Bond, James Bond

As if you expected me to title an introduction to a James Bond fan site anything else? As you have probably deduced, my name is not Bond, James Bond. It Is Luthi, Paul Luthi. Like millions of others, since the moment I was introduced to 007 through one of the (to date) 24 cannon films (Yes, I know of the two others. hold you shorts.) After that I was sold. I have watched all the movies so many times it would almost be embarrassing to tell you. I own all of the books as well... in print, e-book and audiobook editions, although most of the later, non-Fleming books I have not yet read. I buy them and they sit on a shelf and life gets in the way. You know how it goes.

That is a big reason for writing this blog. I want to turn those "I should read/watch/do that" into "check-mark." Just a warning to all reading though: I am writing this blog simply for my own edification. I am really not out to make a profit or anything else. It's just for fun and personal fulfillment. That being said, I reserve the right to delete any offensive or rude comments. I like to argue with people, I like hearing opposing viewpoints and I LOVE learning trivial information that I was not previously privy to, but I am not here to be insulted, berated or belittled. I am sure I will get some things wrong, and if you feel the need to correct me, you are free to do so... in a non-hostile, "hey buddy, you know..." kind of way. ALSO! I will post quotes, pictures and links to other sites from time to time. I am in no way implying that I own the copyright or intellectual rights to anything and will do my best to give credit where credit is due! Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, lets get back on topic.

I may be dating myself, but the first Bond film I saw was 1989's License to Kill with Timothy Dalton. I believe it was around 1992 so I would have been around 10 years old. (Oops, just dated myself.) As memory serves, I wasn't horribly impressed with it, but thought it was a good movie. Then I didn't see another Bond film for about 3 or 4 years. (There was a pretty big gap between License to Kill and GoldenEye, which I'll dedicate an entire blogpost to later on.) At the time, my resources were rather limited. This was the pre-Netflix, pre-Streaming video, pre-Youtube era where if you wanted to see a particular movie, you had to go down to this store called Blockbuster Video (ours was 38 miles away) and if you were lucky enough that they had a copy, then you could rent it on VHS (sorry, no subtitles, directors commentary, deleted scenes or special features here folks.) I think the oldest Bond film our video store had was The Living Daylights.... Although I do remember seeing A View to a Kill somewhere...

Then came the miracle of Cable TV! Woo Hoo! Ok, we had cable in the early 90's but come on, they didn't have TCM and AMC and all those back then. But when those channels started to appear... that was when I saw my first Connery 007 movie (From Russia With Love) and would occasionally catch other older 007 films. Then came the miracle that was The Columbia House Movie Club! For just A PENNY (plus $4.99 shipping and handling) you could select FIVE, yes FIVE movies... as long as you agreed to buy 5 more at regular (inflated) club prices within... a year or two... something like that... But anyway, they had these little stamps that looked like postage stamps but they were movies. you would tear out which ones you wanted, lick (this was before self adhesive stamps) and put them on the handy postcard. Four to six weeks later your movies would arrive, followed my more advertisements for other movies and crap you didn't need or want. (I think I still owe Columbia House $24. I'll have to call and ask.) ANYWAY I remember very clearly that my five movies were GoldenEye, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man With the Golden Gun, Live and Let Die and Titanic (shut up.)

Since then I have seen each movie dozens of times. I have my favorites (Dr. No, GoldenEye), my least favorites (Octopussy, The Living Daylights) and one which I really liked but I am reserving my opinion on until I see if the next one holds up (Spectre.) I am in the process of reading all the books (Fleming, Gardner, Benson, etc) in order of publication and I often buy 007 branded stuff just because it is 007 branded stuff. Yes because those 007 breath mints were sooo worth six bucks...

Anyway, how about you? what was your first James Bond experience? What is your favorite movie? Favorite book? Did you enjoy seeing Daniel Craig and HM Queen Elizabeth II parachute into the olympic opening ceremony? Comment below! And lets have some fun! Til next time...