I mentioned recently about a great new method of keeping your TomTom up-to-date. What I didn’t mention was about the problem that then ensued as I found that a map updates completely wipes your favourites. Oh yes.

It would appear the “bug” (I’m sure it’s an intended feature) has been around for some time – certainly I’m looking at a forum entry about it from the beginning of this year.

Anyway, the answer is to backup before you do a map update and then restore the file MapSettings.cfg.

Come on TomTom – sort this one out!

I went to see this last night (yes, on “Orange Wednesday” to save the usual hideous cost of cinemas these days).

But before I talk about the film there are some things that happened BEFORE it that I want to mention.

1. It was good to see Pearl & Dean return as the advertisers of choice. A cinema is really not the same experience without their theme tune.
2. Showcase have started the age-old cinema tradition of serving food and drinks from the front of the “auditorium”. Except, because there are no intervals any revmore, they’re doing it at the beginning. Which, to me, considering you’ve just been stood in the foyer right next to the food and drinks, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
3. There were TWO sets of ads on before the film promoting their product and “how Bond would use it” (or whatever) which included lots of clips from the film. NO, NO, NO. I closed my eyes during both and swore under my breath. Please don’t do this.

As to the film, it was good. Action packed but a little lacking story-wise. It continues from Casino Royale with Bond attempting to avenge the death of Vesper Lynd and find who was behind what happened. The problem with films such as this, a continuation from another, is that they lack the beginning, middle and end of a good self-contained movie. So the plot, to me, seemed a little lacking. However, I’m guessing that the next Bond film will be back to the old story method (i.e. self contained within the one movie) which will be an improvement.

Like my friend Tony, I didn’t like the jolting camera movements during the action scenes. In a film such as Cloverfield, I can understand its use, where it’s part of the set-up and explainable. They do this to make it more “realistic” as if you’re actually there, but in reality it just makes the scene confusing and hard to work out what’s happening.

But, it was a solid film, Daniel Craig is still great as Bond, the effects were good and David Arnold, as always, provided a superb soundtrack to it all.

Summary of Quantum of Solace

A good, not great, film. An involving plot, superb music and good effects, but it doesn’t feel like Bond anyway. And product placement is getting out of control!

Reviewed by David Artiss on 13th November 2008.