James Bond 007

You find some good shit when you search YouTube for reviews by other people who really detest No Time to Die. This is the redoubtable young Batcho.

So right now all the James Bond movies are available on Amazon Prime, and with the sudden plethora I was stumped which I’m due next to rewatch. When in doubt, it’s back to Goldfinger, just the first few minutes this time. Once again I’m blown away by just how good it is; it’s definitely arguable that both preceding and all subsequent movies lead to and emanate from it. The post-credit opening scene with the swoop down to the diving board and the cut to Felix watching the dive from the glass window ⁠— what delicious glamorous filmmaking. “Into Miami / Pigeon Game” is the 1-minute musical accompaniment.

Pierce Brosnan watches Goldeneye for the first time since he made it. We got lucky that as a child his first great cinematic experience was Goldfinger. Like any red-blooded boy he had the toy Corgi car. Has anyone suggested as a successor… Russell Brand?

Goodness, The Ultimate James Bond Medley is every song from the 25 movies. They probably should have done it as an album, like David Arnold’s, because for example the “You Only Live Twice” chorus needs its proper twiceness, and I could have taken the whole thing of Ted Mills singing “We Have All the Time in the World”, and although it’s very nice, they do splice up songs mercilessly.

The design of Lotus’s upcoming electric vehicle looks like a sleeker Esprit, reports Hearst’s Road & Track; when it’s released we can say we saw the blueprints for this car two years ago.

Shoutout to the magnificent Bubbles Wot Tickle My Tchaikofsky twitter feed on things James Bond (the title borrows from AVTAK’s jacuzzi scene). I read it and well nigh weep with Mads Mikkelsen.

In light of the boundless inanity and affection demonstrated for James Bond at the relentless Twitter feed “The Bubbles Tickle My Tchaikovsky”, I think I know how Eon can, should, must and will deal with the curdling disaster Mr Craig presumably brought upon them with the end of To Die Please Today at What Time or whatever it was called.

And that is to studiously, sumptuously, flagrantly forget what we just saw, with no more acknowledgement of it than a throwaway line like “This weather happened to the other guy” say when some villain gets fried by lightning.

James Bond movies are novel, happily standing alone ⁠— unlike the other big movie franchises today they are not interwoven arcs. Any nod of fan service to a predecessor must be judicious and throwaway. The producers seem to have not understood this; perhaps they were seduced into thinking it okay when they brought back the Aston in the opening scene of Goldeneye and it was fine. But that was enough. And as we all know, they went thoroughly the other way, trying to shoehorn everything into Blofeld’s revenge arc, spoiling the dignity of each of the individual movies.

What dotty old aunts.

Writing in The Guardian, Martin Pengelly is a real oozing 007 fan, managing in this paean to Roger Moore to link to a smorgasbord of great Bond-related cultural relics of recent years, from Alan Partridge’s clang-a-lang-a-singsong to Christopher Hitchen’s “Bottoms Up” and back again to Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s “They looked old. Because they are old.”

Bond is about sex as well as violence and to a seven-year-old boy in 1985 that was almost enough, appropriately given the fate of Kananga in Live and Let Die, to make my head explode.

Because Christmas only comes once a year, and the great man’s now been gone ten, here’s a treat: Hitch on Bond [2006]. Bottoms up!

By Brooklyn-based freelancer Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian’s spoiler review of No Time to Die is nicely done, with some good entries in the comments section, such as SanFranFerg’s stolen artwork angle:

Prominent art thefts in the real world regularly appear in Bond movies, but none to such stunning effect as the recently nicked Duke of Wellington by Goya that showed up in Dr No’s evil lair in the first movie. The theft from the National Gallery had been huge news only a year before the film’s release. Connery hams up his surprise magnificently. It’s worth Googling.

The final, and largest, stolen piece in the movie hasn’t yet been stolen in the real world. This movie’s evil lair is being redecorated with Monet’s Waterlilies, clearly in their Paris Orangerie incarnation. They’d better check their alarm systems.

National treasure David Mitchell knocks it out the park with his (SPOILER WARNING) review of No Time to Die.

The main spoiler is: they’ve spoiled it. The producers of No Time to Die have spoiled Bond ⁠— either a bit or totally, only time will tell.

Another darn piece that expresses perfectly what I was thinking and that I didn’t write myself. This is one where I feel: no matter what, I couldn’t have done it quite this well, this straightforwardly.

Sign up for SPECTRE: The Board Game.

Face James Bond as You Plot, Scheme, and Battle to Become SPECTRE’s Number One.

This top-draw (The New Republic) essay on James Bond and Ian Fleming is ostensibly disparaging about its subject, but author Scott Bradfield’s sheer depth of knowledge marks him a fan. Another clue: although it’s a book review of The World Is Not Enough: A Biography of Ian Fleming by Oliver Buckton, in the entire piece Buckton’s name is mentioned just once! This guy Bradfield’s clearly been chomping at the bit to write something Bondy.

A view to the best bit of Bond fan art I’ve seen maybe ever: David Reed’s 007 film title anagrams.

Mark Steyn rhapsodizes on Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Well this is handy: an article on all James Bond’s watches.

James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design at Art of the Title. It’s by Ben Radatz, a partner at MK12 and co-director of Quantum of Solace’s.

David Arnold speaks to collaborating with Chris Cornell on “You Know My Name”, the theme song for the James Bond movie Casino Royale: “We needed someone who could sing the way Daniel acted…” This has become my #3 favorite, after Carly Simon’s Marvin Hamlish number and Nancy Sinatra’s John Barry one.

Life meets Goblin. Franky Zapata flies his Flyboard Air in Monaco during the Grand Prix on May 29th, 2016 [via my Dad].

Nice piece by E. E. Knight on James Bond as mythic hero.

Mr Daring Fireball writes the brief but definitive James Bond-themed Apple Watch article, complete with the appropriate still from TSWLM. “The idea of a digital watch that can receive secure text messages was remarkably prescient. The idea that the messages would print out on ticker tape was remarkably silly.”

Thank you for this. I will now proceed to dip into this list of the best books about James Bond.

Cool infographic by Empire of all James Bond’s movie travels.

The best piece of James Bond movie criticism I’ve read: “My favourite Bond film: You Only Live Twice” by Phelim O’Neill, at The Guardian film blog. Muscular, yet pitch-perfect, and deft with what to throw in from the film(s) to illustrate his compelling argument.

James Bond and the Jews in The Forward. While the article itself is unfortunately flimsy ⁠— I could have done better myself ⁠— there’s some knowledgeable discussion in the comments.

Finally, a clear-headed review of Skyfall over at FT: “New director Sam Mendes wants to combine a Bourne-like lack of quips and frippery with Christopher Nolan-ish solemnity and gigantism.” Why eschew what you view as your own franchise’s banalities only to take others’?

The Business of Bond. More interesting if you adjust for inflation; Thunderball was the most profitable, then Goldfinger, then Live and Let Die. Great little logos per film as well.

A perfect, dense explosion of James Bond fun and some copycats 1, 2, 3, 4

Melvynn Bragg lauds James Bond, and isn’t it fascinating how weak a writer this public semi-intellectual is compared with modern bloggers.