007 James Bond

Every aficionado has his favourite James Bond actor: mine is definetely Sean Connery – the tough guy, his machismo ready beneath the polished persona.

Bond’s tastes are also often taken from Ian Fleming’s own as was his behaviour, with Bond’s love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming’s own. Fleming used his experiences of his espionage career and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.

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Fleming also endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs and using the same brand of toiletries. On another occasion, Fleming said: “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, ‘James Bond’ was much better than something more interesting, like ‘Peregrine Carruthers’. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure—an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.

Roger Ebert, while clearly expressing his approval of the advanced special effects and Ken Adam’s extravagant production sets, criticised the pace in which the locations of the film evolved, remarking that,
“it’s so jammed with faraway places and science fiction special effects that Bond has to move at a trot just to make it into all the scenes”.

Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said of the film:
“Most rational observers agree that Moonraker is without a doubt the most absurd James Bond movie, definitely of the Roger Moore era and possibly of all time”.

However, while he criticised the extravagance of the plot and action sequences, he believed that this added to the enjoyment of the film, and particularly approved of the remark “I think he’s attempting re-entry!” by “Q” during Bond and Goodhead’s orbiting of the Earth which he described as “featuring what might be the best double entendre ever”.

My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done. Such as, drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.