James Bond is Back in the NO TIME TO DIE Trailer!!!

It's here! The trailer we've been waiting so long for! And our first lengthy look Daniel Craig in action as James Bond since SPECTRE in 2015. (I'm a little surprised at how direct a sequel to that movie No Time To Die appears to be.) Check it out:

New Trailer for JOHNNY ENGLISH STRIKES AGAIN

Man, I am looking forward to this one so much! Universal has dropped another trailer for the upcoming Rowan Atkinson threequel Johnny English Strikes Again (a title that aptly references the slapstick spy parody series' debt to Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies). As in prior English movies (albeit disparate ones), a former Bond Girl (Quantum of Solace's Olga Kurylenko) and former Bond car (The Living Daylights' Aston Martin V8 Vantage) co-star.

Batman Drives Bond's Aston

In issue #2 of Sean Murphy's Batman: White Knight miniseries, on shelves today, a tuxedoed Bruce Wayne is shown arriving at a party in a car instantly familiar to James Bond fans. And, should there be any doubt, Murphy has given it the license plate "DALTON007." The car, of course, is the Aston Martin Vantage driven by Timothy Dalton as Agent 007 in The Living Daylights (1987). And Murphy, who is best known for Vertigo titles like American Vampire, Joe the Barbarian, and Punk Rock Jesus, sure draws it nicely! (Man, I would love to see him do a Bond comic for Dynamite....) Bond himself was drawn driving this car by John M. Burns in the 1993 Dark Horse miniseries James Bond: A Silent Armageddon.

Of course, this is far from the first Aston Martin originally made famous by Bond to be driven by Bruce Wayne. In fact, Batman's playboy alter-ego has a fairly extensive history with the marque. He's been drawn driving Astons in several comics, most notably when artist Jim Lee put him in a Vanquish in the third issue of his and Jeff Loeb's landmark Batman story, Hush. That was in 2002, the same year that Pierce Brosnan drove a Vanquish in Die Another Day. But the association has also been present in movies. I think it was James Bond screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz who first put Bruce Wayne in an Aston Martin in his unfilmed 1983 Batman movie script. Zach Snyder finally realized that ambition onscreen in his (otherwise abysmal) 2016 movie Batman vs. Superman, in which Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne drives a classic 1950s Aston Martin DB Mk III, the very car that Ian Fleming had 007 drive in his novel Goldfinger! (By the time the story was filmed, it made sense to update it to the then-current DB5, and thus history was made.) The same type of car might also be familiar to spy fans from appearances in the premiere episode of Danger Man,  and in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. Season 2 episode "The Children's Day Affair."

For more on Batman/Bond connections, check out this 2008 article, "His Name is Wayne, Bruce Wayne."

Clive Owen Returns as The Driver for BMW Films

He's not quite a spy, but Clive Owen's enigmatic character The Driver from the series of BMW Films in the early 2000s is certainly spy-adjacent. And he (somewhat circuitously) inspired an even more spy-adjacent character, The Transporter. The Driver first appeared in a series of eight short films produced in 2001 and 2002 known collectively as The Hire. It was an innovative idea. BMW approached top international directors including John Frankenheimer, Wong Kar-wai, Guy Ritchie and Alejandro González Iñárritu, to helm short films (or long, plot-driven commercials) featuring Owen driving various BMWs in various action/adventure scenarios ranging from comedic (Ritchie's) to downright surreal (Tony Scott's, which featured Gary Oldman as the devil). The shorts were collected on a now out of print DVD, and beloved by many fans. In 2005, Dark Horse published a less successful comic book version, which also tried the strategy of recruiting industry superstars like Kurt Busiek and Matt Wagner (and, oddly, Bruce Campbell, who is a superstar... but not as a comic book writer!), but kind of missed the mark by using concept cars instead of actual BMWs on the market. That was the last we had heard from The Driver. Until now.

Now, fifteen years later, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Owen is back in the role! Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) directs a new 11-minute short entitled The Escape, and intended, according to the trade, as "an homage to the original series." Does that mean it's not an actual sequel? Unclear, for the moment, but it certainly looks like a new entry in the franchise we're familiar with. Also unclear is whether this is simply a one-off, or if this is the first of a new series of Hire shorts. I'm certainly hoping for the latter! In addition to Owen, original series creative director Bruce Bildsten, executive producer Brian DiLorenzo, producer Steve Golin, and creative consultant David Carter all return. The latter co-wrote the new short with Blomkamp. Jon Bernthal (The Accountant), Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring) and Dakota Fanning (Man on Fire) co-star.

