Ordinary Day

So! Big props to mamishka for giving solarbird and me a chance to go see Quantum of Solace at the Cinerama last night. Let it be said that Meems is as always fabulous, and the remodeled Cinerama is pretty fabulous too. Comfy new seats FTW!

As for the movie itself, my picoreview is this: not as awesome as Casino Royale (although to be fair it would have had to work extremely hard to be as awesome as Casino Royale), mostly still a very solid movie, but has one big, big issue I have a problem with.

( And that issue is this... )

P.S. There will very likely be spoilers in any comments left on this post. Consider yourselves warned.

Snurched from gamera_spinning, I bring you the trailer for Quantum of Solace, the forthcoming Bond film.

I'm all revved up for Dark Knight, mind you, but this? I'll spare some swoonspace to say BRING IT. BRING IT NOW.

So last night solarbird, risu, and I did our annual Longest Night vigil, which was neat since I didn't make it through last year due to having to work the next day. This year I deliberately took today off so I'd be able to snooze after being up all night, so yay!

It was a very low-key and laid-back Longest Night and mostly just featured us hanging out and watching amusing things and eating snackies to stay awake. We went through the GBS Courage & Patience & Grit concert (because nothing keeps you awake quite like perky Newfoundlanders, and Dara and Jenna hadn't seen the performance yet), the rest of Raiders of the Lost Ark (since Jenna and I had started watching it the other night and hadn't finished), and two more early Connery Bond flicks, since I had totally forgotten that we had a laserdisc box set of the first three Connery Bonds! Woot!

So I we watched Dr. No and From Russia With Love, which amused my recently re-activated Bond fangirlishness. I definitely like Goldfinger better than either of these; the first two are much rougher plot-wise and you can really rather tell that they didn't quite have the Bond formula clicked into place yet. But it was also still very amusing to see Connery's Bond and the almost... I dunno, it's hard to describe. Sure, he's got the Bond schmarm down, but there's an almost... guileless quality about it with him. Like when he keeps flirting with Moneypenny--it's extravagant and shameless and over-the-top, but it's also charming and strangely innocent. Brosnan!Bond flirts with Moneypenny, they're joking about sexual harassment and undressing each other with their eyes. Connery!Bond flirts with Moneypenny, it's a lot more romantic. And Connery's also got that strangely boyish air about him in other ways as well, like when he saunters into the office and grins as he deftly tosses his hat onto the rack, commenting with clear expectation that Moneypenny will hear him, "And for my next miracle..."

Come to think of it, it's very similar to the air that Craig!Bond throws off in Casino Royale a time or two. ^_^

Also, Connery gets points for so far being the only Bond I've observed smooching the same girl for more than one movie in a row--he's got dates with the same girl in both Dr. No and From Russia With Love.

Anyway, we watched all of these things, and it was good. We didn't get to bed till around 8am, and I didn't wake up until 4pm or so. Now it'll be fun to try to yoink my daily rhythms back to normal over the course of the weekend. I'm hoping to get a little holiday shopping done and heck, maybe to see Casino Royale again, and possibly Curse of the Golden Flower. We have Battlestar Galactica to get caught up on--not only the previous boxing episode I missed, but also the finale that we missed due to the recent windstorm. And I rented On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which must also be watched. There must be writing and exercise and just general relaxation, for lo, it is Solstice and Christmas weekend.

And it is good. Happy holidays, all!

Lots of miles I haven't been posting about: 38.2
Miles out of Hobbiton: 1635.7
Miles out of Rauros Falls: 326.7
Miles to Isengard: 157.3

While working on paying a few bills and then on being too damned distracted by LJ amusements to eke out more than the usual night's quota on Queen of Souls, I rewatched Goldeneye tonight. I have many fond memories of that movie coming out, for lo, great was my Brosnan-fangirly glee that he had finally achieved the role of Bond.

I gotta say, after seeing Casino Royale, it's rather amazing how cheesier Goldeneye comes out. Brosnan's still fun, but during that scene in the pool all I could think of was Daniel Craig coming up out of the waves and how infinitely better he looked in his swimtrunks. And as much as I liked Judi Dench's shiny new M at the time, I love her so very much more in the new movie.

I am bemused though, because the line I thought I'd remembered her delivering about wanting Bond to take his ego out of the equation was not in fact in Goldeneye. Now I'm wondering where the heck I've heard or read the line before, because hearing it in Casino Royale was definitely a moment of deja vu.

Oh, and one more thing--I hadn't realized before that Goldeneye is full of future mutants, with both Alan "I may be inVEENCible but I have not yet learned how to teleport" Cumming (Nightcrawler) and Famke "Later I'll kill you with my mind, but right now I'll just kill you with my thighs" Janssen (Phoenix). I had totally forgotten about this until tonight's watching. And while I think I remember Famke's former stint as a Bond girl being mentioned when the first X-Men movie came out, I totally did not realize that Nightcrawler had also been in Goldeneye until spazzkat pegged him.

Yesterday I treated mamishka to a viewing of Casino Royale at the Neptune in the U-district, which was quite, quite fun--and tiggymalvern, darthhellokitty, and king_chiron wound up joining us. Meems informed me that she quite liked the film though Craig isn't clicking as "Bond" for her. Tiggy is totally not buying Craig as Bond at all. Me? After a second viewing, I'm not only still very solid on Craig!Bond, but strongly considering one more theater viewing before I'll consider myself done.

Continuing my Bond fangirl mood, I also watched Goldfinger again last night. The contrast between 1964 34-year-old Connery!Bond and 2006 38-year-old Craig!Bond was quite striking, and amused me quite a bit.

( Spoilers for both films back here... )

Tonight I went trolling around looking for Casino Royale icons. There are some excellent ones here, here, here, here, here, and here. It amuses me greatly that those skimpy swimtrunks are a favored icon topic. ;)

This one I've scarfed is courtesy of acopyofacopy!