manages to get away with Bond and the "Bond girl" washing up naked on the beach together at the end of BloodFever!), but the books are still surprisingly violent. (One villain dies an especially gruesome death involving sea urchins in BloodFever.) I guess that’s more acceptable in the realm of children’s fiction. "Nothing compared to the video games," I suppose, as the cliche goes...

Higson’s first two Young Bond novels rank among the very best of the non-Fleming Bond continuation titles. (For the record, my other favorites include Amis’s Colonel Sun, Gardner’s Nobody Lives Forever and Benson’s Doubleshot, but that’s a topic for another time.) I can’t wait to read the rest of Higson’s Young Bond adventures.

The Charlie Higson books are a bit classier than the Anthony Horowitz ones. They’re a bit more educational, I guess (not to say that they’re ever anything less than thrilling), a bit more realistic, and certainly offer better prose. They’re overall closer to the original Bond books, whereas Horowitz’s stories are closer to the Bond movies, even if they lift their plots from the books. Horowitz had the idea first, but then he wouldn’t have had his idea if it weren’t for Ian Fleming, whose estate commissioned the Higson series...

It’s probably not worth comparing the two series. Both are worthwhile and recommended reading for spy fans.


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

4. Nick Fury
Speaking of comic books (see previous post below).... Nick Fury is the ultimate comic book spy. A spy sooooo far removed from the realism of Tara Chace in Queen & Country it’s impossible to compare them. Fury at his finest out-Bonds Bond in terms of outlandish gadgets and over-the-top scenarios. (The "finest" I speak of would be Jim Steranko’s classic pop art Sixties run on the character, collected in two trade paperbacks from Marvel.) But the Fury of the current Marvel Universe is a little more Smiley than Bond... if you can possibly imagine Smiley in a jumpsuit.

Fury is (or was, until quite recently) the head of SHIELD (which stands for something... but it hardly matters what), a spy agency answerable to the United Nations. While he hasn’t been out in the field in his own adventures much lately, he’s really been the puppetmaster of the Marvel Universe, pulling all the strings behind the scenes. He’s currently sitting out Marvel’s big "Civil War" all-universe event (which, like 52, I too am sitting out), but I have a feeling he’ll play a big role in its aftermath.

So why is he on the currently relevant spy list if he’s lying low at the moment? Just because he’s become so prevalent in the modern Marvel Universe. (And also in the "Ultimate" universe, where for some reason his alternate self looks and sounds like Samuel L. Jackson.) He’s an enigmatic, eye-patched figure, capable of being a real bastard. He’s recently been seen tricking or coercing superheroes into serving his agenda in titles like Astonishing X-Men, Black Widow, New Avengers (no relation to the TV show, the real New Avengers!), Ultimate Spider-man and the abysmal "Secret War." No matter how much of a son-of-a-bitch he is, he remains the epitome of cool as a non super-powered guy who manages to bend a universe full of costumed heroes to his will through cloak-and-dagger means.

Fury’s very best recent portrayal was actually in another "alternate universe" kind of title, Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602 which recasts the Marvel heroes in Elizabethan times. I know, it sounds silly, but Gaiman is a top talent and he really makes the book work, especially in casting Fury as a Francis Walsingham-like spy chief to Queen Elizabeth I.

Fury changes a lot in the hands of different writers. Some use him as an authoritarian, almost fascist voice of Bush Doctorine, post-911 Big Brother spy agencies. Others cast him in just the opposite role, as a voice of sanity who stands up for the Intelligence community against politicians and Rumsfeldesque militarists who would rather the intel suit their agenda than be accurate. While some of the more liberal rants do sound a bit odd coming from a military careerist-cum-spy chief (no matter how much they ring true), the character always remains the badass epitome of cool in the Marvel Universe.

He may not have his own book anymore, but he’s more omnipresent than ever in Marvel titles.


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

3. Greg Rucka
Thank God Greg Rucka’s once again relevant enough to make this list! How did it happen? A new issue of his spy comic book Queen & Country finally came out this week! If that doesn’t excite you, then you’re really missing out. Queen & Country is the best current, ongoing spy saga in any medium. It’s a supposedly bimonthly (but really more like tri-monthly or quarterly) black and white comic put out by indie publisher Oni Press. Story arcs typically run four issues or so, and once they are finished they are collected into a trade paperback. There are currently about eight or nine volumes, I think, counting the Declassified stories. There are also two amazing Q&C novels, A Gentleman’s Game and Private Wars.

