My Dear Mr. Bond,

Promotional photo of "Casino Royale" from Sony Pictures

Damn good movie, this one. When's the last time you did "woaaahhhh!"'s and "holy crap!!!" in the movies? As with the last few Bond movies, the opening credits alone was worth the ticket money already. So cool!

Daniel Craig puts the character back to its original erhmm... character. One played to perfection by Sean Connery and softened to parody-status by Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan (OK, fine, Brosnan's still the best Bond, first few times he did it, if one takes into account the "fit" of the characterization with the times). Craig didn't really have any choice, with Hong Kong movies having redefined the adrenalin-level standard of action movies, he might as well have refused to make the movie if he was just gonna do another Brosnan film.

The chase alone, on feet, in the beginning, was enough to carry the whole film, action-wise. That guy Bond was chasing was just awesome! I actually wanted him to be able to get away from Bond.

I started getting bored somewhere in the middle, with the long poker game sequences, and wondered why they even bothered with it, before I remembered that the movie's title is "Casino Royale". Another downer was how everything was explained to the viewers... like "M" asking Bond if he knew why he's still alive, explaining how the girl (Eva Green) made sacrifices to make that possible. Like, hello? A five year old would've figured that out by himself (if he's allowed to watch the movie, I mean). And Bond professing his love to the girl??? Come on! I'd rather he act it than say it. Heath never said anything about his feeelings for Jake, did he?

The jokes are better too, more clever. Or maybe it's just Craig's delivery. His face is always so serious that when he delivers a punchline it's usually unexpected, unlike Brosnan from whom everybody expects jokes all the time. The best proof that Craig can really act are the scenes where he was being tortured, the worst when he was all mushy with Green. You'll never see anyone more uncomfortable with a smile.

I enjoyed the movie so much that only when I got back home did I realize upon thinking about the story, that it didn't have a good one.


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P.S. I've noticed that recently more and more people wanders into this correspondence of ours, looking for celebrity pics. I wish they'd come to look at the photos I've taken, but alas, it isn't so. Having said that, in case some random people do wander in here looking for Daniel Craig's naked photos, I thought I'll do the nice thing and direct them to right place. They can be found in this link. Bye, and thanks for dropping by.

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Fusion

© Joselito Briones

My first attempt at fusion. Or maybe I've always been doing it, just don't realize it. For tonight's dinner, I curried (yellow) mashed banana and with lemon juice, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, coconut milk, and grapefruit slices. I thought the curry would overpower the banana flavor, but the banana persisted. I ended up with a thicker than usual curry sauce, poured all over pan-grilled fish fillet.

The photos above are quite old... on the left is Tour Eiffel, of course, taken September 1994, and on the right is a temple in Bangkok, Thailand, taken September 1996. I used to do my travels mostly in September.




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Reformat

© Joselito Briones

So... blogger.com, the medium with which I'm sending you these letters, decided to upgrade their system. What it means for me is that all my customized modifications are screwed up. I had to tweak my module back to what it was, although it's not all done yet. I also took the chance, since I was gonna do a lot of modifications anyway, escpecially in adding keywords to all the previous entries, to enlarge some of the photos. So if you're using an RSS reader to view these, you might notice old letters getting reposted.


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Rehashed

© Joselito Briones

Don't even start with me about the photo... I just don't have anything else to put here, OK? It's an old picture, one that I took in Greece, a slide printed on a non-color-reversal paper (hence the negative effect).

Today I'm officially lost in my German lessons. Genitiv? What the crap is that? I must've spent the whole class time with my mouth open and my hands constantly scratching my head (and I swear I washed my hair this morning).


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Thanksgiving

© Joselito Briones

It's that hokey time of the year again... when you're supposed to think of all the positive things that has happened in your life, or things that you have, and express gratitude. Naturally, I do not want to think THAT hard. I do think it's appropriate to be thankful to have had "Bed Day", yesterday.

I phoned Norie in California to wish her happy thanksgiving. Turns out they had an early dinner, with her Kevin and Dave, my two brothers Noel and Cesar, and Uding and Little Kevin. Since this holiday calls specifically for enormous dead birds, she decided to (gasp!) order, from the place where she usually gets her honey-roasted ham, a (gasp!) deep-fried turkey. She's adventurous that way, you'll have to give her that. She was already doing the dishes though, by the time I called, and was getting ready for her nap.


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"Bed Day"

© Joselito Briones

Have you heard of this holiday before? We don't have school today here in Germany (or maybe it's just Bavaria) because this is supposed to be the day in the middle of the week when you're supposed to just lounge around in bed all day. Am not shitting you, it's true!

Oh well, I might have spent all day in my pj's, but in front of my computer. I edited some pictures, for the brochure. I also did a new version of this photo that I took of Carrie a couple of years ago in New York. I wanted to experiment in high-key desaturated colors.


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You know you're in the pits when..

© Joselito Briones

...what you're used to walking two blocks for, you now have to go to the next city, by train, to look for, and be informed when you do find a store that carries it, that you have to pre-order it, and that you'll have to come back after 3 days to collect it.

The item in question is a pack of matte-finish heavy stock A3 size photo paper. Fortunately, one of the shops I inquired from recommended one other shop that might carry this item. The name of the place is Saturn. I had to ask for directions at least 3 times, and use what little German I know in trying to understand whatever directions I was given, to find the place. It turns out they do carry the paper, although not the double-sided kind that I was looking for. I bought a pack anyway.


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P.S.
The picture, again, has got nothing to do with anything else written here. This isn't even what I wanted to print on the paper I was looking for. This is just another experiment in post-processing images taken with a digital camera.

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