The thread of Bond lists - LIST 157 - Evaluate the FRWL Opening Titles. (see criteria)

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  • #1 Craig as James Bond. He is the not the best ever - may never be the best ever - but after Brosnan, was a breath of fresh air to the series and put forth a really fine job of things. He was what made Casino Royale work for many

    #2 The airport sequence in Florida where Bond goes after Carlos

    #3 The sinking house in Venice. Yes it's sometimes ridiculous, but there's plenty of action and Eva Green's drowning really leaves a lasting impression

    #4 Madagascar chase with the bomb maker (Mollaka ?), it's also ludicrous, but has plenty of action to get involved in and suspense

    #5 When Bond gets poisoned in Montenegro and Lynd has to save his life for him. They were quite frantic scenes
  • 0BradyM0Bondfanatic70BradyM0Bondfanatic7 Quantum Floral Arrangements: "We Have Petals Everywhere"
    Posts: 28,694
    I haven't paid much notice to this thread, but I obviously have to give my two cents here. ONLY five, @Dimi? All right then... ;)

    5.) The ending- "Bond. James Bond."

    4.) The PTS

    3.) Bond wins the big pot

    2.) The chase in Madagascar

    1.) Bond and Vesper first meet
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,569
    1. The unique PTS is done well- the b&w footage; 'made you feel it, did he?' and Bond's reply, and the exchange between Bond and Dryden is reminiscent of Professor Dent's final scene.
    2. The Madagascar chase, from the exotic location to Bond's improvisation. What a great start.
    3. The stairwell fight. Grainy footage in the right places, plenty of blood- you can't get a more realistic fight scene than this.
    4. The card game, with cleverly placed interludes to keep us interested.
    5. The final moment and line of dialogue. Bond is back!

    Honourable mentions:

    * Craig, for silencing the haters... considerably.
    * YKMN, backed by a fresh and memorable title sequence.
    * Bond in the Bahamas- my future home.
    * Mathis. Such a likeable character.
    * The DBS's incredible nine flips. Another Bond stunt record.
    * The editing/transitions, especially when one shot fades into another, giving it that 60s touch.
  • Posts: 2,402
    I don't think I'm going to retype the list. I don't really need to, do I? I mean for god's sake, it had 20 points on it, and you all know full well what I think about this beyond stellar piece of cinema. The entire movie deserves praise.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,569
    @StirredNotShaken If you type out your comments in notepad and copy/paste from there, you won't lose anything when MI6 glitches out.
  • LicencedToKilt69007LicencedToKilt69007 Belgium, Wallonia
    Posts: 523
    LIST 61 - 5 best moments in CR


    5) The stairwell fight

    4) The poker game scenes

    3) The airport sequence

    2) Bond's first two kills

    1) Title sequence by Kleinman, just superb and You Know My Name song
  • This will be tough.


    5. Stairwell fight and aftermath

    4. The whole damn poker game

    3. Torture Sequenxe

    2. Freerunning chase in Madagascar

    1. PTS

    Honorable mentions:

    Title Sequence & Song, Airport fight, Stairwell fight prelude, Bond orders the first Vesper, "Bond, James Bond", Bond tries to revive Vesper, M's rant about Bond.

    I think that about covers it.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    The pts
    The final scene
    The fight on the swinging cranes
    The torture scene
    The mts
  • Posts: 1,817
    5. The airport scene
    4. Bond meets Mathis, René Mathis
    3. The PTS
    2. Bond and Vesper on the train
    1. Craig's acting in two lines: "Allow me" and "The job's done and the bitch is dead".
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    edited September 2013 Posts: 14,569
    It's good to see the airport scene get some love. I've seen a fair bit of hate for it in the past, like 'it feels shoe-horned in' and 'it's not Bondian enough', but it's a key scene that has a great in-vehicle fight and one of my favourite stunts with the tanker just missing Bond as he rolls across the ground. And we cannot forget the fate of Carlos, shot in a way that the viewer doesn't realize the bomb is attached to him until the final moment. Great stuff.
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,173
    LIST 1: The 007 most intelligent Bond girls
    LIST 2: Your 007 favourite OT sequences by Maurice Binder
    LIST 3: Your 007 most annoying moments in a Bond film
    LIST 4: Rank the Aston Martin cars from the Bonds
    LIST 5: 007's 007 coolest moments
    LIST 6: Rank the non-Barry/Arnold scores
    LIST 7: Your 007 most sexy moments in the Bonds
    LIST 8: The 6 best moments of Bond in London
    LIST 9: The 007 best uses of the Bond Theme
    LIST 10: The 5 worst faces made by the Bonds
    LIST 11: Your top 10 PTS
    LIST 12: The 6 best scenes in OHMSS
    LIST 13: David Arnold's 6 finest moments in the Bonds
    LIST 14: The five nicest folks who ever played a part in a Bond film.
    LIST 15: Ranking the Glen directed Bonds.
    LIST 16: Rank the Blofelds (including NSNA and FYEO)
    LIST 17-61: The 5 worst moments in DN - The 5 best moments in CR.

