A week ago Variety‘s Todd McCarthy‘s got into the whole Bourne-y Bond syndrome in his “Deep Focus” column — my apologies for not catching it sooner.

The main point is the little-discussed fact that all along the Bond films have exclusively used British directors, or at least Commonwealth, given that New Zealander Lee Tamahori did one. But never an American or Euro until now with Marc Forster, which McCarthy feels might have been a genetic mistake of one kind or another, the Bond thing being in British blood

McCarthy states at the end that Danny Boyle would have been the most enticing candidate to direct Bond. (Boyle told McCarthy last week he was a huge Bond fan as a teenager, reading every Fleming book at least twice.) Chris Nolan, among other Brits, would obviously be good, but he might be too much of an auteur for the notorious “stopper” producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli to deal with.

The word around the campfire, I’m told, is that the film was originally longer than the final-cut length but that none of the quieter scenes were working and Olga Kurylenko‘s scenes with Craig didn’t rise to the occasion, so they just decided to cut them all out. Has anyone heard anything more along these lines?