Quantum Of Solace Review

Something Of Boris



Last night I was lucky enough to wangle a ticket to the exclusive worldwide first screening of the new James Bond film, Quantum Of Solace. Regular readers may recall my current obsession with Ian Fleming and Bond, so to get to see the film before it's general release was a genuine thrill for me, and i'm obscenely grateful to the people who enabled this to happen, you know who you are.

Set literally minutes after Casino Royale ended, the movie opens with it's usual pre-credit action sequence, but for post-Casino Royale Bond there's no jolly jape sliding down the Millennium Dome for Daniel Craig, instead we have a hard as nails car chase, with some great stunts, so realistic and pacily edited , that you almost feel each scrape and bang as the cars rattle down a mountain at full pelt. We discover Bond has had the shady Mr White captive in the boot of his car for the whole chase and Bond dutifully delivers the beaten and bleeding baddie into the arms of M, played with prim authority (as usual) by Dame Judi Dench, who aims to extract information from their captive, by whatever means necessary. We are then treated to a damp squib, of the usually iconic, title sequence, which seems half baked and underdone, which is a shame following Casino Royales great playing card suit inspired effort.



Back into the film, we learn more of the shady Smersh/Spectre-esque organisation that White belongs to, Quantum. They have, as seen in the trailer "people everywhere" including the upper echelons of MI6, and said "people" appear to spring their trap and free White. A chase ensues through the streets of Italy, and up until then I had been fairly happy with what i'd seen so far (apart from the titles), but then we are treated to a Bourne-alike chase through the city streets and rooftops. I know Bournes stunt co-ordinator, Dan Bradley, was hired to bring bigger bangs and action set pieces to Bond, but the whole sequence, (and many more to come throughout the film) just seemed to be a Bourne pastiche. I know the Bourne franchise paved the way for the new gritty realistic Bond for the 21st century, but to ape the film series to such a shameless level (roof top chase? check, tough fist fights in small enclosed apartment? check, motorbikes chase? check, have we missed anything? oh yeah jumping from building to building via windows? check) that brings absolutely nothing new to our screens, seems a sad, desperate act, for a long lived, and much loved franchise like Bond. Bond films should have action sequences that bring something new to the screen, not just a reheating of a old idea.



The plot then whistles along at great pace, hardly taking the time to explain why Bond heads for Haiti, then Austria, then Italy then England, then Columbia, and god knows where else. With a great screen writer like Paul Haggis, you'd have expected something a little more coherent from the plotting and story, but half the time, you're left scratching your head, with important dialogue being muttered at a barely audible level, in a barely understandable accent. Bond visits MI6 for some reason or another, and for some reason, the makers have decided that 21st century MI6 needs futuristic touch screen video displays a la Minority Report, which comes across as a pointless special effects exercise, where a simple old fashioned film & photo would have done the trick. Maybe they should stick their video screens in the invisible car, and make it disappear?

That said, despite the unfathomable plot (something to do with a ambitious villain masquerading as an eco-lobbyist, a political coup in southern America and a water shortage?), Daniel Craig is convincing as the cold hearted killer spy, but the writers have made the mistake of having Bond learn to love, and forgive. Bond does conflicted well in the books, but it's much harder to translate onto the screen. Eon should take heed from Seinfelds mantra 'No Lessons, No Hugs'. It's just not Bond.



Mathieu Almaric, so great in The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, brings a sleazy and creepy presence to his character, eco-shyster Dominic Greene, but he feels underused, and he never comes across as a great Bond-Baddie. We want cruel heartless killers, but he never seems to do anything too cruel, he just... talks about them? He has a henchman with comedy hairpiece fresh from Jim Carreys Dumb and Dumber trailer, but again, he never really comes across as menacing, or even that tough. I'm no fan of Jaws, but at least he appeared slightly scary. The henchman here just comes across as comic relief, not the personal bodyguard of the mastermind of a criminal empire.





The Bond girls are good though. The stunning Olga Kurylenko plays a conflicted and damaged Camille, who is also after Greene but for different reasons, and she forms an alliance with Bond once she realises they are both after the same thing. She is gorgeous and a great choice for a Bond girl. The equally stunning Gemma Arterton plays Agent Fields, a low ranking member of the Secret Service dispatched to bring Bond in once he's turned rogue. But this being Bond, she doesn't get much further than the bedroom, before Bond dispatches her with suave charm. Its a shame that it's such a slender role, as she brings innocent spunk and charm to a potentially throwaway Bond girl.





Judi Dench is great as usual, and her scenes with Daniel Craig are great. Her stern school matron M, is the perfect counterpoint to Craigs cocky self assured loose cannon, and their encounters bristle with electricity. Mathis returns, and its a welcome return, although he doesn't last long before he is brutally dispatched. Like Greene says "everything that Bond touches has a habit of withering and dying'.

There are some nice nods to the Bond legacy. His business card reads Universal Imports (fans of the books will get that one). Felix Leiter gets embroiled in the plot somehow, but he feels a little shoe-horned in. In Haiti we get a truck of coffins go by referencing Live and Let Die. So some nice touches for Bond fans.

Some of the the action set pieces are great, especially the plane dog fight, even though its resolution is a slightly creaky implausible climax. The film builds up great momentum, but ultimately the films climax sort of comes and goes with a fizzle rather than a bang. The plot feels like its leading to some big reveal that never comes. The villains demise (without spoiling too much) is rather lame and dissatisfying. And Bond learns to forgive and forget. And thats about it.


So in conclusion...

Its a disappointment of a movie i'm afraid after the brave new grounds broken in Casino Royale. Not as good as Casino Royale or Goldeneye, but definitely better than later Brosnan efforts. I'd like to see them take Bond to somewhere new next time, it doesn't need to be a continuation, thats the beauty of the franchise. Pitch him against an uber-villain, mano e mano, like Goldfinger or Scaramanga, lets have a battle of wits, not Bourne-lite.

