Barbarella was at 7. Casino Royale was at 9. At the Castro Theatre. Thursday, April 3, 2003. I wasn't going to see Barbarella. It's hard to sit through that one if you're alone and sober. If you're seeing it with friends and laughing at it, that can be a good time. Jane Fonda is a terrible actress. I don't care what people say. She certainly can't do comedy of any sort. I don't think she was aware of what Barbarella was. The tone and the ridiculousness of that film seemed completely beyond her.

I was thinking of seeing Casino Royale. I'd never seen it in a theatre. Amy was maybe going to see it with me, but probably not, and then she couldn't, and I started reconsidering it. Then Friends was nearly over and it was almost 8:30 and I decided I'd go.

Put CDs in CD thing. Put CD thing in CD thing that's in the trunk of car. Drive down California, stop at the Fireman's Fund thing on the corner of California and Presidio (I think) and take out some cash at the ATM that doesn't charge you any fees.

Back in car. Drive down Masonic, pass over Haight, take the next right, two blocks, turn left up to 17th. Take 17th down to just before where you are forced to turn right and park there.

Hot Cookie. Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter and Snickerdoodle. I asked what time they were open until; 11pm, 1am on Friday and Saturday.

Lot of people milling around outside the Theatre. Ticket. $8. Medium Popcorn, large Coke. Sad girl at the concessions. I felt for her. She wasn't sad on the surface, I just felt she was sad way down deep inside. I tried to be nice and said thanks and please and stuff.

Inside the theatre was like a circus. It smelled like sex and candy; popcorn was everywhere. Barbarella in San Francisco in the Castro area will do that, I think.

Preview for Nowhere in Africa again. I want to see the movie, but I can't see the trailer again. Some more previews. Something called Cremaster 3 or something looked rather boring and disturbing. I think it appeared like Ursula Andress is in it.

Casino Royale begins.

Some films are classics: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca.
Some films are masterpices: Citizen Kane, Vertigo.
Some films are completely solid entertainments that can be watched over and over any time: The Pink Panther, Austin Powers 2 The Spy Who Shagged Me.
Some films were at one time controversial: The Moon Is Blue, Ecstasy.
Some films were at one time controversial, and are still: Birth of a Nation, Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
Some films are box office bombs: Ishtar, Heaven's Gate.
Some films are critical successes, but do little at the box office: Foreign films, art house films.
Some films are box-office hits, but are critically reviled: Independence Day, Twister.
Some films are spoofs: Airplane! Top Secret.
Some films are satires: Dr. Strangelove, Network.
Some films are remakes: Heaven Can Wait, High Society.
Some films are sequels: The Color of Money, The Drowning Pool.
Some films are remakes of sequels: Father of the Bride 2 (retitled from Father's Little Dividend because everyone in the world is stupid).
Some films are versions of a novel which was a sequel to a previous novel: The American Friend.
Some films are remakes of a version of a novel which was a sequel to a previous novel: Ripley's Game.
Some films are remakes of recent foreign films: Insomnia, The Vanishing.
Some films are sequels of remakes: The Mummy Returns.
Some films are part of a trilogy: Scream 2, Empire Strikes Back.
Some films are part of a series: The Thin Man, Ma & Pa Kettle.
Some films get by on the iconic power of it's star alone: pretty much everything John Wayne made between True Grit and The Shootist, and every film Elvis made, no pretty much about it (Flaming Star is arguable).
Some films are versions of a TV show: The Untouchables, The Mod Squad.
Some films are genre films: Men In War, In Harm's Way (war movies).
Some films are subgenre films: The Dirty Dozen, Bridge on the River Kwai (World War II movies).
Some films are sub-subgenre films: Destination Tokyo, Torpedo Run (World War II submarine movies).
Some films are sub-sub-subgenre films: The Cunt for Red October, Destination Labia, The Rack of Mary Deare, Run Silent Run Deep, Up Her Ass with a Periscope 2: All-Anal Party Down Below (World War II submarine porn movies)*.
Some films were critical and box office flops but later became more highly regarded: It's a Wonderful Life, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
Some films were critical and box office flops but will later become more highly regarded: Pitch Black, The Ninth Gate.
Some films I am really vocally negative about, and while they aren't good, they aren't that terrible, but I have to be negative because too many people are too positive: Titanic, Forrest Gump, Signs, Road to Perdition.
And some films, of course, just plain suck: The Flintstones, Hook, 92% of Chevy Chase films.

