Tuesday 30 October 2012

Casino Royale | Review

I may be wrong, but on watching it today I realised that it was only the second time I've ever seen the film. As in, ever. The first was when it was released and I went to see it in 2006 (which, being six years ago, and being younger than 18 now, means I was very young when I first went to see it). Up until I went to see Casino Royale, I had been a Bond fan. I'd seen Die Another Day in more recent years, and I'd also seen Dr No, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice... the list is gonna go on for a while. But up to, around and after Casino Royale I'd seen a hell of a lot. I'd even braved Licence to Kill (though.. I've never finished it). I've also got the Bond 50 box set now, which means at last I have all the Bonds together, not half-finished collections on VHS (you remember that?) and DVD. But before I go through all of them again, this time watching the ones I've previously avoided or not finished, I turned to Casino Royale, to prepare me for Skyfall.

I know Royale (as I shall refer to it as) has a good reputation. Before watching it a second time, I couldn't see it, and I think watching it when I was a lot younger in the cinema - it must have seriously messed my head up for about a week. I only have rough memories from the first time (and probably trailers I've watched again afterwards), and they were: Bond getting poisoned, Bond's fight on the stairs, Bond and the woman he has a fling with for all of about thirty seconds, the card game (obviously), the ending and the torture scene. Well. You're hardly likely to forget that. But I had fragments of memories of those things - and so I knew what was going to happen, roughly when it was going to happen, and how it would all end. This hasn't stopped my enjoyment of it. I'll admit I didn't expect much from watching it again, and I was expecting to be underwhelmed by Craig's Bond, who I don't remember really liking very much.

I was wrong. And watching it from an older perspective has helped me to enjoy it more, I believe. I'll start with Craig's Bond. He's brilliant. He's much more of a character and less of a kind of little-speaking-and-when-he-does-he's-quite-boring Bond than I thought he might be. He comes out with one liners, he does all the typical Bond things - but he does it in a much more natural, relaxed and modern way. He isn't some posh guy with instant good looks, instead he's just a man who's got a personality, but one he's selective with. He isn't the same to every person, and yet there's an underlying theme which somehow makes you feel you'll know how he'll react. That doesn't make him predictable, it makes him understandable. Bond feels like a human being, not a cliche (as certain performances (like Brosnan's for example) had made him become). He's believable, and he is human, so more weight is added to the decisions he makes. He's got too much emotion, too much attachment to make him become some happy-go-lucky Bond who quips when he electrocutes people (as he does. I was expecting a 'Shocking', but am glad there wasn't one said). That's not being detrimental to other Bonds, it's just saying how individual, how different Craig is. He's a Bond I want to watch - and he isn't as one dimensional as I believed he would be.

Of course, the emotion his Bond has and the weight his decisions carry would be nothing without Vesper Lynd. She is, by far, one of the best Bond girls. In fact, you probably can't call her that, as she isn't the type of person to be a possession, she is her own character. That's only really worked well once before, or even been tried, and that was with Diana Rigg as Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And Bond falls in love with her. So it's believable that Bond can fall in love with Vesper. Her character doesn't try and be glamorous, in fact she tries to do the opposite, and she is, like Bond now is, a real character. She questions what Bond does, and the dialogue that they have when they first meet on the train is fantastically written. It's good to see a Bond girl being a real character, and there being real emotional decisions connected to her and to Bond. She's portrayed amazingly by Eva Green (who kind of reminds me of Lara Pulver, who played Irene Adler in Sherlock), and her character is great. Her betrayal at the end is not only done well, not only fitting in with the character, but it's reacted to excellently by Craig.

The film itself doesn't feel as long as it is. The plot moves along well, with everything tying in, with the chases fitting in (although... perhaps the truck one, and also the Parkour chase, are a little too long), and there's a good balance between the actual card game and the action around it. The direction seems good to me, though not amazing. I'm sure the director could've made the card game look a bit more exciting than it was, but overall it's good. The music works as well, and I'm a fan of Chris Cornell's theme tune (and the opening sequence to it as well - that amazed me when I was younger, and it still does now).

The idea of a reboot is an interesting one - but it's done well here. You couldn't have given this film to Brosnan to do, and certainly not witty Roger Moore or Sean Connery. You also couldn't have continued the same continuity with it, Vesper's death at the end would have been too similar to the death of Tracy in OHMSS. So the decision for a reboot was a wise one. Perhaps a new M should have been found though... I love Judi Dench's performance, but. Well - she belongs with Brosnan.

