197 replies to this topic

[Royal Dalton]

[doubler83]

Mark Fairy? Sounds about right.

And what's that supposed to mean?

[HildebrandRarity]

[Royal Dalton]

[Danny-Craiger]

Another critic with a fudge packing finger for The Exorcist...

[Safari Suit]

Now that's just crass.

[Royal Dalton]

Still, it does manage to improve on the real lyrics.

[HildebrandRarity]

Still, it does manage to improve on the real lyrics.

Where's Jack White?

[Mr. Blofeld]

Still, it does manage to improve on the real lyrics.

Where's Jack White?

Never mind Jack White, where's Waldo?

"Another blinger in a red-striped sweater and a silly cap..."

[Safari Suit]

Cor blimey guv, he's called Wally as far as I'm concerned.

[Germanlady]

From the other site

The killing has begun !

Well, i have been unbeleivably lucky to have seen the film already thanks to very good friend who i am indebted to!(untill Bond 23 that is), and i have to say i fully agree with Bondsums analysis. I won't really add anything to what Bondsum has said because i feel it's important for people to make their own opinions on it without having a skewed view on it going into the cinema, which is always the best way to enjoy something, but i was disappointed. If you're going to make a film this short, you really have to be incredibly precise and economical.

I think the problem here was the White scene being cut out(big mistake), the length of the film, and what really grates me about Bond these days, the sloppiness of pre and post production. QOS didn't really have a complete script before filming began, which is unforgivable. Couple that with a severe lack of editing time and you get this result; An aimless, scatty shadow of what this film could've been. QOS had mighty potential but loses it's bottle half-way through. It has some very brilliant moments, but as i found with CR, it just didn't go 'all the way'. I think Eon is too worried about it's franchise for it ever to be truly as interesting as a Fleming novel.

Its on, yes, but this is only one of the few bad reviews from a member of either two boards and I have read them all. The very BEST reviews, we have had so far, were from none critics here and there. So, I am sure, some people will think about the film like this, but as long as the positive reviews reflect what will hopefully happen with the geenrell audiences, we are fine.

My thoughts are, that we might have expected praise like for CR or even more and when that isn´t obviously to happen, there is a panic and overreaction. The reception is MOSTLY POSITIVE AND BETTER - we only forget that, because we are so wind about about the bad ones. We should stop that and start enjoying this time more. Its gonna be over soon enough and appearently there will be a long wait for the next one. Maybe those who have negative to say, should hold it back just a bit and not try to throw it at people here on every possible moment. This is supposed to be FUN. Its just a f**ing movie. But if we are arguing, attacking, defending etc all the time its NOT fun anymore. For me it sounds often like those, who don´t like the film, just do about everything to spoil the fun for the rest of us. What for? Why not talk about the good, that is obviously there until we have seen it and can make up our minds. THEN the war can begin and that will be unpleasant enough. I so often wonder, my people enjoy so much dwelling on the negative..

Just my two cents...

Edited by Germanlady, 27 October 2008 - 07:55 PM.

[HildebrandRarity]

I agree.

Let's make this a fun time!

Even the 21st (or 22nd) best Bond movie up to Quantum had some good qualities to it. Whether it was the score or dialogue or stuntwork or Bond Girl or locations or actor playing the villian or the actor playing Bond himself.

There were at least some good qualities about all of them.

Let's enjoy this wonderful time as Germanlady suggests.

Let's all be friends.

How about a cuddle or a group hug!?

[Jet Set Willy]

"There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure."


LOL!!!

Only if the thinking man and woman have both escaped from a centre for the educationally sub-normal.

You are sounding a bit of a tosser, who cannot accept another person's point of view. Do you have a problem with someone having a different opinion to your own?

Crawl back to the gutter where you came from....

[Virgo Lupin]

"There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure."


LOL!!!

Only if the thinking man and woman have both escaped from a centre for the educationally sub-normal.

You are sounding a bit of a tosser, who cannot accept another person's point of view. Do you have a problem with someone having a different opinion to your own?