    <font color=orange size=5><b>LIST 62</b></font>

    <font color=green size=6> <b>The 5 worst moments in QOS.</b></font>
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,173
    5 - Opening car chase. Editing for the ADHD crowd.

    4 - Haha! The jars with tomatoes have dropped on the floor. I'm laughing my brains off. Seriously? The shot of the woman lamenting is four times as long as the longest shot in the actual chase. Even if you think this is funny, it's still out of place in the movie we're given.

    3 - The CGI glass.

    2 - Back-and-forth cutting between a chase and a totally irrelevant horse race. Artistic arrogance.

    1 - The OT: an abomination both musically and visually. Who let these people get away with such madness?
  • Posts: 2,402
    DarthDimi wrote:
    5 - Opening car chase. Editing for the ADHD crowd.

    4 - Haha! The jars with tomatoes have dropped on the floor. I'm laughing my brains off. Seriously? The shot of the woman lamenting is four times as long as the longest shot in the actual chase. Even if you think this is funny, it's still out of place in the movie we're given.

    3 - The CGI glass.

    2 - Back-and-forth cutting between a chase and a totally irrelevant horse race. Artistic arrogance.

    1 - The OT: an abomination both musically and visually. Who let these people get away with such madness?

    Really? Why do people have to always put it like that? Despite the misdiagnoses, ADHD is a genuine disorder suffered by some. This statement always comes across as mocking to me.

    I have more than 5. This movie is crap.

    10 - Amalric isn't allowed to do anything to make his villain memorable. Fantastic actor wasted by the director/producers being idiots. This has always pissed me off.

    9 - A hotel. In the desert. Where nobody will ever find it. Therefore NO BUSINESS EVER.

    8 - Hey, speaking of the hotel, let's build it out of fuel cells! That couldnt possibly go wrong!

    7 - CGI parachute jump. That couldn't possibly be survived by a human being.

    6 - No resolution for the Mr. White character. This had better be fixed before Daniel leaves the role.

    5 - M in the field, wherever Bond goes.

    4 - Horribly edited chase scene. The cut to the horse race is retarded and makes me burst into laughter every time I see it. I thought M was shot the first time I watched the film. I genuinely cannot tell what the hell is going on until Bond and Mitchell are on top of the church.

    3 - No gunbarrel at the beginning for literally no reason whatsoever. And the gunbarrel we do get is complete shit.

    2 - The theme song. Could it be the worst song ever committed to tape? There's a strong case for it.

    1 - The worst edited piece of cinema ever: the opening car chase. I counted something like 300 cuts I think. It's appalling. At least Tamahori made his movie so you could understand what's going on.
  • edited September 2013 Posts: 6,396
    1. The title credits and terrible theme song.

    2. The editing throughout is awful and all over the place.

    3. Field's death. An homage to GF that was meant to be both shocking and emotional. It was neither!

    4. The plot. Or lack of. Who cares about some bad people who are now main utilities provider for Bolivia. What?!

    5. So the organisation Bond is chasing is called Quantum. Oh that's really clever, I see what you've done there. The film is called Quantum of Solace. Yes, bravo(!)

    6. DAD gets a lot of stick for the awful para-sailing scene. Likewise, QoS deserves a lot of flack for the green screen parachute sequence.

    7. No gunbarrel at the start. Acceptable in CR given the story but here it is unforgivable. (SF won't fare much better either).

