in such an ugly way something so beautiful

casino royale is soooooo good. okay, this being the second time i've seen it, i must say that it got better. the thing about watching a film at a midnight showing is the anticipation really gets to you and you automatically give the film extra points. but now upon re-watching, i can say that it's every bit as good as i thought it was.

i think it's a study of a good action film. you have a hero that you can really get behind, ludicrously attractive people, evil (and i mean really evil) looking villains, fluid action set pieces (with great camera work i might add) and just heaps of style. the film mixes brutal with beauty very well. the free running sequence is so fantastic. you have on one hand, the crazy bomb maker, who is just full of grace and skill, and then you have bond, tough and determined. they fight, and bond's sheer power wins out. that really just encapsulates the spirit of the film: bond got a little too pretty in the past, and now we are going to show you how tough he can get. the whole film really goes on about that. bond gets dressed up, but before long he's slugging it out with some bad guy. that's the new bond, almost a kind of split personality that you would expect from a spy. i won't go as far as to say it is a smart film (side note: people like to label the bourne series as smart spy flicks, but i seriously fail to see what's so "smart" about them), but it is efficient, like bond is efficient. the film hits at the modern audience, which seems less inclined to suspending disbelief. there is a gritty realism in this new bond which i feel sits better with movie-goers today. oh and eva green is ridiculously good looking. she even looked pretty when she was drowning. if ever there was a film scene that promoted necrophilia, that was it.

enough crap about film. i'm supposed to be writing a paper on roman polanski's chinatown now. roman polanski. now that's a man with an interesting life. he survived the concentration camps as a kid, became a film director, came to america, his pregnant wife got killed by charles manson's crazy "family" and then he was caught having sex with a 13 year old and had to escape to europe. the only oscar he won he couldn't receive cos he is still technically a fugitive.

alright, back to essay.