<![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, james bond]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: defamer, james bond]]> http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/jamesbond http://gawker.com/tag/defamer/jamesbond <![CDATA[Matt Damon's Turn-Offs Include Republicans, Spies Who SAY They'll Call But Don't]]> Fresh from his victory over dinosaur-hating Sarah Palin, Matt Damon has issued two new challenges: one to be settled with words, the other with close-quarters combat.

The actor gave an interview to the Miami Herald ostensibly to promote a long-running PBS series about the environment that he narrates (who knew?), but which actually served as a platform for Damon to launch a new host of feuds. After calling deposed New York Times columnist William Kristol an "idiot," Big Hollywood mastermind Andrew Breitbart scrambled in to offer $100,000 to Damon should he debate Kristol in a public forum, which is certainly the best possible use for a spare hundred grand in today's economic climate. Then, Damon went after 007 himself:

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive.

"Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon's spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he'd do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they're doing, and they're going to keep doing it.''

To be fair, the Bond producers did experiment with adding children and extra fingers to the series, though neither note panned out. Perhaps if they introduced a Palin-pushing columnist as Bond's archnemesis—"K," shall we say?—Damon would finally be willing to overlook Bond's caddish ways.

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<![CDATA[Second Bond Girl Reveals Superfluous Body Parts, Childhood Spent in Fridge]]> Now that the Communist Party has gone after Bond girl Olga Kurylenko for becoming "movie kept girl of capitalist super stud," the actress has been freed to divulge all about her humble, Socialist upbringing. Just how humble was it? Well, as Kurylenko tells Jimmy Kimmel, she was kept locked in a fridge until she reached maturity (in Soviet Russia, you see, fridge owns you).

Then, when pressed by Kimmel about injuries suffered while making the film, Kurylenko one-upped her co-star Gemma Arterton by claiming she lost not just a superfluous sixth finger but a third arm as well! Hmmm, a third arm... there's gotta be a 007 sexual innuendo in there somewhere...

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<![CDATA[It's All Bond All the Time as 'Solace' Forced Down America's Throat]]> Welcome back to Defamer Attractions, your weekly guide to everything new, noteworthy and cash-hoarding at the movies. That latter qualifier is the centerpiece of today's new openings, with the 007 franchise facing virtually no competition outside a few escaped zoo animals from last week. But you still have options, including some critics' choice for this year's best picture and the usual harvest of fresh DVD's. As always, our opinions are our own, but their hauling power is unmatched and they seat millions comfortably. Take a test drive after the jump?

WHAT'S NEW: Quantum of Solace has the wide-release slot to itself, where Daniel Craig's brooding Bond will likely crest above $60 million — by far the highest opening gross of any 007 film to date. We'll call it for $63.7 million despite some pull from leftovers Madagascar 2 and Role Models, themselves expecting $40 million and $10 million respectively in their second weekends.

Your options are a lot better when avoiding the multiplex in LA: Jean-Claude Van Damme's meta-self-biopic JCVD is opening, along with the almost universally acclaimed Catherine Deneuve/Mathieu Amalric dramedy A Christmas Tale. Also: The Alphabet Killers, featuring Eliza Dushku as a police detective (!); the explicit gay Israeli romantic comedy Antarctica; the talky Afghanistan war indie B.O.H.I.C.A. (Army slang for "Bend Over Here it Comes Again"); the Liberian repression doc Pray the Devil Back to Hell; the Jewish basketball chronicle The First Basket; and a new adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun.

THE BIG LOSER: Aside from the glut of indies above, chasing scraps from art-house audiences on their way to DVD — and Soul Men continuing to underperform with $2.2 million or so — today's slate seems to be pretty insulated from disaster. Everyone wins!

