OHMSS Watch Sells For 22,912 Pounds

A watch feature in the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service has sold for £22,912 at an auction in London.

The auction was conduction by Christie’s and featured movie memorabilia including pieces from other film series including the Star Wars and Superman series.

The watch up for auction was a Rolex worn by one-time Bond George Lazenby in 1969 film. The initial estimate placed the watches value between £5,000-£7,000, however, the watch reached the much higher value making it the item with the highest bid from the auction.

The watch wasn’t the only piece of Bond history up for auction, also up for grabs were items from the collection of Peter Hunt, who passed away recently. The items included his working scripts for all of the 1960s Bond films.

Source: Ananova.

David Levison Working on EoN Score

Composer David Levison has revealed that he has been hired to work on Sean Calley’s score for the forthcoming James Bond game, Everything or Nothing.

Levison is performing two function for the game; audio mixing of Calley’s score and also creating the interactive segmentation to ensure that the score matches the onscreen game play.

As a Music and Sound Designer, Levison has many LucasArts titles on his CV including Star Wars: Jedi Fighter and RTX Red Rock.

Source: Music 4 Games.

Win One Of Ten Signed Copies Of Face Blind!

From the pen of Raymond Benson, author of the acclaimed original James Bond continuation novels (Zero Minus Ten, The Facts of Death, High Time to Kill, DoubleShot, Never Dream of Dying, and The Man With the Red Tattoo) and the novel Evil Hours, comes a new and edgy noir thriller.
Imagine a world where you don’t recognize the human face. That’s Hannah’s condition – prosopagnosia, or “face blindness’ – when the brain center that recognizes faces is inoperable.

The onset of the condition occurred when she was attacked and nearly raped by an unknown assailant in the inner lobby of her New York City apartment building. And now she thinks he’s back, and not just in her dreams.
When she also attracts the attention of a psychopathic predator and becomes the unwitting target of a Mafia drug ring, the scene is set for a thrill ride of mistaken identity, cat-and-mouse pursuit, and murder.
Face Blind is a twisting, turning tale of suspense in which every character has a dark side. The novel will keep the reader surprised and intrigued until the final violent catharsis.

To read Daniel Dykes’ interview with Benson click here

With thanks to novelist Raymond Benson and 21st Century Publishers CBn is proud to be able to offer lucky members of CBn ten copies of Benson’s new book Face Blind signed by the author.

All we need you to do is answer one simple question and send as a Private Message to the member CBn Competition. The question is:

TRUE OR FALSE: Face Blind is the first novel Benson has written with no connection to Bond.

In order for your entry to be considered for one of the ten books on offer it must contain three things:

• Subject title must be: “Face Blind”
• You must provide us with a current and valid e-mail address
• You must provide us with a current and valid postal address

Terms And Conditions

• The competition is open to anyone from any country, excluding CommanderBond.Net staff members and employees of 21st Century Publishing. Be aware that if entering from a country outside the UK, that you may be liable to pay customs charges for receipt of the prize. Make yourself familiar with your respective country’s customs policy.
• The competition closes December 31st 2003 with the winner drawn shortly afterwards. The winner will be drawn at random from correct entries and be notified via e-mail. Judge’s decision is final and no discussion will be entered in to.
• If a winner cannot be contacted within one week (7 days) the prize will be redrawn and a new winner notified, ensure the e-mail and shipping addresses you supply are current and correct.
• Only one entry per person will be considered. Any attempt to enter multiple times will result in all entries being deleted.

Mya Discusses Involvement with EoN

IGN Music has interviewed singer Mya on her involvement with the forthcoming James Bond gaming title, Everything or Nothing.

In the article, Mya discusses what her involvement in the project meant in terms of work, “I sort of found out everything that would be happening within the video game when I got to the recording studio. I got to scream from the bottom of my lungs and I got to kick and fight and all kinds of things that I didn’t know I’d be doing when I walked into the session. So it was really interesting and a different project for me in that aspect.” Also discussed is Mya’s writing and singing of a unique song to serves as the theme tune for the game.

The article also features three pictures from the game, showing James Bond and NSA Agent Mya Sterling ‘on screen’.

For all you music fans, if you look along the right hand side of the page, you also can click on a link enabling you to hear a short snippet of the ‘techno version’ of her song Everything Or Nothing.

Wilson, Doctor Michael G Wilson

On December 3, 2003, the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom honored Eon executive Michael G. Wilson. The university gave Wilson an honorary Doctor of Letters degree for his contributions to the worldwide film industry and for his part in establishing Bradford’s National Museum of Photography, Film and Television.

Wilson is an internationally recognized expert in nineteenth century photography, and has worked for the preservation of early examples of photography.

CommanderBond.net congratulates Dr. Wilson on his recent honors.

To read the entire article on his honorary degree, click here.

Two Grammy Nods For Madonna's 'Die Another Day'

Madonna’s single “Die Another Day,” the title song of last year’s Bond film, has been nominated for two American Grammy Awards.

The song is nominated for Best Dance Recording and for Best Music Video, short form.

Cary Grant; The Bond Connection

The interest that Martin Sterling and Gary Morecambe, authors of Martini’s, Girls and Guns: Fifty Years of 007, show in the world of James Bond is more apparent then ever with the recently released paperback publication of their autobiographical work, Cary Grant: In Name Only.

