GAMBLING MOVIE

The truth about poker movies is that very few of them are actually about the game of poker. Most of them involve some other sort of human drama, and poker is just worked into the mix as part of the backdrop of a broader story.

A Poker Movie With Bad Taste

The need for a story to overshadow the game comes from the fact that if they just made a movie about a poker game there would be two hours of cards being played just to have it climax at the end. It would be sort of like watching professional wrestling, but without all the shouting and the occasional elbow smash. With this said, the film Stoic features a rather disturbing story, and the whole thing starts off with one of the worst poker bets in history.

In the film, three inmates decide to alleviate the boredom of a German prison by playing a little poker. Seeing as the terms of their incarceration include having no access to online payment system they decide that the loser must eat something, throw it back up, and then eat the meal they just regurgitated. This particular use of poker in a film makes me long for the days when Brett Maverick was trying to score with Jodi Foster during a break in a tournament. This bit in the film Stoic was just gross beyond words.

Jessica Hinton from L.A. and Sarah Barker from Las Vegas and 17 other models from four local modeling agencies, AWG, Best, Red and Platinum, were at The Bank on Sunday night for the culmination of the Las Vegas Top Model 2009 contest, competing for a grand prize of $5,000.Hosted by The Light Group, the competition played out online where each model posted their pictures. The public was invited to vote for its favorite.

Tre Baillie, a petite girl with bright red ringlets, extraordinarily long blue eyelashes and a thick layer of body glitter all over her back and décolletage, lets me in on a few of the occupation’s numerous perks as the gaggle of models migrates across the Bellagio casino floor from Caramel Lounge to The Bank Nightclub.

As she’s talking I can see the perks for myself: the parting sea of people, the complete bypassing of the long line of non-models outside the club, the ushering upstairs to a VIP booth where chilled bottles await and beautiful people are welcome to dance on banquettes. When the ballots are tabulated, a raven-haired Vegas native takes home the dough.

Arianny Celeste, who maintains that she is a homebody who’d rather be watching a movie at home than out partying, has recently moved from her hometown of Las Vegas to pursue starry-eyed dreams in L.A. She’s currently attending acting school with hopes of becoming television host and actress, but still frequently flies to Vegas (and all over the world) to fulfill her duties as a hot UFC ring girl.

A model since she was 13 Celeste is surprisingly modest about her big win.  “I have never won anything in my life, so I was just shocked. I felt really good because I knew that it was driven by votes. I knew that my fans and friends and family all voted, so it all made me feel good and proud.”

Gambling is an attractive subject for movies since it’s inherently theatrical.Players are motivating characters for movies, since it’s simple for stories to put them in intense situations.By watching gambling movies, we can practice the excitement of gambling devoid of the risk.Good gambling movies have directed to bring optimistic attention to the world of betting and even brought in new gamblers, who were plot and drawn by the glamour and cash.

Some movies did the conflicting and presented a harsh image of addicted gamblers who are on the verge of getting doomed.A lot of great betting movies have been made, Many Movies have centered on the depiction of gamblers and the convincing surroundings of casinos.

Since the notion of gambling is striking to viewers as much as a well known actor or a exciting plot are.There are dozens of betting movies out there, some are dazzling and some are terrible, but how will you know which is a must see and which to keep away from?

Some of the best of the best casino movies are on this list. Magnificent actors such as Paul Newman, Robert De Niro and Edward.Norton, films with thrilling stories such as The Sting, Casino or The Cooler and reasonable portrayals of a gambler’s life such as presented in The Gambler.

The nominations for the Oscars have been announced. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are vying for the top acting honors, though for different movies.

Oscars Trigger Movie Slots Games

As far as movies go The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button heads the list with 13 nominations. Slumdog Millionaire with ten nominations is not far behind. If this has created a craving for the old classics that have ruled the Oscars then check out Sunday Afternoon Classics slots.