The Escape will premiere October 23 on the BMW Films official website.

Here's a teaser:



...and a short behind-the-scenes video:

SPECTRE Land Rover Commercial

Here's another SPECTRE-inspired promotional partner commercial. Unlike the ones we've already seen for Sony smartphones (featuring Naomie Harris as Moneypenny) and Belvedere Vodka, or the unmissable Heineken spot with Daniel Craig, this Land Rover commercial doesn't feature any new concepts or exclusive footage. It's just shots from the Alpine chase scene in the movie re-cut to put the focus on the Land Rovers. I suppose there may be a few extra shots in this that didn't make the final film, and of course the material is edited differently than in the movie, but more or less this spot is just film clips. It's still cool, though, and still worth posting and watching!

First Look at Dynamite's James Bond #2, Featuring an Aston Martin

The latest issue of Diamond Previews (the print version only, unfortunately) offers comic book readers a first glimpse at the second issue of Dynamite Entertainment's James Bond 007, including four variant covers. According to the solicitation copy, "James Bond is in Berlin, alone, unarmed and with no idea of the forces ranged in secret against him. If he can make it to the Embassy, he might survive for a few hours more. But he’s getting into that car with that woman, which means he has only minutes to live…"

Is "that car" an Aston Martin? Cover A, by Dom Reardon (high-res version courtesy of Bleeding Cool), certainly shows one. This is a little surprising because all the publicity surrounding this comic book, by writer Warren Ellis (RED, Global Frequency) and artist Jason Masters, plays up how it's based on the literary James Bond of the Ian Fleming novels, and not the movie Bond. Yet Fleming's Bond only ever drove an Aston Martin once, in Goldfinger. It's clearly a modern model depicted on the cover, similar to the DBS V12 Daniel Craig drove in Quantum of Solace. While a Bentley might have been a more expected choice of vehicle for the Bond of the books, there is certainly precedent for 007 to drive an Aston Martin in comics. In the never completed 1993 Dark Horse Bond comic "A Silent Armageddon" by Simon Jowett and John Burns, 007 drove a dark green V8 Vantage similar to the one Timothy Dalton drove in The Living Daylights. (I sure would like to see Dynamite print the supposedly finished but never published final two issues of that series!) Of course the car in the description is not Bond's car anyway, but one driven by a mysterious woman—presumably the Selina Kyle-looking Bond girl making her public debut on these covers. So perhaps she drives an Aston as a cute nod to the films. Or perhaps the car on the cover isn't even featured inside the comic, and is just the artist's touch! We'll find out December 2 when part 2 of Ellis's inaugural storyline "VARGR" hits shelves.

New SPECTRE TV Spot

A TV spot for SPECTRE airing during the NBA finals tonight revealed copious new footage after beginning in a familiar way for anyone who's seen the teaser trailer. And, man, does it look cool! The teaser was notable (and effective!) for not showing any action at all. The second half of this spot is pretty much all action, and it's fun to see how it seems to tie in with the non-action bits we were already treated to. For example, it looks as if James Bond doesn't get out of that mysterious meeting he seems to have infiltrated all that easily. There's even a hint that, just possibly, 007's Aston Martin DB10 might have a gadget! I can't tell if that fire behind it is because the road's on fire, or because it has some sort of rear-mounted flame thrower. Considering Q is still stuck at a computer monitor dealing with a system shutdown (again?!), perhaps it's not a gadget after all. Making up for a relative lack of romantic conquests in his films compared to other Bond actors, Daniel Craig gets close to both Bond women (Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci) in this trailer... and even finds an entirely new way to deliver his immortal line of introduction, "Bond... James Bond!" Hopefully this TV spot portends a longer trailer in the very near future. We just saw a second Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation trailer, and the new Man From U.N.C.L.E. trailer is supposed to drop tomorrow, so we need another Bond one to match!

