Last Sunday I visited a very busy Moray Playhouse in Elgin for the lunchtime showing of Skyfall. That was the first time I'd been to the cinema to see a Bond film on release since Goldeneye. That one had come out -after a six-year hiatus - surfing on the confidence of Britpop and Tony Blair's New Labour. I was never keen on Pierce Brosnan however; his quips always seemed to have a slightly vulgar edge to them. His villains were timely, however, if a little ridiculous, especially crazy media baron Jonathan Pryce. But I caught all his subsequent movies on tv.
Similarly, I've rented Daniel Craig's movies on dvd. I have a vague recollection that Quantum of Solace is about a SPECTRE-ish organisation controlling water supplies and there's a fire at the end. Otherwise, I can't recall a thing about it. There are only a couple of scenes in Casino Royale that I can remember.
Finding Craig stiff, expressionless and something of a cypher, I was nonetheless intrigued by all the positive press. Plus, you know, Elgin on a Sunday. So, I was happy to say I enjoyed Skyfall. It's certainly hyped, of course: the opening scene and the climax are overlong and the plotting is a bit barmy. Craig is overshadowed by the superlative Judi Dench (who steals the film) and Barden's fruity villain lacks menace. But there are spectacular scenes while Adele's mournful theme song references Shirley Bassey and is matched by striking images in the title sequence.
Coincidentally, I returned to the Ian Fleming novels- for the first time since Secondary School -over the summer. I very much enjoyed Dr. No whose superhuman villain meets a blackly comic end in an avalanche of bird droppings. Goldfinger also presented a gallery of grotesques although the golf duel is deadly dull if you're uninterested in golf. Live and Let Die is underwhelming aside from the details about Voodoo.
My earliest memories of Bond are of the gold-coloured Aston Martin, bought for me as a small boy on the High Street in Glasgow; the Corgi Moon Buggy from Diamonds are Forever; and of the Daily Express: text adaptations of Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. I remember my brother pleading to see the latter and my dad firmly explaining it wasn't for children. Things have changed these days, given the throngs of pre-teens in the Playhouse last week with their soft toy -animal hats and Ben Ten watches.
The other attraction of the Express was the comic strips by Yaroslav Horak and Jim Lawrence. My most vivid memory was of the very racy League of Vampires story which ran from October 1972 to February 1973. It concerns a cult exploited by an Ari Onassis-style magnate and featured a tastefully-draped nude vampire orgy. Naturally, as a schoolboy, I went to the novels looking for this kind of illicit, adult material. As an adult, the post-rationing gluttony of the books is their most striking (and amusing) appetite.
Bond has appeared in the graphic novel format since the 80s. Film buff Paul Gulacy creates an homage to the colour-drenched and glamorous movie posters of the Connery era above...
...while Mike Grell evokes the grittier Dalton Bond in this image. Permission to Die is a great title; the silver lady's a little mannish, though.
007 also influenced super-hero comics, principally at Marvel. Steranko's sixties adventures of Nick Fury had a flavour of Bond albeit with an armoury of Kirby-esque weapons. The aforementioned Gulacy cast his globe-trotting 70s Shang-Chi stories with the likenesses of Brando, Garbo, David Niven and Connery himself. It would seem to be a "no-brainer" for Disney and Marvel to immerse second-string movie Avengers, Hawkeye and Black Widow in the world of Daniel Craig's Bond.
As for James Bond the movie protagonist, I will be in a minority but I'd prefer his stories to be period pieces of the Cold War. Also, Dr. Who has a recent history of meeting English authors. How about an encounter with Ian Fleming in Jamaica? "Crime de la Crime", Mr. Moffatt?
Next: Haunted
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Good idea. Dr Who meets Ian Fleming, who sees the Doc use his sonic screwdriver and it gives him the idea for Q branch whipping up a lot of high-tech gizmos. In the end he leaves them out, thinking they're too unbelievable. "They'd work better in a film" he thinks to himself, as the 'phone rings with Saltzman and Broccoli on the line. "Lights, camera, action!"
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