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Author Topic: Skyfall Edward Havens Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 614 From: Los Angeles, CA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 10-27-2012 12:38 PM                     Yep, it's the best Bond movie in over forty years. Sets the mold for which all future Bond movies will be judged. The formula is simple: Oscar-winning director. Oscar-nominated screenwriter. The best living cinematographer out there, even if he hasn't won an Oscar yet. Throw in as many Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated actors you can get your hands on. Add Noomu Rapace's creepy ex-husband, a boatload of stunts that prove once and for all there needs to be an Oscar awarded for Best Stunts, and a great Thomas Newman score. Shake, not stir, and it's a classic from the first frame. Yes, Bond drinks a beer. And guess what, it totally fits, once you've actually seen the scene. And he gets his martini too, shaken just so. I ain't gonna spoil the movie for anyone, but this Bond fanatic went in with high expectations and Mendes, Craig and everyone on down delivered. A+.  |  IP: Logged Mark J. Marshall Film God Posts: 3188 From: New Castle, DE, USA Registered: Aug 2002 posted 10-30-2012 01:47 PM                    Sounds good. I have a question on this one... how does it rank on the seizure-cam scale? The last one I saw had a car chase that was chopped and cut so quickly and shaken so badly that I could barely make out who was chasing who or what was going on. I gave up after watching that scene, highly disappointed. I love a good action flick. And I enjoy Bond movies generally. But the last one started off shaking me up to the point where I didn't feel like sitting through two hours of it.  |  IP: Logged Frederick Lanoy Film Handler Posts: 88 From: North of France Registered: Aug 2009 posted 10-30-2012 02:51 PM                     Don't Worry. Like you Sam Mendes does'nt like shaking cam. No school like old school : very few CGI effect, excellent editing, beautiful action scenes. And the open credits is truly amazing. By the way : 4 K DCP. I think the image looks fantastic.  |  IP: Logged Kurt Zupin Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 989 From: Maricopa, Arizona Registered: Oct 2004 posted 11-06-2012 06:39 AM                     I posted this on my facebook thread so if your friends with me there then you've seen it already. I am not a Bond expert, I haven't seen every bond film ever made. I would say I've seen half of them. Skyfall is the best of the films I have seen, and most likely it is the best of the entire series. Javier Bardem sets the measuring stick for the next 50 years of Bond as what a Bond Villain should be. He is probably in the movie for a total of 30 minutes but when he is on screen you are riveted, you laugh, you gasp. He covers everything a good bad guy should, you even have to question whether you should be cheering him on to succeed in his goal. I loved the opening Parkour scene in Casino Royale but the opening chase scene is one of the best scenes of this type put on screen. The stunt work on motorcycles is simply put, insane. Sam Mendes is exactly what this franchise needed, bringing along with him the amazing Roger Deakins we get possibly the best shot film in the Bond series. The fight scenes are well choreographed and shot. You can see who's fighting who, and what they are doing in said fight. With Skyfall they have set up the future of this franchise with the introduction of some old friends, one that was introduced in the trailer. Other's you'll have to wait and see. Go see this movie, see it in IMAX film if you get the chance as it looks spectacular. I will update after I see it in digital on Wednesday afternoon. ENJOY! 5/5  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 11-09-2012 11:52 PM                        Kurt, you haven't updated! I could count the pixels in the digital IMAX I saw. Lots of aliasing. But this is indeed a great movie. Bond fans will really enjoy it. Good thing I am a Bond fan but I think I'd enjoy it even if I weren't. There is a bit of shaky cam during a few dialog scenes, but it wasn't used to an overly ridiculous amount. I'm curious why they even used it at all. I did have a bit of trouble discerning who was who in the opening sequence because both Bond and the bad guy had similar colored jackets. Yup, that's as intense as my gripes get on this movie, I think.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 11-10-2012 06:34 AM                        Completely agree with Kurt. Visually stunning. Best clear, sound in a long time. An additional treat for me; heard it in a Cinema where I installed the sound and where they still care. Usual CP500/Ashly/JBL. 35mm still there, but Christie 2K was used. Could have been louder, but for 1 pm on Friday with the over 65 crowd, it was still good. Best of all, no stupid "comedians" or werewolves. Louis  |  IP: Logged Jean-Pierre Gutzeit Film Handler Posts: 43 From: Berlin, Berlin, Germany Registered: Nov 2012 posted 11-10-2012 06:51 AM                        Wondering at the german start last week, I detected a consisted unsharpness in the DCPs (compensating retouching faults?). The indoor shots with the Alexa lack in details in the blacks. And the opening in Istanbul is very "foggy" in my old eyes (against the superb look of the classic 35mm anamorphic shots by Fred A. Young in the 60's or in "Goldeneye" in the 90's). Is that a really improvement of style and grace in the cinematography? So I was very disappointed. Probably they correct these faults for the US launch, I hope.  |  IP: Logged Sam Graham AKA: "The Evil Sam Graham". Wackiness ensues. Posts: 1431 From: Waukee, IA Registered: Dec 2004 posted 11-11-2012 09:21 AM                        CINEMA: Regal Kansas City 18, Kansas City, KS AUDITORIUM: 6 PRESENTATION: Sony Digital 4K PRESENTATION PROBLEMS: The projector could use an RGB alignment. Or maybe it's just shaking. RATING: Two and one half stars (out of four) THE PLOT: A disgruntled former employee pees in his boss's coffee, metaphorically speaking. Wackiness ensues. Great action sequence out of the gate. Then a bunch of stuff happens I don't really remember because Craig's Bond bores the crap out of me. Then there's a big dumb ending at an old house where nearly everything gets blown up. Yay. All the little (and big) references they put into previous Bond gimmicks just served to annoy me. They have no place in a Daniel Craig Bond movie. He's just not that Bond.  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-11-2012 06:03 PM                        Amusing in the way Bond movies are. The big scene in the old house at the end seemed like an episode of Burn Notice without the VO. At two and a half hours not boring but not totally engaging. Theatre I saw it in (Christie 2k) had soft, mushy uneven focus (pity since I read about how great it is supposed to look)and apparently an out of focus lamp. One quarter of the screen was dim with a very off center hot spot and weird bands of shadows.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 11-11-2012 06:56 PM                     Martin I'm guessing you saw that on a silver screen?  |  IP: Logged Martin McCaffery Film God Posts: 2481 From: Montgomery, AL Registered: Jun 99 posted 11-11-2012 08:04 PM                        I didn't stick around to see, and I don't go there often enough, but it didn't register to me as silver screen. The hot spot certainly wasn't extremely bright, except when compared to the edges. What it looked like was a 35mm lamp house that had been focused on the upper left middle of the screen and not backed off. Although the bands of shadows in the upper right corner were something I've never seen before projected. They did remind me of the effect you get when focusing a lamp without a lens.  |  IP: Logged Victor Liorentas Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 800 From: london ontario canada Registered: May 2009 posted 11-11-2012 08:35 PM                     Maybe a high gain screen?  |  IP: Logged Markus Ito Film Handler Posts: 27 From: San Diego, CA, USA Registered: Apr 2011 posted 11-15-2012 11:32 PM                     I saw this IMAX and thought it was amazing. Imagine my surprise after the show when I discovered that the theater I usually go to for IMAX had swapped their 2 film projectors for digital ones! I suppose I should of suspected something when the booth viewing area was roped off and 2 projectors were used. Aside from that disappointment I thought this movie was one of the best Bond films I have seen. There were plenty of twists in the plot to keep it engaging as well as the usual 007 action and suspense. Anyone who is a fan of 007 should see this, and even if you aren't, it is still a very good movie. 5/5  |  IP: Logged Stu Jamieson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 524 From: Buccan, Qld, Australia Registered: Jan 2008 posted 11-24-2012 06:07 PM                     Celebrating 50 years of Bond films, Skyfall changes tack with a shift towards a smaller scale story with anti-gadget sentiments. For a franchise which practically invented the gadget blockbuster this is a brave twist and not without an element of risk. Removing the hi-tech aspect has resulted in a hole at the core of the film which remains unfilled and reduces the project as a whole to a generic spy actioner. The reasoning for this move is curious. Perhaps it is to differentiate the franchise from the very successful Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol of last year? But this merely pushes Bond towards the equally successful Bourne series and Bourne's intrigue came from the mystery surrounding his character. After 25 Bond films (including unofficial entries Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again) there's not a great deal we don't know about Bond. So the gains in pushing the franchise in this direction seem questionable. In any case, Skyfall looks less like a Bond than any previous entry. Following an opening chase scene which is true to form in its excitement and innovation, the plot regarding the attempted assassination of M is small in scope compared to its predecessors and this typifies another problem: it doesn't aim high enough. The movie lacks grandeur and is almost too small for a Bond film. The climax is all very cute and romantic in a gunfight-at-the-OK-corral kind of way but it doesn't make much sense given the resources MI6 has at its disposable. Admittedly it fits in with the films small scale, lo-tech mantra. Daniel Craig remains one of the best Bonds, sacrificing suave for rugged thuggishness and Casino Royale remains his best Bond movie by far. (Indeed an argument could perhaps be made that the best bond movies generally were the debuts of each actor.) The re-introduction of Bond's Aston Martin is cheesy as hell, replete with the equally cheesy replaying of the old-style Bond theme but, again, it is consistent with the films push towards no-tech. The look on Bond's face after witnessing the classic cars ultimate fate, however, is downright hilarious. Skyfall is not a bad film, it's just ordinary, and with the resources and legacy at a Bond films disposal, we're entitled to a little more. 6.5 out of 10.  |  IP: Logged Louis Bornwasser Film God Posts: 4441 From: prospect ky usa Registered: Mar 2005 posted 11-24-2012 06:59 PM                        Stu: you are missing yourcalling; a damn good review. Very well done!  |  IP: Logged

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