Tag Archives: 007

Another James Bond 007 Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

James Bond has been in the news this week. The books by Ian Fleming are apparently being rewritten as they might be considered offensive to a modern generation of new readers and the producers are still looking for a new actor to play their famous secret agent. OK, time for another James Bond 007 post.

The publishers of the Bond books have decided that it’s time for a reissue of the best selling series with a disclaimer telling readers that the novels use language that may be considered offensive by modern readers. Of course the books were written in the late fifties and early sixties and reflect attitudes of the time. I have the entire collection of Bond books and most of them have a reference on the back saying they are outrageously entertaining, which they are, but take away the outrageous part and they are no longer outrageously entertaining but perhaps just somewhat entertaining. Of course if we begin to tamper with books written in the past where do we stop? Roald Dahl’s books are also in the news as they have been updated by ‘sensitivity readers’ although I’m not sure how these well-read children’s books can upset anyone. James Bond of course is a different matter and any sensitivity readers might have a problem with a book like Live and Let Die which is partly set in Harlem and Ian Fleming uses most of the unpleasant racial epithets which were in use at the time.

I started reading the Bond books when I was a schoolboy and unfortunately the very first one I read was the only one they had in our local library – ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, one of writer Ian Fleming’s worst Bond books. Fleming used to write his initial drafts of the novels and then write a second one, adding in all the details which make the Bond books so interesting. Things like details of Bond’s clothes, (the Sea Island cotton shirts) his food, (Bond always had scrambled eggs for breakfast) his cars, his cigarettes (the special handmade ones with the triple gold band) and all that sort of stuff. ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was published after Fleming had died and sadly, he had not revised his original draft. I persevered though, did some research, found the proper order of the books and began to read ‘Casino Royale’, the first in the series. April this year marks the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale and it is this anniversary which has prompted the Bond books to be reissued, complete with disclaimer.

That first book is a pretty original story. ‘Le Chiffre’, a gambler and also a member of SMERSH, a murderous department of the KGB, is engaged on a desperate effort to win a great deal of money at the casinos of Royale Les Eaux in France. Le Chiffre is desperate because he has used SMERSH funds for his personal use and his spymaster bosses will not be pleased if they find out. Britain’s secret service happens to find out about this and sends Bond to France to make sure Le Chiffre doesn’t recoup those funds as of course, as we all know, James Bond 007 is a bit of an expert with the cards.

The book is interesting in another way too. Ian Fleming sold the movie rights to Casino Royale separately from the rest of the books and this enabled producer Charles K Feldman to produce a movie independently from Eon productions who own the rights to the other books. Feeling that he could not compete with the mainstream movies, Feldman decided to make Casino Royale into a comedy version. David Niven starred as Sir James Bond and ironically, Ian Fleming had mooted Niven as a possible Bond when casting began for Dr No, the first movie in the series.

Eon Productions finally acquired the rights to Casino Royale ready for the debut of new Bond actor Daniel Craig. I’ve got to say I didn’t like Craig at first. He didn’t look like Bond and I honestly thought he would have been better cast as one of the Bond villain’s henchmen but I did warm to him eventually and although I didn’t much care for it at first, I really do think Casino Royale is one of the better Bond films. It was released in 2006 and follows the book pretty faithfully which many of the previous films rarely do. Craig’s last Bond film was No Time To Die which I really thought was the poorest of Craig’s five outings as 007 and Bond has been in the news frequently as writers, journalists, bloggers and everyone and his dog have speculated about who the next James Bond 007 will be.

Will it be the usual upper class white guy or will Bond be black? Will there even be a female Bond? What does a 21st century secret agent look like or act like?

James Bond, the character created by Ian Fleming, was a commander in naval intelligence in World War II. He learned to ski in Kitzbühel in the 1930s and fought in the Second World War. He was an officer and a gentleman. He frequented expensive restaurants and gentlemen’s clubs as well as casinos and card tables. He drove a Bentley, lived alone in a Kings Road, Chelsea flat where he was looked after by an elderly Scottish housekeeper named May. He drank a martini made with three parts gin, one of vodka, a half measure of Kina Lillet, shaken with until ice cold then served with a slice of lemon peel. Bond is a character entrenched in mid twentieth century England so making him into a character from the 21st century will not be easy. What can the film makers do? Well, they could set the Bond films back in the 1960s. That’s one option although I doubt if that will happen. They could go radical and make Bond an ethnic character; I’m forever seeing posts about Idris Elba as the next Bond in my social media feeds but then, the character wouldn’t be Bond, would he?

The first change of Bond actor was from Sean Connery to George Lazenby. I liked Lazenby and his one 007 film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was one of my favourites. Connery returned for Diamonds are Forever and then Roger Moore took over Bond’s licence to kill. His films ranged from bad to supremely dreadful and as much as I’ve always loved Roger, I hated his Bond films.