While Grant is, obviously, the primary focus of the work, its connections with the 007 are numerous. Most apparent to Bond fans will be the books detailing of Grant’s relationship with Bond producer Albert R ‘Cubby’ Broccoli. It was a friendship that would stretch from the mid-1930’s until Grant’s death in 1986, and as a result Cubby appears throughout the book including accounts of their first meeting when Cubby was 25 and later when Grant served as best man at the wedding of Cubby and Dana Broccoli in 1959. Of particular interest to Bond fans will be comments from Michael G Wilson on his memories of that day.

Also covered in the book is Cubby’s offering of the role of 007 to Grant for the film Dr No and Grants subsequent refusal to do more than one Bond film. Grant’s connection with the cinematic James Bond is also furthered with the authors interviewing of Roger Moore, the pair being good friends.

Ian Fleming is also mentioned in the autobiography, as he and Grant were acquaintances through their mutual friend Noel Coward. The book also speculates that Fleming may have been influenced in his creation of the character of James Bond by Grant’s portrayal of Devlin in 1946’s Notorious.

However, Fleming’s appearance is most interesting due to the possibility that he got Coward to recruit the Grant into William Stephenson’s Hollywood celebrity spy ring during the Second World War. It is known that Coward worked for them, and his good friendship with Grant is well documented.

Cary Grant: In Name Only is available from Amazon UK.

Bond Cars At UK Motorshow

The Aston Martin V12 Vanquish seen in the most recent James Bond film, Die Another Day, will be featured at a car exhibition in at the Heritage Motor Centre in Warwickshire.

The Vanquish displayed at the Motor Centre will be one of the gadget laden vehicles used for filming parts of the Ice Chase scene. The Jaguar XJR from the same chase sequence will also be on display.

The cars will be on display until the New Year, with the Heritage Motor Centre open every day (bar public holidays) between 10:00am and 5:00pm. Further details can be found at www.heritage-motor-centre.co.uk.

Ursula Wins "Sexiest Screen Moment"

Emerging from the sea in Dr. No, Ursula Andress aka Honeychile Ryder has topped a list of 100 Greatest Sexy Moments, in a list compiled by Channel 4.

In second place was Sarah Michelle Gellar’s lesbian kiss from "Cruel Intentions", third was Salma Hayek, dancing with a snake in Quentin Tarantino’s "From Dusk Till Dawn".

To see the full list, visit Channel4.com!

Thanks to forum user ‘Atticus17F’ for the alert!

Facing Foward With 'Face Blind'

Like many before him, Raymond Benson may forever be associated with the world of James Bond. Yet with his latest work, Face Blind, hitting shelves, the author seems determined to forge a new literary career away from the world of Bond. In doing so, he’s quick to point out that “Face Blind is a suspense novel that is entirely different from the Bond books.”

This difference came in the fact that the “characters, story, universe” were all his own creation, something that obviously granted him much more creative freedom. “I could let the characters go where they wanted to go and I didn’t have to stop and think whether of not ‘whozit’ would do such a thing.”

While such a creative freedom may have seemed like the lifting of a literary technicality for Benson, it did not change his technique in Face Blind‘s penning. As with his Bond novels, Benson still began with the creation of an outline, though he concedes it “wasn’t as detailed” as those he created for the Bond novels. Though again this provided more creative freedom, “I left myself room to improvise during the writing if I needed to. In fact, I decided to kill off a major character halfway through the story when I was writing, and this didn’t occur in the original outline.”

It becomes apparent throughout the process of questioning and responding that ‘freedom’ may best describe Benson’s penning of Face Blind. Like Fleming, Benson is known to have traveled to most of the locations in each of his Bond works for research purposes, yet his ability to situate Face Blind solely in the United States allowed for less extensive travel research. Benson reveals that he was only required to travel to Ohio, where a small number of the novel’s chapters take place. For the scenes set in New York, Benson relied heavily on his knowledge of the city, having lived there for eleven years and having traveled back on numerous occasions. Benson’s use of the city will come as a point of interest for Bond fans, with Benson revealing that he placed Hannah, the female protagonist, in his old studio apartment in the city. Moreover, it is the same studio apartment used by James Suzuki, Bond’s son, in the short story Blast From The Past.

Creative freedom aside, I asked Benson where the idea for the novels plot came from – prosopagnosia (face blindness) isn’t, after all, one of the more commonly known diseases. His answer contains references to Bond related actors such as Pierce Brosnan, John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley, for it was in the 2001 BBC documentary The Human Face that Benson first encountered the idea. “One section of the [documentary] series dealt with disorders of the face, not only actual physical disorders, but disorders in the brain that effect the way people look at and decipher faces. One of these disorders is prosopagnosia in which a person is unable to recognize the faces [of people] except in a strict context.” Benson develops an example to explain such a strict context, for instance, a person suffering prosopagnosia can only identify people by other attributes, such as the location they frequently encounter them in or by their individual voice.

With his latest novel in the bookstores, Benson is happy to admit that future plans are very much in motion. He admits that he has already completed his new book and while he remains tight-lipped about its plot he does reveal that he’s aiming for publication sometime next year. There are also plans to get Evil Hours published, it having only previously appeared as an e-book and print-on-demand novel. While future plans abound, a return to the world of James Bond for Benson does not appear to be on the horizon. “A lot of people ask about updating the Bedside Companion, but it just wouldn’t be ethical. After being in the hot seat of creating Bond novels, I can’t go back again and be a critic of the films, other authors’ novels, or even my own. It just wouldn’t be right.”

But there may be a glimmer of hope, though perhaps only a slight one. Benson makes a note of one other project, a memoir on his experiences with the world of James Bond. However, he concedes it may never see the light of day as he “can’t imagine that there’s anyone who would want to read it.”

Bond fans are certain to disagree.