New Bond girl will be...

Mmmmmm, i likes me some Byrne. They could choose worse....

She's very attractive. I would like to insert my genitals into hers and then move back and forth. Starting slowly at first and then gaining a more rapid pace until I'd eventually release a cream-like substance as a signal that my time with her has come to an end. Then I'd like to sleep.

Good luck as the next Bond girl Ms. Byrne!

I recall being told by a female friend, when assigned to review "Wicker Park", to mention that the dark-haired girl in the film had "fantastic bangs" in my critique. It's true, she does.

There's my Rose Byrne story.

Not a bad looking girl.

That's disturbing.

No, that's my new sig.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaay Vesper Lynd. Hopefully keeping the character's name the same means they'll keep the other spoilery aspects of the character intact for the film.

Good choice for an actress too.

What, she's not going to be named Coitus McCumbucket or something? Like they're actually making a real movie, or even (gasp) actually adapting the novel? The horror.

I was hoping for Brownie Tightsocket or Pinky Spreadeagle or Cuntie O'Cuntcunt.

Fantastic bangs indeed.

As the resident huge Bond fan here (the other would be a certain Mr.Jones from Ohio, methinks) and due that nobody asked me to, I would say...

Rose Byrne? Rose "Troy/ Wicker Park" Byrne? Rose "Fucking vacuum of charisma" Byrne?

As Vesper Lynd?

Seriously, you gotta be shitting me. So far until last week the runners-up were Natasha "a paycheck could do just fine" Henstridge and some unknown english blonde... but this? I mean, Hillary Duff was taken or something? What about Diane Krüger? At least she out-acted and out-everything Mrs.Byrne in Wicker Park... Yeah. Wicker. Park.

Damn, I hope it's for a minor role or something, cause so far that's the first wrong step in my most anticipated movie for 2006.

Oh, and I'd like to be the first to give her the kindest benefit of the doubt but hmmm, I don't know... Some abysmal choices aside (Tanya Roberts, Maryam D'Abo, Britt Fuckin' Ekland), I still believe that Bond girls are a bit more than a great face & body. Yup, I'm talking personality here. Not a three dimensional fully fledged character, but at least some personality.

Rose Byrne AS VESPER LYND? The first girl to give Bond the...?

Shit. Sad news day for me, chewers.

I disagree with just about everything you said. I thought Byrne was one of the highlights of Troy and I doubt Diane Kruger has ever out-acted anything, she certainly was not as strong as Byrne in Troy.

I much prefer Byrne to Halle Berry or Denise Richards or Teri Hatcher.

Hmmm, following your opinion, Sackley, maybe I need to revisit Troy, but she sure didn't leave much of an impression the two times I've already seen that movie. As for Diane Krüger, though hers was a more pivotal role in Troy, she wasn't given much to do screentime-wise (dunno, personally I blame it on the script or maybe the editing), but I later found her pretty good in National Treasure* in which she played a nice heroine role that could go pretty well in a Bond movie. Maybe it's just me, but as with the greats Rene Russo or Famke Jannsen, I kinda see her as the type of model-turned-actress that gets better with time (see also a french flick called Joyeux Nöel/ Merry Christmas for more proof of that).

*Hell, now that I think of it, even National Treasure's Perfect Heist scene was kinda inspired by Bond movies with a tux-wearing Nic Cage running and jumping and shit.


Back on topic, I see a thirtysomething in Vesper Lynd's russian spy/femme fatale role better than a twentysomething (sorry, but Mrs. Byrne age escapes me at the moment, but she seems a bit... nebbish) and though I agree with you that Denise Richards was poorly cast as Lara Croft deux in TWINE, I still like Halle Berry in DAD as well as Teri Hatcher in TND.

Disagreements aside -I love me some good Bond discussion- I also like your sig. That Molti...

Unfortunately I have yet to see Wicker Park, or fortunately depending on who's asked, but this choice as the next Bond girl seems fine with me.

She's attractive (but not too hot) and like Craig, isn't a huge star, thereby preventing her from stealing scenes, or press, from his new Bond or the film in general. The films have always been about Bond, notthe Bond girl.

In my opinion, Terri Hatcher made a decent "Bond girl" simply because she was a supporting player, rarely seen and gave some history to Bond. Plus she could act. She was also killed midway through. Denise Richards compeltely ruined TWINE for me as she was terrible and completely unbelieveable as a scientist. Halle Barry was fine. She's pretty to look at in a bikini and provided some 'sass' to the film. Although a spin off film on her character was wisely stopped.

