Anyone see Casino Royale yet?

[nightwing]

Yes and what was that famous quote from all those years ago...from Pauline Kael perhaps: Bond films are "sadism for the whole family"? 

Whether CR is inappropriate for your children is your call to make.  It's certainly not the worst thing out there and it does show restraint.  But as Bond's go, it's decidedly more earthy than most installments.

Some folks may have no trouble with kids seeing it.  In fact as we stood in line outside the theater, the wife and I noticed a prominent sign on the front door:

"Children under 6 years of age will not be admitted to R-rated films after 6 pm".

Well, good for them...you've got to draw the line somewhere. 

[Super Monkey]

oh boy, you better watch the film after all of that (two long threads!) or I will ban you

There now you must watch it

[davidelliott]

Just got back from seeing the film....

Very faithful to the novel.. first movie since OHMSS to be so.  I liked the "explanations" of somethings.. who is Bond shooting in the gunbarrel sequence at the beginning of each film (hate the redesigned gunbarrel, though)... the signature martini the "Vesper", the drive of 007, etc...  the titles were awesome and I didn't terribly mind the theme song...

Daniel Craig.. the jury's still out.  He doesn't look like Bond, either Fleming's Bond or the EON Bond.  BUT he did do a better effort than I thought he would.  I'm glad Felix Leiter made an appearance, but changing his race and personality was a negetive.  As a fan of the novels, I love the Leiter of the books and I wish that EON would portray him as he is in the Fleming books.

Little things that made the movie... the recipe for the Vesper drink was great.  I love the little touches in the film like that.

This is definitely a restart of the series... one that I guess is sorely needed.  Die Another Day was the last of the previous Bond series and this is an obvious restart.  I'm wondering if SPECTRE or SMERSH will also return...

More as I dwell on it...

[davidelliott]

Welllll... I watched Die Another Day again last night... for the first time in a couple of years.  Compared to Casino Royale, DAD was like Moonraker... so over the top!  The "effects" were horrible, direction was horrible, the car chase on the ice was embarrassing...

But I still love the references to the earlier films.  And the plot was similar to the Fleming version of Moonraker.

Now I'm wondering if EON is going to remake all the novels, more faithfully and in order...

[davidelliott]

Well, I'm monopolizing this thread ;-)

I saw CR again... took my 2 teenage stepsons this afternoon... I liked it more the 2nd time around.

It feels like a early Bond film, like Dr No or From Russia With Love.  Daniel Craig has grown on me and in him I see some Connery and some Dalton, but that BLONDE hair!!! I like the opening credits alot (very retro) and yes, the Bond series needed an overhaul BADLY.  Comparing this film with Die Another Day is night and day.  I never cared for Brosnan as Bond (shudder)... he was too, um, pretty?  Very much like Roger Moore (a little tougher).

FINE! I'm a convert!

[JulianPerez]

Well, I just managed to catch CASINO ROYALE, and I really loved it.

In one of life's weird little coincidences, the shopping mall that I saw CASINO ROYALE at was the exact same mall that was hosting the macabre BODIES exhibit that James Bond himself goes to when he briefly touches down in Miami!

First things first: I love the new guy. He's so dispassionate that he's downright glacial. If they do a Doc Savage movie, this guy would be a pretty good choice.

I love how this film captures early Connery-era James Bond's grit and toughness - this was, after all, the guy that threw an electric lamp at a guy in a bathtub! The film opens up with a distinctly un-Bondish, but very Tarantino-esque fight sequence in black and white, which is set inside of a lavatory. The violence in the movie has a brutality that reminds me of a cross between particularly stylish gangster movies, and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan and his battles fought by the law of the jungle. The movies involved brawls with a sense where blows connect, and no slick, overchoreographed fight scenes can be seen here.

The first hour of this film does the best it can to establish this particular new Bond film as being "not your father's Bond." Bond doesn't do any of the familiar stuff. I never before realized how much the Bond films were really going through the motions with all that "shaken, not stirred" Martini stuff. It was astonishingly refreshing to see Bond sipping on a coke and rum. Sometimes, doing something over and over again can be stifling instead of reassuring. I was especially relieved to see Bond wasn't going to have a chase on skis.

They even have a little fun with the Bond formula. There's one scene where he drives up to a health club. Surprise! He's actually valet parking. Dum dum dum! On another occasion, somebody asks him if he'd want his martini shaken or stirred, and Bond says "Do I look like I give a darn?"

Every single problem that faced Bond in the last few movies here, is corrected. I love Bond's gadget watches too, but you can only go so far making the same movie over and over.

For one thing, no CGI. None whatsoever. There is one absolutely astonishing chase sequence that is a return to the days of hollywood stuntmen and athletes in action pictures, which features Bond chasing down an astonishingly athletic figure that must be part cat, made all the more incredible because it has no wires, just one very limber athlete. Bond doesn't do anything totally insane: the most number of people he takes on at once in this entire film is two.

There was no car chase. Thank God!

I loved the first hour, where James Bond is put-putting around some third world locations that feel like the real Africa. It always bothered me that when James Bond went to a locale, they showed the EPCOT version. This was especially apparent in OCTOPUSSY, where they go through India and they have fakirs, guys on a bed of nails, snake charmers...every goofy Hollywood cliche.

Bond in the less glamorous but more real Third World made it all the more a breath of fresh air when they captured the espionage related glamour later on in the film. You knew the first act was over when some gorgeous dame rises from the water onto the bad guy's private yacht, hosting a card game. That's when we get back into familiar gentleman spy, glamour adventure Bond territory with Bond in a tux...but by this point we get the sense of how different this film is than the others.

I did like they used Poker instead of Baccarat. There was an episode of PINKY AND THE BRAIN where Brain's casino goes out of business...because nobody on Earth knows how to play Baccarat!

This James Bond in this movie is very cerebral. We see Bond do some detective work in this film, using rather ordinary means. Further, Bond has his most important quality: the ability to improvise and come up with a clever solution, hair-trigger wits where he has a life and death situation and in barely a second thinks of something. This movie is an espionage-style thriller: there are betrayals and people have multiple motives.

One important thing about this movie that is emphasized is James Bond as a kind of cog in a machine, that comes up with little passive-aggressive ways to get back at his superiors. Bond' rapport with M here is priceless.