Live and Let Die (1973)

     You know what? I think I had James Bond pegged all wrong. My initial experiances and the way people seem to talk about the franchise led me to believe that Bond movies were all fairly typical action blockbusters lightly flavored with cold war era spy fiction and sci-fi with an unusually high level of racism and mysogyny due to the franchise's adhirance to tradition, and the power fantasy it was created to cater to. However, as we move further along the franchise into the seventies I can't help but get the sense that, while they are spy/sci fiction action blockbusters they aren't at all typical.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

     You know what I find most interesting about James Bond? Just behind Godzilla it is the second longest running movie franchise. That's not the only thing the seem to have in common: they also seem to have gotten really silly at around the same times too, and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) seems to be prime evidence of this. Although, it is worth mentioning that the Godzilla movie it most reminds me of was released two years later: Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973).

Goldfinger (1964)

     (CW: Discussion of rape) Coming out of Dr. No (1962) it occured to me that older Bond might just be too vapid to hold any interest beyond modeling a gross male powerfantasy that really doesn't appeal to me. I wondered if I would even be capable of enjoying any Bond movie made before about 1980 or so. I remember enjoying the two times I saw From Russia With Love (1964) but the last time I saw that was years ago and I was a very different person then. As a result it was with some trepidation that I pressed play on Goldfinger.

Dr. No (1962)

    Well we did it. We all survived 2020, and now it's 2021. Now things probably won't be getting much better for a while now, but fitting for the fresh start of the new year the scratch off poster I'm using to structure this blog has led me to a survey of sorts of James Bond films; hitting a few of the highlights of bond over the years. Over the next few weeks I'll be covering Dr. No, Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun, Moonraker, Octopussy, Licence to Kill, Goldeneye (for some reason labeled "The Golden Eye") and finally The World is Not Enough. It's worth reiterating that this poster only covers the 20th century so there will be nothing past 1999. So this week we'll start with the first Bond film: Dr. No