Ditto on that, mister. And glad to have you around too. Though Denise Richards didn't exactly ruin that film for me -thank god Sophie Marceau was also there, one of the best Bond Girls ever, and one of the best villains too- , the idea of turning Lara Croft into a nuclear weapons specialist wasn't specially well-advised. In a Bond film or any other.

On the other hand, I may be in the minority here but I consider TWINE one of the most underrated Bonds ever in spite of its poorly staged & edited action scenes. Great actors, one of the most character driven films in the series and a good script by Purvis & Wade, who I really think have gotten Bond to a T.

They are also one of the reasons why I think Casino Royale will succeed, though as true as all the reasons you stated above about casting Byrne may be, I still see it as a near 40 Bond paired with a 20+ russian spy chick. Which still doesn't exactly compute to me. Carole Bouquet or not.

Maybe I'm too influenced by her role as a bookwormish stalker/ secret admirer from Wicker Park, but the girl... Fuck it, I gotta be optimistic. Yeah, I have to.

I think I qualify as a pretty huge Bond fan around these parts, and I think she's a fine choice. I have yet to be swayed by the fascination with Charlize Theron, who irritates me. Jolie is ungodly sexy, but Bond has enough issues without her.

Rose Byrne is hot, she was hot in "Troy" and yes, much better than Dianne Krueger.

Also, this trend of getting a star to be the Bond girl is relatively new, and as far as I'm concerned, a detriment to the films. Denise Richard? Hale Berry?? They started casting on the basis of name appeal, and not who could play a sexy Bond girl.

I like it that they are keeping it humble. I am all kinds of excited about Daniel Craig, as I think he's going to take it back to the gritty Connery/Dalton mold that Pierce had long ago abandoned.

Um, are you kidding? These guys are terrible. Their scripts kept getting worse and worse, and "Die Another Day" is unforgivable. Each outing they attempted to give Bond some interesting quirk to overcome. In TWINE it was a "serious injury", in DAD it was torture. And in each film they completely ignored it afterwards, glossed over it when it hampered the plot, and generally embarassed themselves. DAD sees Bond basically getting over months of torture with a nice suit and a shave, which is horseshit. TWINE sees him "struggling" with an injury that only flares up with he's pinched just so by Robert Carlyle. Never mind the skiing, fighting, shooting, swinging, and swimming right?

These guys suck. A good script is more than a couple witty lines.

Shouldn't that be the producers had abandoned? By all accounts, he seemed dissatisfied at the recent 007 flicks as anyone.

Well then welcome to my short Bond fans list, sir.

Oh, and I don't think he really abandoned it, it's more like the movies got bigger in some parts (see? that's the great thing about Bondmania: you can even connect the series with Sunset Boulevard). You could find some of that grit in the first halves of GoldenEye and Die Another Day or mostly all of The World Is Not Enough, where the creators are trying to present a weaker, emotionally & physically scarred Bond (remember the arm injury that comes into play?).

Humble approach? Indeed. And I also hope they keep it that way cause I predict the movie is gonna be one huge event that'll be taking many people by surprise.

As for Angelina Jolie, curious how when they made the official Daniel Craig announcement I rewatched that scene in the mostly terrible Tomb Raider when his character is taking a shower and Lara Croft surprises him. At that moment, by watching their interplay, was when I fully trusted the guy as the perfect replacement in the series.

Gritty and humble you say? If only I could confess I slightly prefer Dalton to Connery without getting my Bond card revoked...

I prefer Dalton to Connery. Connery played a good Bond for a bit, then turned into Sean Connery once he became famous. Dalton didn't give a fuck about any of that, and was just into being Bond.

I'm not saying these guys are future Pulitzer Prize winners, but what I find interesting in them is that they tried to deepen a bit more into Bond's emotional weaknesses than it had been previously done in the series, Connery & Dalton serious flicks included.

Does he overcome the arm injury quite easily? Sure. Such as fucking Indiana Jones fights & gets beaten tirelessly through hours. The guy's a hero (not an antihero) after all. Does it gets glossed over? Sure. I think it's more a plot device rather than a plot point. Does it also seem lazy screenwriting to me? Sure, why not? I'd also like my Movie Bond more human after all, but I don't mind the differences with the Novels' Bond, as after 40+ years I've gotten over the fact that I won't ever get the exact same Bond in the two. Really, I don't mind. To me Bond is getting hammered in the balls AND flying to a space station in a fucking space rocket. Why can't they both coexist in their own mediums?

As for torture, it just wasn't a clean shave and a suit, it was also travelling to Cuba to exact revenge on the motherfuckers that doublecrossed him. Later he also gets MI-5 approval? Cool, but the guy just wants to bash the creeps. Maybe that's why he kinda enjoys impaling Zao with a rooflamp and dropping Moon inside a propeller... or maybe because he's Bond too, who knows.

