Variety's Peter Bart, himself once the "nominal" head of United Artists, offers Tom Cruise some unsolicited career advice. Among the tips: Nurture maverick talent. Also: Shut the hell up about the Scientology stuff, and act like the nice Quakers and Mormons who don't shove their religions in Bart's face. [Variety]
Casino Royale shatters the first-day UK box office record for Bond films, bringing in a record $3.2 million. [THR]
· Meanwhile, China's censorship board approves Royale for release, despite fears that the repeated display of Daniel Craig's unclothed torso might cause an unwanted spike in birth rates. [Variety]
· And in former Bond news, Pierce Brosnan takes another spy-related gig, Spy vs Stu, in which he'll play a "handsome, debonair" secret agent out to steal the girlfriend of a fellow vacationer. [THR]
· Hollywood insiders are skeptical that Phillip Morris is sincere in taking out ads in the trades begging studios not to use their cigarette brands in movies, no matter how cool actors look while marketing their tobacco products to a new generation of potential smokers. [Variety]

Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal has by now almost certainly picked out the Bond-themed outfit she'll be wearing to Casino Royale's premiere, but ushering her first 007 installment into theaters has been a long road, and one that required her to relinquish the iron-fisted authoritarian control one would expect of a maverick studio head overseeing a $250 million project. The LAT takes a look at the business arrangement that led to Sony getting the keys to the tricked-out Aston Martin for the first time, but finding themselves having to immediately cede the wheel to the franchise's creative custodians, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson:

In a mere matter of weeks, minds will finally be made up over whether Casino Royale's latest Bond incarnation, Daniel Craig, has proven his many, internet-enabled naysayers wrong and was worthy all along of inheriting the superspy's mantle. Still, a little nudge of encouragement from a respected co-star never hurts, such as when Dame Judi Dench recently registered her awed surprise at having caught a sidelong glance at Craig's generously proportioned double-oh-seven.

New James Bond Daniel Craig has suffered his fair—or unfair—share of critics' taunts, who accuse the actor of being in possession of an insufficient manlihood to adequately fill 007's tuxedo pants. At least the prolific Craig has his former co-stars to vouch for his potency, such as in this anecdote from Toby Jones, who was more than willing to reminisce about his screen kiss with the actor in the Truman Capote biopic, Infamous:

If you thought being appointed heir to one of the most beloved and fiercely guarded franchises in cinematic history somehow rendered you immune from mean-spirited internet taunts and grumblings regarding your fitness for the role—say, that you didn't know how to play poker, use a firearm, that you had no eyebrows, or turned beet red in the sun, that you couldn't drive stick and looked like a Village Person, or even lost your teeth in a choreographed fight—well, you'd be wrong. Even James Bond has feelings:

Until now, upcoming Bond installment Casino Royale's greatest obstacle—aside from a script by Paul Haggis—was the new Bond himself, Daniel Craig, who seemed doomed from the start to weather the emasculating taunts of the British tabloid press. But now the production has come against a foe far greater than a Bond with uncharacteristically fair coloring and an inability to drive stick: A freak chain reaction has resulted in the studio containing all the Bond sets to burn to the ground.

At the very real risk that you've seen this before, we are happy to pass along the Fucking Short Version of perhaps our favorite movie of all time. [via Screenhead/Waxy]
The glossies really can't win. Call Reese Witherspoon fat enough to be pregnant, get sued. Call Kate Hudson skinny enough to scare her mom, get sued.
· But at least Kate Hudson never got skinny enough to faint dead away in Kitson.

· Four of the six big media companies saw their stocks rise this year. Among them, CBS' went up 4%, while Viacom went down 10%. Les Moonves was last overheard cackling in his office, inviting his secretary to join him for a slice of a custom-ordered cake iced to resemble a naked, weeping Tom Freston. [Variety]
· Superman Returns pulls in a healthy $21 million on its opening day, performing to but not exceeding Warner Bros.' expectations, and not coming anywhere near Spider-Man 2 record of $40.4 million. Brandon Routh's agent announces the happy news at some teenager's house party in the Valley, as his client teeters on the roof, having an Almost Famous moment. [Variety]
· Sony screens 20 minutes of Casino Royale at the Cinema Expo, revealing a much grittier, angry Bond who [SPOILER!] blossoms once he reluctantly accepts an undercover post acting as a bitchy fashion editor's assistant. [Variety]
· "How do you end a network?" In the case of The WB, apparently you end it by airing a day's worth of old pilots and "classic promos and image campaigns from the WB's 11-year history." Be sure to catch the montage of Regrettable Felicity Hair Decisions, set to a tear-jerking "Time Of Your Life (Good Riddance)." [Variety]
· Kyra Sedgwick's TNT series The Closer has been renewed for a third season, in which audiences will finally learn what Kyra has been getting closer to in the first two seasons. [THR]

The British tabloid press seem intent on turning the shaming of new James Bond Daniel Craig into a national pastime, to be enjoyed alongside such others cherished local activities as eight-day cricket matches and deep-fried cod. Their carefully adhered to format dictates merely thinking up a Bond skill (driving a manual sports car, hand-to-hand combat, operating a weapon, exposure to daylight), then reporting that Craig's complete incompetence at said skill rendered him injured and/or a laughing stock, followed by a mention that an expert is being flown in for tutorial. Note how all the elements fall into place with this story from The Sun about Craig's poker-playing illiteracy:

Much derided new 007 Daniel Craig looks as though he's been hitting Her Majesty's Secret Weightroom lately, though the frustrating confinements of his wardrobe requirements appear to be getting the better of him. No doubt at the precise moment this photograph was snapped, Craig was thinking back to his happier, freebagging days as an activist at the forefront of the "tomato juice, not clothes" nudism movement.

