It’s a relief to know that there are others out there. For a long time I thought I was alone; alone in a cold and unpunctuated world. You can imagine my delight and relief at finding other people who care about punctuation as much as I do, and are willing to go to great lengths to keep the standards up.

This book explains the use and history of punctuation. It’s intended to be more approachable than your average straight-forward punctuation guide. It covers the obvious stuff and sheds some light on the less well-known uses and compares the rules given in other punctuation guides.[ftn] Not having covered much grammar and punctuation in English, I found it interesting; the difference between a colon and a semicolon was most informative.

Equally as fascinating is the history of punctuation and the speculation on the future. Most punctuation didn’t exist until the printing press was invented in the 15th century and it seems to be having a hard time crossing over to the internet. Maybe it’s the lack of editors on the net or the lack of a proper English education these days. The only place I’ve found on the net containing some decent punctuation was while reading reviews for this book.

The part I liked most about the book is, while it gives plenty of examples, the text itself is one big example about how to use punctuation. It explains punctuation while using it. This kind of thing amuses me.³ I liked the comparison between good manners and punctuation too: they’re both invisible when used properly.

As I suspected, the apostrophe is the main problem people have with punctuation. While the Apostrophe Protection Society is a nice attempt to spread the light, this book suggests a more aggressive campaign is needed. We should form a militant wing who hunt down abusers and misusers of punctuation. We are encouraged to “embrace your inner stickler” and join the minority of people who will point out mistakes on signs, on posters, in titles, in newspapers, in letters, in emails and on billboards. Recommended equipment includes big red markers to make corrections with. All we need is a leader to unite us and lead us to victory over ignorance. In Lynne Truss, I believe we have such a leader. Sticklers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

Footnotes

1. Made you look, Tom. This isn’t a real footnote. It’s just here to interrupt your reading.
2. One of the funniest things I ever heard.
3. Then again, custard amuses me. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.
4. The second footnote isn’t in the review. It’s just to make Tom look through the article again to find what it is referring to.

Keira Knightley will be starring in a Working Title adaptation of Pride and Prejudice as Elizabeth Bennett! AND, Rosamunde Pike (from Die Another Day) will be playing Jane!

Well, it excites me.

Some exciting news has been brought to my attention: Jessica Alba is in Fantastic Four. It is due out in 279 days and she’ll be wearing spandex. She’s also in Sin City. Due out in 188 days. More on Sin City.

This news has brought light to my life. All though the twitching had stopped, the withdrawal made me depressed. Now I hear the world isn’t so bad after all. Plus Kirsten Dunst is in a new movie and Doom 3 finally downloaded and the DS won’t be here until Q1 2005. I’d better take another dose of Stargate.

DS news.

That’s it. I’ve run out of Stargate. I don’t even have anymore of those Atlantis ones to watch. I can feel the shakes beginning. Maybe I can make it to rehab before the headaches get too bad.

Mmmmm. Always pays to pop by JB Hi-Fi. Certain box sets of definitive classic movie trilogies might have been released early. Darth Vader, Boba Fett and a Stormtrooper tried to stop me purchasing said box set, but a Jedi held them off while I snuck past.

No, really.

By day, I am mild-mannered Tom but by night, I watch Smallville. Which sucks. Yesterday was the episode where the hero’s friend gets in with a bad crowd and thinks the hero is jealous/mean/unappreciative of his gifts when he cautions him against it. I could write some of this with my eyes closed. Kinf og likr yhid buy eiyh bryyrt dprllinh.

This whole “no parents” thing takes a bit of getting used to. All these little jobs that got done invisibly behind my back. Closing the blinds. Opening the blinds. Preparing dinner. And who knew that clothes didn’t wash themselves? They’ve been sitting in the corner of my room for ages, and still have yet to do that thing where they jump neatly folded and clean onto the end of my bed.

In geekier news, I got around to installing the AdBlock extension to Firefox today. Oh my. See an ad you don’t like? I presume this is all of them. Right click on it, block it and all others like it. Pow! They’re gone. I’ve killed five sorts of ads already today and I’m just getting started. I always quite appreciated the subtelty of Google’s ads but I destroyed them anyway.

