I have no intention of shelling out good money for this latest offering.  Have you?  'Woke', is it?  Fleming - like Elizabeth David and Kingsley Amis - was kicking against the pricks back in the early fifties.  Fleming knew foreign travel and gourmet food was alluring to a recently-come-off-ration reader.  Elizabeth David - a woman who did a good deal to change my life - knew that a good deal of the ingredients she talked about were unobtainable except in places like Soho.  They were feeding fantasies.  Now...  what's next?  A black female Bond?  Ask Keir Starmer his opinion.  Lazenby did Bond best: cradling Rigg in his arms: unforgettable moment.  And that syrupy song...

As Yuca says, a Bond who is softer and more socially aware when he’s not killing people is inevitable these days and Craig has undoubtedly revitalised the role. I do wish the product placed suits weren’t quite so tight fitting on a man of his age, even if he is as fit as a butcher’s dog.

Since Vauxhall Cross was blown up in Spectre in 2015 the MoD Building has had to do duty in the films as ‘Bond HQ’. There are often 007 anoraks and foreign tourists outside when I leave work. They tend to stare at you and I like to say ‘Yes, I am a spy’ as I walk past, then I hurry off (I’m not one though of course).

I read the books in the early 60s, and they had a huge impact on me, and no doubt several others of my generation. The cocktails, the Sea Island cotton shirts, the Russian cigarettes - or preferably soft pack Chesterfields, the exotic women - all that stuff seemed unobtainably glamourous to a young teen on a council estate! But they can be quite hard going to re-read, as I found out with a few last year. I've also just seen the last Daniel Craig film...and well, lots of shoot-em-up but little else of any substance really.

Hollywood was good from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. A hell of a good run, but the days when it produced films worth a watch are long gone. Other countries still produce some decent films. France in particular. Not the majority of what comes out I'm sure, but I have seen some pretty good French movies of a recent vintage. I don't mean the arty stuff - I'm talking crime or comedies.

As for other countries: Argentina and Brazil have their moments. However I can count the number of British films I like on the fingers of one hand, and they're all from back in the day. I rewatched Nuts in May recently: absolute comedy genius.

Italy, Yuca, Italy - a match for France in the 30 years after the war.  Very little from the Continent is now shown in Anglophone countries. Our culture has got smaller, less curious, less cerebral, and cinema is a much diminished art form. The UK is so introspective and narrow, shunning the other and as a consequence now shunned by them.

Bianca is Nanni Moretti - nice choice! Released today, that film would never be screened in the UK.

I think the English cinema rarely produced 'grown-up' movies.  Powell and Pressburger maybe.  The French and Italians knocked spots off us in the 40s and 50s in particular, when we were still reliving wartime glories.  Then we became all arty - Losey etc. - and did that badly, too.  England mistrusts intellectualism: anything in the way of yearning and searching.  Anyone interested should read Corelli Barnett.

'The Mafia? I shit 'em'.
A quote I use to this day, substituting the word Mafia

Went to see the Bond film last night with a group of friends. Missus is a Bond fan. Wasn't as 'woke' as I was expecting but he didn't kop off with any birds. The film is probably 30 minutes too long but it wasn't unbearable. Daniel Craig finally settling into the role, if a little bit too late. The film seemed to be trying to tie up loose ends. Looks like the end of the franchise to me. Not sure where they can go with it from here.

Bond doesn't pull? Maybe he's depressed. I am reading about it.

Summing up, I came to dislike Connery very much.  Lazenby I like.  Moore I never took to.  Dalton is local to me, went to the same school as my younger daughter, support the Old Firm etc...  Brosnan made no impression.  Craig I saw less then twenty minutes of in 'Casino Royale' before leaving the room.  Have I missed anyone out?

Oh...  ah...  Never a big fan anyway...  I've only seen that 'Casino Royale' once and hated it.  Hate a lot of films from that period.  Flabby.  The Beatles have a lot to answer for.