Q&C is not in the James Bond family of spying. It’s a "realistic" kind of spy story, set firmly in the real world, owing more to Deighton, LeCarre, and, most of all, the gritty 70s TV series Sandbaggers than to Ian Fleming. The heroine is Tara Chace, one of three "minders" for MI6. That’s the "special section." (Why are there always three in the fictional special section? Three 00 agents in Fleming, three Sandbaggers, three minders... Either they’re all inspired by each other or else somebody found a grain of truth and latched onto it.)

A typical Q&C story half focuses on Tara out in the field in some topical hot spot (yeah, that’s "topical," not "tropical." Remember, it’s not Bond!) and half focuses on her superior, Paul Crocker, the cynical, aqualine Director of Operations for SIS. (Yes, it’s exactly the same formula as Sandbaggers. Some people have even speculated that it’s intended to be a "sequel" of sorts. The similarities don’t detract from either series; both are utterly brilliant.) As Chace navigates the dangers of her mission, Crocker navigates the equally treacherous corridors of political power in Whitehall and MI6 Headquarters. It’s a testament to Rucka’s writing that I’m usually even more captivated by Crocker’s storyline. It takes real talent to mine such great suspense from office politics and bureaucracy. If only 24 could get that right! Rucka shows that you can get intense drama out of actual, realistic office politics at a spy agency. Yet on 24, they don’t even try. Instead, they resort to soap opera theatrics and repetitive pissing contests to generate tension at CTU, and every time the show cuts from Jack Bauer back to CTU, it loses me. Rucka actually makes the office politics the most interesting part!

Of course, it helps that he crafts some of the most lifelike characters in all spydom, real people with real issues trying to do the best they can at an unusual job. Read the first several arcs of Q&C and you’ll be hooked. You’ll so quickly be invested in Tara, Crocker and the supporting characters that you can’t possibly get enough of them!

Which is the problem.

Rucka is a very busy writer. In addition to putting out one novel a year (this year it was one in his "Atticus Kodiac" mystery series instead of Q&C), he’s probably DC Comics’ most prolific writer. And unfortunately he’s embroiled in their ambitious 52 project, which chronicles an entire year in the DC universe week by week. (He’s also writing CheckMate, a comic that tries to do "Queen & Country in the DC Universe," but I gave up after a few issues because unless you follow every DC title religiously, trying to keep up with the convoluted politics of the DC Universe is even harder than keeping up with the real life global politics that serve as a backdrop to Q&C!) I’m sure that he does a good job with that stuff, too, and I’m sure there are grateful DC junkies, but I’m not one of them. I selfishly keep hoping he’ll turn his back on Batman and friends to give us monthly Queen & Country again!

That’s the frustrating part. The comic book comes out so infrequently these days that it’s next to impossible to keep up with the complex storyline from one issue to the next. For that reason, I recommend reading the series in trade paperback collections instead of individual issues. Buy the first two volumes together, and you’ll breeze through them. Read them in order, pausing to read Declassified Vol. 1 between Q&C vols. 4 and 5. Continue in order, and then read the novels in order after you’ve read all the currently published comics. Trust me, if you’re a spy fan, you’ll be rewarded!


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

2. Roger Moore
Why Roger Moore, you ask? Why is he the only other Bond on this list? Well, the list is of people who are of some spy-related importance right now, and Sir Roger makes the cut because he is the only former Bond to have recorded new audio commentaries for MGM’s big Bond DVD re-release.

The new discs hit November 7 to coincide with Casino Royale. MGM dvds are now distributed by Fox Home Entertainment, and Fox is also treating spy fans to their "Classic Spy Collection" that same day, including Quiller and Flint and some great cover art!

Speaking of cover art, 007 didn’t fare so well. Companies like Fox and Warner have learned the value of releasing their classics with original poster art, and have produced some fine, eye-catching DVDs.

MGM, unfortunately, is still working on their lackluster Photoshop skills for some reason. They have at their disposal some of the very best poster art ever created
and instead they used poorly done photo montages. What the hell???