And then there's Casino Royale. The film is, of course, indescribable. I will however attempt to describe it.

The Time Out Film Guide calls it "awful" with a "terrible script". The Video Movie Guide calls it "an overblown bore". Halliwell's calls it "woeful" and "shameless". The Great Man David Thomson, dismisses it as "nonsense". Judith Crist: "witless" & "interminable". E! Online capsulizes it with "disastrous".

Anyway. The film has actually become a little more -- respected isn't the right word (but I don't know what is) -- over the years. It is a mess. It is long. Nobody knew what was going on. Five different people were credited with directing it. The only vision would have been the producer's, Charles K. Feldman. And I think he got some of what he wanted to get through through: anarchy, sex, decadence and fun. But there are moments in the film too, where Feldman just had to be getting laid by one or more of the countless luscious actresses in the picture. I say that because there's no way he could have been present to okay some of the stuff. I almost feel like some production assistant threw something in because that day's director was drunk or something.

Seals. It's a crazy ending, they threw in the kitchen sink and all that, the Belmondo-led French legionnaires show up, American cowboys, Indians (Native Americans) jump out of an airplane and parachute down, Woody Allen is counting down hiccups until he explodes, George Raft's at the bar tossing a coin -- okay, fine, I can see all of that. But there are seals in the casino. Two seals clapping. And then later we see a lone seal with some kind of gold medallion hanging around his neck that I think says "007" or "James Bond" or something.

The Bond films up to that point had bordered on spoofing themselves anyway. And there were the Flint movies and the Matt Helm movies and a lot more that really leaned on the "silly/spoof button". Frankly, it was really impossible to go too far. I think the absolute lunacy and lack of focus and direction of Casino Royale lends to its charm. Or, what I think is charming about it. I have more fun in this movie, than in, say, Around the World in 80 Days, or even It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (some stuff in Mad, Mad is beyond brilliant -- bits by Jonathan Winters, everything Dick Shawn and Buddy Hackett do, surprisingly Mickey Rooney is very funny -- but I digress...).

David Niven, as Bond, is about as good a person you could have to anchor this lunatic film, he never gets too silly, and more importantly he never takes anything seriously. In fact, as I'm sure you know, he was Fleming's original ideal for Bond.

We also have more truly beautiful, sexy women in this film than any of the real Bond films. Look at this: Ursula Andress, Joanna Pettet, Daliah Lavi, Barbara Bouchet, Jacqueline Bisset. That's five really gorgeous women. And there's a lot more. For pics and words on the lovely Barbara Bouchet, check out my little tribute.

What makes Casino Royale more than just silly fun, is the outstanding music and soundtrack by Burt Bacharach. As great as the Barry scores are, this may even be better. Although it is silly to rate them against each other, especially as they are too different. And with Dusty Springfield's classic version of The Look of Love, you really have something very special. (There is a piece of music in the film, by the way, that is not on the soundtrack. Breakbeat Era uses it as a central sample to track 15, Life Is My Friend, on their outstanding drum and bass disc Ultra-Obscene. Buy it. Buy the Bacharach soundtrack too. And go ahead and buy a best of Dusty Springfield disc too. And, of Barry's, get Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Thunderball as starters [most of them have just been remastered and with added bonus tracks(!) in 2003 -- available at the same old low price!]. You know what? Buy the new Sleater-Kinney album while you're at it.)

