John Wick (Keanu Speaks as Little as Possible)

Yes, I rented and watched John Wick. Keanu! I actually recommend this movie if you enjoy an action movie that is kind of smart in some ways. The overall plot is formulaic beyond formulaic (retired mob hitman comes out of retirement to…kill a ton of dudes). But, beyond that, I thought it was hilarious and had many sly, fresh, or delightful moments and little shots. Good camerawork, pacing, focus. Unity of city, time, and plot. Enigmatic characters and spaces.

Great cast including Michael Nyqvist, Lance Reddick, Ian McShane, John Leguizamo, and Willem Dafoe. Bridget Moynahan plays the wife and Adrienne Palicki plays a femme fatale assassin.

Despite its uninteresting premise, it isn’t a movie that has a lot of fat or overly sentimental crap that takes itself seriously. It is visually stylish (but still gritty enough) and the close quarter fighting is just awesome.

Keanu may not be a great actor in the talking or even gesturing part of acting, but he’s a visual relief and is really great to look at. As a part Asian guy, he does not look like your Chris Pine, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt, or other buff young white guys named Chris. Yes, Keanu is older (50!) and his generation of movie lead dudes is slightly more diverse in that not as many of the white guys are named Chris. They’re white guys named Mark or Matt, or Bradley or Jeremy, etc. Or if they’re not white guys they’re Will Smith (46) or Denzel Washington (60).

Anyway, I think Caesar in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes had more to say in his article-free English than Keanu Reeves’s character. “Ape not kill ape” vs. “Yeah.” I think Keanu mostly said, “Yeah.” Which is how it should be for him.

One of my favorite scenes is John Wick taking a sledgehammer to his concrete floor where he buried his mob-days weapons cache. This is so much more badass than having them hidden merely under the floorboards or IN THE GARDEN (hey, Rick Grimes).

Basically this movie is just fun to watch because of Keanu’s fights being things of beauty, and here’s why, “[John Wick] marks Stahelski and Leitch’s directorial debut as a team after multiple separate credits as second unit directors and stunt coordinators. They previously worked with Reeves as stunt doubles on The Matrix trilogy.[7]

Stahelski and Leitch’s approach to action scenes drew upon their admiration for anime[8] and martial arts films,[9] and the film’s use of fight choreographers[10] and gun fu techniques[11] from Hong Kong action cinema[12] was additionally influential in the development of the piece. As well as prominently paying homage to works such as John Woo’s The Killer, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samouraï,[13] John Boorman’s Point Blank, and the spaghetti western subgenre of Western films.[14]” – Wikipedia

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes aka California (or at least San Francisco) Becomes a Majority White State (City) Again

I watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes with the daughter this week. I enjoyed watching it for the second time (third?)–many things are well done in this very mainstream action film, for example the motion-capture on-location filming (very real looking). There are interesting and important issues of speciesism (though not at all subtly explored) and the brutality of human beings who claim to be civilized, etc. etc. That a pivotal scene is shot at a 76 gas station (symbol of humanity’s dependence on fossil fuel and our hubris and extractive economies, etc.) was not lost on me. The film seems to be a critique of guns and violence (although some of the best scenes involve guns…). It is a film that seems to champion peacemaking and co-existence (although the protagonist is invasive but I think the film’s attitude toward this is that he is persistent, heroic, and wants to bring back the boon of the dam for his people, therefore he is good. I did not detect any critique of his actions from the filmmakers, although I personally was critical of them.) Like any invading group with superior weaponry, the human colony “needs” the dam (land, water, minerals, etc. etc. etc.) therefore it should have it (although we never see what they need it for. We only see the lead’s apartment and we don’t see any humans ever doing anything really productive or pertinent to their ongoing survival. And their place looks like crap for having been there for perhaps 10 years). The natives (apes) don’t need the generator at the dam (the Indians don’t need all that land, they don’t know how to make the most of it, in fact they’re wasting it, etc. etc. etc. Why should this group be left to live peacefully in relative sustainability with their environment?).

I was again struck by the lack of Asian Americans in the film, even as silent extras. (And please read on because the critique is not limited to the lack of Asians in the film, of course.)

