Casino Royale
My teenage self loved James Bond. Part of becoming an adult was letting go of 007. I remember walking out of a movie theatre in the early 1990s, saying to myself. “Bond has lost any resemblance to a real human being. This cartoon-like character is just plain old silly. I am never going to watch a Bond movie again!” Two Bond movies later I was part of a captured audience on a transatlantic flight to London. I had to admit to myself that the new Bond movie in which a German media mogul tried to control the world was pretty good. But until last night I kept my vow not to buy a ticket for a new James Bond movie. The publicity surrounding [i[Casino Royale suggested that the producers tried to change Bond from the cartoon character to someone with real human emotions. As a connoisseur of the first twenty Bond movies, I wanted to see this happening. The new Bond is truly a different Bond. Anyone who has seen Bond in action many times will enjoy seeing Bond transformed into an emotionally believable character. If you have never watched a James Bond movie, it is clearly not a film you must see, but you will take a splendid scenic tour of some of the world’s most beautiful spots. In the new Bond, drama unfolds not alone only through physics- defying high tech stunts but also through dialogues. I suspect that Paul Haggis who wrote the wonderful screenplay to Crash (2004) had a strong hand in successfully humanizing James Bond. The new James Bond, Daniel Craig, delivers a strong performance. It is a real pleasure to watch him enact the humanized James Bond. He uses his eyes very effectively to communicate. I walked out of the theater musing: “What new assignment is James Bond going to get by the producers now that they have turned him into a recognizable human being. Will I be able to resist the temptation to see this for myself?”
The Passion of the Christ
The Passion of the Christ should more appropriately be called Mel Gibson’s Passion for Violence. Anyone who sets out to make a movie about the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life has the artistic responsibility to provide a context of what Jesus was all about. Mel Gibson message is that Jesus died the most brutal violent death that one can imagine, instead of relating what is at the core of Jesus’ teaching, namely the love for every human being. The film has strong anti-Semitic undertones. It portrays the Jewish religious leaders as the most despicable, bloodthirsty people one can imagine instead of typical bureaucrats who are trying to maintain their own positions by getting rid of the new kid on the block, who was challenging their teachings and developing a following. Mel Gibson’s desire to bring out the violence committed against Jesus goes so far that he turns Jesus into a masochistic and suicidal fellow. It is one thing to fight for one’s beliefs, even die for them if necessary. It is another thing to invite unnecessarily one’s torturers to continue their brutal violence so that one ultimately dies. Mel Gibson’s vision of Jesus makes no sense, except from the view of a severely psychological disturbed human being. Gibson’s recent anti-Semitic tirade against police officers who stopped him while driving under the influence of alcohol speaks volumes about the motivations that lay behind this misguided film.
A Free-for-All on Science and Religion
By GEORGE JOHNSON (NYT)
Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that
TomKat’s Wedding Picture
When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes failed to give the press a photo of their newborn child for six months, the tabloids started to accuse the couple of simply making up their baby story to create publicity. Here is a picture of their little girl, Suri, from yesterday’s TomKat star wedding in Italy, which moves me to exclaim: Oh, she definitely has the eyes of the father!
Uma Thurman’s Words of Wisdom
“It is better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you than with someone who does not flush the toilet.”
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Remember the six months before American troops invaded Iraq. The French and German secret services were claiming that no credible evidence existed to show that Saddam was close to producing nuclear weapons. Colin Powel, in what became a reputation destroying speech at the UN, claimed that the U.S. had precisely this smoking-gun kind of evidence. After the speech, the French were not still convinced and blocked an U.N. vote that would have given U.N. approval for a U.S. military strike against Iraq. Some Americans were so upset by what they perceived to as unwarranted French obstinacy that they started to a movement to rename
My Super Ex-Girlfriend
Uma Thurman plays a female version of Spiderman. Unlike Spiderman, G-Girl has a bad temper and has trouble keeping a boyfriend. When she is dumped yet again, she becomes exceedingly angry and vindictive. Now she uses her supernatural powers not only to rescue people in need but also to cause mountains of trouble for her Ex. The movie does not work and should never have been made.
A Come-to-Daddy Moment
Maureen Dowd at her best. Her column about the dismissal of Rumsfeld and her speculations how it happened are hilarious.
By MAUREEN DOWD (NYT)
Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they
Bush’s Brain
Until last night’s election, Karl Rove could take it as complement to be called Bush’s brain. American voters no longer seem to believe that the brain of the commander-in-chief is large enough to steer the nation in the right directions. Republican politicians entering the 2008 races will now reevaluate whether Rove’s brain is large enough to compete for his services. It will be curious to see whether Bush will embrace bipartisan politics as he was forced to do when he was first govenor of Texas with a democratic legislature. Or will his presidency simply implode.
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