Strawberry Fields forever

Although I will to have to watch Quantum of Solace about ten more times on the DVD, plus carry out further research on Wikipedia, to figure out what the heck the plot was all about, I found it almost as good as Casino Royale. It is on a par with any of the Brosnan films (with the possible exception of Goldeneye), though perhaps it headed a little too closely into Jason Bourne territory, which is understandable due to its use of the same film editor as the latest Bourne series outing.

The dreadful day when an American is cast as Bond, thus marking the final takeover of the British Empire by the Americans, will still be delayed as long as we can find actors of the stature of Daniel Craig, but with Quantum of Solace we are a quantum closer. The human need to observe and celebrate the eternal Man-God of Hercules, as portrayed by Bourne and Bond, and a myriad of others, is blending into a sameness, but I suppose that the market will have its way, even if I, as an individual, prefer my Bond heroes to be a little less "Man" and a little more "God".

Yes, it's more human that Bond these days bleeds a little more for Blighty than he used to, but I still miss Roger Moore's solution of difficult situations via the wry lifting of his eyebrow to summon the other powers on Olympus to rise from their gilded ambrosial slumber, and to help him a little more energetically, especially Tyche, the Goddess of Luck.

But no matter. A fine film, which will no doubt be all the finer once I have drunk it in enough to work out the point of the plot, where the two bullets came from at the end, and whatever it was Mathis said in the key scene at the centre of the movie.

What was best about the film, however, was not Craig's portrayal of Hercules, but the fun the scriptwriters had with the Quantum organisation; the chief Quantum villain of the film sported the marvellously environmentalist name of 'Greene', plus a career as a major player in the environmentalist movement.

Thus, the new Bond villains set to replace the communists are, wait for it, the environmentalists! Superb. One might have even suspected that a certain Jack Maturin had earned himself an uncredited screenplay debut! Marvellous.

And of course, who else in real life could be the shadowy Quantum group of international crooks, financiers and politicians, other than the shadowy Bilderberg group of international crooks, financiers and politicians? I suspect a few alarm bells will have rung for this bunch of mafiosi gangsters and banksters, when its individual members saw the film. It certainly looked a pretty close fit to me, particularly during the Opera scene. But I desperately don't want to end up in the furry undergrowth territory of David Icke and his conspiracy theorist friends, so I'll leave it there for the moment. (I prefer to think of our ruling overlord masters as being merely lizards and slime balls, in the sense of Douglas Adams, rather than actually being reptilian humanoids).

However, if you are unsure about the interconnected tendrils of this disgusting organisation, and its related "friends" in Chatham House, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission, the best place to get started is Uncle Murray's incredible series of pieces describing the links between all of these Quantum-like groups, as marvellously posited in Quantum of Solace by the links between the CIA and Quantum; read them all, especially the first one, and weep:

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy

Rothbard on Greenspan

The Conspiracy Theory of History Revisited

Swan Song of the Old Right

The Reagan Phenomenon