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It charted even higher than the full-screen standard-DVD version of the same title (though lower than the widescreen standard-DVD version of “Royale”).
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to quickly introduce Vern's review of CASINO ROYALE... and his admission of the huge mancrush he has for Daniel Craig. I saw the movie last night myself and you can add my name onto the "loved it" lists... Eva Green is the pretty and Daniel Craig could kill Cancer. Good stuff... but you didn't click on this headline to hear me talk. Here's the main man, Vern!
Fellas -
I liked CASINO ROYALE too. (review ends here if you're one of those dicks who always complains that my reviews are too long)
This is coming from the perspective of a non-James Bond fan. People are always trying to get me to watch them, especially my buds Paul and Tom at Her Majesty's Secret Servant, who got me to review a couple for them a while back. I can understand the appeal, I like jetpacks as much as the next guy, but these movies are not really my thing. And to me the Pierce Brosnans quickly turn into snoozefests where you only perk up to groan at the worse-than-Schwarzenegger punmanship. The ridiculous action scenes I can get into (gotta love that GOLDENEYE opening) and the character names (how could Denise Richards playing a scientist named Dr. Christmas Jones not be fun? well, they pulled it off). But to me it's mostly the same old shit over and over again with an indestructible super stud doing magical deeds and screwing beautiful women and they lust after him so much they put up with his painful sense of humor. And we're supposed to like this guy. Well, I don't.
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YESSSSSSSSSSSSSsssss!!!
Tone is everything. Nailing the tone of what makes James Bond magic has been so very hard for so very long.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the JAMES BOND movies… hell, check out my BNAT poster for this year and it’s pretty fucking obvious how much I love James Bond. Honestly, I feared there was a part of me that would never buy Bond in a Tux again. Not after that very funny parody scene in XXX where it became all about killing the guy in the Tux.
In CASINO ROYALE – they have a luxury that none of the previous Bonds have ever had. A beginning. An introduction to the character. Sure, Sean Connery invented the character for the silver screen, but he showed up fully developed with no real learning curve. He just was Bond and there was no reason to question it.
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Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, still giddy at seeing my name in the credits of the BNAT 8--OCTOBUTT poster. The only explanation I can think of for my image not appearing on the poster is that I play Harry's CIA counterpart Felix Leiter (or perhaps his name has been changed to Felix Light-in-the-Loafers), and it's always better not to know what he looks like until he reveals himself in the final product. Yeah…that's it. In any event, it seems appropriate that Harry has selected the Bond imagery for this year's poster since it may be the only franchise film of the year that didn't disappointment on some level. In fact, it actually exceeded all of my expectations. Read on…
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James Bond is one of those properties where everyone who’s ever seen a Bond film has an opinion about what James Bond “really” is. How do you think of the character? Do you think of the character Ian Fleming wrote, as he appears in the original books? Do you think of him as Sean Connery? Or Roger Moore? Or Lazenby or Dalton? Or have you grown up watching Pierce Brosnan play the role, with everything else just a bunch of “old movies” that your dad likes?
Because any one of those is valid. Any one of those might very well be your favorite because of the order in which you were exposed to things.
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Bond is back, baby. Boy howdy is he back. And he’s going to be the most divisive Bond ever. When they set out to reinvent the series and went back to the well of the original text, man oh man did they go back. This isn’t the James Bond you’ve come to love over the years – rather, it’s the James Bond from the printed page. The “…anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department” that Ian Fleming both described and wrote about. And Daniel Craig and Martin Cambell do one hell of a job breathing new life into a long dying franchise.
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...with two more looks at CASINO ROYALE. Both seem to be well reasoned & level headed, pointing out the film's shortcomings while still really enjoying the movie. I'm really looking forward to it myself, although I'm still quite irritated by Judi Dench's presence. Sure, previous iterations of her character remained static through past reBondings -- but CASINO ROYALE is more than a reBonding, it's more like a rebirth. Why bring baggage?
Ah well, we are where we are. And, thus far, it sounds like we're fortunate to have a pretty cool movie to look forward to. Both reviews reference the film's brutality, an element I hoped would be maintained back when reviewed the script.
First up: Motta 80.
HI guys,
Went to Casino Royale friday night in London. Good film, great for a Bond film - though I'm not a fan of the franchise on the whole. Haven't sent you guys a review since Melinda And Melinda but in full awards season mode now so might try and send a couple more soon. Anyway.
CRAIG IS NOT BOND. THANK GOD!
Casino Royale is a massive surprise. Not because it is a good Bond film - though it is the most satisfying of the series since Connery's first bow out - but because it opens the franchise out.
MILD SPOILERS - NOT PLOT RELATED
Although the film sets up classic Bond staples this is a film of raw brutal action, incredibly stunts and real characters. There are no charicatures, there is no dodgy CGI, there are basically no gadgets. And the film is all the better for it.
This is a real world Bond. A well written action film with intelligent, well-thought out characterisation, that just happens to be Bond.
Daniel Craig has been accused of not being Bond. And he isn't. And that's good. Because Bond, as Craig's detractors seem to see him, is a cartoon. His world is a cartoon world of supervillains, easy women, maniacal plots and ludicrous gadgets. Not any more. Craig is a great reinvention for the character because he does something Brosnan, Moore, Lazenby and Dalton could never do - he brings a genuine feeling of danger to the role. It was not necessarily the other actors' fault they didn't, they were playing the cartoon Bond. Craig is playing the real world Bond and you sure as hell wouldn't want to meet him.
