"Casino Royale" and "Stranger Than Fiction"

I recently saw "Casino Royale" (the new James Bond) and "Stranger Than Fiction". I really enjoyed both.

Stranger Than Fiction is a nice movie which despite being a one-trick pony plot-wise is actually very entertaining. The premise (a relatively staid man hears his life narrated by an unseen omniscient voice), while original doesn't really provide for much of a drive. Fortunately the cast is so strong that you don't notice that there's really no movie there. Will Farrel has followed Jim Carry's path from course funny-man to Leading Actor.

Casino Royale takes the Bond film back to the future. Based on Ian Flemming's first Bond book, this film takes the liberty to completely break with tradition. Of course, it is still Bond, so the standards (sex, pistols, gadgets, cards) are still present. It's just that the man in the middle is finally portrayed as a human. With frailties, desires, and (the thing that makes him most endearing) an almost indomitable will.

The stakes are not quite End-Of-The-World, but the script is so tight (except for a pointless and bizarre torture scene) that you don't notice the only thing in danger is the stock-market.

Bond pictures are always PG-13 and this one is no exception. They seem to have worked very hard to remove the sexuality. Bizarrely, there's a lot of violence, more than you would expect from a PG-13 movie. I don't really understand why they bother working on the lower rating (or why the rating system allows it). Especially since this may be the most mature Bond film ever, why not just take the R-rating... I guess what I am saying is that there wasn't enough nudity.

I'm Back

Many of you will be glad to know that I made it home safely. Hooray. I had a wonderful time in California. I will post some pictures maybe later. And once again I have made the observation that it is unclear to me why Continental even bothers to provide food on the plane. It's uniformly disgusting and I just don't believe that anyone would eat this food voluntarily.

Traveling

I am going to San Diego, CA tomorrow for a long weekend. There might be some blogging going on while I am there, I cannot guarantee it, but there might be.

I'll be back on Tuesday.

New Phone Madness

Well, my father and I share a cell-phone plan. This has saved us a small amount of money overall, but has led to more than its fare share of headaches. Right now we're caught up in the mix of upgrading our phones.

So, the way it works is this... every two years the main phone on the line (my father's phone number) becomes eligible for a free upgrade. Which is very nice. However, I am the person that needs a new phone. I text-message, I could conceivably download ring-tones or even play music from my cellphone (although I can't really think of a reason why I would want to do that). Never in a million years would my father even think of doing something like that.

Meanwhile, my phone number (for reasons unknown to me) is only eligible for a dinky phone. Bizarrely, the cost savings on buying the dinky new phone are exactly the same as the cost savings for the fancy new phone ($100).

So my father and I went over to the Verizon store in Nanuet to see if they could do anything. They tried to be helpful, but in the end, we're back where we started. Tomorrow, supposedly, I should be able to switch the phones online (I am pretty skeptical of this). Otherwise I have to decide if I am going to stick with the dinky phone or if I'll just straight up buy a new phone for myself. Stupid Verizon.

Java Did It!

I can't believe I forgot to mention that Java (of previous blog post fame) ran and completed the 2006 New York Marathon.  Way to go!

He didn't win, though.  Nor did he get mentioned on tv again (as far as we know).  You might be able to see his results here.  But there's really only one stat required, he finished the race in 3 hours 48 minutes and 7 seconds.

I, meanwhile, attended a baby shower.  I feel like our levels of exertion this past sunday are comparable.

Lost It's Way

The "fall season finale" of Lost aired tonight.  Nothing interesting happened.  This is increasingly the case with this show.  There was a time where the writers had succesfully built up some suspense and intrigue.  But now the show has become Seinfeld on an island.

Oh sure, things happen.  Some characters even die.  But the story never changes.  And the more we learn (as each episode reveals the tiniest scraps of info) the more it begins to seem that there's nothing to learn.  The people are just people.  The bears are just bears.

I'm willing to dub tonight's episode as the episode when the show Jumped the Shark.  Not that I wont continue to watch it, hoping for a resurgence of interesting plot-lines and character interactions.  But I think, more and more, that the writers have only a handful of ideas to stretch out between 16 episodes (the remainder of this season).