| Author |
Message |
|
| lady wakasa |
 Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2009 3:45 pm |
 |
|
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
|
Am I crazy for thinking this might actually be good?
Booming voiceover: "The movie Survivor *wanted* to be..."
Quote: How much is your life worth?
An all-star cast fight for their lives in the Outback survival thriller A Million! Written and directed by Jo Min Ho (Les Formidables), A Million rips the Survivor reality program premise for an unpredictable, hardboiled thriller that reveals the best and worst of human nature. Park Hae Il (Paradise Murdered), Shin Min Ah (Naked Kitchen), Lee Min Ki (Haeundae), Jung Yoo Mi (Family Ties), Lee Cheon Hee (Romance of Their Own), and Ko Eun Ah (Loner) play the ill-fated contestants of the deadly reality show, while Park Hee Son (The Scam) turns in a charismatically mad performance as the program producer.
Eight people of different backgrounds - a documentary director (Park Hae Il), a professional part-timer (Shin Min Ah), a hot-tempered former marine (Lee Min Ki), a quiet law student (Jung Yoo Mi), a financial analyst (Lee Chon Hee), a competitive swimmer (Yoo Na Mi), a bar hostess (Ko Eun Ah), and an unemployed layabout (Kim Hak Seon) - have been selected to participate in a survival reality program in the Australian Outback. The prize: one million dollars. Winner takes all - that is if anyone lives to see Day 7. There's no turning back as the contestants are pushed to the limits, and turned against each other under the manipulation of the game's designer. How far will they go for one million dollars?
"In a world..." oops, wrong movie. |
_________________
===================
http://www.wakasaworld.com |
|
| Back to top |
 
|
| Ghulam |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:02 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
|
| The Norwegian movie O'Horten (2007) shows a few days in the life of a train engine driver who retires after 40 years of service. He is single, a simple soul, a man of few words who on the first day of retirement has some strange experiences, some of them are tender and realistic, others bizarre. In the end he decides to take risks and plunges into things he had always avoided. A strange movie, very well directed, acted and photographed, and very absorbing. It was nominaterd for foreign language movie Oscar. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 2:36 am |
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
|
I also liked O'Horten. It has a deadpan quality and a gentle whimsy. I liked how removed from his beloved train, he gets paralyzed and immobile, especially at the airport. I liked the steely gleam of the film, the crisp cold greys and sleek look. A nice understated film.
I know that I have Kitchen Stories around here deep in the Dvd vault somewhere. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Befade |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:39 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
|
I remember Kitchen Stories......sweet/strange.
Gromit........Guess who's visiting your city? Are you going to see him? |
_________________
Lost in my own private I dunno. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 4:57 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
|
Obama was here on Sunday. Already up in Bejing. It was a cold rainy day here, after a month or more of springlike weather.
The US dignitaries stay at the Portman Ritz Carlton which is just a 10 minute walk directly north me. Security was tight, and they emptied out the parking garages beneath the hotel and apartment towers prior to his arrival.
For some reason the town hall meeting Obama had was held at the Science & Technology Museum a distance out in East Shanghai, with a gov't picked group of 400 students. It was on Shanghai TV, but the gov't here decided not to air it on national TV. Obama somewhat got around staged questions by soliciting questions on a gov't website and answering a few of those more "authentic" questions.
I'm still somewhat unsure why Obama came to Shanghai, but I guess it was a Sunday/travel day kind of thing mostly. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:19 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
|
gromit wrote: I'm still somewhat unsure why Obama came to Shanghai, but I guess it was a Sunday/travel day kind of thing mostly.
Well, there's the financial importance of Shanghai (or so I've been told). It probably doesn't hurt that one of his half brothers lives there. |
_________________
===================
http://www.wakasaworld.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 8:48 pm |
|
|
|
Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
|
Whiskey - I'm talkin' to YOU (well, and everybody else) - I'm late with this by about 6 weeks, but the Criterion Third Man is officially OOP. It's also half price at Barnes & Noble.
