Tag: movies

Henry Golding, the gateway Bsian

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: GQ Magazine names Henry Golding as one of their men (and women) of 2018

I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’ve got this love/hate idea of Henry Golding.  I love that he’s helping debunk the crippling stereotype that Asian men are the neutered weaklings of the gender by association of their ethnicity; but I hate that it’s a guy that barely is/looks a quarter Asian that is usurping all the credit in the world for advancing perception of Asians.

It’s not at all surprising, given how flagrantly and blatantly racist Hollywood is, and of course baby steps and all that rhetoric.  But why couldn’t it be a guy like Daniel Dae Kim, or like BD Wong, Asian men who are fearless pioneers amongst Asian actors, to get any sort of national nod above a practically white guy like Henry Golding?  Kim stuck to his convictions and walked away from a fairly successful show because he was getting financially stiffed.  Wong is openly gay, plays some of the most flamboyantly outrageous roles out there, and is still thriving in spite of having two less-than-socially-accepted-by-white-America strikes against him. 

What the fuck has a guy that looks like a bug-eyed Pierce Brosnan with gapped teeth done remotely in comparison?  Just be lucky enough to have grabbed the fascination of some producers to get spoon-fed the role of an Asian guy in a social commentary of a blockbuster film, and now he’s being credited by circle-jerk Hollywood of being some sort of groundbreaking talent? 

Frankly, if there’s absolutely anyone from Crazy Rich Asians who should be getting this kind of praise, it’s Constance Wu, the obvious hard carry of the entire film.  GQ could have made bigger waves had they actually strived for any sort of equality, and gone 2-and-2 with men and women as “men of the year” and had Wu take Golding’s place, and had her stand along with Serena Williams as women of the year.

But ultimately, I’m criticizing GQ.  They’ve been as relevant in the publication industry as like, MySpace during the era of Facebook, or HD DVDs in the world of Bluray.  A garbage rag like them picking a tool like Henry Golding is pretty much pathetic attempts to garner cheap pops from the lower-standards Asian community who are so desperate for any accolades to an Asian guy, that they’d even settle for a plant like him.

Why do I feel like Venom is going to suck?

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No seriously, that’s not meant to be a rhetorical question.  Aside from knowing that a Venom film was in the works and that it was going to star Tom Hardy, and seeing a single picture of what Venom was going to look like, I couldn’t help but have this feeling that Venom was on the fast track to becoming an automatic stinker.

Really, I’ve got no basis at all to really believe that this movie is going to be bad, but I just can’t help but assume that this movie is going to blow.  A little bit of cursory research about the film only justifies the belief, like finding out that it’s most certainly NOT a Marvel Studios film, but a Sony Pictures production, which we all know how good their last few things have turned out. 

Furthermore, as a result of Sony having already forfeited the rights to Spider-Man, really makes me wonder how a stand-alone Venom film could even come to fruition, considering the fact that the entire basis for the Venom character is basically Spider-Man’s dark side manifested through symbiosis.  Or, it’s the same Venom that was once bonded to both Tobey Maguire Spider-Man and then Topher Grace Venom, and they’re going to do away with Eddie Brock outright.  But either of those are still terrible ideas, and just feeds into the thought that Venom is doomed before it even comes out.

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DDR the Movie: How bad can it really be?

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For some reason, Konami has given the green light for a Dance Dance Revolution film to be created… with a general plot of how the “world is on the brink of destruction where the only hope is to unite through the universal language of dance.”  Or whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.  But yeah!  Film about DDR, a video game where people mash buttons in step to music, with their feet, in an attempt to emulate, dancing.

It goes without saying that this sounds like a colossal flop waiting to happen, but then again Konami, much less the entire video game industry hasn’t been known for success when it comes to translating gaming franchises into somewhat passable films, with few exceptions.

Really though, I’m extremely curious to know what kind of plot a DDR film could possibly have.  If anything at all, I’d imagine the world needing to all start dancing at the same time in order to save the world would have more of a detrimental effect on a planet, what with 6 billion people stomping their feet on the surface simultaneously, creating loads of seismic destruction across the globe, but whatever.  I really hope that there’s some shade thrown to DDR players that hold the rail, because I feel like they’re the ones that have effectively ruined the franchise by making it not so much about the dancing aspect, but the obsessive requirement to get high scores and succeed at clearing stages, even if it makes them look like kids learning to roller/ice skate for the first time in their lives by the way they lean and hold onto the rails for dear life.

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Why Searching is as important as Crazy Rich Asians

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I saw the preview for Searching when I went to go see Crazy Rich Asians, and my first thought was how it was the blatant obligatory targeted preview because it was the only preview displaying an Asian face, in John Cho.  But upon watching the preview itself, Searching seemed like a pretty intriguing plot, about a dad whose daughter goes missing, and how he has little other than combing through her social media outlets to hope to find out any information, only to discover just how little he knows about his own kid.

Needless to say, I was interested, so I made a point to go see it; even if the flick wasn’t that great, it would still be supporting films created by minorities, as the credits are overwhelmingly names that don’t look like an episode of a CW show, and not just confined to the CGI section.  Because, it’s important to me that Asian and other minority-created media actually cracks into the grossly whitewashed Hollywhite, and it’s going to take way more support than just the fad of going to see Crazy Rich Asians is going to accomplish.