THE UNDERDOG: Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is said to have made the best film of his career with Slumdog Millionaire, about a winning 18-year-old contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Except the host thinks he's cheating; he knows too much for a Mumbai slum kid, and his eventual grilling at the hands of the police reveals a sort of Dickens-meets-Bollywood trajectory of lessons learned, knowledge gained ad love lost throughout his youth. Rhapsodizing critics are pushing it for a Best Picture nomination, which, if the Oscar witches at Fox Searchlight have anything to say about it, it will probably receive. But it will need Little Miss Sunshine/Juno traction at the box office, and on 10 screens this weekend, that would probably mean a per-screen average of at least $12,000 to start. Like its hero, we think it's got a good shot.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the gay Hutt-starring Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Takeshi Miike's mystifying Sukiyaki Western Django; and complete-series box sets of both The Sopranos and The Cosby Show.

So is it Bond or nothing for you? Are you saving seats on the Slumdog Millionaire bandwagon? Or is The Clone Wars badness just too tempting to ignore any longer? Be honest! You're among friends.

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<![CDATA[ License to Kill? Yet another delicious dish...]]> License to Kill? Yet another delicious dish to add to the all-you-can-eat James Bond Minutiae Buffet: 5 Bond Girls Who Died After Wearing A Bikini. "[O]ut of 11 Bond girls who had 'bikini moments,'" we've learned, "five died before the end of the film. That’s 45 percent, making the wearing of a two-piece bathing suit in the company of James Bond just about the most dangerous activity a woman could engage in anywhere on the planet at any time in history." Not so fast! They could always work with Alan Ball. [Spout Blog]

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<![CDATA[A Cavalcade Of 'Bond' Sexual Double-Entendres]]> Quantum of Solace opens tomorrow, and will likely draw out every stripe of James Bond fan. (Except the George Lazenby contingent, who all these years later still feel the On Her Majesty's Secret Service and The Kentucky Fried Movie star was wrongly stripped of his double-o status.) But as audiences thrill to the secret agent's adventures battling the nefarious Dr. Heinrick Discord and his plans to detonate the planet using a sympathy-powered nuclear device, some of the touchstones of the Bond brand—the gadgets, the martinis, and, most of all, the cringe-worthy double-entendres—will be nowhere on display.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore has recently voiced his disappointment over the character's devolution into a monosyllabic id, lumbering around hotel lobbies and breaking necks in skimpy gay swimwear. "My Bond," he said wistfully, "was a lover and a giggler." Yes, we remember him well—so it's in his honor that we dedicate the above montage we call Five Decades of James Bond Sex Puns. We hope it Moonrakes your Octopussies off. (Thanks to Nick McGlynn for putting this together, and Maxim for finding the clips.)

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<![CDATA[Ex-Bond Wishes Daniel Craig Was More of a 'Lover and a Giggler']]> Now that Daniel Craig's second turn as James Bond has been threatened by critics, the Communist party, and a diaper-craving Paul Haggis, it almost seems unfair to keep piling on. However, nobody's told 81-year-old Roger Moore to hold his tongue, and the former 007 (perhaps peeved that his general standing as "second-best Bond" is in danger of being usurped by Craig) has weighed in with his thoughts on the franchise's direction to Britain's Daily Mail:

'I am happy to have done [the series], but I'm sad that it has turned so violent,' Moore says.

'That's keeping up with the times, it's what cinema-goers seem to want and it's proved by the box-office figures,' Moore said in an interview about his memoir, My Word is My Bond.

...While making The Man With the Golden Gun, director Guy Hamilton wanted Bond to be tougher and had him threaten to break Maud Adams' character's arm to get information, he writes.

'I suggested my Bond would have charmed the information out of her by bedding her first. My Bond was a lover and a giggler, but I went along with Guy,' the British actor wrote.

Though Haggis couldn't get the idea of a Bond baby past Daniel Craig, we would have loved to see him pitch a scene where 007 threatens a global supervillain not with a Walther PPK but with an unexpected, high-pitched giggle, eventually capping off Quantum of Solace with a nightgown-clad pillow fight at M's office (oh, the hair-braiding that would ensue!).

