Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Jcard (A) on June 03, 2009 at 18:33:57

In Reply to: RE: Quantum of Solace--The best Bond ever? posted by patrickU on May 10, 2009 at 12:11:20

Disagree ! My big problem with Quantum of Solace begins with headache creating fast-edits. Take the frenetic driving scenes: The short millisecond scene cuts are completely disorienting. I felt like it was a video game, not real flesh-and-blood action. Many of these short bursts and flashes at all angles and the uneven patched-together mosaics all just seemed like they were digitally fabricated. What, so no expensive cars would really be scratched? And the Bond car seemed to unrealistically self-repair itself, as it was digitally manipulated through it's virtual chase. What's with that? You couldn't get any reference point to judge the speed and danger in the car chase, or any similar action scenes, such as on the water. Because of this misguidance, you lose the intensity, it just becomes disjointed and disengaging. Pizza and fairytales, instead of the real hamburger.

After surviving the supposed action scenes in Solace, I was suddenly longing for the intensity of the chase scenes of The French Connection, or in McQueen's Bullit, or the original car scenes in the 1974 original of Gone in 60 Seconds, or the screaming cross-desert white-light intensity of Vanishing Point. The viewer felt involved, and could feel the grit of the danger and could get an almost first-hand taste of the brutal speed and terror.

Action scenes in Quantum came across as desperately overly spiced, with a lot of photoshopping around in the digital mall. By contrast in the few pioneering action scenes that I mentioned above, the actual film sets were extremely dangerous to be around. Many cars got destroyed, engines actually got hot. No fuzzy little blue screens upon which to backfill digital Bond car manipulations.

Imagine if we used the crystal clear high definition digital technology to record and edit real clean action, and left the cotton candy to Pixar instead? Even Brosnan's Bond car duels were so much more real. Or, am I just too old school, and I just don't get it??? You tell me!