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The online slot has two bonus games that offer 10 free spins at tripled payouts. The bonus game on the second screen takes the players to the theatre. Popcorn packets are lined up next to a popcorn vending machine. Players get to pick six of them. As each packet is clicked it bursts and spills the popcorn with golden light shining all around. From the light players get golden movie tickets that determine if they will play the bonus round. In the bonus round players get 25 free spins at doubled payouts.

Synopsis

21 is the story of Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess), a promising M.I.T. student who needs money to get into Harvard Medical School. To make ends meet (and against his better judgement) he joins a group of his fellow students, Jill Taylor (Kate Bosworth), Kianna (Liza Lapira), Choi (Aaron Yoo) and Fisher (Jacob Pitts) to go to Las Vegas every weekend with their math professor Mickey Rosa (Kevin Spacey) to “beat the house” by counting cards while playing blackjack.

Fascinating stuff and if the movie would have kept the focus on the characters and how they beat the system, it would have been so much better. But instead it put its focus on how this master group basically did the most cliched things possible in Vegas – riding in limos down the strip, hanging out with strippers and acting like pompous high rollers.

Moreover, the way that director Robert Luketic decided to present this was predictable and boring, with the money making process being outlined through either stop motion video (which I actually did scream at in the theater) or some sort of epilepsy inducing flashes of cards. As I said earlier, this movie is completely Hollywood-ized in a way that really took me away from the story.

Review

Based on the true story of six M.I.T. students, “21″ is a movie about a group of M.I.T. students who, under the tutelage of one of their professors, learn how to count cards and take their skills to Vegas to win a large sum of money at blackjack at the various casinos there. Although counting cards isn’t technically illegal, the casinos frown heavily upon it. The story takes place before the development of facial recognition software (where the casinos can catch cheaters easier with the use of cameras and computers), so catching card counters was a lot more difficult, and thus the punishments were more severe.

“21″ stars Jim Sturgess (”Across the Universe”) as Ben Campell. Ben is a genius M.I.T. student who is cruising his way towards graduation.He has been accepted into the prestigious Harvard Medical School, but Ben does not have the finances to attend.

His only shot at making it there is to win the single full-ride scholarship given out by Harvard, but as the Harvard representative explains to him, Ben would need to wow Harvard to win it.Looking at Ben’s past, he is worried that he doesn’t have anything that would qualify as a “wow” factor. One night, Ben gets invited to join a secret group of students practicing their skills at card counting under the teaching of Professor Rosa (Kevin Spacey - “American Beauty”).

Although hesitant at first to join, the offer of Medical School tuition keeps Ben around. The group goes to Vegas and wins big in their first couple attempts.The ecstasy of victory only lasts so long, however, as a number of problems arise. In-group fighting, losing a distinction between what’s real and what’s pretend, and the threat of getting caught are just a few of the problems that Professor Rosa’s crew has to face in Vegas, and eventually it overwhelms the group, threatening to break them apart. Ben must decide what in his life is the most important.

“21″ also stars Laurence Fishburne (”The Matrix”) as Cole Williams, a casino consultant who has lost his previous job to card counters and vows to catch this newest group before they take everything from his new job.”21″ hits the mark on everything it tried to accomplish. It showed both the highs and lows gambling can cause. In Vegas, you can be whomever you want and no one needs or wants to know any different. At the same point, the cost of obsession (in this case winning and earning large amounts of money) can become too great.Friendships can be ruined, careers can be put off track, and the important things in life can be lost in the process.

The cinematography in “21″ is stunning. As Ben begins to learn and practice card counting, the camera slows down the motion of the cards being dealt in order for Ben to explain how card counting works. The system the group develops involves key words and hand signals. Every time Ben would hear one of these words, Ben would flash back to his practice using flash cards to remember what the words meant.Every time he would see one of the hand motions, the camera would slow down to show how Ben’s mind caught and reacted to the signals.

Overall, “21″ is a fantastic movie. It tells the story of what can happen when a group of people allow themselves to profit from their intelligence and have a great time while doing it. “21″ makes the viewer want to dream big themselves and strive for something out of the ordinary.

