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The Oscars paid tribute to the James Bond franchise with a musical montage, but many fans found they were left unshaken but definitely stirred as they slammed the production for being "pointless," "cringey," and "completely unnecessary."

Many fans had been hoping that the tribute would involve the unveiling of a new James Bond...and were left frustrated when that did not happen. The montage was opened by The Substance star Margaret Qualley, who channeled her character from the movie, Sue, and took part in a dance number performed to the James Bond theme. Qualley danced with more than a dozen Bond-esque dancers before giving way to musical performances from Doja Cat, Blackpink's Lisa and Raye, who sang "Diamonds Are Forever," "Live and Let Die," and "Skyfall," respectively. While the performances were perfectly adequate, and praised by the respective fans of the stars involved, Bond fans were left cold by the whole thing.

Get ready to shake your martinis to the iconic sounds of James Bond theme songs, as the longtime producers of the seminal cinematic franchise are set to be honored with a musical tribute at the 97th annual Academy Awards. According to reports, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson will be honored on the main stage after receiving their own Honorary Oscars at the Governors Awards.

In a new report from Variety — though the Academy Awards themselves have not yet commented on the matter — it was confirmed that Wicked will not be the only musical moment to take place during Sunday's Oscar ceremony. Though details on specifics remain scarce, Variety had this to say about what they did know about the musical moment:

"It is unclear whether the tribute will focus solely on Oscar-winning and nominated songs or take a broader approach to celebrating all 26 Bond themes. However, according to sources,...

Following the shocking and concerning news that Amazon will take over creative control of the James Bond franchise, a new frontrunner for the coveted role of 007 has now emerged. And he’s a real slow horse. The latest name favored to lead the iconic franchise is none other than Scottish actor and Slow Horses star Jack Lowden, who has seen his odds improve in the wake of the behind-the-scenes overhaul.

The 34-year-old actor, who is also best-known for roles in the likes of '71, Calibre, Fighting with My Family, Capone, Benediction, and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, has seen his odds rise to 8/1, according to Oddspedia, putting him alongside other 007 favorites Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Henry Cavill, and Theo James.

RelatedAmazon CEO Finally Breaks Silence on 'James Bond' Takeover, Reacts to Possible AI Use in the Franchise

The 'James Bond' franchise is heading into a new era, and Amazon's Andy Jassy has...

Despite Christopher Nolan successfully rebooting the Batman franchise with Batman Begins, it seems that the previous producers of James Bond were not comfortable giving him control over the iconic franchise. Nolan has made no secret over the years how much James Bond films affected him as a young filmgoer. Many of Nolan's films, from The Dark Knight to Inception to Tenet, are heavily inspired by the Bond films and feel like the director's unique spin on the 007 franchise. Nolan had previously mentioned that he had always wanted to make a Bond film, but it never seemed to work out, and now we know why.

According to Variety, Christopher Nolan was interested in directing a Bond movie as his follow-up to Tenet, which would have been the 007 entry that followed Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond in No Time to Die. However, long-time franchise producer Barbara Broccoli told...

Something always thought impossible has happened as long-time James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson relinquished creative control of 007 to Amazon. Now that this has happened (and we’ve all had time to react), fans of the franchise have taken to social media to reveal what spin-off projects they would most like to see. And bringing back a former star as an aged version of the iconic spy is currently sitting at the top of the list.

Now that Daniel Craig has departed the role following 2021’s No Time to Die, and with Amazon now taking the reins and likely steering the franchise in a direction we’ve never seen before, many are calling for GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies star Pierce Brosnan to return as an aged James Bond. “You know you want it. And you want Amazon to give it to you,” says X/Twitter user...

The fallout from the news that Amazon will take creative control of James Bond is still settling, with reports revealing various new insights from behind the scenes of the shocking decision. One such insight is that, yes, some of the ongoing rumors were true, and longtime 007 producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson did meet with one of the bookies’ favorites, Kraven the Hunter and Bullet Train star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, about taking over the iconic role from Daniel Craig. However, according to this insider, he was never in serious contention. And nor was anyone else.

“[The meeting was] just as kind of an ongoing, keeping your eye out on who’s around, but keeping in touch. But I definitely don’t think that there was any frontrunner. They wanted to know what they wanted to do next before they thought of the right person for it.”

Following the fatal finale of 2021’s No Time to Die,...

Yesterday saw the shock announcement that Amazon MGM Studios would be taking over the James Bond franchise from long-time producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. And now it's been revealed the amount of money the studio may have paid for that control.

