September 14, 2007
Where's Robbo?
Busy about the house today, so I'm not really hanging around in front of the keyboard very much.
I did happen to notice that today is Sam "I vud like to haff seen Montana" Neill's birthday. I've always liked his acting, even in the goofier movies he's done (which, to be honest, seems to include most of them). If Wikipedia is to be believed, Neill was seriously considered to follow Roger Moore as Bond, but was kyboshed by Cubby Broccoli in favor of Timothy Dalton. And the rest, as they say, is history. ("Mr. Dalton? The shark tank is ready now.")
Yip! at you later.
Posted by Robert at September 14, 2007 10:50 AM | TrackBackIf you haven't already, add Reilly: Ace of Spies to your netflix queue. It stars Sam Neill and should be right up your alley in general.
Posted by: Dan at September 14, 2007 11:52 AMYes, Mom was a big fan back in the day when they ran on Mawsterpiece The-aye-ter, but I was just a bit young to take much notice. Definitely need to check 'em out.
Posted by: Robbo the LB at September 14, 2007 01:00 PMThe Bond rumor is true: on my James Bond DVD Collection, they have a clip from Sam Neill's audition tape. They have him and an unknown actress act out a scene from From Russia With Love. I think he would have been much better than Dalton.
They also say Broccoli first wanted Dalton to replace Connery (or maybe it was George Lazenby) back when Dalton was a twenty-something, but that everyone thought Dalton was too young, so they went with Roger Moore. And after Dalton, Brosnan became available, who was higher on their list than Sam Neill.
Posted by: The Colossus at September 14, 2007 01:26 PMTo give you an idea of how Dalton's career has gone, he was one of the villains in Hot Fuzz (made by the same guys who made Shaun of the Dead, if you need a zombie angle).
In fairness, I never thought he was the worst part of the two Bond flicks he made. He had terible scripts to work with, second string bond girls (Maryam D'Abo, Carey Lowell), laughable villains (Joe Don Baker, Wayne Newton), and because of the AIDS scare, they took sex out of the films. You could have put Connery into those films and . . .
. . . well, on second thought, Connery would have made them work. He did his own laughable Bond film in the 80s (Never Say Never Again -- a non-Broccoli production, allowed because of the Thunderball contract litigation) with a pretty bad script and cheap production values, and somehow he still pulled it off.
But anyone less than Connery would have been terrible in those Dalton films, too.
Hot Fuzz, by the way, was fantastic.
Posted by: The Colossus at September 14, 2007 01:48 PMAbstract paintings
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