I am a HUGE James Bond film fan, and plan to see "Casino Royale" very soon!

(And, to see who the Bond girls are)

Saw Casino Royale last night.

How many endings did this movie have? ;)

Loved it, loved it. I loved Die Another Day, that aside, CR's the best Bond in a LONG time.

9 Bornieos out of 10

I saw Casino Royale again the other night, and I guess I’m getting a little GeminiCricketish. I was kinda bugged by all the product placement this time.

Perhaps because I was looking at the displays on my first viewing, but I didn’t previously notice that every handheld device was a Sony Ericcson, the product name prominently placed above every cell phone and PDA screen -- projected, oh about 30-feet wide in a theater. I wouldn’t so much mind if all of Bond’s equipment was Sony. It could acceptably be the supplier of electronics to MI6. But why was Vesper’s cell a Sony, and the bad guys computer a Vaio? Bah.

I also wouldn’t mind product placement so much if the entire world being depicted had real brands. But in the airport scene, for example, the target airplane was from a fictitious airline, and the terrorist-hijacked fuel truck was from a phony oil company. I looked for real airline planes in the backgrounds of shots ... but only found Virgin Atlantic (presumably something to do with Richard Branson’s cameo - going through airport security).

(Actually, though I thought it was a fake airline - - there were lots of CSA planes visible. That’s a Czech airline ... that has no flights to Miami - - but lots to and from Prague, where the airport scenes were really filmed).


* * * * * * *

I suppose product placement goes hand-in-hand with James Bond. I picked up an interesting tidbit from the commentary on the Goldfinger DVD. Seems that the director, Guy Hamilton, showed up on set one morning to find producer "Cubby" Broccoli personally placing tons of Gillette products in the tiny aircraft lavatory set used for the scene where Bond freshens up on his been-kidnapped flight from Switzerland to Kentucky. Hamilton was a little peeved because the Gillette crap was all over the place, and was ridiculous.

Hamilton then made a deal with Broccoli ... the producer would present Hamilton with a list of all the companies he’d made product deals with for any particular film, and the director would fit in whatever he could without negatively affecting the story or the believability of the surroundings.
I’m not sure how successful that plan was for the remainder of the series, and certainly Hamilton was not the director on all the subsequent Bond films. Personally, I think they were pushing the credibility limit in Casino Royale with all the Sony crap. Then again, I certainly didn’t mind Aston Martins popping up all over the place.

Maybe I'm just used to Hong Kong cinema where the product placers get an ad in the credits.

As long as they're not holding it to the camera, pausing, and saying "on the way home from the theater, why don't you stop by your local retailer and buy some Bose speakers..." then I'm ok with it.

Alternatively, think about it as historical archiving. You know how looking at ads from the 1890s is something of a fascinating look into the past? Well, someday Casino Royale will be a look into the technology of a century earlier. Similarly, as the world changes, it makes the film ever more a product of its era and those details become more cherishable.

Saw the flick on opening weekend. Loved it. As a 40-year-old Bond fan, I spent my early teen years thinking that Roger Moore, the then-current Bond, was the coolest. That lasted for longer than I'd probably like to admit, but I discovered the original novels around the same time I had the opportunity to own copies of the Connery Bonds on tape, and then LaserDisc. Connery replaced Moore for best movie Bond, but my favorite 007 was the one who was in the books. Subsequent actors have all been measured against Moore and Connery, but not until Casino Royale did I feel comfortable comparing a Bond actor to Fleming's spy. Did I mention that I loved this movie?

In the recent past, I'd leave a Bond movie and come home and fire up the DVD player and watch "You Only Live Twice" or "Diamond Are Forever" to remind myself how neat the series had been. This time, I had the urge to come home and re-read the original novel. Unfortunately, my copy of the book is in a box in the basement of parents' house in Leonia, NJ.

So I have a question for someone with a copy of the book in their library:

I know that many of the plot details came from the book, down to Bond's drink invention and even the line. But I can't remember how the book ended.

Never read the book. Sorry. Read only one. Don't remember which. Didn't much care for it.


Different person now. Bond mania currently in me. Must find Fleming.

The last words of the book are:



Put in spoiler since iSm is apparently going to read the book.

Thank you very much, Alex.