Timothy Dalton stepped into Bond’s shoes when Moore stood down and made two pretty good films. Legal issues kept Bond off the screen for a long time but when the franchise finally returned it was with Pierce Brosnan as 007. Goldeneye was one of my favourite Bonds but his other films weren’t so good and even looked for a while as if they were going to go down the same road as Roger Moore’s Bonds into slightly ridiculous territory. With Casino Royale though things got pretty serious. The film makers played down the gadgetry which always was a staple of the early Bond films, things like cars with ejector seats, watches fitted with special magnets and belt buckles firing climbing pitons. None of that played any part in the Daniel Craig era but here’s the thing; in the previous films each new Bond has just carried on as before with hardly a nod to the previous actor, although George Lazenby did famously say ‘this never happened to the other fella!’

When Daniel Craig took over the series was to a certain extent rebooted. Bond was new to the 00 section and Casino Royale his first mission. His mission in No Time To Die was also his last, his very last because, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away here, because Bond actually dies. How could the producers start over then with the next Bond? Well, many fictional characters have come back from the dead, most notably Sherlock Holmes who author Arthur Conan Doyle killed off when he got bored with the character.  Holmes perished by falling off a cliff but a few years later Conan Doyle bowed to public pressure and Sherlock Holmes returned. It turned out, he hadn’t really died after all.

image courtesy flickr.com

Ian Fleming didn’t kill off Bond but in You Only Live Twice, Bond is seriously hurt and is rescued by Kissy Suzuki who was posing as his wife while Bond was on a mission for Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese secret service. Bond had lost his memory and Kissy hides Bond away from the authorities. One day though, Bond sees something about Vladivostok in either a newspaper or a book, I can’t remember which, and still suffering with amnesia decides he must go there. You Only Live Twice ends there but in the next book, The Man With The Golden Gun, Bond returns having been brainwashed by the Soviets into assassinating his own boss, the head of the British secret service, known only as M.

The producers never used that storyline in the film adaptations of those two books so if I was the writer of the new Bond movie, that’s exactly how I would start the new era of Bond films off.

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Which Bond is the very Best Bond?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

So who was the best Bond? That’s Bond of course, James Bond, licensed to kill.

I’ve had a little time on my hands this week, looking after my elderly mother. Nothing particularly exciting presented itself on terrestrial TV so I thought, the perfect time to pour a glass of red and crank up a few Bond DVDs.

Sean Connery.

The very first Bond movie was Doctor No starring Sean Connery as the very first Bond. Connery was excellent as the suave James Bond, former naval officer and now agent of M16, the Secret Intelligence Service. Bond gets sent to Jamaica to look into the disappearance of the local station head. It turns out he was killed for being far too interested in the very first Bond villain, Doctor No. Throw in some exciting sets, car chases, gunplay and pretty girls and you have the instant formula for a successful film franchise.

Connery plays a great James Bond and he carried on with his portrayal in three subsequent films. After Thunderball he decided enough was enough and packed the job in. Later he was enticed back to play Bond one more time in Diamonds are Forever.

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #4

George Lazenby.

George Lazenby was an actor in a TV advert and was spotted by the producers to take on the role of 007. Lazenby was to me, the perfect Bond; rugged and good looking as well as smooth and unruffled. To me he was just how I imagined Bond after reading the Ian Fleming novels as a schoolboy. His one Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best films in the 007 franchise. Diana Rigg is a great Bond lady who, unlike no other Bond girl before or after, actually gets to marry Bond. The film is a fast paced thriller with some great fight and chase scenes including a classic ski chase. Lazenby quit the Bond series after getting some bad career advice and it was such a shame that he did not portray James Bond again.

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #1

Roger Moore.

Roger Moore is one of my favourite actors, good looking, smooth and someone who never takes himself too seriously. He was great as Simon Templar and Lord Brett Sinclair in two TV action series but as for James Bond, well I don’t know what went wrong but Moore just didn’t cut it as Bond for me. His first film Live and Let Die was . .well, not bad I suppose but most of the rest were just dreadful, more carry On James Bond than the Bond we, or at least I wanted to see. Sorry Roger, just not my cup of tea at all and as for that underwater car. . . Seriously?

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #6

Timothy Dalton.

Relaxing in front of the TV the other day and The Living Daylights popped up on my TV schedule. I’ve never really thought much of this film but actually it was pretty good. Timothy Dalton was a welcome relief after the Roger Moore years; finally, a serious Bond film again. Good film, good music and a great Bond girl who had, unusually, more to do that just look nice. Dalton made two Bond films, the other one being the slightly tedious Licence to Kill. Great song but a film that needed a few kick starts along the way.

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #3

Pierce Brosnan.

There was a 6 year gap to the next Bond film due to legal issues. Timothy Dalton declined to star as Bond and the producers gave the role to Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan’s first Bond film was the impressive Goldeneye, one of my personal favourites of the whole series. Brosnan’s Bond is as smooth and stylish as the previous incumbents of the role with the addition of some wry humour in the style of Sean Connery. Goldeneye was the best of Brosnan’s films and the only real dud was Tomorrow Never Dies but even that had its merits. His last Bond film Die Another Day did venture slightly into Roger Moore territory with an invisible car though. Brosnan’s series of films were made all the more impressive by a small company of regular co-stars in particular Judi Dench as a female M, and Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny. I have to vote Brosnan in as my second favourite Bond.

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #2

Daniel Craig.

