Mahjong at the movies?

[Barticle]

So a lot has changed in two years. The Wikipedia page I mentioned is gone and the new forum supports kanji but doesn't recognise the old emoticon codes!

Although it's only a brief appearance, it was nice to see a mahjong set today in the 2007 Spanish film La habitación de Fermat (in English: Fermat's Room). It's a thriller about four mathematicians who are trapped in a room and forced to solve problems in order to survive. There are some interesting plot twists but the featured puzzles would be trivial/familiar for real mathematicians and there are some other plot holes. One of the puzzles involves a long binary sequence and one guy uses the convenient mahjong set to decode it.

fermat.jpg (23.7 KiB) Viewed 612 times

Although I'm yet to see it, I know that George's mom plays mahjong in an episode of Seinfeld too - I must add that one to my rentals list.

Does anyone know of any other film/TV appearances of mahjong not yet mentioned here...?

[Barticle]

Aha, luckily the mahjong movie list was copied to the mahjong wiki before the original was deleted!

http://mahjong.wikidot.com/list-of-movies

[Moah]

Aha, luckily the mahjong movie list was copied to the mahjong wiki before the original was deleted!

http://mahjong.wikidot.com/list-of-movies

Are any of these worth watching?

[Esh]

Depends. If you want something really silly, light hearted, and kinda (and by kinda I mean nothing but) cheesy, then look at any of the chinese movies. They're a fun watch, but don't take them seriously.

If you want something a little more serious and maybe intense, try finding anything in Japanese. Actually, here's a good comparison:

Saki = Chinese movies
Akagi = Japanese Movies

[Barticle]

I like that comparison.

[...]George's mom plays mahjong in an episode of Seinfeld

This is from 'The Handicap Spot' (late season 4 episode). Playing American-style with annual league cards, tile racks, points chips and communal discard pool.

seinfeld.jpg (21.25 KiB) Viewed 554 times

[Moah]

There's also "shin janki" although I'm not sure if it's a series of movies, or a plain tv series.
Anyway it's about Sakurai Shoichi, a legendary rep player who supposedly never lost as a rep player.

[Barticle]

Just remembered the keyword search on IMDB, e.g. http://www.imdb.com/keyword/mahjong/

Plenty of hits there, although many will be brief appearances of the game. Famous western titles listed include Driving Miss Daisy, Big Trouble in Little China and Cocoon.

I love stacking keywords...

http://www.imdb.com/keyword/mahjong/ (131 hits)
http://www.imdb.com/keyword/mahjong/singing/ (10 hits)
http://www.imdb.com/keyword/mahjong/nudity/singing/ (4 hits)

You can invent your own random genres.

http://www.imdb.com/keyword/bicycle/christmas/piano/suicide/
http://www.imdb.com/keyword/cigar-smoking/dancing/dog/punched-in-the-face/

[Barticle]

Thanks Shirl. I deticked the auto URL parsing as it was abbreviating the longer addresses like this...

http://www.imdb.com/keyword/cigar-smoki ... -the-face/

...which lessened the comedic impact.

[Ogi]

Netflix has all 3 Kung Fu Mahjong movies available for streaming, two of then have the older couple from Kung Fu hustle in them.
also I know you were not interested in Anime, however ever Saki is available for streaming at crunchyroll.com along with the new series Saki:Episode of Side A.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P6U3LRMFAY

[Ignatius]

I like anime, and I like mahjong anime. I love Akagi, Legendary Gambler Tetsuya, The Legend of Koizumi OVA. And I like Saki and it´s spinoff. I think the best is Akagi. But Saki, it´s true that it´s light mahjong, but because of that is more accesible. I think is the best portal to show what mahjong is to audiences that never heard of it. Because is a charming and colorful anime. The kind of anime to watch while away the time, when you have nothing to do. About Saki´s spinoff I think it has just a little of mahjong, so I think is worse than Saki. characters are less "catchy" to me.

If I have to show what mahjong is, using anime, I would use first Saki (if they like lighthearted anime), and then Akagi to hook people to play mahjong.

[Barticle]

Another random find - this is the opening shot from the Hong Kong gangster movie Election.

election.jpg (24.07 KiB) Viewed 362 times

The womenfolk are playing while the men discuss business in the next room.

Mahjong isn't mentioned again after the first couple of minutes, although one of the characters is called Uncle 'Double East'.

[Barticle]

Misleading movie title is misleading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reacher_(film)