[Photo Credit: AP]

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<![CDATA[Is An Obama World Ready For A Black 007 Or A Bootylicious Wonder Woman?]]> As exit strategies go, Daniel Craig's long view on stepping away from James Bond is the most progressive we've encountered in some time: At a Quantum of Solace press conference last week in Rome, Craig suggested that Barack Obama's election win had perhaps laid the groundwork for a black 007. Admittedly, we hadn't yet considered the "action-movie franchise" component of Obama's social influence, but at least one critic opened the discussion online — and this only days after Beyoncé Knowles made a public appeal for the role of Wonder Woman in the long-delayed (and presumed dead) comic-book adaptation. And so begins America's next essential civil rights debate: Have our blockbuster heroes moved beyond race?

Clearly it depends on whom you ask. By at least one person's standards Batman is already Turkish, and Hancock recently depicted cinema's first drunk, misanthropic superhero as a black dude living on the streets. Global audiences threw $624 million at Will Smith in the latter film, and according to Craig, may be color-blind enough to greet a black Bond with similar largesse:

"After Barack Obama's victory I think we might have reached the moment for a coloured 007. I think the role could easily be played by a black actor, because the character created by Ian Fleming in the '50s has undergone a great deal of evolution and continues to be updated."

Yes, he said "coloured," it's how they roll in the UK, calm down. Craig noted as well that the politically incorrect (at best) Fleming probably wouldn't approve were he alive — a qualification hardly as significant as whether or not viewers who voted in a black president would approve. And even that is an impossible dynamic to parse considering how — if we are the "changed" nation we say we are — Obama's victory owed more to economic and political factors (not to mention pure timing) than the color of his skin. Do we really think we've "reached the moment," or will we only know when the right black Bond comes along?

Beyonce's Wonder Woman scenario is simultaneously simple and more complex. Moviegoers and critics were decidedly stingy to Halle Berry's Catwoman, yielding only $82 million in 2004. Warner Bros., which released Catwoman and whose president Jeff Robinov drew fire last year after allegedly suggesting the studio was done with female leads, has Wonder Woman in limbo (along with Joel Silver) since Joss Whedon abandoned it last year.

So that settled it, we thought, until Beyoncé came along — appropriately Amazonian and looking for her next opportunity coming off her turn as Etta James in the forthcoming Cadillac Records.

"I want to do a superhero movie, and what would be better than Wonder Woman? It would be great. And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right? [...]

"After doing these roles that were so emotional I was thinking to myself, 'OK, I need to be a superhero.' [...] Although, when you think about the psychology of the heroes in the films these days, they are still a lot of work, of course, and emotional. But there's also an action element that I would enjoy."

"It's time for that, right?" Is it? Seriously, we're asking: Is it time for an epochal presidential election to influence Hollywood casting? This town may have helped get Obama elected, but does it have the balls to prove it wasn't a fluke? And are women invited to the party?

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<![CDATA[How 007 Barely Avoided a Paul Haggis-Sired 'Bond Baby']]> Though Casino Royale provided the James Bond franchise with a rebooted reservoir of goodwill, director Marc Forster says that the follow-up, Quantum of Solace, almost took things in a perilous, Mutt Williams-ish direction. Speaking to New York, Forster detailed how Bond producers clashed with screenwriter Paul Haggis when the Crash scripter wanted to add one considerably more kindergarten-friendly element to the film:

"Haggis had an idea they weren't fond of, and I didn't know if it would work or not," says Forster. "The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there. It wasn't anything to insult the franchise. But they felt it wasn't particularly Bond — him looking for the kid. I think Paul thought he just leaves the kid, he doesn't deal with it. But [the producers] thought that would be really nasty, too, because Bond was an orphan himself. If he would find a kid, would he just leave it? They were so vehemently against it. That was the only time I saw, really, 'No, we can't do that.' They said, 'Once he finds the kid, Bond can't just leave the kid. It's not right.'"