Craig made his Bond debut in Casino Royale, actually the first book in Ian Fleming’s series but the last to make it to film, well, in the official franchise anyway. Fleming sold the rights to Casino Royale separately to the rest of books for some reason which is why a comedy version was made in the 1960s starring David Niven as Bond. In fact Niven was Fleming’s personal choice for a film Bond!

Anyway, this series of Bond films brings us to the 21st century version of the British superspy with an accent less on gadgets but heavy on action. The Daniel Craig Bond films are tough and gritty but are all reasonably enjoyable, the best one by far being Skyfall. Craig’s Bond is noticeably more thuggish than his predecessors although he tends to drive a classy vintage 1960s Aston Martin. Interestingly, in the books, Bond’s personal car was a vintage Bentley.

Stevehigginsinslive.com Bond rating: #5

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Second Hand DVDs and don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond Films!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I write a lot of posts about second hand books which I am always buying but I do also get hold of a lot of second hand DVDs so its perhaps only fair I write something about those for a change.

James Bond.

Most of my James Bond DVDs, were bought either reduced or at second hand shops and the greater part of my collection was from an Ebay job lot of Bond films. Sadly the job lot contained all of Roger Moore’s Bond films which must surely rank as the worst films in the series. (Please don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!) My brother, a great fan of classic movies actually likes the Roger Moore Bond films (Thought I said don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!) so happily I was able to just pass those over to him. In a way I’m not sure why I bought any of the Bond films on DVD because they are always being shown on TV and the great thing is that if I come home from work and a Bond film has already started, I’ve seen them all so often that I know them off by heart so I can just get a brew on and settle down to watch the remainder of the film.

Sex and The City.

Recently I came across a box set of the entire Sex and the City TV series in a Lytham charity shop. All the TV seasons in one big plastic box. Great, I thought when I saw them. I already have the individual box sets but now I can keep this giant set near the TV and pop the discs into the DVD player whenever I like. The price tag was a paltry £2.50 and so one day I settled down to watch them planning to take in, one DVD at a time, the entire series.

DVD 1 was popped into the player but what had we here? This was DVD2! Back to the DVD box and I see that DVD2 was in position one but position 2 was empty! How had I not spotted that the first DVD of the entire series was missing? What the heck, my whisky and dry was all ready, so was my cheese sandwich so I had no choice but to start with DVD2. Carrie was already involved with Mr Big, my favourite character of the series by DVD2. Just in case you have never seen Sex and the City, Mr Big is not only the coolest guy ever but actually takes cool to new unexplored heights. Carrie and Big are finished by the end of series 1 but by series 2 they were back together again. Towards the end of series 2 Carrie is asking Big about their summer holiday arrangements but Big reveals he may be off to start work on a new job in Paris. Carrie is stunned and eventually they agree to go their separate ways and Big goes off, we assume to Paris.

A few episodes later, Carrie and the girls are spending time in the Hamptons -now, I’m not sure exactly what the Hamptons are but I guess they are some kind of resort or country area near to New York. Come to think of it, despite all the films I have seen set in New York I sometimes wonder about New York geography. Is New York in Manhattan or is Manhattan in New York? Anyway, at a party in the Hamptons, Carrie bumps into -Mr Big! Apparently the Paris job fell through and there is Mr Big -with new girlfriend, Natasha! Carrie is not amused!

Now the great thing about Sex and the City is that all these relationship issues roll happily along with a touch of comedy, and a great deal of sharp and finely tuned observations about people, relationships and, of course, sex. I’ve not yet reached series 3 but I’ve seen it before, years ago when it was first broadcast and I’m pretty certain Carrie gets involved with Aiden, another very cool dude with a coolness of a different category to Mr Big. Aiden is a woodworker, a beer drinker and an outdoor sort of guy. Carrie cheats on him with Mr Big if I remember correctly but season 4 is really where this whole series reaches its zenith. Carrie gets back with Aiden and in one episode he takes her for a trip to his log cabin in the country (might even be in the Hamptons but I’m not certain.) Mr Big is having his own relationship problems and wants to talk to Carrie about it and a drunken Big is forced to spend the night in Aiden’s log cabin. Tensions erupt in the morning when Big and Aiden have a mud fight after a rainstorm but by the end of the episode they are best buddies.

The Maltese Falcon.

I’ve had a copy of this video for a while but recently a dispute occurred between me and my brother. He borrowed my copy and claims he returned it. As it is now not to be found I claimed that the version that resides at his place must be mine. No he says, that is his copy. Why then did he borrow mine in the first place? I rest my case you honour! Anyway, rather than argue further I spotted a cheap version on Ebay, available for 99 pence and snapped it up.

According to that mine of information Wikipedia, The Maltese Falcon has been recognised as the very first major film noir. It was written and directed by John Huston and based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett. Humphrey Bogart stars as Private Eye Sam Spade who tries to unravel the mystery of his partner’s murder and along the way comes across another mystery, that of the jewelled figure of a bird known as the Maltese Falcon. A number of people are after the bird, Joel Cairo played by Peter Lorre, Kasper Gutman played by the unforgettable Sidney Greenstreet and Brigid O’Shaugnessy played by Mary Astor who makes the mistake of thinking that Sam Spade is corruptable.

