Book Review: The Art of Bond

In my opinion, the book title is deceiving. This is not an art book.

This book is about the history on the making of James Bond movies, up until Casino Royale. That's all 21 films if you're counting.

Included are lots of on-set photographs, some concept artwork consisting mainly of storyboards. There are also interviews with key talents like Michael G.Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Ken Adam, John Barry and Martin Campbell.

In essence, this book is about the history of James Bond and how it made it to the big screen. Many production stories are included in the interviews, like how they fix up the set, cast characters and choose music. These stories come in the form of interviewees' quotes. There is no narration in the book.

The book could be thicker given James Bond's long and illustrious history. I just can't help thinking about how much stuff they left out. I guess they may be covered in other James Bond books.

It's a good read overall, but mainly for James Bond fans.

Here's the list of chapters:

• Bond Words: the novels, the screenplays, the dialogue
• Bond Worlds: sets, locations, gadgets and cars
• Making It Real: the team, the actors, filming the action
• Bond Scores: the music, the songs, the title sequences
• Bond Takes On The World: the marketing, the release
• James Bond Will Return
• Picture Captions

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