Could Bond really have weathered the change from secret agent to absentee surrogate father? We have a hard time believing that Bond would lift a finger for a bratty British tyke, but that's OK — his Bond girl has several fingers to spare.

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<![CDATA[Daniel Craig Just Can't Catch a Break With The New Bond Girls]]> The typical formula of two pliant Bond girls per movie tends to serve the 007 franchise well, as in Casino Royale, where Daniel Craig's first at-bat was supported by striking work from Eva Green and that other one. For the new Quantum of Solace, though, things seem to have gone haywire — almost as though it were planned by some shadowy, nefarious league pulling the strings of Her Majesty's empire! First, Bond girl Gemma Arterton unnerved fans with the bizarre revelation that she was born with six fingers, and now female lead Olga Kurylenko is... well, we'll let the Communist Party give you the details:

The Communist Party in St. Petersburg says Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian-born model who plays a Bolivian agent in the latest Bond film, "Quantum of Solace," has betrayed her roots.

"In the name of all communists we appeal to you, prodigal daughter of poor Ukraine and deserter of Slavic world," the party said in an open letter dated Oct. 21 and posted on their Web site Friday.

The Soviet Union "gave you free education, free medical care but nobody knew you would commit an act of intellectual and moral betrayal that you would become a movie kept girl of Bond, who in his movies kills hundreds of Soviet people and citizens of other socialist countries: Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans, Chinese and Nicaraguans," the party said.

Sergei Malenkovich, head of the party's regional organization, told The Associated Press..."In this movie they wanted to show that a Ukrainian girl sleeps with an American. It's a part of information and psychological war."

Sure, Bond is actually British, not American, but we can understand how a minor detail like that would get lost amidst the waves of devastation and shame washing (equally) over all the deserted Slavs. For her own sake, we hope that Kurylenko will renounce her status as a "movie kept girl of Bond" before she suffers a tragic, 007-worthy fate as her nude body is recovered from the center of a sinister series of Russian nesting dolls.

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<![CDATA[Bond Star Daniel Craig Lands Lifetime Aston Martin Privileges]]> Despite his record of Aston abuse, current James Bond actor Daniel Craig has been granted lifetime privileges to swing by the Aston Martin factory any time he likes and take the car of his choice out for a spin. Want to borrow the test track for a bit? No problem. Of course, Craig says he has no interest in actually buying an Aston since parking in London is such a bear. Best to take the Tube. While we admire AM's PR gesture, we wonder if it wouldn't have been more laudable to pick someone lesser from the movie crew, like a key grip or best boy. You know, someone who can't afford to buy pretty much any Aston Martin he wants already. [Motor Authority]

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<![CDATA[James Bond Curse Extends to Early 'Quantum of Solace' Reviews]]> The first reviews of Quantum of Solace are in, a mixed lot providing a mostly underwhelmed response to a shorter (in running time, not baby-blue-mankini hemlines) Bond film. Bottom line: Solace is packed with brooding, Bournesian action, but lacking in all those touches that—you know—leave an audience more stirred than shaken. What all manage to agree upon is the effectiveness of Daniel Craig in the lead, as well as the excellent performance delivered by Gemma Arterton, an actress who sinks all dozen of her claws into a small but pivotal role. Here's a sampling of what critics are saying:

