What was the last movie you saw at the theaters?

Casino Royale

Pretty sweet, Daniel Craig nails Bond and the villian is also an improvement on previous OTT incarnations. Lot of the supporting cast could have done with a bit of fleshing out. All in all the realistic tone works a treat and the action sequences are all top notch. Thought the airport scene came a bit out of place since the finale had the least action (also if anyone watches, were you thinking Don't Look Now?). Some of the plot twists were a bit obvious especially knowing that a Bond film probably wouldn't end with a LOTR: ROTK epilogue. Liked a lot of the touches they threw in for his opening mission, his drinking coming from living in the edge of death etc. Anyway, a really good return to form and a one of the years better action flicks.

__________________

The last one I saw in the theatre was POTC: Dead Man's Chest.

Casino Royale (2006 - Martin Campbell)

James Bond is back. Thank goodness.

I'm a fan of the first Bond movies, meaning all the Connerys (OK, not counting Diamonds are Forever) and the Lazenby plus the first few or so Moores. By the '80s I was done with 007. I actually didn't mind Dalton in and of himself, but he was in two pretty witless and dead entries. Then came Brosnan, and apart from liking his first outing OK, they quickly degenerated into ridiculous videogames full of patently impossible CGI nonsense and cartoon characters. For me, the more Bond is rooted in a bit of reality the more fun I have with the movies. The last four Brosnan Bonds were increasingly unwatchably dull to me. So I could only hope that when they signed on Daniel Craig as the new Bond that they would also reimagine the tone and overall texture of the franchise.

Happily, Casino Royale is a Bond reboot. Much like Chris Nolan's Batman Begins, we're more or less starting over. The movie opens in black and white and we witness the first two kills that earned ol' Jimmy B. his 00 status. From there it's one of the best of the playful and intricate credit sequences and then we meet our new Bond. This is a Bond in a post-9/11/01 world. There are no gadgets, save for cellphones and wirless communications, and while 007 has deluxe models it's the same technology you can get at Radio Shack. He drives damn nice cars, but they don't turn into submarines and aren't outfitted with surface to air missiles. There are stunts and action sequences and gunplay for sure, but while exciting and well choreographed it never crosses the line into complete and utter comic book make believe. There's no Q and no Miss Moneypenny but Dame Judi Dench is back as M and even CIA man Felix Leiter shows up for the festivities. The plot isn't concerned with a super weapon or a plot to take over the world but stopping the funding of international terrorist activities. So how is Craig as Bond? He's a tougher and more brooding agent, but his steely lowkey demeanor and rock-hard body are perfectly suited for this newest take on Bond. He can flash a little roguish charm when necessary, and he looks great in a tailored tux, but his response to a bartender's question of whether he wants his martini shaken or stirred, both the words he uses and his tone of voice, tell you all you need to know about this 21st Century James Bond. And this guy bleeds and bruises, which turns him back into a human being from the superhero he had become in the past thirty-some years.

The director, Martin Campbell, helmed Goldeneye, the only one of the Brosnan Bonds I can stomach. Early in his career he also helmed the excellent mini-series "Reilly: Ace of Spies" starring Sam Niell as a real-life British superspy. Casino Royale is still a fantasy, no doubt, but there's more Reilly in him than he's had since the 1960s. Eva Green, who was so damn sexy in Bertolucci's The Dreamers, is well cast as the woman James may actually be falling for during this assignment. Mads Mikkelsen is fine as the main baddie, and while his histrionics while playing cards are probably the most cartoony aspect of the whole movie, the torture sequence later in the film is anything but. The other supporting players aren't called on to do much, but that leaves more time to define our new Bond. The movie runs two and a half hours and while there are some wonderful action setpieces, the downtime in between them is not spent looking at your watch wondering when the next explosion is going to liven things up.

Without the gadgets, without the cheeky one-liners and without over-the-top impossibilities in action and plot, I gotta say I loved this James Bond. It really harkens back to the Connery Bond of Dr. No and From Russia with Love. He's been updated, as has the world, but overall this more "realistic" (that term being relative in comparison to say outrunning a giant laser beam that is bringing down an Arctic palace constructed entirely of ice) Bond is exciting, engrossing and still plenty of fun. Taking the camp and X-Box stuff out of it totally brought me back into the Bond fold. I can hardly wait for the next installment.


GRADE: B

__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Did you find the M character annoying Holden? She seemed quite perfunctory with very little interest.

No. First of all I like Judi Dench a lot, but no, even if the character wasn't played by her I like the new kind of relationship they've set up between 007 and M.

Originally Posted by John McClane

Wow, I got to see it now.