For the record, I love both of Dalton flicks with a passion but I don't think much of You Only Live Twice and Moonraker.

Mr. Bridgen, you are my new doppelganger. Or the Mr. Wint to my Mr. Kidd if you prefer.

For my money, Brosnan and Dalton had one thing in common; their first Bond film was the also the last good one they did. I'm going to be an apologist for Die Another Day, as I feel that, all of its flaws freely admitted, it is still a more entertaining film than the previous Brosnans. I was embarrassed for Michelle Yeoh, as Tomorrow Never Dies was awful in almost every way, including the absolutely painful title (what does "Tomorrow Never Dies" even mean?). It also has the single most ridiculous Bond action sequence (the sideways helicopter bit) since License to Kill's big rig wheelie.

Last year, I bought the big box sets and made my way through the series. As a long-time Bond fan, I was pretty shocked at how few of the movies I actually think are good movies. Many of them work on sheer goofy charm, but the Goldfingers are sadly outnumbered by the Moonrakers.

Of course that's your opinion and everyone's entitled, but I certainly don't think that Dalton was a better Bond. Dalton brought a new seriousness to the role - I'll give him that - which was continued by Brosnan in Goldeneye (his best one of course), but Connery will always be the best Bond in my book.

Although I have to say Diamonds Are Forever is Connery's weakest. Oh, wait a minute, make that Thunderball II (Never Say Never Again).

There's a lot of Bond fans here, it's just not hip right now to be a fan. By the way, I absolutely love The World Is Not Enough. I just had to get that off my chest. It's the best of both Bond worlds. You get some good old school gritty Bond at the beginning and intermittently, and you get the mugging of Roger Moore and the actress that was born to play a nucular physicist, Denise "I can't believe it didn't work out between Charlie and me" Richards. A great villain to boot. That's what I think anyway.

I personally couldn't tell you the difference between Rose and Gabriel Byrne, but I think it's swell that they went with Daniel Craig.

I think The World is Not Enough was fairly interesting, but by no means a great Bond film. I enjoyed Tomorrow Never Dies more in the cinema, but both are let down by a totally pedestrian ending and TWINE gets the Roger Moore award for one of the worst lines ever ("I thought Christmas only came once a year"). The thing with TWINE is that it starts off so well - the chase along the Thames is excellent - and just gets more and more dull as it goes along. They have an excellent villain in Renard and do precisely nothing with him, one of the worst ever Bond girls in Denise Richards (I don't think Bond should ever have American chicks) and some pointless and extremely badly edited action scenes.

The same goes for Die Another Day - ace opening sequence, very little else to recommend it. And again, I thought Halle Berry was a terrible choice.

He did, but in an effort to "save them" singlehandedly, he started getting way too melodramatic and over-the-top with his performances. I like Brosnan, I think he had two very good Bond performances, but he is getting old, and since I've wanted a return to the Dalton mold for a long time, he's definitely not the guy to play in that vein.

Well, I love Bond - ok, I like (maybe) Moore, but love the others - but I approach this new flick with apprehension. As I have the last......... well alot of them.

I have hope that the scaling back they say they want to do will make the movie less goofy than some of it's predecessors. I stop short of saying a little character developement would be good, as that's not really the point, is it?

And I think Craig is a little old at 38 to play Bond starting out, which is what the movie is about, no?

There I said it. Commence stoning.

Rose Byrne is a definite step up from some of the previous choices which have already been pointed out.

Oh, and I find myself rewatching Dalton's two films more than any of the others. I find it hard to say "better than Connery" because in so many ways, Connery created what the screen character is, but Dalton has the advantage of his two Bond performances being absolutely first rate. He got out on top.

Brosnan was great in the first two. TND, for whatever issues it has with being a bit "Die Hard", features some of the best Bond moments in over a decade. The execution of Vincent Shiavelli, the BMW scene with Q, and my favorite, Bond sitting along in the hotel room drinking with his PPK, then having rough sex with Lois.

I like that Craig is, for my money, probably in between Dalton and Brosnan. Not traditionally good-looking (Brosnan was a bit too much what the stereotypical video game rendering of Bond would look like) but handsome. Plus, it's a return to the Bond who scored chicks because he was the nastiest, coolest, most dangerous dude they had ever met.

Think Dalton parachuting onto the boat and saying "Well, I suppose we could fuck, give me 20 minutes, M" vs. Brosnan's "Let's cuddle all night long and loving rub ice on each other's bodies" from TWINE. I think Craig is going to be more of the former. Or at least that's how he comes across.

