Although the James Bond movie series began with a surprising lack of gadgetry and big-budget fireworks, who would the Bond we've come to know today be without all his gadgets?


Here's a list of some of our favorite James Bond gadgets and how realistic/functional they'd be in the real world.

• Robot Dog (A View To A Kill, 1985)
  Remember in the 1980's when robots were cool? Every movie or TV show from Short Circuit to Small Wonder had a robot in it and Bond was no different. In A View to a Kill, Q has a small dog sized surveillance robot that he operates by remote control. You might remember how Q used the robot to spy on Bond girl, Stacy Sutton, when she was coming out of the shower. Could it work? Yes. After 9/11, hundreds of robots were used to scourer the wreckage of the World Trade Center's collapsed twin towers and help diffuse road side bombs in Iraq.
  
  
• X-Ray Glasses (The World Is Not Enough, 1999)
  These blue sunglasses from Q's lab are both stylish and functional with X-ray ability that allow Bond to wander though a casino viewing concealed weapons and inspecting ladies' lingerie. But could it work? No. These glasses stretch the barriers of X-ray technology a little too far. X-rays are most widely used in medicine to visualize bones and organs and requires the subject to stand stationary for a few seconds in order to work properly.



• Jetpack (Thunderball, 1965)
  One of the most spectacular gizmos, the jetpack, only appears for a moment. Bond straps it on and escapes over a high wall to his waiting Aston Martin DB5. The jetpack is real and was originally developed for the US Army by Bell Textron Laboratories. High pressure nitrogen gas is released through the nozzles to give a powerful burst of rocket propulsion. The military jetpack prototype could carry a person over a 30-foot-high wall at a speed of 7-10mph. Having just 30 seconds flight time, however, the jetpack was scrapped by the army. These days, it's reserved for novelty value and was used in the 1984 Olympic Games opening ceremony in Los Angeles.
  

There are plenty more Bond gadgets. These were just some of my favorites. Thanks to a remastered DVD collection of the James Bond movie series fans can relive all their favorite gadget scenes over and over again.


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Rambo is back in theaters this Friday, and despite the fact that Sylvester Stallone is about 300 years old, we can all learn from Stallone’s and Rambo’s perseverance under pressure—whether we’re also ex-soldiers tormented about ‘Nam or just mindless office drones. See, Rambo can be a guide to handling anything, including the hassles you face in the office every day. Throw away your copy of Sun Tzu and the Art of Business and take a lesson from a true master of war.

Continue Reading: Rambo's Solutions to 5 Everyday Office Problems


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Here's a little jem I found on YouTube. It's a terrible interpretative dance/trumpet solo from a state beauty pageant in Nebraska, USA. Stacy, the woman in the clip, is Miss Douglas County, and this trumpet solo to the Star Wars theme song was her "talent" portion of the contest.

I think Stacy has been practicing on the wrong instrument.



WARNING: This may be the worst Star Wars related video clip on the Internet.

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With the impending release of The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) fans everywhere can get a taste of what's to come with his short film Hotel Chevalier.



The 13-minute short film is a prequel for Darjeeling stars Natalie Portman and Jason Schwartzman who play estranged lovers that meet one last time. Hotel Chevalier is a free download on iTunes (US).

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Good news for Tron fans. According to the Hollywood Reporter, commercial director Joseph Kosinski is in final negotiations to direct a sequel to the 1982 cult movie classic. Steven Lisberger, who co-wrote and directed the original film, has signed on as a producer.

Kosinski, who last month signed on to the remake of "Logan's Run" for Warner Brothers, will oversee the visual development of the project and have input on the script, which is being written by "Lost" scribes Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. Story details are being kept secret.

In case you didn't see the original film or have forgotten the plot (after all it's 25 years-old now), Tron was about a computer programmer who gets sucked into a virtual world and forced to fight in his own video games. In 1982, the special effects used in Tron were groundbreaking. It was the first movie to use computer generated images (CGI) in conjunction with live action. Sources also say that visual effects personnel, for many of whom Tron was an inspiration to enter the business, are already are jockeying to work on the film.

Before Disney green lighted Lisberger to make the original film, he had to shot a test reel, financed by the studio, of the deadly Frisbee battle. It looks like Kosinski will have to do the same thing, but this time the studio wants to see a test sequence involving the movie's Light Cycles. I can see why. The arcade game based on the Light Cycle scene was so popular in the early 1980's that it earned more money than the movie.

