Tell me this isn’t some of the smartest driving you’ve ever seen. No wonder those roads were so lethal in Rome.

Oh dear. This film came out when I was 12 and I remembered it being terrifically exciting. Zorin seemed more evil than it was ever possible to be, Mayday the coolest henchwoman of the series and the high tech plot was spot on for its day.

And then, after perhaps five or ten years of not having seen it, we watched it again last night. Not good.

The plot is almost non-existent, and when you compare it to the latest Bonds there’s so much chat and so little ‘doing’. The computers, which crop up frequently, are so very very outdated for a film 23 years old, and the plot’s dependence on them makes it look even more of a dinosaur. It looks even more out of date than older films like Goldfinger or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

The characters are entirely one-dimensional, the lines are corny and Roger Moore is very old. Nothing wrong with that, unless you’re bedding a woman young enough to be your daughter (he was 28 years older than Stacey Sutton with whom he had his wicked way in the shower and 29 years older than Pola Ivanova, whom he had pressed up against the side of a Jacuzzi). And don’t get me started on the names. Jenny Flex. Monsieur Aubergine. May Day…

Even the soundtrack sounded recycled. You could easily have cut it into Octopussy and nobody would have known, and the noise on Stacey’s computer when she’s pinpointing the epicentre of the earthquake is the same as is made by the globe in the Liparus control room as it tracks the nuclear missiles in The Spy Who Loved Me.

This was Roger Moore’s last film, and not before time. The franchise was looking tired by 1985, and it needed to be reinvented. He should have stopped after For Your Eyes Only.

A View to a Kill (with retrospect):

Speaking of The Spy Who Loved Me, anyone who knows both it and Goldeneye well (and the soundtrack to The World is Not Enough), will appreciate this very clever bit of editing:

’007 goes rogue’ is how they billed it. The last time they did that – License to Kill – was one of the series’ low points, portraying a cold, heartless character, and a story that lacked many of the franchise’s cornerstone features.

Well, Quantum of Solace doesn’t do that, but the three star ratings it garnered in most of the press reviews weren’t far off the mark. There’s still no Q, and there are no gadgets beyond an impressive array of Sony phones that run software years ahead of their time. There’s no Moneypenny and the villain – a fay environmentalist called Dominic Greene – has all the menace of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. His sidekick is more Bob-a-Job than Odd-Job.

There are some genuine edge-of-seat highs, like a prop-driven aerial dogfight and the much-hyped car chase, which really is brutal, exciting and loud. But in trying to emulate the Bourne films by putting you right in the middle of a fight or the Aston Martin’s driving seat it becomes confused and hard to follow. Bourne simply – sadly – did it better. Perhaps because it did it first and now we’re always comparing.

Never is the more evident than those times when director Forster stops trying to copy the competition and goes his own way, producing something so grand and impressive as Bregenzer Festspiele opera house scenes and the graceful gunfight that ties them off.

If the crew had been brave enough to do this throughout and create something entirely their own it would have been a stand-out entry in the franchise. In parts, though, it feels like a best-of. MI6 has dumped Windows and switched to whatever operating system they used in Minority Report, Agent Fields gets the Goldfinger treatment, although this time with oil, not gold paint. The eco hotel in which the climactic battle takes place looks for all the world like Ken Adam’s Fort Knox (Goldfinger) or the power station (green energy again) in The Man with the Golden Gun. And Quantum itself is the modern day Spectre.

That this is a more intelligent Bond isn’t in doubt, and it has once again stripped away the clutter of the Brosnan era to produce something more in tune with the rough, stark, more authentic From Russia With Love.

I left the cinema feeling a little disappointed, but suspecting that this would be a film that repayed rewatching. Two days later, I’m convinced that’s true, and already looking forward to the DVD.

And also to the third part of what is looking increasingly like a trilogy. We still don’t know what Bond found out from Vesper’s boyfriend, what Canadian intelligence has to do with all of this, or who heads up Quantum (or quite what it is). There is clearly a new Blofeld on the scene, and it wasn’t eco-warrior Dominic Greene.

Quantum of Solace:

A very literal translation. They clearly haven’t got a clue what they’re singing. Nonetheless it’s so catchy you’ll be whistling it all night, if not trying out some of those fabulous crazy dance moves.

On Friday night we discovered the best song EVER recorded by humankind. Austria’s entry for Eurovision 1982, which we were watching with Mark and Bill over curry. Genius. And just look at the crazy dancing. That stage is polished and still they don’t fall over, even with his gangly arms and sideways kicks.

Anyhow, they came ninth, which is a very poor showing. Nicole won for Germany with Ein bisschen Frieden (translated to A Little Peace when it got to number 1 in the UK), despite Austria only giving her one point.