On an emotional and psychological note, it is hard to see yourself and people like you erased from your own country’s cityscapes. Again and again. As an English teacher with an American accent, I am faced with the irony every day of my invisibility and irrelevance.

I spent the last week in southern California, and as everyone knows, the place is full of Asians.

Here are the census stats for San Francisco, where the film is set: As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 Whites (48.1%), 267,915 Asians (33.3%), 48,870 African Americans (6.1%), 4,024 Native Americans (0.5%), 3,359 Pacific Islanders (0.4%), 53,021 from other races (6.6%), and 37,659 from two or more races (4.7%). There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15.1%).

Yet in Dawn of the P of A, which has a high degree of verisimilitude in other human aspects (physical setting, etc.) has, in terms of significant screen time/lines:

a) white men in leadership positions (Gary Oldman, etc.)
b) one dead white woman (unnamed wife/mother of the white father/son leads)
c) one living white woman in typical nurturing subordinate doctor-lady role
d) four Latino American men, see *
e) two black men (one of whom is the muscle for the male protagonist (and is more “angry” than the white man who is the virtuous character), and also perhaps an electrician, and the other is like Zoe Saldana’s character in Star Trek, someone who basically works the CB, and who is ultimately killed as collateral damage by Gary Oldman’s character.).

* Kirk Acevedo plays Carver, the trigger-happy, ape-hating former dam worker who shoots Ash in the shoulder and brings a gun into the ape’s compound when the humans have been told they can’t bring in guns. Carver gets his head bashed in later. I think he’s the first human killed.

The second human killed is one of the men testing guns in the armory. I can’t remember his name and I can’t recognize him on imdb’s tiny pictures but he looked Latino to me. His buddy is white, with longish blonde hair. He is hostile toward the apes and is brutish. Koba shoots him first. Then there’s a longer pause before he shoots and kills the blonde man.

The third man killed is a Latino looking man driving a tank and shooting the apes, once the battle has begun.

There is a close call when Thomas Rosales Jr.’s character hits an ape with a heavy brass stand that one hooks velvet ropes to. Koba grabs the stand and tells Ash to kill the man. The man cowers and says, “No!” Ash refuses, the man and the black woman cowering next to him run away, and then Koba drags Ash up the stairs and throws him off the balcony and Ash dies.

(So…what could explain, in terms of the movie’s world, why there are so few Asians? Well, there was a pandemic it killed (I think) 90% of the human population. Only those with immunity are still alive. A decade has gone by and the humans have a couple weeks left of fuel. They must get the generator at the dam working or they’ll go back to “the way it was,” which was apparently terrible and the lead’s son has “seen things no boy should have seen,” or something like that. We can assume that there was a massive breakdown of civilization.

So one could argue that most of the Asians in San Francisco were not immune and they died. Or, they left before things got bad in San Francisco, leaving the small San Francisco colony something like 85% white. But that seems a little bit ridiculous, since every movie I’ve ever seen set in the bay area or in a science lab on the west coast is 85 – 90% white with maybe one Asian American woman tech in a lab coat and maybe one Asian American guy, who usually dies.)

There are no other women, of any color, with any individual lines (there is a mob scene in which many people shout out things in fear or/anger toward the apes) or names.

Cornelia (Caesar’s wife) has one line (and she is wearing flowers). And she gives birth to a second son. And she gets sick and is saved by Keri Russell, the other wife-type in the film. And Maurice the Orangutan is played by a female human actor. If that counts. He has a significant role in the film.

Keri Russell is also the only human who has to wear a little tank top while the men around her are wearing multiple layers and are covered neck to foot (even when running). She had a daughter (“Sarah”) but she died, we don’t see her picture or see her crying over her. Gary Oldman had two sons but they died–we see their picture/s on his cracked iPad and he sobs. Caesar has two sons and a wife in peril. The protagonist (who is so bland I can’t remember his name or the actor’s name) has a teenaged son (the almost unrecognizable Kodi Smit-McPhee from The Road) who he is trying to protect. I guess the point the movie can’t help but make is that sons are important. Caesar’s son Blue Eyes plays an important role in the film.

