islanded in a stream of stars

First off, many happy returns to latina_business!

I was tempted to make this a real post about what I've been doing the past few weeks but as I'm lazy and there's way too much to talk about, I'm putting it off.

So instead, I present some random thoughts on the upcoming Casino Royale: (more of a rant, to be honest)

What is with the 800 millionth Felix Leiter being brought back? OK, so this is theoretically pre-Licence to Kill, but still, the character had but a fairly brief appearance in the Casino Royale novel; there's no real need to reintroduce him unless he's going to actually be a continuing player in future Bond movies. But the filmmakers haven't been too kind to Leiter; wisely, they've given him a break after Licence to Kill. Leiter's role in the movie has increasingly shrunk over time (with the exception of Licence to Kill) to the point where the modern audience has no idea who the heck Leiter is. Leiter is probably Bond's closest professional friend in the literary canon, butif they're going to do a John Terry as Leiter in the Living Daylights kind of deal (Remember him? Exactly.) then they might as well get some random CIA agent named Marcus Dixon and put him on extraneous wiretapping duty. Casino Royale really isn't the best vehicle for developing the Bond/Leiter relationship.

And to a lesser extent, why are they bringing back Villiers, who's essentially the stand-in for M in For Your Eyes Only because Bernard Lee died shortly after Moonraker? Yay for the whole blast from the past thing, but it's kind of weird to do that sort of resurrection when all of the original actors are gone. I'd rather have Robinson of the Brosnan era MI6 staff come back-yeah, he's not original Fleming but he's better than the vast majority of unmemorable MI6 background staffers/allies of recent years. He'snot exactly the most recognizable of Bond's superiors-seriously, more people would probably remember General Gogol or even the Minister of Defence from the late 70's-80's.

And, um, isn't Mathis supposed to be French? Or did I just not read the book closely enough...perhaps he's Swiss/Italian?

On the note of old-school MI6 staff members-oh where oh where is MONEYPENNY?! How can you have an old school Bond movie without Moneypenny? If you can't have that character back, then the least you can do is bring in May, Bond's literary housekeeper...

And why is the only old-school Bond alumni besides Judi Dench (as M, naturally) Tsai Chin?! You probably have no idea who she is anyway-she's the Chinese girl from the pre-titles sequence of You Only Live Twice. Actually, I made an icon of her the other day from virtually the only non-screencap image of her in existence: .

Like Anthony Chinn (no relation, as far as I know of) and many other various bit part Bond alumni she's taking on a totally unrelated role in this film, as far as I can tell. If the filmmakers were trying to go for a vaguely recognizable cameo appearance, they're really targeting the diehard fans.

Though it is pretty cool that they have a relative unknown as Vesper. I must confess that I secretly hoped that Mia Maestro woul get the part-yeah, Vesper's British through and through though she can speak French "like a native," but she seemed so well-qualified for the role in acting ability as well as physical appearance (re: Fleming's description of the character). Hopefully Eva Green can act; I've never seen her in anything before.

Thank God David Arnold is laying off on the techno wall of sound approach for Casino Royale. Hopefully this film will provide him with an opportunity to show off some strong dramatic writing for the Bond/Vesper relationship, i.e. musically develop Bond's relationships and actually have the music reflect the complexities of the storyline after failing to do so for the World is Not Enough. I've always been disappointed with the lack of development of Elektra's theme from TWINE.


Edit: So much for continuity in Bond's past...the current filmmakers seem to be of the persuasion that Bond was lying to impress Moneypenny in You Only Live Twice about doing a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge. At least the website is pretty accurate to Fleming's background of Bond, although they don't seem to mention that Bond owned his first Bentley at age 7 or so!

(I just made up the age, but he was no more than a teen if we are to take Fleming literally.)

Second edit: I lied. If you look under the military records of the online dossier, it does say that he got the first in Oriental languages but also claims that he took classes at Oxford (?!)