Saturday, November 18, 2006

View to an Overkill

Before we abandon the subject of spy and lothario James Bond, now that the film Casino Royale has debuted worldwide, let me mention two more stories worth reading. The first, by Cinematical’s Kevin Kelly, is a recap of the opening gun barrel sequences from the 21 “official” 007 flicks. (Did you know that “The first three films didn’t even have a Bond actor in this sequence”? As Kelly explains, “They were all filmed using stuntman Bob Simmons.”) The second piece, in today’s New York Times, was written by Simon Winder, author of The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey Into the Disturbing World of James Bond. It looks at the mythologizing of 007 and at the way that his “shape-shifting”--necessitated by a succession of actors in the film role--has left him “ever more powerful, beyond the vagaries of the merely human.”

READ MORE:There Are Similarities, but Real MI6 Isn’t James Bond’s Shoot-to-Kill Service” (AP); “Notes on Moving the Bond Series Forward,” by Ryan Stewart (Cinematical).

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