I just saw Santa Clause 3. I by no way wanted to see this piece of horse *****, but it was for my sister's birthday party so it was required of me. It deserves an

Ha! I just saw that last weekend. While not the best movie, I'd have to I didn't think it was too bad.Sure it was sorta predictable and cheesy but so were the two before it. If you're highly critical of movies avoid this one, but if you're into cheesy holiday movies, it's not too bad. I found it better than I thought it would be. Martin Short was pretty good. I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

__________________
"The plan is to conquer the world with my doodles" - The Dark Lanyard

My Webcomics

For Your Consideration (2006 - Christopher Guest)

Christopher Guest and company have been geniuses at composing multi-character improvised narratives about misfits and losers. Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind are hysterical while subtle, and the real secret to their success is how lovingly the characters are drawn. No matter how odd or pathetic or petty or clueless, you're made to care about what happens to them...even as you're laughing at them. Unfortunately that's a key ingredient missing from For Your Consideration.

Marilyn Hack (Catherine O'Hara) and Victor Allen Miller (Harry Shearer) are two veteran actors who are working on the margins of Hollywood. Callie Webb (Parker Posey) and Brian Chubb (Christopher Moynihan) are two younger actors who are struggling to find those margins. They're all co-starring in a small-budgeted indie drama about a WWII-era family reuniting around a small Jewish holiday. Titled Home for Purim, it's a humorless and overwrought little piece that you might get if a local Jewish retiremement community put on a production of Tennessee Williams or Carson McCullers and videotaped the show. It is cliché-ridden and sprinkled with way too many Yiddish words. This dire little nothing of a film is being helmed by Jay Berman (Christopher Guest) and they're all plugging along shooting the movie when an internet rumor speculates that Hack may be in the running for an Oscar, her work in the dailies is so good. Media outlets follow suit, and soon the unfinished project has "Oscar buzz". This sends a bolt of energy through the production, from the actors to the producer to the P.R. man to the agents to the heads of the small Studio. But what will this new spotlight of expectation do to the little movie?

While thirty years ago the behind-the-scenes action of a set and the concept of Awards fever may well have been too "inside" for an audience to be in on the joke, after a couple decades of infotainment even a mild movie fan will know what's what. Too bad they didn't have anything to do with the concept, and that the characters never get developed more than brief sketches. With the stellar comedic cast which also includes Guest regulars like Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, John Michael Higgins, Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean, Ed Begley Jr., Larry Miller and Jane Lynch as well as new recruits like Ricky Gervais and Rachel Harris, there are definitely laughs to be had (for example Lynch, who has not many lines of dialogue, is fantastically funny every second she's on screen as she has perfectly adopted Mary Hart's bizarre phony posture and physicality). But it never comes together as a whole, and the charm and magic that these talented folks bottled for the previous three movies elludes them here. It's not bad, it just doesn't measure up to their own incredibly high standards.

If you want to see a much better Christopher Guest take on the shallow insanities of Hollywood, check out his first movie as a writer/director The Big Picture (1989) where Kevin Bacon's innocent film school grad learns some quick lessons about how things work in LaLaLand. That was a more straightforward filmmaking process, devoid of the improvisation that has become his trademark, but it's a much more insightful look behind the scenes and darn funny, too.


GRADE: C+


And how I'd grade his work as director thus far...

1. Waiting for Guffman (1996), A
2. Best in Show (2000), A
3. A Mighty Wind (2003), B+
4. The Big Picture (1989), B
5. For Your Consideration (2006), C+
6. "Attack of the 50 Woman" (1993), D
7. Almost Heroes (1998), F

A 6 out of 10???? You've got to be kidding me.

I saw this at the EL CAPITAN 2 weeks ago (relax, I didn't pay a dime. My cousin works for Kelloggs and gives my family free passes to most of the big Disney movies and got some for this one. They're VIP passes and therefore come with a yummy hotdog and popcorn and soda and therefore make it worth going to see any crap she gives us passes to see. So that's how I ended up seeing it. I had nothing else to do that Saturday morning so why not?).

But it was pretty lame. Martin Short was pretty cool but that was about it.

2.5/10

also i saw STRANGER THAN FICTION and FLUSHED AWAY

Stranger Than Fiction could've been way better and twisty. It disappointed a little bit. 7/10

Flushed Away was actually good. Very funny and random. 8/10

My next movies are going to be: Casino Royale, Happy Feet, The Fountain, and Bobby. I should see them all in one week. How? Well my cousin gives me a million free movie passes.

Casino Royale

Everything Holden said. I've never been so excited about a new Bond but I cannot wait to see where Daniel Craig takes 007 next. And perhaps a few more offerings from Martin Campbell? He's clearly the best thing that's happened to the franchise in a long time and I hope the producers don't cock things up this time and actually pay attention to what the man has done; less emphasis on gadgets, and more emphasis on actual spy work.

Perhaps a little too much time spent in Venice, especially since I thought the film was winding down for everyone to go home, but this is still my favourite Bond flick since the Sean Connery films. Good show James.

4/5

__________________
"When I was younger, I always wanted to be somebody. Now that I'm older, I realise I should've been more specific."

Last movie? Borat from kazakhstan. I mean this one:

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/borat.html

Funny thing is before going to see it I wanted to hear how it was from my myspace friends who'd sampled it. Some of them advised me to take painkillers... in case i laughed too hard.

Too right they were, it was hilarious... lol!!!