DOTPOA is definitely a film that, while it has several merits (and several demerits and confounding logic holes), subtly maintains the racial hierarchies at work in the U.S. As in the first film (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), there are several close-up shots that linger on the fearful faces of black men (and a medium shot that shows a non-speaking older black woman cowering next to a man who Koba wants Ash to kill) presumably to show that this film is not racist in terms of the apes being symbolic of black men. I say men because the females (and children) stay home from the “war” when the male apes, led by Koba, go to attack the human colony.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

I went to see Michael Bay’s fourth installment of the Transformers franchise last night. Like many other Gen X-ers, I grew up watching the Transformers cartoons on television (thank you creator Takara Tomy) and my son (now thirteen) has had Transformers toys (but, I must admit, sadly, was never all that into them). Here are a few thoughts on this new movie:

WHY I SAW THIS MOVIE

• If you haven’t read Yellow Future: Oriental Style in Hollywood Cinema by Jane Chi Hyun Park (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) you should! You can buy it direct from the U of M press here, and every other way you can purchase books.
• Of course people should love giant robots fighting. So that’s why I went to see the film, and that’s why I have seen all these sort of awful films (Michael Bay, I sort of hate you). I even got cajoled into seeing Real Steel with my son the other week (ah, summer break).

A LITTLE BIT ON ITS CHINESE-NESS

• This film was co-produced with Chinese entities: “China Movie Channel and Jiaflix Enterprises co-produce[d] the film with Paramount.” – Wikipedia
• Because most PG-13 big American action films are extremely patriotic and have often relied upon extensive stereotyping and vilifying of various “enemies” (e.g. Germans, Russians, Arabs, various Asians), I was curious to see how this film would handle the representations of Asians–in particular because Transformers are originally an Asian (Japanese) creation, but of course what matters to Hollywood producers is the bottom line, not cultural authenticity or respectful homage to source material and cultures.
• I’m fascinated that the franchise has been so successful in China and watched the film through an attempt at an “If I was a Chinese person, how would I see this film?” lens. (e.g. How would I feel about representation of the U.S. military, the Chinese product placements, etc.?)
• I was most interested in how the film represented women (including the dead mother stereotype), the father-daughter relationship, Asian people, and Asian cities (Beijing and Hong Kong, specifically).
• Ironies, sort of, regarding Asian cities represented in the film: “Detroit, Michigan, was used as a stand-in for Hong Kong while McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, was redressed to portray a city in China.” Wikipedia
• Here’s an article from the L.A. Times on its breaking of multiple box-office records in mainland China. This article also includes mention of the Chinese product placements and some things noticed by Chinese moviegoers, such as the cars fighting in Hong Kong have their steering wheels on the left (American-style) rather than on the right (Hong Kong/British-style).
• After seeing the film and noting how long the camera lingered on the quiet handsome Asian man in the elevator with Joshua Joyce/Stanley Tucci (he plays the straight man to Tucci’s manic confessions; he eventually leaps to the aid of Li Bingbing‘s character who is fighting with henchmen of the bad guy, played by Kelsey Grammer) is Han Geng, a Chinese “Mandopop” singer/actor who was a Kpop star and then returned to China.
• Though, as a Chinese moviegoer pointed out, the Chinese milk had (or may have had) more screen time than Han Geng, I was somewhat impressed that no Asian man was ridiculed or emasculated in this film (see the last Wolverine film for some true gems of this nature). A rarety. Of course, the bar for these types of films is sadly low. So…progress, if only because the Chinese co-paid for this movie. He had no lines, he had no role other than as a bystander who happened to be able to fight.
• There are no Asian people with any lines in English (OK, there’s a couple Chinese men who speaks some orders in both English and Mandarin to some other guys…on a boat? Something to the effect of, “Contact the Central Government! Fighter jets are on their way.”) other than Li Bingbing, who is objectified by Joshua Joyce–when we first meet her, she is being taken on a tour by Joyce and I think he says, “My delicate flower,” or something like that to her. Really? It’s sort of tongue-in-cheek, but still. And yes, she turns out to be a bad-ass, riding a motorcycle and possessing fighting skills she learned “before [she] got her MBA.” She is dressed all in black with a fake long ponytail, kind of your typical cold-as-glass-Asian-corporate-woman-neo-dragon-lady-almost-definitely-with-the-eye-surgery-and-probably-nose-job-and-definitely-fake-eyelashes. At least she’s not in a cheongsam and she is not a damsel-in-distress character.
• And she doesn’t have to kiss anyone. But male moviemakers can’t resist throwing in some romance, because in so many movies a woman isn’t interesting unless she’s the object of a man’s (or multiple men’s) desire(s). Though it is obvious that Li comes to care for Joshua in some fashion, when he asks her toward the end of the film, “Did you miss me?” She says, “No” even though her face kind of says, “Yes.”
• Li Bingbing is 41 and Stanley Tucci is 53. Not a terrible age spread for Hollywood, but still, I wonder if they would have cast Michelle Yeoh (51) as his romantic interest (assuming she would have been willing to be in this film in that particular role).
• Tired tropes: Yes, there is a scene with two-white-men-fighting-who-crash-into-an-Asian-family’s-apartment. Yes, there’s the hanging meat and running-through-the-market scene. There is also a brief moment when the team of heroes is trying to get The Seed to a safe place and they are behind three elderly Chinese women and Joshua Joyce says, “How do you say Get the fuck out of the way in Chinese?” There are other semi-Orientalist moments; I noticed a close-up of mahjong tiles being swept off a table as the Americans are getting into the thick of things, and other small moments like that. It’s not as hackneyed as some movies/TV shows, but it’s still there. The mini-message in these moments is: Asia = stillness/tradition and America = action. But those are offset to some degree by the gleaming KSI/China facility, etc. which reinforces the Asia = technology and America = innovation trope (Tucci’s character is presented as a kind of Steve Jobs guru, “We make poetry. We are poets,” he says about their work in robotics.)
• The positive is that in general Asians (Chinese) are not shown as completely incompetent or evil, as in many American films set partially in Asia. We also don’t have to deal with the seedy underworld of “Asialand” (e.g. Ron Perlman’s place of business in Pacific Rim and countless other scenes in countless movies and TV shows).
• I almost forgot, because he’s so un-interesting, but there’s a samurai Autobot played by Ken Watanabe! He’s awesome. His character isn’t really that awesome.

