johnnie to's ELECTION

Anthony Wong is best in everything.

What's amazing is some of really good performances are delivered by guys who are like the equivalent of Justin Timberlake or Nick Carter. . .

the best hk guys are working on some mcqueen/mitchum level, but they also happen to be much more versatile.

election 2 sort of put me off hamburger for awhile

Yam's career began as a male supermodel, before he turned to acting in the mid 1970s. He then signed with TVB, starring and co-starring in a number of TV series prior to "apply his trades" in the movies in 1987. His elder brother is Deputy Commissioner of Police Yam Tak-Wing.

To is mentioned in an nytimes article today

Yeah a new movie with Johnny Halladay!?!?!?

as someone who still hasn't seen this all those months after the ilx film poll thread, kinda pissed off that triad election is on netflix on-demand but original election is not. i wouldn't watch the naked gun 33 1/3 before the first two.

very similar in tone to the naked gun films actually

Vengeance trailer
the dubbing with American accents sounds pretty awful.

as someone who still hasn't seen this all those months after the ilx film poll thread, kinda pissed off that triad election is on netflix on-demand but original election is not. i wouldn't watch the naked gun 33 1/3 before the first two.

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Wednesday, August 4, 2010 10:01 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? they must have taken it down, i watched it on netflix on demand a couple weeks ago

it's still available, I just checked

oh of course as soon as i have to put my account on hold until i get paid.

damn you to hell, netflix

two good links:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/02/10/talk.asia.johnnie.to.cnn?iref=allsearch

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=10912

that fishing scene, yo

― omar little, Friday, September 19, 2008 6:15 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was so good, and really well shot, are the rest as good?

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.

that's one of the best movies of the last i don't even know how many years. it's brilliant. to has always made good movies, but his streak from about 1996 to 2001 was incredible.

<3 Francis Ng

anyone seen OFFICE?

me and morbs have seen it

how is it? it's finally getting a single screening in my neck of the woods in a few weeks.

also yeah paper football scene in the mission is great; to is really good at scenes of people hanging out (see also 1/2 of "expect the unexpected")

it's okay? it's a great piece of technique

anyone seen Three? only playing at a 42nd St plex here.

http://www.metacritic.com/movie/three-2016

sounds interesting

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

Still haven't seen Election -missed it when it was on Mubi, sorry- or anything else of his other than The Heroic Trio, which I really dig. Like the darker sequel too, Executioners, although he didn't seem to direct that, don't know if he had any other involvement.

watched life without principle last night (on hulu) - really enjoyed it

still great

is this the only Johnnie To thread? a few of his movies are on Canadian Netflix but it doesn't seem to be a great selection. I did watch Don't Go Breaking My Heart and found it handsomely shot but ruined by its utterly psychotic characters

revisiting drug war and it rules as much as I remembered

Watched Trivisa - a Milkway production, not directed by To but it could as well have been. Crazy plot twists, cynicism, quirk. Whole thing's a pretty explicit metaphor for the Handover, kind of a farewell letter to the vanishing Hong Kong film industry. Film's super explicit about corruption amongst the mainland authorities - basically one of the gangsters tries to go semi-legit and gets frustrated by the fact that Chinese officials are less dependable and more demanding than previous authorities, who also had to be bribed but only once while these guys just keep pushing it again and again. Film's from 2016, perhaps they couldn't get away with portraying something like that now. Or perhaps they could, I won't fake deep knowledge of the Chinese censorship system.

It's on Shudder, for some weird reason.

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