    8. Dominic Green. Bland, bland, bland.

    9. 30mins into the film and we already have a car chase, a foot chase, a boat chase and a fight to the death. I don't suppose we could have some plot at all Mr Director? Oh sorry, I forgot. There isn't one!

    10. Some humour would have been nice. TD often gets unfairly criticised, especially in LTK, for being too serious but here DC just comes across as RoboBond.
  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,423
    5. Grandma and her dropped tomatoes. Like something out of a 70's Bond picture.

    4. No Gunbarrel

    3. Drab main titles artwork

    2. The editing, especially in the first 30 mins or so.

    1. CGI parachute jump, and it's abrupt ending.
  • Posts: 418
    1. The editing - blink and you miss something.

    2. I would have liked the boat chase to have been much longer and whenever i watch it, i always feel annoyed that i cant see whats going on properly..it's far too jumpy, but that can be said for the car chase and quite a few other scenes aswell though..

    3. Terrible theme song, and one of the worst in the entire series..

    4. Very bland and unmemorable villain..

    5. A weak plot..

    I'd also like to add that i personally think that the running time was far too short for a Bond film, particularly for the modern day films. I like my Bond movies to feel epic, and i like to be taken on a long adventrue. It should have been at least 30 minutes longer, and without all of that cutting and jumping..
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,569
    This film has grown on me a lot in the last 5 years. The theme song, I never really had a problem with- and the gunbarrel outro is now tolerable (the SF gunbarrel annoys me more, with its awkward pose, vinyl sheen and refusal to go back where it belongs).

    1. The death of Mathis. Why, oh why did they have to kill off such a great ally so soon? Why don't we just snuff Leiter too while we're at it.
    2. The editing during the car/foot/boat chase needs some of that slo-mo from Dredd. That should get it back to normal pacing. Not the kind of rush I want from a Bond film.
    3. The overall length needs another 15 minutes added to it. Fixing the editing as mentioned above, plus all the left out shots on the cutting room floor would've seen QoS hit the two hour mark.
    4. Do you expect me to survive this fall into the sink hole? No, Mr Bond. I expect you do die.
    5. Mathis, Leiter and Camille are all strong characters, but there's a serious lack of memorable villains here.
  • LicencedToKilt69007LicencedToKilt69007 Belgium, Wallonia
    Posts: 523
    LIST 62 - 5 (or more) worst moments in QOS

    [11. (too?) high level of blood perhaps]

    10. CGI parachute

    9. That speedy gunbarrel...

    8. The title might be from Fleming , it's still awful.

    7. Lack of humour, "why so serious ? "

    6. The annoying Dominic Greene character, overacted by Mathieu Amalric

    5. The stupid tribute to Goldfinger ( Fields death)

    4. Waste of the plot and some characters (Mathis, Leiter, Fields) -which wasn't that bad at the beginning, needed more work

    3. Daniel Craig's perf (acting badly like a robot)

    2. The TS and song

    1. The editing in general



    Roger Moore described it like a big commercial...I'm on his side.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    edited September 2013 Posts: 16,351
    1. The length. The film is too short.

    2. The Editing. Too quick, it needs to breathe.

    3. The Death of Mathis and Fields. Two possibly returning characters wasted.

    4. The Plot. It's too real world and boring for my tastes. It's like TMWTGG. If I wanted to watch real world problems, I'll watch the news thank you very much.

    5. The Villains. There not fleshed out enough and there mainly glorified Henchmen.

    6. The CGI freefall scene. that was just painful to watch. Could have been a nice chance to do a cool homage to Moonraker but gave us the true successor to Brosnan's Pain face.

    7. During the climax there's a brief shot showing in between a woman's legs. (for the longest time I thought it was an actual nude shot but this is Bond, not porn.)

    8. The ever changing font's that tell us where Bond is. (Save the fonts for the film titles.)

    9. The ripped from Bourne rooftop foot chase.

    10. Giving the viewers a look into M's bathing cycle... Why....just why!?!

    EDIT: I have one more thing I don't like about qos.

    11. The MI6 building. It's way to advanced. the touch screen interfaces and computer interfaces are way too futuristic. This is something you'd see in Abrams Star Trek or Die Another Day.