REPRESENTATION OF THE OTHER FEMALES IN THIS MOVIE

• There are three important white women (all with long blonde hair) in this film, in terms of character development (ha) and plot (ha).
• There is Tessa Yeager (the daughter of Cade Yeager, the main character);
• The (dead, or maybe just missing forever) blonde mother (who does not even have a name or cause/year of death–but thankfully the only time we have to look at her is in a family picture when Tessa was a baby and she, the mother, was still young and beautiful and in her early twenties).
• The scientist Darcy Tirrel, played, with British accent, by English actor Sophia Myles (hey, she was the helpful traitor vampire in Underworld movie!).
• There are some random beautiful black-skirted, high-heeled women who work at KSI, who greet Tucci’s character in trio (just to show his power–look, he can get three women to greet him!).
• Tessa Yeager is a seventeen-year-old girl (played by Nicola Peltz, who is now 19) about to graduate from high school. She is frustrated that she cannot get financial aid to go to college and that her dad has no money because his inventions aren’t good enough to sell. They live on a farm in Texas.
• She is wearing short shorts for the the first part of the movie and is sexualized almost every moment she is on screen. There are numerous camera shots of her butt throughout the film. Nothing wrong with butts, but there are no equivalent shots of Shane’s butt or Wahlberg’s abs, etc.
• Her father (Cade Yeager/Mark Wahlberg) comments disparagingly on the shortness of her shorts and his employee Lucas Flannery (played by comedian T.J. Miller, who is 33) says to the dad, “I think she looks hot.” A couple scenes later, Lucas says to Tessa something like, “I’m basically your uncle.” GROSS.
• In another scene, Tessa is video-chatting with her secret boyfriend Shane (who is 20, which becomes somewhat comedic in a later scene when Cade accuses him of statutory rape and then Shane pulls out a laminated “Romeo and Juliet” Texas law card from his wallet) and he tells her, if memory serves, to take her shirt off. (Am I making that up?) Or maybe it’s, “You look hot.” Something stupid.
• Later, when she goes out to “go for a drive with some friends” she’s wearing an all-white outfit with a short ruffly skirt, symbolizing her goodness/innocence, I suppose.
• Throughout the film there’s an icky obsession by Cade on what is basically Tessa’s virginity, although it’s not explicitly stated, but Cade’s rule is that Tessa is not allowed to date at all (because he doesn’t want her to make the same mistakes he and her mother made, and, to give his character credit, because he wants her to go to college, and pursue her dreams, I guess).
• Tessa spends most of the film in peril. Screaming and crying. Running around in tight pants and short boots. Needing to be saved by Shane and/or her dad. There’s one icky (there’s that word again) scene when she’s in the Decepticon ship and she is hiding from patrolbots and there is an imprisoned alien. It sticks out its phallic-y tongue and it wraps itself around her leg. It’s clearly (to me) meant to be sexual/suggestive, as in it might go up her leg and eventually violate her. She is able to save herself eventually from this situation by cutting off the tongue.
• Some positives: Tessa/Nicola Peltz doesn’t have to take her clothes off (that would be the R version of the movie). As far as moral strength/loyalty/bravery goes, she doesn’t leave without her dad at a crucial moment and she and Shane go back to help him help Optimus Prime.
• The dead/missing/nameless mother’s only role, as is extremely common in these types of movies, is to a) provided sexual gratification to a young Cade Yeager and then to b) birth Tessa Yeager, “You’re the best thing I ever made,” Cade (an inventor) tells Tessa, and then b) die and get out of the way before she got too old or too interesting.
• Victoria Tirrel (scientist) plays virtually no role in the story/film, other than to wear white and be the semi-frosty female scientist. She helps discover the source of dinosaur extinction and then shows up again later. A positive: She doesn’t have to take her clothes off either (like the blonde “scientist”-daughter-person in the last Star Trek movie–also British!). She shows some assertiveness in her first scene in the Arctic when she pursues the truth and dares a guard to try to stop her, “Shoot me.”
• The individuals with agency are the male characters (Harold Attinger/Kelsey Grammer, Joshua Joyce, Cade Yeager, Shane, the Decepticons and Autobots). The women basically react for the most part.

