He's baaaaaack!!!

 Hello, everyone!

Wow, has it really been six and a half years since I last posted?  Time flies when you're ... well, not doing too much of anything at all.  I wish I could say that the giant gap in the timeline of this blog is due to huge life changes.  I have to admit, however, that I just kind of lost interest for a little while, and that little while turned into over a half decade.  

That's not to say that I haven't been writing at all.  I have entered a few short story contests to prevent my skills from sinking into the artistic abyss; I may post them here, I may not.  That's neither here nor there.  I'm here, and I hope to post a little bit more consistently!

I read a book recently called "Dead By Tomorrow" by Daniel Winter and Andrew Monroe.  It's basically a self-help book but something they wrote really struck a chord with me.  Too many people, they said, don't stretch themselves.  They wake up, go to work, come home, eat, watch television, and go to sleep.  That was me.  For a looooooooong time.  They also mentioned that setting aside some time to do something you love gets you into a new routine.  

So that's what I'm trying to do.

I've had some ideas for a novel for a while, but because I'm a perfectionist I think I've been psyching myself out trying to write A MASTERPIECE!!! on the first try.  And then getting frustrated and giving up when it didn't come as easily as I thought.  

So, my goal with this "project," if you will, is to set aside one hour each day to write.  Baby steps at first.  I realize some days I just won't have time, but when I do, rather than just plopping myself in front of the boob tube, I intend to plunk myself down at the old compytooter and let the fingers fly.  Eventually I want to start putting the wheels in motion for what's in my head, but I need to get comfortable just writing something -- anything.  Some of these posts will probably be just random babbling.  I may have a point I want to get across, or I could just freestyle whatever comes into my mind.  But I need to reforge my neural pathways.  And I'm posting this, not necessarily for other people to see, but to keep track of my own progress, rather than (as I have done in the past) fiddling around in Microsoft Word for a couple of weeks and deleting it all in frustration.  I am to hold myself accountable through this blog.

Okay, half an hour gone!  What do I want to talk about next?

How about Bond, James Bond?  I saw No Time To Die last week, and I appear to be in the minority, but I really enjoyed it.  Was it long?  Yes.  Could it have done with a bit of judicial trimming?  Absolutely.  But I loved how it closed out Daniel Craig's story arc as Bond.  Let me explain.

Firstly, I will say that I'm a huge, HUGE James Bond fan.  Why is that?  Well, I came of age (cinema-wise) in the early to mid 1990s.  The bug hit me in grade 11 and I've been a huge movie fan ever since.  In 1995, Eon Productions released GoldenEye, the first Bond film in six years.  I had never seen a Bond film, but my local TV channel, CJOH, showed all the Bond films (I want to say they were in order, but it was so long ago I don't remember) at one o'clock in the morning for a month, in a lead-up to GoldenEye's theatrical release.  Naturally I didn't watch them live, as I was in high school at the time and in the midst of exams, but I taped them all on VHS (remember those?) and watched them religiously.  I was hooked.  The exotic places, the crazy gadgets, the breathtaking action scenes, the quippy one-liners, the fantastic musical scores (and theme songs) and, last but not least for a teenage boy with raging hormones, the beautiful women.  My tastes usually run to the highbrow, but I couldn't get enough of Bond.

The one thing that always niggled at me was the fact that Bond went from being played by Sean Connery, to George Lazenby, to Connery again, to Roger Moore, to Timothy Dalton, and thence Pierce Brosnan.  This in and of itself wasn't a bad thing, as they each brought something different to the role, but every few years Bond changed looks and personality, and nobody onscreen ever commented on it.  It's like his adventures took place within a space-time continuum in which the world changed but Bond remained the same.

And then 2006 came along, and Daniel Craig took the role.  His first film as Bond, Casino Royale, functioned almost as a reboot, introducing Bond before he became 007 as we all know him.  Quantam of Solace followed two years later, and while not one of my favourites, it begins where its predecessor left off; they could easily be two parts of the same movie if one chooses to look at it that way.

Skyfall is where my jaw really hit the floor.  The death of M (who had been played by Judi Dench for the previous two decades) brought some real stakes to a franchise in which nothing, really, was every taken too seriously.  Her replacement by Ralph Fiennes in the middle of Craig's tenure as Bond created a precedent for an actor to change but the character name stayed the same.  I think this was the first time that it popped into my head that perhaps 007 -- and the name "James Bond" -- were, like "M", generic names and titles given to anybody who filled the title.  It was also the second time that I cried during a Bond movie -- and it wouldn't be the last.

Skyfall was followed three years later by Spectre, which again led into this year's much-delayed No Time To Die.  Bond is retired, but pulled back into service when one of his closest acquaintances (does Bond really have friends?  I think not) is killed.  His title, 007, has been taken up by Nomi, played by Lashana Lynch.  Because it's recent, I won't go into too much detail, but lots of action and emotion is played out, and I started bawling like a little baby when a certain line references a song from On Her Majesty's Secret Service -- it was then that I realized with a shock what was going to occur.

An hour is almost up, so for the rest, let me be brief.  The reason I thought it was a wonderful way to end Bond's story arc as portrayed by Daniel Craig is thus.  We meet him as a rough, unforged piece of work who is clearly emotionally repressed, and soothes himself through chronic alcoholism (one thing that I absolutely LOVE about Craig's Bond is that he gets into the psychology of the character; 007 is no longer a superficial wisecracker but a real human with real problems).  He falls in love with Vesper, opens himself up, is betrayed by her and is then forced to watch her die.  He goes through the next two films fired up by fury and anger; vengeance, thy name is Bond.  M, played by Dench, helps him get back to his roots, and is then tragically mowed down by Silva, replaced by Gareth Mallory (Fiennes), with whom Bond has a bit of a touchy relationship.  Mallory becomes the new M, and is simultaneously a protagonist and antagonist through the rest of the series.  Bond then finds out that Ernst Stavro Blofeld, his dread enemy, is his half-brother, but eventually ends up defeating him and seeing him incarcerated.  With that done, and with psychiatrist Madeleine Swann at his side, he retires, only to find himself seemingly betrayed by her.  The final film focuses on Bond's relationship with Swann, and his growth as a human being and a man, and ends on a satisfying, if tragic note.

That's all I have time for today.  Bloggy, I shall see you tomorrow!