Scholieren.com forum - [nu op tv]_o_Lock, Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels_o

geniale film van guy ritchie, de man van madonna.
Hij is nu op rtl 5 maar als je nu niet kan kijken en hem niet kent moet je hem beslist eens huren.(y)

ik ben aan het kijken dus ik kan niet te veel typen nu, maargoed.:o

nog meer liefhebbers?

http://www-db.stanford.edu/~prasanna...rrels_ver2.jpg

The deftly titled, sublimely plotted, cockney-crime-comedy debut of director Guy Ritchie, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is looking increasingly likely to be the high point of a directorial career which has since stumbled through the minor missteps of a competent, but inferior, imitation (Snatch) before walking off the cliff with the unseen-by-me but allegedly atrocious, made-for-Madonna stinker "Swept Away". Perhaps someone ought to remind Guy Ritchie not to mix business with pleasure -- at least, when the pleasure involves being married to a superstar-singer who can't act.

"Lock, Stock...", though, is a fortuitous coming together of hard-edged, but delightfully urbane and witty dialogue (with liberal doses of Cockney slang), a story filled to the brim with wildly quirky, one-of-a-kind characters, and a convoluted plot in which the various threads criss-cross themselves at such dizzying speed that it feels like a major miracle when the dust settles and the complications dissolve in a logical resolution.

If there is a God in the world of "Lock, Stock...", then he is surely blessed (?) with a cosmic sense of humor. Nearly every character's fortunes swing wildly from one extreme to another, turning, it appears, on the wildest of coincidences. It all starts out with our four heroes managing to land themselves 500,000 pounds in debt, thanks to a poker hand gone bad. Ironically, the outcome of this game of chance is the one vagary of fate in the entire movie for which Lady Luck is least to blame! To give away the rest of the story would be to spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that the machinations of God deftly intermingle the fates of a whole host of characters with a series of chance meetings. Fortunes turn this way and that with each such accident, and the plot keeps thickening further and further, its complexity rising in a crescendo for what seems an unsustainable length of time, before resolving itself on a final note of sly delicacy.

Normally, a story involving coincidences sets off alarm bells, for it often heralds intellectual laziness -- a desire to achieve a predetermined resolution (usually, "the Hollywood ending") without the willingness to establish a plausible sequence of events leading up to it. The result is the coincidence as deus ex machina -- God playing with loaded dice to rescue the hopelessly tangled, insoluble mess of a story from the clutches of its clueless author. So, what distinguishes "Lock, Stock.." from the mediocre ranks of the coincidence-as-crutch movies? The distinction lies both in the film's intent and in its execution.

While the deus ex machina exists to resolve complexity, this film uses coincidence as much to build complexity as it does to resolve it. There are chance occurrences aplenty, but not one of them has predictable consequences; as a result, not only are we kept on our toes in anticipation of what happens next, but we also begin to realize that the coincidences are not the filmmakers' tool to manipulate the story, but a serious obstacle to their engineering of a predetermined conclusion. Thus, when the film eventually manages to land on its feet, we are left with renewed admiration for the difficult juggling act involved in finding an elegant way out of the maze of complications. Critics who complain about the ending being a little too neat --- "nothing works out that cleanly in the real world, does it?" -- are missing the point: the tying up of every single loose end into a nice little bow is exactly what elevates the film into greatness.

A second distinction between "Lock, Stock.." and the average genre film lies in the inherent intelligence of the characters. There isn't a single moment where a character indulges in stupidity in the service of plot complications --- no gloating villains who inexplicably fail to gun down the brave hero at the earliest opportunity. When characters find their fortunes swaying, the fault lies not in themselves but in their stars, thus leaving intact the internal plot logic and making the plot's use of such vicissitudes of fortune far more acceptable than would otherwise have been the case.

At the end of it all, watching "Lock, Stock.." is probably not going to teach anyone anything more about humanity than they already knew. But it sure is a whole lot of fun sitting through it, and picking up such perfectly utilitarian skills as being able to speak Cockney slang. Still don't Adam a dickie of all this rabbit? Take a butcher's yourself.

Cockney Rhyming Slang [ Show | Hide ]
The following is a transcription of the Cockney guide that is part of the DVD release of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels".

Forged in Victorian England by the working-class laborers, and appropriated by the underworld, Cockney Rhyming Slang is ideal for those who wish to talk amongst themselves: secret societies, brotherhoods, gangs and the like. Suppose you're a Rob Roy in a read-and-write over River Ouse...

All right, let's translate: Rob Roy=boy, Read-and-write=fight, River Ouse=booze. So, suppose you're a boy in a fight over booze. When telling the story to another lad who's up on his Cockney Rhyming Slang, you can communicate that much quicker (and more in secret) by doing what the natives do: dropping the rhyme portion of the phrase.

Therefore: Adam and Eve it or not, becomes: Adam it or not.

Still scratching your loaf? Don't you think this makes eighteen? Then take a butcher's hook at the following study guide.

English
Cockney

Believe
Adam (and Eve)

Book
Jackdaw (and rook)

Booze
River Ouse

Boy
Rob Roy

Church
Left (in the lurch)

Clock
Dickory (dock)

Cop
John Hop

Copper
Grasshopper

Crook
Joe Rook

Deaf
Mutt (and Jeff)

Drunk
Elephant's (trunk)

Ear
King Lear

Ears
Sighs (and tears)

Easy
Lemon Squeezy

Eyes
Mince (pies)

Face
Boat (race)

Feet
Plates (of meat)

Fight
Read (and write)

Geezer
Lemon (squeezer)

Girl
Twist (and twirl)

Gloves
Turtle (doves)

Hair
Barnet (flair)

Hat
Tit (for tat)

Head
Loaf (of bread)

House
Cat (and mouse)

Judge
Inky (smudge)

Kiss
Heavenly (bliss)

Later
Alligator

Look
Butcher's (hook)

Mate
China (plate)

Money
Bees (and honey)

Morning
Day's (a-dawning)

Nose
Ruby (rose)

Phone
Trombone

Pint (of ale)
Ship (in full sail)

Sense
Eighteen (pence)

Sleep
Bo-Peep

Soap
Cape (of Good Hope)

Voice
Rolls (Royce)

Water
Fisherman's (daughter)

Wife
Trouble (and strife)

Chevy Chase
Face

John Cleese
Cheese

Doris Day
Gay

Bouter-Boutros Gali
"Charlie" (cocaine)

Lillian Gish
Fish

Buster Keaton
Meeting

John Major
Wager

Mickey Mouse
Scouse

Gregory Peck
Neck

Christian Slater
Later

Donald Trump
Dump

Mae West
Best

Barry White
"Shite"

Additional Resources
Interview with Guy Ritchie, Jason Flemyng and Jason Statham
Guides to Cockney Rhyming Slang: Wikipedia, London Slang
More Like This
Snatch -- Guy Ritchie's fllow-up to Lock, Stock.. is not as good but very funny nevertheless.
Bound -- The Wachowski brothers' first effort (superior to their subsequent The Matrix) demonstrates a clockwork-precision plot somewhat reminiscent of Lock, Stock....
The Usual Suspects -- A labyrinthine story told with great flair in a non-linear fashion.