3/5

Back To School, Raindance, & Wispa

Back To School





So... after five long, hard, broke summer months i'm finally back to uni. The second year. The year where your grades get counted towards your final result. Scary stuff. But it's good to be back for sure. Good to see your coursemates, find out what they've been up to, good to find out about your modules, and what is expected, just nice to be back. So, as usual, we have four modules this semester which all finish after we get back from the Christmas break, so even now it seems like we're running out of time. We have two theory based snore-fest modules; "Cultural History Methods & Perspectives" and "Ethics In The Media" which appear to have very tenuous links to Film & Broadcast Production, but what the hell... they say we have to do them, so i'm damn well going to give them a good go. But they are both very boring to talk about so we'll just skim right by those, to talk about the other more practical modules.

"Radio Production" is fairly self-explanatory, for our assessment we have to create a five-minute radio news feature based around a topical subject. My groups project is based around recapping the year 2008 in terms of cinema, and how it has performed, can it be classed as a vintage year? The piece has to include 5 separate recorded interviews with notable sources, and the better the source, the better the grade. So I took it upon myself to aim fairly high, and email BBC Radio 1's resident film critic James King, to see if he would participate in an interview for us. And he said yes! Which is a great boost to the project overall, and I hope we can gain a few more decent interviews for the project. As with a lot of modules, this particular one involves group work, which the mere mention of is enough to give anyone who has ever had to do group work in a university environment, an instant headache and nightmare simultaneously. There are advantages in some cases because you get to chose your group if you're lucky, and therefore can expect particular standards of work from everyone, plus you may get to work with someone you've always wanted to work with. On the flipside, if you don't know enough people in your particular class group, you can pick a nucleus of reliable friends, but you always get lumbered with someone, who for their own reasons don't have a group to work with (they were late, a newcomer to the course, they don't know anyone, they're just weird and everyone has avoided them, or worse...all of the above). And guess what, its happened to us again, after last years crazy Brazillian girl incident (text messages about nosebleeds, incomprehensible stories about penguins, regular no-shows and general crazy weirdness) I didn't think things could get much worse, but they have, but I won't be naming and shaming here, let's just say I don't expect much from our late newcomer. The problem with group work, is you all have to work together and pull in the same direction to get anything cohesive and worthy done, so when one member doesn't think on the same wavelength, or doesn't pull their weight, you have to put in extra effort, all with the annoying and frustrating knowledge that they will get the same result as you, which won't realistically reflect their input. Grrrrr annoying.

"Fiction Production" is the other practical module, and again does pretty much exactly what is says on the tin. We have to produce a five minute short film on an original idea/script, which is very exciting, as we've never worked with actors before in a real sense, on a proper project. It's also exciting, because despite being a group work module again, this time, our group is a team of film-makers in which we all get on, we all want to work with each other, and we're all genuinely excited about the project itself. Its a short comedy piece about two rival housemates who are competing with each other to get out of the house on time for work, and who will go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to out do the other (If anyone wants to read the script, let me know & i'll email it). So we are developing this as we speak, rewriting the script, scouting for locations, researching music and looking for actors. All very exciting stuff. I'll keep a tabs on this project as it moves along. It's called Pistols At Dawn, and we hope to have it finished by the end of the year.


Raindance Film Festival



As Rotten Tomatoes was a sponsor of Raindance (A UK film festival for independent films), I was very gratefully given a festival pass, giving me access to all the screenings for nothing. Unluckily I wasn't able to use it to it's full potential, but I was able to get to a couple of events. On the Saturday night I went to an evening event with Corey Feldman doing a Q&A session with clips from a few of his films. This was really good, and Corey Feldman comes across as a genuinely nice guy, possibly a little disco-damaged from his hedonistic heyday, but still a nice guy (even if he does dye his hair). He was a chatty guest offering up funny anecdotes about Gremlins, The Goonies, Lost Boys, Stand By Me etc, so I was pleased that I managed to go. A little disappointed that I didn't pluck up the courage for a photograph, or to get my DVD signed, but still a good night. Later on that evening I got to see the film that Corey was in for the festival, called The Birthday. Which to be kind, is a strange little, spanish made, but english language curio of a film. Its not had a major release, and only been seen at a spanish film festival before, and probably for a good reason. It has some nice ideas, and the last ten minutes are pretty spectacular, but its incoherent, incomprehensible and down right weird (but not in a good way) for the rest of the time. That said, I met the director Eugenio Mira, who was a lovely guy, so I won't slate the film, let's just say the guy has potential for the future.





For the closing gala night there was a screening of a new British movie called Hush. Having little prior knowledge before the film started was quite a nice experience, and the movie itself, although riddled with plot-holes, and lacking in the plausability stakes, is an effective little British thriller. Not giving too much away, the story centres on the main character, who driving along a motorway late at night with his girlfriend, spots a captive woman tied up in the back of a lorry, as it cuts them up on a turn off. A cat and mouse pursuit then ensues, and the film is beautifully shot, with decent acting turns from most involved. Its worth checking out when it hits the big screen, and marks the director Mark Tonderai as a name for the future.


Wispa Bars



Just as a small side note, in case you hadn't noticed, the classic Cadburys chocolate bar Wispa is back. Why they ever stopped making these is beyond me, and I have been totally addicted, probably having one every day for the last two weeks. A friend of mine insists that the Aero is a superior chocolate bar because of it's bigger bubbles. I put it to you that this is wrong. They ROCK.

Bring back Wispa gold next please Mr. Cadburys.



'Til Next Time....