Carlos Lopez, mayor of Chilean town Sierra Gorda, was arrested for trespassing on the set of Quantum of Solace. The incredibly stupid part of this story is the number of headlines claiming Daniel Craig “fled in terror.” Because seriously, you’re charged at by a trespasser in a speeding car, and stalkers, y’know, kill people sometimes, [...]

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Today MSNBC discusses the great card games in great movies. Casino Royale ranks #3 after The Cincinatti Kid and Rounders. Since I haven’t seen the other two movies, I can’t fairly assess the ranking.

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Premiere Magazine was kind enough to contact me and let me know about their fascinating interview with Mathieu Amalric.
A lot of the “reveals” are already known to the Bond fan who follows every scrap of news: Quantum of Solace picks up 30 minutes after Casino Royale ends. Camille (Olga Kurylenko) has a personal grudge [...]

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Today’s birthday boy is Oscar-winner Paul Haggis. He is the only Bond screenplay writer to have won a Best Screenplay Oscar (for Crash—he was also nominated for Letters From Iwo Jima and Million Dollar Baby).
Haggis, of course, co-wrote Casino Royale with Purvis & Wade. But if you know the Bond films well, you know [...]

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The actor who played Villiers in Casino Royale is 34 years old today. CR threw away continuity on M’s staff by having Villiers replace Tanner, Moneypenny, or Robinson. Now QOS will throw out continuity by leaving Villiers behind. But hurrah! Tanner will return (not played by Michael Kitchen, though. I like Michael Kitchen.)

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In my request for post ideas, Jay asked about the idea of scaling the movies back up again. The process of scaling up and down is interesting one.
The first scale-up in the Bond franchise was the third movie: Goldfinger. Terence Young’s strong directorial stamp on the first two films gave us clean, relatively low-key spy [...]

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…almost missed this. My grand birthday spreadsheet is just being finished up tonight, and I find that today is Simon Abkarian’s birthday. Ah, Pisces, the most emotional sign of the Zodiac (with Cancer, that is).
Abkarian, of course, is the hapless Dimitrios in Casino Royale. Cheated on by his wife, lousy poker player, poor loser.
You may [...]

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CBn has a terrific little interview with Richard Sammel, who played Gettler in Casino Royale (the guy with the eyepatch glasses who gets “nailed” in Venice). The interview is an English translation of a German language interview from BKD (Bondklub Deutschland—a German James Bond fan club).
Here’s my favorite quote:
The benefit from the movie’s [...]

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The website After Elton posted its choices for the best male movie costumes of all time. Coming in #3 was 007’s blue briefs from Casino Royale. And why not? Has ever a man looked finer?

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In the novel Casino Royale, Bond thinks about his preference for dating married women, because they have similar needs to keep things simple and have a life apart from him. In the movie Casino Royale, which, of course, sought to get back to Fleming’s roots, Daniel Craig’s Bond expresses a similar sentiment:
Vesper Lynd: Am I [...]

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