Crawl back to the gutter where you came from....

Opinions are like s - everyone has one!

Some people's points of view are worthless.

I figure you're one of those. An !

[JohnFerguson]

"There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure."


LOL!!!

Only if the thinking man and woman have both escaped from a centre for the educationally sub-normal.

You are sounding a bit of a tosser, who cannot accept another person's point of view. Do you have a problem with someone having a different opinion to your own?

Crawl back to the gutter where you came from....

I don't know about you, JSW, but I'm getting the feeling we're witnessing another episode of "The Adventures Of Scojo And The Magical Proxy Server."

Edited by JohnFerguson, 28 October 2008 - 03:19 AM.

[Elvenstar]

I agree.
Even the 21st (or 22nd) best Bond movie up to Quantum had some good qualities to it. Whether it was the score or dialogue or stuntwork or Bond Girl or locations or actor playing the villian or the actor playing Bond himself.
There were at least some good qualities about all of them.

I think there's a prob;em of expecting too much after CR. Its not a masterpiece (judjing by reviews) but there are still a lot of good points even in negative ones (Craig and other actors, locations, some scenes in particular). And occasionally you start loving the negative and mixed reviews because if the producers take note there could well be a chance of correcting Qos mistakes in the future. After the success of CR they probably felt too safe and free to do what they want but now maybe they will have to understand that the action is not enough and after people were spoilt with CR they just need more...
Anyway I think Qos is goping to be not 'love it OR hate it' movie but rather 'love AND hate' movie. Ah I'll see it soon before I can make up my mind but right now I dont feel like it will be just a mess and nothing more.

[Jet Set Willy]

"There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure."


LOL!!!

Only if the thinking man and woman have both escaped from a centre for the educationally sub-normal.

You are sounding a bit of a tosser, who cannot accept another person's point of view. Do you have a problem with someone having a different opinion to your own?

Crawl back to the gutter where you came from....

Opinions are like s - everyone has one!

Some people's points of view are worthless.

I figure you're one of those. An !

Do you have an opinion too? I thought yours was fact?

And for what it's worth, from one to another .....your point of view is worthless (but I guess you knew that already, and I bet I'm not the first person to tell you that either!)

Edited by Jet Set Willy, 28 October 2008 - 10:39 AM.

[stamper]

"There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure."

I wish, man, I wish...

The point is opinions or pre-opinions don't matter. What matter is if this movie will be LTK 2, and endangers the Bond series again, which is what I think it will.

[Cro Cop]

By the way, John...I found your SPOILER-ific and insightful post on Oct 23 to be one of the best ones in this the Quantum Season.

Thank you. This looks to be quite an experimental picture that will work right away for some, work with the benefit of hindsight and repeated viewings for others, or not work at all regardless of the circumstances for the rest. Based on everything I've seen and read so far, I can see myself really digging this picture due to it's tone, story objective, subtexts and overall visual tapestry but nevertheless agreeing with some of the (non-taste related) criticisms that have been leveled at the film.

Yea. I think [from every bit of information I have taken in] this movie is a complete rebellion against the dumbed-down approach of spoon-feeding movie goers...and off-setting that is a fast paced and relatively short film (by Bond standards).

There's every possibility that this flick will be a cerebral masterpiece with chockfulls of subtext and nuance. A thinking man's/woman's action adventure.

Already (some) reviewers are not getting the fact that it's actually Yusef - not Dominic Greene - who is the primary target of Bond in this movie and it is Yusef who will provide Bond with his, er, quantum of solace and closure.

Years from now Casino Royale [which by no means was getting 9 out of 10s from everyone out there when it came out] *might* end up being regarded as an incomplete stand-alone movie. Views of it *could* change. Just as OHMSS was slagged until the late 80s, CR's current cache' *could* also fall in the future...or it's cache' might end up depending on Q0S being viewed in tow.

