Casino Royale

The last Bond film I saw at the pictures was Live and Let Die. That would have been in 1973, at the Ealing ABC, I think. Between now and then, if you'd asked me to characterise Bond films, I would have thought of Roger Moore's stiltedly-arched eyebrow, and his knowing eye contact with the camera: that camp self-awareness and self-referentiality, coupled with schoolboy-level sexual titillation, misogyny, borderline racism and unconvincing big bang special effects whose aspiration outstripped their execution. So the pleasure of the Christmas Bond film paled after I hit 16 and started to develop some critical faculties and became aware of the cultural orthodoxies that were embedded in these 90 minute chunks of glamourous hokum.

So I came to Casino Royale with a rather fuzzy set of expectations. This was to be the last cinema-social with some old work colleagues (Friday was my last day at work with the company), and I'd agreed to go entirely as a social thing, rather than in any expectation that the film might be any good. I'd deliberately avoided reading the reviews.

Despite those loose expectations, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that: (a) it was very good; (b) I enjoyed it; and (c) most of the Bond cliches that I'd come to despise were gone. (And no Q and his ridiculous gadgetry.)

This Bond film sets a different tone right from the outset: a double killing that sets Bond on the road to his '00x' status. The violence here is not stylised or casual, but mechanical, earthy and effortful - blood, sweat, dirt and fear (to paraphrase Churchill). This monochrome segment establishes a hard-edged realism that the rest of the film (mostly) echoes: it's played pretty straight, with a few ironic self-references that are neither mugged nor telegraphed as of old. True, there are some elements that don't really stack up for me - the main romantic relationship felt to me as if it was never quite effectively established, and the functional poker game sequences are a little dreary - but as a straight thriller, this is pretty thrilling, with some excellent action sequences that really demand to be seen in a cinema with a big sound system.

And beyond all that, Daniel Craig and his impressive pecs manage to imbue James Bond with character, and with real humanity. That's quite an achievement, I think. I went into the theatre thinking that the film ran for 90 minutes, when in fact it's 140 minutes. I see it as a very good sign that it never occurred to me to think that the film was overrunning. Recommended!

Call me Bridget

Hm. Got on the scales yesterday, and my series of 'leaving work' dinners and evenings out have really taken their toll: I now weigh the same as I did about 5 years ago, when I decided that 'that's it!' and went on to lose 3 stone plus. I swore that I would never go back to that weight...but it accumulates, dunnit?

I now need to repeat that earlier weight loss, as I now see myself as prime heart attack material. Hence these pages will carry notes about the number of cigarettes smokes/drinks consumed/miles run or cycled, as I track my progress from vast porky bloater to healthily slender normality (I'll work on those pecs later).

Today: 0 cigarettes (v. good), 1 hour's walking, 1 hour's cycling, alcohol units = 10 (v. bad). (OK, I never smoke, but it's a real positive, innit?)