Top 5 casino scenes in movies

Many film directors have included casino scenes in their movies. Some, like our first two choices below are all about casinos and gambling, while in others the casino is merely incidental to the action. You can find many movie themed games on online casino like Lucky Nugget as well, they always influence each other. Here is a selection of what we consider to be the top 5 all time casino scenes.

Casino
Casino is probably the best movie ever made about, well, casinos. The film, released in 1995, was directed by Martin Scorsese and starred amongst other Robert de Niro, Sharron Stone, Joe Pasci and Frank Vincent. Most of the characters were based on real life people, and the plot centred around De Niro as Sam "Ace" Rothstein (Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal in real life) who was employed by the Chicago mob to run their Las Vegas casino, and his wife Ginger (in real life Geraldine McGee Rosenthal). The best casino scene is hard to call, but our favourite is the “Get your feet off the table” scene in which Ace throws out the cowboy who works for his friend Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro.

Indecent Proposal
Indecent proposal is all about a different sort of gambling – gambling with your heart, but who can really blame Robert Redford for falling for Demi Moore, but was she really worth a million dollars? The casino scenes are a little naff, but the one where Demi kisses the dice before rolling an 11 is irresistible and more than a little sexy.

Casino Royale
Muck of Casino Royale concerns a game of Texas Hold'em between Bond and the terrorist banker Le Chiffre. Bond’s aim is to beat Le Chiffre in the tournament and bankrupt him, and then persuade him to work for MI6. The buy in is $10 million and initially Bond loses. Although his banker Vesper Lynd refuses to advance him $5m for a re-buy, a CIA agent offers the money in exchange for custody of Le Chiffre. Bond of course wins in the end, and the best casino scene in the movie is the final hand where Bond wins with a nut straight flush.

Rain Man
One of the best card counting casino movie scenes was that in the Barry Levinson directed move Rain Man starring Dustin Hoffman as the autistic Raymond Babbitt who had savant talents including a photographic memory, and his exploitive brother Charlie played by Tom Cruise. The scene is set in a Las Vegas casino and Raymond is counting cards in a game of Blackjack, winning a large amount of money.

21
Anyone who has played blackjack seriously will enjoy the movie about the famous blackjack card counting team from MIT which used team counting to win a considerable amount of money, initially from casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic city but eventually worldwide, that is until they were banned from every casino in the world. Not really a great movie in itself, but still a very good one. Best scene? Difficult one, but probably the one where the supposed high roller goes on tilt and nearly throws the whole plan.

Netflix Makes the Leap to Original Content

As one Redditor put it, "Netflix's goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix.

In a desperate bid to keep themselves in business as the tide of DVD rentals washes out of existence, Netflix follows in the footsteps of HBO and AMC and jumps into the world of original content.

Starting tomorrow, the company that once mailed movies to your door is doing its part to make broadcast television an entertainment-less wasteland, by unveiling its new series "House of Cards." This is what happens when you give David Fincher (Fight Club, the Social Network) $100 million and tell him to go make a TV series.

The political drama stars Kevin Spacey and GQ says the story is "pitch black" and plays like "the anti West Wing." OK, I'm in.

Here's the trailer for House of Cards

But here's the interesting thing about the way Netflix is doing this: unlike every other television series known to man, this one is premiering its entire season - all 13 episodes - all at once. Viewers can watch the first episode, decide if they like the show, and then immediately watch the rest of the season that first day it airs. Season two of the series is already in the works.

Will this change in distributing episodic television affect viewership? Part of what makes a television series entertaining is seeing the characters and story lines develop over time. Waiting creates anticipation that translates into viewers. People talking at the office or posting on Facebook about what happened on True Blood last Sunday tends to create interest in potential viewers that might not have watched before. Word of mouth is effective advertising.

What Netflix is doing is dramatically changing the way people watch television. It mutates the conversation from "Did you see what happened last night?" to "What part of the story are you at?"

And then what? What if viewers glut themselves on the show over the period of a weekend and then have to wait a while for the next season to be shot, edited and produced? What if people burn themselves out? Will they want to come back for series 2?

To be honest, not many people have an answer to this. As Spacey said, "I guess we'll find out really soon."

Game of Thrones Tops List of Most Pirated TV Shows for 2012

HBO's "Game of Thrones" was the most pirated TV show this year. In fact, more people illegally downloaded an episode of the show than watched it when it originally aired.