Per Deadline, the streamer had to pay $1 billion to have full control over James Bond, following years of trying to develop the next movie without star Daniel Craig. While Amazon wanted to grow the franchise into something similar to Marvel, DC, and Star Wars, Broccoli and Wilson didn't want that, opting to keep most of the creative control the family had for decades. That kept the potential of a Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino from stepping in to direct.

In March 2022, Amazon paid around $8.5 billion to acquire MGM, which brought James Bond, Rocky, and other IPs into the fold. Deadline mentions that the value of the studio was closer to $4 billion,...

Much like Star Wars and the MCU before it, the James Bond franchise has now fallen into the clutches of a major corporation and streaming platform as Amazon takes over creative control of 007. And Jeff Bezos has already started crowdsourcing major creative decisions, taking to social media to ask fans, “Who’d you pick as the next Bond?” Amazing as it is that such frivolous treatment of the beloved franchise could happen so quickly, a certain actor has emerged as the clear favorite, with Man of Steel star Henry Cavill seemingly being the actor that many want to see slip into the iconic tuxedo.

Fans of the actor, who is also known for previously leading the Netflix series The Witcher and for doing battle with Hollywood icon Tom Cruise (and patenting the crowd-pleasing “arm reload”) in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, swarmed the replies and called for Cavill to finally...

Daniel Craig is not only the last man to play the role of James Bond, but, it seems, the last to play the super spy under the creative control of long-time producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli as Amazon MGM take full charge of the franchise. Now the actor has added shared thoughts in a statement in which he acknowledged the legacy of the character, and his unchanged feelings for Wilson and Broccoli despite the unexpected turn of events.

In a statement published by Variety, Craig said:

“My respect, admiration and love for Barbara and Michael remain constant and undiminished. I wish Michael a long, relaxing (and well deserved) retirement and whatever ventures Barbara goes on to do, I know they will be spectacular and I hope I can be part of them.”

The Future of the 'James Bond' Franchise Is Getting Its Biggest Shake-Up Ever

The news broke earlier today that,...

Just hours after it was announced that Amazon MGM is gaining total creative control over the James Bond franchise, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now outsourcing the casting process online. Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, stewards of the James Bond franchise for decades, have stepped aside from the franchise their family has overseen for 60 years. James Bond was one of the last franchises not owned outright by a major corporation, but now 007 will answer not only to M but also to Jeff Bezos. The new corporate owner is already making some moves on the franchise that likely won't go over well.

Jeff Bezos took to Instagram to share that Amazon MGM is now in control of the 007 franchise. The post, featuring a photo of previous James Bond actor Daniel Craig, was accompanied by a simple caption: "Who would you pick as the next Bond?" The post (see below) has already generated over 5,000 likes,...

The list of actors who could play James Bond post-Daniel Craig is a who’s who of Hollywood’s finest. But despite rumors, “insider” confirmations, and yo-yoing betting odds constantly featuring the likes of Idris Elba, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and the not-going-to-happen Henry Cavill, there is a lesser known name back in “serious contention” for the role. And, just like the original Bond, Sean Connery, he is a born-and-bred Scot.

Stuart Martin is currently best known as a Zack Snyder alum, after making appearances in several of the director's Netflix features, including Rebel Moon and Army of Thieves, but he has also built up an extensive resume since appearing in British TV show Taggart in 2009 and having a blink-and-you-miss-it role in Russell Crowe’s 2010 version of Robin Hood. One of his biggest projects was the 2020 PBS series Miss Scarlet, in which he played the Duke of Wellington in 24 episodes.

Although...

Ever since Daniel Craig bowed out of the role of James Bond after 2021's No Time to Die, the media and 007 fans have debated and speculated about which actor will portray the next Bond. The most recent research shows Tom Hardy as a popular frontrunner, but other much-discussed contenders have included Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Josh O'Connor, and James Norton. However, according to Martin Campbell, the great director behind the first Pierce Brosnan Bond film (GoldenEye) and the first Daniel Craig one (Casino Royale), all of this is "rubbish." As Campbell told MovieWeb in an interview, basically, if you've heard a rumor that an actor will be cast as the next Bond, then they probably won't be.

"You know, I don't believe any of the publicity," said Campbell, who was there when Craig was first chosen for the role. "They always do this, they always come up with names, and it's this,...

Change can be scary. Change can be exhausting. Change can be a lot of things often necessary and good. But one thing that's not changing 'round these parts any time soon: Bond. James Bond. The secret agent man whose sexy and thrilling cinematic adventures have lit up screens for decades, is on the cusp of having his new face announced.