First Look at 007 in Action in SPECTRE

What an exciting week for spy fans! Hot on the heels of the awesome Man From U.N.C.L.E. trailer comes our first look at Daniel Craig in action as James Bond in Sam Mendes' SPECTRE, courtesy of 007.com. The first official still of Craig in the 24th official 007 movie shows the actor in winter gear clutching a pistol (not a Walther PPK) in a snowy Alpine setting with snowmobiles and off-road vehicles in the background. The shot is reminiscent of the famous still of George Lazenby in the Alps with a Sterling submachine gun, and the background elements seem the perfect ingredients for a classic James Bond action sequence—the creation of which is confirmed in the first official behind the scenes video from the set! I'm particularly excited to see Craig in the snow, because cold weather setpieces tend to be among my favorite in the Bond canon, but we haven't had a great one since The Living Daylights back in 1987. (I'm sorry, but the lackluster ski sequence in The World Is Not Enough just didn't cut it for me.) That's more than 25 years—or more than half the duration of the series! So it's about time for another great winter setpiece in a Bond flick. Check out the video below for a spoiler-free hint of how things will go down in this Austrian sequence. Now with Bond and U.N.C.L.E. videos this week, all we need is for Paramount to offer a first look at the next Mission: Impossible!


NOTE: While the plot of SPECTRE was leaked in the Sony hack, not all Bond fans want to know what's going to happen. So please be courteous and refrain from posting SPECTRE spoilers in the comments section.

Pierce Brosnan Pokes Fun at His James Bond Image in Kia Sorento Super Bowl Spot

Well, Kia has managed to get me to give them free advertising by reposting their commercial by casting Pierce Brosnan in it. And I'll happily do so for any commercial with Brosnan! That's a good way to get my attention during Super Bowl advertising breaks. I found this pretty amusing.

Thunderball Music Video

I had no idea there was ever a music video for Tom Jones' Thunderball title song! There wasn't one in the Sixties, but there was, apparently, in 1987. It seems to be a (lip-synched) clip from a live performance. Does anyone know if this is from one of the many Tom Jones DVDs available on Amazon? Whatever its origins, with leather-clad Bond Girls, an Aston Martin DB5 and Jones in a white dinner jacket (plus a healthy dose of 1980s cheese), it's well worth watching!

Movie Review: Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966)

Harry Levin and Arduino Maiuri’s Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (produced by the prolific Dino De Laurentiis) is another one of those Eurospy movies like Deadlier Than the Male or Hammerhead with a slightly higher budget than usual, making it a good stepping stone from the glossy world of James Bond into the decidedly less polished (but no less entertaining) world of European Bond knock-offs. (It was one of the first ones I ever saw, the bootleg being relatively easy to come by.) It’s even got a hero likely to be familiar to American TV viewers: Joe Mannix himself, Mike “Touch” Connors. Connors makes a great spy hero, in fact, and it’s a shame he didn’t play the role more often. Adding to his likability here, as CIA agent Kelly (“Just ‘Kelly’”), is his amusing affinity for bananas. Kelly helps himself to the tasty fruit at every opportunity, stealing one off the back of a truck that picks him up, pocketing another from a fruit bowl at an embassy function, and helping himself to another from the room of a beautiful woman he’s just saved from death by scorpion sting. He even manages to use the peel from one in the film’s climactic battle!

But bananas or not, this isn’t Connors’ film alone. Adding to its appeal is a top-notch ensemble cast. All-American beauty Dorothy Provine (One Spy Too Many) might seem like an odd choice to play British secret agent Susan Fleming, but her appeal in the role is undeniable. Scene-stealing Raf Vallone is fantastic as the smooth villain Ardonian. This script affords him lots more opportunities to chew scenery than he had in The Italian Job, and here he seizes all of them! But even he doesn’t walk away with the movie. No, the most memorable part turns out to belong to Terry-Thomas, who steals the show as Provine’s unflappable stiff-upper-lip chauffeur, James, whose duties include a bit more than just driving. (Confusingly, Thomas also plays another, smaller role in the film, that of Lord Aldric, who dies in the opening scene.)

