Destination Unknown

Movie: Burn After Reading

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:32:46 -0600

This movie is awesome. From beginning to end, it has the Coen Brothers stamped all over it. The star-studded cast did a great job playing characters outside of their comfort zone with all of the quirkiness you expect from the Coens.

J.K. Simmons is only in two scenes in the whole movie, but he did such a great job that I think he was my favorite character in the show, but everyone was awesome.

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Movie: From Russia with Love

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:41:25 -0600

From Russia With Love

Hey, long time no blog, right?

A couple of weeks (okay, more like a month ago), we watched From Russia with Love, the second James Bond movie in the series, this one from 1963. The evil terrorist organization with no apparent raison d'être SPECTRE is the bad guy (bad guys? bad people?), and Bond is trying to save a beautiful (of course) Russian woman who is ostensibly smuggling a code cipher machine out of Russia to hand over to the British, but actually is an unwilling double agent and an unwitting triple agent (she thinks she's working for Russia, but actually she's working for SPECTRE).

I really like the plot. It's complex and requires some attention to follow, which is more than you can usually say for Bond flicks. On the other hand, they didn't exactly have the "action" part of "action movies" down back in 1963, and parts of it really do drag.

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Book: Casino Royale

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Wed, 14 May 2008 08:08:53 -0600

Casino Royale (James Bond Novels)

Ian Fleming

We listened to the audiobook of this on the way to Missouri. I haven't seen the movie, yet, but since the book focuses on Soviet-era espionage, I'm assuming that a movie version set in modern times will have to be drastically different. Another thing that would have to be different is that I hope that the movie, unlike the book, doesn't spend an entire quarter of its content describing one game of bacarat.

I understand now why the movies are more popular than the books. This book is terrible. James Bond is a misogynistic idiot who, at one point, is fantasizing about a female associate agent, thinking that she's such a proud person that having a sexual relationship with her would "have the sweet tang of rape" every time they sleep together.

She's the only female character in the story, and of course she turns out to be a double agent. Yes, I know it's a spoiler, but the story's already spoiled, so deal with it.

After listening to this book, I've come to the decision that Ian Fleming is not a very good writer, and was possibly not a very good person, either. That, and his mother probably beat him daily with a roulette wheel.

This book would be enjoyed by anyone who wants to learn how to play bacarat or likes men who fantasize about rape.

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