Ok I hate this argument. Of course they don't get it, because the character is irrelevant for the first 100 minutes. It is like saying that in Godfather Part II Vito's main goal his entire 20 odd years before returning to Italy was his revenge. Great scene but it sure as hell doesn't carry the film. You spend the rest of the film watching Bond chase a shadow that way.

I read through this thread and you keep talking about Bond getting his "Quantum of Solace". How in the world are people for the most part expected to understand what that means? It reeks of nonsense so much that even Haggis had no idea what it meant when it was attached to the film, and he wrote the bleeding script. I don't care if it is a Fleming title, it is still absurd and should of never been used. When you hear the title of a film it needs to have meaning. Every great film's title has a meaning at the end. When you hear Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, Blade Runner, Memento, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, High Noon, or so many others it brings images to the forefront of your mind. A title shouldn't confuse you.

The film doesn't seem to have a plot or at least not one worth writing about. A man getting from point A to point B is not a plot. It is an outline. An idea that starts every story. What the plot is is how he gets there. The journey. If you think a few minutes of exposition here and there is all you need, I must say you are dead wrong. A few lines lost in the shuffle of explosions is not the construction of a plot, it is a lame attempt to cover up holes.

Bond can do any little sentimental thing he wants like dropping a necklace into the snow or making the choice not to kill someone. Doesn't mean it has any relevance or power, because you must earn those moments. If you have just been slapped around for 100 minutes and couldn't make heads or tails of what you saw, you aren't going to care about the meaning of his action in the final few.

So while Bond my find his "Quantum of Solace", the "Little Giants" proved their point and won their game. Doesn't make either a good film.

Edited by Cro Cop, 28 October 2008 - 12:29 PM.

[Liberator]

I am aware that what I am about to write could be construed as a mixture of ad hominem vitriol and biassed emoting, but I make no apologies for the aforementioned nature of my point of view.

Mark Kermode (or Mark Fairey, to use his birth name) is a jumped up, pretentious, academic "see you next Tuesday", with a silly retro 1950's haircut and an annoying voice. I can't stand his infantile rants. He reminds me of some of the lecturers and students that I had to put up with during my film seminars at university.

I think he should stick to writing books for the BFI and researching documentaries on genre films, rather than spouting his rubbish about popular films on the radio and in the press.

Is Quantum of Solace going to be a good or bad film? I'll make up my mind on Friday.

Hello all.

I have never in my life agreed with a posting on any message board as much as I do this one. I also think we went to the same university, obviously at different times.

[marktmurphy]

3. He says that Q0S has (paraphrasing) "two big action set pieces before we get to any plot". Well, eventhough I have not seen the movie, i've seen ALL the footage that's availabe on the net and clearly there's the interrogation scene between the Aston escape and the Siena footchase. This interrogation scene has TONS of plot points if one had the mental capacity to understand it. Namely:


WARNING - HEAVY SPOILERS COMING

A. Yusef is not dead.
B. His death was fabricated
C. It's a cover-up by some organization to mislead the intelligence services.
D. The organization is supposedly everywhere.
E. Bond misleads M by suggesting neither Yusef or Vesper were/are important...but
F. Craig's nuanced acting and 007's taking of the picture suggests that Yusef IS important and Yusef holds the key to Bong getting some measure of comfort, some closure with respect to Vesper and precisely why Vesper was led to the point of commiting suicide when, in fact, he (Bond) could have saved her.
G. There is a traitor in MI6 right in that very safehouse.
H. G clearly proves to both Bond and M that Mr White is right about the organization being everywhere.
I. H suggests that it's going to be very difficult for either M or Bond to trust anyone.

Having now seen it I agree with Kermode more- all this exposition is given and pondered upon in about as long as it takes to read out the list you've given above. One big action scene, titles, a minute o so of chat, another big action scene. No opportunity for an action scene is missed in this film, which makes it feel like it's been written by the writers of a computer game.

