The OtherArena

[Steve Yohe]

Just got back from seeing the mid-night first showing of Casino Royale. It's real good. One of the best made Bond films ever. Very adult & smart film. You would have to go back to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to find anything like it. Daniel Craig is more Steve McQueen than Sean Connery but works really well in the part. Best movie I've seen this year.****1/4--Yohe

[eron]

That's what I hear from anybody. Eva Green is gorgeous.

[jdw]

The Critics Tomatometer are RT is exceptionally high right now at 96%:

RottenTomatoes.com - Casino Royale

That's with 91 critics in. That will likely go down over time, but for reference Borat is at 92% and that one of the best reviewed movies of the year:

2006 Top Tomatometer Rankings


John

[chadlaca]

I dug it. Big tonal shift as they dispense with the camp (most of it) and give Bond a harder edge. Couple of majorly entertaining action sequences that feature excellent stuntwork, which I'll take over CGI any day of the week. At the end of the day, Bond just feels more real. It worked as a fresh start for Batman with "Batman Begins" and I think it's been pulled off again with this.

My one quibble is that, as much as I was enjoying it, there came a point where it felt a bit long. That said, it had built up so much good will with me by then that I let it slide as a viewer.

And yeah, Eva Green is gorgeous. :)

[jdw]

[eron]

[Tomer]

Just saw it, and I agree completely with Steve & chadlaca. I think it may be in my top 5 Bond films (though I have to think about which one goes where). Definitely candidate for film of the year.

-Tomer

[Steve Yohe]

You can see Bond evolve thru the movie. Early he's a talented young killer whos self image hasn't formed. He makes mistakes thru the film & he learns from his mistakes. He is betrayed by a women, leading to tortured & lossing the money he was to gaurd, and by a friend. Bond will never make that mistake again (maybe). Emotion isn't something that works well in his profession & if he is to live he has to learn by his mistakes. He has to remove himself from guilt after a kill. So in the next movie, when he tells a joke after spilling blood, we understand why. It's just not funny...it fits his character. When he moves from woman to woman while using him....we understand his justification.

The Bond character is much deeper now. It just not fun...theirs something serious in the jokes. It give us a feeling about the loneliness that surounds him. James Bond is the loneliest person alive. He doesn't even know if he can trust "M". So he fills his life with shallow richs because he knows thats all he can have. This loneliness leads to him being a true hero. He becomes a sucker for varifided friends & innocent people. Having sex with James Bond may not lead to love but it will give you a break with the friendship thing......if he can read your "tell".

Bond has a chance of moving from just being entertainment & evolve into a semi-serious drama. That is, until they find out the old braindead moves made more money.--Steve Yohe

[jdw]

The movie "only" made $14.75M on Friday night. That's might be a little discouraging:

Top Opening Friday's of 2006
$55,830,600 Pirates of the Caribbean 2
$45,102,265 X-Men 3
$28,630,324 The Da Vinci Code
$21,788,862 Ice Age 2
$19,713,746 Cars
$19,017,001 Scary Movie 4
$18,016,961 Talladega Nights
$16,632,157 Mission: Impossible III
$14,471,873 Saw III
$14,426,286 Click
$13,937,800 The Break-Up

Superman opened on Wed:

$18,037,277 Superman Returns

With the reviews, you would think this has some legs to it. But here's a BoxOfficeMojo chart on this movie vs. the last Bond vs. MI-III vs. the second Bourne vs. XXX:

Bond Showdown

I've got it set on the daily totals. One can click it around for Summary and Weekend numbers.

I can't think of any reason why this *wouldn't* star above the last Bond. Massive add campaign, great buzz, New Bond.

On the other hand... this was a rather large part of the last add campaign:



And a lot of people thought that movie was surprising in being the biggest grossing Bond of all-time.

;)


John

[Steve Yohe]

It isn't a family film. These days, if your making a movie for semi-smart people instead of air heads, you better have a low figure budget. Junk sells.--Yohe

[jdw]

[jdw]

Estimates for the weekend:

$42,320,000 Happy Feet
$40,600,000 Casino Royale

They rank #11 and #12 for November opening according to Box Office Mojo:

November Openings

Die Another Day is right ahead of them at $47M.

It's an interesting list - Potter movies are #1-3, while Pixar movies are #4-6. Kinda cool.

Anyway, no one lower on the list got to $200M. Only the top 7 got there, with Grinch being the #7 November opening with $55M back in the far less front loaded 2000 era (only 21.2% of its take was opeing week, which is the second best in the Top 20 to the sleeper legs of National Treasure).

I can't even predict CR's box office potential. Maybe strong buzz and the holiday weekend will give it a really strong second weekend. $200M is too much of a stretch. I hope it has legs to top Die Another Day so they stick to grittier movies rather than cartoons.


John

[corrado]

A bit surprising to see Happy Feet with the mild upset over Casino Royale. I guess this means even more crappy CGI films about animals.

As for Casino Royale, it could finish at the top next week. There's not much competition for a while, so it'll have some pretty good legs. Deja Vu may be the closest to a big hit in that timeframe.

[DavidInNYC]

I thought Casino Royale was really good, but like Superman Returns (another movie I really liked), there were some flaws. I give that the edge, but that has a lot to do with the airplane sequence I saw in 3D. That I can't think of any movie better then a Superman or James Bond movie (no matter how fun) makes me sad.

Just a few thoughts....

First, we will one day have the technology to digitally replace George Lazenby with Sean Connery in "On Her Majesty's" and that will be the greastest James Bond movie ever. Why Diana Rigg never became a huge movie star, will forever remain a mystery. Really has nothing to do with the conversation though.

Second, like the hospital scene in Superman Returns, the Venice scene just dragged. They started this in the first Spider-Man movie and it's trend that needs to stop. This is why DVDs are so popular. "Can you read my mind" never happens again.

Third, the "everyone has a great hand and they all bet the farm" in Poker is one of the worst movie cliches ever. It's what ruined Maverick for me (speaking of, Braveheart was my favorite movie ever, how am I supposed to watch that again without looking at Gibson and just getting mad?).

Fourth, was I the only one that expected Dr. Evil to come out and blurt "$100 Million Dollars." This is some worldwide criminal organization that funds terrorists, launders money for evil-doers, and it'll collapse if the bad guy doesn't come up with 100 million dollars it recently lost? I could understand a billion dollars, but this isn't the Oakland A's. And, why are they playing for dollars outside the United States? For that matter, who launches a prototype in the middle of the night? And, why would a terrorist organization care about that?

Fifth, the Bond movies were popular because it pushed sexuality and action in a way it never had before. The average "Alias" episode that can be seen on Saturday. at four in the afternoon, contains more sex and more action then "Casino Royale" did. The average Hip Hop video is more provocative (as a sidenote, I think that's a problem with Jennifer Lopez. When her music videos that can be seen for free on MTV are more provocative then her movies, why would anyone pay to see her?). Basically, I'm just suggesting that they push an "R" rating.

I did think Daniel Craig was an excellent James Bond though and I'm happy they pulled back from cartoonish stunts that have plaqued the franchise. James Bond is a superhero, but his movies shouldn't be cartoonish. I'm really looking forward to the next James Bond movie (and like Superman, they'll be another Daniel Craig 007 movie).

[Tomer]