At least the discs are housed in slimcases, which greatly cuts down on the shelf space from the last Bond release. The slimcases are inside a kind of neat "magazine holder" style inner case, which slides into a sturdy, glossy cardboard outer slipcase.

The cases for the first two volumes, one gold and one silver, are attractive at first glance, but exhibit some weird choices as to photos used. For example, Goldie (that 90s trip hop artist who played a very minor baddie in The World Is Not Enough in a bit of stunt casting no one really cared about?) ends up the most prominently pictured actor on Set 1, moreso than any Bond actor or any of the beautiful women. Huh? The discs are also randomly assembled, so that Set 1 contains an odd assortment of Connery, Moore, Brosnan and Dalton, but not the first movie, Dr. No. Or even the second. So it will prove confusing each time you go for a specific Bond movie, and have to figure out which set that particular one is in.
But enough with the negative. The new discs themselves are amazing! The picture quality is the best it’s ever been on Bond, and they retain all the special features of the last batch (including the wonderful documentaries on each film) plus great new ones. And, of course, the Roger Moore commentaries.

Sir Roger is one of the great DVD commentators. His tracks on episodes of his two best TV series, The Saint and the fantastic, underrated The Persuaders! are first rate. He and his producing partners Johnny Goodman and Robert S. Baker provide commentaries that are both informative and entertaining. Ol’ Rog is very funny, usually in a self-deprecating manner. And he has an amazing memory! He knows every actor’s name, even in the smallest of parts, and what happened to them and where they are now. Therefore you’re never faced with those lengthy discussions you sometimes get where older commentators try in vain to recollect someone’s name, or endlessly debate whether or not the person is still alive. He finds tactful ways to give us a bit of gossip on them (usually to do with drinking problems, it seems) and never takes himself or the material too seriously. So, based on those other tracks, Moore’s commentaries were probably the number one reason I’ve been anticipating these new DVDs.

I haven’t had the chance to listen to much of them yet, but based on a few minutes of The Spy Who Loved Me, he doesn’t disappoint. I think it was a mistake to let him go it alone, because the give and take with Baker and Goodman was part of the success of the Persuaders! tracks. If they’d gotten Michael G. Wilson or Barbara Broccoli or even a moderator to join him, it might have turned out a little better and filled the occasional gaps. Or perhaps they could have gotten production designer extraordinaire Ken Adam to record with him. Adam provides entertaining commentaries over his home movie footage elsewhere on the discs, and Moore mentions having a great relationship with him on his track. Had the two old buddies gotten together to remember, I think it would have been a good time for them and for us. And it’s definitely a missed opportunity not to have the incomparable, always entertaining Christopher Lee accompany Moore on The Man With the Golden Gun. Oh well. Like, I say, Moore doesn’t disappoint anyway. He’s still as droll as ever and offers up the same kind of anecdotes about bit players he did on his other commentaries. I can’t wait to listen to them all at length.

Moore’s also on my brain right now because I’ve been watching a lot of Saint episodes lately, some of the black and white ones I hadn’t seen before. Australia’s Umbrella Entertainment has put out top quality DVD sets of The Saint and just about every other Sixties ITC show. I was able to pick up the first set at a ridiculously cheap price, and have been enjoying all the extra features (like the aforementioned commentaries) that it offers that the bare-bones A&E sets here in the States don’t. (Of course, now there are two massive sets out from Network in England that include all the Australian bonus features plus brand new, full-length documentaries! If only I could afford them...) I enjoy The Saint a lot, and contrary to most fans I think I prefer the color episodes just a bit. But for me, Roger’s TV masterpiece is his early Seventies team-up with Tony Curtis, The Persuaders! (Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title.) If you’ve never seen this show and you’re a fan of spy/adventure shows, you owe it to yourself to check it out. A&E have released it in two good volumes here in the USA, including some of those exemplary Moore commentary tracks. Network seems to have just put out the definitive version in the UK with loads more features, but importing it is naturally expensive, so I haven’t seen it.

