The Chasing Iamb

A James Bond movie marathon. Can there be anything more wonderful? All the cheesiness, all the corny pick-up lines, the globe-trotting, the discovery that every house has a man who has watched Goldfinger six times... surely nothing can be a better pick-me-up. In my scheme of things, it has been as good as the afternoon two young ladies and I watched (back-to-back) one soft porn-movie, Caligula and When Harry Met Sally. (However I may outvote Bond after watching five versions of Pride and Prejudice back-to-back.)

Some movies do require more stamina from viewers than the others of course. Live and Let Die is so incredibly racist I was not sure whether I wasn't watching a spoof... Undercover Brother Returns perhaps. Pierce Brosnan, whom I like otherwise, seemed to have been in the most tiresome Bond movies. Sean Connery is positively villainish. I forgot. Bond-marathon-fun includes all the endless speculation about which Bond was better. I have never particularly cared so far but I came screeching to a halt with Daniel Craig.

Brutish, bull-necked, plainly a prole in a dinner-jacket, changing Bond before my very eyes... forcing a Bond movie to have a narrative. Shocking. With the addition of the most beautiful woman in the world, Eva Green, I vote the new Casino Royale the best one so far... of course there are other Bond movies that are simply more fun to watch, because they are more solidly in the B-movie genre. But decades from now, when I have another bad week that can be fixed with a Bond-movie marathon, I will thank Craig for making me join half the human race. The half that has strong feelings about Bond movies, I mean.

Here is Craig making a very different kind of entry.