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Thread: "Blind Shaft" (Mang Jing) is the best Chinese movie I've ever seen

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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
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    Austin TX
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    "Blind Shaft" (Mang Jing) is the best Chinese movie I've ever seen

    It's about two or three years old, and tells the story of a pair of con-men who get jobs in various coal mines. They masquerade as the relatives of some other worker, kill him, make it look like a mining accident and then shake down the owner for wrongful death compensation (actual accidental deaths are so common that no one ever suspects a thing.) Then they move on to another mine and repeat the process. It's shot in a documentary style, plot wise it's practically film noir, and thematically it's vicious social critique. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

    Director Yang Li (no relation to Ang Lee that I can tell) is jumping to the top of my list of favorite contemporary filmmakers, if he can keep this level of quality up.
    All my fight strategy is based on deliberately injuring my opponents. -
    Crippled Avenger

    "It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever get near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propoganda visits...Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecendented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."

    First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Upstate NY
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    168
    Quote Originally Posted by Chang Style Novice
    It's about two or three years old, and tells the story of a pair of con-men who get jobs in various coal mines. They masquerade as the relatives of some other worker, kill him, make it look like a mining accident and then shake down the owner for wrongful death compensation (actual accidental deaths are so common that no one ever suspects a thing.) Then they move on to another mine and repeat the process. It's shot in a documentary style, plot wise it's practically film noir, and thematically it's vicious social critique. Highly, HIGHLY recommended.

    Director Yang Li (no relation to Ang Lee that I can tell) is jumping to the top of my list of favorite contemporary filmmakers, if he can keep this level of quality up.
    That was in a movie festival one year up here.

    It was full when I got there. I was so ****ed that I missed it.


    I think the director got in trouble with china, and all his films were destoryed, but this one got out.
    A"recovered" crack addict. "That came from being one of the Reagan-era kids when I was in middle school as part of that whole Just Say No thing. They would have people who were recovering addicts come to talk to us at school. One guy in particular came to talk to us about drugs. But it didn't sound like he thought they were that bad. He sounded more like a commercial for drugs than a warning."
    -Dave Chappelle on Tyrone Biggums



    "A good male hostage negotiator can talk the pants off a nun. And a good female negotiator could be caught in bed with another man by her husband and the next moment would be standing up, putting her clothes on, acting like it was a big joke, convincing the husband that nothing happened. And after a while, maybe he wouldn't believe it, he's not stupid, but it would put some doubts in his head..."
    -CPD hostage negotiator

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 1970
    Location
    Austin TX
    Posts
    6,440
    I saw it on dvd, rented from an artsy/importy local video store. If you can't find it at a store like that near you, I suspect netflix has it.
    All my fight strategy is based on deliberately injuring my opponents. -
    Crippled Avenger

    "It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever get near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propoganda visits...Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecendented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him."

    First you get good, then you get fast, then you get good and fast.

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