Here’s me doing my best James Bond impression - with my tuxedo and a pretty girl. All I’m missing is a martini.

(Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 50)

I’ve watched more movies this year than in many other years of my life combined.

(There’s a good chance it’s close if you go with ‘Movies Watched in 2022’ versus ‘Movies Watched in My Entire Life’.)

One of the missions of this movie-watching was to broaden my horizons - see a bunch of different movies I had never seen before.

I wanted to do more than ‘kind of’ get movie references and inside jokes.

I certainly did that for a lot of movies.

And especially for the James Bond movies.

I hit a really good stride with the James Bond movies for a while there.

Most of them were on Amazon for a while and I just barely ran out of time on them. (I skipped the Timothy Dalton movies so I could watch the Pierce Brosnan ones.)

But when I was watching them, I went in deep and I learned a lot and some of it was really interesting and I meant to write a post about it all….so here we are with two weeks left in the year making good on that.

I started with the first of the Daniel Craig Bond movies and I’m kind of glad I did. Because when I went back and watched the first Sean Connery one (almost 50 years between them!) I started to see the formula they followed…and it allowed me to get a sense of how the characters changed - or, at least, the types of actors who played them changed - over the years.
I knew nothing about the other characters in the James Bond world, but I especially liked the character Q - and I loved how he was played by the same actor for decades. And how often do you get a character getting a send-off in his final on-screen appearance the way Desmond Llewelyn did? (Most tend to go the way of Bernard Lee, who played M, and died in 1981 during filming of For Your Eyes Only, but before his parts were filmed.)
I was really curious about the “Albert Broccoli Presents” at the beginning of every movie - I thought it was a made-up name. I looked it up and it turns out it’s a real name, and he (and his daughter - Barbara Broccoli) are the producers of the movies. And - he has roots in Astoria, where I grew up.
I liked learning little facts like that. And this: Each of the movies ends with a “James Bond will return in….” and at the end of The Spy Who Loved Me it said, “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.” But Moonraker was the next movie instead…because the James Bond people wanted to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars and have an outer space movie.
Speaking of The Spy Who Loved Me: the music caught me a little by surprise. I obviously knew about some of the music from Bond movies - songs like “Live and Let Die” - and especially the newer ones with Adele and Billie Eilish…but it was striking to me that the most popular ones sound so different from the stock songs of the other movies.
“For Your Eyes Only,” “Live and Let Die,” and “Nobody Does It Better” all break the formula of those movies…and I think that’s what helped them get the recognition they’ve gotten over the years. (Also, shame on me, but I never realized the lyrics from “Nobody Does It Better” include a reference to ‘the spy who loved me’ all those years hearing it on CBS FM.)
And the theme song. Man. Nice work Monty Norman. It’s always impressive to me to think about when something that iconic didn’t exist and trace it back to when it first appeared.
Most movies I watch because I liked the book. The James Bond movies I liked so much that I sought out the book. I read Casino Royale after watching Casino Royale….and I liked the movie better. It was just one book, so I might give more of them a shot eventually…but I definitely preferred the movie, so I thought that was an interesting aspect of the franchise.
As for James Bond himself? Well, I didn’t know that Sean Connery left and came back again. I really liked Roger Moore (and from what I’ve read he seems extra-likable in person). But I thought Daniel Craig was great, and that group of movies was my favorite. I won’t spoil anything by giving any further details but I am glad I watched them most of all.

Thanks for humoring me. I had been meaning to write about this for a while and I thought it would lose steam after months on the back burner.

I guess not.

John Sucich will return in Sunday Paper, Year VII, Issue 51.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

Unfortunately there was no new Matt Sucich album this year to make the album-listening…but there will be some new music of his in the new year to listen to. You can keep tabs or sign up for his mailing list or listen or watch stuff at his website. Speaking of watch - he also released a music video this week. You can see that here.

As for what I did listen to and watch this week:

“Music From Big Pink” - The Band
“Band On The Run” - Wings
“The Band” - The Band
“Last Splash” - The Breeders
“The Writing’s On The Wall” - Destiny’s Child
“Skool Luv Affair” - BTS
Father of the Bride
Superbad
The Wolverine
Die Hard

Yep. Finally watched Die Hard. I wanted it to be more of an occasion but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to even watch it this year because it’s pretty exclusively on Start. But my parents have Starz and we came down Saturday instead of just for the game on Sunday so I was able to On Demand it Saturday night. My brother says now I have to watch 2 and 3. We’ll see if we can squeeze them in before the end of the year.

Notes

*Consider this post number one of two movie-related end-of-year posts. I made a big movie discovery this year that I’ll be writing about next week.

*If you’re not following along with my little running adventure on Instagram, I’ll tell you about it here because this week was fun: On Wednesday I had to run indoors because it was rainy and I didn’t want to run in the rain. Which obviously interfered with my soldier runs around Framingham. But then on Friday I did my 10-mile run, and I more than made up for missing Wednesday. 12 soldiers! I thought the route I was going would only get me about 5. 6 at most. So that was a nice surprise. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should probably check out the Instagram page. Link below.

*Huge game for the Jets today. It’s getting into complex rooting-for-certain-teams and rooting-against-certain-teams-for-playoff-positioning territory here towards the end of the season (and it’s been a very long time since we’ve had that to worry about), but after a heartbreaker last week the Jets can really make a statement this week against the first-place Bills. I’m excited for it.

*Here are the social media links, including my running Instagram, which sees the most activity these days.