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film at 11

gav on 2003-08-31T00:41:33

I caught Dirty Pretty Things last night (as recommended by ask) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Go out and see this film, it's a great story even though the ending was a bit too Casablanca-ish for my liking.

While we're on the subject of films, Running Out of Time is a fantastic action film from Hong Kong. The protagonist is dying of cancer and has only four weeks left to live and avenge the death of his father. Lots of twists, turns, and interesting characters -- this is well worth watching.

Must dash, I've got Sanjuro on DVD to watch.

Thanks

petdance on 2003-08-31T00:52:40

Thanks for the recommendations. They've been added to my want list.

Amy & I watched Roger & Me's director commentary last night.

Re:Thanks

gav on 2003-08-31T02:58:46

I like the "want list" idea. It reminded me that I needed to relieve myself of $30 or so for the new Perl Cookbook :)

Re:Thanks

petdance on 2003-08-31T04:06:57

The list started with movies. I tire quickly of the "What movie do you wanna rent?" game.

Running Out of Time

autarch on 2003-08-31T03:05:28

I absolutely love that film. It's also one of Andy Lau's 2 best performances, the other being in Days of Being Wild.

If you liked Running Out of Time, I'd recommend most of the other action films from that same production studio (Milky Way), which would include The Mission, The Longest Nite, and a few others.

There's also a Running Out of Time 2, with the same cop (Lau Ching-Wan) but a different "bad" guy. Unfortunately, it really doesn't live up to the first one at all.

Re:Running Out of Time

gav on 2003-08-31T04:43:16

Andy Lau's performance was great, I'll have to see if Netflix has any of his other films.

I've noticed with HK films a definate tendency to sequels and trilogies that push a hit beyond even what Hollywood would attempt. I've always wondered why they do this.

Re:Running Out of Time

autarch on 2003-08-31T15:22:34

Not to mention insane numbers of spinoffs. Shelly Kraicer has an amusing list of all the Young & Dangerous sequels/spinoffs. Bizarrely, at least one of them was a great film, far better than the Y&D films themselves (Portland Street Blues). The list is at http://www.chinesecinemas.org/ydseries.html

HK has always been this way, I think because of a tradition of very fast & cheap film-making. This makes it easy to whip together a few sequels and ripoffs very soon after a big hit.

In the case of ROoT2, however, it didn't come out all that soon after the first one. I think it was an honest attempt to make a decent film, it just didn't succeed as well as the first one. I blame this in part on one of the leads, Ekin Cheng, who is a piss-poor actor.