The author gives 8.5 out of 10.0. I would concur. A very good movie.

= = =

One nit:

I have been taking some writing classes in recent years and at one point last night when the characters went into great detail explaining the idea of a poker player's "tell" I leaned over to my wife and almost shouted at her

Resist the Urge to Explain!

My own writing drafts have R.U.E. scrawled in red ink in lots and lots of places.

Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.

I just saw it last week, and found it surprisingly good. I recommend it.

I'll be seeing bond this weekend with the in-laws.

on Sunday night.

I agree that it was very, very good, and a remarkable departure from the previous Bond films. It owes much to some current cinematic trends...John Woo's "Heroic Bloodshed" themes are in evidence here, especially in that opening chase. Furthermore, no previous Bond has ever had the stuffing so thoroughly and so frequently beaten out of him as this one, and that tended to humanize him. Some of the fight scenes were evocative of the fight in the German apartment in The Bourne Supremacy (still the best fight scene ever filmed, IMHO).

Not many outlandish gadgets, as you note. I don't own an Aston-Martin DBS, but I'm reasonably sure the stock glove box is kitted a little differently than Bond's ;-). Speaking of that car...I grew a little tired of product placements of everything from the watch to the gin to the car itself, but that's modern movie marketing, I suppose.

Biggest difference and/or improvement for me? The fact that the "villains" are more realistic than the traditional super-villain/egomaniacal madmen we're accustomed to.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham

something worse happens when a studio sits down to make a sequel of a successful movie, especially a niche or budget movie. They try to copperfasten success by applying their sure hit success formulae to formats that succeeded due to their absence.

Or something like that.

Anyway, the new bond movie sounds good. On her majesty's whatnot was always my favorite (well, not always, as a kid I liked Moonraker). This sounds like it will be better.

Do you publish your movie reviews anywhere but here?

God help the while, a bad world I say.

However, I can say that Chris Guest's "For Your Consideration" is the latest in a series of small wonderful absurdist comedies that exist, seemingly, only in his head. And Eugene Levy's head. And Catherine O'Hara. And...

Pricelessly funny.

Also saw "Happy Feet" for 40 minutes. Then we ran out of popcorn and Tess decided it was best we leave. But those 40 minutes were pretty eye-popping. Miller is another rare filmmaker, if working in a completely different milieu.

That's right. Milieu!!

Can milieu be jejune? Of course it can!!

Anyhoo. See 'em both. Well worth it.

To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard

Albeit too long. Many of the scenes just seemed to go on and on well after we'd gotten the point. Some brutal editing the clipped the running time down to close to two hours would have made the film almost perfect.

I do expect that the next film will feature a smoother, more polished Bond character.

Guard, protect and cherish your land, for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.

I really enjoyed the book as well -- what a final line!

There's a cool video posted here showing real-life running/jumping/climbing as in the opening chase scene.

I've always had odd taste in Bond movies, though; I thought the generally disliked On Her Majesty's Secret Service was among the better films in the series. It's funny to read the IMDB reviews for that film in light of Casino Royale, for example: "The plot involves the usual Bond movie plot elements plus something unique: romance. The movie follows the original Ian Fleming novel closely... What's nice is that there is less reliance on gadgets." Perhaps I was just ahead of the times =)

Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson

. . .to see it today, but decided to wait for the long weekend coming up.

The funny thing is that from the moment that Sean Connery appeared on the screen in Dr. No--a movie far more resembling the novel it came from than most of the subsequent Bond films--it was clear that there would be a substantial deviation from the books in one sense. Early in Casino Royale--which was the first Bond novel, in case one has forgotten--Ian Fleming described Bond as closely resembling Hoagy Carmichael. While Carmichael was a very successful and well-regarded bandleader who appeared in a number of films, he wasn't about to become a romantic lead in a major Hollywood series.