Synopsis

The Cooler 2003

The Cooler is Bernie Lootz, a loser who has made his career out of his contagious bad luck. The Cooler plies his trade, working on the floor of Las Vegas’ aging Shangri-La casino, an old-school “gambler’s casino,” a dinosaur in the shadow of the new Strip and its theme-park attractions.

In this purgatory of bright lights and chirping slots, Bernie drifts from table to table, his bad karma cooling one gambler’s lucky streak after another. Like an inmate serving time, Bernie has been here for years, paying off a nasty gambling debt he owes to the Shangri-La’s slippery Director of Operations, Shelly Kaplow. Bernie is just days away from fulfilling his debt when he meets Natalie, a new cocktail waitress at the Shangri-La.Natalie sweeps Bernie off his feet, and after a night of much-needed raucous sex, Bernie is in love.

When Natalie starts to love him back, Bernie’s luck starts to change. Feeling good for the first time in years, Bernie can’t wait to leave Las Vegas and move on with his life with the woman of his dreams. But will Shelly let his most valued asset leave so easily? Moderately entertaining but leaving no lasting impression, Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler is one of those films that just simply comes and goes. The movie’s a bit darker, and somewhat more intense, than I had anticipated, but ultimately it’s fairly hollow in the center.

Fans of Las Vegas and casinos will derive a few thrills from the movie, and a particularly spirited (albeit one-note) performance by Alec Baldwin is reason enough to give The Cooler a mild recommendation. The Shangri-La casino is old school Vegas. With no roller coasters, shopping malls or gondola rides to be found anywhere on the premises, Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) makes the rounds at the casino working as a “cooler” for his old friend who runs the establishment, Shelly Kaplow (Alec Baldwin).

This job entails going from table to table where gamblers are on a winning streak and putting an end to their good fortune purely by being in the vicinity. You see, Bernie is thought to be the unluckiest person in Vegas, and bad vibes follow him wherever he goes. That changes when Bernie meets the Shangri-La’s new cocktail waitress, Natalie (Maria Bello). The aggressive Natalie charms Bernie right into bed, and the man falls in love before he knows what hit him. But, true to form, Bernie’s timing couldn’t be worse — he has planned to leave the Shangri-La in a few days, as he’ll have worked off his debt to Shelly.

Shelly, on the other hand, is desperate to retain Bernie’s services, especially in light of the fact that the owners of the casino have sent in a young businessman, Buddy Stafford (Ron Livingston), to modernize the Shangri-La in order to make it more competitive with the other new school casinos. But Bernie’s developing a professional problem — the more he falls in love with Natalie, the less effective his “cooling” is. Soon, he’s bringing nothing but good luck to the Shangri-La’s ecstatic customers.

Bernie’s plans to skip town are further complicated by the arrival of his estranged son (Shawn Hatosy) and his pregnant girlfriend (Estella Warren), who get into some unexpected but deadly serious hot water with Shelly. William H. Macy has played the sympathetic loser several times in his career, and here he treads familiar ground.

The one wrinkle to the role is that he spends a fair amount of time in steamy sex scenes with Maria Bello, who hits the right notes as the rough-around-the-edges but still dignified Natalie. It is Baldwin though who brings an absolute ferociousness to the dangerous Shelly. Sure, the character is written with too much of a singular purpose, but the actor makes Shelly a dominant, threatening presence every time he’s on screen.

Frank Hannah and Wayne Kramer’s script is all conventional, surface level twists and turns, many of which you can see coming a mile away. The subplot involving Bernie’s son and his hairy predicament is sloppily abandoned after reaching a dramatic crescendo, and a few other supporting characters are touched upon too briefly. The script is stuffed thick with various elements (including some Casino-esque violence), which just aren’t proportioned effectively. Kramer is able to visually create the atmosphere of the Shangri-La — a decaying relic lost among the posh hotels and casinos that have been sprouting up in Vegas for the past two decades (not to mention many other places). His camera work starts off flashy, but settles down enough to not be distractingly obtrusive.

