During this weeks I wached and watched again two italian movies about poker, they are "regalo di Natale" (Christmas present) and "La rivincita di Natale", (Christmas rematch). The first one was of 1986 and the 2nd is of 2004. I don't like too much the actual italian movies production but this is an exception. Probably you'll never watch them because I don't think they were dubbed or subtitled, and expecially in the American contintent they are probably unfindable and it's a pity because I think that they are 2 of the most dramatic movies about card games.

The first one tell about the friendship of 4 friends, one of them became very rich and he's the owner of a big movie theater. They were poker players during teen age and now they come together again to play during Christmas' night with a rich lawier in order to win money for help one of them who is in difficult economical conditions, but the lawier won't be exactly what some of them thought about him and the last hand will be dramatic and a disaster for one of the 4 friends, the rich one who will realize that one of the other friends betrayed him.
This movie tell about the lost of friendship and I think that the character of the lawier is something very near of what I imagine to be the devil...

In 2004 they made the sequel, called "rematch": after 17 years the one who lost all in the first match succeded to have success and now is rich and have a lot of movie theaters and he want his chanche of revenge. They will reorganize the same table but the things are very different because everyone knows who are the others... Or they think to know it... The match will be more dramatic than the first with a lot of "coups de theatre" and the last hand will be a very strange surprise. This movie is about revenge but show that after a lot of years the characters are worse than before and they are the mirror of our era: they are disposed to do all for money, sell themselves and betray friends.

They are very, very sad movies but I liked them a lot, rent them if you find them !

these are the imdb pages:

http://imdb.com/title/tt0091837/

http://imdb.com/title/tt0403452/

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They both sound like good movies, but sadly I looked them up on Netflix's and wasn't able to fine either of them listed for here in the states. There is a big movie rental place in the Seattle Area of Washington that my son goes to and is suppost to have almost anything you could want to find, I'll ask him to see if they carry them and if they are subtitled or dubbed in English.
I watched "The Passion Of Christ" this last weekend and enjoyed it very much. I wasn't sure how I would feel about the movie at first, given all the controversal talk about it, but I really thought it was a great movie, and done very well. I came away feeling a lot of emotions after viewing it.

I'm now hooked on the tv series "Angel (Spin off of Buffy the Vampire slayer), my son bought me the first whole season of it on DVD for Xmas and I'm really enjoying the show
I'm also a new fan of the series "Smallville" of course it helps that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are both total cuties and make me wish I was 20 years younger again lol
 

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I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to just try and keep control over this group of bozo's at the Nut house errr...Clubhouse! --Guilty Pleasures Chief of Bozo's

I'll try to find them   . It's always good to watch european movies.   (Has anyone watched " Night watch"? I couldn't believe it's russian   ) The last movie I watched was " Suicide club" .Don't watch it!   Please!

What about bulgarian movies ?

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lol, I see that erenda has exactly the half of my age...

(Tormie-granpa feels very old   )

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The golden age of bulgarian cinema were the 70's and the 80's . Now the new directors make movies by habit and even they don't know why they're making movies.   There are some good movies like "Toplo" (Warmth) . You can find more information here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0189154/ . It's about a tenement house witch needs to have steam heating installed.The people living there find some "workers" to do te job , they pay them and then the "workers" disappeared living the whole tenement house in holes. So they don't need to leave their flats to meet each other , to communicate and to share things.   (They even don't need phones or internet. WoW , it's very "modern" for te 70's ) They tried to find the "workers" and finally find them in jail. Now they must help them escape to finis the job, or take their place in jail. They choose te second.    
Other good movie was "Vchera" (Yesterday) It's about a language high school (Maybe that's why I like it so much) and students who were "rebels" (At least they tried to be . It was difficult to be a rebel in a Communist Republic) Although the film was made in 1988 it's still inusually topical exspecially when it comes to my language high school.   The diffrence is that we're not wearing uniforms .   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0170783/
And the last one , a real "classic" is " S detsa na more" (With Children at the Seaside). I don't know who writed the bulgarian title on IMDB but it's a real nonsense!     I can't even pronounce it.   Anyway the movie is consisted of two parts . It's about a group of children witch are bored and try to "help" the adulds wit their problem.  In the first part they try to get a young couple together only to understand that the young couple didn't want to be together. In the second part they accidentaly took pictures of one adult they call "Uncle Mancho" who is very kind with them and his girlfriend (he's married). Uncle Mancho does everyting possible to take that photo. He steals te photographic camera and hurls it in the sea then he understands it was another photocraphic camera. Meanwhile he get in trouble with his girlfriend and his wife and in the end he understands that the photograpic camera was empty and there was no photo.   Here's the link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326098/.
And TORMENTOR if you feel older only when you meet someone younger that you it means you're not older. Age is nothing but a cipher.

I love non-mainstream movies. We're lucky in Australia we not only have 'world movies' channel on pay TV, but a free to air multicultural station called SBS (special broadcasting service) that covers so many nationalities and shown so many imported movies, old and new.

I watch so many 'foreign-language' films I look for the sub-titles on normal movies when I miss what they're saying  

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