What does that mean?

Nerdy James Bond fans the world over emitted squeals of excitement...or more likely scratched their chin and softly exclaimed, "hmm," with the official announcement of the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die. As you can see from this screen capture, whoever was responsible for writing the press release for the announcement made a boo boo by writing the movie's title as A Day to Die.  There are two possible explanations for this error. It was a typo, or A Day To Die was a title under consideration until No Time To Die was finally selected, and it was in a draft release or on the mind of the writer. 

Whatever the title means, the plot of the film, and the choice of font which looks like it belongs on the cover of a paperback novel from the 1970s, all will be revealed when the film is released in April 2020, when Daniel Craig makes his last appearance as James Bond.  

Matters of the heart

According to a survey conducted by British travel website wotif.com, new James Bond actor Daniel Craig is among womens' top ten Valentine's Day dream dates. So, women evidently have a thing for craggy looking, deep voiced men in their thirties? There's hope for me yet. I've never seen the point of Valentine's Day myself. The cynic in me says that it's contrived by the retail industry to fill a flat spot in their calendar. According to that well known source of reliable information, Wikipedia, it originated as a pagan holiday in ancient Rome, and is also significant as the day on which the St. Valentine's Day Massacre occurred in 1929 in Chicago.

If you're married or otherwise attached, why is there is a need to have one day out of the entire year where you express your feelings for your significant other by buying them things? Since when has love become a commodity, exploited for commercial gain? Surely love can be expressed throughout the year, in a multitude of ways, I would have thought. Then again, what would I know?

You know the name, you know the number

My brother Scott and I went to see the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale, over the weekend, and we were both suitably impressed. This is the first outing of the new Bond, British actor Daniel Craig. Based on Ian Fleming's first Bond novel of the same name, we see Bond going on his first mission. The villainous Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) is a private financier of international terrorism. In order to shut down this terrorist network, Bond is sent by M (Dame Judi Dench), head of MI6, to beat him in a high-stakes poker game at Casino Royale, Montenegro, with his stake provided by the British Treasury. Treasury official Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) is sent to supervise Bond and watch over the government's money. As Bond and Lynd survive numerous attempts on their lives by Le Chiffre and his henchmen, they develop a mutual attraction that leads them both into further danger, and fateful events that are instrumental in making Bond what he would later become.

After the bloated action spectaculars of the Pierce Brosnan era, director Martin Campbell's grittier, more realistic character-driven approach is refreshing, hearkening back to earlier Bond films like From Russia With Love (1963), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Licence to Kill (1989). Thanks to a great performance from Craig, who has surely made his detractors eat their words, this time Bond is portrayed as a believable human being, with flaws and emotional depth beneath his cold, ruthless exterior, and not a suave caricature. The longest running franchise in film history has been successfully reinvented. One hopes that the producers will keep to this approach, and not revert to the well-worn formula of megalomaniacs with plots for world domination.