Oddfelt

Have spoken before about odd things in James Bond films, but working my way through the shiny new attache case of all 20 remastered flicks, all sorts of new ones occur.

Doctor No and From Russia With Love are both very fast-moving, with lots of tightly edited quick scenes and sequences. I love that having set Bond up as this dangerous playboy we then find out that he shoots like a lady.

I also like how vast the world is - it's a long and arduous process to get across a border.

Doctor No thinks Bond just a "stupid policeman" with ideas above his station (about nice wines and so on). But Bond's actually quite a blunderer. His job is to walk into wherever's the dangerest and piss people off until they tell him their plans. Then they fail to kill him.

Goldfinger really is very good indeed. I don't quite understand why Goldfinger gives his demonstration to hoodlums he's going to kill - unless it's just so Bond can eavesdrop.

It's a whopping great coincidence in Thunderball that Bond happens to be in the same health farm as the baddies. That is, unless either a) it's being right next to a NATO base means the Secret Service can get a discount, or b) M has had a tip-off.

Though the latter seems not to play when Bond phones in his suspicions about Count Lippi's tattoo: Moneypenny reminds him how he's on leave.

There's a top cat moment in You Only Live Twice, as Blofeld and his gang flee the control room. Watch the white pussy struggling in his arms, and pulling hilario-comedic gurns at the camera.

Also, when Blofeld kills Osato (just before he doesn't kill Bond, then walks through a door, and then tries to), the cat escapes him. So presumably dies in the volcano.

Why don't Blofeld and Bond recognise each other when they meet in OHMSS? There's a silly scene of Savalas catching Bond out on geneaology when they've already met...

Bond sits reading Playboy in OHMSS, and then steals the centrefold. While trying to look inconspicuous in a lawyer's lobby, he's admiring the double-spread and then pocketing it.

Blofeld tells Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are Forever to go and put more clothes on because her bikini distracts his workers. So she covers up her arms. Also, she's a sassy, dangerous lady right up until she meets Q on the fruit machines. And then she's just a ditzy, dizzy broad. Which is a shame.

All Sean's movies except Goldfinger end with him and his moll on a boat.