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die also features what might well be the best gadget car of the Sixties spy cycle this side of 007’s DB5. The Rolls Royce that James drives our heroes around in offers every possible amenity. It has shields that slide into place protecting someone in the rear driver’s side seat from someone in the rear passenger side seat. It has a GPS tracker... from the days before GPS was a thing. It has a built-in drinks station that swivels into place at tea time with an already-steaming pot for Susan. When Kelly says he’d prefer a Scotch, James presses a button and a minibar appears, Scotch poured. It even adds a spritzer of soda. But when Kelly sips it, he chastises, “James, this is whiskey!” To which a flummoxed James responds, “Really, sir? I’ll have to speak to the mechanic about that!” But the car’s best surprise is its elaborate camouflage system, which I don’t dare spoil as it’s one of the delights of watching the film to discover it in action. All told, it’s no wonder that James spends as much time polishing this impressive vehicle as he does. (“How long does it take to turn out a chauffeur like you?” Ardonian asks him, to which the driver replies, “Oh, not long, sir. Just four to five generations.”) Or that, when Kelly parks his own clunky jalopy next to it, James gives him a withering look prompting Kelly to quip, “Your car doesn't object to being next to my car, does it?” (“Have you had it inoculated?” demands Thomas.) It’s a truly great spy car.

Clearly, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die has a sense of humor. (When Kelly discovers that Susan is also an agent, they engage in their own miniature arms race, revealing gadget after gadget on their persons.) It’s also got the requisite sense of the absurd for this subgenre. The villain’s plan is ambitious enough for Moonraker’s Hugo Drax (or perhaps screenwriter Christopher Wood) to later copy, but even he leaves out the best part—the motivation. Like Drax, Ardonian plots to launch toxins derived from a rare orchid at Earth from outer space, thus rendering all the men on Earth sterile. While Drax plans to repopulate the planet with a race of supermen, Ardonian hopes to repopulate the planet himself! He will be the only potent man left in the world, and he’s frozen a cadre of beautiful women in suspended animation for him to breed with. (His relationship with the female sex is complex and unhealthy, to say the least.)

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die takes place entirely in Brazil, and as in any Brazil-set Eurospy movie worth its salt (there were quite a few of them, for some reason*), Rio’s famous statue of Christ the Redeemer makes its presence known. But it’s not just seen in grainy stock footage aerials here. No, Kelly actually has a fight scene inside and on top of the statue, before climbing from the Savior’s head onto a waiting helicopter!

My only real complaint about the film is the ending. For the most part, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die manages to function as both a spoof and an action movie the viewer is legitimately invested in, a feat not even the Flint films managed to pull off. But in the final moments, the directors make a decision to play up the comedy at the expense of the story, and a deus ex machina played for laughs sadly undermines all the actual suspense they've managed to build. Still, that one small oversight aside, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die offers pretty much everything you could ask for from a first-rate Eurospy movie (once you get past the silly and somewhat incongruous opening): exotic locations, thrilling action, beautiful ladies aplenty (including genre stalwart Margaret Lee, unfortunately wasted in a bit part), killer piranha, deadly scorpions, genuine comic relief, fantastic gadgets, outlandish mod attire, an appealing hero, a dastardly villain, and lots of bananas. And I bet you never even realized that you craved bananas in your Eurospy formula, did you? Watch Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die and you’ll see why.

Sadly, that’s easier said than done. This title has yet to turn up on DVD, and that kind of surprises me. With the well-known star, well-known producer and relatively high production values, I would have expected it to be one of the more likely Eurospy titles to get released—if not on DVD, then at least as a made-on-demand disc. If Columbia still controls the rights, then they need to release a nice, widescreen print as part of their MOD program ASAP. (They’ve done a good job with their Sixties spy catalog for the most part.) And if someone else owns the rights now (De Laurentiis’ company?), then they need to strike a deal with Redemption or Severin or Scorpion or one of those specialty labels. This is one of a couple of Eurospy movies that can boast Quentin Tarantino having called it his favorite, which should make nice copy for the front cover further enticing someone to put it out. Until then, unless they get the rare opportunity to see it in a revival theater, spy fans are stuck with a low quality bootleg.

*Perhaps the country offered good tax incentives. Whatever the case, other Eurospy movies set in Brazil include OSS 117: Furia a Bahia (review), Dick Smart 2.007, That Man From Rio and Ring Around the World (review). All of them lent inspiration to the 2009 genre spoof OSS 117: Lost in Rio (review).

New RED 2 Trailer

This has Helen Mirren shooting two guns out of a fishtailing Lotus Exige. Love. Love!

Daniel Craig Unveils New Range Rover Sport

Evidently James Bond's association with Range Rover didn't end with the use of a Land Rover Defender in Skyfall. Or, at least, 007 star Daniel Craig's didn't. Craig drove the all-new Range Rover Sport into its unveiling event in New York City this week, and though there's no official 007 association here, Range Rover cut a suitably Bondian video to introduce the new SUV.

