Sam Mendes Commentary

Anyone else listened to this?

Sat through it the other day, and enjoyed it immensely. Mendes is witty, personable, articulate and sharp as a tack. A 21st century Terence Young or Peter Hunt. I honestly take back anything I've said about the guy in the past.

What also impressed me was the technical insight he gave, and a fine attention to detail. For example he talked about how Kubrick and Ken Adam's oppresive use of overhead strip lighting in DR. STRANGELOVE's war room inspired the MI6 underground bunker sets, or how he and Deakins modelled the shot of Bond pulling into the street facing the Shanghai skyscraper on a similar shot in CHINATOWN. Plus he talked about Thomas Newman's score a number of times, along with favourable comparisons to Bernard Herrmann.

I'm definitely gonna get into that soon. So glad we got more worthy features out of this than QOS. Who woulda thought Mendes of all people was right for Bond. I think the first time I realized that was when he praised LIVE AND LET DIE of all films as his favorite. I did not expect that.

Well, I said that Mendes may be a good choice after I saw Road to Perdition, but many said that we didn't need another drama director.

Once the film gets released in Australia, I'll definitely be watching it with the audio commentary.

Mendes commentary is first rate. I may even listen to it again.
It's one of the best in the series. I don't quite share his vision regarding what he was trying to do, but he certainly laid it all out, and in layman terms too. He didn't dumb anything down, but he didn't wank on either with overly technical filmmaking discussion. He kept the general film audience in mind.
We do learn once and for all that Bond was purposely trying to miss, when he took the gunshot at Severine. This is what I always suspected. Bond would not be drawn into playing such a sick game. As Mendes explains, Silva, being the sick bastard that he is, then "callously" blew her away. Bond then tries to salvage the situation with his "insensitive" waste of good booze remark.
My only objection to this scene is that it was drawn this way in the first place; ie Bond put in such a hopeless situation for saving the girl, but that's my personal preference as to how I like to see Bond portrayed on screen. I don't like to see him beat like that by the villain, but otherwise the scene works fine.
Bond made the best of a hopeless situation. Severine was beyond saving.
Mendes also confirms that Silva's computer was indeed intended as a trojan horse. He did plan on getting captured and for Q to connect his machine to the Mi6 network. This is fairly apparent anyway after a couple of viewings, but it did prompt much discussion among fans.
But as commentaries go, Mendes did a hell of ajob. Thanks for putting the work in.
About the second commentary; it's beyond brutal. Yes I managed to sit through it, but only out of obligation to being a Bond completist.
I pity anyone else that manages to survive the whole dreary exercise.
Basically according to Babs and Mikey, everyone associated with the production was either amazing, fantastic, great, we were so lucky to have them, yadda yadda yadda. Gassner can't even save this interminable stroke fest.

Glad you're back, tiffy. I was getting a bit concerned.

:|

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Glad you're back, tiffy. I was getting a bit concerned.

:|

Thank-you Khan, I was undergoing blue-snuggers withdrawal. It's not easy.
I do recommend the Mendes commentary though!
Anyone else survive the Babs/Mikey/Gassner snorefest? If so I fear we are "a rare breed indeed."
Only diehards are going to hang with that for more than about 10 minutes.

tiffanywint wrote:

Anyone else survive the Babs/Mikey/Gassner snorefest?

I've avoided it. The warning's on the label.

I remember listening to their CR commentary when the special edition was released in 08. Got through about 15 minutes of Babs, David Arnold and someone other idiot prattle on about nothing. The Campbell/MGW commentary was much more entertaining.

Mantalk. *slaps Bab's butt*

Largo's Shark wrote:

Anyone else listened to this?

Sat through it the other day, and enjoyed it immensely. Mendes is witty, personable, articulate and sharp as a tack. A 21st century Terence Young or Peter Hunt. I honestly take back anything I've said about the guy in the past.

What also impressed me was the technical insight he gave, and a fine attention to detail. For example he talked about how Kubrick and Ken Adam's oppresive use of overhead strip lighting in DR. STRANGELOVE's war room inspired the MI6 underground bunker sets, or how he and Deakins modelled the shot of Bond pulling into the street facing the Shanghai skyscraper on a similar shot in CHINATOWN. Plus he talked about Thomas Newman's score a number of times, along with favourable comparisons to Bernard Herrmann.

I listened to about half of it the other day. Will listen to the rest at some point. I don't recall any particularly good anecdotes or a colossal wealth of insight on [A] SKYFALL, [B] Bond in general or [C] film in general, although I did find a few of his observations quite interesting, e.g. the point you mention about how atmosphere can be created by a judicious and Kubrickian use of overhead lighting. So, no, I don't feel that this is one of the all-time great commentary tracks, but Mendes certainly comes across as an intelligent and pleasant fellow.

What would you consider to be the all-time great commentary tracks?

Well, you've got me there. To be honest, I have no idea, although I suspect that Mendes' SKYFALL commentary isn't up there with the all-time greats.

Well, from the gazillions of commentary tracks I've heard over the years, I'd say it's one of the best. Sure, it may not be a cornucopia of technical insight, but Mendes holds the your attention, never talks down, and always keeps the average listener in mind. 90% of commentaries fail at at least one of those points.

The only other Bond commentaries worth listening to are some of Roger Moore's. They're like having Sir Rog over for dinner.

The John Glen commentaries should come with an FDA warning.

There are always those mythical Criterion Terence Young commentaries from the laserdiscs, I believe.

Forgot about those. I remember when someone uploaded them online a couple of years back.

I still have those on MP3. I don't like separate commentaries cut up and spliced together but at least Criterion took the most interesting bits the filmmakers would say. I think the only commentary that was edited out of an interview was from Maibaum (as he already passed), otherwise the rest with Young, Hamilton and Hunt are them actually watching the films as they talk.