Thursday, November 20, 2008

Not even a quantum of solace!

Everyone is excited about the new Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace", that released last week in the US. Everyone that is, except me. We went out for dinner last weekend and ran into some friends who were going to go watch this "movie event". The discussion automatically turned to whether the movie was watchable or not and what stunts there would be in the movie and which of the wonderful technological advances shown in the movie were actually accessible to the common man. All wonderful bond traits and things to discuss about any Bond movie from any era. I enthusiastically joined in... until the discussion turned to who made a better Bond, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Everyone agreed Daniel Craig was good, maybe not as much eye candy as Pierce Brosnan, but not bad on the eyes either, except me who has taken a weird aversion to him. I don't know what it is about some people that turns you off instantly. For eg., there is nothing wrong with Daniel Craig (atleast acc to popular opinion). He's a fairly decent actor who's no worse than the other male stars out there, he's not very bad-looking, a lot of people consider him very handsome, and intellectually, I know he does a decent Bond. I mean, you can't do worse than Timothy Dalton, in any case, right? So my brain tells me there's nothing to hate about him, cause the emotion I have is stronger than mere dislike, its not as strong as hate maybe, but its definitely getting up there. I pray I don't smack his face if ever I run into him somewhere (highly unlikely, so I'm safe there!).
I read somewhere that babies have a built-in evolutionary way of telling if someone is good-looking... they look for symmetry in the features and the expression in people's eyes. As far as symmetry goes, I can understand if the mathematical part of your brain likes that, and therefore if a face is completely unsymmetrical, we call that bad-looking. That makes perfect sense. So does the idea that the expression in a person's eyes appeals to your instincts or your emotions and you like people who smile with their eyes or dislike those who glare at you. But as far as actors are concerned, their every expression goes through a gamut of people, from the casting director to the cameraman to the editor before it winds up in your face, so why should this highly filtered input not cause anything but admiration. It mystifies me what exactly it is about certain faces that you like instantly (I guess we call it "clicking with someone") and what about other people drives you to violence unnecessarily. :)
For now, it remains a chemical imbalance in my brain that causes me to dislike actors like Daniel Craig and Raveena Tandon at first sight, without even considering their body of work. I guess I will cave under pressure and curiosity and end up watching "QofS" someday, but I donot believe I will enjoy the actor much.

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