Some dipshit drove James Bond's car into a lake in Italy while filming Quantum of Solace, the second picture starring Daniel Craig as Bond. A stuntman whose name does not appear in press reports, probably for the same reason that the Feds discourage releasing the names of the key witnesses against Tony Soprano, "was delivering the iconic Aston Martin DBS to the film scene in heavy rain when he lost control" and plowed 007's sweet, sweet ride into Lake Garda, a body of water that few reporters will be able to resist describing as "scenic." The stunt man was taken to the hospital "with a few bruises," most of them probably administered by the producers; the car, which was hauled out of the lake and is now the world's most expensive portable hot tub, was reportedly the only one of its make available for the production.
Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second "official" entry in the Bond franchise that began back in 1962 with Dr. No, has already experienced its share of setbacks. It went through a change of directors, requiring that both principal photography and the picture's release date be pushed back; Chilean politician Carlos Lopez crashed the location shoot (after the filmmakers had used the village of Antofagasta to double for Bolivia) to criticize the filmmakers' geographic sense and compare them to the Pinochet dictatorship; weather caused the cancellation of a planned shoot at Macu Picchu last month; and on top of all that, the thing's called Quantum of Solace. Is that supposed to be a rebus puzzle, or what? In addition to the sturdy, studly Craig, the cast includes new Bond girls Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton, and Mathieu Amalric (Munich, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), popularly known as "that little Roman-Polanski-looking sumbitch", as the requisite supervillain. Quantum of Solace is supposed to open in the U.K. in late October and in the U.S. the first week of November, if there are enough survivors to finish it.