Lamborghini Unveils the Perfect Spy Hunter Vehicle

Now this is the car they should use in that new Spy Hunter movie! (For the uninitiated, Spy Hunter is a videogame that centers much more on a gadget-filled supercar than Angleton-style mole hunts. Ruben Fleischer is directing a movie adaptation for WB.) At the Geneva Motor Show this week, Lamborghini unvelied the new space-age Veneno... and tell me that's not the pixelated G-6155 Interceptor come to life? I've previously pitched the Jaguar C-X75 and the new Lotus Esprit for this crucial role, but now my heart is set on this wicked looking Lambo.

Of course, the top and rear views are the most important in determining a good Spy Hunter vehicle... and this crazy vehicle doesn't disappoint from those angles. Just think of the weaponry and gadgetry you could load onto this thing! It looks like a submarine already, without even undergoing a Lotus-like transformation. Or a jet.

Tradecraft: Spy Hunter Moves Forward at Warner Bros.

After a decade of fits and starts, this latest incarnation of the forever-in-development videogame adaptation Spy Hunter seems to be moving healthily forward with director Ruben Fleischer (Gangster Squad), who was first attached to the project last October, still involved. Deadline reports that Carter Blanchard (Good vs. Evil) has been hired to pen the new script to Fleischer's specifications. Comingsoon has a very enlightening quote from Fleischer on his approach:

If I can make any movie, it would be a James Bond movie. I've always loved the genre but I don't think they'll hire an American to direct a James Bond movie, I've been told, so for me, Spy Hunter is an opportunity to create a new spy franchise. It sounds silly but that was my favorite video game when I was a kid and it had a great title and a great theme song, but there's no real other associations that people have with it other than a cool car, so I feel like there's a lot of room for us to invent a new character and a new series. I think just the Spy Hunter that is the most bad-ass spy who hunts down rogue spies is a really cool launch pad for an idea and I hope that we can bring it to life.

Sounds like the right direction to me! Any Eurospy fan knows that many highly entertaining movies have come from emulating James Bond.

New Spy DVDs Out Today: James Bond and Beyond!

Today is a huge day for spy DVD and Blu-ray releases! The celestial body around which all of these releases are orbiting is, of course, Skyfall (review here). The 23rd official James Bond movie is available on DVD and Blu-ray from MGM and Fox. Special features include two audio commentaries (perhaps to make up for none on Quantum of Solace?), one featuring director Sam Mendes, the other with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and Production Designer Dennis Gassner, an hour-long making-of documentary called "Shooting Bond," a featurette on the premiere, a 1-minute spot advertising the soundtrack, and the film's theatrical trailer. The film is presented in a 2.40:1 widescreen aspect ratio, which is somewhat controversial because it could be seen in two different aspect ratios theatrically. Personally, I preferred the taller 1.9:1 presentation seen in IMAX theaters. Mendes and cinematographer extraordinaire Roger Deakins shot with both formats in mind, but claimed not to have framed specifically for one or the other. The 1.9:1 version cut off some information on the sides of the frame, but the 2.40:1 version cut off some information at the top and bottom. To my eye, the IMAX image looked more natural. But the difference is really negligible enough that it's not worth dwelling on this much; I just wanted to let people know which one is on the disc. Had they provided both options, I might well end up so paralyzed with Hamlet-like indecision every time I put the movie on that I would never end up actually watching it, and that would be a tragedy! Skyfall is a wonderful Bond movie, and it really goes without saying that it belongs in every Bond fan's library. Retail is listed as $39.99 for the Blu-ray and $29.98 for the DVD, though both are already significantly discounted this week on Amazon and at other retailers. Amazon also has the Bond 50 Blu-ray collection on sale this week for just $129.99, and that's even got an empty slot reserved for Skyfall. So if you held off buying it last year, pick it up now and you'll have all 23 official 007 movies to date in one convenient, attractive package!