Sure the settings are lavish as always, the woman are beautiful, but this is grounded in a way that could really open the franchise up. And if it upsets fans of Die Another Day and recent outings, that's good, because they were poor, generic, risable jokes. Fun, perhaps, but there was no meat there.
Casino Royale also boosts some of the best action sequences I've seen on film in years. The free-running sequence and a sequence in an airport are superb - up there with the car chases in the two Bourne films. Truly exhilarating. A word I'm not sure has ever been attributable to a Bond film before.
It is not without it's flaws. Bizarrely it is both too long and moves too quickly! Key plot points are often thrown out and resolved so fast you wonder why the filmmakers bothered to include them. But the biggest problem is you can feel the time. It is nearly two and a half hours and it feels it. The first 30 minutes flies by but then it slows and in places all but halts completely as the pace gets lost in complex plotting. I feel churlish complaining about complex plotting. The Bond franchise rarely could be accused of such and overall Casino Royale benefits from its set-ups and characterisation but, boy, it goes on.
Overall a good film and a great Bond film. Craig and the filmmakers have brought a surprisingly fresh take and reinvented the character. It gives the you the ability to ignore the existence of the previous films, and that is not a bad thing. However, it's a little too full of itself - like a kid with a new toy - and it will be interesting to see if Eon have the guts to do the same again on the next one when they don't have Fleming source material to lead them.
Have a good one,
Motta80
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Merrick here...
Yeah…here we go.
Here come the reviews.
I won’t bore you with an endless preamble framing or contextualizing a film that…at this point…needs neither framing or contextualizing.
Here’s the review – probably one of many we’re likely to receive for this film. It’s by Toke, and we appreciate him taking the time to send it in. The short & sweet: “good but not great.”
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Merrick again...
MTV has posted the music video to Chris Cornell’s “You Know My Name” – the song for the imminent CASINO ROYALE.
The video features a bored looking Cornell intercut amidst clips of the movie.
As I've said before, I feel I should either love this song or hate this song…but I feel no emotion towards it at all, damnit. Maybe that’s why Cornell looks bored?
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Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.
Dan Goldwasser dropped me a note that you Bond superfreaks might find interesting, and if you follow the link, you'll be able to hear excerpts from the entire soundtrack. Pretty cool, eh?
Hey guys,
This fall James Bond returns with a new look in Daniel Craig, but is it a new sound with David Arnold's score? SoundtrackNet will find out, as we bring our readers a "First Listen" analysis of the new score to Casino Royale. We go track-by-track, and bring you lengthy sound clips that you won't hear anywhere else, so come on in and check it out!
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Merrick again…
Slaine wrote in with a heads up for AICN readers: a YouTube sampling of the opening title song of CASINO ROYALE. It’s called “You Know My Name” & it’s from Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Audioslave.
I don’t hate this, but it doesn’t knock me out either. Sounds like the opening song to a video game. I don’t mind them going for a “new sound” to match Bond’s “new feel”, but this song…as a song…does nothing for me. I just listened to the entirety of the tune, and have already forgotten it.
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Hey folks, Harry here with our first look at how CASINO ROYALE is coming and the review is extremely positive, thank god. Now - you should look out for spoilers - but if you're a Bond-phile, spoilers probably won't bother you much. Here ya go....
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. This trailer rocked my socks off. Watch it!!!
CLICK IT HERE AND PICK HOW BIG YOU WANT TO WATCH THE TRAILER... MY ADVICE, THE BIGGER THE BETTER!!!
Really cool, huh? Huge action and stunts, as expected, and Eva Green...
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Hey folks, Harry here and these pics got my temperature rising! Daniel Craig is looking 'manly' as hell in these shots. All the controversy about Craig aside, I love the casting. He looks like a killer - he looks like a guy that could charm, yet
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Hey folks, Harry here... I know Quint posted up a look at the new Aston Martin that Bond will be driving in the next 007 film, but the primary Aston Martin he's driving was only shown as a sketch concept design. Well... There's an actual shot of
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. It looks like we can expect Bond to get behind the wheels of a brand new automobile and a Bond classic... The newbie being Aston Martin's still-in-development DBS and the classic being the Aston Martin DB5. Here's the tip-o
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I am - Hercules.
Sony has just confirmed that Eva Green ("The Dreamers," "Kingdom of Heaven") will play Vesper Lynd in "Casino Royale"!
And Jeffrey Wright (hilarious in "Broken Flowers") will play James Bond's regular CIA counterpart Felix
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with an official (finally!) bit of casting news for CASINO ROYALE. Daniel Craig is 007! Oh, wait... you already know that... that's not new! Hrmm... Oh yeah, Craig's Bond is going to be matching wits with Le Chiffre in the f
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Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I don't mean to be negative before I've seen a frame of film.
And, honestly, I love the choice of Daniel Craig as James Bond. I think he's a great choice.
But this... sounds
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a bit of rumoriffic fun concerning the new Bond flick, CASINO ROYALE. The internet has been abuzz with the rumor of Rose Byrne being in talks to play Bond hottie, Vesper Lynd. I kinda discounted that since the rumor cam
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Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... it seems that MILLION DOLLAR BABY scribe Paul Haggis has been hired to overhaul the CASINO ROYALE script written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH and DIE ANOTHER DAY). Good news it seems since I di
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is the first to crack the