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"Casino Royale" was on the agenda yesterday afternoon for a friend and me.

All the initial quibbling and carping and whining about Daniel Craig prove to be utter nonsensical pap after watching for about 30 seconds. He is superb.

In my opinion, he is the closest embodiment of the character as envisioned by Ian Fleming. There's a degree of thugishness in Bond that the tuxes and fancy cars and beluga can't hide. Bond's ultimate job is that of an assassin hired to eliminate enemies of the state. Not a bridge partner or suave dinner companion, but an employed killer.

This Bond has just achieved his double 0 status. denoted by two kills, one unfamiliar with the double and triple crosses of the espionage trade. So Craig is given the tricky task of showing the slow evolution of a character moving from almost total confidence to one far more world-weary. One who at the end realizes that trust is illusionary.

I was fascinated from the first second. Did I understand all the machiavellian machinations: Good heavens, No!

Some odds and ends that I looked up later.

The singer of the main song, "You Know My Name" was sung by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden.(Available on YouTube at Casino Royale Chris Cornell Complete Full Song) I got my Chris's mixed up and thought it was Chris Martin of Coldplay.

The actress who played the love interest, Vesper Lynd, was Eve Green. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out where I'd seen her before; IMDB tells me she played Sibylla in Kingdom of Heaven against Orlando Bloom. So that explains her familiarity.

I read that this was the first Bond film with rain in it. Certainly a odd fact.

The first film in the series in which Bond plays a totally nude scene.

There were very few of the quips from the earlier films.

Vesper sits down on a train opposite Bond and says, "I'm money" (MI6's money person for this case), to which Bond retorts, "And worth every penny of it."

Bond has been poisoned while playing cards, stumbles out to his Aston Martin which conveniently has a defibrillator which he employs with the help of Vesper. Then returns to the game and says, "That last hand was almost the death of me."

One last tidbit: I came across an article, no longer available, that said: Daniel Craig tops poll of men women fantasise about while having sex.

PAX!