"ELEKTRA"
Don't laugh....it had a scantily clad Jennifer Garner in it. Of course...thats ALL it had going for it.


http://www.seantconrad.com/years/200...an/elektra.jpg

Also "Wake of Death"......again with the laughing....it had a scantily clad Van Damme in it.
http://www.cinemovie.info/VanDamme/3.jpg


ok....so my weekend selection sucked.

Monas World (Denmark 2001):Comedy about a girl (Sidse Babett Knudsen) who works in a bank is witness to a bank robbery, and falls in love with one of the bank robbers (Mads Mikkelsen - The Danish voice of Randall from Monsters Inc). 8 / 10

Sounds like some might be feeling the same boredom with this influx of Oriental stuff as me.

How come nobody ever seems to have a bad word to say about anything with subtitles, particularly if it comes from the Far East?

Don't get me wrong, I like Takashi Miike and the Pang Bros. stuff (kinetic, extreme, sometimes very funny) and I'm a sucker for the harsher ends of the Jap torture series and 90's CAT III shockers... but recently these "mystery horror" movies are beginning to all look the same and the novelty value is gone.

I would say people view foreign films through rose-tinted specs sometimes, and consider that because they are intelligent enough to sit through the subtitles and "get" the foreign-ness of it all this gives the movie plus-points that an identical, English-language film wouldn't earn.

How do we know these Japanese/HK actors are not actually wooden as fuck soap-opera quality unless we understand the language they're speaking?

Perhaps it's the subtitle translators who are the unsung heroes of it all...

almost any one of these films - on their own - would be good viewing, and a welcome change from the american same old ..

in the similar vein as how cool friday the 13th was when we first saw it .. but as each progressive slasher used the same old bullshit as the last - it gets tired fast....and this is whats happening with these eastern horror/mysteries.

I enjoy foreign films as a rule because they give me a break from the usual crap - a fresh outlook or style.

The Hong Kong crime thrillers, the french new wave dramas..,
and within North America .. the young black filmmakers had a unique fresh approach (until it became the norm)

its interesting to see that the east are as guilty as the west when it comes to riding the wave of a good thing until its beaten to death.

I have also wondered about the question of the quality of the acting - are we blissfully unaware and everything sounds stellar because we wouldnt know the difference ..

i guess there's something to be said about that .. if we dont know if its bad or not .. then it sure isnt hurting us that way.

hey, it was a promising start - here's hoping they can use their skill as filmakers in some more innovative directions.

I just hope Miike isn't lured by the West, like John Woo and others were, to churn out quirky actioners starring Jean Claude Van Damme with his own "unique" style.

friday the thirteenth

Fist Of Fury HK Legends 30th R2

Bumfights 2: Bum Life - fucking hilarious!

What about the guy signing his life away before he embarks on a trip down a near-vertical slide... on a skateboard???

"Good luck, man."

"I told you, it ain't got nothing to do with luck... it's about SKILL!"

Then what an anti-climax!

His little hands scare* me.


Last for me was Dogville. I didn't think I was going to stop laughing every time the characters opened and closed a fake door, but it was deffinatly worth the wait. It made me smile.