The Persuaders! is silly, it’s generally mindless, and it’s bogged down in truly hideous Seventies fashions (actually, that’s part of the fun) but it is a pure joy to watch. Relentlessly entertaining! The whole thing depends on the pitch-perfect chemistry between Moore and Curtis, which is so undeniable on screen that I find it really hard to believe that it supposedly... wasn’t... off! Other key factors in the series’ success are the gorgeous European locations (none of that Saint grainy stock footage establishing shot followed by obvious studio backlot business here!) and a parade of recognizable guest stars like Terry-Thomas, Ingrid Pitt, Ian Hendry and Susan George, to name a few. Definitely start with the pilot episode. It really establishes the characters’ relationship for future episodes to build on, and it’s got a great split-screen race through the winding roads of Monaco between Moore’s Aston Martin DBS and Curtis’s Ferrari Dino! (Echoed, probably unintentionally, by the Aston/Ferrari race in the same location in Goldeneye decades later!)

Watch The Persuaders! opening credits (accompanied by John Barry's wonderful theme) on YouTube!


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

1. Daniel Craig
James Bond is the granddaddy of them all. It was Bond that made me as spy fan, and without 007 there probably wouldn’t be half the other spy stuff there is out there.

James Bond is everywhere right now, mainly because Eon’s new movie of Ian Fleming’s first Bond book, Casino Royale, is due out in just over a month. There’s even more buzz than there usually is over a new Bond movie because, as anyone who hasn’t been under a rock for the past year knows, there’s also a new Bond. Daniel Craig is going to show us what he’s got up his sleeve as Fleming’s quintessential superagent.

And he’s the elephant in the room of anything calling itself a spy blog, so I guess I better say how I feel about Mr. Craig. I say, wait until November 17. That’s when we’ll know.

I loved Brosnan, even though his last two Bond movies were sadly among the worst in the series. Despite the material, he got better and better with each movie. I think he’s a really gifted actor who did a great job in the part and does an even better job in his sleazier, non-Bond roles. Last year he got a Golden Globe nomination and probably should have gotten an Oscar nomination for his perfect comic performance in The Matador. He played a similarly amoral riff on his Bond persona in my favorite Pierce Brosnan movie, The Tailor of Panama (based on the John LeCarre novel). He’s a great actor who keeps getting better, and is at the height of his game. I think, like Sean Connery, he’ll end up playing some of his greatest parts in his more mature, post-007 years. He still looks great and I think he had another Bond movie yet in him. (He’s still younger than Roger Moore was when he shot his last Bond movie, and in better shape.) But the producers decided to go a different direction, so it’s no use crying over spilt milk. (The saddest part is that, if media reports are anything to go by, ol’ Pierce seems to have been rather unceremoniously dumped, which is too bad.)

So now we’ve got Daniel Craig. Let’s not judge him in advance. I think that whole "Craig not Bond" stuff the media made such a big deal of a few months ago is bullshit. We haven’t seen him as Bond yet! How can you say he’s not Bond? Yes, it’s true that he’s not traditionally handsome, but then again it could be argued that Brosnan was too much of a pretty boy. I can see why they want to go in a different direction, especially if their angle is to make Bond "grittier," as it seems to be.

Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale is a pretty dark, somewhat gritty novel, so that makes sense. Why couldn’t they have gone that direction with Brosnan? The shot in the trailer that seals it for me is the one where Craig jumps out the window going after the baddie. Just look at the way he goes through that window! Can you see Brosnan doing that? That’s not the way he moves. It takes a younger man to be so physical, and it makes for a cool shot.

So I say give Craig a chance. I’m optimistic about him. The posters look great, the trailer looks AMAZING (the best Bond trailer since that glorious original Goldeneye teaser more than a decade ago!), and the buzz in the movie’s pretty good.


7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig

List

For the first entry, to let potential readers know where I’m coming from, I’ll do a Top (double-oh) Seven list of people in the world of fictional spies to keep an eye on. People who are relevant right now. Such lists are by nature entirely arbitrary, and, for me, constantly changing. I’ll probably forget a bunch of people today that tomorrow or any other day might easily make such a list. But the point of this one is to let you know what kind of spy fan I am, what my tastes are. And to cram in a bit of news and some early reviews as well.

7. Elke Sommer
6. Mark Gatiss
5. Charlie Higson and Anthony Horowitz
4. Nick Fury
3. Greg Rucka
2. Roger Moore
1. Daniel Craig