ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

Also known as:   Kuchizuke

From IMDb:  Kinichi and Akiko meet when they visit their fathers in prison. After successfully gambling on a bicycle race, they spend an enjoyable day together at the beach. Akiko, who tries to make money as an artist's model to pay for her mother's medical expenses, now has to find 100,000 yen to pay off the company from which her father embezzled. Kinichi also requires 100,000 yen as bail for his father, who is accused of election fraud. Kinichi tries to borrow 100,000 yen from his mother, whom he has not seen for three years.

[southendmd]

IMDb:  Bridget Gregory has a lot going for her: she's beautiful, she's intelligent, she's married to a doctor. But all of this isn't enough, as her husband Clay finds out. After she persuaded him to sell medicinal cocaine to some drugdealers, she takes off with the money, almost a million dollars, and goes undercover in a mid-American smalltown. Because Clay has to pay off a loan shark who'll otherwise damage him severely, he keeps sending detectives after her, trying to retrieve the money. When Bridget meets Mike Swale, a naive local who is blinded by her beauty and directness, she devises an elaborate, almost diabolical scheme to get rid of Clay once and for all.

Apparently with nude scenes between Linda Fiorentino and Peter Berg.

[memento]

A dinner with friends witnesses exchange of millions of dollars and changing plans along with a transformation of all dynamics among friendship as money starts playing a major role in each person's life.

[oilgun]

Gil, somehow I missed the Andy Warhol poll, where is it? 
[...]

It's in the Polling Place:  http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,21936.0.html
I thought there would be more interest in the question for some reason.  Maybe there isn't enough skin?

[Meryl]

Pinky (Richard Jordan) is released from prison and has decided to go straight from now on, but accidentally getting himself a job as a
maintenance man at a large bank gives him a lot of undue attention from "Ivan the Terrible" David Niven, the local hoodlum.
By using Pinky, Ivan hopes to rob the bank and Pinky starts to liken to the idea of going back to his old ways.

[oilgun]

IMDB: Three fraternal bank robbers languishing in jail, discover a profitable (if not dodgy) way to spend their time. Crime can most certainly pay, if you "know wot I mean?" However when sex and greed rear-up between the good crims and the bad cops, the consequences are both bizarre and fatal.



=aside= Gil
Welcome back. I hope you had a nice vacation.

Thanks! It was a great vacation and the weather was perfect!



I'm a big Guy Pearce fan but I didn't enjoy THE HARD WORD.  I assume that you saw it, what did you think?

[Fran]

From IMDb:  This film originated as a play in Paris. The story focuses on the one-day adventures of Bertrand Barnier, played by a genius of French cinema, Louis de Funes. In the same morning he learns that his daughter is pregnant, an employee stole a large amount of money from his company, his maid is about to resign in order to marry a wealthy neighbor, and his body builder is interested in marrying his daughter. The seemingly complicated story-line is a comedy of errors and some of the most hilarious mime scenes of the French cinema. There is never a dull moment in this film.

=aside= Gil
The beach looks beautiful.  Whatcha reading?  (I'm assuming that's you in the photo.)

[oilgun]

AKA: BURNT MONEY



One of the hot scenes with Eduardo Noriega and Leo Sbaraglia  !

Plot: Burnt Money, which premiered at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival, is set in Argentina in 1965 and is the fourth film by director Marcelo Piñeyro. This true story follows the tumultuous relationship between two men who became lovers and ultimately ruthless bank robbers in a notoriously famous footnote in the annals of Argentinian crime history. Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia), Angel (Eduardo Noriega) and Cuervo (Pablo Echarri) are bank robbers who flee from Argentina across the border to Uruguay after a large-scale hold-up that turns bloody. Angel is hurt and the three must lay low until Angel recovers. Nene and Angel are known to everyone they know as "the twins" because of their resemblance, but the two are not brothers at all - they are involved in a steamy homosexual relationship. To get back to Argentina, the group must first wait for Fontana, the brains behind the robbery, to arrange for passports. Anxious from hiding, Cuervo decides to break curfew and go party. After Nene and Angel also decide to take off, Nene meets a prostitute named Giselle and Angel ends up getting in a fight. The group is forced to abandon their refuge and Angel and Nene decide to move in with Giselle. However, the sexual attraction between Nene and Angel burns too strongly and when Nene gets hostile with Giselle and kicks her out, she goes straight to the police to snitch on the group. It's not long before police are surrounding the building and the fate of Nene and Angel appears to be sealed.




==ASIDE==FRAN

=aside= Gil
The beach looks beautiful.  Whatcha reading?  (I'm assuming that's you in the photo.)

Isn't it a great beach!  "Ontario's West Coast" on lake Huron is a hidden gem with miles and miles of sandy beaches.
And yes that's me in the pic and NOT Brad Pitt (or Alain Delon)    The book I'm reading is called SNUFF by Chuck Palahniuk, which was a BIG disappointment.   I also started his INVISIBLE MONSTERS which I'm enjoying a lot more, maybe because I can really relate to being invisible.

From Publishers Weekly
Palahniuk delivers another entertaining and cynical social commentary on American materialism and gluttony. In her final pornographic performance, Cassie Wright has decided to be on the receiving end of a 600-man gangbang. Neither Cassie nor the men waiting for their chance with her expect her to survive. But some of the men have very different ideas about what this encounter will mean for them in their personal and professional lives. Todd McLaren does an excellent job voicing the many different first-person accounts. Whether reading the accounts of Cassie's assistant, an aging stud or the Cassie's presumptive abandoned son, McLaren finds a complementary voice for each and keeps them consistent throughout. Given the raunchy discussions of sex and the sinister elements that are often associated with the porn industry, McLaren's gritty voice adds the needed edge to this seedy but interesting novel.


From Publishers Weekly
Palahniuk's grotesque romp aims to skewer the ruthless superficiality of the fashion world and winds up with a tale as savagely glib as what it derides. Narrator Shannon McFarland, once a gorgeous fashion model, has been hideously disfigured in a mysterious drive-by shooting. Her jaw has been shot off, leaving her not only bereft of a career and boyfriend, but suddenly invisible to the world. Along comes no-nonsense, pill-popping diva Brandy Alexander, a resplendent, sassy, transgendered chick, who has modeled her body rearrangement--the breast implants, the hair, the figure--on what Shannon used to look like. Brandy suggests veils, high camp and no self-pity. Shannon wants revenge[...] Adding to the plot's contrivances are the relentless flashbacks, heralded at the beginning of almost every paragraph with "Jump back to..." and the author's pretentious device of using a fashion photographer's commands ("Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break") to signpost the narrator's epiphanies. Palahniuk writes like he's overdosed on Details magazine. Though the absurd surprise ending may incite groans of disbelief, this book does have fun moments when campy banter tops the heroine's flat, whiny bathos.

[Fran]

Also known as:  "When Women Lost Their Tails"

From IMDb:  Filli (Senta Berger) and the other cavemen from "When Women Had Tails" are living a carefree, if boring, life inside a dinosaur skeleton. But when conman Ham (Lando Buzzanca) introduces them to the concept of currency and economics, their lives fall apart. On top of that, Filli starts to fall in love with Ham....

=aside= Gil
Speaking of Brad Pitt, maybe we should do a "N" Degrees of Brad Pitt round. 

[memento]

IMDB: Carter and Lee head to Hong Kong for vacation, but become embroiled in a counterfeit money scam.



=aside= Gil

I didn't see "The Hard Word." I'm disappointed that you didn't like it, knowing what a Guy Pearce fan you are. I guess I won't be renting it.