Tag: movies

High praise for Cruella

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sure if it’s because I haven’t really watched a feature-length film in a long time, or if it was actually a great movie, but I really enjoyed Disney’s Cruella. 

The film is full of cinematography that is appealing to me as someone who knows squat about what constitutes good cinematography or high fashion, but I know what I like to see.  The soundtrack is an endless array of outstanding tunes from the 1970s, one of the best decades of music as far as I am concerned.  And I like Emma Stone, and I thought she did an outstanding job portraying the rise of Cruella Deville.

Put it all together and it was an entertaining film that I found to be enjoyable on several accounts, and probably something I could watch again if I hypothetically happened to be flipping channels and I came across Cruella on television, regardless to how dated such a metaphor has become this day and age.

The interesting thing about the film as a whole is that by actually giving a deep backstory to Cruella, Disney has canonically created a narrative that is capable of garnering sympathy and empathy for the character, and I think the real interesting thing will be to one day watch 101 Dalmatians, the original animated film, and see how I or anyone else, feels about the character, now that we all know about her upbringing and life in general.

I mean just the groundwork laid down in Cruella, with her interactions with dogs in general already kind of fills in some narrative to why she does the things she wants to do in Dalmatians, and eventually when I watch the original film with my daughters, I’m curious to see how I’ll feel about cartoon Cruella, knowing what I know about her backstory.

Either way, I thought the film was pretty outstanding.  From a visual standpoint, soundtrack, to the performances of the actors themselves, I was into the film, and it was paced well and easy to not get bored during the whole thing.  Plus the guy who plays Nandor from What We Do in the Shadows is in it, and once I realized who he was, it was impossible to not laugh whenever I saw him screen.

Venom 2: Poor Woody

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I saw an ad on theFacebook for a second Venom movie, and my first thought was, surprisingly, whyyyyyyy?  I never saw the first one because I thought it couldn’t possibly be anything but suck, and although from what I read, lots of critics seemed to agree with that assessment, the almighty financial results seemed to prove contrary to that notion, grossing $856 million during its run.

So regardless of if the movie’s story, plot, acting or production sucked, it’s still a success if it rakes in money, and if it rakes in money, a sequel is all but inevitable.  So here we are, on the doorstep of a Venom 2, the sequel to a movie that has everything to do about Spider-Man but somehow doesn’t have a single thing to do with Spider-Man.

Frankly, I could save all zero of my readers the trouble and just say to go back and read the post about the first Venom (above) and just swap out “Tom Hardy” with “Woody Harrelson,” because the sentiment is exactly the same for Woody as I felt for Tom Hardy.  In spite of the star power a guy like Woody can bring to the table, and in spite of all the positive credibility he’s built up over the last decade with stuff like True Detective and getting into the Star Wars universe, he’s pissed his chance to get implemented into Marvel, by tying himself up to a Sony Pictures Marvel film and not a Marvel Studios Marvel film.

By doing so, not only does he follow in the footsteps of a guy like Tom Hardy who blew his shot at getting onto the money printer bus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he’s also going to be mentioned in the same breath as the walking STD Jared Leto whom last I heard, was going to be in a Morbius film, which is another Spider-Man sub-property that will try to have a film that has nothing to do with Spider-Man.

Frankly, I’m lukewarm on Tom Hardy, and I couldn’t think any less of Jared Leto, but I actually like Woody Harrelson.  I’m sad for him that his people have steered him into such a stinky detour into the Marvel family, and I figure he could’ve been so much better as a lesser character in the MCU than a pretty high-tier villain in the Sony…verse, because at least he’d have an actual adversary to go up against.

I don’t have any doubts that Woody will probably be able to squeeze a good bit of watchability portraying Cletus Kassady who eventually becomes Carnage, but when the day is over, it’ll be like polishing a turd.  With no fucking SPIDER-MAN to ultimately oppose him, there’s only so much road for he and Venom to actually be able to go down before they run into a brick wall of failure because you can’t really have a bunch of villains going at each other without their origin being seemingly legally forbidden from interacting with them.

Either way, much like the first Venom, I have zero intention of watching the second.  I wouldn’t watch either of them short of being paid to do so, and even then I’d probably demand my professional freelance hourly rate in order to do so, and I’d probably still bitch about wanting my money back afterward.  I shed exactly one tear for Woody’s involvement in this film, and wish that he could’ve been some rando third-tier property in the MCU than to be a first-tier villain under Sony.

