Casino Royale, the Ian Fleming novel that started the James Bond franchise, is the first 007 movie to star blond Brit actor Daniel Craig. The Observer's Tim Adams got a first look.

This column by NYT public editor Byron Calame is ostensibly about obtaining fair comment, but it also has an interesting vignette about the perils of relying on a database search.

Those Nazis had an ideal physique in mind. As part of achieving it, they had a project called "Lebensborn" or "Font of Life," designed to raise children who would meet that ideal. For the first time, the children of that project have met as adults.

If you read the posts in chronological order, you'll realize I went to Kensington Market this morning. Being a lazy guy in the kitchen, I didn't really have breakfast before I headed out, partly because I had visions of the Big Fat Burrito breakfast burrito dancing in my head.

The burrito is undeniably tasty, but at $5.50, is it good value?

Are you getting the same ratio of food weight per dollar spent that you would with a more conventional breakfast or sandwich? In other words, should the burrito actually be priced in the four-dollar range?

I suspect it's more profitable to flog burritos than more conventional fare. Someone should do some research into this burning issue.

There is a cheese shop in Kensington Market that I frequent.

I feel my order has become entirely too predictable. So, apparently, does the staff there.

"Three dollars worth of cheddar, sir?" said the clerk today, clearly ground down by the tyranny of monotony that my purchasing pattern imposes on her.

"You're right: I don't really vary my order a lot," I conceded. But then I added, in faux protest: "I've had the cream cheese. I've bought some feta now and again. I've had the gouda."

"Well I haven't sold it to you," she groused back. "Must be some other store."

Then she said, "We call you 'Cheddar Man'."

So I'm right up there with 'Late Lady' as having a nickname with the shop's staff.

"We call her 'Late Lady' because she always comes in right before closing time, at five-to-six every Saturday," the clerk said.

"You know why? Because she always goes to pray first at St. Patrick's church."

I told the clerk that one of these days, I'm going to come in with a cheesehead hat (in cheddar, of course) just to make everyone in the shop laugh.

Gabriele Torsello was snatched last month, as was his Afghan translator. While Torsello -- whom his kidnappers wanted to trade to Italy at one point in return for an Afghan convert to Christianity -- has been released, the translator's fate isn't known yet.

From the NYT review by A.O. Scott:

(Babel) tells four distinct stories, disclosing bit by bit the chronology and causality that link them and making much of the linguistic, cultural and geographical distances among the characters. The movie travels — often by means of jarringly abrupt cuts and shifts of tone — from the barren mountains of Morocco, where the dominant sound is howling wind, to fluorescent Tokyo, where the natural world has been almost entirely supplanted by a technological environment, to the anxious border between the United States and Mexico. Each place has its own aural and visual palette. The languages used by the astonishingly diverse cast include Spanish, Berber, Japanese, sign language and English. The misunderstandings multiply accordingly, though they tend to be most acute between husbands and wives or parents and children, rather than between strangers.

Surely, something must hold this world — or, at any rate, this film’s vision of the world — together. Whether anything does is the question most likely to fuel the cafe-table arguments “Babel” will surely provoke. The individual scenes are sometimes so powerful, and put together with such care and conviction, that you might leave the theater feeling dazed, even traumatized. “Babel” is certainly an experience. But is it a meaningful experience? That the film possesses unusual aesthetic force strikes me as undeniable, but its power does not seem to be tethered to any coherent idea or narrative logic. You can feel it without ever quite believing it.

From the NYT:

The action in Volver moves back and forth between a workaday neighborhood in Madrid and a windswept village in the Spanish countryside. Really, though, the movie takes place in a familiar, enchanted land -- Almodóvaria, you might call it, or maybe Pedrostan— where every room and street corner is saturated with bright color and vivid feeling and where discordant notes of violence, jealousy and fear ultimately resolve in the deeper harmonies of art.

Pedro Almodóvar, the benevolent deity of this world, has revealed it -- or, rather, created it -- piece by piece from one film to the next. His two previous movies, Talk to Her (2002) and Bad Education (2004), explored previously uncharted regions of masculine melodrama, while Volver, whose title can be translated as “to return,” revisits the woman-centered territory of All About My Mother (1999) and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). Drawing on influences ranging from Latin American telenovelas to classic Hollywood weepies and on an iconography of female endurance that includes Anna Magnani and Joan Crawford, Mr. Almodóvar has made yet another picture that moves beyond camp into a realm of wise, luxuriant humanism.

