Sean Connery Voted Best James Bond Actor In CBS Poll

CBSNews.com offers a piece on the poll taken on which actor best portrayed Ian Fleming's iconic James Bond character.

Over the past 50 years there have been 23 official James Bond films, and the character has been portrayed by six different actors. So who was the best Bond?

Americans strongly favor the first man to portray the character in film, with 51 percent picking Sean Connery as the best James Bond.

Connery originated the role in the 1962 film "Dr. No." He would go on to star in five more Bond adventures, in addition to the non-official 1983 Bond film, "Never Say Never Again."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-who-was-the-best-james-bond/

You can also watch Sean Connery's introduction as Bond in Dr No via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xDj3NRYTU8

Note: I agree that Sean Connery was the best James Bond, but I would rank Timothy Dalton as the second best and George Lazenby as the third best.

Timothy Dalton offered film viewers a harder, more serious Bond than the previous Bond, Roger Moore, and although their were some silly bits in his two Bond films, I thought they were well done.

George Lazenby was a good Bond, in my view, considering that he had never acted before, and he had to follow Sean Connery. He looked like Ian Fleming's Bond and he did the fight scenes very well. Had he continued as Bond he might have grown into a very good Bond. I also think On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the best Bond films. 

As for Pierce Brosnan, he had some good moments as Bond, but I was not too thrilled with the films he starred in.

As for Roger Moore, I liked him as the Saint on TV when I was a teenager, but I didn't like his light-hearted portrayal of Bond and I didn't like the silly films he starred in.

Lastly, I'm glad that the film producers have returned to making Bond films thrillers, instead of silly comedies, and Daniel Craig is a good Bond, even he does not look like Fleming's Bond.

I think the producers should have hired Clive Owen instead of Craig. Owen would have perhaps offered a Bond to rival Sean Connery.

I'm looking forward to seeing who the next Bond actor will be.

'Hemingway & Gellhorn': How The HBO Movie Came To Be Made

Scott Timberg at the Los Angeles Times offers a piece on how the director Phil Kaufman and the actors Nicole Kidman and Clive Owens came to be involved in the HBO movie about writer Ernest Hemingway and his wife Martha Gellhorn.

Inspired by what he called "a stormin' script," Owen threw himself into the role of Papa Hemingway in a way he never had before. "At first it's daunting. God, I'm English, playing an iconic American writer. But I immersed myself in everything Hemingway. I took months and months, read everything he wrote, read everything about him. Had endless talks with Phil about him."

Owen visited places Hemingway had been — Cuba, Spain, France — struck by the adulation and fondness he seemed to leave behind him and spent days with recordings of Hemingway's voice ringing in his ears. He also put on weight to play this man of enormous appetites. But Owen does not speak with the portentous tone of the Hemingway character played by Corey Stoll in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."

"I think he's an absolutely amazing writer," says Owen, who had known Hemingway's work only slightly. "A bit out of fashion at the moment, because of the whole macho thing, the bullfighting and safaris. The feminist movement buried him a bit. But I would argue that a lot of the writing is hugely sensitive. He was the beginning of the economy of language: The discipline, the way he extracted the fat and honed and honed."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-hemingway-gellhorn-20120520,0,3035397.story   

Actor Clive Owen Given Access To Ernest Hemingway's Cuban Home For Film Role

 

The British actor Clive Owen told the entertainment web site Contactmusic.com that he was given total access to Ernest Hemingway's Cuban home as he prepared to portray the late great writer in the HBO film Hemingway and Gelhorn.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/clive-owen-given-access-to-ernest-hemingways-home-for-film-role_1309434

You can also read an earlier post on Clive Owen and the Hemingway film, as well as other Hemingway films via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/06/hbo-to-make-movie-of-ernest-hemingway.html

You can also read my online column On Crime & Thrillers on Hemingway's crime stories via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2009/08/on-crime-thrillers-hemingway-on-crime.html  

Clive Owen Shows Off His Hemingway Moustache

The entertainment web site Monsters and Critics reports that British actor Clive Owen showed off his Hemingway moustache on the Ellen DeGeneres TV program.

Owen (seen in the above Russ Einhorn/Splash photo) explained to DeGeneres that he grew the moustache to portray Ernest Hemingway in a film for HBO about the writer and his journalist wife Martha Gelhorn. Actress Nicole Kidman is portraying Gelhorn.

You can read the item via the below link:

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/news/article_1628049.php/Clive-Owen-shows-off-Hemingway-tash

You can also read an earlier post on the Hemingway/Gelhorn film and other films on Hemingway via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/06/hbo-to-make-movie-of-ernest-hemingway.html