• I owe Skyfall another viewing but for now I’m comfortable calling this the best Bond. It’s pure perfection of the formula, Connery is in top form, and that Shirley Bassey dramatic title song combined with some of the most beautiful opening credits I’ve ever seen (black backdrop with women painted in gold with the movie displayed on them) is hard to erase from my memory
  • As entertaining a movie as I’ve seen
  • We have iconography all over the place—Oddjob, Pussy Galore, Operation Grand Slam, the Aston Martin
  • The opening, after that breathtaking credit sequence, is silent and so assured—we have Connery setting up the bomb, switching into the tux, getting the girl, seeing the trap in the reflection in her eye, then the fight and the “positively shocking” action line when he kills him by electrocution. Haha
  • After that opening we go to an establishing shot of Miami that is a stunner- easily could be in a movie in 2018
  • We have the opening in medias res—the banter with Moneypenny and meeting with M… then to the gadgets with Q before setting out….
  • Robert Shaw had a great line about wines in from Russia but not sure it’s better than Gert Frobe’s line—Connery says “do you expect me to talk?” and he says “no I expect you to die”
  • I think the gold obsession and the plan, not to steal, but to wipe out other gold supplies which increases the value of yours is sort of genius
  • You’d win some trivia if you thought that the climax of Bond’s best film was shot, partly, in Louisville, Kentucky
  • HR/MS border- probably closer to HR