I understand that Quantum of Solace, which is up next, doesn't continue the high standards, and it will only be the second ever time I've seen that one too when I watch it (the first being in the cinema in 2008). As long as Craig's performance keeps mixing the lighter side, where his personality comes out, to the more emotional side, then it'll work. If it's just one or the other - it won't.

Casino Royale is probably going to become one of my favourites. The characters drive it, and while I think it's not as good as OHMSS (my favourite, because it balances typical Bond action as well as emotion and Royale is more focused on emotion), I think it will probably end up being quite high on my list. I enjoy all-out action Bonds like A View To a Kill (others may not like it as much, however) and You Only Live Twice, but the ones where character is brought forward and sits side by side with the action work the best. By that logic - Casino Royale should be in my top five Bond. I should write a list when I've seen them all.

I'll review Quantum of Solace, and then Skyfall. Skyfall's meant to be a similar character story to Royale, so I hope that'll be as good as people have made out (with a bit more action/emotion balance though, rather than shoving all the action at the beginning). Casino Royale isn't a perfect film, all in all, there are little tweaks to be made - but it works as a reboot, it works with the Bond they've chosen, Vesper is perfect - and there are moments throughout the film (locations, bits of music) that echo the very first film from 1962.

(I won't give the film a rating. But I will end the blog with my favourite line from it.)

"Vodka Martini."
"Shaken or stirred?"
"Does it look like I give a damn?"

Sunday 28 October 2012

Planet of Evil Review

Aha, 'tis my first Doctor Who review for this blog! Rather than a review of every single aspect, this will be a general look and a kind of 'why you should watch it' thing (more for Who beginners). A quick bit of background: Planet of Evil, by Louis Marks (writer of a Dalek episode and everything) was shown in 1975, and it was the second story of 'Season 13'. It's also the first story that sees the 4th Doctor/Sarah Jane on their own, they'd previously been with UNIT Member Harry Sullivan.

For "Planet of Evil", the 'why you should watch it' part is really quite easy. You should watch it because it is undeniably Doctor Who. It's almost a stereotypical Doctor Who episode, it epitomises everything that it is Doctor Who. The general checklist for classic episodes is: do the Doctor and companion get separated and/or blamed for crimes? Is there a human colony somewhere? Is there a scientific concept that very loosely plays on real science? Admittedly the last question is more flimsy for Planet of Evil, but the other two questions are ticked. I normally find the whole Doctor/companion blamed thing really boring, and it happens a fair bit during the 26 years of the classic series. Planet of Evil does it in the traditional way, complete with human soldiers who are as arrogant and annoying as they should be. But for once, the arrogance isn't as annoying, and the annoyance is therefore less present. Yeah, so the Commander of the soldiers goes over the top - but the thing is there are those who don't go over the top to calm him down, to argue with him, and you'll like them a lot more because they're telling the over the top Commander he's wrong.

The actual monster itself, anti-matter, is one that's popped up before. The Three Doctors is a good episode and uses the idea of anti-matter a lot - and so in many ways Planet of Evil should recycle the same ideas. But it doesn't. It takes a relatively simple idea, threads it through and makes it seem more complicated than it is. The effect of the 'pure energy creature' is done really quite wonderfully, and the separation of a certain Hyde character (you'll know who I mean when I get to Part Four) is a really good effect. The set is stunning (and everyone will say that about this story). The planet looks amazing, the direction on it is amazing, and while things look a bit less good when you get to the spaceship, it makes it feel all the more Doctor Who-y.

Now for the negatives. (otherwise I'm in danger of sounding like Robert Shearman backing up 'The Space Museum' (discreet Whovian joke)). It's slow. There isn't much of a plot, and you feel that you're missing something when you watch it because it is uneventful. It's just the same plot line, reused, shifted round a bit, and running after the other. There's no overlap, there's only one storyline, and it a little too simple, a little too focused. If it expanded to create another plot (perhaps the planet was becoming more and more absorbed by anti-matter too so there was another anti-matter infection in danger of spreading around), then the four parts would feel justified. Though it may have felt slightly squashed as a two-part, it would have been incredibly action-packed and there'd be a sense of urgency. Taking two parts off and squashing the story would be a challenge, but I think that perhaps this story would be appreciated for plot and set and direction, rather than just the latter two.

