I saw the new Bond flick on the weekend.
It was pretty entertaining, although I wish Hollywood would get over its "Big-Corporations-in-Alliance-with-the-CIA" as villains mentality.
I found the fighting sequences confusing as the cuts were so rapid-fire that you didn't have time to see who you were looking at before they switched angles.
Other than the overall plot, the movie had a Le Carré flavor to it. You never knew who was on what side. It wasn't as tight as a book, with plenty of loose ends. Which, I suppose, sets up the next one.
Funny bit at the beginning: The movie starts with a running gun battle/car chase. It begins on the coast, then they are suddenly in a marble quarry (which, IIRC, is near Florence), and ends with Bond driving into Sienna on the day of the Palio* all within a 10 minute sequence. Which is pretty good considering that Sienna is a good hour's drive from the coast and Florence is another hour beyond that.
*And actually managing to get near Sienna in a car on the day of the Palio is damn near impossible.
Overall, though, a fun flick. Worth the $12.
If you weren't doing anything wrong, then you have no reason to be afraid while they kick the crap out of you. - D.A. Ridgely
Re: A QUANTUM OF BOND^22
I was disappointed. Casino Royale was good and, insofar as it wasn't authentically Bondish, well, they were reinventing the franchise and needed to get back to Bond's roots. Fair enough. But enough is enough. If Bond is going to have feelings and keep mourning all the women he beds who then get killed, he's never going to serve as an adolescent male role model again, so what's the point? Also, it's time to keep Judy Densh's M back in London instead of following Bond around everywhere. What's the point in that? And there wasn't enough 007 music! And they didn't do the moving gun barrel until the closing credits rolled. What's up with that?!?!
BTW, the reason Hollywood keeps picking on imaginary corporations to be the villains is, of course, that real corporations don't have a Corporate Anti-Defamation League picketing the movie and reducing world boxoffice grosses.
"love is like porn, you know" -- Ali
Re: A QUANTUM OF BOND^22
Didn't like it. Casino was much better scripted and directed. In particular, I don't like super shaky cam during action sequences. One of the Bourne movies had that same thing going on to the extent it made me not want to watch it.
Re: A QUANTUM OF BOND^22
I saw it last night. I liked it, which I guess puts me in the minority. I thought the opening title sequence had a cool retro feel, and I thought the plot was decent. I agree about some of the shaky-cam stuff. In some of the fight scenes, I was saying "There's a guy! I can't tell who! And he's...somewhere, doing something!" because the camera was in so tight and weaving and spinning so much. The opera house fight scene looked very cool, but I couldn't tell what the hell was going on.
There was also some "plot-dependent ability" stuff - in one scene, Bond can take out three MI6 agents in ten seconds, but then later, he's fighting with Greene (who is not exactly a ninja) for a good couple minutes. But oh well, it's a movie.
I was wondering if Bond could be diagnosed with some kind of personality disorder. He's violent and promiscuous, he has almost no close friends, he identifies with authority figures yet has a very rocky relationship with them...