· "It's James Bond, licence to bore....Bond is a boorish oaf who simply rushes from country to country with the manic speed of Jason Bourne, including sequences shot in Panama, Chile, Italy, Mexico and Austria, in a plot about holding a country to ransom over its water supply...Quantum of Solace lacks any wit, ironic or otherwise, which has been a strength of so many 007 films...At around one hour 40 minutes, this Bond is shorter than most. Somehow it felt longer." [Times Online]
· "Quantum Of Solace doesn’t seem like a major entry in the Bond canon. Well under two hours long, it’s shorter and more frenetic than most of its predecessors, and an often-jolting experience to watch. Loose ends about. What it does have, though, above all, is vigour." [The Independent]
· "I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterisation in this Bond: Forster and his writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favour of explosions." [The Guardian]
· "One wonders if director Marc Forster and screenwriters Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis haven't tried a little too hard to distance the film from traditional Bond plots. The expository dialogue scenes can be dull, and cram in so many machinations and double-crossings that it's easy to lose track of who's duping whom." [Telegraph]
· [SPOILERS] "Mostly it doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. Not once does Craig say: "The name's Bond. James Bond." There's no Q or his gadgets. Heck, we even see Bond in a cardigan. There are no risque quips or arched eyebrows. This Bond is a soul in torment having lost the love of his life when Vesper Lynd drowned...It doesn't disappoint - just don't expect the brilliance of Casino Royale. [Daily Mail]
· "The raw nature of the film may put off some who yearn for the days of gizmos, gadgets and Bond quips as he dispenses with faceless opponents...It's a film that feels like the second part of a trilogy, with this being the bleaker second act." [BBC]

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<![CDATA[New Bond Girl Admits She Once Had Two Extra Fingers; Cares Not For 'Twelveopussy' Jokes]]> It would be an understatement to say Esquire got more than they bargained for when they approached Gemma Arterton—the striking and statuesque actress who'll play Agent Fields in Quantum of Solace—to learn something about the newest Bond girl:

The 22-year-old starlet, who plays Agent Fields in the upcoming Quantum Of Solace, admitted she was born with six fingers on each hand.

After undergoing an operation to have them removed, she still has bumpy scars as remainders of her extra digits.

The extra fingers were 'tied', which causes them to fall off naturally.

She tells Esquire magazine: 'It's my little oddity that I'm really proud of. It makes me different.'

Earlier this year, she revealed she was also born with a crumpled ear, which was corrected through surgery.

She said: 'I was born with lots of deformities.'

Whatever surgical adjustments Arterton required were a smashing success, as the actress bears almost no resemblance to the duodenary-digited, crumple-eared duckling she was in her youth. Still, our minds can't help but wander to the alternate outcome, and the dazzling possibilities of Bond's deadly Secret Service associate 0012—the only agent capable of typing the nuclear-dismantling codes into the evil Dr. Oilhoarder's [caution: link contains spoiler] supercomputer fast enough to avoid the obliteration of Western Europe.

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<![CDATA[Daniel Craig Will Accept Your Blame for the Title 'Quantum of Solace']]> After the rapturous reception afforded the Daniel Craig-toplined Casino Royale, it seemed like the James Bond franchise could do no wrong as it headed into its next installment. Then, the problems began to pile up for 007's 22nd adventure: a lopped-off fingertip for Craig, stuntmen badly hurt, and a theme song tangle with Amy Winehouse that forced producers to settle for a middling Alicia Keys/Jack White duet. Through it all, though, one decision stood head and shoulders above the rest for its sheer confoundingness: the decision to title the film Quantum of Solace. Now, in an interview with GQ, Craig reveals that the head-scratching moniker was essentially his idea:

Asked if he agreed with fans who have laughed at the new name, Craig told GQ: "No, because I was involved in making the decision. Names were coming out, some ludicrous stuff was going back and forth – I can't remember exactly, but you know the sort of thing: 'The Blood On Your Face'. I knew I didn't want 'death', 'die', 'bleed' or any of those things in the title.

"We had it written down on boards and we'd literally go and sit in rooms and stare at this title. If you look at 'Q's, they're really weird in a title.

"As soon as it came out, people were saying, 'Ooh, it sounds like Harry Potter.' No, it's Quantum of Solace. I was saying, 'It's a Bond title! The name of a Bond film is not about anything. Live And Let Die? Octopussy? What does it mean? It means very little. We've got nothing to worry about."

Though we mourn the loss of the producer-suggested title You Only Bleed When You Die From Death, we have to agree with Craig that the Bond names typically mean very little (and that Q's are totally rad!). Still, why didn't the star insist on his perilous title's incorporation into the film's theme song? Jack White yowling words that rhyme with "solace" might have provided the Bond theme with the frisson it so desperately needed — or at least a great many more lines about undersung Kojak star Telly Savalas.

