Have you seen this, have you heard about this? Apparently "Slumdog Millionaire" star Freida Pinto is being considered as the next Bond-girl in the upcoming 23rd James Bond film. Now it might just be me, and stop me if I've said this before, but is it so difficult to find an actress to play a Bond-girl opposite Daniel Craig who doesn't look like she's young enough to be his daughter? Now I'm not saying that Daniel Craig is an old guy or anything, and at age 40 he's pretty much as old as the other Bonds in their prime, but look at him:
The guy is craggy, man. And make no mistake, it works for the character. But when you're casting women in their early twenties, it really makes him look old and them look young. And personally, yeah, it's a little creepy for me. To say nothing of the fact that guys dating women nearly years younger than them in real life has never really sat well with me anyway.
It worked in "Casino Royale" because they had the time to build up the Bond relationship with Eva Green's Vesper Lynd to the point where I bought the fact that they might find some romance with each other, but that didn't stop me from making the lame joke about James Bond and his daughter (and Craig, twelve years older than Green, did look like her old man). Olga Kurylenko, who's only a year older than Green actually, looked more age-appropriate in "Quantum of Solace", but you still had the bit about Bond bagging Gemma Arterton's Agent Fields. And since Craig actually
is old enough to be Arterton's father, well that... yeah, it didn't sit 100% with me.
Now as something of a Bond afficionado (I suppose beginning with 1991's James Bond Jr., I'm somewhat ashamed to admit), I'm aware this sort of thing is par for the course with the Bond films. In fact Roger Moore (who I'm not the least ashamed to admit was always my favorite James Bond), decided to step down after realizing he was older than the mother of his View to a Kill Bond-girl (I have mixed feelings about admitting "View to a Kill" being the first Bond film I saw, what with the pluses of Christopher Walken and Grace Jones). But still. Doesn't sit well with me. Just figured I ought to be the first guy to say that, even if everyone else seems fine with it.
Post-Script: I assured you that when I described Daniel Craig's appearance as "craggy", I was in no way attempting a joke or anything. I want to make it perfectly clear, dear reader, that I am not that lame. I just went with "craggy" because, at the time, it sounded better than "grizzled". I suppose it still does, which explains why I opted to add this after a read-through instead of simply changing it.
Oh, by the way, "Slumdog Millionaire" -- pretty good film. I see why it won the Oscar.
Right then.
What's the appeal of Saved by the Bell? It wasn't a very good show, and yet it's been running continuously since it first aired twenty years ago. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent person with an eye for quality television, and yet, if it's on, I'll watch it, even though I know it's not that great. Even when it was still airing new episodes, I knew it wasn't that great. I remember thinking as a ten year old that it "really went downhill once Screech's voice changed". It always bugged me too how every non-main cast member student was some sort of stereotype, and how all of the classes seemed to be held in that one room across the hall from Mr. Belding's office, and how 75% of all classes were taught by Mr. Tuttle or Mr. Dewey. And still, God help me, if I come across an episode, odds are I'll stay with it at least until the commercial break. Maybe they have some kind of hypnotic thing going on, like that episode where Zack put a hidden message in a song to get Bayside's female student body to fall for him during that Valentine's Day, heart-swapping thing.