And for anyone worrying about who might be taking up the mantel, have no fear: it's still going to be a man.

In a new interview with franchise producers Barbara Broccoli and her brother Michael G. Wilson in The Independent, the daughter and step-son of late James Bond producer Albert "Cuddy" Broccoli have shared their views on what's to come and how they're handling the changeover from Daniel Craig to whomever comes to carry the gun and gadgets next.

For the siblings, James Bond has always been about change and a new perspective.

The studio behind the James Bond franchise, Eon Productions, is reportedly getting close to finding the right director to bring the iconic adventures of 007 back to the big screen following the departure of Daniel Craig in 2021s No Time to Die. While much of the speculation has been around who will be cast as Bond, the filmmaker chosen to take the helm is equally important and will indicate the kind of approach (comedic/action-based/gritty?) the studio will take as the beloved franchise heads into its latest era.

According to The Telegraph, Eon has now started meeting with potential directors, with the Academy Award-winning Edward Berger top of the list. Berger is best known for 2022s All Quiet on the Western Front, which won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, among others. His next project is the psychological thriller Conclave starring No Time to Dies Ralph Fiennes alongside Stanley Tucci,...

For The Ages

Revered Indian actor Waheeda Rehman, who was accorded the Dadasaheb Phalke award, India’s highest film honor, last year, has donated her personal memorabilia to the Film Heritage Foundation (Fhf) for preservation. Rehman, the 86-year-old grande dame of Indian cinema, has worked with most of the legendary filmmakers of her country during her career and the roles she chose were in films that are considered classics in the annals of Indian cinema. She worked with Guru Dutt in “Pyaasa” (1957) and “Kaagaz Ke Phool” (1959), Satyajit Ray in “Abhijaan” (1962), Basu Bhattacharya in “Teesri Kasam” (1966) and Yash Chopra in “Kabhie Kabhie” (1976), among many other memorable roles.

The donated material includes the saree Rehman wore to the “C.I.D.” premiere in 1956, her photo albums and photographs and lobby cards from “Kaagaz Ke Phool,” “Chaudvin Ka Chand” (1960), “Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam” (1962) “C.I.D.,” “Bees Saal Baad” (1962) and “Baat Ek Raat Ki” (1962). The donation was...

Timothy Dalton's third James Bond movie could have broken the long-standing rule of only adapting Ian Fleming's novels. The potential movie was going to be based on the non-Fleming book "Colonel Sun" by Kingsley Amis. While the franchise has never fully adapted a non-Fleming book, small parts of "Colonel Sun" have been used in later James Bond movies.

In the 1990s, the fifth actor to play James Bond on the big screen, Timothy Dalton, was slated to star in his third Bond film, and in the midst of developing that, the franchise almost broke a massive James Bond rule that is still mostly in place today. James Bond is an iconic British action franchise which follows the exploits of the legendary Secret Service agent James Bond, also known as 007, as he takes down various villains and saves the world. Since the 1960s, seven different actors have portrayed James Bond,...

An adaptation of the novel has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

UK writer Martin Amis, the author of novels including The Zone Of Interest and London Fields, has died aged 73.

His wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, confirmed to the New York Times that he died on Friday (May 19) at his home in Lake Worth, Florida, with the cause given as oesophageal cancer.

It was the same day that also saw Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation of Nazi drama The Zone Of Interest premiere to “remarkable” reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, where it plays in Competition for the Palme d’Or.

Martin Amis, whose 15 novels were must-read books for British fiction lovers, died Friday at home in Lake Worth, Florida of esophageal cancer, his wife confirmed. He was 73.

Amis’s best-known work is a trilogy of novels: Money: A Suicide Note (1985), London Fields (1990) and The Information (1995). He also had a memoir, Experience, (2000).

A film adaptation of his Zone of Interest, a Holocaust drama, is screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and is considered one of the front-runners for the event’s Palme d’Or, its highest honor. The film is written and directed by Jonathan Glazer.

Amis’s father was author Kingsley Amis, part of the group of writers known as the Angry Young Men in the 1950s. He was best known for Lucky Jim. (1954).

The two had a rivalry, riven by political differences. Yet Martin Amis acknowledged that his father’s prominence played a role in his own success.

British writer Martin Amis, the author of the book “The Zone of Interest,” has died at 73. News of his death comes just one day after the big-screen adaptation of his 2014 novel premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews.

The New York Times reports that Amis died of esophageal cancer, as confirmed by his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca. He died at the family’s home in Lake Worth, Florida.