This might be your last chance, if you don't have it... STOCK. UP. (*Before* Leo D does his remake.) |
_________________
===================
http://www.wakasaworld.com |
|
| Back to top |
|
| Marc |
| Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:37 pm |
|
|
Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
|
| Watched Billy Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE. Wow! What a prophetic movie. Right up there with Dr. Strangelove. An absolute masterpiece with a dark uncompromising ending. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 12:46 am |
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
Marc wrote: Watched Billy Wilder's ACE IN THE HOLE. Wow! What a prophetic movie. Right up there with Dr. Strangelove. An absolute masterpiece with a dark uncompromising ending.
Though I think it has some striking images and scenes, Ace in the Hole has never been a favorite film of mine. It's too on the nose, too uninflected. But it has at least one great Wilderesque line, when Jan Sterling says:
"I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 1:08 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
|
Quote: It's too on the nose, too uninflected.
oh please. Sometimes bluntness is what is called for when an artist feels the shit is hitting the fan. This was Wilder in a Sam Fuller mode and I think it was terrific. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 2:12 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9008
Location: Shanghai
|
Ace in the Hole is great. Such acid cynicism which has proven true. I like how the price keeps going up on the sign, which shows the cash-in mentality while at the same time showing the passage of time. Love the "We're Coming, Leo" country song, later reprised as a dirge when everyone is dispersing. The carnival has S&M in its name (________ S&M Carnival Corp.)
The wife is almost perfect as an attractive but not too attractive peroxide blond. Nice quick backstory about how she ended up there, and from where, as she fell for a returned soldier boy and got trapped into his not very glamorous small town world.
Great scene where she leans in for a kiss and Kirk belts her one, and then is pleased the tears in her eyes finally make her look like the grieving wife. Cold stuff.
The screenplay has a nice arc where scenes during his ascendancy are replayed in reverse on his way down -- with the reporters taunting him and then the ending business offer.
Don't know how this film got buried for so long. |
_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
|
| Back to top |
|
| inlareviewer |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 2:57 am |
|
|
Joined: 05 Jul 2004
Posts: 1949
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Am quite fond of Ace in the Hole, though it doesn't grab me quite so much as it once did before covering Adam Guettel's watershed acrid/elegiac Floyd Collins musical onstage. But it's a taut, dark, typically Wilder-ironic film, fairly potent given the degree to which its (inspired-by-two) true trapped-below story(ies) was reconsidered into a skewed parable of vulturous media and crass personal ambition. Also, any film that pits Kirk Douglas against Jan Sterling cannot be entirely without value, and it certainly was ahead of its time, jaded-ness-wise.
Sorry to hear about the Criterion Third Man issue going OOP. My VHS is wearing out, and am way, way behind in my semi-annual perusal of Alida Valli's final emotionless stride (gotta keep in practice, on the event of encountering various editions of The Man What Done Me Wrong.) |
Last edited by inlareviewer on Tue Nov 17, 2009 4:13 pm; edited 1 time in total
_________________
"And take extra care with strangers/Even flowers have their dangers/And though scary is exciting/Nice is different than good." --Stephen Sondheim |
|
| Back to top |
|
| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:39 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
| I'm pretty sure I saw Ace In the Hole a long time ago on TV, because some of the things that have been mentioned sound familiar to me. I'll have to check it out. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:57 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
inla--IMO The Third Man has the greatest final image of any film I've ever seen--and I don't just mean Valli's "emotionless stride" (adore your coinage) but also Cotten's cigarette throw, the camera angle, the music. But one burning question always, always plagues me:
How did Carol Reed get those autumn leaves to fall in just the right way?
Must have had a third A.D. hired just as a leaf wrangler. In any case, the whole thing is profound, depressing, and exhilarating all at once. In one unforgettable image it serves as a working definition of "world-weary." |
Last edited by billyweeds on Tue Nov 17, 2009 8:02 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2009 7:59 am |
|
|
|
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
|
marantzo wrote: I'm pretty sure I saw Ace In the Hole a long time ago on TV, because some of the things that have been mentioned sound familiar to me. I'll have to check it out.
You might have seen it under its flavorless alternate title, The Big Carnival. Why, I ask. Why? |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
