Blog, James' Blog

The Bond Girl: Culture, Feminism and Storytelling

By msarko on 2/10/10 8:36pm
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As long as there has been a James Bond, there has been the Bond Girl, that rare category of action star vixen that has been at the center of everything from adoration to outrage. Just like so much of the Bond mythos, the Bond Girls follow a formula that has only been broken for a postmodern effect on the story. The classic setup involves two girls, one an agent of the antagonist and the other an unlikely ally to Bond. In the first film Dr. No those two roles went to Miss Taro and Honey Ryder, respectively. It wasn't until the famed reboot with Daniel Craig that this equation got jumbled.



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The Changing Face of Felix Leiter

By roskopp on 9/15/09 7:06am
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Jack LordJack LordJames Bond is the quintessential British spy. He harks back to the days when Britain had an empire and a hefty political influence on the world. Even if the colonies were gone the British were still present in every country, peeking in and meddling in every plot and foiling the bad guys time and time again. The idea of friendship between the UK and the US is always handled carefully in the Bond movies. The relationship is clearly one based on expediency than any real affection. The only American character to repeatedly appear in the franchise is Felix Leiter.


Felix is actually a friend of James Bond, perhaps partly because both men are willing to flout the orders of their superiors in order to get the job done. He appears throughout the novel and film series but he pops up in various guises and is played by a host of different actors.

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Villains: Max Zorin

By roskopp on 8/8/09 3:33am
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Max ZorinMax ZorinThere have been a lot of memorable Bond villains over the years although many of them have been played by average actors. One of the exceptions is Max Zorin, the baddie from A View to a Kill who was played by the excellent Christopher Walken. This psychotic German is a big businessman and a rogue KGB agent who branches out on his own and causes all sorts of problems for Bond.


A View to a Kill is a Roger Moore outing and although the title was borrowed from a Fleming short story the screenplay was actually entirely new. It was a pretty poor film and an aging Roger Moore was singled out for the tired performance he gave in his seventh and last appearance as Bond. It still raked in over $300 million at the worldwide box office and one of the big draws was the quality villain portrayed by Walken.

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Villains: Largo

By roskopp on 5/8/09 6:25am
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Emilio Largo played by Adolfo CeliEmilio Largo played by Adolfo CeliThunderball featured the Italian villain Emilio Largo. In the film he was a white haired SPECTRE operative with an eye patch. In fact he was No. 2 in the organisation and described as the head of extortion operations. He was played by the Italian actor Adolfo Celli. Largo also appears in the 1983 remake of Thunderball, Never Say Never Again, but his forename is changed to Maximillian and he is played by the Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer.

Largo plays out a classic baddie plot which has been reused several times over the years in numerous productions. He has stolen two nuclear bombs from the careless chaps at NATO and now he is blackmailing the world. If they don’t stump up £100 million in diamonds then he is going to destroy an undisclosed city. It later turns out to be Miami that he is targeting.

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Thunderball

By roskopp on 4/14/09 3:50am
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Thunderball was released in 1965 and broke box office records at the time. Sean Connery appeared as Bond in his fourth outing and was charged with recovering two stolen nuclear missiles which were being ransomed by the evil organisation SPECTRE. It featured some classic Bond moments but it also caused a legal battle and was remade as Never Say Never Again in 1983.

The film opens with Bond uncovering the fake funeral of a SPECTRE agent and then having a fistfight with the evil transvestite which is strangely comical to behold. He escapes the scene with the help of a jetpack which was the height of cool technology at the time. He then skips into his rigged Aston Martin DB5 in a very memorable Bond opening sequence.

The film is an extremely odd mixture of rather ridiculous scenes like the opening fight and great moments like the scene which treats us to an inside view of SPECTRE.

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You Only Live Twice

By roskopp on 4/6/09 5:41am
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You Only Live Twice posterYou Only Live Twice was released in 1967 and it was the fifth Bond film to hit cinema screens. Once again Sean Connery played Bond, although he took some persuading this time. Rather bizarrely the screenplay was penned by Roald Dahl. The film saw Bond tangling with his ultimate villainous opponent, Blofeld, played by Donald Pleasance and the action took place with a Japanese backdrop.

