> Yesterday my wife and I went to see both "The World Is Not Enough" and "Sleepy Hollow." I have to say, both were extremely good, and I recommend them highly. I guess this means the holiday movie season has officially started, and the Oscar race is on. Cool.

I'd have to agree on "Sleepy Hollow", but not about the Bond Movie. Before I go into "The World Is Not Enough", a follow-up on the "Sleepy Hollow" spoiler thread I started a while back:

The actor revealed on the bus ad I mentioned wasn't listed in the opening credits but it wasn't something that was sprung on the audience near the end of the film like King Richard's cameo at the end of "Robin Hood". The actor in question was revealed about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes into the film. So, even knowing that he was in the film didn't spoil the film experience. An odd thing about this advertising -- a wall banner hanging in the theater advertising the movie has the actor featured on it (head, not name).

To "The World Is Not Enough": It was a lackluster movie. The best analogy I can think of is the Bond series has become like the Star Trek series -- if you like James Bond, you'll like TWINE (neat acronym), if you don't like Bond, there's not much to recommend the film.

The opening sequence isn't as action-packed as one would expect from the Bond series -- it opens with a brief action sequence, a (seemingly) longish talking heads sequence, followed by an action-packed sequence.

Following the opening credits, the movie slows down for about the first half of the movie. A lot of talking heads for the majority of the time, noticeable in our theater because whenever there weren't explosions or background music (oddly missing from certain scenes -- almost like a workprint) the only speakers firing were the center channel. Even two characters talking in the foreground in a large crowd scene (Elektra King leaving the shrine) seemed to not use the surround speakers. One hopes this was something wrong with our theater's speaker system and not the film itself. However, it made the separation of exposition scenes and action scenes much more noticable.

Back to the movie proper, TWINE does speed up once Denise Richards' character enters the film. However, I don't know why her character kept going with James Bond from one location to another. I'm not certain if her acting or her dialogue was what also hampered the character. She has a line near the end of the film that seems to want to explain something to Bond and he has a line that explains something to her, but they sound like the scriptwriter is explaining things to the audience.

The major villain of the plot. I really didn't feel like he was all that interesting. I can't even remember his name, which I guess might really have happened to the bad guys in the opening sequence. "You've got to protect me from, um, er, ah. Him. Him. You've got to protect me from him!" Bring back Ernst Blofeld. (How many people have played him? Five?) Even Eliot Carver was interesting. This guy,

Other characters: the entire Q branch was fantastic, as was Judi Dench as M (although I really think that M should have some neat geejaws like the 00 agents get). It's nice to see recurring characters from earlier Bond films -- Charles Robinson reappears (he was "Black Bishop" in the opening sequence of "Tomorrow Never Dies" and reprises his role here).

But still, I can't wait for the next one.

-Faux "missed all the cameos of previous Bond girls" Pas