Wendy Craig took time out from filming Butterflies to sing for Switzerland.

But there was some real durge in there, too. Finland sang an anti-bomb song that deservedly got nul points, Yugoslavia pitched up three women of whom only two actually looked like women, and Portugal really didn’t know what was going on.

If there was a prize to be won for pulling faces, though, it should have gone to the guy in beige prancing around behind Spain’s entrant. I suspect his trousers were too tight. Skip through to two minutes if you haven’t got time to watch it all.

Technorati Tags:
eurovision, eurovision+song+contest, 1982

This really kicks off at 1 minute 53 seconds. I can’t believe we used to watch this stuff.

One woman has already missed her flat viewing as she can’t get there on time. Another one got grabbed by a client in the next carriage who detained her for a chat on the way to the buffet. The woman in the seat across the aisle from me said that some embryos needed to be ‘put back into the injection tube’ (whatever that means) as she wasn’t going to get there any time soon.

And neither am I. Anywhere. We’ve been sitting at Harold Wood for close to an hour now due to broken signals all the way along the line between Goodmayes and Ilford.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck here answering my emails (hallelujah mobile broadband) listening to the inane details of everyone else’s lives as they narrate them into their mobiles.

Perhaps I’ll make up something juicy and broadcast it to the carriage myself.

UPDATED: 12h19 and I’ve finally arrived at work, over two hours late. On the plus side, a woman two seats back and one to the side from me managed to get her car insurance sorted out after a long time on hold, and the woman in the seat in front of her applied for a new bank card, in the process telling everyone at our end of the coach her name, branch, account number, sort code and birthdate.

It’s been something of a record this week. It took a good two hours to get into work one day on a journey that as the crow flies is a mere 35 miles. That was nothing compared to today. Rich got to the station and they were turning everyone back at the gates. The points had failed and there were no trains going anywhere.

So he came home and we worked from here.

Working at home is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand you don’t have any of the distractions you get in the office – no ringing phones, nobody wandering up to your desk, no half-heard conversations going on at other desks. It means you get a lot done, and since eight this morning I’ve popped out 3,840 words, including most of a feature for the next issue.

So that’s all good.

But on the other hand you have to try and keep up with your other jobs, do your emails through a browser rather than a proper client and sit by a window looking out on the garden where you’d rather be pulling up carrots or harvesting this year’s beetroot or playing with the chickens, who have been standing at the front of their run looking up at the study window waiting for someone to come down with some corn for them to peck at.

You also end up working much longer as there are no defined ends to the day. I’m just packing up now, at gone 7pm, having not spotted that the end of the day – technically 6 – passed an hour ago.

So, let’s keep our fingers crossed for better trains tomorrow. For one thing it’ll get us away from the fermenter. We’re brewing wine this week, and its air lock is sputtering out a vaguely winey gas at regular intervals from where it sits in a corner of the kitchen. The cat’s not too keen on the noise and I can’t say I’m too enamoured with the smell. I’m sure we must have the whiff of a wino whenever we leave the house.

Now that the US election is over and the Republicans have been comprehensively trounced, the talk has begun of who may run against the incumbent in 2012. Palin’s name is being bandied around with worrying regularity.

But it’s not all in favour. While her die-hard supporters would love her to run for the highest office in four years’ time, those in the party who dislike her way of working are finally starting to talk about what went on behind the scenes in this year’s campaign.

And why not? They have nothing more to lose now they’ve lost the presidency.

McCain, in his concession speech, said that the loss was all his own fault, perhaps because he knows he can never run again and his deputy has a chance of making it next time. According to Palin, meanwhile, saying she caused the failure of their campaign gives her too much credit.

‘I don’t think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain’s loss to me,’ she said.

But clearly some believe she did have something to do with that loss, and now they’re starting to talk. About how she wouldn’t prepare for TV interviews, how she had tantrums at bad press reports, how she gave a briefing wearing just a towel and how she didn’t realise that Africa was a continent, not a country.

Even Fox news, which is traditionally sympathetic to the Republican cause, reported the unnamed insiders’ vented feelings.

Here’s the report:

That’s scary.

It’s not inconceivable that she could run for office in 2012, but Palin’s biggest problem is what her supporters see as her biggest asset: her strong views. Palin is a polarising force, and I suspect that in the next four years, out of office and with plenty of time to plan its next campaign, the Republican Party will come to the realisation that it needs a moderate candidate to unify both sides of the party.

Palin, strong though she may be, probably isn’t that person.

• Dreamy Photo Effect
  Simulate the effect of expensive lenses in Photoshop.
  (tags: photoshop photography)
• Post-Processing Tricks: Vintage Effects
  Sinulate blown and faded colours using Photoshop’s curves control.
  (tags: photoshop photography)