And then there's the well-worth-it high production values: lavish late 60s costumes and sets, and although some of it is wasted money (blowing up an old castle which is only interesting because you know the film was expensive and there were so many ways to have everything the exact same without having to blow up this huge old castle), much is really neat.

And then there's the cast. Even if you get bored and tired, somebody cool's gonna show up in a minute. David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress (from Dr No), Orson Welles, Joanna Pettet, Daliah Lavi, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, William Holden, Charles Boyer, John Huston as M, Kurt Kasznar, George Raft, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Terence Cooper, Barbara Bouchet as the hottest Moneypenny ever, Angela Scoular as the very Scottish "Buttercup", Jacqueline "Jacky" Bisset as Miss Goodthighs, Sellers' talented pals Colin Gordon, Bernard Cribbins, Tracy Reed, Graham Stark, Bert Kwouk [Cato from the Pink Panther films and cast member of both Goldfinger (as Mr Ling) and You Only Live Twice (as Spectre 3)], John Le Mesurier, and Peter O'Toole.

And with the likes of Woody Allen, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Billy Wilder, and Peter Sellers contributing uncredited bits to the script some neat things are gonna slip through. And the photography is by Jack Hildyard and Nic Roeg.

As far as my particular filmgoing experience went -- it was awesome -- totally worth it. The theatre was pretty full (in a good way) and it was stacked with Casino Royale fans! I didn't know there were any (or at least, that many). It was really fun to see this movie with people -- all laughing at the same oddity, or bit of lunacy, or corny joke, or actually funny joke. And applause. It's just so much fun to see a movie that way.

And on the big widescreen you can see so much more. Stuff that was just a tiny blur on the TV you can see that it's actually something.

There were also some little things that I don't remember ever noticing before. They're hard to explain. But as Bernard Cribbons and Joanna Pettet flee "Germany" Vladek Sheybal (of From Russia with Love) comes out and starts shooting at their car driving away. As he's doing this, an old bobby-type of beat cop walks over to him as though he's caught Sheybal (as Le Chiffre's representative) littering or some other minor offense. That alone is pretty funny, but then Sheybal looks at him and just barely kind of shrugs and walks away. It got a lot of laughs. One of those things where you laugh, and then you kind of think about it and you laugh again.

All kinds of crazy stuff goes on that was almost certainly caused by ineptitude on someone's part. Halfway through the movie Joanna Pettet's hair has been cut very, very short -- no reason given. Three-quarters or so into it, Peter Sellers appears to be killed -- shot down by Ursula Andress. But you think he's dreaming it. But then I guess he's not. We don't really see him again.

The movie's pre-titles sequence is also very odd. This tall old gaunt man (Duncan Macrae as Inspector Mathis) comes up to Peter Sellers and says these are my credentials and Peter Sellers says they appear to be in order. That's it. Roll opening credits. We come back to this first scene halfway through the film. No idea why. Actually I think this scene is supposed to be funny, because the guy shows Sellers "his credentials" by holding them just below his waist. And there's a cement railing that goes up to just above their waists. So it's maybe supposed to be like one of those Benny Hill jokes where we see a nude statue from behind and old Benny walks up to it and takes off his hat and sets it on what appears to be this statue's hard-on. Then we cut to a different POV and we see that there's a part of a fencepost or something that Hill set his hat on. The statue does not have an erection.

* And yes, I made up the names of those submarine porn movies.

* Check out this interesting essay on Casino Royale.

* TCM's Jeff Stafford on CR.

* Andrea LeVasseur at All Movie Guide on CR.

* Meanwhile, buy the DVD -- only $16.99 (as of this writing)!

* Buy the original, quintessential Ian Fleming pulp Bond novel!

* Check out albums by the band which named themselves after this movie, Casino Royale, including Back to Bacharach and Where's the Tiger?

* At imdb.

* Some scenes were filmed in Kellin, Scotland.

* Links to reviews at mrqe.