Sunday, August 22, 2010

Casino Royale (2006)

  So, this was another Christy exchange. This time it was me trying to improve her. Did you know she has never seen a James Bond movie? Not the latest James Bond, but any James Bond movie. I didn't even know that was possible. I mean, Spike TV runs a marathon of them about once a month. 

Knowing this, when she came up to visit I insisted that we initiate her into the 007 fold. I chose Casino Royale because, as a reboot, it seemed the easiest place to start. No need to drag in the 5 previous Bonds to confuse her.

Turns out, she's a lying whore. She actually had seen it before, just not all of it. The ball-smashing scene, for instance, came as a bit of a shock. Even if you're told about it, watching it is still painful. Overall, she liked it and is open to watching the sequel Quantum of Solace although she felt it had some pacing problems. I have to say that I agree. Parts of that movie, especially the actual poker scenes, are boring as hell.

I'm going to go ahead and include my thoughts about QoS here too, for reasons that will be immanently apparent.

I did not like it as a stand-alone film. I felt it was one of the weakest in the canon. But, watched back to back as a single film, CR/QoS works. That's why it directly follows it in my collection instead of being between Pushing Daisies season 2 and Queen of the Damned. It seemed like more of a LotR series instead of two different films. Which made me wonder how the proposed third one was going to turn out. Would it be a stand-alone, like previous Bonds, or more like The Return of the King and just round out Daniel Craig's involvement?

Thanks to the financial woes of MGM, we may not get to know for quite some time. Last I heard (in July '10), they had stopped all work on production. Then I heard it was back on, then off, and now who the hell knows. But you know I'll be first in line if they ever get that sucker off the ground.

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