tales of an ordinary girl

It was a pretty good weekend with much lazing around and my new game of choice Heroes of Might & Magic V. Frustratingly it started crashing on me on Sunday, but I'm hoping it was an isolated incidence related to the mission and patch level. I managed to squeeze in two new movies as well.

The first was the remake of Casino Royale. I've never seen the original, so I don't know how faithful the adaption was or if it was similar at all. It was a different kind of Bond movie. I liked the character as he was presented, but the story was a bit fanciful. But then it's a Bond movie, a spy movie and it's supposed to be. The end seemed tacked on as a way of explaining why Bond never developed attachments and in the end that just didn't work for me and here's the reason.

The older Bond movies are more polished. Matt even mentioned during the movie that this Bond was certainly the must "scruffy" Bond of them all. Movies have changed over the years to reflect more realism and less fantasy, I think. Not that all old movies are more imaginative or all new movies are gritty, but it's been a trend that's become more predominant. And that's the style that is attempted in the newest Bond movie.

Maybe they were afraid that the fans wouldn't accept the new Bond character and so they tried to link it to the old movies by showing the younger, more naive Bond. I don't think they needed to and it detracted from the movie for me. But even though I haven't seen enough of the old films to judge them all, I always thought the old movies were nice looking and exciting, but lacking in substance. This one tried to bring more substance to the characters, but I don't think it was a complete success.

The second movie, House of Sand and Fog, has to be the most depressing movie I've ever seen. I thought my mother-in-law was cruel for making us see Eight Below, but sadly-humanized-puppy-eyes have nothing on this film. HoSaF sets out to destroy your day as soon as it begins. It's a good movie overall I think and the central message, that seeing things only from your point of view can be disastrous, comes through clearly. But like Shawshank Redemption, I'm not so eager to go through the pain of it anytime soon (and Shawshank had a happy ending).