It’s hard to put the finger on my favourite scene but one of them is this exchange between Bogart and Greenstreet:

Gutman: We begin well, sir. I distrust a man who says “when”. If he’s got to be careful not to drink too much, it’s because he’s not to be trusted when he does. Well, sir, here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding. [They drink.] You’re a close-mouthed man?

Spade: No, I like to talk.

Gutman: Better and better. I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking’s something you can’t do judiciously unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we’ll talk if you like. I’ll tell you right out – I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

Spade: Swell. Will we talk about the black bird?

Gutman: [chuckling] You’re the man for me, sir. No beating about the bush, right to the point. Let’s talk about the black bird, by all means.

The Shape of Water.

Now, there are those who seem to think I only ever look at black and white classic movies. Not so, I like modern films too and just to prove it I picked up the Shape of Water, again for a few pounds on Ebay. You may remember that the film won the Oscar for Best Film at this year’s awards and it looked pretty interesting in the various clips I have seen. Everything I had heard about the film was positive but the first warning sign was the extensive availability of DVDs of the film on Ebay and the second was the rather low prices. Anyway, I got my DVD and watched it and how this film won an Oscar I really do not know. Yes it is well acted. The photography was excellent although everything is presented in a sort of greenish hue that the director perhaps feels enshrouded late fifties and early sixties America. However the content just didn’t do it for me. It’s about a young mute woman cleaner in a top secret government installation who falls in love with a strange creature, half man, half fish, that is held captive there. She and her father rescue the fish man and take him back to their apartment high over a cinema and install the creature in the bath.

The Guardian said this about the film: Guillermo del Toro’s escapist fantasy-romance The Shape of Water was the biggest winner, (at the Oscars) the story of a young woman’s love for a captured sea creature — with best picture and best director, setting the official seal of approval on what is, by any measure, a beautifully made movie to which audiences have responded with distinctively sensual delight.

Don’t believe a word of it, the fact is the Shape of Water is a dismal weird film and my copy will soon be available once again on Ebay. It was so bad it even made me hunger for one of Roger Moore’s Bond Films. (Don’t mention the Roger Moore Bond films!)

Floating in Space is a novel by Steve Higgins available from Amazon as a Kindle download or a traditional paperback. Click the links at the top of the page for more information or to buy.

More about James Bond 007, and Me.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I spoke briefly about James Bond in a previous blog and thought I might write a little more about the UK’s most famous secret agent.

I started reading the Bond books when I was a schoolboy and unfortunately the very first one I read was the only one they had in our local library: ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, one of writer Ian Fleming’s worst Bond books. Fleming used to write his initial drafts of the novels and then write a second one, adding in all the details which make the Bond books so interesting. Things like details of Bond’s clothes, (the Sea Island cotton shirts) his food, (Bond always had scrambled eggs for breakfast) his cars, his cigarettes (the special handmade ones with the triple gold band) and all that sort of stuff. ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was published after Fleming had died and sadly he had not revised his original draft. I persevered though, did some research, found the proper order of the books and began to read ‘Casino Royale’, the first in the series. I have loved the books, and the films ever since.

007I didn’t see the Bond films until 1969 when I saw probably my favourite Bond film ever, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, at the cinema. It was everything I had imagined it would be and what I liked about George Lazenby, who played 007 in the film, was that he looked pretty much as I had imagined Bond. He had the authentic ‘comma of black hair’ as Fleming had always described Bond having and not only that, Diana Rigg was probably my favourite Bond girl too.

The Bond films were not then a staple of UK TV but there was always a Bond documentary, usually on TV at Christmas time which built up, as it was supposed to do, the public interest in Bond. It certainly built up mine. There was one documentary I remember which showed the viewer how Ian Fleming suffered with back pain and was sent to recuperate at a rest home where they put him on a back stretching machine which he later incorporated into ‘Thunderball’. Aha, I thought, this is how writers think!

Sean Connery was the first movie Bond and he did a great job in setting out the 007 ‘stall.’ The Bond movies are as much about Bond’s colleagues as they are about Bond and in the original films we had some great supporting actors, Miss Moneypenny, played by Lois Maxwell, ‘M’ played by Bernard Lee, and the long serving ‘Q’, played by Desmond Llewellyn. CIA man Felix Leiter was always played by a different actor in each of the movies, which never ceases to surprise me. A good Leiter would have been a pretty good idea for US cinema goers, surely.

George Lazenby was selected to play Bond when Connery tired of the role. However, he was new to the industry and advisers told him that the Bond movies were on the way out. Friction occurred with his movie bosses when he grew his hair long and sported a beard and eventually Lazenby was sacked. Connery returned to the Bond role in ‘Diamonds are Forever’. With Lazenby that would have been such a good movie but Connery played a tired and lacklustre Bond and after the serious and fast moving ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, ‘Diamonds’ perhaps appears a little tame. Worse was to follow however when Roger Moore was selected to play Bond. Moore plays Bond as a sort of smooth talking fashion icon and some dreadful Bond films were produced in the 1980s.

