There have been on-and-off efforts over the year to get a stunts category into the Academy Awards, and apparently those conversations are starting up again. As someone who would like to see more movies like Casino Royale or District 9 to be in Oscar contention, and for action movies to have more incentives to think of themselves as Oscar-worthy and to raise their game correspondingly, I think I’m in favor of such an addition, pending what the final categories look like, of course.

I’m also in favor of this for the same reason that I support some sort of collaborative performance category to recognize performances like Andy Serkis’: such categories would serve as an important reminder that the movies are a craft as much as they’re an art, and that they can’t exist without the people who do things that stars won’t, either because they require a different set of skills, or because they’re dangerous. A lot of what funds the ability of pretty, elegant people to do pretty, elegant things on screen (or, alternatively, to surrender their beauty and poise in ritual artistic acts of self-abnegation) is the work that’s done by these people to make movies that are exciting, and propulsive, and that sometimes are dumb but don’t inherently have to be. Action sequences can be as compelling, and as witty, as good dialogue. Movies like Mission Impossible IV and Casino Royale have been particularly good at using fights to joke about and comment on characters from the first and third worlds. And Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a decidedly more mediocre movie without the fight that destroys the main characters’ soul-sucking suburban facade and resurrects their sexual connection. That’s work, and it draws a lot of people to the movies, and it should be recognized for that, though it might make sense to start the category out small to set a consistently high bar.

I’ve written in qualified defense of product placement in the past, arguing that when it’s used to subsidize repetitive competition shows or to prop up low-rated but quality programming where the audience is aware that product placement is ongoing, there’s no real damage to the creative integrity of a program. But switching up Bond’s martini for a Heineken in Skyfall, the next installment of the storied franchise, is going too far.

First, it would be hard to make the case that adding a Heineken sponsorship is actually necessary to help the production cut costs or make some sort of margin. The Bond franchise may be the most reliable product in moviegoing history, resistant to downturns, odd plots, and dreadful names—Quantum of Solace made just $5 million less than the far superior Casino Royale. Unless Sam Mendes, who is directing Skyfall, is doing something truly bizarre with the movie, there’s probably no particular need to lock in a little margin to ensure that everything will be okay.

Second, this is a case where Bond’s original product choice actually matters—the scene where he comes up with the particular formula for it in Casino Royale is all about the delight a self-made man takes in tweaking the conventions and the formulas of the class he’s joined. That Bond drinks his martini shaken not stirred, and therefore slightly weaker, is a nice little chink in his masculine armor because it means he’s drinking a weaker cocktail (shaking makes the ice melt faster and dilutes the drink). Characters’ tastes can be and often are arbitrary in popular culture, but Bond’s are carefully curated and a very important projection of his personality that helps provide continuity from one actor to the next. Turning him into a Heineken drinker is a betrayal.

More to the point, why does it have to be Bond quaffing the brewski? If Felix Leiter is back—and one has to hope he will be given how wonderful Jeffrey Wright’s been in the role of Bond’s American counterpart—why not have him knock back a beer while Bond drinks his martini? You’d still get the positive association, and you could get it in a way that tweaks Bond’s martini-drinking a bit, plays up the difference between American and British styles. That actually seems like it would be smarter, and more self-aware. And one of the things that’s made Subway’s product placement in recent years so successful is that it acknowledges that the audience is fully aware of what they’re doing and what they’re trying to achieve. It’s less about building desire for the product and more about generally positive associations for the brand, something that’s more sophisticated, but much more fun for viewers. Bond can be deadly serious, but as Casino Royale showed, he’s more fun when he’s aware of his own affectations, pretentions, and self-defense mechanisms. Heineken and Mendes might want to take a lesson.

The bridge is yours.

-Horse-racing fans, rejoice. You get another season of Luck.

-The best review I’ve read of Lana Del Ray’s album.

-The Smithsonian adds the Mexican Museum in San Francisco to its network.

-Great prints of classic pop-culture real estate.

-A first glimpse at Skyfall, the next James Bond movie.

-Sarah Palin accent fans, your fix is here:

The bridge is yours.

-Louis C.K.: web innovator and skeptic.

-Ninja engagement photos. Zombies are so earlier this year.

-Apparently we get five more Daniel Craig-as-Bond movies.

-Restoring the credits of blacklisted screenwriters.

-More Azelia Banks:

LIQUORICE by Azealia Banks

The bridge is yours.

-I really want to see how M will interact with the new Q.

-Rod Dreher on church architecture and Gaudi.

-Martin Scorcese on 3D.

-Critics, citizen curators, and gatekeepers.

-Gorgeous bicycle animation:

I’m feeling sort of meh about the next Bond movie. After Casino Royale gave us a plot with actual relevance, as much drama when Bond wasn’t committing acts of violence as when he was, and a Bond Woman in Eva Green as opposed to a Bond Girl, Quantum of Solace regressed to loud nonsense and eye candy. But one thing in the description of Skyfall did catch my eye: “Bond’s loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her.”

I thought that one of the things Casino Royale did best was to reboot the relationship between Bond and M as a somewhat maternal one, albeit one that’s riddled with prickles. That initial scene where he breaks into her apartment to rifle through databases that are closed to them has the air of a mother exasperated with an inconveniently precocious child. When she scolds him after his tropical misadventure, he’s a teenager she needs to give a leash to, but she’s keeping an eye on him. And after Vesper’s death, when Bond tells her curtly that “The job’s done, the bitch is dead,” it’s understood between them how badly he is wounded. Part of the fun with Bond, of course, is his appeal to women, but it was a relief to see a sustained relationship in there, and one that’s based on intellect, wit, and the work.

I also just think that Judi Dench’s work as M has been superb. I will admit that I appreciate it when someone as accomplished and talented as she is shows some affection for tacky action movies like the Bond Franchise and the Riddick movies. Rewarding her for transforming a kind of thankless role by giving her a substantive backstory should be fun for her — and for us.

The totally unsubstantiated rumor that Idris Elba could be the next James Bond (really, discussion of the True Fact that he would be awesome at it) is back! I think it’s true that Elba, particularly after his amazing turn on Luther, has demonstrated that he has the chops to succeed Daniel Craig. For me, Craig’s main accomplishment, particularly in Casino Royale, was to define Bond who can take a tremendous amount of punishment as well as dish it out, and someone who has tremendous emotional vulnerabilities that he keeps mostly very well-disguised.

And beyond that, I think there’d be some real power, especially for American audiences, in a black Bond. It’s not like we don’t have black cops, black soldiers, and black spies. The Craig movies even gave Bond a black American counterpart, though Jeffrey Wright has very little time on-screen. But given the way our dialogues around black men and violence have failed to evolve; our widespread comfort with the state-sanctioned killing of black men, whether by the police or as part of an execution process; the way our pop culture depictions of black men overwhelmingly show them committing illegal acts violence rather than legitimized ones; I think there would be something significant about a depiction of a black cultural icon who has a license not just to protect people, but a license to kill, and not in self-defense.