busker

One of the trailers before Kung Fu Hustle is for a tempting gangster movie, Layer Cake, featuring our next James Bond, Daniel Craig.

As I watched the promo I realized two things

1. I wrote hastily about Craig's unsuitability as the new 007. We all have the smoothie hardman image firmly in mind and this may have played itself out. I think the producers have been clever and are going for a slightly more uncouth version, albeit with the usual Bond-style birds and gizmos.
2. But what an even better Quiller DC would have made - that cerebral spy and brilliant creation by the late Elleston Trevor under his most famous (of many!) pen names, Adam Hall.
   • Last time I spoke to Chaillé Trevor, Solitaire seemed to be the doldrums - fingers crossed they get the right actor for the role.

In fact, I'm the worst person to talk about turning Quiller into film, being too blinded by admiration for Hall's style and too convinced that his elliptical style doesn't actually transfer to celluloid - as proved by the botched job on the TV The Quiller Memorandum.

But I glimpsed something of the loner Quiller in Craig's build and features and rather regret losing him to 007.

On the other hand, at *least* it didn't go to that wet Orlando Bloom who I think surpasses drippiness (which puts me in disagreement with 97% of the world's otherwise discerning and red-blooded women).

Or let him star in the version for the *12 year* olds.