Timothy Dalton took over for two movies, ‘The Living Daylights’ and ‘License To Kill,’ and after that the film franchise was in limbo until it re started with ‘Goldeneye,’ which after OHMSS is my favourite Bond movie. Brosnan doesn’t overdo the comedy unlike Connery and Moore. He seems like a pretty tough customer yet looks good in a finely tailored suit and, like Sean Connery, he has a wonderful troupe of supporting actors to help him. Judi Dench plays a female ‘M,’ Samantha Bond plays the faithful Miss Moneypenny, and Desmond Lewellyn once again plays ‘Q.’

I was sorry to see Peirce Brosnan go because I can’t really say I’m keen on the latest Bond films although I have seen them all at the cinema except for the latest offering. The aim of the producers was to re-introduce Bond to 21st century moviegoers and to show Bond as the hard man he must really be. My feeling is that they have succeeded too well and the films have a hard edge that I don’t really care for. Let’s have another villain like Goldfinger or Doctor No. Not trying to take over the world perhaps but with a really clever criminal scheme for Bond to sort out. And give me some good espionage gadgets, please! Yes, I’m sorry to say that Daniel Craig isn’t my idea of James Bond. Fleming himself reckoned that Hoagy Carmichael was how he imagined Bond and he wanted David Niven to play the part, which he did although it was in the spoof version of Casino Royale back in 1967. And it’s my considered opinon that Bond was based on one man, yes, none other than Commander Ian Fleming of Naval Intelligence in World war II.

Anyway, it was nice to see that in ‘Skyfall’, a good set of supporting actors was established and instead of one actor departing and being replaced, the introduction of the new ‘M’ was handled well and an interesting element was the story giving some background to the Moneypenny character.

Spectre is the latest Bond movie. It was released in 2016 and although I always try to see the new Bond at the cinema, I somehow managed to miss this one. I have not seen it until now as I recently managed to pick up a cheap second hand DVD version for a few pounds. It’s a very well made glossy movie although it is a little lacking in the story department. Yes, the fights scenes are great, as are the car chases although in recent years the Bond films have stepped away from reality slightly. In one scene Bond and a young lady are having dinner on a train. A Spectre assassin comes to assault Bond and a frantic fight scene ensues in which a great deal of the dining car is destroyed. Bond eventually gets the upper hand but the next morning, Bond and his companion are dropped off at the station as if nothing has happened.

One good thing was the return of Ernst Stavro Bolfeld who comes complete with a backstory linking him to Bond’s earlier life. I suspect somehow that Blofeld will return in another Bond but will Daniel Craig?

One annoying thing about Spectre was I felt that the scriptwriters had somehow confused Bond with the character Jack Bauer from the TV show 24. As you will know, if you’ve ever watched the TV show, Bauer is a sort of maverick agent who disregards any instruction or advice from his superiors, even the President, his commander in chief. He always goes off at a tangent and is a complete loose cannon. That is exactly how Bond starts out at the beginning of this film, he is at odds with ‘M’ the head of the secret service but, just like Jack Bauer, he disappears going completely his own way and later he gets colleagues within the service, like Miss Moneypenny and Q, to follow him just as Chloe O’Brian was an insider for Jack.

Hello, Bond scriptwriter! Just remember who you are writing about, it’s Bond, former English naval officer turned secret agent and not Jack Bauer!

Final result: Enjoyable, good in parts but the next Bond would benefit from a more tangible back story.

 

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The Saint, James Bond, and a Rather Hot Afternoon.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The Saint and James BondI spent a lot of time last week trolling through my book collection and photographing the books for last week’s post about Marilyn Monroe. It wasn’t quite that easy because since my divorce my books have been boxed up in the spare room at my Mum’s house and it took me a while to search through the boxes and find the books I wanted. The other problem was that being a bit of a book fanatic, I kept coming across books I’d not read for ages or forgotten about and my original task was put on hold while I sat and started reading! I came across my James Bond book collection and as you will know from reading these posts I do love James Bond.

One of the Bond books I found was ‘Live and Let Die’. It’s not one of the best in the book series but it’s pretty good. Roger Moore played Bond in the movie version, in fact it was Moore’s first Bond movie and I have to say, Roger just didn’t do it for me as Bond. He just didn’t look the part unlike the previous 007, George Lazenby, who completely fitted in with the Bond of my imagination.

Live and let DieSadly, Lazenby listened to some poor advice which advised him that secret agent espionage films were on the way out: They weren’t, but it turned out Lazenby was. Sean Connery filled in for one more Bond film, Diamonds are Forever, until Moore took over on Live and Let Die.

Moore was a poor Bond. He looked like a sort of tailor’s dummy all the way through the film and was unable to present that hard edge that a real spy must have had. Don’t get the idea that I don’t like Roger Moore though because the fact is he’s one of my favourite TV and film actors and was great in the TV version of the Saint. His slightly flippant, happy go lucky personality was perfect for Simon Templar, the playboy cum adventurer of the TV series.

