Eastern Promises: Vory v Zakone

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms

Eastern Promises [2007]

Director: David Cronenberg
Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl

I’ve always had a strong interest in the Vory v Zakone, a particularly branch of the Russian organised crime world. The vory have strict rules that they abide by, and they consider prison their home, freedom being a temporary thing. Of course, in reality things don’t really work this way, but the vory did spring forth from prison culture, and their characteristic prison tattoos, while not even half as beautiful as the famous Yakuza tattoos, do tell the tale of your life, and are as important. As a result, when I saw the trailer for this film not so long ago, I knew I wanted to go and see it. Cronenberg, Mortensen and the vory, can’t go wrong, right? :)

The movie is part of a set of movies, starting with A History of Violence, also by Cronenberg, also starring Viggo Mortensen. This film, while different, has a lot of similarities to its predecessor, and should really be seen as two parts of a whole. For instance, where in A History of Violence the seemingly normal, every day man seems to have a touch of violent in him, in Eastern Promises it’s the seemingly violent man that has touches of calm in himself. Anyway…

…Nikolai is a driver for a Russian crime family in London. He is confronted by Anna, a midwife at a hospital who is trying to get in contact with the family of a fourteen year-old girl that died while in labour, in order to bring to them her new-born baby. She has nothing to go on except her diary, which shows that she was a girl smuggled to London under false promises of work, only to be forced into prostitution. The information in the diary is potentially very harmful to the crime family, and the head of the family, Semyon (Mueller-Stahl) asks Nikolai to make sure the information never reaches the police. In the meantime, Nikolai is caught between the degenerating relationship between Semyon and his son Kirill (Cassel).

From all accounts, the main actors in the film, none of who are Russian, manage to speak Russian rather well, and a lot of research was done into the authenticity of the language, customs and mannerisms. Regardless, it’s a great film that I think I might go and see again sometime soon.

Ike

by Dennis••6•Posted inJournal

Last night, in order to commemorate the passing of Ike Turner, I beat up Moulsari. (Don’t worry, she’ll be able to walk again, soon.) I hereby call upon all men, all over the world, to victimise their girlfriends, wives, mothers or just random women on the street if you have to, in order to mark the passing of such a wonderful man.

Bad Karma

by Dennis••1•Posted inJournal

.: Fight
I had a great dinner with Eva, last night, but the start of it was a little weird for me. (Probably for her, too.) Only five minutes before we said hello, I had a fight on the middle of an intersection with a rather burly guy. How the hell did I manage to piss off someone to the point that they wanted to jump me, you ask? Well, I was cycling along (fast, as usual), and a guy came cycling along the opposite way, but on the wrong side of the street. I didn’t spot him fast enough as he didn’t have any lights on his bike and wasn’t wearing the most reflective of clothing, either. So as I came barreling down the path I overtook someone, which probably scared him, forcing him to step off his bike. He yelled something at me that I didn’t understand, perhaps because the guy was African, and without turning my head I flipped him the bird. Threehundred yards down the street I had to wait for a traffic light and out of nowhere, from behind, the guy bodychecks me off my bike. Luckily I remained standing because he kind of tripped over my bike as he pushed me off of it. I hit him a couple of times, and got him in a choke before his (much larger and fitter-looking) friend came up. I was pretty rattled to begin with, but I have never fought two guys at once before, so I let the first guy go, so I was ready for the second guy, but the second guy held his hands out in a way that made me realise he didn’t want to fight, he just came there to get his friend who was catching his breath. Before they had the chance to regroup, I hopped back on my bike and get the fuck outta dodge. I’m guessing the second guy either thought his friend was overreacting, and it had occurred to me that perhaps those guys weren’t friends, but they were both African guys, which made me jump to that conclusion. In any case, I got away without any scratches or bruises, but my bike makes a bit of a rattly sound now.

.: Dinner
Had dinner with Eva, and I started out with tequila/tonics to calm my nerves a little bit. Gave out some bad vibes to some other dude at the bar, I think, while we waited for a table, but anyway, pretty soon Eva and I were talking at top tempo and all the weirdness of fifteen minutes before was quickly forgotten. One of the highlights was the revelation that Eva had purchased the DVD box for The Kingdom, a mini-series directed by (among others) Lars von Trier. Claus told us about that series with such enthusiasm (and those of you how know Claus, he doesn’t really do enthusiasm) that it had always stayed with us. So hopefully we’ll be able to find a few evenings in which we can watch it. Looking forward.

.: Gaming
Prototype looks to be a really good action game. Dark and atmospheric, if the website and trailer is anything to go by. I got my brother Assassin’s Creed for christmas, so hopefully we’ll be able to try that out, too. Can’t wait for Gears of War to hit the PC, and I want to free up some time to play BioShock, because seeing and hearing Moulsari play that game has kind of got me in the mood for it.

Dennis is about to continue his D&D game, while I’m writing the synopsis for my last campaign for those interested (especially Edwin), but sadly we’re probably going to put that off until the new year, since I’m have some obligations the coming few weeks. Looking forward to that, too.

Oni

by Dennis••4•Posted inJournal

I got ahold of SpecialBites, a Dutch restaurant guide, the other day, and while I happened to be in Den Haag yesterday, we thought to try out the fifth best recommended restaurant in the top 100, and the best recommended restaurant in Den Haag;Oni. It was amazing. Atmosphere and food were top notch.

Superbad == Superbad

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms
Superbad [2007]

Director: Greg Mottola
Actor: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen

After American Pie everything changed. It was alright to have really shitty plots and stereotypical charicatures in comedies that were mostly about men trying to get laid. Some of them were funny (Old School, Wedding Crashers), some of them were not. This one was not.

Seth (Hill) and Evan (Cera) are two dorky high school students about to graduate. They are also best friends. Seth is the chubby clown, not too serious about anything but pussy. Evan is a good student, socially a little awkward but a guy who has his head on straight. They’ve been best friends since they were 8 years old, and now, on the eve of their graduation, they decide to try and get laid before hitting college, so that they will have some experience before facing college chicks. A party thrown by a friend of theirs provides them with the right opportunity to get their respective girls drunk enough to sleep with them. They reluctantly team up with their friend Vogel (Mintz-Plasse) who has obtained a fake ID, and goes by the name McLovin most of the movie, in order to buy the alcohol for the party.

From then on the movie finally gets going, but it goes in a bizarre direction. Two cops (Hader and Rogen) with some deeply disturbing emotional problems and personalities that are both incredibly dim as well as frightfully unpredictable, take McLovin on a tour through the city, going from one call to the next, while drinking booze and breaking a lot of laws. All in the name of “fun.”

Blah blah blah. I don’t want to write the rest of this review. There’s a few funny bits, but mostly it’s an annoying film. Sadly, the few funny bits were spaced just so that I thought something might change this film from the Superbad turd it was into something fun. A fun turd, perhaps. It didn’t. Shite!