Wall Street Journal profiles one-time 007 villain Michael Lonsdale

The Wall Street Journal’s arts section, in a story dated Dec. 3 but already online, has a profile of actor Michael Lonsdale, who played 007 nemesis Hugo Drax in Moonraker.

Here’s an excerpt:

At 79 years old, Mr. Lonsdale has played the gamut of religious roles —priests, abbots, cardinals, inquisitors—as well as countless aristocrats ranging from English lords to Louis XVI. Also a man of the theater, his circle of friends has included literary heavyweights like Marguerite Duras, Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, whose works he performed on stage in Paris in the 1960s. Perfectly bilingual, he moves easily between the bizarre shoe salesman in François Truffaut’s “Stolen Kisses” and the campy bearded villain in the James Bond classic, “Moonraker”

There’s a lot of detail about Lonsdale’s career and current projects. To read the story, JUST CLICK HERE.

And here’s a quick look back to the 1979 007 film where Lonsdale delivers a short speech to his minions on a space station while Bond (Roger Moore), Holly Goodhead (Lois Chiles) and Jaws (Richard Kiel) look on.

MGM watch: bankruptcy court approves studio’s reorganization plan

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., home studio of the James Bond movies, today won the approval of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York for MGM’s reorganization plan.

MGM said in a statement that it expects to exit bankruptcy in mid-December. Studio lenders will exchange about $5 billion in debt and interest for a stake in the new MGM, that will be run by Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, the co-founders of Spyglass Entertainment.

The development comes less than a month after MGM filed for bankruptcy. In its filings, MGM said it wants to take Agent 007 off hiatus and have Bond 23 out in November 2012. MGM and Eon Productions jointly control the 007 franchise, and Eon said in April it was suspending development of the film while MGM worked through its financial troubles.

For more, you can read a story at Bloomberg.com BY CLICKING HERE. To read Reuters’s story (the news service that once employed 007 creator Ian Fleming), just CLICK HERE.