I have always loved that opening sequence in the Saint. You know, the bit where he meets some pretty girl, something happens like an attempted robbery or something, Templar saves the day and the girl says, ‘aren’t you the famous Simon Templar?’ Moore then looks up, raises an eyebrow, a halo appears and then we cut into the theme tune and the opening titles.

Funnily enough, The Saint is currently being reshown on ITV4 during the day and as I have come into possession of one of those freeview digital recorders it’s so easy to record all the episodes. Just a touch of the series link button and there they are, queuing up on the hard drive waiting for my viewing pleasure.

I started watching one today; it was an episode about an actress who is what they call today a ‘diva’. The Saint was invited to watch some filming by his old friend Lois Maxwell who would one day play Miss Moneypenny to Moore’s James Bond. The actress threw a bit of a wobbler and retreated into her caravan which was then hijacked right out of the studio and the actress held to ransom. I’m not sure how the episode ended because it was so hot (Tuesday as I write this) I had to get outside for some fresh air.

That’s the thing about the UK. You know how it is -once a year the temperature in Manchester is higher than in Barcelona and the newspapers suddenly revert from Celsius to Fahrenheit because 100 degrees is so much more exciting than 37.7!

The other thing is that in Spain, if it’s too warm you automatically go indoors, because indoors in Spain is so much cooler. In the UK it’s the opposite, it’s warmer indoors!

Looks like I’ll just have to wait for a much cooler evening to find out what happened to the Saint and the actress!

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8 Things You Didn’t Know about James Bond, 007

Posted on by Steve Higgins

bondblogI’ve been a big James Bond fan since I was a schoolboy and you may have noticed a couple of other Bond posts that I’ve written previously. The first Bond book I ever read was The Man with the Golden Gun which is a rather poor entry into the Bond world. Author Ian Fleming wrote the first draft but died before revising the book. His method was to write a first draft and then on the second, add in all the little bits of detail, such as Bond’s meals, drinks, clothing and so on that made the books so fascinating. I persevered, found the correct sequence of the novels, and have been a Bond fan ever since. Anyway, I’m getting away from my theme, eight things you may not know about 007.

1: The Longest Serving Bond.
Roger Moore made the most Bond films starting with Live and Let Die in 1973 and finishing with A View to A Kill in 1985. As much as I love Roger Moore, I really do feel he was the worst James Bond ever, totally unsuited for the role and a prime factor in me stopping watching the films during the 80’s. Adam West, TV’s Batman, Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were all once in the running to play 007 but all declined, believing Bond should be played by a British actor. Cary Grant was also approached but turned down the role believing he was too old.

2: The Shortest Serving Bond.
George Lazenby was recruited to carry on as 007 when original Bond actor Sean Connery left. Lazenby was an Australian actor and the star of The Fry’s Chocolate Cream TV adverts. Lazenby was my personal favourite Bond actor and the one I’ve always felt that most resembled Ian Fleming’s description of Bond. He had the authentic black comma of hair that Fleming described in the books and his one Bond movie, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ was one of the very best. Such a pity that Lazenby didn’t go on to make more Bond films. He was given poor advice about the movie business; in particular he was advised that the Bond movies were on the way out. Away from the Bond set Lazenby dressed like a seventies hippy with long hair and a beard, none of which went down well with his movie bosses and PR men so Lazenby was out and Sean Connery asked back for one last 007 movie.

image courtesy flickr.com

image courtesy flickr.com

3: Who wrote the Bond books and where were they written?
Ian Fleming wrote the Bond books. After the war finished Fleming began work as foreign manager for the Kemsley newspaper group and as his contract with them gave provision for three months holiday during the
winter months, Fleming spent the time in Jamaica where he bought a house. He named the house after a wartime operation known as operation Goldeneye. He returned there every summer where he would work on the next Bond book. When all the books had been made into films, Eon productions, the makers of the Bond movies had to create new stories and new plots. The seventeenth Bond film Goldeneye was named after Ian Fleming’s Jamaica home.
Goldeneye the movie marked the debut of Pierce Brosnan as 007 when the movie franchise returned to the cinema screens after a brief hiatus. Apart from a rather silly tank chase, Goldeneye was one of the very best Bond movies.

4: Was there a real James Bond?
Indeed there was a real James Bond. When Fleming was planning his original novel he was looking around for the blandest and most anonymous name he could think of, and that’s when he came across a book called ‘Birds Of The West Indies’ by ornithologist James Bond. In 1964 Fleming gave Bond a first edition copy of ‘You Only Live twice’ inscribed by Fleming ‘to the real James Bond from the thief of his identity.’ When the book was auctioned in 2008 it fetched £56,000.
Many magazines and newspaper articles have put forward theories as to who the real Bond was but the fact is that while many of Fleming’s colleagues in the wartime SOE (Special Operations Executive) may have inspired him, the character of Bond was inspired by Fleming himself. Fleming was a commander in naval intelligence during the war, just like 007, and it was Fleming who drank the vodka martinis that James Bond liked so much. It was Fleming who wore the Sea Island cotton shirts that appear in the novels and it was Fleming who favoured scrambled eggs for breakfast, just like his creation, James Bond.

