Bondtastic Congratulations

To Daniel Craig for being one lucky S.O.B. and marrying Rachel Weisz.  I'm not sure what gadgetry Q Branch came up with as a wedding gift for the two of them, but we here at Bondtastic HQ are praying for a leaked video at some point.

A Bondtastic Bond Movie Marathon

Over the weekend I played a lot of Warhammer 40K, and had a James Bond marathon.  The James Bond movies were a fun diversion where we sat around watching and talking about movies.  I decided to journal the time spent for the blog.  We watched Goldfinger, The Man With the Golden Gun, and License to Kill.  We had The World is Not Enough and Casino Royale on the list, but after 6 hours we needed a break and never got back to those movies.  The cast of characters watching the movies were myself, fellow Bondtastic author Steve, and our friends James and Scott

Just a word of warning, this was written as we watched James Bond and drank (beer, whiskey, and martinis).  Comments were not edited for mixed company, and tongues loosened as booze flowed.  So if anything offends you, my apologies.  Not a lot of swearing, but topics of conversation might offend.


Hit the jump to see my journal while watching these movies.

A Tribute to the Martini

While he seems to prefer the *gasp* stirred not shaken method for mixing the martini *gasp*, Cracked.com's Gentleman Bastard has written a wonderful tribute to the Martini.

Personally, I prefer a vodka martini with a twist of lemon, but I will have a gin martini if vodka is not available.  I will also have a cocktail onion, but I hate olives so I try to skip those whenever possible.

I think for the next time I'm watching a Bond film that is not at 8:00 in the morning (thank you USA Network) I might try the Vesper Martini:

• 3 measures of Gordon's Gin
• 1 measure of vodka
• 1/2 measure Kina Lillet
• lemon peel for garnish

 Or maybe I'll drink James Bond's preferred drink from the books, bourbon (I like mine on the rocks).

Anyhow, enjoy the Martini tribute, and while you're at it, enjoy a good martini too.

The Mysterious Abandoned Plane in the Bahamas

Take a look at this picture.

This picture was stumbled on by Steve as he was working on his Bondtastic Locales project.  He was visiting this page about Nassau.  When he saw the caption for the picture said it was an abandoned plane used in a James Bond movie, well thus began the Mystery of the Abandoned Plane in the Bahamas. Now these tangents are fun, and frustrating.  So much is learned, and so many little golden nuggets of joy are gleaned, but as Steve puts it, "If it weren't for...tangents like this, I might actually have been finished with the file a long time ago...but that's half the adventure, heh heh."

Here's what we've done on the search.  The very first plane I thought of was a Jetstream.  But the tail doesn't match this plane.  Looking at the tail and the windows we are leaning towards this plane being a DC-3.  However, the only DC-3 we can think of being used was in Quantum of Solace (filming of the plane chase was in Mexico).  So if it was that plane then the mystery deepens, because the paint job is different (all silver in QoS) not to mention the whole "How in the name of Q did it end up in Nassau?" question that is lingering.

However, as much as we think it's a DC3, the angle of the shot, the foliage, the shadows, the damage to the plane, and the small size of the photo make it very difficult to say absolutely that it's a DC-3.

So we looked at what movies were filmed in the Bahamas to see if we could pin point something that was used that would have been abandoned after filming was done...or was left in the Bahamas and eventually abandoned.  Here are the films that actually filmed in the Bahamas:

1. Thunderball
2. The Spy Who Loved Me
3. Moonraker
4. For Your Eyes Only
5. Never Say Never Again not officially canon, but cannot be ruled out since the Nassau site didn't specify that it was a canonical Bond film
6. Casino Royale

From there we looked at the Wikipedia list of aircraft used in Bond movies and the Air & Space Magazine list of airplanes used in all 22 Bond films.  Both lists were helpful, but the Air & Space Magazine list didn't include pictures.  So that led us to wonder about their entry of a DC-3 used in Goldfinger.  However, I know Goldfinger used the ATL-98 Carvair to take his car from England, and that Carvair was actually a heavily modified DC-4.  So is that a misprint?  I don't have a copy of Goldfinger available to scan through and see.

So back to the list of movies filmed in the Bahamas.