...but so is Gemma!
I'll take them both, thank you. Gift wrapped, please.
Posted on 03/25/2009 12:02:13 PM PDT by ReformationFan
By some tortured, objective filmmaking standard it might be possible to make the case that Quantum of Solace isn’t the worst James Bond film of all time, but I defy anyone to argue that it isn’t the least satisfying. After all, a bad James Bond film is still a James Bond film. There is that going for it. Invisible cars and Grace Jones have done no small amount of damage but in the smoking, campy wreckage there still lies a James Bond film. Unfortunately, in the smoking, plodding wreckage of Quantum of Solace that scrap of comfort is nowhere to be found. Quantum isn’t Bond #22, it’s Bourne #4, and the worst of the four but, you know, starring an adult this time.
After Daniel Craig’s knock-out debut in the superb Casino Royale (2006), two fatal mistakes were made. Direction was handed over to Marc Forster, a talented helmer of small, intimate dramas but a newbie in the action department, and with regard to the script, obviously good enough was the phrase of the day when those woefully undercooked pages were passed around.
(Excerpt) Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.com ...
Action sequences were annoyingly long. Pointless. Villians sucked. Girl was sooooo unbelievably hot though.
Yup. That and "The Dark (and in need of a film editor) Night" and "DREAR∙E WALL∙E" made is a bad year for movies for me....
Main girl wasn't. Dead Red Head was.
QOS was supposed to shake the mold of Bond and remake it slightly. I think the story was a 2-star story and barely worth the effort of filming. And as for DVD purchases...this would be one of the last movies of that year that I’d ever buy to have in my library.
I preferred the gorgeous Italian actress Caterina Murino who played the gangster’s lonely wife Solange in the first half of “Casino Royale” to either of QOS’s lead females.
...but so is Gemma!
I'll take them both, thank you. Gift wrapped, please.
The villian of “Quantum” is an environmentalist fraud who in some scenes is lit to look like Al Gore. A LOT of Libs didn’t like it for that reason.
It’s not the best Bond, but still a lot of fun. Some dynamite locations, pretty fair stunts, Craig and Judi Dench in good form.
And a very nice surprise at the very end.
“The villian of “Quantum” is an environmentalist fraud who in some scenes is lit to look like Al Gore. A LOT of Libs didn’t like it for that reason”
True. But it also featured evil CIA guys right out of “3 Days of the Condor” to please the Lefties. It was also badly shot and edited. What good is it to stage the stunts action in a way that the viewer can’t discern what is going on? I wish Martin Campbell had returned to direct to give it more of a consistency of style with Casino Royale. As it stands now, the only scenes I liked in QOS where the scenes that directly referenced CR and made me wish I was watching that instead.
For the record, my current top 5 Bond films are(in order of their release):
1) “From Russia With Love”(1963) Classic cold war spy thriller.
2) “Thunderball”(1965) First truly big budget epic style Bond film with Sean Connery at the top of his confidence in the role and the most beautiful gallery of Bond girls to ever appear in a single Bond film, especially Luciana Paluzzi as a lovely but lethal redhead from SPECTRE.
3) “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”(1969) Underrated epic, very faithful to Ian Fleming’s original source novel(possibly Fleming’s best).
4) “The Living Daylights”(1987) A return to a FRWL style cold war espionage Bond film with a great performance by the underrated Timothy Dalton. Very well written spy thriller. Only downside is lack of strong villain and (watching it from a post 9/11 perspective)the fact that some of Bond’s Afghan ally characters probably later joined the Taliban.
5) “Casino Royale” (2006) A true Bond epic in the style of TB and OHMSS and probably the only Bond film post-1970 to truly recapture some of the grand style of the 1960s films along with the harsh feel of the Ian Fleming novels.
I watched it last night. The music sucked and I could not follow the plot at all. The dialog was spoken so low that I could not understand what was being said.
And yeah, the always excellent Jeffrey Wright, as Felix Leiter, was ill used.
It was dispapointing to say the least.
I'd go with most of your choices with the exception of Thunderball. Rik Van Nutter is a poor Felix, but what really sinks it is the interminable underwater sequences. Talk about not knowing what's going on -- and eventually not caring!
I join in a tip of the hat to Dalton as Bond.
He was a believable licensed killer.
Also better films than most give credit for.
Well, I did like the opening sequence.
Quantum is the 24th James Bond film. These writers let the produces just count the ones they made. I call BS. If Never Say Never with Sean Connery is not a Bond film, then none of the others are either.
QofS would be the second worst Bond film. Die Another Day was laughably bad.
“Goldfinger not top five?”
It’s in my top 10. But I enjoy these other 5 more.
“I’d go with most of your choices with the exception of Thunderball. Rik Van Nutter is a poor Felix, but what really sinks it is the interminable underwater sequences. Talk about not knowing what’s going on — and eventually not caring!”