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Even if you’re not a Harry Potter fan, you have to admire J.K Rowling. Not just as a writer with a world-class imagination, but also as a businesswoman and entrepreneur. She seemed to come out of nowhere to create one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.

It’s hard to believe that she used to be unemployed, surviving on U.K. state benefits. That was 1995. Now it's 12 years (and hundreds of millions of dollars) later, and she’s just finished her seventh and final Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

iTunes Link: J.K. Rowling Interview

Rowling recently did an interview with Meredith Viera for the American news programs The Today Show and Dateline NBC. I only caught part of her Dateline NBC interview, so I was pretty happy to see that they posted the whole thing on iTunes. The interview is an interesting glimpse inside the world of Harry Potter, and it offers some real insight into the woman who created a billion dollar world of magic.

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Apparently JK Rowling and Warner Brothers have a Money Printing Spell. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" whisked its way to No. 1 at movie box offices with weekend ticket sales of $77.4 million and a five-day total of just over $140 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday.



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Danny Ocean & Co. are back at it, this time taking Las Vegas by storm once again. In 2001's Ocean's 11, we saw the crew take out not one but three Las Vegas casinos at one time -- the MGM, the Bellagio, and the Mirage. In Ocean's 12, the team heads across the pond to pull off another heist. This time, to dismal reviews, they were after the world's oldest stock certificate, issued by Dutch East India Company in 1602. This Friday, June 8th, they're back in Vegas.

To celebrate the release of Ocean's 13, we decided to cast the special effects and clever screenwriting aside to find the less-than-glamorous inspiration for Hollywood heists. From actual casino jobs in Vegas to East Coast bull semen robberies, here are 13 heists that really happened -- one for each of Ocean's crew.

Plus this is a really cool article so definitely check it out.

[Via Gadling]

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If you are a regular reader of Entertainment Weekly, then you might have seen the first photo of the upcoming Iron Man film they published last week. The picture got such a huge fan reaction in the blogosphere that Paramount decided to release a high resolution version of the photo.

Jon Favreau (Swingers) will direct Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. (Less Than Zero) has the lead role of Tony Stark/Iron Man. Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges have also been cast in the film. Iron Man is slated to hit theaters on May 2nd 2008.

The high rez photos are definitely worth checking out.

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It premiers in 10 weeks, but the writers, animators and director of "The Simpsons Movie" are still working out the basics... including the storyline. It's hard to believe, especially since they first started working on the screenplay in late 2003. The deadline is going to be pretty tight, but the writers and animators of "The Simpsons" have assured audiences that "The Simpsons Movie" will be released on July 27 (US) no matter what.



What can we expect to see in the movie? Judging from snippets of movie trailers, news releases and Internet chatter, the plot seems to involve the town of Springfield dealing with an environmental disaster that Homer accidentally starts. Further details are scarce, but look for a giant mob scene that will include every Simpsons character ever. Also, apparently Homer has a pet pig in the movie.

It will be interesting to see what they come up with before July 27th.

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Spider-Man 3 made a record breaking $148 million this past weekend. The film now holds the top spot for the most successful movie opening of all time. Sony Pictures, the studio who produced the film, was so happy with the North American box office results they announced that Spider-Man will return for at least three more movies.

Sony Pictures chief executive Michael Lynton had this to say to the BBC on Sunday night:

"Everybody has every intention of making a fourth, a fifth and a sixth and on and on." There would be "as many as we can make good stories for..."

According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Spider-Man 3 now holds the record for the most successful opening weekend in history, making $148m (£74m).

Here are the other films that round out the top ten:

1. Spider-Man 3 ($148m)
   
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($136m)
3. Spider-Man ($115m)
4. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith ($108)
   
5. Shrek 2 ($108m)
   
6. X-Men: The Last Stand ($102m)
   
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($102m)
   
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ($93m)
   
9. The Matrix Reloaded ($91m)
   
10. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ($90m)

Michael Lynton went on to say: "When everybody comes up for air, we can think about how to make the next [Spider-Man film]" The box office results "way exceed our expectations."

I just hope they stay with director Sam Rami. Most superhero franchises are already ruined by the 3rd film (Batman, X-Men, Superman, etc.), but Rami seems to have found a good balance between between story and special effects to keep the franchise fresh and entertaining.

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