It's Casino Royale weekend! Sadly, it also means our (00)7 Days of James Bond will be drawing to a close as well. For your enjoyment and consideration, we've consolidated all of the opening gun barrel sequences to the James Bond films here.

I used to think this was a camera shutter when I was younger. It was only later that I finally realized it was a rifled gun barrel. Imagine my chagrin at all those years of wondering, "Why does James Bond not like photographers?"

Some trivia:

• The first three films didn't even have a Bond actor in this sequence. They were all filmed using stuntman Bob Simmons.
• Sean Connery made his debut as Bond the in the gun barrel sequence with Thunderball.
• Lazenby was the only Bond to drop to one knee while firing.
• Bond wore a hat and fired one-handed until 1973's Live And Let Die.
• Since The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond only wears a tuxedo in the opening, although that appears to change in the new film.
  
• 1985's A View To A Kill features a text card just before the sequence stating that the Max Zorin character does not reflect any person or company in real life.
• Die Another Day has Bond's gun firing a bullet that you actually see passing through the assassin's gun barrel. Nice shot, Mr. Bond. This was done to commemorate the 20th Bond film, and to celebrate more than 40 years of Bond.
  
• In the teaser trailer for Casino Royale, Daniel Craig is actually in a tiled restroom when he turns and fires, not the normal white background.
• The sequence was shot through a pinhole camera in an actual rifle barrel until GoldenEye. It has been CG-animated ever since.

Now get out there and check out the new Bond flick -- after first checking for snipers, of course. ...

One more day until Casino Royale hits the theaters. Are you excited about it yet? Have you been following all of the Bond coverage and pretending that you're a superspy? I've personally had the Goldfinger theme song stuck in my head for days. At first, it made small errands (like going to the post office) fun and exciting. I'd pretend I was on a secret mission, and that the stamp on my letter contained a secret microdot that had to get to New York by Saturday. After that was another death-defying mission at the grocery store (plans for the enemy's HQ hidden in the canned vegetables). However, at this point I'm going a bit mental. Get out of my head, Shirley Bassey!

Hopefully my mental slippage won't be too obvious as we immerse ourselves in Part Two of the History of Bond Films. If you missed the first part, you can catch up quickly and be ready for Casino Royale by Friday. Make it your mission, in fact. "Gooollllldifing ... " er, sorry.

Onwards through the doors of MI6 and into Bond history we go -- just don't call me Moneypenny.

James Bond films are always known for their action, sex appeal, explosions, guns, vehicles, Bond girls ... and the opening credit sequences. I still remember being about twelve years old and seeing Octopussy (I'm really dating myself here). My friend and I were like, "Holy crud. You can almost see naked women!" Yes, when you're twelve years-old and living in Texas, that's some pretty exciting stuff. Although these were the days before the Internet was invented, so that's probably all changed now. Believe me, it was hard enough convincing my mom to let us go see a movie called Octopussy.

The point is that the Bond film openings are meant to ooze sex and mystique. They all do an extremely good job of that, except Dr. No which is all wacky flashing lights until about halfway through, and then it morphs into a semi-sexy "Samba Lessons for Adults" sequence, and then jumps the shark into bizarro-land with a Jamaican version of "Three Blind Mice" ... we kid you not. They figured it out by From Russia With Love, and every Bond movie has had a similar opening sequence ever since.

Since we brought you every Bond movie trailer imaginable on Monday, you can find every Bond opening title sequence after the jump. YouTube user jmkaos, if you're out there reading this, thanks for all your hard work. The first martini is on us. (We can expense those, right?)

Unless you've been hiding under a rock or working on an off-world colony for the past several months, then you know that the 21st James Bond film, Casino Royale, will be hitting theaters this Friday. It promises all the explosions, car chases, fistfights and gunplay that you've come to expect from a Bond film, and an even more emotional Bond, which we might have to get used to.

