Primer. Bond. James Bond.

You may have heard there's a new James Bond movie out. 'Strue. It's called Casino Royale and it stars - hold on, what's this - a new Bond, Daniel Craig. In general, people who follow these things are saying the movie's pretty good, and what's more, Craig is downright great.

So we thought we'd mark the occasion with a new primer: two parts, even, spread over four pages. Walt Opie begins at the beginning and takes 007's story through 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me; Craig Phillips picks it up from Moonraker and runs with it through Die Another Day.

"In the wake of such a welter of exploding vehicles, smirking and physically memorable henchman and flawed plots for global domination, over so many books and so many films, how has Bond maintained this appeal?" asks Simon Winder, author of The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey Into the Disturbing World of James Bond in the New York Times. "Perhaps it is as simple as the original idea being a very good one: a secret agent for a nuclear age rooted in a global myth of Britishness."

Updated through 11/22.

Now then. Casino Royale, 2006: "[T]he whole thing moves far lower to the ground than any of the newer Bond flicks," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Successful franchises are always serious business, yet this is the first Bond film in a long while that feels as if it were made by people who realize they have to fight for audiences' attention, not just bank on it. You see Mr Craig sweating (and very nice sweat it is too); you sense the filmmakers doing the same."

"Whatever your personal poison, even the most ardent of fans would have to admit that following the exploits of 007 hasn't always been the most pleasurable of assignments," writes Andrew Wright in the Stranger. "Speaking as one of the aforementioned diehards, it gives me great relief to say that Casino Royale is good. Really, really good. Maybe, in fact, the best entry since 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

"Right away, everything about this 007 feels a lot leaner and a good deal meaner than we've come to expect from the series in recent decades," writes Sean Burns in the Philadelphia Weekly. "The controversial casting of Daniel Craig as Bond has sent a lot of rabid fans with entirely too much time on their hands into an online tizzy, and I look forward to watching them eat their words in the coming weeks."

In the New Statesman, Ryan Gilbey is rattled by "the impassive expression that Bond wears as he watches the woman who was caressing him the night before being zipped into a body-bag. You can see him mentally crossing out her name in his little black book, for ever. It's a characteristic touch in a film that strips most of the glamour and escapism from Bond, but remains the truest and toughest instalment yet."

"[H]e's what Bond hasn't been in a quarter-century, since a certain rugged Scot said, 'Never again.' He's fascinating," writes New York's David Edelstein. "This Bond is haunted, not yet housebroken, still figuring out the persona."

Similarly, Robert Wilonsky for alt-weeklies coast to coast: "Absolutely it goes on too long, clocking in at 144 minutes, and absolutely half of the damned thing makes no sense at all, but beneath all the gimmicks and gadgets... is an actor who brings to Bond all the things he's lacked since Sean Connery fought the Cold War in a toupee."

"As it turns out," Scott Foundas chimes in for the LA Weekly, "everything that seems 'wrong' about Craig (who was last seen as one half of the oddball jailhouse romance between Truman Capote and convicted killer Perry Smith in Douglas McGrath's superb Infamous) is exactly what makes him right for this incarnation of Bond."

"Daniel Craig is the first Botticelli Bond," proposes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "Craig is Bond reinvented and reborn, a creature so unexpectedly distinctive that even though we all think we know what we want in a Bond, we could never have dreamed this one up."

"Along with Brutal Bond, Casino Royale offers Hyper Bond, a character more muscular and kinetic than before. So is the movie," writes Time's Richard Corliss. "[T]his is a Bond with great body but no soul."

But Zoe Williams and Paul Flynn swoon in the Guardian, where, again, they've got a special section going.

For the London Times, Kevin Maher talks with Barbara Broccoli, "the film's legendary producer. The 46-year-old Bond heiress, daughter of Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli and bona fide producer of the four previous blockbusting Bond movies." Wendy Ide, by the way, gives the film four out of five stars.

Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph: "[M]uch against expectation, and purely because of Craig and [Eva] Green, Casino Royale is the best Bond film for decades."

"[W]hile you buy Craig's cocky Bond as implacable and impervious to danger, someone who can convincingly say 'Do I look like I give a damn?' when asked the famous 'shaken or stirred' vodka martini question, you also believe him, and this is crucial, as a flesh-and-blood human being who can be physically hurt," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

Ray Pride interviews Craig for the Reeler.

"The action scenes are great; Craig makes a very interesting hero; the plot is generally logical. So what could be wrong?" asks Andy Klein in the LA CityBeat. "Well, the one real problem here is the dramatic structure (and the length it demands)."

That Little Round-Headed Boy remembers production designer Ken Adam: "Have there ever been such rooms as Strangelove's war room, Dr No's subtropical lair, Goldfinger's Fort Knox and rumpus room and You Only Live Twice's eye-popping volcano missile launch site? Has Frank Gehry really got anything on Ken Adam?"

As for the direction, Armond White tackles that angle in the New York Press: "[Martin] Campbell breaks the genre into components - almost Godard-style - where each action set-piece takes on an almost self-analytical precision and zest.... Unlike every other opening showpiece in a Bond film, that tongue-in-cheek, 60s bemusement (a discovery of how buoyantly silly and extravagant action scenes could be) is replaced with a contemporary knowingness; the audience's now-jaded expectations are squarely met."

"We go to Bond films precisely because the characters possess things the proletariat can never have: at worst it's cynical, at best pleasing and playful (as a colleague observed, the difference in quality between a good Bond film and a bad one is damn-near negligible)," writes Keith Uhlich at Slant. As for Craig, "I'm almost prepared to call him my favorite and I wish him a much-deserved longevity in the role, even though I suspect he'll never be able to top the frayed, jangled-nerves characterization he pulls off here."

