Discusses the first three James Bond movies and informs readers to "get set for number 4", Thunderball which at the time of printing had not yet even started filming.

It took some time, but I sorted out over 70 MB of high quality (many high definition) images into folders, uploaded them all and created pages for each film.

James Bond Wallpaper.

James Bond Film Posters.

I will continue to update these pages with new artwork as I find it.

Derek Meddings was part of the special effects division of the James Bond films between 1973s Live and Let Die and later helmed that department until his death in 1995. In this 1981 interview in Starlog Magazine, he discusses his life, his career and reveals some of the magic he used to create the world of James Bond.

I have been collecting all things Bond for many years now. Time to share it all with the world. Today's post comes from The "Best of Starlog Vol 4" (1983). "After his sixth superspy saga, this saintly hero may be eying a new direction beyond 1983, the biggest Bond year of them all. Roger Moore has reached a major crossroads in his career. During the production of his sixth James Bond film, Octopussy, he has repeatedly declared that this latest movie mission will absolutely be his last outing as Agent 007..."

Think you don’t know Vic Armstrong?

Wrong! You’ve seen his work in countless films... 

He’s been a stunt double for James Bond, Indiana Jones and Superman, and he’s directed action scenes for three Bond movies, Mission Impossible 3, Thor, and the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man to name but a few.

Counting Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger among his friends, and officially credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Most Prolific Stuntman, Vic’s got a lot of amazing stories to tell, and they’re all here in this - the movie memoir of the year!

I also read Hal Needham's Stuntman!: My Car-Crashing, Plane-Jumping, Bone-Breaking, Death-Defying Hollywood Life and I have to say Vic Armstrong is much more modest when describing his accomplishments (Hal claims to have invented just about everything stuntman related - and perhaps he did - but he comes accross as extremely arrogant and very in your face about it. For example, as an "I told you so", he took out a full page ad in a hollywood trade publication that showed himself outside a bank with a wheel barrow full of cash, after Smokey and the Bandit came out).

Of the two books, I found The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman: My Life as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Superman and Other
Movie Heroes to be the more intersting read. This is partly because Hal's career spanned from the 1950s to the early 80s and with the exeption of the Burt Reynolds movies, most of his stunts seem to have been for old westerns, many of which I have never heard of, let alone seen. I don't doubt that the stunts were spectacular, it's just that I have seen so few of them that it was just not as interesting to read about as Vic's career, which is so much more mainstream, and more relevent to anyone born after 1970 - he worked with Steven Spielberg, Scorcese, included references to a lot more of the films that I have actually seen and enjoyed.

James Bond

Vic Armstrong worked as a stuntman on You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Live and Let Die (1973), and Never Say Never Again (1983), he also helped with casting for The Living Daylights (1987) and directed the action on Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999), and Die Another Day (2002). As Vic describes directing the action on these last three movies it becomes clear to us why the Brosnan era of James Bond was so awful (I'm sorry, but it was - Brosnan wasn't awful, it was the "plots" - if you can call them that). Vic dreamed up the action sequences for these movies, and as action set pieces they are very entertaining, but it seems like the entire movie was made around these stunts, rather than starting with a story and adding action only as needed. In his book, for the most part each chapter is devoted to a movie, or a series of movies worked on in a short period of time. The chapters for Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough are broken down by the big action pieces of the movies - the pre-credit sequence, the car park chase, etc. and you realize that the rest of these movies, the parts in between these big set pieces pale in comparison, as if they just needed a way to take bond from one big set piece to the next. Just my opinion.

Anyway, overall, a very interesting read.

The True Adventures of the Worlds Greatest Stuntman B+.

Stuntman! C+.

Shortly after releasing the first 3 James Bond films on Laserdisc in a 2-disc CAV format in 1991, Criterion was asked by EON Productions (Producers of the James Bond Films) to recall all unsold Laserdisc product. Albert R. Broccoli felt that the audio commentary tracks on the 3 titles where unacceptable.

The three Bond Films were pulled from the shelves and later re-packaged by Criterion into a single disc CLV Format, and re-issued without any of the supplemental features. Furthermore, when MGM released their DVD version of these first three James Bond classics, they contained different audio commentaries than their predecessors on laserdisc, which this time were approved prior to distribution. Now, the original 2-disc Criterion versions go for big bucks on Ebay. I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of these discs and extract these rare commentary tracks which I present here for bond fans everywhere to download free and enjoy. I'd like to thank Fanfiltration for preserving these great special features.

Dr No Commentary Track
From Russia With Love Commentary Track
Goldfinger Commentary Track

One of my earliest memories is seeing a few minutes of James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me at a drive in movie theater in California in 1977. I was three years old. My parents took me to a double bill: Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo was first, and I was supposed to go to sleep after that while they watched James Bond. I fell asleep to the theme song "Nobody Does It Better", woke up again briefly to watch the car chase and fell asleep again after Bond drives out of the ocean.

Since then, I have been hooked. I have read all the novels, seen all the films more times than I can count, owned them all on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and now Blu-ray, have an extensive library of books about James Bond, and I have had this domain name for over three years, but done nothing with it. I have re-designed the site at least 5 times, but never been happy enough with any design to actually complete it, nor have I written more than a few paragraphs of content for it. I never intended it to be a blog site, but - not wanting to create yet another site that just rehashed the plots, listed all the gadgets, vehicles, villains and bond girls - I think this is a good format for what I have to offer, and most importantly it lets me publish small amounts of detail at a time. Watch this space.