marramgrass

Click through for The Bourne Ultimatum, the condensed version.

(Little sweary-word if that offends you, hence the click-through.)
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Transformers was a key feature of my childhood. As such I waited impatiently for the live-action movie.

It’s a while since I’ve watched a film with such a stupid grin stuck to my face the whole way through.

Casanova was surprisingly not bad, either. In my defence, my wife was off work sick, sitting on the sofa with a hot water bottle, and I was looking for something brainless-yet-entertaining to divert her for a while.

It worked. Quite entertaining, and fairly unusual for this kind of thing in that all the notional ‘bad guys’ were played to be quite sympathetic characters.

Mean Girls. Much better than I expected. Actually funny, with occasional moments of slight originality. Cool.

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In other news, my spam filter appears to be eating my email notification of comments, so I haven’t noticed a couple over the last few days until now. Sorry. And it’s too late at night for me to think about replies. Sorry take two.

It’s an interesting idea that might be bad, might be good, and will probably cost me money.

Monday evening was my wife’s work night out for Christmas. Realise that ordinarily I wouldn’t seriously consider attending one of these, as an evening out with a bunch of medics is quite a special experience. But when the night out takes the form of hiring a cinema screen to watch the new Bond, well then I can make an exception.

It’s a new kind of Bond film, and all the better for it. If you can describe a film based on such a fantastic idea (I hope) as more realistic, then this one is.

Bond films gloss over the violence inherent in the idea of a man with a licence to kill, but this one doesn’t. It’s quite raw, and a little brutal in places. Definitely gone is Brosnan’s comic-book spy – Daniel Craig plays James Bond as dark man with a chilling detachment from the violence. He’s accused of being nothing more than a thug, and you know that in the back of his mind he realises that this is true.

It takes a little bit of brain-twisting, timeline-folding gymnastics to end up with a James Bond in the early days of his career taking on is first mission as a double-O in the summer of 2006, but it’s worth it. This is a whole new Bond, think Bruce Wayne’s reinvention in Batman Begins. It’s probably controversial to say this, but it’s a better Bond, too. The bright colours of early Connery don’t work anymore, and Brosnan escapism got tired (fun though it was). Casino Royale gives us the dark, fragile Bond who pulls the trigger without thinking but shows the scars for it.

The stunts and cars are all happily present – an early free running chase, and the obligatory Aston Martin are great fun to look at – but they aren’t the heart of this film. Daniel Craig is James Bond, there’s no doubt, and if his first time out is anything to go by, he will be the best yet.

Sitting here finishing some work, and Serenity‘s on the TV.

It really is a very good film.

That is all, except to say that more of the Firefly ‘verse would be nice. I can dream.

A Scanner Darkly is an adaptation of Philip K Dick’s novel, and it’s all about drugs and their effect on the characters.

It’s quite a surreal tale that takes a little concentration to get your head around, but it’s an interesting film to watch, with some very entertaining dialogue. Nicely paranoid, the film certainly gives your brain something to do, and plenty to think about.

Of course, I say paranoid, but the constant surveillance in Dick’s near-future society perhaps isn’t that far off, and the disintegrating consciousness of the ‘hero’ – caused by his use of fictional drug Substance D – gives us a creative window into his world. It’s all helped along by the slightly wonky rotoscoped visuals.

If you give the film a chance it is worth watching.

Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn in The Break-Up.

As a movie it’s okay. Funny in a few parts, entertaining in others, but on the whole nothing special.

But it should probably be required viewing for young (or not so young) couples considering getting married – even if the characters in the film aren’t actually married. At leas, that’s speaking from my own experience:

Again and again it made me squirm as I thought, “I do that.” It made me think, a lot.

So a bit like a short, sweet marriage counseling course in the cinema. Not a bad thing.

Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead man’s Chest opened last week, and since at that point I was sitting at home twiddling my thumbs I was duty-bound to catch a preview.

Being me, there may be SPOILERS – look below the fold if that doesn’t bother you.
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