"Sensationally successful," declares Godfrey Cheshire, who muses in the Independent Weekly on "why this four-and-a-half-decade-old spy fantasia remains cinema's most durable franchise."

"The film actually plays a bit like The Bourne Identity (although more slickly lensed)," finds the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Cheryl Eddy.

David Berry agrees in the Vue Weekly: "[T]he newest Bond owes almost as much to the Bourne series as it does to its own heritage, borrowing on the other series' messy, gritty, cuffed-across-the-face aesthetic and putting it in a tailored tux. But hey: replacing a mostly bland protagonist with a man who has ice vodka running through his veins and melts slinky cocktail dresses with a raised eyebrow? Top drawer."

"Every era gets the James Bond it deserves," proposes Gary Susman in the Boston Phoenix. "Ours gets a Bond who's strong and forceful but also reckless and arrogant, who blunders into tricky situations in Third World countries and makes a bloody mess of things. Okay, no one goes to a James Bond movie for its geopolitical insights, but Casino Royale is still the meatiest Bond movie in ages, not just because of its real-world resonance but also because it strips the franchise of its credibility-defying excess to focus on character." Also: "Why Pierce got booted."

Cinematical's kinda been going nuts over the past several days. In a good way, of course:

• From Kevin Kelly, all the trailers and all the credit sequences for all the Bonds, plus an overview of "45 years of Bondage": Parts One and Two.

• "[L]et us praise seven moments during Moore's tenure," proposes Richard von Busack at Cinematical. "It wasn't all bad, was it?"

• Scott Weinberg lists the "Very Weirdest Bond Henchmen."

• Christopher Campbell on the spoofs.

• Jette Kernion, however, is "Just Not That Into Bond," and lists seven reasons why.

Matt Singer surveys the "Many Lives of James Bond" for IFC News.

Favorite Bond songs? Dennis Cozzalio's got a list.

At Cinema Strikes Back, Mike Malloy reports on how the very first adaptation of Casino Royale, "a black-and-white live-television episode of CBS' Climax drama anthology series on October 21, 1954," was saved from oblivion.

Anthony Lane in the New Yorker: "I cannot prove it, but I suspect that God may have designed Craig during a slightly ham-fisted attempt at woodworking." And so on.

Updates, 11/19: "Casino Royale and Daniel Craig are the best choices the Bond franchise could have made at this time," argues Andrew Tracy at Reverse Shot.

Matt Singer for the Reeler: "Any sense that 'this is how it began' really comes from Daniel Craig, who makes a distinct impression distancing himself from his predecessors and bringing a freshness to the character even when the material does not."

Anthony Quinn also breaks from the crowd in the Independent: "I've liked Craig as an actor since Our Friends in the North 10 years ago, and his brooding, troubled air has been the making of several decent movies since. But I remain unconvinced by his Bond, not least because 'good acting' is wasted on such a fantasy role; what's really required is a presence, an ability to look the part and to carry off its essential foolishness."

For the Observer's Philip French Craig'll "do. But then I'm one of those people who thought George Lazenby wasn't so bad and that On Her Majesty's Secret Service was one of the best in the series, an opinion shared, I'm happy to say, by Kingsley Amis, Fleming's most discerning admirer."

Bright B Simons for OhmyNews: "A Manichean ethics operate in Bond's Universe. There is good and evil, and one has to choose. But the right choice is almost always bound up with patriotic sentiment. Given the relative lack of focus on state-sponsored evil, Bond leaves open the possibility that all patriotism is good. He is an unflinching patriot, who will go to any height, or sink to any depth, to serve his country."

At Cinematical:

• Richard von Busack speaks up in defense of the 1967 version of Casino Royale.

• Jeffrey M Anderson writes up the seven "Best Bond Theme Songs."

• Kevin Kelly gathers "Every James Bond Gun Barrel Sequence" - plus a bonus.

• Chris Ullrich picks the seven "Hottest Bond Girls."

• A junket report from Ryan Stewart.

Craig is fine, but he's no Connery, argues Peter Nellhaus.

Updates, 11/20: Dennis Cozzalio: "This week at the Drive-in Trailer Park it's James Bond week."

Online viewing tip. Karina Longworth for Netscape at the Movies.

Cinematical's James Rocchi picks his seven favorite Bonds.

Wagstaff chimes in at the House Next Door: "[T]his Bond is a step in the right direction, and for the first time since I was a kid, I'm looking forward to the next one."

Craig Phillips, having wrapped the primer: "[S]eeing the latest incarnation of James Bond, Casino Royale, on the heels of watching all these other recent 007 films made it easier to see clearly how superior it is to most of them."

"Bond as Bond Girl? Audacious," offers That Little Round-Headed Boy. "Craig is the best thing about Casino Royale, although it's not a bad film. Unfortunately, it's a fairly predictable one. It's what I was afraid it was going to be: Another ramped-up, big-sequence, action extravaganza, full of needless, over-the-top stunts."

Update, 11/21: Martin Campbell for Stop Smiling: "After one weekend it's already a cliché to remark that the Bond movie is actually very good. It has a good cast, a sensible plot and (at last) a good script. So I am content saying this: Whatever the production team might have set out to achieve, Casino Royale did exactly what I had hoped for - it gave James Bond his balls back."

Updates, 11/22: For Andrew Sarris, writing in the New York Observer, this is the first Bond picture "that I would seriously consider placing on my own yearly 10-best list. Furthermore, I consider Daniel Craig to be the most effective and appealing of the six actors who have played 007, and that includes even Sean Connery."

Rob Humanick at the Stranger Song: "Casino Royale's polish makes for a sublimely cool viewing experience, but it's also comforting to once again be taken into conventions by able hands."

Vince Keenan: "Loved it."

Posted by dwhudson at November 18, 2006 9:25 AM