Amis published 15 novels over the course of his career, a number of which were adapted for screen. “Under the Skin” director Jonathan Glazer’s treatment of Amis’ chilling Nazi drama “The Zone of Interest” is one of the buzziest premieres to come out of Cannes so far.

The film follows the family of a high-ranking SS officer that lives next door to Auschwitz concentration camp. In a review that labelled “The Zone of Interest” as “chilling and profound,” Variety...

While The Spy Who Loved Me reinvented the James Bond novel formula, the book’s movie adaptation dropped its ambitious premise—and for good reason. The James Bond novel canon runs parallel to the movie series and contains some significant departures from the version of the suave super-spy seen in the franchise’s theatrical outings. Not only was Ian Fleming’s original version of 007 a slightly more grounded character, but he also had a darker life story. In Fleming’s stories, Bond even had a short-lived son who died at the hands of 007’s shady enemies.

However, tonal darkness is not the only thing that the James Bond movies changed from their novel inspirations. Some characters, like James Bond’s accomplice Felix Leiter, are more over-the-top in their novel incarnations but more grounded in their film appearances. This could be to avoid drawing attention away from Bond himself, or it...

Despite being popularized by DC Comics' The Sandman, the world of dreams has been wide open for the Marvel Universe since it first introduced the Moon Knight villain Morpheus. Although he shares the same name as the Dream most know from The Sandman, Marvel's version is the complete opposite. The Morpheus from Marvel Comics is a villain with a complex background, but he didn't always have powers and only took the name Morpheus when he gained them.

Marvel Comics took a more sinister route with its depiction and created Morpheus to be one of Moon Knight's worst enemies. As a vigilante involved in mysticism and the night, Moon Knight is the perfect pipeline to introduce the manifestation of dreams through. While his powers were a lot more limited than DC's Sandman, Morpheus was still able to create and control nightmares in his victims' minds.

Related: Marvel Confirms Moon Knight's...

This Star Trek article contains spoilers.

In Act 4, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, the heroine Portia, posing as a male lawyer, begs Shylock the moneylender to spare her love’s friend the “pound of flesh” that he is owed. Her speech goes:

“The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown.”

It is the quote referenced by the title of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ finale, “A Quality of Mercy,” demonstrating, aside from anything else, that sometimes what you learn in your degree can be relevant to your job. The use of the quote tells us about Pike’s character, what sort of commander he is, and what fuels...

Robert Zemeckis’s retelling of the wicked children’s story feels more grumpy than scary, while its comedy veers between frantic and strained

Who did Roald Dahl hate more: grownups or children? Kingsley Amis says that Dahl once told him to try writing for children and when Amis said his heart wouldn’t be in it, Dahl replied: “Never mind, the little bastards’d swallow it.” The issue of Dahl’s attitude towards his readership is revived once again with director Robert Zemeckis’s “reimagining” of Dahl’s story The Witches, first published in 1983 and filmed by Nicolas Roeg in 1990 with Anjelica Huston as the incognito Grand High Witch who convenes a sinister children’s charity event in a hotel ballroom.

Now Zemeckis has collaborated with Guillermo Del Toro and Kenya Barris on the screenplay for another version, absorbing some of the earlier film, although why exactly this process has...

It’s a Brit sex comedy that addresses the basic facts about boy-girl petting — and not much else. A noted ‘adult’ role for Hayley Mills, it pairs her with an unlikable Oliver Reed, trying his damnedest to affect natural charm. Was Reed the reason Hayley chose as her next picture a story about a lady studying penguins?

Take a Girl Like You

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1970 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Hayley Mills, Oliver Reed, Noel Harrison, John Bird, Sheila Hancock, Ronald Lacey, Penelope Keith, Imogen Hassall, Pippa Steel, George Woodbridge.

Cinematography: Dick Bush

Film Editor: Jack Harris, Rex Pyke

Original Music: Stanley Myers

Written by George Melly

Produced by Hal E. Chester

Directed by Jonathan Miller

Wait a minute — when exactly did they finally stop calling young women, ‘birds?’

When the Hollywood studios all but collapsed at the end of the 1960s,...

Mark Allison Feb 22, 2017

Iam Fleming's James Bond novels still have narratives and ideas that haven't made it to the 007 movie series...

A spoiler lies ahead for Spectre

See related The world of the Peaky Blinders

Over the course of 11 years, Ian Fleming wrote 12 James Bond novels and nine short stories before his death in 1964, forming the basis for the film series which survives to the present day. 24 films and 55 years since the birth of the cinematic Bond, it might come as a surprise that the franchise hasn’t completely exhausted its source material. More often than not, however, the James Bond films have been adaptations in name only.

