Daniel Craig’s James Bond in Quantum of Solace and Casino Royale might eschew gadgets in lieu of a hard punch to the nose, but it’s hard to argue that the best Bond gadget in recent years isn’t the invention of the Blu-ray DVD. Now the classic Bond films have started appearing in the format with upgraded images, sound, and a slew of special features. Casino Royale was previously released on DVD as one of Sony’s first “must have” discs to show off your Blu-ray player (which was probably a Sony PlayStation3), but now they’re visiting a smattering of different Bonds in this first release.

As I’ve learned in my adult life, there are sometimes those moments that you realize you’re probably unhealthily obsessed with something. For me, that moment came when I was seriously considering purchasing a $2,999 framed collage featuring signatures of all the actors who had played James Bond in the “official” movies, along with various playing cards, casino chips, photos and what not. I ultimately had to pass on it, and my wallet was grateful after the fact.

Thankfully there are much more affordable ways to feed this obsession, some of which can be documented in the series of Bondcasts that I used to host with Athena Stamos at Cinematical. One of those ways has been collecting the James Bond movies on DVD. There have been not one, nor two, but now three different collections of Bond issued on DVD, and while I really miss the menu screens from the first set, (”Please activate your remote control to activate the Goldfinger Special Edition DVD” — complete with an extremely Bondian gadgetlike interface), you can’t argue that Blu-ray is definitely giving the previous James Bond films a shot in the arm.

…Read more