In preparation for Friday, we're summing up all of the previous Bond movies by capsulizing the plots and picking out our key favorite moments. Oh, who am I kidding, these are my favorite Bond memories. I grew up on these films, reading the novels, playing the role-playing game, obsessively reading the Q Branch Manual to find out about Bond's gadgets. I also must have played GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 a trillion times, so I like to consider myself somewhat of a Bond-o-phile. Roger Moore was the reigning 007 when I was growing up, but I watched the Sean Connery Bond films on tape, and was sold on his coolness vs. Moore's. This led to an enormous rift between me and my best friend, who idolized Moore (and his dad kind of looked like him). Although we both agree that the latest Bond films are a lot of fun, I think we still want to butt heads over who is the best Bond.

Luckily, you don't have to have seen any of the previous Bond films to "get" the next one, but this little history can help you appreciate all of the effort that has gone into the series. We're serving it up to you shaken, of course ... never stirred.

If you haven't seen any or all of the previous 20 Bond films, then you can catch yourself up by watching the trailers for all of the movies. Extremely enterprising YouTube user famouswillie (and other folks with an extraordinary amount of free time on their hands) have made us very happy Cinemites by doing the tedious uploading work for us.

After the jump check out the trailer for every Bond film up through Casino Royale, and some bonus video treats at the very bottom of the list.

These trailers also serve as a sort of visual history of film. It's especially eye-opening to contrast the Dr. No trailer with the one for Casino Royale. We certainly have come a long way, Mr. Bond.

Over at her Risky Biz Blog, Anne Thompson has a piece up on the big scoop around United Artists. United Artists has been a studio in limbo ever since Sony acquired both MGM and UA in April of last year. No one was sure if Sony would simply absorb the other company, or whether they would continue to use their brand and logo as a distribution arm. Today the mystery is over, with MGM announcing today that Tom Cruise and his partner Paula Wagner will help relaunch the new United Artists as partner-operators. This finally lands Cruise at a new studio, after being released by Paramount following the disappointing box office take for M:I3, and displeasure over Tom's couch-jumping antics. The new deal gives Cruise and Wagner the ability to greenlight their own projects, and will serve as a pipeline for them to distribute their own content. What remains unclear is how this newly announced deal will affect the new Cruise/Wagner production company that was cobbled together by investors once Tom left Paramount.

Since 1919 United Artists has had a storied past since inception and creation by four of the film world's biggest stars at the time: Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and director D.W. Griffith. It enjoyed both success and failures in the intervening years, giving birth to such franchises as the Rocky, James Bond, and Pink Panther films as part of its highs, and being the studio behind the Heaven's Gate debacle as part of the lows, which left it essentially bankrupt in 1980. The press release lauds Cruise as, "one of the most successful, critically acclaimed and sought after movie stars in the world. Cruise's films have resulted in worldwide box office totals of approximately US$6 billion and his last two films, War of the Worlds and Mission: Impossible III have grossed nearly US$1 billion worldwide." United Artists is hoping that both Cruise name and star power will help bring them home some of that bling.

In what has to be some of the funniest news of the day, a group of James Bond fans have come together to boycott Casino Royale because of Daniel Craig's involvement. According to a message on their site, www.craignotbond.com, "the purpose of this site is to protest Bond producer Barbara Broccoli's questionable decision to fire popular Bond star Pierce Brosnan and replace him with an unknown actor with a penchant for oddball roles, Daniel Craig."

Why all the hate for Craig? Beside it being a bit too late for this kind of mass boycott, can't you at least give the guy a chance? As if simply asking real hardcore Bond fans to boycott wasn't enough, the folks behind the website took things a bit further - they've provided you with an angry letter to use and a ton of email addresses for folks at Sony Pictures, MGM and United Artists. Oh, and there's also a petition you can sign, which so far, has only 328 signatures.

Seems to me this looks like a project for people with a little too much time on their hands. Personally, I love the approach they're taking with Casino Royale and think the bold casting choices will breathe some new life into this series. I see no reason to attack Craig's acting before we even see him as James Bond. Yet, if he turns out to totally suck the big one, then maybe I'll swing by and sign your bogus petition. Though, right now, I can think of a million better things to do with my spare time. Thanks for the laugh.

Dan Clowes is one of my favorite cartoonists (or is that "graphic novelist?") There's precision and realism in his frames that I find really pleasing. And he creates good characters too. (His new book, Ice Haven, is about a town filled with many odd characters, though it's based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case.) Clowes talks to NPR about his new film Art School Confidential, which will be released this fall.