Accentuating the positive

[dc]

OK, life has been no bed of roses recently. But it hasn't all been bad. Really.

There has been, for one thing, the confirmation that Ken MacLeod will be GoH at satellite_1. Yes!  What more can I say?

Life On Mars continues to delight. Although, frankly, they could have sat around reading the phone book after the Keep out of bloody Camberwick Green! line and I would still have been happy. I haven't caught up with my flist yet, not by any means, but I have seen an interesting post by blue_condition (I think it was) drawing parallels with LOM and The Prisoner. Hmm. He has a point. Let's hope the series ends in a suitably satisfactory manner.

I finally (finally!) saw Casino Royale. Ah.

My expectations of Bond films have been low in recent years decades. OK, Dalton and Brosnan gave decent performances, but sometimes they were fighting against the material. Still, an improvement over the Moore offerings (filed under lame and geriatric). The last utterly good Bond film was probably the best of them all, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. So, despite all the word-of-mouth, even from people like wibbble and banhe whose opinions are not worthless, I settled down to watch Casino Royale with the hope that it would be OK. Nothing more. Been disappointed too often in the past, and if I am a Bond fan, it's old-school Bond...

Bugger me. This is a damn good film. For the first time since the Sixties, a Bond film which seems to be about Fleming's Bond. Updated, yes, with action sequences and gadgetry, but definitely it has the feel of Fleming's hand having touched it at some point. It's a sumptious film. The cinematography, the colour — stunning. The music (the main theme apart, that's a bit lacklustre) seems to echo the classic Barry scores without actually quoting them, and the hints of the Bond theme throughout the film leading up to the climactic use of it are very deftly done. The quips which were so often so cringeworthy in previous films are much fewer and rather better handled. Daniel Craig's performance is excellent, and this Bond is a credible killer. (Yes, Moore, I'm looking at you.) Although the film has been updated from the book (the villain is a terrorist banker in the post-Cold War world as opposed to the SMERSH paymaster of the original) a surprising amount of the book is recognisable in the film. Some of Fleming's words make it fairly intact to the screen, and the film even incorporates the literary Bond's preference for dalliances with married women (I think that is from either Diamonds Are Forever or From Russia With Love, but I could be wrong).

This is the best Bond since... Well, actually, maybe it's just the best Bond. If it doesn't squeak ahead of On Her Majesty's Secret Service and From Russia With Love (which is the best of the Connerys), it gets pretty damn close. And I am not sure it doesn't squeak ahead of them. You could quibble about the handling of Mathis, the handling of Leiter (but they have never got Leiter right), and I remain unsure about the retention of Judi Dench as M (why reboot the franchise and retain one of the main figures from the Brosnan films?). But these are just quibbles, and Dench attacks the role with gusto. It's not the craggy Admiral of Fleming's books, but her M. seems at least as formidable. The only real false note, I thought, was the way she kept calling him James. If that's the worst you can say about a film...