Guest: Bond, James Bond (opening thoughts)

Happy Birthday. 45 years since the release of the first official entry in the James Bond film series. This calls for consecutive viewing, it does. The way I figure, if it’s good enough for TBS to marathon once a year, it has to be good enough for me, right? Right.

This will be useful, since I have trouble recalling the details of some of the earlier films in the series. Outside of my overall rating, events, characters and plot points bleed together, and I’m not entirely certain what happens in Octopussy; it's quite possible that I have never seen it.

Atonement of this inexcusable laziness consists of purchasing all four volumes of the James Bond series, as well as the separately packaged 21st film, viewing unofficial entries, and resolving not only to watch everything in order but to follow up every film with the corresponding extras on the discs (yes, that includes full-length commentary). I expect to be the nerdy Pai Mei of Bond films after this is all over. If not, I will at least stop getting Bond wrong.

Afterwards, I can tally my intellect with the Bond Scene-It DVD mini-game included in Volumes 1 and 2. It’s the only way I can reconcile the spending of so much money. Second most profitable franchise indeed.

Nobody does it better, eh? Well, we'll see about that.