Here is what The Guardian's John Patterson says about The Host, a South Korean movie:

Bong Joon-Ho: what a fantastically evocative name. With a handle like that, the South Korean director could easily be an ounce-a-day pothead or an Asian porno superslut. Sadly, he is neither, but with his new horror movie, The Host, he deserves our heartfelt commendation for reviving the fine old tradition of taking an innocent monster movie and packing it to the irradiated gills with yeasty political satire, knowingly zeitgeisty nods to Our Present Plight, and plenty of digs at the squid-brained idiots we have elected to rule over us. In times like these we need more of this sort of thing.

Incidentally, The Host screened at TIFF '06.

From a fortune cookie:

You combine good taste with a quick mind

When a comedian is willing to risk being beaten or shot -- and possibly worse, to have a very fat man's naked ass and testes mashed against his face -- both to make us laugh and to make a point, one has to salute their courage.

Not everyone thinks it's a good idea, and there are issues in deciding how it will fit with the Arabic-language mothership, according to this BBC story:

Rev. Ted Haggard, head of the 14,000-member New Life Church and the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals, has stepped aside while his colleagues investigate a man's claims that Haggard paid him for sex.

From the NYT:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”

The Pakistan government claimed the Dec. 1, 2005 death of an al Qaeda figure and four other men was due to a munitions mishap. Pakistani journalist Hayatullah Khan reported that based on his evidence, the men were killed by a U.S. missile strike -- a very sensitive topic in Pakistan. He paid for his scoop with his life.

Khan was one of three journalists honoured Wednesday night at the International Press Freedom Awards.

The Beeb's excellent Pakistan correspondent Aamer Ahmed Khan looks at what role the United States may have played in the bombing of a Pakistan madrassa alleged to be a militant training centre.

Barrett Hooper sayeth: "The Hour's weak and whiny host can't sustain CBC's hipster entry."

Here's a news release from Sun Media announcing an editiorial re-org of sorts:

Charles LeBlanc, who regularly buttonholes cabinet ministers in Fredericton, N.B. to interview them for his blog, found himself charged with obstruction last year following a demonstration. He plans to use a 'freedom of the press' defence based on the fact he was doing journalism at the time.

Real estate prices in New York City aren't what they used to be, but then again they are dropping across the U.S.. And with lots of of condos about to hit the market, developers are are getting more "creative" about selling them.

Flavor Flav, one component of the seminal hip hop group Public Enemy, has used reality TV -- namely his hit VH1 show Flavor of Love -- to power his own career. But some are asking whether he's treading too close to the line between satire and the perpetuation of racial stereotypes.

The NYT has obtained a classified briefing for U.S. Central Command that suggests Iraq is edging towards chaos.

The less educated among us -- ok, like me, for example -- may well ask, "no shit?"

The NYT and CBS News have a new poll that says Americans expect the Democrats to "substantially reduce or end U.S. military involvement in Iraq" if they take control of Congress on Nov. 7.

And just as surprisingly, they think Republicans will try to maintain or increase troop levels if they win the midterms.

According to the Delphic Oracle known as Wikipedia, right-wing pundit and sometime presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan first coined the phrase "Soviet Canuckistan" (which I use below) in 2002 to describe our home and native land.

While that phrase has always made me smile, there are some obvious problems.

For one thing, as we move forward in time, more and more people will have no clue there was once a Soviet Union (the end of history and all that).

The Canuckistan part still has some legs, IMO.

However, with the "new government of Canada," we're not a bunch of over-taxed, pot-possessing, gay-marriage-positive hedonists out to bang 14-year-olds any more. Nope, we are sober family values types who work hard, pay our taxes and play by the rules. So maybe it doesn't fit after all.

I don't often beg for comments, but if somebody -- anybody -- has a more au courant idea for an amusing replacement for Soviet Canuckistan, I really, really want to hear from you.

There may even be a prize involved. I'm thinking a really cheap keychain with some sort of Toronto motif (if you've walked Yonge St. between Gerrard and Dundas, you know what I mean). But don't think about the material reward; think of the exposure.

Yesterday, I noted an NYT story about falling newspaper circulation in the U.S.. Don't be smug, Soviet Canuckistani newspaper people: You're losing ground too, although your Web audiences are picking up.

Oh, and the National Post? Down 10 per cent weekdays and 11 per cent on weekends.

Most, but not all newspapers in Pakistan think the government was right to act when it leveled a madrassa on the Pakistan border, killing 80 people. They do have one request: Show some evidence it was a militants' training camp.

More at this BBC article.

