Andrew:
Hello readers! It’s Day 2 of our 7 Days of 007. Yesterday we kicked
off our weeklong celebration of Skyfall’s release by watching the
very first Bond movie, Dr. No. For our second night I felt
it was prudent to have Sarah and I watch the second Bond movie, From Russia With Love. I feel, and it’s generally believed by Bond fans,
that From
Russia With Love was not only an improvement on Dr. No but is still one
of the best films in the franchise.
So Sarah, now that you’ve seen the first two Bond films on
back-to-back nights, how would you compare From Russia With Love to Dr.
No?
Sarah:
It’s leaps and bounds better. It’s like the filmmakers went back to the source
material and decided they needed to choose a certain path to take Bond and go
with it. I found that this film was more the Bond we know and love today. He
was more a spy, there were more gadgets for him to play with…and you know,
we’re introduced to the characters better in the second film.
The villain has an ominous feel to him because you never
quite see all of him but you hear his voice. He has these henchmen working for
him, we see them, we know what part they play. It’s just so much better than
the first one.
They kind of finally figured out the way they wanted to take
the series.
A: Now the
villain you mentioned, the unseen man who was stroking a white cat, is Ernst
Stavro Blofeld – the big baddie in the series. But the actual henchmen that
Bond are two SPECTRE agents named Grant, played by a much younger looking
Robert Shaw (Jaws), and Rosa Klebb, played by Lotte Lenya.
