June 24 - Bond No. 25...

The Toronto Star headline for this morning leads with "Road to James Bond No. 25 full of potholes" - it is from the entertainment section. It is way down the list of the newspaper's headlines of the day, but as a lead headline it is perfect. The story is about Daniel Craig's ankle injury delaying production.  It chronicles Daniel Craig's injuries over the Bond movies.  It also refers to him as the actor who famously once said he would rather kill himself than play Bond again. In Wikipedia, there's a chart showing all the Bond movies, year, actor, box office, etc.   According to Wikipedia: "The Eon-produced films have a combined gross of nearly $7 billion, and constitute the fourth-highest-grossing film series, behind Star Wars, Harry Potter films and the Marvel Cinematic Universe." The first film, Dr. No came out in 1962 - this spans 57 years - a lifetime.  I wonder if we can track the impact on the social unconscious of North America. Of course we can -there are many articles, and scholarly ones. This from Popoptiq.com: "Much has been written on the subject of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. From Umberto Eco’s older essay “Narrative Structures in Fleming” to Christoph Linders’ modern collections The James Bond Phenomenon and Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale, there is a wealth of critical work on capitalist/consumerist, imperialist, gender, and racial analyses in the books and films." The impact articles range widely - pop culture, the spy genre in movies, on social norms, and so on.  Many of these come from professors at universities. One journal article had these topics listed: Financial bonds, Movies, Thrillers, Secret service, Motion picture industry, State espionage, Attachment behavior, Material films, Narrative devices, Narrative plot Our picture today shows a  Floyd Elzinga's sculpture at 13th Street Winery.