Friday, 11 July 2008

Hancock

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.9/ 10

Plot: A hard-living superhero who has fallen out of favor with the public enters into a questionable relationship with the wife of the public relations professional who's trying to repair his image (IMDB).

Wednesday, 9 July 2008

Battle Royale

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.0/ 10

Plot: Forty-two delinquent students, three days, one deserted Island: welcome to Battle Royale. A group of delinquent students from a Japanese high school have been forced by legislation to compete in a new forum of reality television.The students are each given a bag with a randomly selected weapon and a few rations of food and water and sent off to kill each other in a no-holds-barred (with a few minor rules) game to the death, which means that the students have three days to kill each other until one survives--or they all die. The movie focus on a few of the students and how they cope. Some decide to play the game like the psychotic Kiriyama or the sexual Mistuko, while others like the heroes of the movie--Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada--are trying to find a way to get off the Island without violence. However, as the numbers dwell down lower and lower on an hourly basis, is there any way for Shuya and classmates to survive (IMDB)?


Sunday, 6 July 2008

The Banquet

Language: Mandarin. English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.5/ 10

Plot: In 907 AD, the Tang Dynasty is in tatters; infighting snarls the imperial family. Crown Prince Wu Luan loves Little Wan, but his father takes her as his Empress. Wu Luan goes into exile, studying dance and music. His uncle murders his father, taking throne and Empress; uncle sends assassins to kill Wu Luan. The Crown Prince eludes death and comes to court. The Emperor arranges for Little Wan's coronation and dispatches Wu Luan to a distant land; he then calls for a midnight banquet on the 100th day of his rule. Poison, treachery, Wu Luan's return, and the love of the innocent Qing for Wu Luan set up the final entanglements. No Fortinbras or Horatio lay the dead to rest (IMBD).


Part I


Part II

Saturday, 5 July 2008

Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac.

Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac.

Green Street Hooligans

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: Unjustly expelled from Harvard when a stash of cocaine is found in his possession, Matt (Elijah Wood) moves to London to live with his sister and her husband Steve (Marc Warren.) He is quickly introduced to Steve's chirpy, cock-sure younger brother Pete (Charlie Hunnam.) Initially, Pete is reluctant to get acquainted with Matt and allow him to tread around the capital city with him because he may be seen by others as an 'outsider', but after a heavy drinking session with him and his mates he quickly changes his opinion of him. On the way back from a football match, Matt is viciously accosted by a gang of Birmingham City thugs, until Pete and his friends step in and save him. It is from here that Matt learns the truth about Pete and his friends- they are football hooligans, operating the GSE (Green Street Elite) 'firm.' Initially afraid of the violence, Matt soon ends up becoming as desensitized to it as his new found friends- but as events roll on, suspicion, shocking revelations and unsettled scores combine to a devastating climax where London's most fierce football rivals- Millwall and West Ham United- are set to go head to head (IMDB).




No video? Get the DivX Web Player for Windows or Mac.

Friday, 4 July 2008

The Cube (1969)

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.8/ 10

Plot: A man awakens inside a white cube, covered in a four-by-four grid. He has no memory of how he got there and there seems no way out. But as time passes, panels open temporarily to admit an intruder or onlooker. They pop back through their panels but bar the man from going through, pointing out "this is MY door; you'll have to find YOUR door." The intruders vary from individuals to a child on a tricycle and and a rock band. More and more people start to come into the cube, filling it up and this developes into a sort of cocktail party. A rock band comes through sometime during all of this, singing The Cube's theme song, "You'll never get out, you'll never get out, you'll never get out till you die." At one point the man sees himself, a double, and has a dialog with himself about how he has to find HIS way out. Is the man a prisoner? An inmate? Someone on a voluntary retreat? The stories change with each new visitor. Eventually, just as he succumbs to despair, a square panel clicks open. The man crawls through it and discovers he is in a clinic corridor. A therapist welcomes his escape form the Cube and takes him to his office. There the therapist reveals the reason the man was in the Cube. Or does he? Once in the office the man was given a fountain pen to sign some forms before being discharged. He accidently cuts his finger, and when he sucks the cut he tastes not blood but .... strawberry jam. The office then dissolves into ... the white cube. Fade to white (IMDB).


Thursday, 3 July 2008

Half Light


language: English/ Arabic subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.0/ 10

Plot: In London, the successful novelist Rachel Carlson is married with the mediocre aspirant writer and great editor Brian and they live in a comfortable apartment with her son Thomas Carlson. While writing a new novel, Rachel forgets the back gate open and Thomas drowns in a lake. Eight months later, Rachel is still disturbed and she decides to move alone to a seaside cottage in Ingonish Cove, a very small coastal Scottish village. Sarah decides to visit the lighthouse in the island close to her house to help in her research for the book, where she meets the lighthouse keeper Angus McCulloch. One month later, she falls for him and they make love. On the next morning, she invites Angus to go to a birthday party in the shore, and while waiting for him, she discloses that Angus McCulloch died seven years ago. Rachel returns to the island trying to prove her sanity to her neighbor Finlay Murray, and they see that the lighthouse is completely empty. Rachel has a breakdown and she asks for help to her psychiatric Dr. Robert Freedman and to best friend Sharon Winton while she is haunted by ghosts.


Wednesday, 2 July 2008

La société du spectacle

This is a must see, although the book is of course a lot better...

Language: French/ English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 7./ 10

Plot: The 90 minute film took a year to make and incorporates footage from The Battleship Potemkin, October, New Babylon, Shanghai Gesture, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rio Grande, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Johnny Guitar, and Confidential Report, as well as Soviet and Polish films, industrial films, American Westerns, news footage, advertisements, and many still photographs. Events such as the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald (who assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963), the revolutions in Spain in 1936, Hungary in 1956 and in Paris in 1968, and people such as Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon, and the Spanish Anarchist Durruti are represented. Throughout the movie, there is both a voiceover (of Debord) and inter-titles from "Society of the Spectacle" but also texts from the Committee of Occupation of the Sorbonne, Machiavelli, Marx, Tocqueville, Emile Pouget, and Soloviev. Without citations, these quotes are hard to decipher, especially with the subtitles (which exist even in the French version) but that is part of Debord’s goal “to problematize reception” (Greil and Sanborn) and force the viewer to be active (wiki).


Tuesday, 1 July 2008

An Inconvenient Truth

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.1/ 10

Plot: Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore's personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change. A longtime advocate for the environment, Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way. "Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message," said Guggenheim. An Inconvenient Truth is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely," said Gore (IMDB).