This week's reads.

( Long list of things I found fascinating this week. )

Casino Royale

So, I went to see Casino Royale with the very lovely desirae and j5nn5r, and I must say that I have to agree with other people I've spoken with who've seen it: it is the best Bond film in twenty years. Better than any Roger Moore, better than most of Brosnan's work, better even than Timothy Dalton's brutal in-your-face Bond. Yes, it's Bond rebooted, with M questioning the wisdom of promoting this "blunt instrument" to double-O status, and Bond clearly being far more on top of things than M expects, and M being more on top of things than Bond expects, making them both disgustingly hypercompetent, which I suppose is the point.

There are no gadgets, there is no hypertechnology. All but one of the instruments shown can be bought on the open market-- that is, if you can afford an Aston Martin DB5, and some markets may require travel for, say, the RPGs.

And the most thrilling part of the movie is a poker game. An astoundingly interesting poker game, except that the writers thought that Bond's two overseers (the local MI6 contact, and the hot babe sent from Treasury to shepherd his financials as he plays high-stakes poker) should kibitz "as-you-knows" back and forth to explain the game to audience members who might not be familiar with Texas Hold'em. (What? No Baccarat?)

But that's really the only weak spot. The opening chase sequence is nicely integrated into the storyline (somewhat unusual for a bond film) and is an astounding example of parkour, the fight sequences are meaty and efficient, the car crashes appropriate and dramatic. All in all, a very satisfying addition to the Bond oeuvre.

Silly jokes, good wine.

Yesteday, Kouryou-chan had a friend over for a long playdate and I offered to make dinner. We proposed Macaroni & Cheese, and I made it my way, old-fashioned baked-in goodness with a real whitesauce and chedder and parmesean and all of that. And as I was cooking, I said to Omaha, "I love cooking with wine."

"There's no wine in macaroni and cheese."

"Yes, but there's wine in me." The wine in question was that Menage a'Trois 2003 I blogged about a couple of months ago. It actually is better now than last year.

And truly sad: I've been saving that joke for months. I now can't find the website that inspired it, either. I could have sworn it was Real Life Adventures, but I looked through all of 2006 and didn't find it. (Not a great comic, but a consistent one.)

Apocalypto!

No one can outrun their destiny.

Look, Mel. I can probably forgive the anti-semitic bullshit. I can understand that everyone carries a little-- or a lot-- of hypocritical bigotry inside them for one group or another, and it is the hypocrisy of keeping it inside all the time while living up to the higher standards of public discourse that make civilization clank along in its ungainly fashion like Frankenstein's Monster.

But get your freaking tagline's grammar right! Okay? "No one can outrun his destiny." Got it? Repeat after me. "No one can outrun his destiny." Singular referent, singular reference. Make sure you get it right before you put it on posters going up in every theater across the planet! Otherwise people really will start to think you really are a bloody idiot.

I'm just sayin'.

Moreplay!

So, into the mix I've tossed a preacher's daughter, a pair of incestuous clones sharing one set of memories and a very strange fashion sense, and a semi-sentient bed that wants to keep them all happy. 4,448 words in three hours. Damn, maybe I could do this for a living. (Aaah, I say that every Nanowrimo, win or lose.)

Buzzword of the day: Cognitively Modified Organism. That's the bed: its brainwiring preprogrammed to lack Darwinian instincts for independence, mateseeking, and self-determination but instead predispose it to be wholly interested in the wellbeing of those who sleep on it.