I actually think that a 20 something Bond would be far more ludicrous. In almost every case, upper echelon special operations guys tend to be older, far more experienced guys. Delta, SAS, these aren't guys out of high school and college, they've been in a while and have loads of experience. 38 as a number sounds older than I think Craig comes across anyway, I thought he was a lot younger than that.

Well, except Fleming himself was recruited into the British Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy in 1939 - at 31. I'm just saying, Bond starting out that old is a problem for me.

I'llhave to look into the book again - it's been too long since I read it - but if I remember correctly, Bond was late twenties (according to many, Bond was born in 1924 and the events of Casino take place, from what I can tell, around the beginning of the 1950's - someone can correct me, but that's how it also seems on wikipedia).

I'm not saying the movies have to reflect the age of Bond exactly, I'm just saying that Craig seems too old.

On the other hand, Bond is pretty timeless for most of the books - somewhere in the late 30's early- 40's so I suppose I'm being anal for no reason...

Regardless of how old he is on paper, I think you'd have a hard time making an argument that Craig seems very much older than Connery, Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan were when they started out. His age is fine. I'm just relieved (and a bit pleasantly surprised) that we haven't heard more fanboy bitching about him being blonde.

Point.

Hmm... hadn't thought about the blonde angle....

I'd better go file a grievence.

Probably because he wasn't blonde in the picture they released.

True enough, though I wouldn't put it by some of the AICN crowd. I don't think he's going to look like the pic they released though seeing as how it was just a quickie done for the announcement and they are only now about to start shooting. I'm glad they are going the "Goldeneye" route and keeping most of the other roles cast with unknowns.

See, merely being "hot" isn't what's required for a Bond film. Back in the day, they would scour the earth to find that one, special, exotic beauty that met the qualifications. They didn't cast Elizabeth Taylor or some other A-list broad, they cast unknowns who you had no preconcieved notions about, and who played as dangerous and exotic.

I think Rachel McAdams is extremely hot. Do I think she can convincingly play a femme fatale in the world of international espionage? No! She's not even the right match for Craig, who already seem too old for her and way out of her league. Thandie Newton did her part already in "M:I-2" and is just okay anyway.

It's Bond, you don't need big stars, they never have.

Oh, and the set pics out this week confirmed what I thought. Craig's hair is slightly darker, sort of a dirty blonde/brown. but not too heavily done, which is a plus. Also, the sort of longer, traditional Bond cut from that audition photo is gone. He's got a shorter "Layer Cake"/"Tomg Raider" cut going on, which makes more sense as he's being recriuited from the military.

Got a link?

Coming Soon had the easiest link, follow the directions and you'll get there.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=13021

And then they'd have to hire an actress to loop all her dialogue. My personal leaning is towards an actress who can convey danger and exoticism through her performance, rather than a model who's unfamiliar enough that exoticism can be projected upon her (or someone like Famke Janssen, who can split the difference).

They would only have to loop dialogue if they hired some chick who can't act, which wasn't the way they did it. They hired actresses from foreign films, unknown to American audiences, thus you almost always got a fresh face. Even recently, Famke Jansen, Izabella Scorupco, Maria Cuccinotta, and Rosamund Pike were unknowns when they played Bond girls.

I concede the point, but my flippant remark was rooted in the extensive amount of voiceover work Nikki van der Zyl did on the early films, up to and including Ursula Andress in Doctor No.

Up to and including Dr. No? Dr. No is the first movie.

As much as we (the Bond fans) would like to see an unknown actress cast, it's highly doubtful.

For one, they've obviously stopped doing that with the recent castings of Halle Berry, Denise Richards and all those other ones listed above which we've already bitched about. But I can bet you that from the Producer's point of view, they are looking at the new Bond and thinking: no one really knows Daniel Criag in America.

They think they'll need to bring aboard a name actress to draw us to the box office and help publicity. Unfortunately they can't be convinced otherwise. While she may not be a huge star, she will be well known enough to headline the picture, which also means they'll probably give her a bigger role in the film.

I think, from the rumblings, that this is what they are attempting. The problem is, from the reality of it, it doesn't look like it's working. They started throwing out names like Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron, the A-list of the A-list. Then we started hearing Natasha Henstridge and Thandie Newton, heading towards the B-list. Now they are shooting, with the role still uncast, and we're hearing people like Rose Byrne, just slightly above "unknown".

Personally, I don't know why they don't just cast Sienna Miller. She's hot, has a chemistry with Craig, she's tabloid worthy without being too much of a dominating presence, and unlike Newton/Byrne and some of these names, I could see actually buy her as a femme fatale. "Layer Cake" was as good a Bond girl audition for her as it was a 007 audition for Craig.