The Next Incarnation of Bond
The James Bond franchise is amazing. And not necessarily for the right reasons. Of the twenty-five official movies, I’d posit there’s only one truly great film – From Russian With Love. It’s a grounded spy thriller with brilliant performances from Sean Connery, Robert Shaw, and Lotte Lenya. Then the series becomes more gimmicky, which irked Connery, and which the Roger Moore era truly embraced – perhaps to accommodate an era were movies were growing sensational in their storytelling. Of the other twenty-four movies, I’d suggest there’re a handful of good ones, and the rest are middling, forgettable, and – in some cases – terrible. I grew up when Roger Moore…
Contemporaneous: Chapter 18
18. Wednesday, I go into work for the morning, but come lunchtime (Autumn ducking her head out of her office to wish me luck) I’m out of there and catching a train into the city (I hate driving into the city) to meet my publisher, Regina, for lunch – well, actually, she was appointed fiction publisher after I was signed and had my two books published, and I’ve only dealt with her briefly, and unsatisfying, over email. She’s only thirty or so, which worries me because I’m ageist – I’ve dealt with younger people in the publishing industry, and they think they know everything. I know that because when I…