A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

From Russia With Love (1963) Written by: Johanna Harwood (adapter), Richard Maibum, Berkely Mather (uncredited) Based on: From Russia With Love, by Ian Fleming Directed by: Terence Young Starring: Sean Connery, Pedro Armendariz, Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, Lotte Lenya, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Vladek Sheybal Tatiana: [Bond first meets Tatiana, who has crawled naked into his hotel bed] You look surprised. I thought you were expecting me. James Bond: So, you're Tatiana Romanova. Tatiana: My friends call me Tania. James Bond: Mine call me James Bond. SPECTREs tender trap: Daniela Bianchi in a publicity still for From Russia With Love. With the phenomenal success of 1962's Dr. No - a film that earned $59 million over a production budget of $1.1 million - producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli were approached by United Artists, the U.S.-based film production and distribution company which had helped EON Productions' first James Bond movi...

Dr. No (1962) Written by:  Berkeley Mather, Johanna Harwood, and Richard Maibaum. Based on Ian Fleming's novel Dr. No Directed by: Terence Young Starring: Sean Connery, Joseph Wiseman, Bernard Lee, Jack Lord, Ursula Andress, Lois Maxwell In October of 1962, shortly before the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, United Artists released Dr. No, the first motion picture adaptation of a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming. Produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli and directed by Terence Young, Dr. No introduced the world's best-known intelligence officer in a modestly-budgeted and comparatively low-key story pitting Bond (Sean Connery) against an enigmatic Chinese-German operative named Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) who is sabotaging America's Project Mercury by using a powerful radio signal transmitted from his Caribbean island lair. [James Bond's first scene, winning a game of chemin-de-fer] James Bond: I admire your courage, Miss ...? Sylv...

© 2016 MGM-UA, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; 007 logo and related James Bond Tradeworks © 1962, 2015 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation On September 20, 2016, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and MGM released The James Bond Collection, a 24-disc Blu-ray box set which collects all of the EON/Danjaq James Bond films now in existence. Starting with 1962's Dr. No and continuing on to 2015's Spectre, this collection allows fans of Ian Fleming's famous creation, British Secret Service Agent 007, aka "Bond...James Bond" to bring home all of his various missions as recreated by six actors, many writer-director teams, and spanning over 50 years of globe-trotting spying, romancing, and using his "license to kill" in Her Majesty's Secret Service. (As of March 2019, this box set contains all of the Bond films to date; presently, director Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame is working on the untitled film known as  Bond...

© 2016 MGM-UA, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment; 007 logo and related James Bond Tradeworks © 1962, 2015 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation  Well, gang , it's Sunday afternoon here in my nook of Florida, and the weather outside is nice and spring-like. It's 77 degrees Fahrenheit, and the skies above are mostly cloudy. Perfect day for lazing about with a good book and a cool drink! I was going to write a review of my latest Blu-ray find, The James Bond Collection, a 2016 box set from MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment that has all of the existing official James Bond films, starting with 1962's Dr. No  and ending with 2015's Spectre. That's 24 feature films in one set, which for me is a record-setting purchase, at least when sheer number of movies is concerned. (Cost-wise it was on par with buying the 2011 Star Wars: The Complete Saga;  I paid $86.60 - $79.96 plus Florida sales taxes - for the James Bond Blu-ray set, which is pretty mu...