    EDIT 2: Changed number 10.
  • Murdock wrote:

    8. The ever changing font's that tell us where Bond is. (Save the fonts for the film titles.)

    That's a great one @Murdock. It's always annoyed me too. And in general, why do we need captions telling us "London", "Siena", "Bregenz" etc. It's treating the audience with contempt in thinking we're too dum to realise what city/country the action is currently in.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    Murdock wrote:

    8. The ever changing font's that tell us where Bond is. (Save the fonts for the film titles.)

    That's a great one @Murdock. It's always annoyed me too. And in general, why do we need captions telling us "London", "Siena", "Bregenz" etc. It's treating the audience with contempt in thinking we're too dum to realise what city/country the action is currently in.

    Well It's fine to tell us where Bond is. Casino Royale did it in a more subtle way. But I thought one of the fonts was a Sign attached to a building and it just confused me. One font for telling the viewers where Bond is, is fine.
  • ThunderballThunderball playing Chemin de Fer in a casino, downing Vespers
    edited September 2013 Posts: 814
    5. I agree about no resolution with Mr. White. Better be in Bond 24 or 25..
    4. Some of the editing.
    3. Seeing Mathis go.
    2. So-so villain
    1. The song 'Another Way To Die'

    I really like QOS, but these are the things that always stick out for me.
  • QBranchQBranch Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
    Posts: 14,569
    Murdock wrote:
    but gave us the true successor to Brosnan's Pain face.
    It's difficult to imagine that anyone other than Broz could shoulder the responsibility.
    Murdock wrote:
    11. The MI6 building. It's way to advanced. the touch screen interfaces and computer interfaces are way too futuristic. This is something you'd see in Abrams Star Trek or Die Another Day.
    This is another good point. The touch screens are reminiscent of the Zion control interface in the Matrix. The first time I saw it, I felt they went too far, and could possibly hurt continuity when faced with the inevitable task of scaling back the tech for SF.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,351
    QBranch wrote:
    This is another good point. The touch screens are reminiscent of the Zion control interface in the Matrix. The first time I saw it, I felt they went too far, and could possibly hurt continuity when faced with the inevitable task of scaling back the tech for SF.

    I think that's why MI6 was blown up in Skyfall. However to be fair. There are such things as touch screen computers, there not magic scanner tables.
  • 5. CGI parachute jump

    4. The overly-political plot.

    3. The gunbarrel goes at the FRONT, people.

    2. The editing, especially in the beginning. The car chase looks like an epileptic fit, and the needless cuts away during the interrogation and chase are infuriating.

    1. The title
  • saunderssaunders Living in a world of avarice and deceit
    Posts: 987
    5. CGI parachute jump.

    4. Too little of Felix Leiter.

    3. Mathis death, such a unnecessary waste of a great Fleming character.

    2. Bond not getting to bed Camille in the last reel.

    1. Opera being sung over an action sequence!

    Having said all this, I still really love QOS and the fast pace editing no longer bothers me!
  • Posts: 1,817
    5. Too much M in the field
    4. Lack of the Bond theme
    3. The way they cut the scene of Bond at Talamone (and pretty much of the whole editing but this particular moment annoys me)
    2. Fields getting 'goldfingered'
    1. Gunbarrel at the end
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    The five scenes with Elvis.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117

    2. The editing, especially in the beginning. The car chase looks like an epileptic fit, and the needless cuts away during the interrogation and chase are infuriating.

    Oh dear Soundofthesinners expect a rebuke in the post for trivialising a serious illness:
    Really? Why do people have to always put it like that? Despite the misdiagnoses, ADHD is a genuine disorder suffered by some. This statement always comes across as mocking to me.

  • 4EverBonded4EverBonded the Ballrooms of Mars
    edited September 2013 Posts: 12,480
    I can add more later, this is a messed up film with a few spots of brilliance.

    1) The editing, obviously the director was a fan of the Blair Witch Project ...and it's just chopped up too much; this film was short on content and not lovely to watch for the most part (opera scene excluded) I wasn't getting into the story, I was watching a director direct - and I really hate that

    2) The theme song - so bad, it is painful and a lousy way to start a Bond film

    3) A weak villain; Greene is just a schmuck, not menacing at all

    4) Mathis's death - unnecessary and disheartening in an already downbeat film
    He could have, should have, been in one more Bond film as an ally

    5) The rather boring storyline, plot; the whole script actually with only a few parts excepted
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