What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching? ARCHIVE

Man, that is some serious stuff! May I ask which kind of gang and why? In most of movies, they make the gangsters look cool but CoG and SN really show that it's no goal to pursue. That guy with MS tattoo all over his face gives me shivers.

The sequel, City of Men is also great. I actually liked it a little more than City of God.

Is your cousin actually in a gang, or is she just hanging out with gang members? Cause I've heard that female gang members either need to be "jumped" into the gang, which involves a brief beating at the hands of several gang members, or else they "pull a train" if their gang is the female auxiliary to a male gang. Either way, not a good situation. And when somebody wants out, they go out the same way they came in.

They have gangs in Canada?

Yeah, they go around following the rules and being polite.

MORAL PANIC.

It's not like those Los Angeles gangs or anything but still no good for someone her age. They usually get the girls into the gangs around her age and in a few years, they're in the sex trade. So it's been tough to try and get her to see right from wrong because the gang is offering her friendship and all that awesome stuff kids crave when they've just sort of had it with everything else at home (parents, siblings, grandparents, legal guardians, group homes, whatever). The guy trying to break her in is 18 and she's like totally head over heels about him but we know what he's after.

I'm not trying to get too involved cuz it's complicated between her, her parents, her grandparents (the legal guardians) and stuff. I just called up her grandmother and told her to find a way for her to watch Sin Nombre and Gran Torino cuz they both deal with gang seduction and touch on those issues (my cousin loves movies so it's an easy thing for her to do). It's funny cuz when I called, she was watching Freedom Writers (on her schoolteacher's suggestion) which is a very plain vanilla anti-gang movie as well.


I think movies can really be a great way to reach these kids (she's really young) when they don't want to listen to adults at all. I remember when I was around that age, watching American history X was a real wake up call to me on how pointless racism is. I've never seen it explained so clearly. I would imagine Requiem for a Dream might be similar for anyone tempted by heroin but i dunno

Michael Barnes wrote:

They have gangs in Canada?

In Vancouver we have huge gang problems. People are killed all the time in Gang Wars. Toronto and Montreal also have problems, as well as, to a lesser degree, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Calgary.

I'm really curious to see what will happen during the Olympics, because our city looks pretty disgusting in some places and we don't have the awesome Chinese PR machine to hide it all.

I watched the award winning⁽¹⁾ Jean-Claude van Damme classic 'Bloodsport' last night. To paraphrase Beetlejuice 'and it keeps getting funnier every time I see it'.

(1) Drunkie awards: Winner: Best Poor Quality 80's Action Movie, Winner: Least Non-Clichéd Moments in a Film (None), Winner: Best Nipple Work in a Film, Nominated: Best Martial Arts Training by a Recluse, Nominated: Can't Believe Quality Actor is in this Shit (Forest Whitaker).

I'm not really a movie guy, outside of a handful of favorites, but I watched Tombstone last night and liked it.

I've been catching up on some classics and watched Vertigo for the first time. That was amazing!

J.T. wrote:

I've been catching up on some classics and watched Vertigo for the first time. That was amazing!

In spite of what you may believe, Vertigo is shit. I have never understood the fascination of it as every character in it is fundamentally unlikeable, which made me completely detached from the film which is not what you want from a thriller.

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote:

J.T. wrote:

I've been catching up on some classics and watched Vertigo for the first time. That was amazing!

In spite of what you may believe, Vertigo is shit. I have never understood the fascination of it as every character in it is fundamentally unlikeable, which made me completely detached from the film, which is not what you want from a thriller.

That works fine for Mad Men, or as I call it: "Bad Things happen to Bad People".

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote:

J.T. wrote:

I've been catching up on some classics and watched Vertigo for the first time. That was amazing!

In spite of what you may believe, Vertigo is shit. I have never understood the fascination of it as every character in it is fundamentally unlikeable, which made me completely detached from the film which is not what you want from a thriller.

By the time you realize just how nasty everyone is, you're already hooked.

dysjunct wrote:

I'm not really a movie guy, outside of a handful of favorites, but I watched Tombstone last night and liked it.

Tombstone has to be one of the most underated movies of all time

I have been really enjoying weaning my wife off crappy crime tv and getting her to watch movies instead. This weekend we watched Smoke (completely underated movie, I don't know why this isn't on more must watch lists), Tristram Shandy (quite good although my wife hates Steve Coogan in his off-screen life which ainted her opinion) and Nausicaa (which I confess I found to be, unlike most Studio Ghibli, quite good).

We got drunk yesterday and watched Hellraiser 5. Half of the first movie was terribly boring but I really liked this one.