some interesting stuffs...

Casino Royale. gold. pure gold. i loved this movie, and reccomend any Bond fan [except fans of the shitty, money grabbing James Bond Jr. cartoon series] to see it, and keep an open mind for 30 minutes. it took me about that long to be sold on Daniel Craig. sure. blonde Bond. that made me skeptical. hes a bit more muscular than other Bonds. he seems to have that scruff/edge/bite to the character that wasnt there before. but after 30 minutes, i was sold. what really impressed me about this particular film were the level of realism to the stunt work this time.... this is something, that to me, has been lacking since really the Dalton era films... aside from the way the bomb-making guy in the opening chase sequence seems to bounce around all the time, everything else seems very, very plausible, if not how youd expect something to play out... by this i mean, no motorcycles jumping between helicopter blades... no bond, floating around the space station shooting up gold toothed morons... no flying around on metal zeppelins... no flying over japan in a suitcase helicopter... no Tatto or the dude from Fantasy Island trying to be the bad guy... none of that. to me, the story in this film has as much to do with why i like it, as the new actor as Bond. The story is succinct and makes it relevant. Sure, Bond is out roguing around and stumbles into this one; but whats more relevant than the financing of terror? it keeps the scope of the movie quite in line, and quite relevant-- something Moonraker obviously cant figure out-- but it stays logical in progression... something lately that was lost on the movies... while abandoned nuclear arsenals MIGHT pose a problem, the former Bond ally, we never really knew or cared about, faking his own death to ally with some other guy who is billed as a "man who can push himself harder than any other normal man" somehow ended up with these nuclear weapons, just gets lost on me. but for this movie, when its predecessor was "The World Is Not Enough" where do you go, in scope, with that next movie? how many times can we, believeably, watch Bond destroy a nuclear weapon, or fight a guy with a shark tank, or kick the hell out of ninjas, or beat up random voo-doo zombie lords, or screw some ho' named Octopussy, and come away with anything but the campy sense of it all. this movie shattered that for me. why? because they did it once before. yes, Dalton. for all the haters out there; Timothy Dalton's Bond was a stark change from Roger Moore and Connery's Bond. Dalton intrduced vengence, needing luck in fighting the enemy, and more of a sense of plausible nature. Everyone canned Dalton, the actor, but no one says much about the films and story lines of his two films. If anything, they shy away from the dark nature of License To Kill... its laced with profanity, violence, and down right nasty themes of revenge and sadistic nature of people. but Bond needed that, to break away from the campy shit that became the Roger Moore era. Who cares? Well, that formula worked well... that particular Bond actor did not. [by the way The Living Daylights is one of my top favorites!, aka... the Other Dalton movie] , this incarnation gives us a return to a real story line, like what we got out of the Dalton films, but with a Bond that makes it work. Besides, we come to expect a different hero now a-days. Face it. We expect to see a conflicted hero in the post-modern age of cinema. Think Die Hard, think Pulp Fiction, think Gladiator, think Sin City. Huge movies; but all of them twist the classic conception of "ideal good guy" and "ideal villan." We dont want that simplicity anymore. Think Superman Returns. We now question if Superman is gay; because nothing is appealing about plain old PB and J sandwhiches, just like nothing is appealing about the superhero our grandparents adored. We o want: grit, gore and gusto. We get all three from Craig. and it works. Really, fucking well, I might add. I mean it. I really like this movie. About the only spots I grumbled about had to do with the poisoning sequence [somewhat of a spoiler, but not really], and the whole eloping with this chick sequence... only because I felt both of these parts felt unnecessary to force the story. who cares? well, I felt like getting up and leaving when the whole eloping scene started up... I really felt, that if this was the Brosnan, or Moore Bond; thats where the movie would have ended. thankfully, on both accounts, it pushes us back to something thats a bit more interesting. bottom line. go see this thing. its the re-education of James Bond... you'll spend more time, like I am now, trying to figure out how to rank this Bond into the story line of the back catalog, than you will about anything else, if thats the only objection you will come up with.


Work. Some of you might know how I've been getting sick of getting slammed with freight, and getting fucked into doing all the work and watching the managers stand around and do nothing all day. Worse than that, I hate getting smacked by them for things that I do to make sense, because they don't like it... or how thats not how they've done it for 15 years... Well, today made up for that. With a slight smile to my face, someone from general office showed up. Just so happened, I know him. heh. See where this is going? They happened to stumble upon alot of fucked up things in that department... purely on their own... but I fleshed out the back story for everything I was asked about. Well. Little Ms. and Mr. Perfects got their asses hauled in back and thoroughly reamed out today for well over an hour. Appearantly, this was the worst visit score our department has received in recent memory. And, I can't say we didn't earn it. And I can't say, I'm not glad we got hammered for it. They needed that to happen. They needed someone to drop the axe and make them realize things need to change. People went scurrying about to fix things, and supposedly started getting defensive and argumentative with general office about it all. I laughed. Its pathetic. Own up to it. If they say, "Scott, your department looks like dog shit." I've got to own that. I own that statement, just as much as I would own, "Scott your department is the best looking in the district." Because thats what I was told at Staples. But appearantly, I know nothing of the "Menards way", or of running a department. I never once argued with Staples corporate office visits. I, instead, would ask to clarify, or have them walk it with me to see WHY they are saying what they say... I would even, on perfect scores, have them come up with criticisms to put on the reports... Why? Because I need something to work on and improve on... nothing is that good. The Menards way? Be difficult with them, argue, refuse to do things, and let the place look like dogshit. Thats great management appearantly. In fact, people were complaining that the visitor went out of his way to go through and detail all the problems he found.... my comment; "Why wouldn't he?" For God's sake, if it looks that bad, they have no choice. Kind of reckon it to an off-duty cop... if hes sitting eating dinner, and watches someone get shot, hes got to do something. Off duty or not. This store visit wasn't meant to be a house cleaning action, I think it was just a normal drop in, for this guy to check out how his projects are working out in our store... But he walked into a place that looked that bad, he had to do something. Like I said, I can't say we didn't deserve it. And I own up to it. Hopefully some other people around here will as well.