NON-HUMAN GENDERED…STUFF

• There’s an imprisoned non-humanoid alien (on the Decepticon ship) that is gendered in two ways–it has spidery legs and at the center is a kind of vagina dentata. The crass, trigger-happy army-type Autobot (named Hound) played by John Goodman says something like, “You’re just too evil to live. Die, bitch!” and shoots it and it explodes. Ha. Ha.
• The Decepticons are trading the evil humans something called The Seed for Optimus Prime. The Transformer species is basically male. There was that evil female Transformer in the second movie who seduces/attacks Shia LB in his dorm room and then tries to kill him, but other than that, all the talk about the species/race is male-oriented. Creation for the Transformers is masculine. The Seed must be seen in this context as masculine, and certainly correlates to references to human sperm as “seed.” I’m sure there are other explanations for why there are no female Transformers in some other forum/venue/Transformer story (perhaps) but I haven’t looked into it. Within the films, though, the Transformers are almost exclusively male (and some of them even leer at human females, as I recall both Megan Fox and Rosie Huntington Whitely being the objects of lewd remarks by one or more of the smaller robots). Much like the dwarves and other non-human, non-Elven, non-Hobbit species in Lord of the Rings.
• The Seed is both destructive and creative–it destroys what it explodes into/onto, but it then transforms that material into what KSI named Transformium, the programmable matter that the Transformers and Decepticons are made of. Like Cade Jaeger (who says to Tessa something like, “You don’t date. I don’t date. Those are the house rules,”), the Transformers do not need females. The Seed is more like a parasite than reproductive energy. I could not find an image of it online, but it’s about 3 feet long, light enough for one man to carry around in a bag, and has an elongated egg shape but is pointed at the end. It’s basically a bomb.

RANDOM WINNIE-THE-POOH CONNECTION

• Peter Cullen, who provides the voice of wise, noble elder Optimus Prime, has also voiced Eeyore in the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise. So, there you go.

