johnnie to's ELECTION

u mean 2?

oh I dunno I thought there were more mentioned itt

Election 2 is even better, imho

not to be confused with JOHNNY HTOO

http://i.imgur.com/PWo8x.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp3Y1lR3LBs

hell yeah

that almost made me pass out from excitement

ikr?!?!?!?!

http://i.imgur.com/R7wolJw.png

ah ah ah ah *presses fast forward on my life*

YES

what a trailer
what a trailer

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=133273&sid=39583973&con_type=1&d_str=20130429&fc=10

http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1225874/four-arrested-after-suspected-triad-member-hacked-death-outside

watched cold war after someone convinced me it was the new johnnie to

need to start paying attn to this thread

cold war was tense but ultimately kind of meh i thought

was kind of disappointed by drug war tbh

http://25.media.tumblr.com/ba8a3fd218d847e57b61b2992d8effe2/tumblr_mph4c2wbdK1ry4hn1o1_500.jpg

I've never been crazy about the genre, but Drug War is impressively bleak.

have you seen 'election'?

I don't think I've seen any previous To.

Drug War is really good; definitely in the "good" column of To stuff. (Though not quite at the Election/Election II level.)

do
not
see
blind
detective

he can't see you either!!!!

classic

you knew shit was gonna get serious when lam suet showed up

thought this was really well done... though had some flaws for sure. all the drug use in the film was kinda hilarious and OTT and reminiscent of that anti-marijuana PSA that ends with the kid turning the shotgun on himself. i guess you could even see the whole film as a PSA against drugs, i wonder how much pressure the mainland exerted on the production. nevertheless, really liked sun honglei in this - had a suitable gritty 'mainland' edge that you don't often see from hk actors.

drug was alright but it had a kinda inert ambience, there was a kind of dourness to it which reminded me of old french neo-noir films

drug *war*

yeah i think it depends on how compelling you find the relationship between koo and sun

i wanted to mention, since it hasn't been mentioned before, that tony leung ka-fai was really, really excellent in 'election.' such a great old school charismatic villain performance.

idk how much of my reaction to this was about the general idiocy of 'drug wars', just when there are inklings that america and europe might be seeing the errors of their ways, china will continue the good fight

what is the next best to thing after election

the mission, exiled

election 2 is pretty sick (in more ways than one)

skip 'vengeance' imo

'breaking news' is solid. 'the big heat' is a nice superviolent late '80s relic.

to's movies are only as strong as the scripts, and oftentimes they end up very gimmicky

that said, he can often direct his way around a gimmick... if you can look past the silly memento-crib in vengeance, johnny hallyday turns in a really good performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZU0bljAVlY

hallyday is really good. the movie feels like an 'exiled' retread aside from that imo. it might be the 'team of killers vs vicious simon yam' thing.

yeah... i'm not sure how i feel about to's emphasis on brotherly fraternity between contract killers. i mean, comes from a long tradition, but it often feels a bit hollow. it's a recurring theme in his movies for sure

i think 'the mission' is the strongest of his works in that mini-genre, maybe because it's such a stripped-down exercise in masterclass action directing and while it's violent, it's also a basically good-hearted film.

i love that the whole movie boils down to a bunch of charismatic actors biding their time in between gun battles in which they basically stand in one place shooting at people we don't see until the last ten minutes of the movie.

dig the balearic music in this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnqIC3IU3j8

Ok, yes definitely a spaghetti western in Far Eastern fair. But this movie sux. These are suppose to be professionals? They can shoot tin cans but they can't hit the guy standing next to them. And they empty their clips yet fire a dozen shots! I would say this is more a poor poor parody. That is the kindest thing I can say about it. It is just play silly without meaning to be. It's stupid is what it is. Slick & hip? You need to get out more often. If you are looking for something that you can sleep through, hey, this is your movie. Just turn down the volume.

Slick & hip? You need to get out more often.

there was this a few weeks ago:

http://www.film.com/movies/ranked-johnnie-to-films-from-worst-to-best

a day out and i think i'm liking drug war better and better. there were a few missteps towards the end but i think they were necessary to set up koo for the finale. verdict: Very Good Movie

i liked drug war!

the "print" i saw was pretty shitty tho, felt like i was watching a bootleg bluray

i watched a blu-ray rip...looked pretty good. think it might have even been shot on 35mm??

film was set in tianjing i think, real sense of northern bleakness in the gray sky lightbox, unfinished roads, piles of concrete shingles on the side of the road.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2165735/technical?ref_=tt_dt_spec

hel l yeah, keep 35mm alive

there's northern light and a bit of smoggy grimness but also lots of sleak cars and sense of emergent wealth, it looks more like moscow than some industrial backwater

the space is important, the vast disquieting emptiness around the climactic bloodbath which you wouldn't get so much in the hk films

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EuZ4bngqE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7UCUlcE0A0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zksKhwBZljY

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5731

this looks like fun. stoked to see 'sparrow' on the big screen maybe

Yeah, a friend just told me about that earlier this week.

I wish, I wish

I have so far seen 13 Johnnie To films and enjoyed 12, man has a crazy hit rate. His romantic comedies rule too!

From that moma list I particularly recommend Life Without Principles.

Pretty sick that he's coming here! wish i could make it

The king is here!

Chaos and Order: The Way of Johnnie To starts TOMORROW! pic.twitter.com/v7OkaeWore

— MoMA Film (@MoMAFilm) September 11, 2024

was unable to get tickets for tonight or tomorrow night :(

Get there an hour early and do standby. MoMA always manages to squeeze people in because there are always no-shows, even with the highest-demand screenings. (Works better if you're alone because they rarely are able to find two seats together.)

damn, that's good to know, actually

I've done the same at lincoln center for NYFF

gonna see the mission for the first time in many years tonight :D

Standby is a good backup plan, but it is a hassle. The earlier you go, the better the chances of getting a seat (an hour is usually reliable), but it kind of sucks watching person after person walking by to the theater knowing all the good seats will be gone. The few times I resorted to standby, I was either way off to the side or way in the back. (The very front is actually not bad if it's in the smaller theater, but for the bigger theater, it kind of sucks.) So unless it's a must-see situation like the only scheduled Q&A, it's not a bad idea to wait for another screening if you can make it.

FWIW, quite a bit of fans out for To:

Johnnie to flocked by fans pic.twitter.com/GxcJDqa8T0

— Peter Damm (@petedamm) September 14, 2024

(The guy in the white hair is probably Dave Kehr, who likes To's work quite a bit. It must've been a fun Q&A for him to do.)

The Robert Frank exhibit has also opened at MoMA, so this was a nice meeting-of-worlds:

Johnnie To at the Museum of Modern Art absorbed in a lobby installation before his Q&A. pic.twitter.com/gBbsoaxjsL

— Shelly Kraicer (@skraicer) September 14, 2024

Someone recorded and uploaded both Q&A's:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_ZEa3rSboA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDMLR68jEbw