BY Raymond Benson
I thought my days
of writing about or for James Bond were over. But as Al Pacino bemoaned in The Godfather Part III,
'They keep pulling me back in!'
And that's exactly what the recent so-called "Ultimate Edition"
DVD releases of the Bond series did for me. After having not viewed many of the pictures in years, it
was a treat to go back and watch them all again in chronological order, dip into the bonus features, and
reassess the official EON 007 films' something I hadn't done since the publication of the updated
edition of The James Bond Bedside Companion in 1988. Twenty years is a long time and I'm a very
different person than I was in 1988. For one thing, I've been on the other side of the fence with Bond.
Thus, I'm not really in a position to opine whether or not this or that film is good. It's the main
reason why I don't update the Bedside Companion-it just wouldn't be ethical for me to write critiques of
the Bond books or films since 1988. I leave that for others to do.