Starting with Roald Dahl’s outlandish screenplay for the fifth Bond film, You Only Live Twice, the film scripts began to drift away from their literary inspirations. For most of Roger Moore’s seven-film tenure, for example, entire plots and characters were...

Raymond Benson and Peter Janson-Smith in Krakow.

By Raymond Benson

Peter Janson-Smith passed away on Friday, April 15, 2016, at the age of 93. He was a giant in the world of British publishing, a major figure in that arena for nearly seventy years. Serious James Bond fans will know him as Ian Fleming’s literary agent, the man who spearheaded the exploitation of Fleming’s 007 novels around the world from 1956 until Peter’s retirement in 2002.

On a personal level, Peter’s death is a great loss. For me, he was a mentor, a friend, a teacher, and someone I called my “English dad.” He was instrumental in the research for my 1984 book, The James Bond Bedside Companion, and he hired me to write the continuation James Bond novels in the mid-90s. In short, I owe much of my career to him.

Peter was born on September 5, 1922, in Navestock, England, which is...

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published May 5, 2015.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale,...

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As Spectre opens in UK cinemas, Daniel Craig talks about playing Bond for the fourth time, injuries, stunts and more...

Spectre marks Daniel Craig's fourth outing as James Bond, and it's safe to say the job doesn't get any easier, as widely-shared interviews have recently proved. But when we meet Craig a few days before the 24th Bond film hits UK cinemas, he seems relaxed and cheerful.

As he joins a roundtable of journalists in a London hotel, he fields a volley of questions ranging from Spectre's writing, his role as co-producer, and the injury he sustained during a fight scene with the colossal Dave Bautista.

As for whether he'll return as Bond for a fifth time, he remains coy. Here's what Daniel Craig had to say...

Well done - brilliant film.

Thank you very much.

How are you feeling this morning now the reviews are in?...

By: Jay Dyer

Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the most recognizable and successful characters in modern popular culture. The novels have sold over 100 million copies, and the film franchise is the second most successful in history, having been recently displaced by the Harry Potter series. For most readers and viewers, 007 is merely a Western pop icon. However, there is much more at work in the novels and films than appears on the surface. In fact, there are deeper undercurrents, themes, symbols, and messages that operate as psychological warfare propaganda and an in-depth semiotic analysis of the novels and films yields an interpretation that confirms this thesis. Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale, there...

“There was a man in New York one time,” reminisces Kingsley Amis in his book Everyday Drinking, “who bet he could drink fifteen double Martinis in an hour. He got there all right and collected his money but within another minute fell dead off his bar stool.” It’s a pity Amis never met Nick Charles (William Powell) or his wife, Nora (Myrna Loy), who down a half-dozen martinis apiece within The Thin Man’s opening minutes; they’d have doubtless won the bet and swiftly ordered more. Nick and Nora remain Dashiell Hammett's most enduring pair of private detectives, and The Thin Man, adapted by W.S. Van Dyke from the mystery novel of the same name, is an exemplary film noir. Hammett’s story of a vanishing family patriarch and...

Early imprints of the Bond books increase in value every year. Is this just down to a large readership, or does it say something more fundamental about Ian Fleming's creation?

Funny old thing, that James Bond. Though Ian Fleming died in 1964, his hero has had a charmed existence since, newly incarnated in a variety of actors and films, and in further Bond adventures written by Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and, now, William Boyd.

Of these, Boyd seems the best choice. He has a sophisticated interest in the world of espionage, a fluent prose style, and a crisp eye for a Bondish detail. He was pictured, on publication week, in front of one of seven vintage Jensens, each of which was to deliver a copy of Solo, his new Bond novel, to Heathrow, from where they would be flown to various destinations associated with Bond (or...

William Boyd's James Bond book is, if anything, superior to some of Ian Fleming's originals

The (rare) critics of this book in the past 10 days have fallen into the very trap against which Boyd gently cautioned. That of trying to judge his book against the James Bond films. It is, in mitigation, a faintly understandable confusion, the films having become down the decades such a lash-up of stylistic tics, fashion anachronisms, "humour", believable gunplay, cartoon violence and casual sexism that it's a wonder anyone can remember the Bond of the books as opposed to the brand Bond.

William Boyd remembers the distinction. He obviously remembers the very smell of those 1960s/70s paperbacks, with their tiny type, and page corners folded down with impatient grubby fingers on every monstrous interruption, as we learned the meanings of "cordite" "gunmetal-gray" and, for late developers, "nipple"; he obviously quietly revered the excitement of the creation.

