I have always had mixed feelings on the Bond franchise. I think Sean Connery was fantastic as Bond but it has been so long since I have seen one of those films that I cannot honestly assess my feelings about them. I like Pierce Brosnon as an actor but I felt that the scripts for his Bond movies were fairly weak. That being said I was initially very doubtful about the casting of Daniel Craig and wasn’t sure that this was a film that I wanted to see. However, the marketing department did a fine job with this one as the first trailer I saw hooked me. Thus Monday evening saw Jeff, Cameron and I (there were more invited but life got in the way) at an early showing of Casino Royale.
With a perfect sense of irony, it appears that the spirit of the one ring has been reforged even as we spent the day watching its demise. But first, a recap:
See that guy? The one with the wings? Yeah, I’ve been digesting in his stomach all week. Fun stuff. Its called work. Hey kids, unemployment isn’t always a bad thing. I’ll be back once I’ve been regurgitated. Until then, think happy thoughts.
A large part of the appeal of the recent literature phenomenon, The Thirteenth Tale, is the fact that it is a book written for book lovers. As Stranger Than Fiction came to a close I realized that there is much of the same in this film. Will Ferrell’s latest finds him playing the character Harold Crick, who is himself a character in Kay Eiffel’s (Emma Thompson) new novel. The early humor in the film comes as Harold discovers the voice of the narrator in his head and comes to realize just who he is. The poignancy and depth of the film reveals itself after Harold discovers that his fate is that of Kay Eiffel’s previous literary heros: death. His only saving grace, for the moment, is that Kay Eiffel has a terrible case of writer’s block.
