James Bond Films

With going to the exhibition I've been thinking about Bond films. There's been quite a few by now and  everyone has their opinion, mostly based on which one they saw first, so I thought I'd put mine down.

• Best film: You Only Live Twice. It's based in Japan and it's got lots of helicopters and Little Nellie and Sumo! and it's a Connery film (see below) and it's got spaceships and ninjas and samurai swords and Donald Pleasence as Blofeld and a pool full of piranhas and... It ticks a lot of boxes.




• Runner Up: Difficult. Any Connery (even Diamonds Are Forever at a pinch) apart from Never Say Never Again, or any Brosnan apart from the last.


• Best Bond. Sean Connery. The original and still the best.
• Runner Up: Pierce Brosnan. Not as iconic as Connery, but understood the role better than the others.


• Best Villain: Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), but only just (see below), and he set the mould really. Fröbe couldn't speak very good English, so he was dubbed! Bet you didn't know that.
• Runner Up: Dr. Julius No (Joseph Wiseman). I know Blofeld is a more obvious choice, but he got played out pretty quickly. A more recent alternative would be Electra King (Sophie Marceau), the ultimate bad girlfriend!

Oooo, pop quiz. Which Bond villain was played by Royalty? (see answer below)


• Best Henchman: Oddjob (Harold Sakata), no question. Jaws was just too silly.
• Runner Up: Tee Hee Johnson (Julius Harris), from Live and Let Die, but I thought Richard Stamper (Götz Otto) from Tomorrow Never Dies was good.


• Best Girl: If I had to choose, it would be Solitaire (Jane Seymour) in Live and Let Die, first impressions being the best.
• Runner Up: Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi, but voiced by Barbara Jefford) from From Russia with Love or, more recently, Camille Montes (Olga Kurylenko) in Quantum of Solace or Colonel Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) in Tomorrow Never Dies. She's got to be a lot more than eye candy.


• First film: Diamonds Are Forever (1971). I was about eight.

Fun Bond fact: "The World is Not Enough" (Orbis non sufficit, in Latin) was actually the family motto of Sir Thomas Bond (ca. 1620–1685), James Bond's supposed ancestor.

I've not been convinced of recent Bond films. Brosnan's era ended with a damp squib (far too self referential) and the last two films have been a bit tame. Maybe it's the Bourne thing, but Daniel Craig doesn't convince either: Bond has style and charm, "a man that shakes the hands that shake the world" (Dean Motter's expression, not mine, sadly), while Craig just looks like a scary nightclub bouncer who's been hit in the face once too often. Maybe third time lucky with Skyfall:



Another reason for my lack of conviction is that I read Greg Rucka's Queen and Country.

His heroine, Tara Chace, makes Bond look like a part-timer. The dialogue's pretty good too. When she and a contact are in a corner, she asks how fast he can run. He replies, "When someones shooting at me, I'm bloody Carl Lewis!"

...and another thing, when Grosse Point Blank has a better two-blokes-trying-to-kill-each-other (John Cusack and Benny Urquidez, the former's kick boxing trainer) fight scene than many a Bond movie, you've got to wonder!



Pop quiz answer: Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big in Live and Let Die was played by Yaphet Kotto, who's father was a Crown Prince of Cameroon.