Casino Royale, with Cheese

If you know me well you know that I don’t like many old movies. Sure these “classics” get points for originality but by current standards everything from the editing, cinematography, directing and even the story setup are all laughable. I recently had to endure a chapter of The Thin Man movies that my Dad got from Netflix. This movie got 4 stars in 1937, but the film itself was of less artistic value than any high school play I’ve seen. I’m trying to stay focused but the bottom line:Film is a relatively new media and the advances made in just the past 40 yrs have been significant.


The point I’m really trying to make is that literature has not undergone a similar renaissance. People have been writing books for thousands of years. It’s a craft that humans have pretty well mastered. With this reasoning I defend my love of classic lit and NOT of classic movies. Most current fiction I’ve come across is trash, and that includes The Da Vinci Code.



I just finished reading Casino Royale. It’s the first James Bond novel, written by Ian Fleming originally in 1953. This is a brilliant book, especially for it’s genre. I had never read any of these books and was ambivalent to do so as it came on my Dad’s recommendation (and as I mentioned above, his Netflix tastes are rather poor). Having seen the recent film adaptation of the same name, I can say with no hesitation that the book is infinitely superior to the movie. Godfather aside, that statement seems to hold true for most film adaptations. But the thing is; the movie wasn’t bad, the book was just so much better. Fleming was involved in English military intelligence during WWII and drew heavily on his experiences there to create an authentic character. And you thought Sean Connery was cool? This James Bond drives a Bentley! And smokes 3.5 packs of cigarettes a day! And orders entire carafes full of ice and vodka! And of course he gets laid. Badass aside, Fleming injects a very real political slant on the piece and the Cold War ideals are a prominent theme. Additionally there are some excellent, although brief, philosophical dialogues between key characters. I really didn’t expect that part, but thoroughly enjoyed it. I just don’t get why they can’t make the movies this good.




Hitchcock once said that in order to make a great film it needs to be based on a mediocre book, otherwise what’s the point? And while I do like many Hitchcock flics, I disagree with him on this note. The point would be to transfer this great story into a different medium; a medium with music and costumes and dissolves. The kicker is that this transfer is VERY hard to accomplish.

First off, most movies are limited to about 2hrs. That’s not very much time to tell, say The Brothers Karamazov. Then there are practical considerations, which seem to be nullified by advances in CGI. Another reason the movies may suck is that the reader imagines the characters and settings idealized in their imaginations. If the director’s vision doesn’t synch with mine, I may just dismiss his/her take on the piece. Whatever the reason, most books are better versions than their film interpretations. But so many more people watch movies than read. And so it appears as though I’ve no one with whom to discuss my Ian Fleming book. Oh wait, my Dad….