I think part of the reason why the numbers are so high may have to do with the fact that the only way to watch Game of Thrones legally is to subscribe to a television provider like Time Warner or DIRECTV. But to do that means that you have to subscribe to a bunch of other cable channels most people are never going to watch. For decades, cable companies have been kicking around the idea of "a al carte programming" instead of the package deals they currently offer.  But in doing this, they know that that certain channels would never get any viewers. This has always been a sore spot for most HBO viewers. Why do I have to buy other channels to see one or two shows on HBO? Why doesnt HBO simply offer their content online a day or even a week after it airs, like most other television networks?

As for me, I dont watch much television anymore. I cancelled my service to DIRECTV several years ago to save money and figured I would just watch stuff over the air or through the internet. And this scenario is not that uncommon. More and more people are dropping their bullshit cable services and watching what they want either through Netflix, streaming stuff online directly from the networks or torrents.

It's time for networks like HBO to seriously re-think the way they distribute their content.

Here's the full list of the top torrented TV shows for 2012, according to Aceshowbiz.com:

1. Game of Thrones - 4.28 million downloads
2. Dexter - 3.85 million
3. Big Bang Theory - 3.2 million
4. How I Met Your Mother - 2.96 million
5. Breaking Bad - 2.58 million
6. The Walking Dead - 2.55 million
7. Homeland - 2.4 million
8. House M.D. - 2.34 million
9. Fringe - 2.9 28 million
10. Revolution - 2.13 million

"Please dont Watch Two and a Half Men" says Jones

Dont worry kid, no one is watching "Two and a Half Men" anymore.

Angus Jones, best known as the half man in the once-popular, now trainwreck "Two and a Half Men" said in  a church web video that he wishes the show would be cancelled because its "part of the plan of the enemy." Which is of course (wait for it)...SATAN.

Jones alleges that there is a Masonic/Satanist conspiracy on the show to brainwash people using television.

“If you watch Two and a Half Men, please stop watching Two and a Half Men," Jones says. "I’m on Two and a Half Men, and I don’t want to be on it. Please stop watching it, and filling your head with filth. People say it’s just entertainment, do some research on the effects of television and your brain, and I promise you you’ll have a decision to make when it comes to television, especially with what you watch.”

Here's the video. This is part two. Part one can be found on YouTube.  Fair warning: its 15 minutes of him being all religious and holy and shit. You'll have to sift through the usual "god is great" nonsense. The good stuff kicks in at the 7:34 mark.

The show has had pretty dismal numbers since Charlie Sheen's departure. However Ashton Kutcher says the show has found its groove. 

Honestly if Jones really didn't want to be on the show, he wouldn't be on the show. He just re-negotiated his contract for another year back in May, and according to Celebrity Net Worth, makes somewhere around $15 million per season, or roughly $350,000 per episode. so I'm guessing that he's still happy to collect that paycheck while telling all of his new bible-pounding buddies how much he hates his job.

Nice work, Angus. Here's hoping you get your wish soon enough.

New Video from "Friday" Creators is Just What You Expect

Remember Rebecca Black? That talent-less ditz whose Mom paid $4000 to have a song and video created so her little girl could become a star - but really her nasely auto-tuned mess of a video "Friday" turned into nothing but a flash-in-the-pan widely-hated internet viral sensation? Yeah. I know you've tried really hard to erase it from your memory, but just as the drugs have started to wear off, It turns out that the guys that created that infamy are at it again with a new "star" and a new "hit" video that is just as, simplistic, formulaic and annoying as the last one. 

Songwriter/producer/ con-man Patrice Wilson, along with equally untalented co-conspirator Clarence Jay convinced another sucker that they could become a hit sensation without any of those pesky issues like talent, originality, or hard work. 

Debuting just in time to barf up your Thanksgiving turkey, we present Nicole Westbrook and her new video "Its Thanksgiving"

Yes she really does use a turkey leg as a microphone.

I really feel kind of sorry for Nicole - Her parents are out several thousand dollars so that she could ultimately flounder in the shadow of  Rebecca Black's 15-minutes-of-mediocrity.  Just because someone got some publicity and notoriety creating something so profoundly bad doesn't mean you are going to become famous for attempting the exact same thing. 

You know what they say about sequals.

Soundtracks: Discuss

Here I go, always provoking debate. Well, really, go on. I thought I’d like to hear about people’s favorite movie scores, because, though a connoisseur of the finer moving picture arts, I know little to nothing about movie scores. So I’m going to list my favorite soundtracks, defend my argument, and generally try and prod some kind of response from your wheezing, pasty corpse.

