New James Bond = Daniel Craig.

Finished _Casino Royale_ and found it was fascinating to compare the movie with the book; what they say about popular culture changing -- but more than that, instructive about the differences in storytelling in the two mediums. The torture scene in the movie is straight from the book (and could not have been filmed at the time), but many plot points were shifted or expressed metaphorically, and two important characters were profoundly changed, but not without regard to the integrity of the story.

A case in point is the basic plot turn, a casino card game. In the book it's baccarat, unfamiliar to most readers and thus explained fairly meticulously. Rather than slow down the movie, they used tournament-style Texas Hold-'em, and explained nothing.

The difference in believability is profound. A large amount of money has to be bet and lost, so in the poker game it's done with a combination of bluffing and absolutely unbelievable luck -- you'd have to play for years, a lifetime, for those hands to come up.

But the only way to win a huge pile in baccarat is to bet a huge pile and wait for the cards to fall. It changes the psychology in an important way, because nobody can bluff. I think the technical term is "balls to the wall."

Of course the role of coincidence is different in movies. Impossible poker hands in a book make me put the book away. But movies treat reality differently: that guy _does_ have a royal flush. I can see it.

I think the book's story is better. The characters have to be viewed with a bit of a filter, allowing for the half century that's passed. Women are primarily sexual commodities to Bond and the Soviets are out to conquer the world, preferably with evil tools. But after almost being tortured to death by a monster, Bond has an extended epiphany where he realizes that he is no less monstrous -- that his "license to kill" is permission to perform psychotic acts for God and Crown. The earlier Bond movies had a touch of that, and so does this latest, but the middle ones feature a denatured hero with a killing smirk...

I like the bit about the cards.

Actually, one of the worse bits of the movie was that guy explaining all the hands to Vespa just to clue in the noobs in the audience.

As a n00b, I aappreciated that part, although in storytelling terms it was dead as a canned sardine.

Daniel Craig was EASILY the menacing Bond on film to date.

Yeah, I just thought it could've been written better. It's a really good film, but the length of it made me a bit nitpicky at times.

Craig is undoubtedly best Bond evah. Fleming would've approved.

ewww

I like how he seduced horse woman by just staring at her in an intense, neanderthal manner.

Right after they announced that Craig was to be the new Bond, I rented "Layer Cake" and watched it twice in a row, back to back. Loved it. I then went out and bought the first two books - Casino Royale and Live and Let Die. Upon finishing Casino Royale at the office on a SLOW day of work, I walked home, and found myself (as often happend around that time) in a bar where I knew the bartenders quite well. I propositioned them to make me the Vesper, which they did. And then followed it by three more. Add on top of that a rather enourmous dinner, and I was feeling absolutely no pain whatsoever. I walked home. After a botched attempt to speak to a lost Moroccan in French, I made my way up my street to my apartment and sit down on the couch to begin reading "Live and Let Die." I made it about two pages in, and pass out with the book in my lap. About an hour later, or so I'm told, my brother and his girlfriend-at-the-time come home (he was staying with me then). I carried on a lucid, but drunk conversation with them as the dropped off some stuff and got ready to go out. As they were leaving, I whispered to my brother "You hhhaaaaffff to khilll hhherrrr....Ssssheesh an enemy agshent..."

Translation: " You have to kill her. She's an enemy agent. "

I no longer drink martinis.

btw, I picked up a huge stack of Fleming at a used book shop for about $26 the other day, including a $6 hardcover with Live and Let Die, Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever.

The other paperbacks are: For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Octopussy, another copy of Casino Royale for a friend who saw the movie with me but hasn't read it, and some weird 1965 Bond overview called 007 James Bond: A Report by O.F. Snelling.

Also scored a hardcover first edition of John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for $4.

the whole mission -- win money off terrorist banker -- doesn't make sense. why not just kill the banker and seize his assets?

which is fine only they try to give bond human emotions and stuff. i like that bond rescues le chiffre from the african guys.

writer comes off like a total loser.

I didn't know you're supposed to pronounce it Eva GRIN, either.

at least she maybe looks a little more like that dead girl.

Latebloomer you never saw the Dreamers?

Anyway lb next time you watch Casino Royale, you can totally hear her accent around the 'r's and such, but she does ok.