Also out today (though pre-orders have been shipping early), and making its high-def debut, is Twilight Time's Blu-ray of In Like Flint. Last month the specialty label released its predecessor, Our Man Flint on Blu-ray, and the sequel comes just as loaded with special features as that one was! And like on the first release, I'm on some of them (under my actual name, Matthew Bradford, and billed as a "Spy Film Historian," which is certainly accurate), discussing the impact of the Flint movies and their star, James Coburn. I'm in these ones a lot more, in fact, than I was on Our Man, so if you're among the millions and millions of fans buying these for me rather than Coburn, you're in luck! Bonus material on In Like Flint includes an audio track featuring Jerry Goldsmith's complete isolated score, an audio commentary with Cinema Retro's Lee Pfeiffer and film historian Eddy Friedfeld, trailers, a rare screen test, and the featurettes "Derek Flint: The Secret Files," "James Coburn: The Man Beyond the Spy," "Designing Flint," "Flint vs Zanuck: The Missing 3 Minutes," "Puerto Rico Premiere," "Future Perfect," "Feminine Wiles," "Spy School," "Musician's Magician," "Spy Vogue," and "Take It Off." That last one is a vintage featurette that seems to be promoting the movie to women(?) while at the same time insulting them (?), and doing it via a weight-loss advertisement. If you manage to make it all the way through its interminable running time, I sincerely doubt you'll ever revisit that one, but it's still nice to have, of course, as a weird, unwatchable time capsule. Fortunately, the rest are all fascinating! Some of these are retained from the previous DVD edition, but some are brand-new documentaries created exclusively for the Blu-ray release by John Cork, co-producer of those wonderful documentaries on the James Bond Special Editions. Sadly what's missing from this release that was on the DVD edition is the attempted Seventies TV revival of the character, Our Man Flint: Dead On Target, starring Eurospy leading man Ray Danton as the irrepressible Derek Flint. It's true that the TV movie is far from essential (in fact it bears little resemblance to the Sixties films, and Flint himself is a mere private eye, not an international playboy superspy) and that poor Danton (who was excellent in some of his Eurospy work) struggles to fill Coburn's large shoes... but as a spy completist I still want to own it. That means I'll have to hang onto my DVD set despite buying these new Blu-rays. Oh well. The new special features on Twilight Time's edition certainly make this Blu-ray a must-buy for Sixties spy fans even without the TV movie! Seriously, this is sure to be one of the major spy releases of the year. The region-free Blu-ray is a limited edition of just 3,000 units, and retails for $29.95 exclusively through Screen Archives Entertainment. These limited editions do sell out, so be sure to order soon!

Also timed to piggyback on Skyfall's release is BBC's DVD of the Top Gear special 50 Years of Bond Cars. The special, presented by Richard Hammond last fall to tie in with the theatrical release of Skyfall, is one of the best James Bond TV specials I've ever seen. It's a must-see for fans of Bond cars especially, and I'm so glad that it's getting a DVD release because it's one I definitely want to own for posterity. Not only does Hammond interview a number of 007 production personnel (including Guy Hamilton, Roger Moore and Daniel Craig) and test drive some original Bondmobiles, but he also pilots an actual working Lotus submarine car! Top Gear's version is based on an Excel rather than an Esprit, but unlike the production version(s) used in The Spy Who Loved Me, this one actually functions as both a street car and a submarine! Seriously, this is one you want in your Bond collection. Best of all, it's a real steal with a bargain SRP of just $9.95... and it's even less than that on Amazon.

What's this doing on here? Avengers fans, take note! Six years after the first two seasons of The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries came out from Universal, Shout! Factory is releasing the third Hardy Boys season, sans Nancy this time, on DVD today. Why is this of particular interest to spy fans? Well, the show does sometimes deal in espionage, and in this season the Hardy men have graduated college and are official government agents themselves. In one two-parter, they even help a Soviet defector wishing to relocate to Hawaii... but that's not why I'm mentioning it. Not specifically, anyway. No, I'm mentioning it because Patrick Macnee (who celebrated his 91st birthday last week) turns up as a guest star in the episode "Assault on the Tower" playing a debonair, bowler hat-wearing British agent identified only as S. This was just a year after The New Avengers went off the air, so fans of John Steed will probably want to add the DVD to their library. (Well, completists, anyway, like myself.) The 3-disc set retails for $24.97, though it can be ordered through Amazon for significantly less.

I know I've been remiss on my weekly spy DVD alerts lately. So later this week I'll do a post rounding up all the spy releases so far this year. Stay tuned!