[Photo Credit: AP]

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<![CDATA[Jack White/Alicia Keys '007' Theme May Leave You Shaken, Not Stirred]]> Though a brief, instrumental version of the new James Bond theme was released alongside a Coca-Cola commercial last week, it's only now that we can hear the full, yowling power of the Jack White/Alicia Keys duet entitled "Another Way to Die." Equal parts hair metal, Bondian bombast, and just plain weirdness (with a healthy helping of White's own "Seven Nation Army"), it's definitely... different. Does it fit into the 007 oeuvre, or will it start Quantum of Solace off on a dissonant note? Enjoy the song (and the additional eye candy) in the video above. Amy Winehouse, your move! [Stereogum]

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<![CDATA[Pepsi Man Jack White Lashes Out at 'Quantum' Theme in Coke Commercial]]> There are no quantums of solace to be found today in the Jack White household, where the recent unveiling of his and Alicia Keys's theme song to Quantum of Solace via a Coke commercial has the songwriter lashing out at his Sony patrons. "Jack White was commissioned by Sony Pictures to write a theme song for the James Bond film Quantum Of Solace, not for Coca Cola," read a statement obtained over the weekend by NME. "Any other use of the song is based on decisions made by others, not by Jack White. We are disappointed that you first heard the song in a co-promotion for Coke Zero, rather than in its entirety." Ah ah ah — make that Coke Zero Zero Seven, rebranded exclusively for the occasion of Quantum's release this November. We'll withhold judgment of the song itself until we can hear it in its entirety, but the sample available after the jump certainly sounds low-calorie.

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<![CDATA[New 'Quantum Of Solace' Trailer A Little Too Quantumy For Our Taste]]> Voilà, Bond fanatics: the second trailer for Quantum of Solace, consisting of approximately 45,000 strung-together microshots that keep cutting to black for maximum seizure-inducing effect. What can we glean from the snippets on display? Apparently, the dude from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has made a miraculous recovery, but all those frozen years in a wheelchair have made him extremely bitter, transforming him into a Bond supervillain. Jeffrey Wright can imbue even lines like, "James, move your ass," with a stirring gravitas. Daniel Craig still looks excited about his new body. And Olga Kurylenko plays the "beautiful but feisty Camille," who makes up for her lack of naughty-homonym name by mastering that tricky combo of threatening/icy/bangable that is truly the hallmark of every great Bond girl.

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<![CDATA[ Bond, Shames Bond: The divorce of actor...]]> Bond, Shames Bond: The divorce of actor George Lazenby and tennis pro Pam Shriver has taken a nasty turn from those earlier toddler-scotching allegations that so scandalized the one-time James Bond a few weeks back. New statements by Lazenby's ex-wife Christina Master contend that he "punched her in the face when she was five months pregnant and broke her nose when their son was dying from cancer," according to reports, which add: "She claims he threatened to kill her when she told him she wanted a divorce and says she was so fearful he meant it that it took years before she found the courage to leave him in 1994." Lazenby denied the claims, further challenging Master to turn up medical reports or photos proving her injuries: "I never punched her in my life," he said through a spokesman. You can believe whomever you want — innocent before proven guilty, yadda yadda — but we know where we stand, and we don't buy for a second that George Lazenby has a spokesman. [Daily Mail]

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<![CDATA[Ex-007 George Lazenby Makes Earnest, Beer-Sharing Play for Father of the Year]]> We're sorry to learn today of the troubles afflicting George Lazenby and Pam Shriver, the one-time James Bond and tennis champion (er, respectively) whose six-year marriage has dissolved into a mess of abuse, dental and toddler drunkenness. At least that's the account handed down in papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, which also granted Shriver temporary custody of their three young children and a restraining order based on threats Lazenby allegedly made against his estranged wife.

