Thank you for visiting with us — we hope you enjoy the time you spend here. Be sure to check out some of the links to our friends and colleagues. To contact the webmaster, email here.
Barbara Walters, one of the most famous American news interviewers of her era, has died at 93, according to multiple reports, including an obituary published by The Washington Post.
Walters over her career interviewed major newsmakers and celebrities. With the latter, one of her most notable interviews aired on ABC in 1987 with actor Sean Connery, the first film James Bond actor.
In that interview, Walters famously asked the actor about striking women.
Citing an earlier interview, Walters quoted Connery as saying, “You don’t do it with a clenched fist, you do it with an open hand.”
“I haven’t changed my opinion,” Connery responded.
“You haven’t?” Walters said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“You think it’s good to slap a woman?” the interviewer asked.’
“I don’t think it’s good,” Connery said. “I think it depends on the circumstances.” It would be one of the most famous interviews of the actor’s career.
Walters was one of the first women to make an impact on U.S. television news shows. She was a co-host on NBC’s Today show in the 1960s. ABC hired her away in the 1970s as co-anchor of that network’s evening news show. ABC also produced entertainment specials where she interviewed celebrities. At one point, NBC’s Saturday Night Live had comic actress Gilda Radner doing a parody of Walters dubbed “Barbara Wa-Wa.”
When ABC hired Walters, she was paid $1 million a year. Walters soon was almost as famous as those she interviewed.
Here is how The Washington Post summarized her career:
Ms. Walters repeatedly enjoyed the last guffaw over doubters and detractors during a career spanning five decades. She shattered glass ceilings, sending shards into many male egos. She became the most durable and versatile TV host of her era, as well as a celebrity more controversial than many of the ones she covered.
Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (as devised by the late Paul Baack)
There has been plenty of coverage how Henry Cavill is being retired as Superman. Some James Bond fans still hold out (the fading) hope the 39-year-old Cavill could still be cast as James Bond. But that may be a long shot at this point.
Meanwhile, this week, the Collider website published an article that The Man From U.N.C.LE. was “the Henry Cavill franchise that should have been.”
Background: Cavill was a late casting as Napoleon Solo for the U.N.C.L.E. movie (filmed in the fall of 2013, but not released until August 2015).
Until Cavill came aboard, the filmmakers envisioned an older Solo paired with a younger Illya Kuryakin. Armie Hammer was cast as Illya first. Eventually, Guy Ritchie took over the project and his first choice was Brad Pitt as an older Solo. For a time, Tom Cruise was in the picture, but he went back to Paramount’s Mission: Impossible franchise.
When Cavill was cast as Solo, the concept of the original series was re-established: Two leads of about the same age.
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie was not a financial success. It divided fans of the original 1964-68 television series. Some loved it. Others despised it, saying it was U.N.C.L.E. in name only.
Regardless, there is a “what could have been” vibe associated with all this. We’ll likely never know what could have been.
The year of the 60th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise is drawing to an end. What happens next?
The thing is, nobody outside of Eon Productions (and their film partners Amazon and MGM) really knows.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So it is with the future of the cinematic James Bond.
One U.K. tabloid, Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, claims that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, has the inside track to be the next cinematic Bond. But nobody else has confirmed that. For now, The Sun is alone, out on that limb.
One Bond fan YouTube Channel has suggested Christopher Nolan has an inside track to be Bond 26’s director. But we’ve heard that song before.
One Spanish-language Bond fan site once claimed in 2017 that Nolan would direct Bond 25/No Time to Die. This week, that same site did a gag post saying it had confirmed Taylor-Johnson would be the new film Bond. Dec. 28 is the Spanish equivalent of April Fools. You might think that’s funny but it’s not a way to enhance your credibility.
All of this reflects a thirst, a hunger, for ANYTHING about ACTUAL, REAL information about the future of the cinematic 007.
Barbara Broccoli, the boss of Eon Productions, said repeatedly it would be at least two years before Bond 26 would start filming. Supposedly, Eon is doing a deep dive into Bond’s movie future.
Broccoli’s father, Albert R. Broccoli, once (between May 1985 and July 1987) changed creative direction and cast not one, but two Bond actors (Pierce Brosnan first and when that didn’t work out, Timothy Dalton).
Is this a serious deliberation? Of course. But it’s not rocket science. James Bond is James Bond. The character has been adapted to the times on numerous occasions.
There has long been fan interest in the idea of Christopher Nolan directing a James Bond film. This week, The Bond Geek channel on YouTube brought up the idea again.
Nolan is a self-confessed Bond fan. Some bits from his trilogy of Batman movies (2005, 2008, 2012) have homages to the Bond film series. So did his 2010 movie Inception, where one segment seemed based on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
What’s more, Nolan’s name comes up every so often in connection with Bond movies.
It happened in 2013 when Nolan was mentioned as a possible director for Bond 24 (finally titled SPECTRE).
It happened again in December 2017, when a fan website said Nolan was “more than likely” to direct Bond 25, finally titled No Time to Die. I’d provide the link, except the fan site apparently took the article down.
As the blog has written before, the Bond series itself has been affected by Nolan. 2012’s Skyfall had Nolan inflences. Director Sam Mendes said so.
That influence continued with SPECTRE, which had Hoyte Van Hoytema as director of photography and Lee Smith as editor.
If you bring Nolan inside the Eon 007 tent, there are other issues. With Nolan, you typically also get the involvement of his production company, Syncopy. Nolan gets a producer’s credit. So does his wife, Emma Thomas.
