Ripping Good Yarns: Bond, James Bond, Is Back

Ir started with a fever of about 103.

The summer between my fourth and fifth grade years we rented a cottage for an extended period of time in a rural area near Traverse City, Michigan.  It was the only summer I remember us doing that.  After that we got a travel trailer and didn't mess with cabins anymore.

I remember swimming in the lake.  I remember that the central office of the campground had a little library where I could pick up old science fiction magazines.  And I remember getting very, very sick.

When the fever first hit me, my parents were a little slow to respond.  They went to an old country doctor who said I'd be fine in a day or so.  My fever would come and go, but at the time we wanted to go see a movie, I wanted to see it so bad, I put on a front of feeling better.

We went to a small thaetre that bragged that it had the world's largest indoor theater mural.  I have no idea whaether that was true or not, and I don't really remember what it was.  But I do remember the movie we saw.  As my fever went back up, the movie was burned forever into me.  It was...Goldfinger.

I had never seen anything like it.  Sean Connery's brutish cool, the amazing gadgets, the quirky villains  - everything was glorious, as I shivered in a feverish delight.  Bond would become an essential part of my life. I would always thrill to the opening of another Bond movie.

Yes, Bond and his movies had it's ups and downs.  Often I would be disappointed or worried that the magic was dissipating   But the thrill never left me, and I have a higher tolerance for a weak Bond movie than I do for almost any other kind of film.

Overall, Daniel Craig has been a very good James Bond.  He has given the part the similar passion and cool swagger that Sean Connery did.  The current film, Skyfall, brings Bond into full flush glory again.  Exciting and clever without being cartoony, it contains great action sequences with clever humor and one of the best Bond villains in quite a long time.  Javier Badam is extraordinary as Silva, the ex-agent with a single-minded determination to confront M ( played with fierce steeliness by Judi Dench).  All in all, a very worthy addition to the Bond canon.

Of course, I didn't see it in a fevered state.  A day or so after Goldfinger, I was in the hospital with pneumonia.  But I must admit, that even though not ill, I still get a little sweaty, a little dizzy  a little flush, just sitting in the theater waiting for the start of another Bond.  James Bond!