Minari: chicken soup for the Korean-American soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I finally got around to watching Minari.  I didn’t watch it because of all the Academy Award acclaim it was getting, nor did I watch it solely because it was a film about Koreans, starring Koreans and was produced by mostly Koreans.  I’ve been wanting to watch Minari because based on the premise of the film, it was something that I knew was probably going to hit home to a Korean-American person like me, and I went in knowing that there were probably going to be a lot of moments of reflection, reminiscing, comparing and probably shit that was going to make me cry.

Without giving anything away, the basic plot is a Korean family moves from California to Arkansas, primarily so that dad (Steven Yeun) can chase his dream of starting up a farm.  Naturally, this is a cause of culture shock for Koreans to move into rural middle America, and the struggles and rigors of surviving and adapting at the same time.

What was endlessly amusing to me is that I feel like Steven Yeun, since rising as a star from The Walking Dead, I feel like took his appearance in David Chang’s Ugly Delicious to heart a little bit, where Chang’s circle-jerk of celebrity friends was giving him a little bit of shit for being able to make it as a big-time American star in spite of being Korean, and almost since then, has been doing a lot of roles that inject him into his Korean heritage.  Despite the fact that his Korean sounds a lot like most Korean kids who did a lot of their growing up in America, it’s his attempts to sound like fresh-off-the-boat English that had me cracking up. 

But if there’s anything that was truly right about the entire film, it was undeniably Youn Yuh-Jung’s role in the film, playing grandma Soonja.  Obviously her performance was justly recognized seeing as how she was a shoe-in to win best supporting actress and did such, becoming the first Korean actor or actress to win an Academy Award.  But she shines from the moment she shows up in the film, and it makes me reminisce to my own childhood, where my grandma often stayed at my home to fulfill the same role as Soonja did, being the free babysitter for primarily me since I was the baby of the generation.  My grandma wasn’t nearly as hands-on, or quite nearly as sassy or show as much personality as Soonja did, nor was I nearly the shithead to her as David was to Soonja, but it definitely gets the memories flooding through the gates.

Frankly, there’s a lot of parallels to the film I could feel with my own life, seeing as how both my parents were also chicken sexers growing up, and how my family grew up in rural Virginia, which wasn’t nearly as remote as Arkansas, but was still similar in the sense that there probably were like 15 Koreans in the entire town, with some of them being relatives.  And I imagine just about every Korean family in America could probably feel some sort of kinship to the film as I did, and just about everyone in my own family has stated similar feelings themselves.

There’s a lot of subtle symbolism and interpretation necessary in the plot and its happenings throughout the film, and at first blush I was kind of perplexed at the way the film concluded, but when I lay in bed thinking about it, most of it kind of falls into place, and it makes me admire the film even more than I did while watching it.

Bottom line is that the film really is like chicken soup for the Korean-American soul, and although it’s nowhere near as critically acclaimed or attention-getting as Crazy Rich Asians or Parasite, but in my opinion, is still a tremendously important film for Korean or other Asian cultures to try and watch sometime.

Something I’ve started doing at work now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I generally try to avoid writing about work as much as possible, it’s gotten pretty bad, to the point where it unfortunately permeates into my time off the clock, and poisons my thoughts and emotions on a regular basis.  And because nobody actually reads my bullshit in the first place, this is probably about as safe as a place to vomit all my thoughts and emotions without needing to burden my wife, friends, famiry or anyone else I give a shit about with talking about work.

But lately, I’ve decided to stare directly into the camera during certain meetings, like I were Robert De Niro in Heat.  The scene where he’s doing some recon for Val Kilmer when they’re on a heist, and he just so happens to be looking directly at a night vision camera being actively monitored by Al Pacino.  It looks like De Niro and Pacino are having a fierce stare down when in reality, they’re two guys in different locations who have no earthly idea that they’re looking right at one another.

Just like the virtual world of professional meetings, that we’re living a reality of these days.

It’s one of my favorite scenes in cinema, and captures the feeling of tension like few really can, and it’s what I think about whenever I stare directly into the green light of my computer, so that everyone else on these particular calls can feel like I’m staring directly at them, mostly when leadership is feeding me all sorts of bullshit lectures, attempting to emasculate me, tell me I suck at my job, or any other verbal act of trying to tear me down, which has become something of a sport to them, it really seems.