IN CONCLUSION…

• This movie is pretty dang sexist, but I’ve seen worse.
• The movie is not as racist as I expected (surely because it is trying to appeal to a Chinese audience and show the few Chinese characters in a positive light, not because of any evolution in Hollywood). For example, no Asian woman dies (and she’s not a prostitute)! That is truly revolutionary. But, it is implied that she will maybe get together with the white American guy. Not revolutionary, and totally unimportant to the “plot.”
• It’s hard to tell who is who during many of the robot fights–this was sad, as the whole point of seeing this movie is to enjoy the robot fights. 
• It’s a long movie that goes on and on…
• The dinobots are cool but not that cool.

 

Link

I recently watched The Wolverine (PG-13, 126 minutes, directed by James Mangold with screenplay credits to Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, produced by Hugh Jackman, John Palermo, Hutch Parker, Lauren Shuler Donner and released in US theaters in July 2013). Boxoffice.com stats: Opening Weekend: $53,113,752 | Total Domestic Gross: $132,556,852 | Worldwide Gross: $417,019,529 | Total Budget*: $170,000,000

This movie had some mildly entertaining scenes. Well, there were scenes with a lot of movement. Now that that’s been established, I will make a list of some sadly predictable ways this film represents Asians (Japanese, specifically) and women as inferior in a variety of clichéd ways:

• Bechdel fail (unless I missed something)
• Significant age difference of seventeen years between male lead (Hugh Jackman 45) and his female romantic lead (Tao Okamoto 28) (yes, Wolverine is immortal, but that’s besides the point). (Famke Janssen, who plays Jean Grey in the other films and in dream sequences in this film, is 49. But Jean Grey went “crazy”–a truly powerful woman is a CRAZY WOMAN and must be KILLED.)
• The film shows us August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki. An American B29 (flown in real life by Major General Charles Sweeney) drops an atomic bomb (named “Fatman”) on the Japanese city, Nagasaki, and its people. Three Japanese soldiers commit seppuku on the beach and a fourth (Ken Yamamura), who had just freed Wolverine (who didn’t really need freeing) hesitates; he lifts his sword but is stopped by Wolverine. I read this brief sequence as establishing that a) Japanese men are cowardly (they commit suicide/they are afraid to commit suicide) and that b) Wolverine is noble, compassionate, and is on the side of life.
• Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), the soldier he saved, has become the most powerful man in Japan (snooze!), but he is dying. He isn’t represented as a complete cyborg but he is lying on this bed-of-nails-type-contraption that moves with him, fulfilling the Western fantasy of the Asian-as-robot (“we are human, you are sub-human; we are wild-n-free, you are control freaks!”).
• Yashida’s son, Shingen, (Hiroyuki Sanada) turns out to be completely evil–not only do we see him slap his daughter, but he is the one behind the plot to have her kidnapped/killed by the yakuza (oh, THEM).
• We see Mariko, Yashida’s granddaughter, lady-run to the edge of this balcony that overlooks some cliffs, apparently about to throw herself off it (BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT ASIANS DO–WE KILL OURSELVES, ESPECIALLY ASIAN WOMEN. PROBLEMS SOLVED.) but WHEW she is grabbed by the caring Logan, who is able to save her from herself and all those nasty Asian men causing her problems. Her white dress and the rain that falls on her emphasizes her innocence and vulnerability. She’s tender, while…
• Yukio, an orphan that Yashida took in to keep Mariko company (and where is Yashida’s wife? Presumed DEAD and unmentioned. Where is Mariko’s mother? Presumed DEAD and unmentioned.) is the tough one, though she still needs to be saved by Logan (if I recall) while she is fighting Yashida’s son.
• Noburo (Brian Tee), Mariko’s sleazy fiancé (a betrothal arranged by Yashida for political purposes; is this supposed to be another hint that Japanese men are patriarchal and try to control “their” women?), is being interrogated by Logan (after having his two companions–two white women [in their underwear, as I recall] who have a prostitute-ish air about them…[listed as Party Girl 1 and 2 on imdb] I think this is meant to make the audience find Noburo even more kill-worthy) and he says something in Japanese to Yukio. Logan punches him again and yells “ENGLISH!” then eventually gets the information he wants and throws him over the balcony for the audience’s comedic relief. These kinds of scenes–over and over and over again–remind me of the scene in Indiana Jones in which Indy is facing off with a fearless turbaned foe who has a menacing whip. Indy loses his patience and pulls out his pistol and shoots him–and much hilarity ensues. Not that Noburo was a sympathetic character, but none of the Japanese male characters are sympathetic. They are all using Mariko or can’t provide her with what she wants–which is, apparently, Logan, who basically kidnapped her. But, like a good woman, she eventually realizes she needs saving by him, cooks for him, and teaches her an “ancient Chinese (Japanese) secret”–that putting one’s chopsticks straight down into your bowl is a “bad omen” and that “everything has meaning” in Japanese culture. Good thing the Wolverine has an Asian woman to tame him. At least for a minute anyway.
• And in the rising action toward the climax and in the climax, we see Mariko’s ex-fiancé, Harada (Will Yun Lee), dedicating his life to protecting Mariko from afar, deluded until death believing that they will be together–she, pitying him because she loves Logan. Logan also eventually kills Yashida, who is now embedded into a giant robot suit–fulfilling his ASIAN DESTINY TO BECOME A ROBOT. -sigh-. As Logan vanquishes him and he, Yashida, falls to his demise over a cliff, Logan says, “Sayonara.” -sigh-.
• Then, Yukio, who seemingly is also attracted to Logan, but knows that he prefers Princess Mariko, decides that she will go with him as he leaves Japan, to be his bodyguard. Because she has nothing better to do, though she apparently has the most badass samurai skills in the country. As an orphan, as a foil to the highly en-familied scion Mariko (who has a business empire to run, with no skills or strengths other than her beauty and soup-making? and surely has commoners–people with JOBS–to oppress), she is free to make her cartoonish (mini-skirted, pink-haired) way with the rogueish Wolverine…(nothing wrong with mini skirts or pink hair, and I think the actor, Rila Fukushima, did a fine job with what she had to work with, but it’s just a visual cliché. And…there are four types of Asian-women-in-Asia in Hollywood movies: Princess, Punk, (Dead Invisible Mother), and Comic-Relief-Middle-Aged-Woman-Selling-Cheap-Stuff (Love Hotel clerk in this movie)). Well, at least Fukushima didn’t have to take her clothes off on film to get this job. That’s something.