So it is a good story, and I would recommend it for.. not a new Whovian, it's probably too slow. They should watch Genesis of the Daleks, or The Caves of Androzani, or The Five Doctors (or buy the Revisitations 3 box set and watch all of them, 'cos they work in that capacity), but if you're used to Doctor Who (and it's occasionally varying standards, pace and tone), then this would be good to launch you into the rest. It wouldn't be a favourite - but it should certainly be admired.

Thursday 25 October 2012

Book Blog and Blood Rush

This probably won't be as exciting as the title makes it sound. I hope this to be the start of my more in depth blog entries, and in fact my girlfriend suggested I call the blog "Insight". In the end I went for my generic username thingy - but of course Insight would have been a very apt name for it. If not an insight into anything particularly deep, then it's an insight into my brain/thought processes/ideas.

This is, as the title suggests, a look at books. Specifically James Bond books, and to write about this now, about a week before I go to the cinema to see Skyfall, seems fitting. I've never read, or got very far, in the Ian Fleming novels, despite my attempts. I've tried Casino Royale, and the description and.. French, gets me down. Dropping French phrases into an English book sounds sophisiticated - but a bit difficult when you're trying to get what's happening. I've also attempted 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service', because that's also my favourite film, but that was great until Bond visits the place that Casino Royale is set, and the French words return. I've nothing against the French language, it just distances myself and the book.

I do own all the Ian Fleming novels, and have taken an occasional interest in the past of the ones written by other authors. I bought Sebastian Faulks' 'Devil May Care' when it was released, and got up to the point where someone's tongue is cut out. There have also been others, such as Carte Blanche and another one recently I can't remember the name of. Aside from these, I've been vaguely interested in the other ones, but never assumed I'd find or buy them on the shelves. That is until a couple of weeks back, when I found four of John Gardener's books in a shop, and bought three of them for five quid. Though my mum accurately predicted that I'd never read them and just wanted them for my collection... But that's beside the point. It interests me to occasionally flick through and see how others have written Bond, and to see whether I can get into those books and later the Ian Fleming ones.

What interests me as well, slightly weirdly, are the chapter titles. I've always gone by the principle of 'you can only have a good chapter title if it's obscure'. Most of mine are either non-existent or one word. This always works, I feel. But the Bond titles have never been one word, but always obscure and strangely engaging. In several English Lit tasks I've had to do, I've had to give chapter titles to chapters of Birdsong or names to scenes of Journey's End by RC Sherriff. My Birdsong ones have been one word, but I've given my Journey's End ones more obscure names. One of these was "Blood Rush", a kind of title that gives away nothing but sounds interesting. It wouldn't look out of place in a Bond novel either. I often try quotes from the book/play as well, so today I went for "Gently Snapping Jaws", from the moment in the play when Osborne reads from Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

So that's what the Bond books have done for me. I may have never finished one or get very far, though I plan to one day, but I've taken chapter title inspiration from them, and hopefully I'll put a lot more effort into them as a result of it. Of course - I'll have to put effort into the books I write as well though.

That's normally quite useful.

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Autons N Things

Greetings.

This is probably my twentieth attempt at a Blogger, and in the gap since I've had the last one I've had a Tumblr, which I'll still use to review occasional things on. The Tumblr can be found here: trilbywearingauton.tumblr.com.

On this blog I'll be generally talking about general things, generally moaning about geeky things, and generally reviewing random things that I'm interested in. All of the things I post will be advertised on my Twitter, @cookiemonsta_eg. I also have an Instagram... with no photos. At the minute. But that also goes by the name of triblywearingauton.

So quick thing about me then. I'm not an Auton, though they're my favourite Doctor Who monster (which makes me sound about ten but I don't care), and I'm an aspiring writer of TV and novels and stuff. I wear trilbies (obviously), and occasionally big glasses I don't actually need. I also occasionally hold writing competitiony things so keep an eye out for them.

JR Mortimer

A quick note on two blogs that are worth a look as well, just 'cos I look at them occasionally and those writing them talk about quite interest things (if you like books, TV or writing). Those are ex-Doctor Who Script Editor Andrew Cartmel and YouTube Figure Adventure maker Tom Newsom.