But I feel like staring at the camera which in turn makes it look like I’m staring directly at them, makes me feel a little empowered and I hope that I’m making them uncomfortable by looking like I’m staring directly at them.  The irony of it all is that while I’m staring at the camera, I’m not looking at anything that’s actually particularly important, like whatever subject matter we might or might not be discussing if it’s instead how much I suck at my job, but I can also type without looking at the keyboard unlike some of my peers, so if I ever need to be typing something, I can maintain my steely stare directly at the camera.

Metaphorically, it’s my way of standing up to all the bullshit that’s constantly flung in my direction, and I will do my very best to not let it get to me and ruin my confidence as a worker.  But really, I just hope it makes people uncomfortable being stared at so directly.

Tempting, if I knew how

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know shit about stocks.  I know the general basic concept of buying shares when you can afford to purchase them, and then it’s a waiting game of hoping they rise and not fall, and if they do fall, sitting on them until they can hopefully rise back up.  And then you sell them, hopefully for more than what you paid for them.

Regardless of my general lack of knowledge, I’m absolutely fascinated with stories about the stock market, whether they’re films like Boiler Room or The Wolf of Wall Street, or numerous books written by Michael Lewis who seems to have a niche writing about stock market stories and/or gambling, but I guess in a way the stock market is basically like gambling, and gambling is something that I do enjoy doing myself, which probably explains why I’m so easily fascinated by stories about the stock market.

The thing is, despite my general fascination of the stock market, I don’t even have the slightest clue to dipping even a toe into the pool.  Supposedly, I could get on apps like Robin Hood or set up an account with like eTrade or some other service, but like I said, I have no idea.  Furthermore, I often ask myself if this is the kind of rabbit hole I even want to explore going down the first place, because as I said, it’s basically gambling outside of a casino, and I’ve most certainly done my share of losing money in a casino, so it might not be such a great idea to put myself in a situation where I can lose it outside of one.

If I were single and without children, the circumstances would probably be different to where I might feel inclined to try, but my life in general these days is more than just myself and I always have to consider that, so in spite of my temptation and curiosity, the likelihood of me actually partaking in it is pretty minimal.

Regardless, it’s hard to not be fascinated, curious and of course tempted, when hearing of the wacky hijinks of the internet where from what I understand, Reddit has basically colluded in a manner, to seemingly artificially inflate the price of GameStop stock, to where it start off at worthless, but has ballooned up like 140%, and people are literally making large returns on investment in quick in-and-outs. 

There are numerous people that I know that are buzzing about it, and have put some skin into the game, and I’d definitely love to be among them, but like I said, I don’t feel like I’m really in the position to be as flippant with my money, and that’s coming from someone who spends hundreds of dollars on replica wrestling blets, but more importantly, I don’t want to create a habit or become addicted to it, because I love winning, I hate losing, and I’m not saying that I’ve ever had any inkling of a gambling problem, but I’m also not able to access Las Vegas every day.

But damned am I fascinated by it all, and tempted if the circumstances were different, because it literally seems like a really easy way to make some real quick and thrilling scratch if I just ponied up a little start-up capital and pulled out quickly.

Seriously, Eddie?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As an actual Asian person who earnestly cares about actual Asian representation in film, theFacebook has gotten wind that they can target me movie trailers for movies starring Asian people and I’ll probably actually give more than the passing glance or hide-from-X treatment that I give the fast majority of other targeted ads.

Recently, I saw this preview for this film called Boogie, which is the directorial debut of Eddie Huang, the guy who made Fresh Off the Boat, a series that I really wanted to hate based on the horrible title, but ended up watching way more of than I care to admit and actually liking a lot of it.  The premise of the film is pretty simple: charismatic and athletic Chinese guy living in New York, aspires to play basketball professionally, but has to overcome all sorts of stereotypes, oppression and racism to strive towards his goals.

I’m typically on board for all Asians vs. the World kind of plots, especially ones that feed the observational narrative of the racist double-standard that exists within all races in the world, towards Asians.  However, there was one thing that instead has piqued my curiosity, and really makes me skeptical of the, planning of the film, regardless of how the story and film actually pans out.

The titular character is played by some guy named Taylor Takahashi, and my very first thought was, really?  A Japanese guy to play a Chinese guy?  Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that concept, it’s just that this seems like one of those characters that I feel like would probably have been a little more appropriate if it were actually being played by a Chinese person.

