New James Bond = Daniel Craig.

James Bond: [to the camera] This never happened to the other fellow.

More's the pity -- I didn't even realize that was Jeffrey Wright!

Mads Mikkelsen did pretty well as Le Chiffre precisely because of two factors in the script rather than his own pretty good performance: 1) no time wasted on his backstory, 2) carrying over from the book the fact that he's as much under severe pressure as 'in charge.'

I think the last time they did something even close to that was The Living Daylights. Actually there's a series of threads you can run through all the movies that purport to be taking Bond 'back to its roots' pretty clearly -- moral ambiguity, no clarity about who is on what side at many points, and an initial unsureness about what the villain exactly wants (though this can be the case in the canonical classics as well, with Goldfinger being a prime example; Bond only finds out what Goldfinger's exact plan is with about half an hour to go). On Her Majesty's Secret Service *kinda* aims for that mix but the Blofeld stuff gets in the way (I still love that it's Kojak leading SPECTRE), but For Your Eyes Only and The Living Daylights both went this route, as does this one.

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1. loved the main title sequence, song was...disposable.

Say, when was the last non-disposable title song? The one wot Jarvis sang?

2. pacing in the 3rd act was FUCT. way too many postcard shorts. half an hour too long, too much meta-discussion, didn't get to where we needed to go.

3. we never found out what happened to the blonde chick(Le Chiffre's moll). Normally, whatever arm candy the bond villain has is either converted to Bond's side or dies by the last reel.

4. bond chase scenes always tend to end with the death of whoever he's chasing.

5. Daniel Craig will be a great bond, especially if they keep giving him good scripts.

6. the married chick from the first act uses my old phone: a sony ericcson t637.

7. product placement has been a part of Bond since Goldfinger or before. this time i really noticed the logos popping up in prominent parts of the frame(virgin airlines, louis vuitton, etc).

8. the part i didn't like was where the bad guys from the last part showed up. this could have been handled far better.

9. the poker sequence went far better than i had ever expected. i retract my earlier horror.

10. Le Chiffre at the table looked like McGoohan. The part when the italian guy has to say "Look! It's the Tell!" made me want to scratch out my eyeballs.

11. i hope the next one has Q and Moneypenny, and they keep Felix Leiter.

12. bond villain = cool boat. i found myself being more impressed by the effort to include the cool boat than the cool boat itself.

13. i want one of those "Military Intelligence" backgrounds for my PC

14. the stunts were great, and of an even better level than most brosnan moves. the jumpy jumpy bombmaker reminded me of one of jackie chan's guys.

15. modern times = even the bond chicks have raccoon eyeshadow

I thought Craig was outstanding as Bond, a subtle, nuanced performance which touched at the inner turmoil of the character. Physically he was the part too, he's the only Bond who looks like he actually came from a military background.

the getting ready scene in the hotel bathroom, before the big game, may have been my favorite - vesper looking even more gorgeous without her makeup, preparing to fix her face in the mirror, and telling bond, via the mirror, after he's feigned dignified outrage that she's had the temerity to buy a dinner jacket FOR him - "there are dinner jackets and then there are dinner jackets - and this is the latter" and "i'd sized you up the moment i laid eyes on you" - phewEE! and capped with the luxuriously long take of bond trying it on, and looking at HIMself in the mirror, and loving what he sees (shades of the boy who did not come from money, learning how to "pass")

and the equally generous shot just after, of vesper looking at herself in the mirror with an unexplained weariness, trying to rise above her burgeoning interest in this thug, knowing more specifically than bond the way that it would all end badly

xpost: it is said that craig hit the gym for months for precisely that reason, that bond should look like he was fresh from his naval commander days

i'm disappointed in ned's tepid reaction to the baddie, i thought he was EXCELLENT although/because pointedly not, as has been mentioned in the classic bond villain mold: he is not humourless nor consumingly "evil", just a bad man in a bad world - his laughing-despite-himself in the torture scene, his reluctant admiration of bond's grit, was so fantastic

It's a paraphrase from the book's final line, FWIW:

"Yes, dammit, I said 'was.' The bitch is dead now."

Well, I think he's unavoidably overshadowed by the focus on Craig's debut -- understandable for a lot of reasons (in comparison I think the villains in the next two will get greater attention by default). I'm not saying Mikkelsen did terribly; rather I think that the filmmakers had to make sure he ended up not rivalling Craig in terms of dominating the film, and the story and script helped there. He is exactly "just a bad man in a bad world" -- that's how the book had him and that's how the script carried him over, and the fact that Mikkelsen played him at that level is to his credit.

It was a bit jarring. Arguably though the whole idea of the exhibit was 'public' display, period. (I would have been much more surprised if there had been some sort of fight scene in there that involved knocking the figures down!)

UH

Still both songs better than that Chris Cornell song. Jesus, who dusted him off?

Clay Aiken can remake "All Time High" or something.

Ah right, the Feast of the Enunciation.

The sad thing is that this would still be a thousand times better than the Chris Cornell abomination.

whatever, Bodyworlds is a freakin' travelling circus that's been making big $$$ everywhere on ticket sales. it's all just curious people coming to check it out (not that i have a problem w/that but jeez let's not get all huffy abt it)

Billy Dods on the ILM Bond theme thread just said that song and the opening credits sequence work perfectly together -- which I'd have to agree with since I didn't think much of the credit sequence either!

I think I missed one Craig line but otherwise perfectly understandable.

I always loved the weirdness in how "I Spy" ended up on the soundtrack to the first Mission: Impossible movie. Which is doubly ridiculous because now that I think about it that song's a PERFECT one to be sung from the point of view of Craig's Bond! (Seducing wives, loathing the upper class...)

They're like the Tigers in the World Series in this respect.

Haha, what I meant was it compliments the pre-titles sequence where Bond goes on his first kills. The title sequence itself I think is a pretty smart realignment of the franchise. The lack of willowy dancing girls neatly echoes the film itself, less playful and more business like.