Mentioned the other day that I wanted to attempt watching a movie every single day in 2026…. something I attempted to do about a decade ago but I kinda lost my mind and patience after 4 months.
My approach is a little different this year… however it’s a little too early to tell if I’m going to have my sanity in place in May.
What I can however impart today is that I’ve recently done a little plunge into the world of 007 movies. One of the things I wanted to commit to for my movie project, was to focus on movies I hadn’t seen before. That shouldn’t be too hard… there’s surely 365 movies I haven’t watched or don’t remember really watching all the way thru.
I’m fairly certain that at one point or another I watched 007 movies. I couldn’t tell you what Moonraker is about or Octopussy, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen them. I may however have played 007 Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 so much that I think I know what those movies or characters are all about.
As luck would have it - Netflix - worked something out with MGM and all the Bond movies are available to stream. I started my journey by watching the very first installment of 007 called - Dr. NO. The movie was originally released in 1962…. I believe its not the first book of the Bond series, but for whatever reason it was the first novel they wanted to adapt.
Much to my surprise, I ended up LOVING the movie. I went into thinking it was going to be super corny and out dated. I also had some preconceived opinions about Sean Connery playing to role of Bond. I wasn’t exactly far off on him being a womanizer…. I’ve never read a Bond book in my life, so I don’t know if he went out of his way to sleep with women like he does in the movies.
In the movie Dr. No - I believe that Bond killed three men and slept with 3 women. I didn’t sit down with a piece of paper to keep track of both body counts, but I remembered thinking that the number was kinda low. I feel like i’ve seen an afternoon of Mad Men episodes where Don Draper slept with twice as many women in the same amount of screen time.
But I digress…. another thing that surprised me about Bond was seeing so many people of color having key parts, playing key roles in the movie. This is years before Star Trek, which is often cited as a key program that showcased diversity.
Another thing nice about this early entry of Bond is that it wasn’t so product placement heavy. There wasn’t a plug for Rolex or Aston Martin. Those things follow very soon in subsequent movies…
All this made me think about a book of COOL that was gifted to me in my late teens. It’s a book that kinda helped me understand which were the “cool” albums to have in your music collection or which of the Bond movies were the “cool” ones to see and know.
This deep dive into Bond, is helping me understand how the character/franchise - went into a couple of stages. Bond was Cool… and then he was kinda Campy and then he became kinda Quaint.
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