I’ve read that about TB for years. But I love the underwater scenes. I don’t find them dull at all. Perhaps it’s my enthusiasm for the water. Also, TB’s very faithful to the Fleming source novel and features the early era Bond creative team at its most confident.
Jack Lord(Hawaii 5-0’s Steve McGarrett) was the best Felix Leiter IMHO.
I knew I couldn't have been the only man on the planet to notice how extremely absurd that whole concept was.
“I join in a tip of the hat to Dalton as Bond.
He was a believable licensed killer.
Also better films than most give credit for.”
Agreed. Timothy Dalton is the most underrated Bond actor and my 2nd favorite Bond(after Connery). I wish they had been able to film “Casino Royale” in the 1980s with his Bond, Rachel Ward(Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid) as Vesper and Alan Rickman as Le Chiffre and a score by John Barry. Also, Le Chiffre could’ve been a Soviet agent like he was in the novel since the U.S.S.R. was still around.
Nope, the worst bond movie was “the world is not enough”. Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist who is traipsing around Saudi Arabia with perfect hair and make-up, in a tank top and daisy dukes. I couldn’t stop laughing after that.
Oh yeah...that was pretty silly. But, it’s hard to top the invisible car, the ice palace, and the cheesy graphics of Bond surfing across the ice floes on the hood of his car.
Oooh, that would’ve been good !
All the Pirs Bonbons Bonds were poor.
I actually thought the first 1/2 to 2/3 of “Die Another Day” was probably Brosnan’s best hour in the role. I liked the use of North Korea serving as a 2000s replacement for the way the USSR served in the 1960s thru 1980s 007 films. I also liked how they tried to incorporate aspects of Fleming’s “Moonraker” novel into the script. The sword fight between Bond & the villain was the highpoint of the film. However, once the CGI tsunami parasurf hit, the film went downhill. I think if the poor-CGI work, Madonna(both her dreadful song and even worse cameo appearance), much of Halle Berry’s dialogue, the over Bruckheimered finale on the plane and some of the other cheesier elements had been dropped from the film, DAD would be a much more highly regarded entry in the Bond series than it now is. There’s some pretty good analyses of both what was right and wrong with the film here-
http://www.hmss.com/films/survey/20dad.HTM
“Oooh, that would’ve been good !”
Indeed. We can dream about the possibility from this fan trailer
Timothy Dalton in “Casino Royale”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB_I_aNbYdE&feature=channel_page
“All the Pirs Bonbons Bonds were poor.”
They were among the more mediocre entries in the series. However, I found “Quantum of Solace” more disappointing than any of the Brosnans since my expectations had gotten so much higher post-”Casino Royale.”
Not bad. It's too bad the problems the producers had after "Licence to Kill" that delayed filming any new ones for 6 years. I'd have liked to have seen Dalton continue in the roll for a longer period.
"They were among the more mediocre entries in the series. However, I found “Quantum of Solace” more disappointing than any of the Brosnans since my expectations had gotten so much higher post-”Casino Royale.”"
One concern I had when I saw PB in the role was that they were taking a swing back towards the worst of Roger Moore's entries (right down to the smug winking at the camera behavior, a la the adjusting his tie when the boat went under water, just head-shakingly bad). Part of it was also the series just lost its magic. I was a big fan of John Barry and losing him was bad enough, but the '90s Bonds didn't even FEEL like Bond films, just something else entirely. You felt the continuity clear up from "Dr. No" to "The Living Daylights" and a slip-off in LTK (which seemed more like an expensive "Miami Vice" episode, although I loved MV so I could give it a pass), but after LTK, it seemed to just vanish. Sure, Desmond Llewellyn was still there, but that was the last remaining link, and he was well past too old.
I didn't want to pass judgment on Daniel Craig until seeing him play it at least twice, but my initial problems with him (nevermind his being a Blonde Bond), was that the producers went "extreme." Before, they have insufferably smug and too comedic (Moore/PB) and now they had a guy who was a walking ice cube and more like a villain himself (Robert Shaw's Red Grant without the panache). They failed to strike the right balance (as they did with Connery and Dalton, and even George Lazenby, who acquitted himself well in trying to succeed Connery). I was thinking Clive Owen seemed to "look" the role more (he looks like an amalgamation of Connery, Lazenby & Dalton), and I was rather sorry he didn't get it.
I haven't seen "Quantum", yet. The theaters play films so loud I can't tolerate it, but given the opinions of a lot of JB fans, it sounds like it was a big letdown. I presume Craig will do one more before hanging it up, although they don't appear to even have a new JB in pre-production on his IMDb credits despite his being credited for a 2011 film.
Dalton was excellent in my opinion. His rumored planned third film (”Property of a lady”) according to a script I saw had a fembot in it so it’s good that wasn’t made. But I wish he had done Goldeneye one of my favorites which imo is better than the other Bronson movies due to it’s originally being written for Dalton.
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