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Goldfinger has the perfect PTS in this regard, I would say.
Fair play - in the space of 5 minutes, you've got:
-Bond as a proper commando
-Bond in a (white!) tux
-Bond gets the girl
-Bond's fisticuffs, bone-dry delivery of "shocking," and then walking away.
Put that way, it's a wonderful little 'tone poem' that tells the story of Bond in minature.
Ideally, the antagonist could have been an amalgamation of both Spang brothers, posing as a respectable jeweler in London, as the head of the House of Diamonds, while turning out to be the owner of a chain of hotels and casinos in Las Vegas, indulging in Old West reenactments.
I prefer QOS to SF in every single way, except for the main villain.
I like Craig's performance better, I prefer Mathis over Kincade (even though I like the latter too), the locations are better, the production design is more inspired, the action is much more thrilling, I prefer the villain organisation monopoly scheme to the digging into Bond's past and even the cinematography I find to be on par really.
Edit: I also love Camille. But even if she would have been a lesser Bond girl, it would have still been better than no Bond girl at all.
Agree entirely, mate! SF is a Bond film I really want to like, but it just never satisfys me!
And where I think Deakins gets a lot of praise for his lensing, I much prefer Roberto Schaefers lush, richer cinematography!
I am firmly in the SF-camp (which I think is bigger, @GoldenGun is probably correct in saying), but you guys are really making me want to rewatch QoS. I really want to see, what you guys see and maybe I haven't given the film the fair shake it deserves. I guess that's what positive fandom is all about.
So there are people on these boards who don't hate SP?? I thought I was the only one... ;)
My good sir, I love SP. In fact, I rank the Craigs as follows:
But these are trying times for SP fans, aren't they? ;-)
1 QOS
2 SP
3 CR
4 SF
But like I said, I love them all.
Deliberate editing choices you don't like isn't poor editing.
It absolutely can be, if that deliberate choice is misguided. Many poor things in film history were deliberate choices that seemed like good ideas at the time.
Well, no. Quantum of Solace has more than competent editing in a style you think was a "mistake" stylistically (because you don't like it). The editor didn't screw up. It's not "poor editing".
With great respect, that feels like mental gymnastics.
It might have been a conscious stylistic choice, but that doesn't make it good, nor does it imply that the editor "screwed up", just that it ultimately didn't work out in the end and takes away from other elements in the film, like the previously mentioned cinematography.
If what you are saying were the case, then there's no such thing as a bad anything in any film; no HOD ever sets out to have their department's contribution take away from the film's quality. For example: a poor score can also take away from a film, despite the composer doing exactly what he was asked to do in a way that he believed would be good. It doesn't matter, what matters is the end product. Similarly, I'm sure QoS was edited as it was asked to be, but that doesn't make it a well-edited film.
There's a reason why people think QoS suffers from shakey-cam when there's actually not a lot of handheld camera-work in it.
No, being a conscious stylistic choice doesn't mean it's well edited. But when you say it "didn't work out in the end", this is really just an opinion that this type of editing shouldn't be done in Bond films (or perhaps any films). The award-winning editors behind QoS (which won an award for editing) more than competently implemented a vision from the director that served a pretty clear thematic purpose. I don't want to misstate your position, but I suspect your solution to this "poor" award-winning editing would be to not edit the film in this fashion at all. So this says nothing about the work of the editors.
And this isn't to say that nothing can be bad in any film so long as it's deliberate. Thunderball doesn't seem to be a particularly well-edited film, what with scenes appearing to be out of order, and a shot of the Disco Volante that cuts to a very similar shot of the Disco Volante that cuts to a third similar shot of the boat. Diamonds are Forever seems to loop dialogue and omits critical information. Whether these things are deliberate or not, I'd be hard pressed to imagine what a guiding artistic vision behind them could be.
Yeah. The reason is: it's made to look like shaky cam. I'm not sure what you're implying here. Handheld cameras would likely not be ideal for the PTS car chase and rooftop chase, and they were able to get the intended aesthetic without it.
Do you mean to suggest, in contrast to your other point, that the footage ended up looking like shaky cam through some kind of error?
If you compare to the Bourne films (which it is pretty undeniably aping) it isn't really in the same league: despite all of the shaky stuff in the Bourne action scenes you know exactly what's happening- that's simply not the case in QoS. I'm sure a lot of that is down to the director too: he needs to make sure we understand where we are in the actual location/set and that we have a feel for the layout before he thrashes about in it and that he actually shoots everything the editor needs.
Anyway, in terms of the Craig films I am very un-controversial: it's Casino Royale and Skyfall at the top, then Spectre, then QoS a long, long way down below. I think it may be the weakest Bond film of the lot (and CR/SF are candidates for the very best).
Yes, indeed. It is an opinion in a thread about opinions. Instead of mistating my position, after saying you don't want to mistate my position, I'll give a direct answer to a yet unasked but badly needed direct question:
I actually don't mind that editing style, when used well. It's just not used well in QoS. If the retort to that is "well they won awards!", then I'm absolutely fine with that. I don't really care what they won for it - plenty of things have won awards that weren't deserving. You're boldly assuming that "this is not good because I don't like it" as opposed to the other way around. I also still like QoS, despite my perceived flaws of it.
You're speaking of purpose and intent, but it remains that I don't think it achieves and follows through on either.
No, the implication is that the cutting created an illusion of shakey cam where there was none, thus infringing on the artistic merit of the cinematography - which was my original point to the OP on Schaefer's work and thus not in contrast to any of the views offered so far. I don't buy the idea that shakey camera setups were not ideal for those sequences: plenty of other films utilised them for similar action beats. The Bourne films being the obvious examples.
