Beyond the Ponytail to Bond!

Ladies and Gentlemen, if you came here to read the next installment in the "Ponytail and I" series, I'm sorry that the blonde guy on top has stolen the show. His name is Craig, Daniel Craig and he is the reason that Pierce Brosnan doesn't play Bond for the fourth time. We have a new Bond - and he is an Englishman and the first blonde haired person to act in the role. I don't know what to make of him, but he definately looks the part - and is a better pick than Orlando Bloom or Colin Farrell.
While we are on a Bond-theme, I will divert my attention from the Blogosphere fracas, which has been driving immense amounts of traffic to this site, I will take a post to divert away from the matter, because I love watching 007 movies. So I will discuss my favourite Bond movies.
For Sean Connery, my favourite movie was Goldfinger (1964)
Classy women, a maniacal villian with a amd lust for the yellow stuff, a even more maniacal side-kick (Odd-Job), the best name for a female character in 007 - Pussy Galore (hey, can I help it if I'm a MCP at heart). And of course the Aston Martin DB5, one of the best cars ever built!
Then there was Thunderball (1965) and its rip-off Never say Never Again (1983) which was an 'unofficial' Bond flick. Both dealt with stolen Nuclear warheads - nukes got lost with an alarming frequency in Bond movies. In fact, it was positively scary. The later movie was very corny, but somehow Connery pulled it off. Connery, after all, was 'the man'. The first movie, however had the classier women.
I hated Geaorge Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. You can't get Bond married off, and the jokes were all bad. I mean really bad. Better best avoided unless you really have to finish them all. I know the first review at IMDb calls it wonderful, but take my word for it, it sucks.
Then came the Roger Moore movies - where I loved two in particular - 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me and 1983's Octopussy. The first one I loved because of the Lotus Esprit that converts into a Submarine, this was a particularly wet movie - water, water, everywhere. And even the body disposal wasn't exactly original, copying Thunderball's Shark method (I loved the Pig disposal system in Snatch a lot better). Octopussy I love for the simple reason that they shot parts of it in Udaipur and Vijay Amritraj plays a great role. I really loved 'VeeJay' in that movie. Again, it dealt with a lost warhead. Man you wonder how the world didn't explode with 007 around!
My favourite Bond was Timothy Dalton. His movies were dark and somehow extremely good fun to watch. The Living Daylights (1987) despite having Art Malik playing the role of an Afghan Warlord is a great film, down to the storyline. And Licence to Kill (1989) is by far and Away the darkest Bond film ever made. But what a waste of good cocaine at the end!
Then we come to the Irishman. I watched Pierce Brosnan for the first time in Remington Steele on the old Star Plus when I was a kid and somehow knew that this man should be a 007 someday. He was so suave, so cool, so Bond. He made three movies, but I only really liked the first, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) which might have starred the BMW z8 instead of the DB9, but man, plots of media moguls taking over the world sounded rather believable.
Many people believe that Brosnan should have carried on, but I think at 50, he is getting a bit old, and a blonde Bond is a great idea. Now, as long as they can beef up the scripts a bit and get the sharks and SCEPTRE back, we might even have a good plot.
Anyway, I have carried on about 007 for a long time. Here is to Daniel Craig and his Bond career.
PS : Along with Pierce Brosnan, the BCCI also fired the Bengali. Thank god! It seems Greg Chappell won after all.