It’s been a long time since I watched Casino Royale, a spoof of 007 films, which had originally been developed as a serious adaptation of the Ian Fleming novel. When the Bond filmmakers, and Sean Connery didn’t want to be involved, the producers held onto the rights and went with a comedy instead. With five…
Tag: spectre
Star Trek: Spectre (1998) – William Shatner with Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens
William Shatner doles out another ‘Kirk is the best captain ever’ tale with the Reeves-Stevens helping him out. I make it sound like I didn’t like the book, I did, but I hate how even now, Shatner, goes out of the way to make sure that Kirk is portrayed as the smartest, strongest, most attractive…
Battlestar Galactica 4: The Young Warriors (1980) – Robert Thurston and Glen A. Larson
Robert Thurston delivers a full length novel based on a single episode of Battlestar Galactica. His previous novels had encompassed double episodes, but despite that, Thurston delivers a strong story, that takes the episode The Young Lords, and layers out and tells almost a completely different story, while still giving us the same basic tale….
Nobody Lives For Ever (1986) – John Gardner
Ian Fleming’s 007 James Bond is back in action in this 1986 thriller penned by John Gardner who carried on the series for the Fleming estate and updated the secret agent by retconning his early adventures into the late 60s and 70s allowing his Bond, slightly older, to prowl and protect the world of the…
For Special Services (1982) – John Gardner
John Gardner’s second 007 novel, updating Ian Fleming’s James Bond for the 1980s, is on the book shelf this week, and delivers the crisp, solid, sex and violence filled thrill ride we’ve come to expect from England’s top spy. This story, set largely in America, sees the return of Bond’s old nemesis, SPECTRE, with the…
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1963) – Ian Fleming
The eleventh 007 book, and tenth novel, by Ian Fleming is this week’s entry on the Book Shelf, and you could see how the film series would begin to influence the continuing novels as we get a mention of Bond’s parentage, with his father being a Scot, and there is an increasing sense of Connery…
Thunderball (1961) – Ian Fleming
The ninth book, and eighth full novel,in Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007 series is up this week. And this one is a bit of a special case. It was originally concocted as a screenplay, and early editions gave sole credit to Fleming, whereas future editions, much like the film(s) that would later be developed from…
You Only Live Twice (1967) – Lewis Gilbert
When I decided to tuck into the literary world of James Bond, and decided to read the original novels, I realised that there I hadn’t covered almost half of the films for the blog, so I figured for every Bond novel I read,I would watch one of the Bond films I haven’t written about before….
Bond By Design: The Art of the James Bond Films (2015) – Meg Simmons
I got into the 007 films fairly late, I was 11 going 12 and living in Bermuda, when we finally got a VCR and I was able to explore the world of Ian Fleming. Before we lived there, I had purchased a Bond book by John Gardner to read on our annual trip out east to…
James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters (2015) – Alastair Dougall
I love movie posters as much as I love movies, and as far back as I can remember, I can recall cutting black and white facsimiles of posters from newspapers and taping them to my wall, until I was able to start buying them (or bringing them home from work – a bonus of having…
The Mind Reels 