50 replies to this topic

[Surrie]

Oh how ghastly that would have been!! 

[Gobi-1]

The four year gap between Die Another Day and Casino Royale was pretty unbearable especially the period just after DAD and before Craig was cast in the role. Such uncertainty.

[sharpshooter]

The four year gap between Die Another Day and Casino Royale was pretty unbearable especially the period just after DAD and before Craig was cast in the role. Such uncertainty.

And once Craig was cast, I couldn't wait for the film to come out to prove the doubters wrong.

[Gobi-1]

 

The four year gap between Die Another Day and Casino Royale was pretty unbearable especially the period just after DAD and before Craig was cast in the role. Such uncertainty.

And once Craig was cast, I couldn't wait for the film to come out to prove the doubters wrong.

 

 

Although I wasn't sure about Craig I too wanted him to knock it out of the park. And he did. And here we are  almost 12 years(!) later.

[Turn]

At least during the four-year gap we had social media and different varieties of home media and other things to keep our interest.

 

That six-year gap was pre-internet and brutal. We knew LTK underperformed in the U.S. but didn't have the outlets to know the status after. There was that article in mid 1990 or so about the sale of Eon in Variety, but few had access to that.

 

My first hint as to how much trouble the series was in was an article in a sci-fi magazine that spelled it out quite well around late 1990 or early 1991. It was really sad. Even the American fan club shut down at the time. 007 Magazine and that club was still going strong, but there wasn't a lot for them to report on either and they kept things going with the unique reunion events and such.

 

The biggest things we got were the new comic series, that 30th anniversary CD with the then holy grail of lost recordings and better remastered VHS copies of the films. And there were the various polls that kept telling us Mel Gibson was the ultimate choice as Bond depending on the week.

[Eskyfall]

Read Solo and now on to Trigger Mortis. I must admit, I am not a fan of Solo. Hopefully, Trigger Mortis will feel more like a Bond adventure.

[SecretAgentFan]

Had to stop Gardner´s SCORPIUS.  I liked the beginning and Bond´s being tired out by survival training - but then the story gets downhill pretty quickly, turning into something that feels so uncharacteristic of Bond stories it´s not even funny.  At least for me.  Skimming to the end of the book I even cringed at a plot twist that Gardner used too many times before.

 

Reminded me why I stopped reading the continuation novels in general.

 

I must say: only Amis´ COLONEL SUN was a truly worthy heir to Fleming´s approach.

[univex]

Yes, absolutely SAF, but then again, Amis is...well...Amis, in a league of his own. Have we had another really good writer doing a continuation novel? One of that caliber? He is a better writer than Fleming. Not of Bond, per se, but in general.

 

I´d have loved to read, say, a Umberto Eco Bond novel. He was a big Bond fan, and has some dissertations on it. He was lucky to have Connery play a major role in his The Name of the Rose. Can you imagine that, for a Bond fan? 

[Dustin]

Back in the day the regularity of the Gardner œuvre was what kept Bond alive between LTK and GE. They didn't really feel like the originals, okay. But then TSWLM or GE didn't feel like FRWL either, so perhaps we were in a more forgiving mood simply because there was "James Bond 007" slapped on the covers.

I've recently taken a look at Gardner's Boysie Oakes and Herbie Kruger series (apparently named after Hardy Krüger), and my impression was he felt more at home in both than he ever did with 007. It is a bit sad his better books seem to be largely under the radar, while the Bond canon was a somewhat troubled affair, yet it's the part of his work most will have heard about.

[SecretAgentFan]

Indeed, I haven´t read any other Gardner efforts outside the 007-realm.  Thanks for the tip, I´ll check out those other series!

Yes, absolutely SAF, but then again, Amis is...well...Amis, in a league of his own. Have we had another really good writer doing a continuation novel? One of that caliber? He is a better writer than Fleming. Not of Bond, per se, but in general.

 

I´d have loved to read, say, a Umberto Eco Bond novel. He was a big Bond fan, and has some dissertations on it. He was lucky to have Connery play a major role in his The Name of the Rose. Can you imagine that, for a Bond fan? 

 

I did not know or even consider it possible that Eco was a Bond fan!

[univex]

 

Yes, absolutely SAF, but then again, Amis is...well...Amis, in a league of his own. Have we had another really good writer doing a continuation novel? One of that caliber? He is a better writer than Fleming. Not of Bond, per se, but in general.

