Heaneyland!

I love that scene where Roger Moore dies and morphs into Timothy Dalton

There's good news for two Brit icons this week. First, Pierce Brosnan will continue playing James Bond after all. (Here's a link, though it might not be active by the time you get there. The upshot is that the reports of Pierce not being brought back for a fifth film were actually feelers by the studio, and the ensuing avalanche of protests convinced producers to stay the course.) The plots of all Bond movies being largely interchangeable, my interest in them can generally be directly correlated to the charisma of the actor playing 007 (and, nowadays, to my curiosity to see whether John Cleese will be better used than he is in the Harry Potter movies). I think Brosnan makes a swell Bond...though, of course, I'm one of the five or six people who liked Timothy Dalton, so I might not be a good bellwether for the nation on the Bond issue.

As for the other item -- Doctor Who is finally returning to television, after 15 years (not counting the abortive attempt to bring it to the US in 1996). Taking the role will be Christopher Eccleston, who seems like a fine left-field sort of choice. He's not someone whose face I could immediately call to mind, but it turns out I've seen him in several excellent films (Shallow Grave, Let Him Have It, 24 Hour Party People), so I'm pretty psyched, even though the fellow who would probably have been my dream casting choice for the role -- Richard E. Grant -- was also under consideration but didn't make the cut. Ah well. Maybe he'll be the next regeneration. Probably not the next Bond, though.