Shaken. Not stirred.

There is no rhyme nor reason for the random choices we make in the evening when picking something to watch on our small screens of entertainment. I decided, for some reason that I cannot remember, to watch the first James Bond movie, "Dr. No" yesterday evening. As it scrolled on the screen (and yes, I know there is no scrolling anymore, but I like to say that) I realized that I had never seen it before! How could that be? Doesn't matter.  I watched it and it was James Bond with NO GADGETS!  Seriously, he had nothing but a gun and a Geiger counter. There was no M to invent strange and useful tricky things like the magical briefcase that appears in the second movie, "From Russia, With Love" that I am watching right now.

I might have seen parts of FRWL over the past 50 years but I know I have never watched it from start to finish. Most of it takes place in Istanbul, a city I visited and loved, so it's very nice to revisit that city via this movie.  Plus, the cool thing is that these are fun movies to watch! Yes, they are sexist and dated in many ways (what they could have accomplished if they only had a computer!) but that's part of the enjoyment. They were not technological and the movies don't have CG stuff, they have explosions that were created with gas and explosive stuff. The explosions look real because they were real, there wasn't any way to fake stuff in the 1960's unless it was a cartoon.

Anyway, these first two  Bond movies are simply old school fun. The next one up is "Goldfinger" which I will skip because I have seen it numerous times. In fact, I saw it in an actual movie theater in Redondo Beach, with either my brothers or some other boys, in 1965, a year after its release.  But after that was "Thunderball" which I will check out in the next few days because I might have missed that one as well. Sean Connery is a handsome youngish man, and it's a pleasure to watch him work his silly movie magic.  We all need silly magic now and then. And don't we all want exploding briefcases, and an Aston Martin with knives coming out of the wheels and an apparatus that will let us fly without wings and a watch that can make coffee and a shoe that does laundry?   Where is M when we need him?

Shaken. Not stirred.

(P.S. If you google "James Bond gadgets" you will get a Wikipedia list of all the gadgets in all the Bond movies. It's quite revelatory because there are gadgets we, the viewing public, did not even know about unless we were totally paying attention in a completely gadget geeky way.  Check it out if you are a fan of Bond stuff.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets#Dr._No

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