saturn return to sender

I saw Casino Royale. It’s long. It’s convoluted. It’s rangy. It’s implausible. Daniel Craig is the best Bond we’ve had since Connery, if not better as a darker, textured and flawed Bond, at once both beautiful and ugly. The bad guys are badder, too — not in the campy “I will rule the WORLD!” sense but in the claustrophobic “I’m a disturbing sociopath” sense. So on the whole it’s a welcome rebirth for the franchise, but I’d be happier if they’d taken the opportunity to tighten up the implausible bits just a little. I mean dumb things like “uh, so gosh it’s lucky for Bond that the bad guy happened to run out of bullets at just the right moment.” There’s just no reason for that kind of thing in a movie that otherwise takes itself seriously and my eye-rolling habit is bad enough as it is.

One bit I haven’t quite teased apart is Eva Green’s well-played role as Bond’s romantic object. The filmmakers (or Ian Fleming?) certainly developed her better than most of Bond’s women, but for all the lip service paid to her independence, intelligence, and strength, most of the movie nonetheless sees her playing the usual helpless pretty appendage to Bond’s strong hand. And not just in the action sequences, but in the story’s arc, where she could plausibly play a substantial role.

Ah, but then plot twists at the end reveal her to be of stronger character than we were led to believe, and not quite so two dimensional. In line with archetypes of woman, she in fact becomes the tacit prime mover of the whole movie, and by virtue of her virtue, the mother of Bond’s subsequent career as soulless killer and womanizer. My goodness, it’s almost … literary! But archetypes aside, I still can’t decide if she in sum winds up being more or less dimensional than Bond himself, more or less flattering to notions of sexual equity.

Hmm. It’s a Bond movie and I’m looking for thoughtful reflection on gender roles. Funny! But seriously, it may be more sophisticated than I’d give it credit for on the surface. Being skeptical of Hollywood’s capacity for thought, I’m gonna put that down to Fleming’s handiwork until I hear otherwise. Anyone have any other thoughts on this?

In a fit of procrastination, I overhauled Immortal Cookie’s design. Haven’t checked it out in any browsers but Safari and Firefox Mac, in which there’s some odd background repeat bug happening …

There’s tweaking that should happen (I think the background is too loud, for starters), but I need to do work I’m actually *supposed* to be doing …

Does the FFT icon thumb look weirdly overlong to anyone else?

Speaking of death and Hollywood, I saw Stranger Than Fiction the other night. Spoilers follow the page break …
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I dreamt that I died last night. I don’t remember exactly how I died, but I remember the last moments of consciousness, and I remember the first moments of resurrection. Yes: I also dreamt that I was brought back from the dead.

My impressions as awareness began to fail could be characterized, essentially, by “Holy crap, I’m dying!”

Interestingly, after dying, and after a suitably dramatic pause for oblivion, the camera switched to focusing on the people around me. So that’s weird, and makes the dream seem a little less weighty. I mean, if the dream continues after death, then … well, it just seems anti-climactic. It sort of corrupts it like a Hollywood film, where you’re never permitted to have an ambuiguous ending, or one where the protagonist actually just plain dies.

Or I suppose it’s possible that it was still “my” point of view during an out-of-body experience. *shrug* I don’t remember now if those people around me were responsible for my death or responsible for bringing me back, or neither, or both.

But somehow I wound up back in my corporeal self, the lights flickered on, and I felt something along the lines of “Holy crap, I’m not dead!”

I’ve heard that dreaming of your own death is significant in some way. I dunno. From what I remember, I thought the direction was okay and I could relate to the protagonist, but the dialogue was pretty bad.