ifmv.blogspot.com www.ultimate-rihanna.com

thanks for the upload. been dying to see this one. but man am i disappointed. talk about beauty vid gone bad.... the vignettes are all nice, some are visually interesting (the paint/water being thrown about & the half-grade (telecined) dance portion & the first verse buzzing-focus scene), and rihanna looks beautiful in most. but the video is cut so poorly it doesn't come close to capturing the energy of the track. i rarely see such high-level professional work and think, 'what a mess'.

jay-z's opening performance is wretched and he comes off as if he completely phoned this one in. the 'glamor c.u.' of rihanna is lazy - (1)too slowly cut compared to the rest of the vid, (2) not particularly well lit, (3) passion-less. the ballet section is wannabe sigismondi but without the care (what's with the cuts of only her feet and then only her top half? we know she's hanging onto something to maintain the pointe so greenscreen that damn thing out and show us some full body shots). the silver body shots are nice but i kept seeing anthony kiedis instead of rihanna but that's what happens when you rip-off famous stuff.

the whole affair comes off feeling stiff and lackluster which is truly a shame because the song has so much energy and drive. such a let down...

/rant

p.s. - i wouldn't normally go on so but this is one of the few mainstream vids, on the immediate horizon, that i've been truly looking forwards too.

kalstark, i agree with everyone you just said. i wasnt AS offended by the video as you, the main saving grace being the semi-interesting water splashing sequence, but the edit is what killed it for me. it was all stuff that looked great on paper, im sure, but Rihanna as a performer and an arist is pretty passionless and vapid. i've heard her live and she couldnt hold a note for her life. sex appeal? yes, but thats it. sadly the moments in the video that need that spark from her she falls flat...way flat. bad editing + bad performance + some nice ideas = disappointing video.

I don't think the edit is the main fault here. Ok it's a bit dodge, but ultimately i can see what he/she had to play with from the shots used. Looks like they just shot complete run throughs in wide, mid, c/o in generic 'lock off' formats. The camera hardly moves an inch thus creating a hellish job for a decent edit. Great for green screen if your manipulating the footage in post, but absolute crap for an energy fuelled R+B performance.

The footage is so flat and uninspired with regards to camera operation which boils down to one thing --> bad direction/DP, which in turn makes it obvious why Jay-Z is lacklustre. A good director would've inspired a better performance all round, which is a great shame as there's some nice concepts.

Beauty mash-up.

this song is tight... i do see the editing issues discussed here. but i think it's totally watchable. rihanna def looks better than she does in this video

I was thinking the exact same thing about the edit while I was watching it, I wonder how this would turn out if they had a different editor go back and redo it. Also it didn't help that the director couldn't just pick one cool effect and stick with it. The orange gradient was just stupid, but there's plenty of other eye candy in here. As for the silver chick, I kept thinking Doin' It not Chili Peppers.

i haven't checked the above links, but new-music-now.blogspot.com has a quasi-HQ link for the mp4

slightly different version