Here’s a side project I have been working on for more than a year – read this book chronicling the making of all 25 James Bond movies, and watching each movie (together with Kuniko) in parallel.
The way I did it was to first watch the movie, and then afterwards read about the history of the movie and get all the interesting details. This worked out well as a strategy – the movie was still fresh in my mind while reading. Watching 25 James Bond movies was made easier as Kuniko had gifted me a Blu-ray box set years ago, so we could throw a movie on anytime. But 25 movies can take a while – we ended up watching from February 2025 until May 2026 – so we averaged about 2 movies (and book chapters) a month.
And while the movies were hit and miss (greatly depending on the Bond actor and our feelings at the time) the book was comprehensive and consistently full of details – even for movies made 50 years ago. I can see why superfans of the movies would love this book.
One of the things I liked best was to find out exactly where scenes were filmed, and learn about how it was chosen and what challenges were faced while filming there. Often when watching a Bond film we see places we want to visit – and then I’d read the chapter and discover that it was in a completely different country (or inside a sound stage). Later with the advent of computer technology it wasn’t clear if it was a real place at all.
It is important to emphasize here just how much detail was in each chapter – so much that it is natural that some information won’t be as interesting to readers as others. I didn’t really care much about the financial and back office politics involved with financing a motion picture, but by adding up these details you can start to understand why the movie took as long as it did to get made (or why it was banged out so quickly).
The authors dug up so much information and did so many direct interviews that I sometimes felt that having interviewed these people they were obligated to include their comments, whether or not they were engaging. I also felt occasionally like I was getting lost in the flood of names involved with so many stages of moviemaking over 50 years – some names came up again and again while others slipped past to be forgotten at the next page turn.
But having finished our James Bond project yesterday with No Time To Die, today I wrapped up the last chapter of the book – published just as they were leading up to getting the latest Bond movie under production.
Now the project is finished, and I am glad that I had Kuniko with me along for the movie side of things. Maybe once I start to lose my memory I can go back and revisit these all again as new movies!