5: Which was the highest grossing Bond movie?

image courtesy flickr.com

image courtesy flickr.com

It was actually ‘Skyfall’, the 2012 Bond movie starring Daniel Craig as 007. The movie is easily the best of the Daniel Craig Bond films and there are some interesting aspects to the film in particular a visual homage to past Bond movies using a vintage Aston Martin. Until recently the top grossing movie was ‘Thunderball’ with Sean Connery.

6: How did two independent Bond movies come to be made?
Ian Fleming sold the movie rights to Casino Royale separately from the rest of the books and this enabled producer Charles K Feldman to produce a movie independently from Eon productions who own the rights to the other books. Feeling that he could not compete with the mainstream movies, he decided to make Casino Royale into a comedy version. David Niven starred as Sir James Bond and interestingly, Fleming had mooted Niven as a possible Bond when casting Dr No, the first movie in the series.
The other independent movie, ‘Never say Never Again’, came about due to a legal squabble. Fleming began work with producer Kevin McCLory and writer Jack Whittingham on a script which never came to fruition. Like many writers, Fleming was reluctant to waste this material and used it in his book Thunderball but did not credit McClory or Whittingham. McClory sued Fleming and won certain rights to the story. This enabled him to make what was essentially a remake of Thunderball in 1983 with Sean Connery returning for a last bow as 007.

7: Did the author ever kill off 007?
Not exactly but at the end of ‘You Only Live Twice’ in the novel, Bond is presumed dead or missing and M, the head of the secret service and 007’s boss, writes Bond’s obituary for the Times. It is quite interesting to read and M mentions that Bond was born of a Scottish father and French mother. The Bond family motto as we learn from ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ is ‘the world is not enough,’ a phrase that later became the title for the 19th Bond movie.

8: Bond girls and voice overs.
A quick internet search tells me there have been 75 Bond girls but I’m not sure whether that includes minor flirtations or ladies like the formidable Miss Moneypenny herself. Two Bond girls were veterans of the British TV espionage series the Avengers: Diana Rigg played Tracy in ‘On her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and Honor Blackman was Pussy Galore in ‘Goldfinger.’ Terri Hatcher, formerly Lois Lane in the TV series of Superman played Bond’s love interest in Tomorrow Never Dies and Eva Green played Vesper Lynd in the new version of Casino Royale. The most famous is probably Ursula Andress who played the first ever Bond girl Honeychile Ryder in Doctor No. Interestingly, Ursula Andress’ voice was dubbed in the film by Nikki van der Zyl who did voice overs for many Bond girls. Apparently Ursula Andress was felt by the producers to have had too strong a German accent. Shirley Eaton played Jill Masterton in Goldfinger and it was she who was famously covered in gold paint. Jill’s voice was dubbed by Nikki in order to give her a softer voice. French actress Claudine Auger who played Domino in Thunderball was also dubbed by Nikki.
Miss Moneypenny, M’s secretary is not necessarily considered to be a Bond girl; however, in the films Moneypenny and Bond always have a certain amount of banter. Lois Maxwell played Moneypenny in the first fourteen Bond films. My personal favourite was Samantha Bond who played the role four times in the Pierce Brosnan era. The current Miss Moneypenny has been given a sort of backstory in Skyfall, that of a former field agent assigned to a desk role.

The 24th and latest Bond movie ‘Spectre,’ premiers later this year. Watch the trailer below!

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James Bond and Me.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I spoke briefly about James Bond in a previous blog and thought I might write a little more about the UK’s most famous secret agent.

I started reading the Bond books when I was a schoolboy and unfortunately the very first one I read was the only one they had in our local library: ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’, one of writer Ian Fleming’s worst Bond books. Fleming used to write his initial drafts of the novels and then write a second one, adding in all the details which make the Bond books so interesting. Details of Bond’s clothes, his food, his cars, his cigarettes (the special handmade ones with the triple gold band) and all that sort of stuff. ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ was published after Fleming had died and sadly he had not revised his original draft. I persevered though, did some research, found the proper order of the books and began to read ‘Casino Royale’, the first in the series. I have loved the books, and the films ever since.

007I didn’t see the Bond films until 1969 when I saw probably my favourite Bond film ever, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, at the cinema. It was everything I had imagined it would be and what I liked about George Lazenby, who played 007 in the film, was that he looked pretty much as I had imagined Bond. He had the authentic ‘comma of black hair’ as Fleming had always described Bond having and not only that, Diana Rigg was probably my favourite Bond girl too.

The Bond films were not then a staple of UK TV but there was always a Bond documentary, usually on TV at Christmas time which built up, as it was supposed to do, the public interest in Bond. It certainly built up mine. There was one documentary I remember which showed the viewer how Ian Fleming suffered with back pain and was sent to recuperate at a rest home where they put him on a back stretching machine which he later incorporated into ‘Thunderball’. Aha, I thought, this is how writers think!

Sean Connery was the first movie Bond and he did a great job in setting out the 007 ‘stall.’ The Bond movies are as much about Bond’s colleagues as they are about Bond and in the original films we had some great supporting actors, Miss Moneypenny, played by Lois Maxwell, ‘M’ played by Bernard Lee, and the long serving ‘Q’, played by Desmond Llewellyn. CIA man Felix Leiter was always played by a different actor in each of the movies, which never ceases to surprise me. A good Leiter would have been a pretty good idea for US cinema goers, surely.

