God, I loved Cliffhangers! They finished the Dracula story but left the other two hanging! I loved Dracula's house and his dogs and the heroine's mother and Dracula being a professor of a night class ...

No, I wasn't watching obsessively and loudly lamenting every school play practice that made me miss an episode. I called in sick on the play practice that took place on the night of the finale.

Cliffhangers is not on Netflix.

Aw. Spit.

I think it's great that a black actor who's never opened a movie is considered a flagship of the American attack on world culture.

Flagship? No. More like a medium cruiser in the rear of the fleet. Which doesn't exactly make it any more palatable.

I do like Cheadle and think he's a terrific actor but if they did have to have a black American actor playing Bond, I'd rather see Sam Jackson in the role. Providing he wore a kilt throughout. And said "motherfucker" a lot.

The newspaper said that Radford had already anticipated the distributors' concerns by shooting extra scenes for television in which bare-breasted prostitutes who appear in the theatrical version are fully clothed for TV.

This goes back to the silent days and the "Biblical" epics. Directors would frequently shoot two versions of a scene; clothed maidens for US consumption and bare-breasted maidens for European audiences.

...Sony Film Classics has asked director Michael Radford to digitally retouch a scene in his The Merchant of Venice in which a naked cupid is shown in a Veronese fresco...

Someone better tell the child-molesters, people who talk at the theatre, and men who take sexual advantage of * seemingly -naive-young-women -who-then-drug-you-and-try-to -steal-your-ship to shift over because they've got new neighbours in their level of hell.

* white-fonted on the off-chance there's a movie thread reader who still hasn't seen Firefly.

I think that the difference between Christopher Lee and Shaq, Rodman, Jordan, and even Gheorghe Muresan (who was in My Giant) is that they don't list their occupation as being an actor. That's also why the tallest actor, period, is Matthew McGrory (from Big fish) at 7'4", not Muresan. BTW, prior to McGrory, it was Richard Kiel, aka Jaws from Star Wars.

Or so I'm guessing. They don't say what the specific rules are, so . . . .

Gandalfe ... I reckon you've hit the nail on the head. Lee is a professional film actor, while the others are sports stars who have occasionally "acted" in films.

Maybe they don't have SAG cards?

That's also why the tallest actor, period, is Matthew McGrory (from Big fish) at 7'4", not Muresan.

How tall was Andre the Giant? Though he's probably categorized more as a wrestler, though, right?

Maybe they don't have SAG cards?

Nah, they have to have SAG cards, I figure.

I can see some of that argument, but I figure by the time you are the name above the title, you're an actor too, no matter how you normally make your money -- Muresan, NSM. Shaq, MJ, yeah. Rodman even had a gig on a TV series.

Richard Kiel, aka Jaws from Star Wars.

You mean Moonraker....

Where the cute lead guy came over all fangy whenever he got grindy with the girl. I've been all over netflix and imdb.

Assuming you're not taking the piss and meaning BtVS, might I suggest the pant-wettingly awful Vampire High?

I think Don Cheadle would be a good James Bond,

A resounding no. I think Don Cheadle is a cracking actor, and v. cute, but the risible Dick Van Dyke accent he did in Ocean's Eleven absolutely rules him out as Bond. I'm sure he could be a ballsy action hero with panache and wit and all that stuff, but he's really not Bondish, imho.

Colin Salmon isn't just a bloody good actor, he's a bloody good actor with the gravitas and the quintessential Britishness and Bondishness going on already - he can totally do this. He'd make an excellent Bond. I don't know if it'll happen, because the notion of British=posh and white is deeply ingrained in USAians, and multicultural Britain isn't really what they want to buy, as far as I can see. But maybe that's changing gradually. I hope so. I was delighted that Bend it Like Beckham did so well in the US - maybe there's getting to be more of a realisation that British doesn't just mean pink and posh. I'd love to see Salmon as Bond.

(The notion of Englishness/Scottishness/Welshness/Irishness is very blurry for non-Brits, so the fact that most of these 'English' actors who've played Bond aren't English is neither here nor there - they're still British, and most non-Brits use English and British interchangeably. Hell, so do most English people.)

edited to add:

Emotionally I agree with Jimi re: employing British actors. However, it's true enough that I'm always 'Yay! Go Team!' whenever I see a Brit playing Americans in American movies. Upon reflection I agree that if the actor really is good enough for the part, then the accent and background and whatever that they have when they're being themselves is neither here nor there. (I'd be cool with Denisof as Bond, for example, because quite apart from being one hell of an actor and utterly shaggable to boot, he can do the accent and he lived here for years - he understands that England isn't some Victorian pastiche of tea and scones and this informs his acting.)