Posts

Dr No, or, just how racist are these movies

Image
Film: Dr. No Release date:  5 October 1962 Bond: Sean Connery Director: Terence Young M: Bernard Lee Moneypenney: Lois Maxwell Q: NA (see below) Bond girls: Sylvia Trench, Miss Taro, Honey Ryder Ah, Dr No . The alpha. The first Bond film. The iconic credit image with Bond through the gun barrel. The theme song with the twangy guitar (in 1962!) Ursula Andress in that bikini... This is kinda weird, especially for those of us who are familiar with the books, which I'll get to in a bit. The first thing that struck me was, since this is the first Bond film and the tropes of the series weren't established yet, how much this reminded me of a not-very-big-budget Hitchcock ripoff. Particularly, if I was to name a couple of examples, To Catch a Thief and North By Northwest . That also leads us to imagining Cary Grant as James Bond, which is just kind of mind-blowing... Despite that, much of what would become codified throughout the series is introduced here, pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching James Bond during the Coronavirus Pandemic

Image
For some stupid goddamn reason I decided today that I would watch all* the James Bond films, in chronological order, and blog about every single one. It just seemed like the thing to do, and then I tweeted about it, so now I'm committed. This is my first post. A bit of background might be in order, to give dear reader some context into why I'm undertaking this ordeal. I have already seen nearly all of the Bond films, although I don't know if I've seen any of the Dalton or Brosnan ones; they certainly spark no memories. So, for the most part I'm not going into this blindly. You will learn I have a marked preference for the Connery films, but also with a fondness for most of the Craig ones as well. The first Bond I saw in a cinema was probably The Man With the Golden Gun , and so for a brief period, for me, Roger Moore was Bond. That would obviously change once I was able to see the Connery films, which must have played on TV a lot during my youth, since I grew
Post a Comment
Read more