Who is the Best '80s Bond Cinematographer?
Your choices:
Alan Hume (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, and A View to a Kill)
Alec Mills (The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill)
I've decided to stay impartial in this survey; let the sport commence!
Posted 31 July 2009 - 01:50 AM
Who is the Best '80s Bond Cinematographer?
Posted 31 July 2009 - 04:19 AM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 05:07 AM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 07:47 AM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 07:51 AM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 10:42 AM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 05:41 PM
Edited by Rufus Ffolkes, 31 July 2009 - 07:30 PM.
Posted 31 July 2009 - 09:28 PM
Posted 31 July 2009 - 09:33 PM
Posted 01 August 2009 - 02:59 AM
Posted 02 August 2009 - 02:36 AM
Posted 03 August 2009 - 06:49 PM
Posted 08 August 2009 - 09:07 AM
Posted 08 August 2009 - 11:10 AM
How about adding to the mix Douglas Slocombe from Never Say Never Again?
Posted 08 August 2009 - 05:00 PM
Spot on, also with the earlier poster NSNA Slocombe is very impressive! Hume gave the movie a certain look, Mills looks like he is shooting a TV series. LDL exteriors are marvellous but the interiors look really drab.Wow! Four votes for Mills? Really? I thought LTK looked like utter . The TLD exteriors look good, but the interior scenes are pretty flat. There's no nuance in Mills' photography - it all has the 70s-early 80s floodlit TV look.
Personally, I think Hume is a much better cinematographer, particularly his work on "Octopussy."
Posted 09 August 2009 - 07:07 AM
Spot on, also with the earlier poster NSNA Slocombe is very impressive! Hume gave the movie a certain look, Mills looks like he is shooting a TV series. LDL exteriors are marvellous but the interiors look really drab.Wow! Four votes for Mills? Really? I thought LTK looked like utter . The TLD exteriors look good, but the interior scenes are pretty flat. There's no nuance in Mills' photography - it all has the 70s-early 80s floodlit TV look.
Personally, I think Hume is a much better cinematographer, particularly his work on "Octopussy."
Edited by Donovan, 09 August 2009 - 07:08 AM.
Posted 09 August 2009 - 08:41 AM
I don't know if it would help but watching NSNA on Blu really makes a huge difference. There is a timeless feel about the movie especially when Bond is in Nice and Bahamas.Spot on, also with the earlier poster NSNA Slocombe is very impressive! Hume gave the movie a certain look, Mills looks like he is shooting a TV series. LDL exteriors are marvellous but the interiors look really drab.Wow! Four votes for Mills? Really? I thought LTK looked like utter . The TLD exteriors look good, but the interior scenes are pretty flat. There's no nuance in Mills' photography - it all has the 70s-early 80s floodlit TV look.
Personally, I think Hume is a much better cinematographer, particularly his work on "Octopussy."
I completely agree re: Hume over Mills. The exterior shots in FYEO and OP are phenomenal. Although things looked kind of harsh in AVTAK. And I also agree that LTK looked pretty bad.
Not a fan of Slocombe's work in NSNA, however. Way too much soft focus everywhere. It was like watching a 60s episode of Star Trek. It's amazing to me how OP, with its dingy locations, looks a million times better than a film shot in some of the most beautiful places in the world. There's a wide shot of Nice that looks like it was taken with a video camera.
Edited by Dekard77, 09 August 2009 - 08:42 AM.
Posted 28 April 2014 - 07:09 PM
Wow! Four votes for Mills? Really? I thought LTK looked like utter . The TLD exteriors look good, but the interior scenes are pretty flat. There's no nuance in Mills' photography - it all has the 70s-early 80s floodlit TV look.
Posted 28 April 2014 - 08:54 PM
Going with Alan Hume here if only as he shows more variety. This comes with a footnote that states I really *loved* the work for TLD (which might have swayed me had it not been for the rather dismal follow-up effort). This said - AVTAK is not a high for Hume to go out on either.
Posted 01 May 2014 - 11:01 AM
Hume is it for me. Eyes only and Octopussy are looking terrific!
Posted 01 May 2014 - 12:23 PM
Great idea for a thread (do we have one for the other decades? we should!)!
The difficulty, of course, is to really differentiate between the scenery and sets and the actual cinematography. FYEO, OP and TLD do have great locations that are very photogenic, while LTK mainly has Florida (nice to look at, of course, but not as varied as the others).
I canĀ“t decide on the spot. I will have to take a closer look at those films again. But in my memory, the images of FYEO do have a slight edge.
Posted 23 May 2014 - 05:32 AM
Posted 24 May 2014 - 08:33 PM
What I don't like about Mills' work on TLD, for example, apart from some of the floodlit interiors, is all those chintzy pretty pastel soft visuals. This was supposed to be a hard-edged Bond, right?
Posted 20 July 2014 - 01:54 AM
Hume for me. Some his shots for FYEO were pretty great. Example: One of the very first scenes in the film, where you see the priest running out of the rectory and the camera pulls back to reveal a brooding 007 deep in thought at his wife'e grave.
Posted 20 July 2014 - 11:30 PM
Alan Hume. I've always liked his softly-lit, fog filtered style. For that reason RETURN OF THE JEDI is my favourite STAR WARS film visually.
Alec Mills - some stunning shots in DAYLIGHTS, though surrounding my a lot of average stuff. The less said about OFF LICENCE the better.
Posted 20 July 2014 - 11:47 PM
Mills
Posted 22 July 2014 - 06:32 PM
Alan Hume. I've always liked his softly-lit, fog filtered style. For that reason RETURN OF THE JEDI is my favourite STAR WARS film visually.
Alec Mills - some stunning shots in DAYLIGHTS, though surrounding my a lot of average stuff. The less said about OFF LICENCE the better.
Posted 22 July 2014 - 06:48 PM
If i'm honest there are no winners here. For Bond the 80s were not picture perfect.
The only 80s Bond to really look attractive was Hume's FYEO, but even that pales besides the other decades.
Posted 30 July 2014 - 02:41 PM
For what it's worth, Mills actually photographed much of Return of the Jedi after Hume quit the picture.
I can only assume those who think LTK looks good never saw it in the theatre. The image on the blu-ray has been seriously manipulated, as it looks nothing like the original theatrical prints. Siskel and Ebert even singled out the dinginess of the film's look in their review:
http://siskelandeber...-Met-Sally-1989
Posted 30 July 2014 - 07:46 PM
For what it's worth, Mills actually photographed much of Return of the Jedi after Hume quit the picture.
Wow, didn't know that, but it makes so much sense. I'm betting Hume did the Jabba the Hut stuff and the finale Darth / Luke battle (which has marvellous tracking shots).
Whereas Mills perhaps gave us Endor and the Ewocks looking like Star Wars the tv show.
No offence to Mills - there were far worse cinematographers out there getting high profile work, but he was playing amongst the best. Hume was perhaps slightly more suited to that game.