But for those 007-ophiles who shrug off the one-film Lazenby era urging good riddance and the rejoinder that there are no second acts in American life, a closer look at the marital discord in fact proves that the On Her Majesty's Secret Service star couldn't ask for a more stirring, villainous comeback vehicle:

"We were having a hard discussion about whether we could continue together under one roof. When the conversation turned to the kids, he said 'If you take the kids, I will kill you.' He and I have discussed this horrible incident and he says it was just his Australian manner and some humour - however, the mood and tone was all serious and I was devastated." ...

Shriver said the couple had disagreed on parenting issues. "Throughout 2006 and 2007, I observed and objected to him offering our children beer from beer bottles and ice from scotch glasses," she wrote. "Throughout the marriage, I have protested his objections to things like the kids brushing their teeth, going to the pediatrician for check-ups, having innoculations, using sun block, keeping a schedule and car seats fitting securely."

In court filings obtained by the Herald Sun, Lazenby said had never abused Shriver or the children. "She is a very competitive person — this is the cause of her success on the tennis court," he said. "Her actions seem to indicate that she is more interested in winning and controlling the situation than what is best for our children."

Having spent some time with a number of warm-hearted friends from Down Under, we can vouch for Lazenby's benificent "Australian manner"; like his compatriot Mel Gibson before him, he's also been accused of anti-Semitic slurs denouncing "senior Israeli government officials who were dining in the same swanky Los Angeles restaurant." Moreover, if you've never seen an Aussie dad pop a latex nipple on a Foster's can, then you're just not paying attention. And sunblock? Really? Seriously, remind us to never marry a tennis pro.

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<![CDATA[Rejected Amy Winehouse Threatens To Release Mumbled '007' Theme Herself]]> Though producers for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace eventually settled on Jack White and Alicia Keys to record the series' first duet, there is one wronged woman who will not go away quietly, and her name is Amy Winehouse. The crack-smoking chanteuse was the first singer approached for the project, and though producers claimed that recording sessions yielded nothing, Winehouse begs to differ — in fact, she told New! that she plans to put her own Bond theme out when the film premieres:

"I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring. When I do release mine – and I am tempted to do it on the same day – this would be the bigger hit. If they change their minds, I’m waiting!”

...She added, “I do think they could have waited a bit. If they want a worldwide hit, I have them all up here [pointing to her beehive]."

Reportedly, Winehouse's Bond theme is only hamstrung by her inability to settle on a name; having found that the existing Bond titles "Die Another Day" and "All Time High" hit too close to home, she's settled on three potential options: "Speedball," "MoonBlaaaaker," and "Cunts Like Kanye."

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<![CDATA[Burned by Winehouse, '007' Producers Settle for Head-Scratching Jack White / Alicia Keys Duet]]> It seemed too good to be true, and indeed, it was: after rumors surfaced that Amy Winehouse had been tapped to sing the theme song for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace, the troubled songstress fell out of the project (having recorded nothing but confused shrieks of "Oi! Blaaaake" over a propulsive string quartet). Now, Bond producers have turned to an unlikely pair to record the series' first duet:

Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, producers of the highly anticipated 22nd James Bond adventure Quantum of Solace, announced today that multi-Grammy Award-winning and platinum selling recording artists Jack White of the rock band The White Stripes, and Alicia Keys, have recorded the theme song for the film, which will be released worldwide this November.

Their song, written and produced by Jack White, and titled "Another Way to Die," will be the first duet in Bond soundtrack history. In addition to writing the song, Jack White is also featured as the drummer on this track.

Already, we can feel Bond fans clutching Walther PPKs to their bosoms, moaning that the duo isn't fit to join the hallowed ranks of Bond interpreters like Sheena Easton, A-Ha, and Rita Coolidge. Will Keys be able to give White's rock and roll nursery rhymes some Bond-ian grandeur, or will the pair crash and burn, leaving 007 producers no other choice but to approach the film's one true muse: Miley Cyrus?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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