I have the video camera again, so a series of ‘webisodes’ charting our time in Canada might turn up. Bite size pieces, I’m thinking. Sadly — or perhaps happily for you folks — we don’t have overly exhaustive footage. But stay tuned to NTGF for “Operation: Hypothermia” and “Assassinate Georgie-Boy”.

I can’t believe Monash don’t have mid-semester break yet. What are you losers waiting for? Any later and you’ll have to call it swot vac.

If you haven’t seen this you should now! Steal a car to drive you to a house where you beat people until they get you this video: Dawn of War Intro Video. There’s also a demo but I haven’t tried it because I’m afraid it will be a let down after that video.

In my watching Stargate news: The guy from the Nanny turned up. He won’t come back to Earth if he knows what’s good for him. I’m on a four Stargate a day habit. I tried only one or two initially but it was too addictive. Unfortunately my stash is running out. I had some real good stuff. I know a guy who can get them at 700 meg for two eps. I’ve tried cutting it with Atlantis but it’s not the same.

The evil space aliens are going to eat Agent Doggett! Where’s Mulder when you need him? I guess being eaten is a risk you have to take if you want to explore another galaxy. Still it wasn’t mentioned in the briefing before they left.

“Everyone volunteered for this mission. You represent a dozen countries. You are the best and brightest. We have only one shot at this and we may not be able to return. Some of you will be eaten. Let’s go.”

I should have been suspicious when he wasn’t mentioned in the credits.

The thing I like most about Goldeneye is, it’s not lace, nor leather. It’ll do what I please, and has no time for sweetness. It also has really, really bizarre lyrics to its title song, in the grand old James Bond tradition.

The first Bond film in ages when it was released in 1995, Goldeneye made quite a splash. I don’t recall much of it, but I do remember the Nintendo 64 game. Which isn’t strictly relevant to this review. Interestingly, the three subsequent Pierce Brosnan Bond films are quite different to this one — the rest have the same writers and composer, and Goldeneye is notably different on both counts.

Goldeneye opens with a flashback[ftn] that introduces a villain with a more emotional connection to Bond than normal — a good start, with some excellent stunts thrown in. There are good chases, good fights, women with sexy Russian accents[ftn] and funny lines. I’m tempted to call it the perfect Bond film. While it keeps an emotional side to the story, it doesn’t usually get in the way of the plot, and at no point does it drop all its integrity and just go completely stupid, unlike a certain Bond film that will remain nameless. Director Martin Campbell is known for his magnificent British mini-series, Edge of Darkness, and brings some of that grittiness to this film. Sensibly for a Bond film, he leaves a lot of it behind.

The dialogue in Goldeneye is for the most part far superior to later Brosnan Bond films. Here, Bond is after the women, certainly, but makes very few sleazy jokes, and more than a few good silly ones — teasing the Russian Defense Minister about the lost art of interrogation, and thanking assassin Xenia Onatopp for “a lovely time”. The romance is a shade more convincing than most Bond films, though as per usual for an action film, there’s a moment where for no apparent reason two people who’ve been dodging bullets and getting hit for half an hour suddenly snog. And for all I know, that really does happen when you do all that. I’m not about to try it out though. At one point, the villain does put Bond in an easily escapable situation, but it turns out to be part of a plan to frame him and so can’t be boiled down to villain incompetence / bad writing.

The music is interesting. I’ve read harsh criticism of it from people who believe Bond films should only ever have big brassy music, and weren’t so big on Eric Serra’s[ftn] more peculiar scoring. As far as Bond films go, I like the music to play a big part, and hate it when it falls into the background for large stretches of time — something that’s obviously desirable in other genres of film. That doesn’t happen here, and Serra’s echoing, percussive score gives a lot of tension to the movie.

Brosnan himself would’ve been a breath of fresh air after the extreme seriousness of Dalton, and extreme campness of Moore. An actor who can do both? Amazing. Brosnan’s bond is cheeky and likeable in this outing, yet brutal and focussed when he has to be. He’s very convincing at getting beaten up, too, I was wincing a bit in the final throw-down. It’s a shame that later films wouldn’t give him quite as much silliness to play with, although they did keep the emotional pain coming regularly. Natalya and Onatopp are both excellent Bond girls. Natalya is genuinely convincing as a self-motivated sidekick to Bond, even if she is far far too gorgeous to have ever learned anything about computers. Onatopp is over the top, and yet she fits into the film perfectly. If I die prematurely, I want it to happen between Famke Janssen’s thighs. It beats having my neck sliced open by a metal-rimmed bowler hat in any case.

