Life is getting unfairly in the way, and I won’t be reviewing Skyfall until tomorrow; but I thought I’d pass the time with a little amuse-bouche that I found recently during my perambulations the internet: a video documenting the gun barrel sequence, as first designed by the legendary Maurice Binder, in each of the first 22 James Bond pictures.
Some things to look out for:
-The films to credit the producers in the gun barrel.
-The film where the blood “whites out” the image of Bond.
-The film with a dot that’s a markedly different color.
-The films that seriously fuck with the music.
-The films that cut out the opening melodic line.
-The films that try a wacky lighting effect.
-The film that switched to CGI.
-The film with a wholly re-designed barrel.
-The film with a CGI bullet.
Note more generally: that Connery almost falls over when he strikes his shooting pose, that Moore turns and cradles the gun and fires so slowly that you wonder how he hasn’t been shot, like, 8 times in the interim, and how Dalton is unequivocally the best at it of all six Bonds (seven, if we count poor, stocky, not-at-all-Connery-like Bob Simmons).