Look, I’m all about guys like Randall Park and Ken Jeong being arr rook same’d and getting cast as Chinese guys, because they’re still getting paid and go get it if it’s offered, but the same rhetorical question applies to them as it does for Taylor Takahashi: were there seriously no talented Chinese actors to play these roles?  Or I guess more accurately, was there any genuine effort in trying to cast any talented Chinese actors for these roles?

Like, in the case of the Boogie preview, I’m having a hard time digesting and a hard time not laughing, when a Japanese guy is reciting lines about how stereotyped we Chinese are, and how he’s got 2,000 years of Chinese oppression on his shoulders that he’s trying to overcome so he can be what sounds like a fictional version of Jeremy Lin.

I know I clown on China a lot being Korean and all, but real talk here is that I’m very aware that in a country with a population of a gabillion, there are bound to be quite a number of talented, bilingual, and physically comparable actors as Taylor Takahashi, who probably would be slightly more believable and convincing to play the role of Boogie, than a guy that’s inherently of Japanese descent.

So egg on Eddie Huang’s face for what I think is kind of an embarrassing faux pas here.  Looking at all promotional material for Boogie, it’s embarrassing to see the three marquee names, being Takahashi, Paige and Jackson, in a movie that’s basically about Chinese culture living in New York.  But Huang’s kind of become a giant king of the twinkies anyway, or as what I saw a friend say on the internet being an Uncle Tong, so I guess it’s no surprise that he’s utilizing all these non-Chinese guys to promote his own stories of ironic appropriation and further exploitation of his own culture in order to stay relevant and famous.

I wish for the 2.5 hours I lost back

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My job put me in a shitty mood today, which sucks, but for the sake of writing out a post of criticism, it’s actually kind of advantageous.  I tend to believe that intent is sharpest when paired with an emotion that rides along the same wavelength, so when I’m in a pissed mood, lighting into something might be the right mindset for doing such.

Frankly, I knew what I was getting into when I sat down to watch WW84 because making a title card “Wonder Woman 1984” would have been the hardest thing to do for this day and age where people can sparsely be expected to use vowels when writing their shorthand bullshit, even in a professional working environment.

But I had already heard that this movie wasn’t good, and I’d seen the memes, my favorite of them being the title of this post because I felt the exact same way after watching it.  However, out of one part morbid curiosity and another part simply because Gal Gadot is gorgeous and I could probably put up with watching Boys Don’t Cry or The Boy With the Striped Pajamas if had Gal Gadot in it, I decided to watch it anyway.

Despite knowing that it probably wasn’t good, and despite knowing that it was 2.5 hours long and I could have done a myriad of things with 2.5 hours instead of watching WW84, I did something stupid and watched WW84.

And it sucked.  Unsurprisingly.  Frankly, in spite of the praise of the original Wonder Woman received, I didn’t think it was particularly close to as good as the praise it was getting, and I hate to sound completely sexist, but I think films like it and shows like Jessica Jones get a bump in credit solely for the fact that they’re stories about strong female leads with mostly female production crews.  Frankly, the gender of casts and crews are irrelevant to me, and I’d rather not know it at all as long as captivating and entertaining stories and presented to me.

Regardless, it goes without saying that the original Wonder Woman was easily the strongest DC property film since the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, and easily the best DC flick in the supposed Justice League universe they’ve tried to cobble together with most notably a Ben Affleck Batman.

But ultimately, that’s like saying the least stinkiest turd in the punch bowl because for whatever reason, DC Comics can’t seem to get their shit together when it comes to translating their properties into film.  Wonder Woman was alright, which makes it the strongest DC film in their respective universe, but honestly, I’d rather have watched episodes of the lowly Iron Fist or the fairly mediocre Defenders shows than DC’s top film.

I kind of feel bad for DC comics.  Because in the actual world of comic books, DC has plenty of quality properties and capable writers and some legendary stories told.  Batman alone carries DC comics way more than any single Marvel property can take credit for carrying Marvel Comics.  But no matter what, they just can’t seem to make good movies, and it’s almost as inevitable that a non-Batman DC movie is going to suck as much as the Braves will always collapse in the most embarrassing or heartbreaking fashions possible.

So needless to say, a sequel to a marginal quality film was bound to be a downhill ride no matter what, and to WW84’s credit, they basically lived up to expectation.  Thank goodness this never made it to theaters, because I already want my money back for it wasting 2.5 hours of my life, despite watching from the comfort of my own home on HBOmax.