For Your Marathoning Pleasure: James NovemBond

Some members of our fantastic Nerdonomy team, namely Sarah and Sean, came up with some brilliant ideas of celebrating some great actors and directors by turning their film career into a viewing marathon! To make matters even more heavenly, they found a way to add the actor/director’s name into the name of a month, which dictated when the marathon would happen. Sarah came up with Mel Brooks-uary (January) and Sean came up with Denzel March-ington (March). I recently came up with a marathon idea of my own and as the title spoils, I am going to start a tradition of James NovemBond!

 Bond Front

There are 30 days in November and 23 James Bond films so far, which makes for a really packed month of movie-watching. Those 23 movies don’t even include the Oscar-bait movies that’ll be released in theaters which, of course, I will definitely be seeing. As a bonus, I’ve only seen some of the Bond films, including all of the Daniel Craig and Pierce Brosnan films and only a few of the Sean Connery films. After recently purchasing the 50th Anniversary Bond collection on blu ray, I now have an opportunity to experience them all in the best format possible, just short of watching them on the big screen. I even created a calendar to mark which  Bond movie I’ll be watching because, you know, I’m a nerd like that and I even made sure to watch them in chronological order, based on their release. To nerd out even more, I placed an image of each actor posing from their intro in each Bond film they stared in! For example, for the eagle-eyed viewer, the pose Daniel Craig has from Casino Royale is different from his pose with Quantum of Solace and Skyfall because of the different intro those three movies had.NovemBond Calendar

When it comes to Bond, I’ve been a fan for many years, but not a huge or diehard fan. There was always something about how Lazenby, Moore, and Dalton acted as Bond that never interested me when I was a kid. Connery always had the charisma, Brosnan had the charm, and Craig had the tenacity, each of them creating or recreating a distinct persona of Bond that I could see. The times I got to see a few minutes of a Bond film starring Lazenby, Moore, or Dalton, I never got the impression that they were trying too hard nor trying something new with the Bond character, which is why I was uninterested in them. However, my favorite Bond film that I’ve seen, has to be Skyfall for dozens of reasons, but most importantly: 1) It’s the best-looking Bond film, 2) It contains all the tropes and expectations of a Bond film while keeping things fresh, and 3) *START SPOILER ALERT* It FINALLY explains where Craig’s Bond story comes into play with the whole Bond franchise, which takes place pre-Connery, basically *END SPOILER ALERT*. For those reasons and many others, I’m really glad that I get to watch Skyfall last.

Bond Book Front

Bond Book Back

One of the blog series I’ve been doing called Best o’Boxes, where I review some blu ray box sets like Jurassic ParkIndiana Jones, and Back to the Future to name a few. Since I’m going through the whole Bond 50th Anniversary Collection, it’ll give me the perfect opportunity to put out a review for the whole set at the beginning of December, which may help those looking to get their movie-friend something for the holidays!

Bond Open Books

Kevin Sutorius

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