A Bond book is a tough gig, but Boyd's authentically written attempt entertains more than it exasperates

Several unusual incidents occur during the course of Solo, the latest attempt to prolong the literary existence of James Bond. The secret agent pays his first recorded visit to the cinema, to see Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (this is 1969), although he gets bored and leaves before the end. He considers changing his hairstyle, for aesthetic reasons rather than as a disguise, and wonders whether the short fringe favoured by a television presenter (he can't remember his name, but it sounds like David Frost) might suit him. During a long car journey he stops to relieve himself in a wood, which will come as a shock to those who believe that 007, like the Queen, exists in a realm above such crude bodily functions. Perhaps most disturbing of all, while getting dressed for the final...

Solo, by William Boyd, is latest novel to follow in Ian Fleming's footsteps, which charts spy 'recklessly motivated by revenge'

We may have got James Bond slightly wrong. Yes, he is a prodigious drinker, heavy smoker and consummate killer, but when it comes to his womanising, the author of his new incarnation believes that the spy was more honourable than some think. "It seems to me he wants a relationship," said William Boyd. "It is not just casual sex."

Boyd was speaking at the launch of his new Bond book, Solo, at which he was asked who his favourite Bond girl was. "I'm not too keen on the expression 'Bond girl' because I think Bond has relationships with women," he said. Having said that, he named the character Honeychile Rider – "nothing to do with Ursula Andress playing her in the movie … I think she is a very interesting Bond woman".

Boyd should know,...

Creative force in the British film industry whose work included The Stepford Wives and Whistle Down the Wind

The director, actor and writer Bryan Forbes, who has died aged 86, was one of the most creative forces in the British film industry of the 1960s, and the Hollywood films he directed included the original version of The Stepford Wives (1974). In later life he turned to the writing of books, both fiction and memoirs.

The turning point for him in cinema was the formation of the independent company Beaver Films with his friend Richard Attenborough in 1958. For the screenplay of their first production, The Angry Silence (1960), Forbes received an Oscar nomination and a Bafta award. Attenborough played a factory worker shunned and persecuted for not joining a strike. His colleagues are shown as being manipulated by skulking professional agitators and to some it seemed more like a political statement than a human...

The release of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of Fitzgerald's booze-soaked novel provides the perfect excuse to dream up some naughty desserts …

As fashion magazines fill up with 1920s-inspired spreads to celebrate Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, those of us more concerned with culinary pleasures can find other ways to remember this most whiskey-sodden of American novels.

Cookery writer and all-round bon viveur Kiki Bee certainly thinks so. Her new book, Bootleg Bakery, takes direct inspiration from Gatsby's prohibition-era America, in which chefs had to find creative ways of sneaking alcohol past the authorities. She had the idea when having an afternoon tea treat once: "I kept looking between the jug of Pimm's and the lemon cake on the table and thinking: 'I should do something with this.'"

The result was the "Pimm's O' Cake" recipe – actually one of the less boozy offerings in the book. Much more decadent...

Did Mervyn Peake go mad writing Titus Alone, or does Titus Alone merely predict his madness? Is it a work of dystopian science fiction, or a work of psychological symbolism? Is the book a terse masterpiece, or is it just the half-formed ravings of a crumbling mind?

What the heck is this book you’re holding?

Let’s start with the facts. Mervyn Peake was a noted artist and illustrator of children’s books who spent his formative years in China. He published the novels Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950) to excellent reviews, though not resounding commercial success. After the failure of his play The Wit to Woo (1957), Peake suffered a nervous breakdown. Parkinson’s disease, electroshock therapy, and brain surgery would follow over the next decade. Peake spent his last years in institutions, finally passing away in November of 1968. His works would dip briefly into obscurity and academic disfavor — Kingsley Amis...

J.G. Ballard’s novel “The Drowned World” has been optioned by Warner Bros for Heydey films says Deadline.

“The Drowned World” had its 50th anniversary publication last year and appeared in hardcover for the first time in the United States. Here is a synopsis from the publisher’s website:

“First published in 1962, J.G. Ballard’s mesmerizing and ferociously imaginative novel not only gained him widespread critical acclaim but also established his reputation as one of the finest writers of a generation. The Drowned World imagines a terrifying world in which global warming has melted the ice caps and primordial jungles have overrun a tropical London. Set during the year 2145, this novel follows biologist Dr. Robert Kearns and his team of scientists as they confront a cityscape in which nature is on the rampage and giant lizards, dragonflies, and insects fiercely compete for domination. Both an unmatched biological mystery and a...