Admittedly, the views I have on the editing are pretty uncontroversial.
Anyway if we're doing lists
1. CR
2. QOS
3. SP
4. SF
I like SF, just don't love it as much as the others!
And, yes, am proud member of the SP fan club, have always enjoyed watching it!
1) CR
2) SF
3) QoS
4) SP
I guess I just wasn't clear on your opinion, and I still don't see why you think the editing in QoS is "poor", as opposed to just not your bag. At least @mtm offered the example of Bond's boat chase success being unsatisfyingly laid out (I'd have to rewatch to respond one way or another, but I don't recall being bothered by it).
If you liked Richard Pearson's work in Bourne, but not in Bond, I guess I'm just wondering how exactly Pearson failed at aping himself? Or why the 10 minutes of the film that's edited in this way infringes on the merit of the cinematography of the film as a whole? Does John Glen's experimental editing of OHMSS's fight scenes infringe on that film's cinematography?
I mean, George is taken into a room and somehow beats everyone up, and you get a general idea that "Bond beat a bunch of people up". The cinematography of OHMSS, in my view, is none the worse for wear. Daniel drives a car fast while being pursued by other fast cars, and he drives his car better and causes the others problems. I'm not sure what's so different here. It's an impressionistic approach to a very basic scene, that, at least in the case of QoS, seems to be reflecting Bond's state of mind, and we see the style recede quite a bit as the film goes on.
Same here. I wasn't at all pleased with QoS in the cinema, but I like it more pretty much every time I watch. It's possible that a smaller home screen makes shaky cam/fast editing a bit easier to handle.
after many, many viewings to really enjoy QOS. Given the problems they
had with a writers strike etc. I remember reading that the editing was a little
frantic at the start, but as the film continues it does settle down. As the idea
was to almost disorientate the viewer. To give them a taste of the frantic pace
Bond lives at in these life or death situations.
Me too, hopefully NTTD will help boost positive opinions on it.
Yes, I can see that you were unclear; you jumped right to the de facto "well you just doesn't like that editing style and you're wrong because it won loads of awards" response instead of asking. I would also be unclear on someone's stance if I took such a broad stroking approach right off the bat! But, I'll elaborate on it now, just so you definitely are clear :).
I wouldn't say Pearson "failed" at anything. It wasn't just him, after all. Editors are as much the crafters of the story as the director is, but they must work in tandem with each other in order for it to work, and clearly something was remiss along the way. Forster himself said that with an unfinished script, he purposefully wanted the cuts tighter to disguise story issues. Pearson's not the only one responsible. I'd say it's a bit more than ten minutes - the hyper-quick, stylised editing is present almost entirely throughout the film. That and the fact that the editing style was pretty much a retroactive decision (to distract from the film's flaws) make up two of the big differences between QoS and the fight scene in OHMSS for me (elaboration below).
Yep, while I wouldn't go as far as seizure-inducing, I'd definitely say it's often incomprehensible. I've gotten used to it over the years, but that's not the same as realising that it is suddenly good.
The big difference between the OHMSS example provided and, well, pretty much the majority of the action beats in QoS is that everything always feels more cohesive and made with the style in mind in the OHMSS scene, on top of the fact that particular style does lend itself to hand-to-hand combat scenes. Everything in that OHMSS fight scene feels like its designed to compliment the editing - shot choices, camera movements, the sound effects. It's very carefully planned out beyond just choreography; you get the feeling that Hunt, Reed and Glen spoke about how it was going to look and feel before they shot it. As well as that, that style is limited to those short fights between Bond and whatever goons are in his way, so it's arguably more effective. You don't get that in QoS - you just get a lot of "oh that might look good" angles in a blender without any rhythm, which is why the Schaefer's work is undermined, in my view. There's one exception, however: the Bond versus Slate hand-to-hand (see!) in QoS is probably one of the few examples in the film of that style working well; we have things for our eyes to follow, and an actual build-up that establishes the geography of the room and establishes the fact that Slate has a switchblade which we know Bond will eventually turn back on him.
However, it works less well in vehicular based sequences as, with the amount of movement involved, we constantly need a sense of where things are in relation to the characters, where they're attempting to go, or how they're going to attempt to do it (I say rarely because only Greengrass seems to get this right, for some reason). They're already going at incredible speeds in dangerous directions as it is, so those details are important. I get the idea from people that it's supposed to reflect Bond's state of mind, but that really feels like a bit of a cop out to me.
@mtm mentioned the boat chase, which is a fine example of all of that stuff and is also a fine example of a collaboration not working in sync. There was a thread that had more than a few pages dedicated to the boat flip during the climax of the chase, and nobody could provide a satisfactory answer as to what causes the enemy craft to jackknife the way it did. There's pretty much nothing presented in the film to show what is on the opposite end of the line that Bond throws into the enemy boat. Granted, that's as much on Forster as it is on any editor (as Mark said already), but it still doesn't make the editing any less ineffective in parts, even from someone as good an editor as Pearson.
And yet, I still like the film, so go figure!
If you watch it again you'll see there's no reason for the opponent's boat to be flipped. Bond tosses an anchor into it but there's no suggestion that the other end of the rope is anywhere else but in his own boat, which would do nothing at all.
Here is a controversial opinion for the thread: the experimental editing in OHMSS looks much worse than the speed ramping in DAD. Those sped up fights... they're really stupid.