Tag: movies

The outcomes are fixed, but the moves are still real

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And highly dangerous in the hands of untrained Missouri rednecks.  There’s an amount of jokes I’d want to say in light of the context of this story, but considering a two-year old little girl was killed because a man was a stupid piece of shit, I will try to be a little selective with my choice of words.

I’d be lying if I didn’t demonstrate my adult strength over a child before, but the difference is that I’m not actually throwing my nephew or the kids of my friends in any manner that can cause anything other than delirious laughter and want for repeat performances.  But that’s the difference between adults with brains, and those without.

Considering the perpetrator in question here was actively abusing his teenaged girlfriend’s kid to begin with, it’s almost another level of sadism that he was performing wrestling moves with the likely intent that wrestlers portray on television, but with no training from either party, resulted in actual pain and damage.

I’m actually surprised that the article actually names any specific moves, citing that among the numerous physical traumas inflicted on the kid, one of them was a Batista Bomb, which those in the know, know is a sit-down power bomb.  Honestly, I’m actually perplexed on how this actually worked considering the difference in sizes between a 24-year old idiot and a 2-year old toddler; like dropping into a sitting position would physically make it impossible for the kid to hit simultaneously, but why am I even bothering pondering this, when the lack of training probably made things worse, in a lethal way.

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Thoughts on Get Out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I just watched the film Get Out, which came highly recommended by just about everyone.  Needless to say, when everyone is saying it’s a great movie, and then you start seeing/reading things about how it’s getting rave reviews, most notably the 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, then the bar is being set onto some skeptically high heights.

To cut to the chase, I did think Get Out was a really good movie.  It’s well acted, thought-provoking, with great timing on comedic moments to break the tension and levity of the constantly escalating conflict of the story, with some pretty good twists because everyone loves twists in the plot.

Worthy of a certifiable fresh rating on snarky websites like Rotten Tomatoes?  Definitely.  But to be given the sheer volume of critical response it received?  I think it’s a little overblown.  Frankly, after the film ended, I couldn’t help but feel like, especially given the sheer nature of the entire film, that there’s a prevalent aftertaste of white guilt involved in how the film was so universally acclaimed.  I feel like I could see clear as day the irony of a film that touches on white guilt on almost an anthropological way is applauded by the vastly white majority of popular media, who watched it undoubtedly in an anthropological manner.

It’s a very good movie, don’t get me wrong, and I would love to see what Jordan Peele does next in the future.  But maybe it’s because I’m in a minority group substantially more minor than blacks in American society that I just don’t see anything about how white people treat black people for me to be apologetically lenient with my judgment of a film over.

I did nothing but pretty much watch television all weekend

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

And it was everything I thought it could be.  No really, for the vast majority of my weekend, I watched television primarily, and for the first time in a while feel like I actually had a nice relaxing weekend.

Prior to this past weekend, I’ve had to go into work at least once per, in four out of the last five weekends, and was just coming off a stretch where I’d gone into the office twelve straight days.  Working overtime for the betterment of the team, keeping shit on schedule and because the season occasionally dictates it isn’t really that big of a problem, but the sheer volume of my work compounded by a faulty machine that failed more frequently than a Volkswagen was putting me into a situation of rapid burnout, and this past weekend wasn’t so much of a deserved weekend off, it was absolutely necessary.

Needless to say, I slept in both days, which relatively speaking, means I slept like eight hours, instead of like six.  Granted, my body is so accustomed to waking up at like 6:30 a.m., I hit points where I always wake up between 6:30 and 7:30, panic about having overslept before realizing that it’s the weekend and then crawl back into bed with tremendous relief and try to go back to sleep and hope the animals didn’t hear any commotion and start trying to wake me up.

And when you’re feeling rested and caught up on sleep, everything afterward feels leisurely and relaxed.  Coffee tastes better.  Going to the gym for a run felt pleasant and not like a nuisance chore.  Taking the dogs out is more leisurely without a clock over your head on when it’s time to head to work.  Going out to hang with friends is more enjoyable when you know that there’s no drop dead cutoff time to get back home and get to sleep in order to get enough rest.

