Quantum of Solace

Sooo I watched Quantum of Solace last weekend with a few friends. Overall, I liked it a lot, but the ending was rushed and kinda underwhelming.

The story picks up quite literally minutes after Casino Royale, with Bond driving to Siena, Italy with a captured Quantum agent, in an epic car chase scene (rated 10th best car chase scene in history). When he gets to M, it's revealed that even MI6 has been infiltrated by the Quantum organization, and they didn't even know about the group.

The first three fourths of the movie are excellent, but then the story slowly degrades and becomes confusing. The Quantum organization is played up to be some massive, yet unknown, organization that has people all over the world, everywhere. But in the ending it seems like it has 3 people running it. The movie does a good job at making you root for Bond, when all sorts of things happen that he wrongly gets blamed for, as well as MI6 and even the CIA trying to capture him at one point. It makes it get pretty intense when the viewer doesn't know whats going to happen to him.

Overall it was good, but like I said earlier the ending was meh (yes, "meh" is indeed a word and has been added to the dictionary). It seems very rushed and doesn't really offer much closure (not many movies do, nowadays) The building where most of the ending took place was kinda stupid. Who would build a multi-million dollar building in the middle of the desert, that is laced with so many volatile fuel cells that lighting a match could cause the whole thing to explode? The movie was certainly entertaining, but I don't think its story was very high quality.

Pie is incredibly good. The cake is a lie.

Hi. I'm just gonna share some of my thoughts about what is going on in the movie we are currently watching, Out of the Past.

So far, it has been an interesting movie. It certainly lives up to its film noir genre classification, with its extensive use of smoking, shadows, and a partly urban environment. Though, I was at one point a bit confused when the really long flashback was occurring, I didn't realize it was a flashback at first. I guess I must of phased out or went brain dead for a moment when that was being established, though it does make sense now since they had that voice over narration during it. I like the fast paced, responding with a question style dialogue that is heavily featured, its a bit different than what I am used to and I like it. I am also a bit confused about the relationship between the secretary and Jeff, because when they first met it seemed like they did not know each other at all, yet a little bit later on they acted as though they had known each other for a while.

Overall, my first impressions of the movie are good and I look forward to see what happens next.

Pie

Hi. Even though we don't have to write about westerns, and everyone is probably sick of them, I'm gonna write about one anyways, as I think it deserves special mention.

Shane is a "classic" western that won an academy award for best cinematography, and got placed in the National Film Registry as historically, culturally or aesthetically significant. Well, I don't think its deserving of such titles and recognition. It was bad. Really bad. Like, me and my friend wanted to turn it off and do something else halfway through bad. I think the worst part of it was where some little kid named Joey was running yelling "bang bang" repeatedly making his mom cry because it was an emotional and scary time for her. I think I cringed every time he yelled "bang bang."

The characters were also all very bland and you were not really "rooting" for any characters, they did not really make you care about them or what happens them. The plot was also very generic, definately a classic western formula plot. Good guy meets people in need of help. Bad guys come and good guy helps needy people. Story goes until there is a showdown between the good guy and the bad guys. The "showdown" wasn't even satisfying, for a western there was hardly any action, and what there was was pretty cheesy. The western we watched in class, Stagecoach was awesome in comparison. It was also pretty cheesy at points, but it's story was more enjoyable and I actually wanted to see the next part the next day, I would look forward to it. Shane...bleh. Don't watch it.

Old movies

I don't like old movies in general, whether they are considered a "great" movie or not. I suppose some of the biggest contributors to this... prejudice... against old movies is the music, acting, and being black and white.

I really, really, hate the loud obnoxious band/orchestra music that all of them have, especially in like the openings of the movies or something. Westerns are especially perceptible to this. I like the more subtle music that fits the the theme. A good example of this would be the intro's to a movie such as Batman. Here is the song Vespertilio from Batman Begins.



I like that song because it is instantly recognizable - you hear it and you know its Batman. I don't feel like you can do that with many old movies. Old movies it just, to me, feels like the composer just dipped their head in ink and face-rolled a piece of paper, and called it a movie score.

Another reason why I don't really like old movies is that that many are not in color. Movies are supposed to immerse you in a story and make you sort of...feel like you are there, right? I don't think black and white does that for me, I just can't get into the movie. Many times the story is good, but the presentation does not deliver. Maybe I just haven't been exposed to enough older movies (perhaps I'll see some I'll like in this class?). When I go looking for a movie to watch, I usually don't even glance at the older ones, its straight to the new/semi new releases.

I guess you could say I'm addicted to CGI(computer generated imagery), and I would say that is true. I love the beautiful visuals that CGI offers. It can go from enhancing scenes to make them look real to a scene totally computer generated, one that couldn't be done otherwise.

Back to old movies. I think that in many old movies, the acting is terrible. If you took an old black and white movie (one that is considered a good movie), made it into color (and made it so the visuals were nice and crisp, as if it were filmed with modern technology) and re-released it in an environment where people have never seen it before, I do not think it would be received as well as when it was originally made.

One old movie I DO actually like, off the top of my head, is Good Night, and Good Luck, which I watched in US history. It had an excellent story and good acting (other people were falling asleep when we were watching it...I don't know why).

Oh wait. It was made in 2005 but released in black and white. Never mind, I guess there isn't an old movie I like.

Introduction

Hi I'm Jared and I like watching movies.

The latest one I've seen is Vantage Point (that was a while ago actually...1-2 weeks), it was pretty good and I enjoyed it, but some things got a little annoying. After maybe 3-4 restart-the-movie cycles it started to get old and I just wanted them to get on with it. Other than that, I liked the story and the end was satisfying.

A cool thing I found out is that http://www.imdb.com/features/video/ is offering free streaming of oldish movies, check it out.