The Teaser

Yes, me again. Disappointing, isn't it?

I've had a pretty quiet summer. My main activity appears to have been gaining weight, thanks to the assistance of a semi-competent personal trainer who had no idea what she was doing. My original trainer is back now, and the weight is sloughing off like skin from a burn victim. She's getting a Christmas present. Patience of a saint, that woman.

The other thing I've been up to, surprise surprise, is watching DVDs, and I've managed to make a big dent in the pile as a consequence. Which has since filled up again with new discs - apart from the copy of if... which never turned up from the Amazon vendor. A circle of hell is reserved for him.

The thing I haven't been doing is maintaining this blog, principally because I have really struggled to think of topics to write about. So, I've had to make something up. I'm going to do a marathon.

Not a running marathon. That would be insane. A DVD marathon. Inspired by the wonderful Adventures with the Wife in Space, I will be undertaking that great right of passage for any true Englishman - I will be watching the James Bond films in order over the course of a year and blogging about them. And possibly livetweeting; I haven't decided yet.

As was announced yesterday, the new James Bond film, Skyfall, will be released at the end of October next year. This will be the 26th screen outing for 007, counting the 23 regular films, the 60s version of Casino Royale, the lawsuit-enabled remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again, and the little-seen 50s TV version of Casino Royale. I will be starting in two weeks time, and watching one film every fortnight, leading up to the release of Skyfall, and will try to post as soon as possible my thoughts and comments on each film.

I've been a huge Bond fan for many years, and cannot in fact remember a period when I hadn't seen one of the films. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that this isn't the first time I've done this. ITV ran all the films in 1999, conveniently slotting them around my exams, and when I first acquired the DVDs I ran through them from late 2003 to spring 2005. I'd be interested to see if there is any change in my opinions, as well as appending the Daniel Craig films to the equation.

To try to give the postings some kind of structure, I'm thinking of putting in some regular categories that might not have appeared in previous similar compendia. Already, I feel that listing the moments when Bond does something weirdly out of character ("Bond bakes a quiche"), or just weird ("Bond locks a midget in a suitcase"). Any other suggestion would be appreciated. There will also be the usual succession of interesting facts and remarks about how closely each film resembles the source material. A fun visual game will be adding pictures of those nearly cast, with a line of dialogue as a caption so you can imagine them saying it. That does sound like fun, doesn't it?

First off the blocks will be the 1954 version of Casino Royale, a 50-minute production broadcast live on American television. Hopefully, the review will be online sometime on Saturday 19 November. Wish me luck. A final note of oddness. At my place of work I recently saw someone reading this blog. It was the entry about last year's Christmas party and my subsequent blackout. Perhaps I've found the culprit. Yes, you. You will never know when I will strike, and you will never hear me coming. But I will have my revenge. Oh yes.