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Hashtag white-washing lol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Ghost in the Shell starring Japan’s own Scarlett Johansson attempts to create promotional meme; blows up in their face like Japan’s own bukkake

Honestly, I thought too much time had passed for me to bother talking about the white-washing of GITS.  Sure, I’ve got lots of opinions about whitey taking over yet another story conceived and taking place in ‘ze Orient, but none of them would really be any different than the litany of white guilt white knights that are all over the internet crying over the injustice of it already.

I mean there was a movie about the Great Wall; of China, starring fucking Matt Damon of all the people on the face of the planet, so it shouldn’t be the least bit surprising that GITS would star a woman as Japanese as Scarlett Johansson as the lead character.  I don’t think we’re that far off with a remake of Roots, starring Topher Grace as Kunta Kinte, or perhaps a rendition of Frida starring Blake Lively as the titular Frida Kahlo, and neither would be a surprise if such were to occur.

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Attempting to kill The Killing Joke

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the holidays, I took a little bit of time to watch the animated rendition of Batman: The Killing Joke, widely regarded as one of the most memorable Batman comics ever made.  Despite curmudgeon Alan Moore’s best attempts to discount its merit, there’s no denying that it’s a genuine classic that puts an exclamation point on the dark undertones of the series, and shows a very serious and vicious rendition of The Joker and a storyline that distances it miles away from the safeness of The Animated Series and the campiness of the 60’s Adam West show.

When the film debuted over the summer during Comic-Con, there was a lot of buzz in the negative sense about its execution; something about an artificially added storyline, damaging of female empowerment, and a very non-canonical relationship.  In other words, typical nerd outrage over something that a lot of people didn’t agree with.  Although the details of these particular elements did sound a little suspect, I didn’t really want to come to any conclusions without seeing it myself; after all, with the return of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy to reprise their TAS roles, maybe this could be an epic retelling of an epic comic story.

Well, after watching The Killing Joke, put me in the camp of comic nerds who believes it was overall crap.

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Rogue One’s new alien race: Asians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is the face I imagined Donnie Yen making when being told that his character was going to be basically a blind martial artist.

Disclaimer: I will not give away any Rogue One plot, but I make no promises that I will not state any character characteristics.  But who are we kidding, you’re not going to actually even have the chance to read this until my brog is back up, which really might be never.

To cut to the chase, mythical gf and I went and saw Rogue One on “opening night.”  Frankly, I’m not thrilled to have to shell out $40 for movie tickets that cost more than a home edition would be, but we live in a world that puts importance on immediacy, mostly because people on social media don’t know how to shut the fuck up, and not seeing things the very moment they’re released leaves one subject to the litany of spoilers that internet blabbermouths are inevitably going to barf out as soon as their fingers reach any sort of keyboard.  It also sets the bar extremely high for me to feel like a movie is remotely worth the cost of admission.

Rogue One was an entertaining movie.  I found it enjoyable, and nowhere near as bad as anything with Jar-Jar Binks in it.  It wasn’t $20 admission-per good, but honestly short of live performance and/or sports, I’m hard pressed to think of many things that are.  But I feel like there was an evident amount of care put into the movie that made sure to act as an appropriate addition to the franchise while not stepping on the toes of existing canonical storylines, while executing creative ways to tie existing plots together.

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Another Wolverine movie and the sky is also blue

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, FOX is really milking their Wolverine hard-on all the way to the end, huh?  I think I’m more surprised that Hugh Jackman is completely okay reprising Wolverine for the ninth time with Logan, but I guess he really likes money and is completely okay with being typecast as Wolverine for the rest of eternity, no matter what else he does with his career.

Seriously though, Jackman has shown up in literally every single The Wolverine Show Movie Occasionally co-starring the X-Men, and just about every single one of them revolves around him.  Aren’t the fans tired of the character being ret-conned over and over again?

Wolverine hijacks all three of the original X-Men films, gets his own origin film, then his own stand-alone film.  He makes a cameo in First Class, before being thrust back into the spotlight in Days of Future Past, which I’m convinced existed solely to reset the Wolverine timeline so more Wolverine and Wolverine-centric films can be produced.  This is confirmed with his cameo in Apocalypse that takes him straight back to Weapon X.  And now Logan will be Wolverine in the far future.

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