The film actually started in space with a US space craft being eaten by a UFO which turns out to be a SPECTRE rocket. MI6 trace the space craft to Japan and send Bond to investigate. A Soviet space craft is also eaten and a world war looms as Bond races to uncover the evil mastermind Blofeld and foil his scheme. There are some great moments in this outing and some deeply cheesy scenes as well.

This is the first Bond film that reveals Blofeld fully; his face was never revealed in previous films.

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Henchmen: Tee Hee Johnson

By roskopp on 4/1/09 11:28pm
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Tee Hee Johnson played Julius HarrisTee Hee Johnson has to be my favourite name for a Bond baddie henchman. He worked for Mr. Big (Kananga) in Live and Let Die as the head henchman. He was a big scary looking gangster with a metal arm and a pincer for a hand.

He appeared to be the right hand man or bodyguard of Mr. Big and was always hanging around in the background whether his employer was portraying Mr. Big or Kananga. The name Tee Hee refers to his habit of giggling at inappropriate moments, something which seems to irritate Bond. He tangles with the agent a couple of times during the film. The first time they meet the tarot reading Solitaire warns Tee Hee that Bond is armed and dangerous. He grabs the gun and showing off the formidable strength of his metal claw he bends it back on itself. At the next meeting Tee Hee tries to strand Bond at a crocodile farm.

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Villains: Dr. No

By roskopp on 3/30/09 11:02pm
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Joseph Wiseman as Dr. NoThe very first in a long line of Bond villains was the unfortunate eponymous Dr. No. He struck an imposing character with his unusual racial background and dangerous metal hands. He also behaved as a classic Bond villain, inviting the agent for dinner and politely explaining his nefarious plans.

Dr. No was a mad scientist, the son of a German missionary and a Chinese girl. This racial blend was probably the most monstrous that British Empire stalwart Fleming could imagine. He was supposed to have worked for the Chinese criminal gang the Tongs and escaped to the US with a large portion of their profits. In the book the gang tracked him down and cut off his hands as punishment, in the film he is supposed to have lost them during his research messing with radiation. He set up an island lair at Crab Key, Jamaica in a Bauxite mine where he constructed his own nuclear reactor.

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Live and Let Die

By roskopp on 3/26/09 10:46pm
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Live and Let Die posterThe first appearance of Roger Moore as James Bond came in the 1973 release Live and Let Die. This time Bond takes on, not a secret evil organisation bent on world domination but, the heroin trade in New York which is stereotypically run by black gangsters. The film received a lukewarm response from the critics and Moore failed to convince fans of Connery but none of that stopped the film being a huge financial success. Made on a budget of around $7 million it took over $160 million at the worldwide box office.

The action starts with the mysterious deaths of three MI6 agents. So how do they react? They send another agent, in the shape of Bond on his own to investigate. After narrowly escaping death on arrival in New York he begins to track Mr. Big, a local gangster. He meets the tarot reading Solitaire, played by Jane Seymour (the youngest Bond girl ever at the time at just 22 years old) and she has the ability to predict the future. Following Mr. Big back to San Monique he uncovers a huge heroin production operation.

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Henchmen: Jaws

By roskopp on 3/23/09 2:23am
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Richard Kiel as JawsJaws was the towering mute henchman from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. He had razor sharp steel teeth fitted and used his unnatural strength to hold down unfortunate targets and bite their throats out. Played by the frightening Richard Kiel he was a memorable henchman.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, which was Roger Moore’s third outing as Bond and possibly his best Bond film, Jaws first appeared as a terrifying killer. The script for the film underwent a number of re-writes and it was a troubled period for the franchise but the resulting film was praised by critics. Jaws was the hired help for Karl Stromberg, a web fingered shipping magnate with an underwater base. He was entirely mute and extremely menacing and his enormous strength and slicing teeth made him a formidable opponent.

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