[HildebrandRarity]

...This interrogation scene has TONS of plot points if one had the mental capacity to understand it. Namely:


WARNING - HEAVY SPOILERS COMING

A. Yusef is not dead.
B. His death was fabricated
C. It's a cover-up by some organization to mislead the intelligence services.
D. The organization is supposedly everywhere.
E. Bond misleads M by suggesting neither Yusef or Vesper were/are important...but
F. Craig's nuanced acting and 007's taking of the picture suggests that Yusef IS important and Yusef holds the key to Bong getting some measure of comfort, some closure with respect to Vesper and precisely why Vesper was led to the point of commiting suicide when, in fact, he (Bond) could have saved her.
G. There is a traitor in MI6 right in that very safehouse.
H. G clearly proves to both Bond and M that Mr White is right about the organization being everywhere.
I. H suggests that it's going to be very difficult for either M or Bond to trust anyone.

Having now seen it I agree with Kermode more- all this exposition is given and pondered upon in about as long as it takes to read out the list you've given above. One big action scene, titles, a minute o so of chat, another big action scene. No opportunity for an action scene is missed in this film, which makes it feel like it's been written by the writers of a computer game.

Well, let's assume that Dr No and FRWL were produced for not only cinema-goers, but to also sell more Flemings. To make the books sell like hot cakes...

Well, you know that we're in a gamer era...

This thread:

http://debrief.comma...p...c=50854&hl=

suggets that the movie is also produced to make the games sell like hot cakes. Looks like CBn-ers who love games are having a ball. Can you blame the capitalists for making as much money as they can?

[Danny-Craiger]

I saw the film on Friday at the O2 Vue in London. I still think that Mark Kermode is an annoying tosser, but I do agree with some of his points. The film was a huge disappointment for me. For my money, Dr No, From Russia With Love, Casino Royale, and to a lesser degree Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service are the series highlights. However, being positive...

-It was better than the last couple of Brosnan films, as well as most of Roger Moore's later efforts.

-I admired the fact that Forster tried new things i.e. the opening helicopter shots across Lake Como, intercut with the close-ups of the Aston Martin etc, accompanied by Arnold's violin based score.... the opera sequence.... the subtle ending...

-I liked the brief fight in the hotel room with Slate, the scenes with Mathis and M, and some of the stunts.

-Daniel Craig did his best to lift the material.

[No. 2]

I've just come back from seeing QOS at the swanky new Cinema De Lux in Bristol (in Digital Projection no less )...

What can I say, I didn't think it could be done but EON/Sony/Marc Forster have managed to achieve the near impossible.

Somehow they've taken the new, cool, sexy, edgy, vision of Bond so skilfully 'rebooted' in CR, and, in only 106 minutes, totally ed it up good and proper.

Where to start? The dreary title sequence and theme song? The ridiculously OTT location captions? The endless succession of unimaginitive fight/chase scenes and their epileptic editing? How about the complete pointlessness of the title and it's total lack of meaning in the film? The lack of any clever, witty dialogue?

The script and story is a total mess and characterisation poorly handled. Bond is no longer a spy, relying on his cunning to solve problems but redced here to simply an information gatherer - take a picture here, get a name there, send it back to London for the answer.

There is also not one single image in this movie that even gets close to being considered iconic Bond.

I don't always agree with Kermode on his reviews but this one (and I've just seen it now AFTER seeing the film) is, sady, pretty spot on.

I think they stuck the gunbarrel and theme tune on at the end just to remind us it was a Bond film we'd just seen after all.

[Captain Tightpants]

You're perfectly entitled to have your own opinion.

Just as I'm perfectly entitled to think said opinion is bollocks.

CR wasn't a full reboot, but more of a half-reboot. EON couldn't go from the old timeline to a film like QOS without a transitional film, which is precsely what CR was.

[Marquis]

I'm rather perplexed at how a seasoned film journalist of Kermode's calibre could possibly fail to "get" the weight of Solace's denouement and it's meaning in the Casino-Quantum arc. Unbelievable.