The other characters are pretty good too — Ourumov is a fantastic highly strung Russian general, and Sean Bean as always acquits himself well. Playing 006 must be pretty cool — all the fun with none of the typecasting. Although, probably not as much money. The Q scene is fantastic — “That’s my lunch!” — and the action is continually entertaining. Though someone should tell them that you can’t have it both ways — if you want a vehicle to get crushed by a tank, you can’t then show everyone getting out unhurt a moment later. If you want people to get out unscathed, then, well, don’t scathe them.

The film even manages to flesh out Bond’s character a shade, and make it nearly convincing. “He was your friend. And now he’s your enemy and you will kill him,” sums up Natalya, indignant at being caught in the black and white world of the action movie. Bond is forced to agree, but at least he looks a bit sad about it too. Later comments by 006 concerning the men Bond has killed and the women he failed to protect aren’t handled quite as well.

Amazingly, Goldeneye keeps a near-consistent tone throughout, despite featuring women who murder men by suffocating them between their legs, a comedy Russian crime boss played perfectly by Robbie Coltrane, a crazy tank chase, and a man who can fall from a great height into a plane and pull it out of a dive. Because he’s Bond. James Bond. And this is him at his best. Now, if someone could just make a cinema show it,[ftn] I’d really like to see that tank business on the big screen.

DVD Review

This DVD, like all the Bond ones I’ve bought, for some reason requires you to press ‘enter’ at the very start in order to get to the menu. I can’t understand it. It’s not like you’ve got an option. II like to turn on the DVD player, get food, and come back with everything ready for me. This stupid menu was seemingly made specifically to make me unhappy.

On slightly less petty matters, there’s a commentary by Martin Campbell and producer Michael G. Wilson, which isn’t quite as boring as most Bond commentaries, since there’s a bit to talk about regarding the introduction of a new actor, as well as the large gap between Bond films. Tina Turner’s Goldeneye music video is there, too — only to view if you want to see just how daggy music videos used to be.

The best feature is probably the Goldeneye Video Diary. Starting off with the caption “Day One,” it looks like it’s going to be amazingly exhaustive for a moment, but doesn’t actually do every day individually. It gives excellent insight into the stunts however, and makes me really concerned that no one will bother doing any in ten years time or so. There’s an extra thrill to watching the dam bungee jump or motorcycle dive at the beginning of the film when you know someone really did it.

Your proper DVD reviews will mention the audio and visual transfer, aspect ratios, sound quality and colours. You’ll find them on proper sites.

Footnotes

1. As regular Grapefruit readers know, flashbacks are cool.
2. Thus allowing me to show a gorgeous woman who’s actually relevant to the review. There’s a challenge for you, Andy.
3. Serra did the awesome score to The Fifth Element, too.
4. I’ve been checking The Astor’s listings for years in this hope. But nooooo, they keep trotting out boring Roger Moore films. Pah.

Oh yes. I’ve got positive money. No more of this negative money, or anti-money as I like to call it. Nasty stuff. So now, I’m earning interest and not paying bank fees. Oh happy day. I’m one step closer to my iMac. Mmmmm. iMac.

I’m also only two days away from my parents’ three week holiday. Party at my place! Everyone’s invited!

No, not you. I don’t like you.

In other news, Kofi Annan has said that by the UN Charter, the Iraq war was illegal. All the people involved seem hurt by that comment. Frankly, if the UN Charter doesn’t have some line in it to the effect of “If the UN tells you not to do something, and you do it, then that’s ILLEGAL,” then it’s exactly the kind of pathetic institiution these same people continually accuse it of being. But no, no one is impressed, they all insist it was quite legal, and kinda brush over the bit where the UN told them not to go, and they went.

It makes me wish we were still doing St Crispin’s News. Then Jackson could write a comedy story effortlessly melding GameCubes and UN Charter Law, and I could laugh.