 

I´d have loved to read, say, a Umberto Eco Bond novel. He was a big Bond fan, and has some dissertations on it. He was lucky to have Connery play a major role in his The Name of the Rose. Can you imagine that, for a Bond fan? 

 

I did not know or even consider it possible that Eco was a Bond fan!

 

Major, major Bond fan. 

http://www.umbertoec...james-bond.html

 

My editor, who is actually a crime novelist himself, interviewed him a couple of years ago on the matter. He was very knowledgeable on Fleming, he says. A true fan. 

[SecretAgentFan]

I decided to give the Christopher Wood novelizations of "The spy who loved me" and "Moonraker" a chance.  I hardly remember reading them when I was, um, a child - but they left no real lasting impression on me.

 

So, just a few chapters into "The spy who loved me", I have to say: impressively Flemingian.  And despite following the plot of the film it has a different approach to telling that story.  I had always thought that Wood was responsible for the campy aspect of those Moore years - but judging from his prose he was much more into the hard-edged Fleming tone.  Maybe Gilbert added the broader humour?

 

I´ m excited to see how the next chapters will turn out. 

[Dustin]

Wood apparently wasn't all too fond of Fleming - our own glidrose has given a number of interesting links to interviews and articles with/about Wood - but he decidedly had a way with turning his tie-ins into the closest material to Fleming.

The TSWLM tie-in shows traces of FRWL PART II, apparently an idea that popped up during the many different script versions and treatments handed in. Particularly a torture scene in Egypt was way ahead of its time, closer to CR than anything else in the films. Difficult to imagine Moore in these passages.

JAMES BOND & MOONRAKER shows the same sleight-of-hand with utilising a Fleming-tone for a film that for the most part avoided just that. Particularly the pts sequence is transported most cleverly to the page.

[sharpshooter]

So, just a few chapters into "The spy who loved me", I have to say: impressively Flemingian.

Apparently it's meant to be a really good book. I'd like to read it myself one of these days.

[SecretAgentFan]

Wood apparently wasn't all too fond of Fleming - our own glidrose has given a number of interesting links to interviews and articles with/about Wood - but he decidedly had a way with turning his tie-ins into the closest material to Fleming.

The TSWLM tie-in shows traces of FRWL PART II, apparently an idea that popped up during the many different script versions and treatments handed in. Particularly a torture scene in Egypt was way ahead of its time, closer to CR than anything else in the films. Difficult to imagine Moore in these passages.

JAMES BOND & MOONRAKER shows the same sleight-of-hand with utilising a Fleming-tone for a film that for the most part avoided just that. Particularly the pts sequence is transported most cleverly to the page.

 

Sounds intriguing!  Thanks!  Will check out those links as well.

[Harmsway]

So, just a few chapters into "The spy who loved me", I have to say: impressively Flemingian.

Apparently it's meant to be a really good book. I'd like to read it myself one of these days.

It's pretty solid.

[Professor Pi]

Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun and Woods' Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker are far better continuation novels than most of John Gardner's and Raymond Benson's efforts.  I haven't read the later authors to make a fair judgment on their work.

[SecretAgentFan]

From what I have read I will say this: Gardner seems to have run out of plot ideas because after his first solid entries he uses the same mechanism again and again (the female traitor).  And Benson... well, I just don´t like his plots at all, they are not what I expect in a Bond novel.

 

"Trigger Mortis" and "Solo" had some decent moments but did not work fully for me due to their haphazard plotting.  And Deaver´s effort just was not enough Bondian for me.

 

So, Wood...  still pretty good so far...

[sharpshooter]

Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun and Woods' Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker are far better continuation novels than most of John Gardner's and Raymond Benson's efforts.

I own Wood's James Bond and Moonraker. As a big fan of the film I generally liked it. But I remember it being more of a straight movie novelisation. The Spy Who Loved Me is meant to be infused with more Fleming touches, which is what interests me.

[DaveBond21]

.  I had always thought that Wood was responsible for the campy aspect of those Moore years - but judging from his prose he was much more into the hard-edged Fleming tone.  Maybe Gilbert added the broader humour?

 

 

I think Cubby was a fan of the camp humour.

 

_____________________________________________________________________

[Daniel_Craig]

Hang out. Annoying that no news about Bond 25. I found the perfect actor for the bond role. And he is ready.

Enough with the dogs, Daniel. 

Edited by Daniel_Craig, 01 May 2017 - 08:52 PM.