Dustin Hoffman directs a stellar cast in this bittersweet tale of ageing opera singers forced to face their mortality

Dustin Hoffman was 30 when he made his screen debut as the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Three years later, in 1970, he played the 121-year-old frontiersman Jack Crabb in Arthur Penn's western Little Big Man. In his 50s he returned to star as Willy Loman and Shylock. So he knows something about the vagaries of ageing. It seems therefore not inappropriate that he makes his confident directorial debut at 75, directing a formidable ensemble cast ranging in age from the 31-year-old Sheridan Smith to actors pushing 80 and beyond in a movie adapted by the 78-year-old Ronald Harwood from his own adroitly crafted play Quartet.

Sheridan Smith plays Dr Lucy Cogan, sympathetic manager and resident physician at Beecham House, a handsomely appointed home for elderly opera singers fallen on hard times. It's...

Oxford just inherited a sizable collection of letters and manuscripts from former poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, The Guardian reports. The archive was donated to the University’s Bodleian Library by his children, actor Daniel Day-Lewis and food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.

The collection includes letters exchanged between the elder Day-Lewis and other notable figures, such as Kingsley Amis, Alec Guiness, and W.H. Auden. The latter, with whom Day-Lewis was especially chummy following their undergraduate years at Oxford, offers previously unseen criticism of Day-Lewis’ work that ranges from subtle (“The lines ‘For there’s no wonder … When any echo waits’, sound as...

Tamasin and Daniel Day-Lewis hand over poet laureate's archive including manuscripts and letter from Wh Auden.

Wh Auden did not want to appear condescending but his criticism of Cecil Day-Lewis's poem would certainly appear to be crushing: "You are not taking enough trouble about your medium, your technique of expression," he wrote, adding that one line sounded as if Day-Lewis was waiting for his tea.

The letter, from around 1928 or 1929 when both poets were still in their 20s, is one of many to appear in an extensive literary archive that has been donated to Oxford University's Bodleian Library by Day-Lewis's children, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis and the food writer Tamasin Day-Lewis.

The library will on Tuesday host a symposium celebrating the life and work of the former poet laureate and marking what Chris Fletcher, keeper of special collections, said was an extremely generous gift.

"It is a wonderful archive...

With The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming took an ambitious gamble: abandoning Bond for much of the book in favour of a female narrator. As Skyfall opens, Richard Williams remembers a surprising heroine

Vivienne Michel is perhaps the least well-known of the women for whom Ian Fleming arranged assignations with James Bond, and yet none of her more celebrated sisters, from Vesper Lynd through Tatiana Romanova and Pussy Galore to the Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, succeeded in engaging the author's interest to the same extent. To her alone is accorded the honour of a Bond book written entirely in her voice, with 007 making a late appearance in a supporting role. And although, unlike some of the others, she survived to tell the tale, she was destined to suffer a different kind of literary death.

Few novelists in Fleming's position, riding the public's voracious appetite for the adventures of a fictional hero,...

An energetic family threequel surprises Peter Bradshaw

Here is a family movie from which absolutely nothing is expected, and yet it's one of the week's best releases: a muscular, potent and very funny film. It's the animated threequel from the DreamWorks studio about those wacky animals once resident in New York's fictional Central Park Zoo, who are now struggling to make their way back from Africa to America via, of all places, Monte Carlo. Not an obvious stopover.

Ben Stiller voices Alex the lion, Chris Rock is Marty the zebra, David Schwimmer is Melman the giraffe and Jada Pinkett Smith is Gloria the hippo. Sacha Baron Cohen returns as bizarre King Julien, the ring-tailed lemur. Madagascar 3 isn't getting the saucer-eyed notices handed out to, say, Tim Burton's latest film. It isn't considered as important. But to quote Kingsley Amis's famous dictum: importance isn't important, good writing is – or in this case,...

With 23 Bond films now in the can, and Skyfall about to be released to cinemas, it is about time to reflect on where the franchise may go next – and while upcoming articles will explore some concrete predictions for the direction of Bond 24, this article will look backwards, as opposed to forwards for inspiration, to find the greatest Bond stories not yet told on screen.

Though most of Ian Fleming’s Bond stories have now been adapted, there remain a couple that were not in whole, and there are a number of the continuation works, written by Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks and Jeffery Deaver which have not yet been referenced or chosen outright for adaptation. And though some will invariably turn their nose up at the suggestion that some of the best Bond stories didn’t come from the pen of the spy’s creator,...

