Quantum of Solace

I've never been that big a Bond fan, I didn't really like the character and the quickly established formula of gadgets, girls and explosions never grabbed me for some reason. I think they came across as too English and couldn't match that bit of otherworldness that American action films had.
Now though after diminishing box office returns and a more realistic style of action film the move was made to update the franchise. Casino Royale stripped out the majority of the globe trotting and went for a more straightforward story, by and large this was successful although the much hyped emotional core of the doomed girlfriend didn't quite work, it fell into the trap most movies do of saying a relationship was important because it just is instead of trying to build it up realistically.
With Quantum of Solace acting as a direct sequel to Casino Royale the story picks up with Bond kidnapping someone to be interrogated by MI6 and then…
That's the problem, the story is convoluted, boring and veers very closely to treating Bond as an English version of the Terminator. Although Daniel Craig is a good actor he's given nothing to work off, he receives a kicking, gets up, kicks back harder with seemingly no personal damage, rinse and repeat.
The attempt to humanize Bond in Casino Royale seems to have been jettisoned with the odd nod to hunting down someone related to Vespa's death as a nod to some kind of humanity, the rest of the time he's smacking people in the head.
This brings up the action scenes, I've got to say that I'm sick of epilepsy inducing editing and weird camera angles, since the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan directors have been trying to outdo each other in throwing the handheld camera around. The difference between them and Spielberg is that he knows how to put you in the middle of the action but still tell the story and not confuse you. While not as bad as the fight scenes in Batman Begins, Quantum of Solace suffers from showing the stuntmens ear rather than what's happening.
Although Marc Forster has done a couple of nice character pieces like Stranger Than Fiction and Finding Neverland, he seems to be out of his depth in this. Set pieces such as the opera sequence that should show the scope of this new evil underground organisation fall flat and when the story is as all over the place this compounds how confused the film seems.
It's a shame that something as simple as another pass at the script seems to have been jettisoned to make sure the writers strike didn't stop filming but when the film makers literally copy and paste the Euro fag villain from Casino Royale over there has to be criticism at that level of lazyness.

Guns n' Roses- Chinese Democracy

The self proclaimed most anticipated record EVER has finally turned up, after 14 years of adding a bleep here, an orchestra there and turning up the guitars a little bit in the cans please, Axel has sent his new record out into the world.
The problem is that a lot of people with access to the interspaz and the knowledge of nefarious sites have heard the demos and early mixes of these songs over the last few years so there's zero surprises here. Apart from the odd name change and Axel's Sade phase from 1998 actually making it onto the album nothing jumps out as being shocking.
Well apart from the record not being a total car crash and actually being quite good. Anyone expecting another Appetite for Destruction will be let down, taking the BIG sound and Queen fascination that the Use Your Illusion records showed and really going for it.
There are waves of guitars (each song averages 5 guitarists), thousands of multi tracked Axels and keyboards filling any gaps that the other instruments have missed and that's just the first 30 seconds of the opening track. If you're going to employ 4 or 5 producers over the years then I guess you want something to show for it but Chinese Democracy is so polished that a lot of the immediacy and smacking you around the back of the head aggresion that made the original band so popular is gone now.
That's not to say that the songs are lacking, they've just been buffed to within an inch of their lives and there's a couple too many piano driven big ballads but songs like the title track, Better, There Was a Time and Prostitute stand out for having great tunes and they'll translate on record or live.
Whether anyone will actually care and buy the record in big enough numbers to make this profitable's highly debatable but at least it's finally done and the pigs can get ready to fly.