Here it is!

My book review!

James Bond the Legacy by John Cork and Bruce Scivally

This book is about the legacy of the entire 007 Bond series. It’s birth in 1952 from the book written by Ian Fleming, who wrote his first novel in Jamaica btw! To the latest Bond flick, Die Another Day starring Pierce Brosnan.

If you’re a fan of James Bond you will love this book! It is 14 by 10 inches (Length & Width & probably weighs 10lbs!) and has loads of pictures showing all of the Bond men, women and their nemeses. It told how James Bond influenced our world or we it. It certainly changed our way of thinking about spies and things of a global nature like that.

Do you know how Ian Fleming came up with the name James Bond? That name belonged to a real person, an Ornithologist who wrote a book entitled “Birds of the West Indies.” Fleming liked the book and loved the sound of the author’s name because it wasn’t very “colorful” or complicated. I.E., it wasn’t a name like “Carruthers” or “Standfast” or something else more as he said “colorful”, just plain old, flat sounding, James Bond.

The Bond character was also loosely based on Fleming because they shared similar things like:

“…backgrounds, features, tastes, wardrobes and weaknesses. They both loved high stakes gambling, sea-island cotton shirts, a well-made cocktail and custom made cigarettes adorned with three gold bands”. (1)
And of course Mr. Bond’s martini has to be shaken not stirred!

The phenomenon of James Bond actually happened in the 1960’s when the character became an Icon to many people in the Western World at a time when they needed one. [It was during the time of the Soviet Union].

Here are some interesting facts I learned from this book:

Adam West of the popular “batman” series was once being considered to play the James Bond character after his show was canceled.

Benicio Del Toro (of the movie Traffic) played a henchman in one the Bond films [and this was way before his award winning role in Traffic].

Bond movies influenced the cinemas; films such as Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, Dirty Harry and the television show MacGyver were made because of the popularity of the James Bond movies. These movies were all based on heroes who came to the rescue of others and that genre was very popular with movie audiences.

License to Kill with Timothy Dalton in the role of James Bond was not a big success as the other films because he was unpopular but rather that movie was released in theatres with competition from Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade; Lethal Weapon II and Batman. With the release of those popular movies, License to Kill made less money than all the other Bond releases.

I learned so much more about James Bond, one of the movie characters I enjoy watching. If you’re a 007 fan I highly recommend this book to you. The pictures are really good and they give a lot of details about the film, the people who made them, the actors, and actresses, singers who made the music for the different movies and what they were going through when they wrote a song for a James Bond movie.

Some of those songs became hits and even re-kindled some careers. Who remembers “For your eyes only” by Sheena Easton? Who remembers the actress Grace Jones? The Bond films rekindled their careers for a while!

Some other singers who were featured were:

"Tom Jones, Nancy Sinatra, Sir Paul MaCarthy, Lulu, Carly Simon, Rita Coolidge, Duran Duran, a-ha, Gladys Knight, Tina Turner, Sheryl Crow, Garbage, and Madonna, they did the title song for the Bond movies. Louis Armstrong, The Pretenders, Tim Feehan, k.d. lang and Scott Walker, performed non-title songs." (2)

I’ll always enjoy watching the James Bond movies because the idea of Bond, James Bond is not just a hero, but he’s everyone’s dream! Who wouldn’t like to live like him?!

Now I just hope the newly elected Bond will continue the legacy! Link

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(1) Excerpt from the book - James Bond the Legacy
(2) This list was originally written by Erik Aadahl, with contributions by Christopher Nowicki & Cedric Stalpers and edited by Kimberly Last from their Website about James Bond Movie Music at http://www.klast.net/bond/soundtr.html. - their Website has some great musical info and feature a list of all the songs for the Bond movies!

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