Bond is Back

Well, it's about time! I was beginning to wonder if James Bond movies had been banned from TV for their often embarrassing political incorrectness, but no...the SciFi Channel is showing Goldeneye and Casino Royale today. Yippee!

Goldeneye was Pierce Brosnan's first of four movies as Bond, and in my opinion, his best. Sean Bean, forever etched in fantasy movie aficionados' hearts as the flawed-but-courageous character Boromir in Lord of the Rings, plays a great bad guy. And for almost pure, sadistic evil, there may be no character in the entire James Bond series to rival Xenia Onatopp, portrayed by Famke Janssen.

Casino Royale, an original Ian Fleming story (albeit obviously modified to fit the early 21st century) that was perverted in 1965 into a horrible Bond farcical movie with the same name, introduced one of my favorite Bond actors in Daniel Craig. Gone, though, were the often very humorous characters of Q and Miss Moneypenny. Then again, Craig's Bond isn't quite as much of a "kidder" as his predecessors. To add a touch of continuity between the Brosnan and Craig movies, Bond's boss M, played by Judy Dench, was retained.

Sci-Fi picked the two best James Bond movies of the last six made to show today. But still, to me that's stretching the genre of science fiction a bit.

Is there a "spy shows" channel around? Just think of the possibilities: Bond, the Bourne trilogy, Austin Powers, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Prisoner, Secret Agent, The Avengers, Mission Impossible, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, the Flint movies, the Harry Palmer movies, the Matt Helm movies, Get Smart, Honey West, I Spy, just to scratch the surface...