Overall, The Cooler feels a bit too commonplace — really, you’ve seen this all many times before (and done better), so if originality is a priority, then there’s not much reason to see this film. But if you’re interested in the world it’s set in and can tolerate the familiarity, The Cooler, despite its occasional lack of inspiration, isn’t a bad way to spend 100 minutes of your life.

Mike Hodges’ Croupier takes us behind the scenes of the casino and into the world of professional gambling.

Croupier (1999)

Like the recent film Rounders, we are guided through this world by the narration of a young man caught up in circumstances greater than himself. Hodges’ film is smarter and sexier, however, and tells the story not of the gambler, but the life of the croupier - the dealer and casino worker. Croupier abandons the typical dressings of underground noir films, and instead opts for wry humor and perceptive insight. In Croupier, Jack (Clive Owen) is the South African son of a compulsive gambler now living in London and attempting to make a career as a novelist. He works from his flat which he shares with girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee) who is the ordinary and mundane figure in Jack’s life.

I must say that she is one of the most beautiful and coiffed “ordinary” people I have ever seen, making her role as the ordinary girl who must be pushed away in favor of the exotic a tad less convincing. The plot is set in motion when Jack’s publisher rejects his master manuscript, and instead suggests that he write a formulaic soccer novel. Shortly thereafter a dejected Jack receives a phone call from his father in South Africa who announces that he has arranged for Jack to take a job as a croupier in a London casino.

The story is then occupied with chronicling Jack’s descent into the casino world. His already fading feelings for Marion are further complicated as he becomes involved with another croupier, Bella (Kate Hardie), and a beautiful, mysterious South African woman named Jani. Jack, who narrates the film in the third person, scraps the soccer novel and begins to write an autobiography of sorts, “I, Croupier,” the main character of which is Jack’s alter ego, Jake.

As the film progresses, Jack become increasingly confused about his identity - is he Jack, the humble bohemian writer? Or is he Jake, the handsome and subversive croupier? While Hodges thoroughly explores this dual identity, the movie never takes the question too seriously, and it is this tension that keeps the story and characters fresh and interesting throughout the film. Because the plot does not center around intense group of card players typical to this genre, we are treated to a solid story and interesting characters who are not driven inevitably into the “big game” situation, but who nonetheless lead us to a surprising and entertaining ending.

While I often find narration of a film a tedious plot expedient, Jack’s dead-pan third person narrative provide us both with his witty inner monologue and perceptive observations of those around him. Clive Owens is charming as the stoic and sardonic Jack, although I wish that he had done a bit more to distinguish his character from every other post-modern noir anti-hero that can only conquer the world by distancing himself from it.

As an unfortunate consequence of this posturing, the few times that Jack does display a burst of emotion; it seems forced and over-dramatic, rather than betraying a new dimension of the Jack/Jake character. Alex Kingston’s South African accent is not well coached, and this is distracting, - she delivers the obligatory “eh” sound (as in, “South ‘Eh’-frica”), but then returns to a proper Queen’s English clip. Despite this irritation, her role is a success, intriguing and beguiling both Jack and the audience.

Given that we view the story from the standpoint of the croupier, Hodges’ views the casino games more with amusement than with suspense. Hodges draws the viewer slyly into the story, much in the way that Jack is drawn into the life of his fictional Jake. We are at first led to believe that the dealer can’t lose. After all, our reliable hero announces to us, “In life we all make a choice: either you’re a gambler or a croupier.” So, if it turns out that the joke is on Jack, the joke must also be on us, and the distinction between gambler and croupier, between winner and loser becomes appropriately muddled.

Croupier takes us for a ride in a most subtle manner, reminding us that suspense and noir films need not be tied to fancy action sequences and complicated plot devices. It is unfortunate that Croupier did not receive a wider North American release, so for those readers who will miss the limited New York and Los Angeles engagement, I urge you to look for this film when it finds a happy home in your nearest video store.