I just saw Quantum of Solace and I would like to say that it rocks.
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Andrea adds: I saw Mamma Mia on the plane. It was very good, but lacked the gravitas and character development of Blue Crush.
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Rebecca says: Since we’re discussing really meaty stuff, I liked QoS because I like all things Bond, but the direction gave me a headache – far too often I didn’t know who was chasing whom in the action scenes, and why I should care. And Daniel Craig chose to give Bond a decidedly non-U accent, when everyone knows British intelligence is staffed by privileged Oxbridge alums – that’s why they were so thoroughly infiltrated by Marxists.
As to Mamma Mia, I know it only from the reviews, one of which, comparing Mamma Mia and Dark Knight to the classics, is here: http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2008-07-20.shtml
It is deliciously biting, and I recommend reading it all. Here’s an excerpt:
As entertainment, as art, there is so much to love.
As a social artifact, this movie is so loathsome it almost gives me a rash. Here’s why:
I can live with all the politically correct cant: You don’t need to find your father to find yourself! I’m glad I raised my daughter alone, it was better that way. We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall! (Oh, wait, that was Joni Mitchell — but the sentiment is there, all right.) Isn’t it cute that Colin Firth’s character turns out to be gay?
I can live with it because I’ve been numbed. But what I can’t live with is the vile hypocrisy of it. Because, while the dialogue keeps delivering punchy little slogans for the elitist anti-marriage crowd (and all the pro-marriage sentiments are uttered by a naif who, at the end, changes her mind), this movie absolutely depends, for all its emotional interest and impact, on the audience’s innate longing for love and marriage, monogamy and fidelity, babies and nuclear families with a mom and a dad.
In other words, they’re having their cake and eating it, too. This movie has no point, it does not work, without the audience’s commitment to the traditional (and, one might even say, culturally necessary) moral worldview.
And yet the movie pretends to be post-marriage and post-family.
The problem is that while coasting on tradition, Mamma Mia! is normalizing the civilizational deathwish of our current cultural elite. As a social artifact, it isn’t worth scraping off of the bottom of my shoe.”
by 
Re: Mamma Mia
But Colin Firth turned out gay. Colin Firth should never ever ever ever be gay. That goes against all the laws of physics and everything that is right and good in the world. Colin Firth is Mr. Darcy and will always be Mr. Darcy and must never be gay. Even in other movies.
If you need a good surfing movie, watch The Endless Summer. Character development is irrelevant in that film. Watch it on a dark rainy or snowy day.
Hmm…I much prefered Casino Royale…something about the blue swimming trunks… 😉
That would have been my one critique, Deborah. Colin Firth can never, ever, ever be gay. Pierce Brosnan could have been. Colin Firth cannot. (I don’t like reading Jane Austen–I am, however, religiously devoted to the BBC movie version of Pride and Prejudice.)
I was able to overcome this, however, cuz Abba music is just so happy. (all other analytical elements of my brain, and/or concerns for family/marriage were checked at the door. Who seriously analyzes a movie that takes place on an island in Greece where the characters break out into Abba song and dance? Not I.
(thank you for the Endless Summer tip.)
I saw the “Mamma Mia” musical, and came away angry for its treatment of the beauty of marriage. But wow, that review has really pinned down the irony of it.