George Lazenby was selected to play Bond when Connery tired of the role. However, he was new to the industry and advisers told him that the Bond movies were on the way out. Friction occurred with his movie bosses when he grew his hair long and sported a beard and eventually Lazenby was sacked. Connery returned to the Bond role in ‘Diamonds are Forever’. With Lazenby that would have been such a good movie but Connery played a tired and lacklustre Bond and after the serious and fast moving ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, ‘Diamonds’ perhaps appears a little tame. Worse was to follow however when Roger Moore was selected to play Bond. Moore plays Bond as a sort of smooth talking fashion icon and some dreadful Bond films were produced in the 1980s.

Timothy Dalton took over for two movies, ‘The Living Daylights’ and ‘License To Kill,’ and after that the film franchise was in limbo until it re started with ‘Goldeneye,’ which after OHMSS is my favourite Bond movie. Brosnan doesn’t overdo the comedy unlike Connery and Moore. He looks like a pretty tough customer yet looks good in a finely tailored suit and, like Sean Connery, he has a wonderful troupe of supporting actors to help him. Judi Dench plays a female ‘M,’ Samantha Bond plays the faithful Miss Moneypenny, and Desmond Lewellyn once again plays ‘Q.’

I was sorry to see Peirce Brosnan go because I can’t really say I’m keen on the latest Bond films although I have seen them all at the cinema. The aim of the producers was to re-introduce Bond to 21st century moviegoers and to show Bond as the hard man he must really be. My feeling is that they have succeeded too well and the films have a hard edge that I don’t really care for. Let’s have another villain like Goldfinger or Doctor No. Not trying to take over the world perhaps but with a really clever criminal scheme for Bond to sort out. And give me some good espionage gadgets, please! Yes, I’m sorry to say that Daniel Craig isn’t my idea of James Bond. Fleming himself reckoned that Hoagy Carmichael was how he imagined Bond and he wanted David Niven to play the part, which he did although it was in the spoof version of Casino Royale back in 1967. And it’s my considered opinon that Bond was based on one man, yes, none other than Commander Ian Fleming of Naval Intelligence in World war II. Anyway, it was nice to see that in ‘Skyfall’, a good set of supporting actors was established and as usual, I look forward to the next new Bond movie!

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Spiders, Spider-man, and why I’ll always admire James Bond

Posted on by Steve Higgins

quotescover-JPG-85Recently, one of my friends put this on her Facebook status; ‘why are spiders so big?’ Indeed, why are they so big and why did the Almighty allow them to get so big? My friend had encountered a large spider in her home and was prevailing on her husband to remove it. Various comments followed on Facebook, some telling her to grow up and some hoping that the offending creature be put to death immediately if not sooner. In fact my friend’s husband commented later that the offending spider was really a plastic toy one, not that I believe him because the simple truth is that I, a grown man, really hate spiders.

I’ve always rather liked Spiderman though; in fact Spiderman is my very favourite super hero, partly because he’s so different from other super heroes. He’s young, nerdy, full of teenage angst (whatever that is) and as well as being a superhero he has to deal with a lot of stuff teenage people deal with, spots, acne, girls and so on. Peter Parker, as you may know, was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him his incredible powers. If I was Peter Parker though, a radioactive spider would have got nowhere near me because (1) I would have splattered it immediately it came within range or else (2) my screams would have made it scuttle off pretty quickly!

James Bond has always been one of my favourite fictional characters. I read all the books as a teenager and once spent a hot afternoon in Manchester in an Oxford Road cinema watching a double bill of Goldfinger and From Russia with love. Bond has been in some pretty tight spots too, you may remember him strapped to a table and being threatened with a laser beam, then there was the time in Live and let Die when they left him on a little island surrounded by alligators. Remember when he was in a shark filled pool in You Only Live Twice? All pretty scary stuff but the scariest ever was in Doctor No when he wakes up, switches on the light and finds a massive saucer sized spider crawling over him. Luckily, as a double O agent he is licensed to kill and clearly this includes spiders as not long afterwards the spider met it’s just end.

2048px-Cobweb-spider-frontal-mzeThe other day at work, I was having my morning ablutions in the comfortable surroundings of our disabled toilet, when a spider the size of a house, a mutant gargantuan spider limbo danced under the door and headed straight towards me. Now you may not know this but like Gandhi, I subscribe to the ancient tenets of Ahimsa, the culture of non-violence and also in recent years I have gravitated towards the Buddhist faith. Buddhism is a religion that is at peace with all mankind, a religion of respect and understanding. It also embraces the belief in Karma, the universal force which ensures that you will be paid back in equal measures for your kindness and also for your wicked deeds. Now, the thing is this, I may have to go out and find some old ladies to help across the road or donate a large portion of my earnings to charity because, well, perhaps you’ve guessed already:

As that spider came hurtling at me I didn’t think for a moment of Gandhi, Buddhism or Ahimsa. I just did what any right minded individual would have done: I put out my foot and squashed that spider!

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