Casino Royale ...Spoilers
Be warned: If you haven’t seen Casino Royale and you plan to, stop reading now and come back after you’ve seen the movie…
I’ll wait…
Okay—Here we go. I LOVED it! Now the action scene at the beginning of the movie and the very last scene were not in the book. The villain has been updated from the financier of SMERSH (extra points if you remember what that was) to the financier for some shadowy terrorist organization. The locale in the book was, of course, Monte Carlo and has been relocated to Montenegro. But that aside, this is a very human Bond, with all that implies. He still has a certain disdain of women that falters when he falls in love. He’s edgy, arrogant, brave. There are no high tech gadgets (well, a couple, but nothing that stretches belief). All in all, Daniel Craig has taken the Bond role and made it his own. The last line in the book, “The bitch is dead,” is not the last line of the movie. They stuck an epilogue of sorts at the end. Still, Craig when he does deliver that quintessential Bond line, does it perfectly. I, for one, hope the Broccoli’s plan to redo the entire series.
The big news this week was News Corp’s decision to cancel the O.J. book and Fox TV special. I say hurrah—not that I expect it was done for any altruistic motive. Rather, so many bookstores said they would not carry the book, that if the project went ahead, the publisher ReganBooks stood to lose a bundle. The big question is why it was ever considered in the first place.
Also read an interesting blurb about one of my favorite TV shows, Heroes. Seems the head writer, Tim Kring, is the “seat of the pants” type who didn’t even plot out the entire first season. So far, letting each episode go where it will has worked. BUT how long can a story continue if the writers don’t know what’s going to happen? I know how that works for me in my writing—IT DOESN’T!!!
Okay, time to go stuff a turkey. Hope you and yours are enjoying a safe, happy, warm holiday.