It was a matter of time..

"Bond. James Bond."

Daniel Craig was tough, edgy, understated, athletic to a fault, convincing entirely without the sort of "overacted underacting" the character has become famous for. I enjoyed his first Bond film, Casino Royale, immensely.

But in the end even the British version of Hollywood is what it is.

The new Bond film will be written 'in the context of global warming'.

The new villain, a French actor named Amalric, says "It's so difficult to know who are the villains today. ... Maybe they're in banks, maybe they are the insurance companies, maybe they're in labs, even in the subprime crisis".

Uh, yeah.

Then again, maybe they're Islamic terrorists. Maybe they're trying to FUND or ARM Islamic terrorists. Maybe they're in the UN and they're trying to skim billions from world charity or trying to stamp out Israel, a UN member in good standing.

One can hardly recognize the villains these days....

The plot apparently involves money interests trying to reinstate a dictator in return for shares of the natural resources. They don't even see the irony here-- dictators passing out natural resources in return for unethical support and for ignoring little problems like their mass graves and suffering people, well, that was exactly the problem Bush was trying to SOLVE.

They've done it. They've put me off James Bond movies.

These are sad times.