As usual, we’ll see. Nolan’s next film, Oppenheimer, is scheduled for release in July 2023. Here’s the trailer:
The accompanying graphic has been the blog’s annual Christmas/holiday season greeting since 2011. It’s a tradition and things wouldn’t be the same without it.
This year saw the 60th anniversary of the James Bond film franchise. Dr. No debuted on Oct. 5, 1962. It was the start of a long run, albeit with various bumps along the way. It was also a year with fans wondering what is coming next and when concerning Bond 26.
The graphic used in this post was designed by Paul Baack (1957-2017). It’s just one sample of his artistic handiwork. He designed it when the blog was part of the Her Majesty’s Secret Servant website (1997-2014).
To the blog’s readers: Thanks for being here. If you’ve got some time off, enjoy it.
Ian Fleming Publications sent an email this week to various James Bond websites saying it is getting ready for a big 2023.
Next year marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel by Ian Fleming. IFP previously has said it will publish new editions of the Fleming originals.
IFP, in this week’s email, said a 70th-anniversary logo will be unveiled in the new year. A teaser version (mostly obscured) was included. Also coming out in early 2023 will be the new covers for the Fleming titles.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, photographed by Michael Reed
Michael Reed, who photographed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, has died at 93, according to various James Bond websites.
Reed was director of photography on a Bond film with various “one and done” participants.Star George Lazenby and director Peter Hunt were the others. Hunt had previously edited and/or was second unit director on the five previous 007 movies made by Eon Productions. But Hunt would never direct another Bond film.
First-time director Hunt turned to Reed, a veteran of British television, to photograph Majesty’s. Reed had photographed episodes of The Saint with Roger Moore, including a two-part story that was re-edited into The Fiction Makers. Hunt also hired another British TV veteran, John Glen, who had edited episodes of Danger Man, to be editor and second unit director.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had a different look than previous Eon Bond films. A recurring motif was the use of the color purple in a casino sequence and later at Blofeld’s Switzerland laboratory.
After OHMSS, Reed’s many credits included episodes of The New Avengers, a 1970s revival of the 1960s TV show. Another Bond alumnus, art director Syd Cain, also worked on The New Avengers.
Lazenby, on his official Twitter feed, wrote a tribute to Reed:
Sad to hear that Michael Reed, who photographed my Bond movie, has passed away. He literally made me – and everyone else in OHMSS – look good. I remember his calm presence on set. His work will endure. Condolences to his family. Love George xxx https://t.co/G8rlhMvxSX
Tom Cruise is ending 2022 with one box office triumph, Top Gun: Maverick. But as the year nears its end, he is hyping his seventh Mission: Impossible film, due out in July 2023.
Cruise and his M:I studio, Paramount, have shown behind-the-scenes footage for the signature stunt of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One. In that scene (filmed in 2020), Cruise’s Ethan Hunt drives a motorcycle off a cliff.
Of course, that evokes a stunt from 1995’s GoldenEye, near the end of that Bond film’s pre-credits sequence. Except, this time, Cruise himself is doing the stunt. In a video that runs more than nine minutes, Cruise says it’s the most dangerous stunt attempted in a Mission: Impossible film.
Here’s the video:
“I’ve been wanting to do it since I was a little kid,” the 60-year-old Cruise says in the video. “It all comes down to one thing — the audience.” According to the video, Cruise did at least six such jumps.
Toward the end of the video, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie adds this note: “The only thing that scares me is what we have planned for Mission 8.” Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part Two is due out in 2024.
At this rate, Daniel Craig’s goodbye from the role of James Bond will be as long as the running time of the five movies (which included the three longest Bond films) where he played 007.
Variety this week came out with yet another story where the 54-year-old actor says he wanted to stop playing James Bond.
Daniel Craig says he has no regrets about leaving James Bond behind and has revealed that he discussed killing the character with franchise producer Barbara Broccoli.
“No, none at all,” Craig said when asked by Martha Kearney on BBC Radio 4’s “Best of Today” podcast. “I had an incredibly fortunate 17 years of my life making this. I literally want to spend the next 20 years of my life trying to unhook it all and try and put it into a place because it was incredible. I left it where I wanted it to be. And that I was given the chance to do that with the last movie.”
Which is a variation of comments Craig has said in multiple interviews since the long-delayed No Time to Die finally came out in the fall of 2021.
We get it. According to Craig, he wanted to kill off his version of Bond very early into his tenure. Fine. If true, he got his way.
Why is this still a thing?
Partially, it’s because there isn’t much real Bond film news. So, naturally, entertainment reporters keep picking over the scabs of the recent past.
Eon Productions has been doing a victory lap since No Time to Die came out.
Victory lap? More like a victory marathon. But you get the idea.
When last we heard from Eon boss Barbara Broccoli, the production company was still figuring out where to go next. Whatever.
Craig, after cashing in hefty paychecks for Bond, is cashing in even more hefty paychecks from Netflix for playing his Knives Out character. Good for you, Daniel. Being an actor can be a hard way to make a living. At this stage, Craig has made enough money for multiple generations of his family.
In American football, players who score a touchdown spike the ball in the end zone. Figuratively, Craig and Barbara Broccoli are running from end zone to end zone to spike the ball.
It would be nice if Variety, or other major entertainment news outlets, could let us know about the future of Bond films. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
The Spy Command 