johnnie to's ELECTION

it's not very focused but it's fun (also it's playing at amc times square)

has nomar seen sparrow yet??

not yet! i have no idea where to get a copy. might have to order it? the local dvd rental place just closed down, they tended to get all if not most To movies.

office looks amazing imo.

let me clear out some dropbox space maybe? i actually don't think i have any way of reaching you outside ilx haha

just hit you up with my email ;)

;)

OFFICE tonight at NYC MoMA in 3D

real heads caught it at the times square amc

well this was free for me

龜: i finally managed to watch SPARROW. thanks again for sending it my way.

damn to's such a good director. and simon yam is so good. he's a great and underrated lead actor, in total cary grant charm mode here but hanging onto that "yamsian" element of menace a bit. he's probably the most effortlessly chill of all HK dudes imo. and actually it's funny to think that, for me at least and probably many others, he made his stateside rep with this crazy psycho performance in 'full contact'. and he's done a few others like that as well, i.e. 'run and kill'. also he looks only about five years older here (movie is from '08) than he did in '92.

totally swell movie and beautifully composed and with a big heart, generous to all the characters, even the purported villain. enjoyed lam suet's borderline cameo mini role. and gordon lam is always a welcome presence.

i'd like to hang out w/kelly lin tbh.

btw i was thinking about THE MISSION recently too. listen to the balearic jams in this scene, it sounds like The Studio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p4bXobWSn8

reposting from above obv, vid was deleted before

glad you liked it nomar! :)

https://mrjagofilm.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/sparrow-1.gif

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

just want to recommend the film 'expect the unexpected' to everyone; might be my favorite to film. he's made some of his very best films since this time, but he was really on a roll from 1996 to 2000.

anyone seen THROWDOWN?

yeah, that's one of his weirdest films; lots of tonal shifts that are hard to adjust to at first. but i have grown to really like it.

rewatched the mission last night. best scene is them playing paper football outside the boss's office

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