"Die Another Day," Or, How the Mighty Have Fallen

We're celebrating 2002 this week. Here's Deborah Lipp...

When Die Another Day was released in November of 2002, it was greeted with tempered enthusiasm. Spending time, as I do, among movie fans, and within the narrower Bond fan community, there were certain very clear reactions: Invisible car: Dumb; Madonna song: Bad; Movie overall: Pretty damn great.

How the mighty have fallen. I should explain...

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Meet the Contenders: Rosamund Pike "Gone Girl"

Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's breakthrough leading lady. Mild tonal spoilers follow

Rosamund Pike as "Amazing Amy" in Gone Girl
Best Actress

 

Born: January 27, 1979 in London, England

The Role: Based on the best-selling novel from Gillian Flynn, Pike plays the beautiful, ideal "cool girl", Amy Dunne. After she and her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) find themselves unemployed and strapped for cash, they move back to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri. But the marriage isn't the idealic relationship it once was and on the morning of their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing - with Nick as the prime suspect. To say more would ruin the film, but let's just say that Amy looms large over the rest of the story...

Reese Witherspoon bought the rights to the book, hoping to cast herself as Amy. But when David Fincher came on board to direct, he had a very specific idea of the character in mind, citing Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as his model and considered well-known stars like Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Olivia Wilde, Abbie Cornish, and Julianne Hough (?!). Fincher went with Rosamund Pike because she wasn't as recognizable and he loved her "opacity" as an actress, having seen her in several films but never quite getting a read on her, allowing the mysterious character to remain so through her anonymity.

Previous Brushes with Oscar and Critical Takes after the jump...

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007 Femme Fatales

Deborah Lipp, author of "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book" continues her countdown to "Skyfall" with lists of 007 things!

Author Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond series, had no interest in the archetype of a femme fatale—a seductive, beautiful, dangerous woman. The femme fatale is Freud's ultimate woman, combining sex and death. Fleming's women were either love interests, usually fragile and in need of rescue, or—if villains—hideously ugly. But the Bond films introduced us to the sexy villainess. As it happens, there have been exactly seven such villainesses in the course of Bond film history.

In chronological order, then, here's a run-down of the femmes fatale that have passed through Bond's films and bed...

Miss Taro

001 Miss Taro, Dr. No (1962)
A secondary villain, Miss Taro sleeps with Bond to keep him at her house long enough for compatriots to come and kill him. Unfortunately, he knows her plan, and in a rare gesture of mercy, has her arrested. She's the only character on our list who survives the encounter! She's also not terribly interesting; she seems uneasy in her role as villainess and the film relies far too heavily on "inscrutable Asian" stereotypes.  

What should I say to an invitation from a strange gentleman?"
-Zena Marshall as Miss Taro 

Fiona Volpe

002 Fiona Volpe, Thunderball (1965)
This one's the best, ladies and gentlemen, the prototype, the mold upon which all other seductresses are based. 

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