Years in the making, Walter Salles's movie adaptation of Kerouac's beat classic is bold, affecting and inherently sad

The first two books I bought when I arrived in New York as a graduate student in August 1957 were William H Whyte's The Organization Man and a special edition of the avant-garde quarterly Evergreen Review on the "San Francisco scene". They complemented each other. Whyte's book is a devastating assault on American conformity by a senior editor of the business magazine Fortune. The Evergreen special was a celebration of the countercultural artists soon to be famous as leaders of the beat generation, and the writers featured as members of the San Francisco scene were Allen Ginsberg, whose poem "Howl" was published earlier that year, and Jack Kerouac, whose On the Road was to be the literary sensation of 1957 when it appeared a month or so later.

During that autumn my principal...

The following is an introduction to a new edition of Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" [W.W. Norton, $24.95] written by Andrew Biswell. The piece sheds light on the enduring legacy of the novel, and the various dystopian works that influenced Burgess's writing. Biswell also discusses Burgess's (often clever) responses to the novel's adaptation, and ideas for adaptations that never came to fruition:

In 1994, less than a year after Anthony Burgess had died at the age of seventy-six, BBC Scotland commissioned the novelist William Boyd to write a radio play in celebration of his life and work. This was broadcast during the Edinburgh Festival on 21 August 1994, along with a concert performance of Burgess’s music and a recording of his Glasgow Overture. The programme was called "An Airful of Burgess," with the actor John Sessions playing the parts of both Burgess and his fictional alter ego, the poet F. X. Enderby. On the same day,...

The interesting premise of a sex-free couple attending therapy is shoehorned into a cutesy, phoney Hollywood comedy. I'd rather be beaten on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly

Here is a syrupy Hollywood comedy about a sexless marriage in crisis, a subject for which, in this country, the two classic texts are Kingsley Amis's autobiographical novel Jake's Thing and Victoria Wood's song about being beaten on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly. Those are both very different from this film, which magics a saccharine happy ending out of thin air, and which despite the analysis theme is weirdly incurious about its characters' backstories. Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones are Kay and Arnold, empty-nesters in a non-sexual rut. Arnold, a decreasingly lovable grump, has to be bullied into going with Kay to couples-therapist Dr Bernard Feld (Steve Carell) and talking about his feelings for the first time in 30 years … or maybe ever.

Early pop culture sophisticate and first post-Fleming author Kingsley Amis described British Secret Service agent James Bond as "the man who is only a silhouette" in his highly recommended critical analysis of the novel series, The James Bond Dossier. The line comes from the book Moonraker, where Bond tells us he must always play the role expected of him. This mirrors creator Ian Fleming's view of Bond as a "neutral figure" and "instrument" which, for decades, has allowed readers and audiences to project their own image onto the gentleman spy. As Bond entered the cinematic realm, each dazzling incarnation of Fleming's character helped to further define and connect 007 to the origins of his carefully cultivated image, which embodies an entire...

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Anthony Burgess's diabolical tale of juvenile ultraviolence is 50. Five decades on, the novel holds a lofty position as one of pop culture's most influential and enduring pieces of literature

Fifty years ago today, Anthony Burgess published his ninth novel, A Clockwork Orange. Reviewing it in the Observer, Kingsley Amis called the book "the curiosity of the day". Five decades later and there is still nothing quite like it.

When discussing A Clockwork Orange, many mistakenly confuse the book with Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film and immediately focus on the violence of the story, when really it's the language of the book – a vernacular so lively and colourful it renders those much-discussed descriptions of beatings and rape almost – almost – comical – that is its most remarkable and revolutionary aspect. Kubrick's dazzling adaptation contributed greatly to the book's ascension to the lofty position it holds today as one of pop culture's most influential and enduring pieces of literature,...

Shrewd film producer behind School for Scoundrels and Night of the Demon

Hal E Chester, who has died aged 91, was a juvenile actor, then a producer of low-budget movies in Hollywood, before he moved in 1955 to Britain, where he set up his own production company to take advantage of the lower costs of filming. Over the next 15 years he turned out a wide range of pictures, which often featured American stars such as Mickey Rooney, Dana Andrews, Yul Brynner and Paul Newman. For a period he specialised in British comedies. The first and best of these was School for Scoundrels (1960), loosely based on the popular Gamesmanship books of Stephen Potter. The impressive cast included Alastair Sim, Terry-Thomas and Dennis Price, with Ian Carmichael as the intrepid hero trying to impress Janette Scott.

Small, dynamic and fast-talking, Chester was perhaps a typical example of the shrewd and ambitious Hollywood producer. He...