I made it well into my early 30s without watching a James Bond movie all the way through -- I loved the John Barry soundtrack album I found at a thrift store, I wasted many enjoyable hours playing GOLDENEYE64 and I think I even read a few of the original Ian Fleming potboilers [either that or I read long-form criticism about the books, which seems more likely] but the random pieces of the movies I caught over the years were inevitably either too slow or too stupid for my taste.
I didn't seek out a 007 film until I heard Chris Cornell's theme to CASINO ROYALE on the radio and thought that maybe the movie would be as clever as the song. Yeah, I know, but I think it's an awesome stroke to cast the often life-ending amounts of violence and mayhem [committed by or to Bond] that the movie's audience is about to be experience as mostly a pain in the ass for MI6's human-resources department. It's cool to see a Bond movie that had more Flemingesque foodiness and homosensualiciousness and less Wily E. Coyote-speed health regenerations between explosions and assbeatings. That said, QUANTUM OF SOLACE remains the only 007 movie I would ever want to watch twice, although I still don't understand why.
Speaking of which, here's a 1958 radio conversation between Fleming and Raymond Chandler. Enjoy.
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