Upcoming Spy DVDs: Top Gear: 50 Years of Bond Cars

TV Shows On DVD provides the cover art for BBC's upcoming Region 1 DVD of the Top Gear special 50 Years of Bond Cars. The special, presented by Richard Hammond last fall to tie in with the theatrical release of Skyfall, is one of the best James Bond TV specials I've ever seen. It's a must-see for fans of Bond cars especially, and I'm so glad that it's getting a DVD release because it's one I definitely want to own for posterity. Not only does Hammond interview a number of 007 production personnel (including Guy Hamilton, Roger Moore and Daniel Craig) and test drive some original Bondmobiles, but he also pilots an actual working Lotus submarine car! Top Gear's version is based on an Excel rather than an Esprit, but unlike the production version(s) used in The Spy Who Loved Me, this one actually functions as both a street car and a submarine! The run time for the DVD is listed as 135 minutes, which is substantially longer than the TV version. According to the BBC America blog, extended interviews account for some of that extra length. Best of all, it's a real steal with a bargain SRP of just $9.95... and it's available to pre-order on Amazon for even less than that!

James Bond Parody Video Featuring an Aston Martin

One of the moments that gets the biggest crowd reaction in Skyfall is the look on Daniel Craig's face when something bad happens to his beloved Aston Martin DB5. It's a great look. But some people take issue with 007 showing more visible reaction to what happens to his car than he does to the fate that befalls a woman he beds earlier in the film. It's certainly a moment ripe for parody. And my friends Brad Hansen and Athena Stamos (huge Bond fans both) at Crave Online have seized that moment and produced an excellent parody video, "The Spy Who Loved His Car!" But it's a parody with serious production values. Not only do they have some pretty cool effects (I love the moment Bond drives through the invisible wall in the parking garage), but they have an actual vintage Aston Martin! (It's a DB6 and not a DB5, but it's still the right color and it's still beautiful and it's still an Aston Martin... so that works just fine.) This is awesome. Check it out:

Reuben Fleischer to Helm Spy Hunter

This is another one of those projects that's been floating around in perpetual development at various studios for as long as I've been writing this blog. (Longer, in fact.) But studios remain determined to make a movie out of the popular 80s arcade game Spy Hunter, a vertical scroller in which a secret agent in a gadget-laden supercar, um, hunted spies (I guess) by blowing up lots of other vehicles (that was the important part). As I said last time I wrote about this project, back in 2010, Spy Hunter combines two of my very favorite things: spies and their cars. At that time I was blogging about a potential Chad St. John-scripted version at Warner Bros. Prior to that incarnation, the property had been churning at Universal for a number of years with The Rock attached to star, and first John Woo and later Paul W.S. Anderson attached to direct. Now Vulture reports (via Dark Horizons) that Warner is still keen to make this movie happen, but St. John appears no longer involved. Instead, the studio has tapped Zombieland and Gangster Squad helmer Ruben Fleischer to direct and executive produce. Apparently he's not using St. John's script, but searching for a new writer to flesh out his vision. (Spies and cars? My hand just went up, Warner Bros.!)

While most videogame adaptations immediately spark discussion of what actor could best realize a beloved pixelated hero, in the case of Spy Hunter the question is what car could play the famous Interceptor? I put forth a number of suggestions back in 2010, but of course the vehicular landscape has changed since then. Since the version depicted on the side of the arcade console looked kind of like a cross between a Lamborghini and a Lotus, I think my top choice now would be the brand new Lotus Esprit. It's a cool car, it looks the part, and of course the Esprit has a proud history with spy gadgets.  The 2013 Aston Martin Vanquish would be pretty cool, too, though that marque is obviously pretty closely associated with another spy franchise. (Still, when EON opted not to use the new Vanquish in Skyfall, they might have given up their claim on the car...) Lest I lean too heavily on former Bond vehicles, I'll also suggest the new Jaguar C-X75. Actually, that might be the best option! I still can't believe that amazing concept is actually getting made. It simply cries out for a starring role in a spy movie!

Sky Movies HD Promo Cuts All the Bonds Into One Spectacular Car Chase

This is just an ad for the UK's new Sky HD 007 satellite channel (which is, admittedly, a pretty cool thing, since it collects all the Bond movies in HD in the same place), but it's really well done. Sky's editors have cut together several classic Bond car chases to create one massive cliffside car chase involving all six official James Bonds! The opening Aston Martin chase from Quantum of Solace proved an especially good framework to cut the other pieces into since it itself was so nonsensically edited to begin with! I particularly like the exchange created between Brosnan and Moore: