James Bond is better than everything

[Naïve Old Fart 9,528]

QUANTUM OF SOLACE is my favourite Arnold score for a Bond film, and my second favourite Arnold score, overall.

I wish that 'Crawl, End Crawl' had a physical release.

 

The film has gone up in my estimation, since 2008. It's now among my favourite Bond films.

[Richard Penna 3,688]

TWINE is my favourite, but partly for nostalgic reasons. It's also more balanced between the string/piano material and action which makes it an easier listen. I know TND is probably the most popular around here but for my tastes it's too loud and overbearing for the most part - I've never gotten into it.

 

The problem for me with QoS is that I think the film is absolutely goddam awful - I sat through it once with my brother, then twice more I tried again and neither of us had a clue what was going on, what the story was, and were both thoroughly bored. Arnold absolutely did the best job anyone could have done (and I'm sure he found the film more intesting than we did) but it remains a concept album for me - 20 minutes or so of decent action music.

 

I also unpopularly side with JNHFan2000 in that I like Newman's scores in general. The action music is a bit mixed given that (a) action is not his forte imo, and (b) some of the material at the end of Spectre is just generic fluff (considering Mendes knows how to use music well, I really question what he was thinking here) but the overall sound he gave to the scores is refreshing - his more ambient/rhythmic approach working particularly well with the early action sequences in Skyfall and the Scotland scenes later on.

[Jay 37,364]

On 06/04/2024 at 3:36 AM, Holko said:

So, Bond scores. When Tomorrow Never Dies came out, I listened and rewatched the movie and happily bought it. When TWINE and DAD were selling out, I rewatched all the Brosnans and decided TND is enough.

 

So now when LaLD and O came out, I listened to the samples and liked LaLD... but is this the right score to jump down the rabbithole with? I certainly knew don't want every single Bond score on by shelf, is this really one to buy? Sure I liked it but what if it's for example just copypastes of Barry cues from better scores and would be redundant if I get those too in the future? The simplest solution of course was... to watch every movie again from No to License, I haven't seen most of them in 12 or more years anyway!

 

And the overall impression is that it's a wildly mixed series of movies. The practical stunts in most of them are insanely impressive, even if many of them had overlong superfluous chase scenes shoved in just to have them. The gadgets are always fun, Q is the best character (was positively surprised to see him in bigger "field work" roles in some of them!), it was sad to see Bernard Lee and eventually Lois Maxwell go. It was also funny to see how little of an effort they put into Felix Leiter, I assume eventually they just decided it's a core element of the Bond formula that he cannot be played by the same actor in any two movies, and they have to have nothing to do with each other!

 

The formula of random side adventures all over the world leading to megalomaniacs wanting to control the world was getting old fast, but when it was dealing with random smaller fish underworld figures, that got dull and kind of small stakes too.

 

Connery's era is endearingly classic, all of them are pretty good, even if Thunderball gets really bloated and YOLT pretty silly. I thought OHMSS was good but a bit bland, and DAF was a pretty weak attempt to go back to the previous feel. Moore was... well it ranged from good but bland (SwLM, FYEO) to stupid but in a kind of fun way (MWTGG, Moonraker) to just plain old embarrassingly stupid (LALD, Octopussy) to whatever AVTAK was, I didn't even finish that one, just had enough by that point. Dalton was a really refreshing revitalisation attempt, I loved his take on the character and loved TLD... but then LTK was kind of a mess.

 

So, why did I do this again? Oh right, scores! Barry was having a lot of fun with the early ones but after a while it felt like he started resenting them? He used the main theme less and less, and most often just in its Gunbarrel arrangement, he was writing good themes but just reused the same settings of them again and again, some of the later scores, maybe due to their spottings, are just not really all that fun at all, most that's left is just murky investigation tension and some love themes with the song melodies. There are of course standout favourites that I'd like to get when they're expanded properly: From Russia with Love is a good varied thriller score, Goldfinger starts off meh but has some really good stuff near the end, You Only Live Twice has some gorgeous writing, Golden Gun was really fun after he took a little break, Moonraker starts off meh but has some really good stuff near the end, Living Daylights' 80s sampled percussion loops put me off a bit but even with that I really got into it. That's still a really good amount even though I was picky.

 

Non-Barry? Well, mixed again. Funny that the two least bad Moores had the worst scores, though neither quite nearing Goldeneye levels where the score is actively working against a great film to make it as uninteresting as possible, making sure to never enhance anything. License to Kill has fantastic Arnold level playfulness and main theme renditions, great action, but also a lot of dull general Kamen stuff, sorry, half of what he does is just not really for me. That leaves Martin and LALD, the reason for this whole exploration... and hell to the fucking yes I'll buy it! When Barry was going down, Martin kicked the fun and groove up to 11, incorporated the song's many melodies well and played with the main theme a lot, and delivered what I think's easily my favourite non-Barry non-Arnold Bond score! It was so good that even Barry had to get himself back together for MWTGG right after.

 

Nice post, I really enjoyed reading it!

[Tallguy 3,386]

9 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

QUANTUM OF SOLACE is my favourite Arnold score for a Bond film, and my second favourite Arnold score, overall.

I wish that 'Crawl, End Crawl' had a physical release.

 

The film has gone up in my estimation, since 2008. It's now among my favourite Bond films.

 

I can see that. The parts that were bad or dumb can be outweighed by the parts that are awesome. And there is a lot that's awesome. Face it, this is the Bond we wanted to see after OHMSS.

 

Nice timing:

 

 

Sam's description of the camera work is perfect. "blubedyblubedyblubedyblubedyblubedyblubedyblubedyblubedy!" 

 

Although I disagree about the "mistake" with the camera on the car crash. I think it has that "found footage" look that the filmmaker was going for.

 

I LOVED the camera work in the opening scene because it was disorienting and confusing. I HATED the camera work in the rest of the movie for the exact same reason. (I should keep a spreadsheet or something for this thread because I'm almost certain I've said this before.)