Perpetually embattled heir to the James Bond title, Daniel Craig, has had everything from his virility to his lack of eyebrows challenged since filming started on the series' next installment mostly at the hands of archenemy CraigNotBond.com. But just when things couldn't get any more absurd in one of cinema's most overblown and thoroughly entertaining fanboy uprisings, another bizarre chapter unfolds. In what has to be a first, James Bond's dad has come to his son's defense:

The makers of the next James Bond film have gone on the defensive. Having read the reports questioning their choice of fair-haired, tooth-impaired Daniel Craig for the title role, Casino Royale producers organized a press junket on the set, that reporters may gaze upon Craig's rugged yet dashingly appropriate good looks and ease with a hand weapon. Craig himself dismissed all those pesky rumors:

Kurt Loder had a chance to talk to Paul Haggis shortly before the Oscars about his favorite film of the year, Crash, not a surprising choice for the MTV personality considering the Best Picture winner in many ways echoes that other classic urban cautionary tale, the "Papa Don't Preach" video. Looking ahead, Loder questions Haggis on what we can expect from Casino Royale, the upcoming James Bond installment for which the writer/director did a script rewrite:

The British tabloids are doing their best to establish themselves as new 007 Daniel Craig's personal Blofelds, stroking their white cats as they conspire to singe off the actor's testicles with the laser of public humiliation. Cackles The Sun about the latest emasculating mishap to befall Blonde Bond:

· The Greatest Bond of Them All finally falls in line and offers his endorsement of Daniel Craig. And if you need something to make you forget about his tomato-tastic nude scene, here's a bunch of naked pics of the new Bond girl. [link NSFW]
· Maybe those people harbinging the death of blogging aren't just whistling Dixie.
· We always thought that Brian Fellows was a little too tipsy to get behind the wheel. And the same goes for Donald Duck.
· The last person on earth not to know The Daily Show is not a "real" news program just so happens to hold high public office.

· Like her famous adoptive dad Brad Pitt, little Zahara Jolie-Pitt has a hard time turning her thoughts into recognizable words. But when he took her to the Eiffel Tower, the clever toddler still managed to communicate to her father that she recognized the place where Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes pretended to get engaged.
· Worker #3116 has 12 reasons why he'd be a better Bond than the naked guy.
· We'd forgotten that Matt Damon essentially dumped Minnie Driver on Oprah's show, but ABC News reminds us about some particularly soul-crushing celebrity break-ups.
· Britney Spears' bad taste in gurus is surpassed only by her unfortunate choice in baby daddies.
· Finally, some proof that at least two people have seen Firewall.

We were so moved by the recent stories that former James Bonds Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore leapt to the defense of embattled 007 successor Daniel Craig that we decided to call upon his famously tuxedoed cinematic ancestors to rescue their pilloried compatriot once again. The WOW Report has some revealing shots from Craig's tomato-slathered full-frontal work in Some Voices, a moment of weakness the actor swears was alcohol-induced. We assumed that the pistol-packing trio would understand the things a hard-drinking superspy might do after a couple of stiff martinis on an empty stomach and wouldn't mind standing sentinel over Craig's naughty bits. But should curiosity get the best of you, clicking the above image will quickly decommission Blonde Bond's security detail.

New 007 Daniel Craig has been having a time of it lately: His web-enabled critics are accusing him of being nothing more than a blonde Bond shell, and reports from the set have him losing teeth in fight sequences gone awry and incapable of driving his own Aston Martin. Leave it to his legacy, then, to come to his defense. The Scoop notes that the Bond Craig replaced, Pierce Brosnan, somewhat magnanimously explained to a UK reporter that injuries on a Bond shoot are common, saying, I got stitched up and sewn up a few times, it just didn t get in the papers. [...] There s going to be mishaps.

Daniel Craig Humiliation Week continues, following yesterday's reports that the unpopular new James Bond lost a couple of teeth in his very first fight sequence, with an item in today's NY Daily News claiming that the actor admitted he was incapable of driving Bond's signature vehicle a redesigned Aston Martin because the car is a stick-shift. Meanwhile, Craignotbond.com, your internet home for hilarious Craig bashing, makes a strong case that the actor is perhaps better suited to fill the shoes of any number of Hollywood icons over Agent 007, from Nosferatu to Kramer to that All-American tween take on the great British spy himself: Banks. Cody Banks.

· It's been a tough day for the new 007, who lost a couple of teeth, and then had some angry Bond fans with too much time on their hands launch an online jihad against him for his perceived failure to properly fill the iconic tuxedo.
· Harrison Ford on why he made Firewall: "I like to play a real person who has a real life and family. I just thought it would be a good movie for an audience to enjoy." We admire him for keeping the more personal reasons, like the rising cost of helicopter fuel and the fact that Calista Flockhart demands a new, solid-gold pony every day as a gift, to himself.
· Blogging.la got a nice facelift.
· TVGasm, as always, asks the tough questions. Today: What if your favorite informercial was actually about a penis instead of an amazing folding ladder?
· Kissing Madonna seems to have been good for Christina, but may have ended Britney Spears' career.
· The only thing cuter than gay Lego cowboys is the tiny sheep they tend. [via BoingBoing]