1. Saw.

 I love the Saw music because, not only can you use it to make everyday situations eight times more tense (searching for a pen for lectures becomes a pant-wetting trial of nerves with Hello Zepp playing), but it uses an almost ambient sound as percussion. The first film’s aesthetic is very industrial, very bleak, very modern. Using percussion that reflected this allowed the music to sit more comfortably within the film and become simply part of the background noise as opposed to kind of sitting there like a poo on a table.

2. Gremlins

Go on, put on the Gremlins theme. Do it now. Good. Now tell me you don’t feel gleeful, bouncy; a little arson-friendly. That’s Gremlins summed up in music. The pumping stupidity and gleeful staunchness on the soundtrack captures the movie perfectly. It’s also damn catchy, and I was once serenaded with it by an inebriated friend.

3. Submarine

I thought the use of full songs was interesting. It helps that Alex Turner is pretty much the living, breathing embodiment of Indie monarchy, and that the wistful sarcasticness of his pieces fit the film perfectly, but using the entire song allowed the audience to get inside that emotion on a different way. It might be this compulsion I have that brings me to heap praise on whatever Richard Ayoade does, but that’s irrelevant here.

4.

Jurassic Park

I could have picked any John Williams score, really. It would have been a crime to leave him off any list of best soundtracks. I pick this one simply for the first real swell of the music as the helicopter rises above the island; an example of perfect camerawork and perfect soundtrack combine to make something eye-poppingly striking.

5. Streets of Fire

The pumping Jim Steinman beats! One Bad Stud at a strip club! Willem Defoe in a binbag! This film has everything, from a striking pre-Ghostbusters Rick Moranis, to an evil bike gang, to Diane Lane trying to express emotion with those cold, dead, leeching eyes that look like they go to the centre of time themselves and see nothing, see nothing at all. The acting is non-existent or massively over-the-top, the script is howlingly quotable, and it remains today one of my all-time favorite films. 

Anyway, all this fist-pumping eighties jollity is underlined by a film-saving soundtrack, featuring performances from The Blasters and suchlike, that brings the film to Rock-Opera proportions and makes the whole thing a lot more credible. 

Hollywood Loving

Quiet at the back, it's time for a talk about sex scenes.

My first gripe is that sex scenes are pointless. If you are old enough to be watching a film that has a graphic sex scene in it, it's reasonable to assume you've got some idea about the general features of the horizontal shoe shuffle, and don't need to be shown it in all it's sweaty, heaving, thrusting, cheesclothed glory. The only time sex scenes are even slightly justifiable is in films like, say Boogie Nights, where we might have some questions about how a seventies porn scene would have been shot (or, indeed, what Mark Whalberg's penis looks like with comedically large attachment presumably fashioned from some kind of sandwich filling). Similairly, anyone old enough to know the logistics of it probably also knows that it's never, ever as good as it is onscreen either. Condoms don't appear from nowhere. Women don't launch into positively operatic orgasm after four seconds of stimulation. You forget to lock doors and roommates (or parents) stop by. You bump into people from your history class as you leave, and they never let you forget it (just me?).
I was watching the Ellen Page movie Whip It last night, in which she loses her virginity in a swimming pool, in a tender and loving fashion, with the boy of her dreams, to a sweet indie soundtrack. As a teenage girl with several teenage girl compatriots, I can safely say that the only thing I've done to a sweet indie soundtrack is eat crisps, and that virginities are rarely lost in any sort of semblance of  romantic situations. It's all tents and everyone knowing about it and the whole situation stinking of an uncomfortable regularity.  Like A Virgin? Like an uncomfortable and vaguely non-consensual, more like. Movies don't feel the need to have the heroes bleeding rainbows, or guns firing little pebbles of wisdom. Why try and romanticise the one thing that almost everyone has in common?
What get me most about these films is that they never actually show the sex act due to censoring, leaving sour-minded spinsters like me to assume that it's because of some x-rated fetish. Think of the grimmest sexual fetish you've ever heard of. Now add some vegetable matter. Next time a wishy-washy teen flick stops as soon as his shirt comes off, assume it's because that's what happens next. I'll tell you this for free: the image of Micheal Cera doing that with a handful of vine tomatoes in Scott Pilgrim vs The World will stay with me till the day I die.