On Nov. 1, 1996, al-Jazeera -- the Arab satellite TV network based in Qatar -- hit the airwaves. Since then, it has built an audience of 40 million Arabs. Its long-awaited English channel starts up on Nov. 15.

I had breakfast at the Cafe Diplomatico this morning. Had the omelette with a side order of sausages, plus a coffee.

Total bill: $9.07.

I paid with a $20 bill. I told the waitress that I had seven cents, as that way, she could give me back $11 in change.

She gives me back seven dollars. I inquire as to why.

"Oh, I thought you said, 'give me back seven'," she said, sounding slightly flustered.

You were thinking I'd give you a four-dollar tip on a nine-dollar meal? I don't think so! :)

Alberta's Premier Ralph Klein is in the late twilight of his political career.

Throughout his 26 years in elected office, he was known for being, uh, "outspoken." :)

Here's a feature I did for CTV.ca on some of Klein's choicer remarks.

BTW, Klein is going to do some teaching at Calgary's Mount Royal College. Here's an excerpt from the Calgary Sun story:

John Gushue has a post in which he asks people about favourite scary movies and/or particular scenes (his post was triggered by this Retrocrush article on the 100 scariest movie scenes -- which is a very Amerocentric list, in my opinion). Here's my contribution:

While one can take the first 45 minutes of Twin Peaks prequel Fire Walk With Me and erase them, the final scene is the very essence of horror. It's been more than 14 years since I've seen it and I can still conjure it in my mind.

Actually, the final two episodes of the TV series are worth revisiting.

There's several from Japanese director Takashi Miike: Audition, the 'box' sequence in Three Extremes, One Missed Call and Imprint.

A couple from Europe: Haute Tension and Calvaire.

And two in the horror-comedy vein that played at TIFF this year are Severance and Sheitan.

Another TIFF horror movie that got good reviews is All The Boys Love Mandy Lane.

To that I could add Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water, remade by Hollywood as Dark Water) by Japanese director Hideo Nakata, who also did the original Japanese versions of The Ring and The Grudge.

A Tale of Two Sisters, by the Korean director Ji-Woon Kim is another fine film, as is The Eye, by Thailand's the Pang brothers.

While it's hard to classify, a horror-comedy that's well worth seeing is Battle Royale, by Kinji Fukasaku.

Americans continue to abandon printed newspapers, according to new data released Monday. On the bright side, that's just continuing a trend that's been going on for a few decades.

An AP story from the NYT:

Google moved yesterday to expand efforts to provide software that helps users create and post materials online by acquiring a start-up, JotSpot, which develops online collaboration tools.

Terms were not disclosed.

The collaboration tools, known as wikis and popularized by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, let users create, modify and even delete information on items that others in a group have produced.

The chief executive of JotSpot, Joe Kraus, said the company would be able to grow by tapping into Google’s large user base and robust data centers.

In July, JotSpot released a new version of wikis that aims to make shared pages similar to spreadsheets, photo albums and other software that people already use.

A few posts of interest from David Akin's On The Hill blog:

He linked to an essay by the CBC's Iran Basen on the Harper government and the news media, posted to PressThink.

And he linked to an article on whether Wikipedia can ever make the grade as a credible source of reference information.

From the Beeb's The Editors blog:

We’ve been looking recently at a site called News Sniffer. Its stated aim is "to monitor corporate news organisations to uncover bias" and it does this by tracking changes to stories on this website and the others it monitors. It also looks for the "censoring" of comments to our Have Your Say pages.

On news stories, it automatically detects and shows where they have been amended or updated, then visually highlights the relevant lines or passages.

The Canadian Journalism Foundation will be hosting an event on Thursday, Dec. 7 on the media and the military.

The discussion will focus on the disconnect between reporting on the mission and the public's opinion of it.

Panelists include Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, chief of staff for land forces for the Canadian armed forces; John Wright, pollster with Ipsos-Reid; and Lisa LaFlamme, national affairs correspondent for CTV News. She's spent some time in Afghanistan.

LaFlamme, a senior colleague at CTV News, recently received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Wilfred Laurier University.

Congrats, Lisa! (just checking to see if you're reading! :) )

While I'm only going by my vibe from the trailers, I gotta say it looks promising!

And while I wasn't a big fan of Daniel Craig as the new Bond (I still think Clive Owen would have been a better choice), I'm starting to think he's going to do all right in the role.

General Aminullah Amrkhel claims he was too good at his job of arresting smugglers at Kabul's airport, and that organized crime figures had him forced out of his job.