Edited by Marquis, 03 November 2008 - 07:34 AM.

[Angel of Death]

Take it from me....this Mark Kermode must have been smashed when he gave his review. The film is one of the best in the series.

[Glockenspiel]

I was exactly in the same state of mind as you are before seeing the film, yesterday.
My expectations were high, I worship CR and I wanted to love QOS.
But I didn't...
And, worse, I dislike it more and more hours after hours since I saw it.
It's a mess, Harmsway... Alas, it's a mess.
First reason (in my opinion) : the director (essentialy) screw up his job.
Second reason : the editing is awful.
I hate the action sequences, which are (still imo)the worst in the whole franchise.
You can't see anything.
They are made like in the Bourne movies - no more, no less (that's normal, the second unit is the same and Forster who has, according to me, no idea of how shooting properly a chase or a fight, let this second unit do the job... very badly).
Some like those kind of scenes, I don't.
It's the firts time in a Bond movie that you can't see what happened on screen during an action sequence.
The comparison with the action sequences of CR is very painful.
Campbell knows how to make them, Forster don't.
So, necesseraly, you concentrate on the screenplay and on the dialogue scenes, which are both unsatisfying.
I don't tell more.
You'll see.
As far I'm concerned, I'm now waiting for Bond 23 and I won't see QOS another time.
(sorry for my english, which is not very good).

I've seen enough reviews to know that my reaction to QUANTUM OF SOLACE cannot be entirely predicted in advance. QUANTUM OF SOLACE is controversial.

However, the negative reviews haven't made me lose hope. They've made me all the more interested to see it, whether I ultimately think it's a masterpiece or an interesting mess.

[SecretAgentFan]

This "Mark Kermode" guy really should calm down. He comes across like a cross between TV evangelist and embittered teacher in front of a class that ignores him. He enjoys hate, is riled up so much that he loses his eloquence and begins to stammer, and the way he all but screams at the other guy, cutting him off as if he were questioning him for state secrets - well, I just can´t take him seriously. He does not argue his points, he wants to force his opinion on the audience in a kind of "AND IF YOU DISAGREE, YOU ARE A FOOL" attitude.

I watched his other reviews and he is always like that. Clearly, he is totally humorless (watch his "Burn after reading" review), and he can´t explain what the Second Unit is supposed to do (for him it is always "Action and... STUFF"). Yet, he considers QOS being only filmed by Second Unit.

This guy is a joke. He should not be allowed near a microphone. Instead he should consider medicine for his way up high blood pressure.

[Zorin Industries]

I've just come back from seeing QOS at the swanky new Cinema De Lux in Bristol (in Digital Projection no less )...

What can I say, I didn't think it could be done but EON/Sony/Marc Forster have managed to achieve the near impossible.

Somehow they've taken the new, cool, sexy, edgy, vision of Bond so skilfully 'rebooted' in CR, and, in only 106 minutes, totally ed it up good and proper.

Where to start? The dreary title sequence and theme song? The ridiculously OTT location captions? The endless succession of unimaginitive fight/chase scenes and their epileptic editing? How about the complete pointlessness of the title and it's total lack of meaning in the film? The lack of any clever, witty dialogue?

There is a great deal of subtle humour in the film as there is a rounded nod to the title of the piece. Sorry. It's there.
The script and story is a total mess and characterisation poorly handled. Bond is no longer a spy, relying on his cunning to solve problems but redced here to simply an information gatherer - take a picture here, get a name there, send it back to London for the answer.

It is only a mess if you were expecting to be spoon-fed everything.

There is also not one single image in this movie that even gets close to being considered iconic Bond.

That is sort of the point. We've been there and done that with "Bond as icon" - check out the 1990's.
I don't always agree with Kermode on his reviews but this one (and I've just seen it now AFTER seeing the film) is, sady, pretty spot on.

I think they stuck the gunbarrel and theme tune on at the end just to remind us it was a Bond film we'd just seen after all.

If you need reminding then that's why they put it where they did.