I also finally watched Casino Royale, the 2006 version that introduced new Bond, Daniel Craig. It was a darker, more serious Bond film than I am used to, although I have to admit to having never seen any of the Pierce Brosnan ones, so I'm not sure if the trend had started earlier.

In this film, based on Ian Fleming's first Bond book, we see the origins of the "double oh" that James Bond would become. In fact, it begins with a black and white montage, showing us how Bond qualified for the 00 status. After this, we see him in Africa, trying to track down the source of terrorist money and he follows the money trail until he attempts to break the financier in a high stakes poker game. Much mayhem ensues and Bond gets his man.

I enjoyed this new Bond flick and thought Craig made an excellent Bond. I'm not, however, keen on torture scenes, even if we know revenge is in the offing, so it was a little unsettling. And I thought the movie in general was uneven; that the pacing was off. There were plenty of good action scenes, but the idea of hinging the whole plot on a poker game seemed just to trite these days. But I'm looking forward to his next installment.

I watched on BluRay extra, about the search for Craig. It's funny, the producers were talking about needing a new Bond, because this movie would go back to the beginning of his career, so they wanted someone younger. But they admitted that while it didn't make much chronological sense, they did stick with Judi Dench as "M". I have to also admit that I for some reason thought this was her first, but she actually goes all the way back to GoldenEye, Brosnan's first Bond flick.

The BluRay picture was very nice. I could really see the quality when I paused the movie - rock solid pause with a crisp, clear picture. I still like the HD DVD menus and extras better, but what can you say?

Netflix and the USPS really have been combining for a joyful experience. I dropped the movie in the mailbox Tuesday just before pickup (1pm). Wednesday at 7am I got notice that the movie had arrived in the processing house. And I had its replacement by Thursday. Very Nice!

Casino Royale [Blu-ray]

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Busy and expensive weekend for me. After having a couple of martinis on the back deck with my wife (hey, it was way up into the 30s!), I went in and watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon, found on the Free Movies section of Comcast HD on Demand. Starring Sean Penn as the loser Samuel Bicke (actually Byck), is is based on the real story of Byck's planned assassination of Richard Nixon. A movie of unrelenting pessimism and gloom, Sean Penn's portrayal of the crazed Bicke was simply remarkably, and really, I think, the only reason to watch the movie. Truly a depressing yet fascinating movie, in the old "watching a car crash" fashion.

Then my wife and I watched Knocked Up on HD and, frankly, I don't see what the fuss was all about. Nor did my wife, who had an even harder time understanding Alison's motivations at getting involved with this loser and then keeping him around. Knocked Up reminded me of director Judd Apatow's earlier film, The 40 Year Old Virgin in its uneveness. I found some spots to be hilarious but the movie seemed to drag and at nearly 2 1/4 hours, was about 30 minutes too long.

But Katherine Heigl is truly a stunning beauty, which made her connection with Seth Rogan's Ben Stone even harder to understand. I think my favorite character was Kristen Wiig's TV exec Jill. Her reactions, both to Alison's first promotion and then to her newly discovered pregnancy, were classic.

But Sunday I spent way too much money on a Playstation 3 and various accessories. It is, however, a very slick looking console, if a little big. And I was surprised to see that it plays Playstation one games (the new 40gb machine purposefully does not play PS2 games). even if they do look ugly. It doesn't come with an HDMI cable, so I had to buy one of those. And I forgot to buy an optical audio cable, so I need to get another one, although I borrowed the one from my Xbox for now. I also bought another controller, the DVD controller, a game (Oblivion because it was cheap), and a movie (Life Of Brian).

The game looks spectacular, even if it is "only" 720p. Life of Brian, while still uproariously funny, doesn't look quite as nice. I demand solid colors from my hi-def DVDs, and this had a little too much speckling. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised at that, give its age (nearly 30 years ago it was filmed!). I will enable BluRay on my Netflix account and will try some newer movies. I tried to get some James Bond movies, which I thought were all out on BluRay, but I guess only the latest one, Casino Royale is available.

But I probably shouldn't have indulged, even if I did get a windfall from the selling of a boardgame. The game catalog is sadly lacking. At the Best Buy where I picked it up, maybe a third of a row had PS3 games, while the other 2/3 was PS2 games. The XBox 360 had 1.5 rows. But there are a couple of co-op games available I might try, like Resistance: Fall of Man or the upcoming Army of Two.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Knocked Up (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]

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Ouch. Netflix is dropping HD-DVD:

You're receiving this email because you have asked to receive high-definition movies in the HD DVD format. As you may have heard, most of the major movie studios have recently decided to release their high-definition movies exclusively in the Blu-ray format. In order to provide the best selection of high-definition titles for our members, we have decided to go exclusively with Blu-ray as well.

While we will continue to make our current selection of HD DVD titles available to you for the next several months, we will not be adding additional HD DVD titles or reordering replacements.

Toward the end of February, HD DVDs in your Saved Queue will automatically be changed to standard definition DVDs. Then toward the end of this year, all HD DVDs in your Queue will be changed to standard definition DVDs. Don't worry, we will contact you before this happens.

Looks like maybe my birthday present to myself is going to be a PS3 player...

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