Casino Royale on DVD

The eagerly awaited two-disc collector's edition (R2) of Casino Royale comes out tomorrow (19th).

Special features:

Becoming Bond (30 mins)
James Bond For Real (30 mins)
Death in Venice (30 mins)
Bond Girls are Forever ( 50+ mins)
5 News wraps
Music Video

Amazon.co.uk have the trailer on their page, whereas Play has a teensy clip from the extras.

MI6 review the R1 version in terms of the 'technical merits of the disc and the special features'.

There will be less of Daniel Craig's flesh on show in the follow up according to a report on Digital Spy, in which the actor says that he doesn't want any more nude scenes.

I expect you to win, Mr Bond

The name's Craig. The award-winning Daniel Craig.

The Bond star won best actor for Casino Royale at the Evening Standard British Film Awards. Celebrating a vintage 12 months for British cinema, other winners included United 93, Dame Judi Dench and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen.

News that Craig, 38, would become the sixth James Bond provoked a mixed reception from Bond fans when it was first announced. But with Casino Royale taking £55 million in Britain alone, the attention paid to Craig's performance has been overwhelmingly positive.

At the ceremony at the Ivy, Craig said he was delighted at being the first actor to win a major award for playing 007.

He said: "This is tremendous. It makes you think that the success of the film might not be a fluke. We wanted to make an exciting and sexy Bond and tell a good yarn at the same time."

More details on Bond and the other award winners at This is London1 and This is London2.

A few links (News, Carofiglio and how to date Bond)

Firstly I've updated the 'News' page on Euro Crime with a few more items including Marcel Berlins' top crime novels of 2006 which includes Euro Crime, Petrona and Crime Scraps favourite, Gianrico Carofiglio's, 'A Walk in the Dark'.
(Reviews: Euro Crime, Petrona, Crime Scraps.)

Secondly, The Independent has a so called 'secret' section on Casino Royale (if you don't mind the advertising), here. For those wanting to know if they'd be eligible to date Bond, click on the 'exclusive' tab.

Casino Royale - let's not forget the book...

Today's Guardian reviews the new Penguin film-tie-in edition of Casino Royale. It's hard to believe that the book was written in 1953.

The review concludes:
"You should also read this because, without doing so, you will never have a complete picture of the imaginative postwar life of this country. It is odd to think that people watching the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II could take a break by reading the newly published hardback edition of this book. When Larkin said that sexual intercourse began in 1963, you may think that he was exactly a decade out. And in his hugely enjoyable study of Bond, The Man Who Saved Britain, Simon Winder points out that the key moment in the novel is when Bond orders an avocado pear ("with french dressing") for dessert. We forget how exotic and desirable the avocado was in 1953; and how hard it was to take money out of the country. When Bond is gambling with thousands of pounds at the baccarat table, British readers must have been boggle-eyed with envy. And even northern France, while a modestly dipped toe in the waters of Abroad, was still a start.

The other reason to read the books is that they are enormous fun. But you might have guessed that already."

Read the rest of the review here.