However, it turns out that Searching is a very well done film, and I have a lot of admiration for the acting and the creative execution of the entire film itself, from the perspective of the myriad of phone and tablet and computer screens that saturate the vast majority of all of our lives today.  The plot is linear and pretty basic, but it’s a good example of how execution and creativity can take basic and make it compelling and engrossing.  At no point did I correctly predict any reveals or major plot points, but very much went ohhhhhh and came to realization of several hints sprinkled throughout the rest of the story.

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Photos: Dragon*Con 2018

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2018’s Dragon*Con.  I actually sat on these photos for nearly two full years, because as my post-2018 Dragon*Con post alluded to, I had kind of a forgettable time, and I skipped out in 2019 to zero regrets, and had no plan on going to 2020, even if coronavirus weren’t a thing.

It wasn’t until I began to chronologically catch up to Dragon*Con 2018 did I realize that I never touched the RAW photos, and I broke my posting stride just to make sure that these didn’t slip through the cracks and never get posted.

Looking back at these photos, the sheer fact that there are only 60 photos should be sign enough of just how unenthused my heart was going into this convention.  I used to want to shoot hundreds of pictures, but a combination of my inability to enjoy the con, not really seeing things that make me want to shoot, and I guess being at the wrong places at the wrong time to not see the things I wanted to see, leads to a really small photo count.

But it’s the ones with friends that matter the most, and ultimately I’m okay if there’s more of those photos than of people I don’t necessarily know.

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Batista will be in for a rude awakening

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know Dave is on this little high of thinking he’s a something big shot because he’s a former WWE champion and that he played Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, but I don’t think he realizes that he doesn’t have as much clout as he thinks he does.  But thinking that anyone is going to join him much less care, by threatening to walk away from the franchise if Marvel-Disney doesn’t reinstate director James Gunn after firing him for inappropriate tweets from a lifetime ago, he’s going to be in for a very rude awakening at the results that will ensue.

I’m sure he got the impression that the actors could make a difference, after Chris Pratt’s earnest attempt to pen an open letter and get all the stars of the franchise to sign off on it, but in spite of his experience in the public eye as a public wrestler, he’s still relatively green when it comes to the world of Hollywood, which at the very core of it, gives zero fucks about any human being, cares only about money, and fully understands that absolutely anyone is expendable and replaceable.

Furthermore, I’m sure ol’ Dave thought that the cast and crew of Guardians were tight as knots when he made his declaration of wanting to opt out of future Guardians films if they didn’t bring back James Gunn, but the reality is that Gunn or not, the franchise is going to continue, and ain’t nobody from the righteous and current-hotness Chris Pratt all the way to James’s own brother Sean, who has been a bit part in the both films so far would be willing to walk away on solely principle from the money, prestige and exposure that a Marvel Studios film provides to all those involved.

Frankly, Dave Bautista has a tremendous amount to learn about way Hollywood works, and as much as admire his determination to stick to his guns, it’s simply not the best idea for a guy that barely has a handful of films worth mentioning under his belt to be trying to make such waves in an industry where the ensemble cast around him is most certainly not as willing to join the cause. 

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The sociological entertainment of Crazy Rich Asians

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As someone who agrees that Hollywood is whiter than a Republican national fundraiser, I knew it was something of a social obligation that I should go out and watch Crazy Rich Asians.  I never read the book, nor did I have any inkling of an idea of what the plot was about going into it, but I still figured it would be a good idea to support any progression for Asians in a white-dominated industry, if we want to have any modicum of a chance of earning any respect up in this motherfucker.

The movie itself was fine.  Fairly predictable and extremely formulaic, but refreshing in the simple sense that every face didn’t look like Finn Wittrock or Balakey Lively.  Constance Wu carries the film brilliantly, and it’s super gratifying to hear her speak in her actual voice and not as over-the-top tiger mom from Fresh Off the Boat.  I didn’t even realize it was her until seeing her name in the credits although I thought she looked familiar, but Michelle Yeoh’s presence as a cunningly savage rich Asian mom is like an anime where you can feel an aura emanating from her whenever she comes on screen.

It kind of goes without saying that I rolled my eyes at the casting of some hafu named “Henry Golding” as the male lead of the flim, when surely it most certainly could have been cast to an actual Chinese or other Asian guy that didn’t look like a cross between Lawrence from Westworld and a young Ralph Macchio.  But seeing as how this film was being released in white Hollywood (oxymoron?), there had to be some compromise to make sure white power had some degree of a tether to their oppressive natures.  But it’s okay, because as bland and useless of a character Nick Young was, the film had no intention of being carried by him in the first place.

There’s one character in the film whose storyline carries almost zero correlation with the main plot at all, and could presumably not been needed at all whatsoever.  I’m going to assume it’s vastly different in the book and has more of a connection, but for the film’s sake, I’m going to assume it was included probably solely because the actress involved in it is somewhat known, extremely pretty, and needs to have requisite screen time in order to justify her casting.

As for the rest of the film, it had some fun characters and was moderately enjoyable, even with the obnoxious people in the theater, to where I couldn’t decide which was worse between the incessant commentary in Mandarin from the girls next to me, or the incessant commentary from the stereotypical black women who felt the need to very loudly opinionate on everything.

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