My thinking on James Bond is that he can be anything you want -- but only one thing at a time. I remember the first Pierce Brosnan Bond, and it was like, here are the hoops you have to jump through, one two three: "shaken not stirred," Aston-Martin, inappropriate kissing, okay now you can have a plot. Have fun!

Lame.

Reinventing Bond is a matter of picking a vision -- any vision -- and sticking with it. Jason Bourne is basically one spinoff aspect of Bond (smooth killer with a complex); the Harrison Ford Jack Ryan is another (revenger and patriot). If they've picked Casino Royale to work from, then at least it implies they've chosen a vision. Probably not the same as Ian Fleming's vision, because, hello to the OTT self-flagellation, but something to put their backs up against.

And they did, with 15 minutes of the second half gone, stand-off Tyrone Dalton weaved his way over the try line for what was to be the only try of the game. ...

Let's not forget the Extreme Bond of Triple-X Vin Diesel, or the M:I franchise.

I think seeing a movie with liberal use of the F word is fine, so long as your boys know the limits. I remember my parents taking me to see the play "Hair" when I was 12. There is swearing and nudity in the play and I know they were nervous, but I felt sophisticated and mature that they trusted me to know where to draw the line. Make it about their maturity, and imply strongly that maturity means knowing the difference between what's onscreen and what they use in conversation and I think you'll be fine.

I saw "Splash" when I was about seven, and that's got full-frontal nudity in it. My parents rented it, and it was understood without having to say so that, yes, this has some Objectionable Content, but it's okay, because we're watching it with you. Having your parents there keeps things in perspective a bit, I think, particularly if you know they're not going to join you in a chorus of F-bombs later in the night just because you've seen a swearin' picture (as opposed to seeing it with your friends, which would guarantee that sort of thing).

Thanks guys. I probably could go with the 14yo, but the 11yo I think is too young. After reading a zillion reviews I'm scared off now. I think I'll watch it with Brendon and see what we think about letting the boys see it. He was very much opposed when I suggested it earlier.

It sounds like it is way more than a sprinkling of language. I'd be uncomfortable, B.Jr. would love it, Bobby would be reporting back word for word the raunchiest parts to his little friends (and then I'd hear from their parents), and Dad would never let me hear the end of it for taking them.

I'm still conflicted because I personally find Chappelle's humor brilliant even with my language discomfort. I know that my older son would understand and appreciate the humor in the racial bits, he'd probably roll his eyes at the sex content, but I think Bobby is still too young to understand. The humor would go over his head and it would just be Woo Hoo dirty words!

Wimping out for now.

I remember my parents taking me to see the play "Hair" when I was 12.

Hmmm. I went to see that with my mother. I'm 52 now, so I was probably a little bit older than that at the time. I have to try and remember just how much I comprehended in my youth.

I saw the movie Hair when I was 13, and didn't get the song "Sodomy" at all, but loved the music (and repeated the dirty-words lyrics with glee, I'll admit it--hey, I was 13!) and dancing.

Laura, DH says he doesn't remember there being an overwhelming amount of profanity in the film, but it's not something he's sensitive to, so take it with a grain of salt.

Also, I just noticed that iTunes has all 5 Academy-nominated live action shorts for $1.99 each (which makes it cheaper to download all 5 than to go see them at Cinema Village). But if you don't want to spend money seeing all of them, I was rooting for The Last Farm to win -- it's got the tightest storytelling and biggest emotional punch of the lot.

I hope they put up the animated shorts.

I saw Night Watch today. It was pretty cool, though I wasn't as impressed as I'd hoped to be. It's fairly predictable, since the plot is a mishmash of all your standard fantasy/horror tropes. The nice thing about the story, though, is that it builds on itself. There's no clear trajectory at the beginning, but each plot point leads to the next plot point, and so on. So even though things in the first half don't seem to be that relevant, they turn out to be important later on.

Really, though, the movie is so worth going to see just for the subtitles. They're the best fucking subtitles I've ever seen. Some are in blood. Sometimes the action on the screen obscures them. If a character's coughing out his words, the text flickers to mimic his speech. If a character's reading from a computer screen, they appear typed out letter by letter. They're very creative.

I saw 16 Blocks and, although it was rather formulaic in the last 30 minutes, the rest of it was surprisingly good, I thought. Bruce Willis and Mos Def work well together and the film does a really great job of capturing what New York streets actually feel like.