__________________
AA
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.myspace.com/aa_spaceagent
"The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..."

Casino Royale. Again.

Just as good the second time. I love how old fashioned it feels, yet at the same time being modern and relevant to the world today.

Stranger Than Fiction (yesterday)

Now I wish I'd read more about it before watching it. I went in with just the TV trailers. It's nothing like the advertising. Which made it a disappointment for me because I'd wanted a real let-loose Ferrell fest of laughter and fun.

It was what it was ... but I went in expecting what the advertising promised. Which was way off.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

Borat, not as good as expected. But still a few hilarious scenes.

__________________
"No, we don't have any needles here... Just a big f*cking gun"

Little Children (2006 - Todd Field)

The darkness lying behind the well-mowed exteriors of American suburbia has long been a target of literature and films ever since the end of WWII, but in the past decade with movies from Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) and The Ice Storm (1997) to The Virgin Suicides (1999) and The Safety of Objects (2001) and of course the Oscar-winning American Beauty (1999), it has become a bit of a cliché. Finding something new or relevant or insightful to say on the subject is now a challenge. Director Todd Field has given it a shot in Little Children.

Adapted from the novel of the same name, we follow a few characters through their daily longings and secrets until they intersect and crises force drastic decisions. Sarah (Kate Winslet) is a young mother with a Masters in Literature who is an uneasy young mother. She loves her daughter, but hates the clique of gossiping neighborhood Moms and is growing resentful of how little time she has for herself thanks in part to a husband (Gregg Edelman) who is too busy either working or masturbating to the internet porn he's recently discovered. Brad (Patrick Wilson) is an equally uneasy stay-at-home Dad. His wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is beautiful and determined and comes from money, but Brad feels that she doesn't respect or love him much and if he fails the Bar Exam one more time whatever affection remains may evaporate forever. To get back a bit of his youth and a smidgeon of independence he has joined an adult nighttime touch football league at the invitation of a neighbor he never much cared for, an ex-cop named Larry (Noah Emmerich). The entire community is a bit on edge this particular summer as a forty-something man who was convicted of exposing himself to a child on a playground (played by Jackie Earle Haley, who was briefly a young star in the '70s in movies like The Bad News Bears and Breaking Away) has been released from prison and is living back home with his elderly mother (Phyllis Somerville). These are the ingredients for our tragedy. The secret sexual affair between Sarah and Brad and the boiling tensions of the known pedophile heat up at roughly the same time as the temperature and humidity climb around the public pool and fenced-in back yards.

The distant tone to all these sorted goings-on is aided by an omniscient narrator (actor Will Lyman, who's deep voice has marked episodes of "Nova", "Frontline" and other PBS documentaries over the years) who occasionally remarks about the action and the characters' unspoken thoughts and desires. This very literary language and style, lifted directly from the book, doesn't ever quite work the way it should. Unlike the narrators in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and Von Trier's Dogville, there isn't enough ironic juxtapoisitioning to the on-screen action, rather it comes off as a lazy way to tell what the movie is unable to show.

Much like in Field's first directorial effort, In the Bedroom (2001), he has the filmmaking ability to bring a sense of dread and loss to the screen without giving the audience a chance to breathe by inserting much comic relief, and there are plenty of good performances. Without the element of satire that someone like Todd Solondz brings to the table, the unsettling stuff is just unsettling without much seeming point beyond the obvious. Ultimately while certainly effective in spots Little Children can't destinguish itself enough from the ever-growing list of other dark suburban tales.


GRADE: B-

Thanks pikey

__________________
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha

Borat

Unfortunately. My 13 year old made me take him. I found it formulaic and in line with the current crop of 'comedies' that seem to insist that stupid comedy is good comedy. Basically, it's a semi-humorous Saturday Night Live skit that has no real cohesive story and even less value otherwise.

There were so many better ways to spend an evening at the movies.

My son loved it by the way.

I enjoyed Borat; I liked the social commentary. It's shocking that there's people who think and behave that way. Apparently the drunken frat boys are trying to sue him now. Serves them right for acting like such despicable idiots on camera.

Saw 3. I thought it was decent, but it was a little too easy to figure out. I enjoyed it though. I hope they dont intend to make a Saw 4, I heard a rumor that they may..

__________________
Any good villian is the hero of their own story.

The Fountain Directed by Darren Aronofsky.



With Darren Aronofsky's new film, a shade of maturity has grown on Aronofsky's directing style. Now The Fountain itself works on many barriers, it works as romance, which to me, did not feel weak, contrary to much negativity towards it. It works as a science-fiction film, which to me is the most intelligent "science-fiction" flick since Soderberg's remake on Tarkovsky's Solaris. The film places many ideas compiled in storylines told in different periods of time, and while it could've been made to be a disaster, The Fountain takes a multiple non-linear film style and creates an original format for it. Aronofsky himself has impressed me with this, as he tries to cover new ground and new genre's, and while there are some cliched filled romance scenes, it doesn't feel too forced, and it works as an overall film.

B+