What to say about Riddick?

• He’s sneaky as a fox! He can’t be beaten! He’ll kill all of you if he wants to!
• He’s so tough he can only be taken down with three tranq darts! (Because he cleverly immunized himself against the paralyzing toxins of the monsters early on in the film…smart…)
• Leather! Slow motion! A cape!
• There are many shots of his cool, opaque, silvery, glinty pupil-less irises
• His voice remains deep as in his other movies
• There are a bunch of men of color in the film, but in the end, Riddick is the only person of color who survives, along with three white people
• The two men in leadership roles are white (one is American and one is Spanish, and something of a sadist, and a raper)
• The one woman of color in the film is a prisoner, implied victim of repeated sexual assaults, and is shot down like a wild animal early on in the film movie
• Plenty of cringingly offensive things are said about women although Katie Sackhoff, who plays a mercenary named “Dahl” and is the only woman out of two women who survives to the end of the movie, is quite capable and is more capable than most of her male colleagues
• He tames, from puppy-hood, a wild alien CG dingo who is the moral center of the film; the best comedic relief of the film, and who is loyal to the very end
• The desert planet upon which most of the action takes place is pretty fake looking
• The plot is unoriginal, but once the action starts its minor variations on genre-style killings (Riddick is picking them off, one by one–the whole hunted-becomes-the-hunter narrative) manage to entertain
• The monster things are kind of cool–they have hypnotic tales that look like faces! Steam comes out of eyehole-looking things! Barbs! One of the monsters is gutted by Riddick and it’s such a barbarian that it eats its own entrails before falling to its death!
• Doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There is a scene early on in which four naked women are lolling about in a bed (unnamed, not talking about anything, let alone something that has nothing to do with a man), waiting for Riddick, but he is on to BETTER, MORE NOBLE THINGS (like trying to get back to Furya); he’s BORED with four naked women lolling about in a bed waiting for him. Can’t you people see that?
• Age note: Katie Sackhoff is 33, Vin Diesel is 46

 

The Grandmaster, aka Tony Leung’s Formula for Reverse Aging

The Grandmaster is still in theaters! It is based on the story of Ip Man, the kung fu master who popularized the (deceptively simple?) Wing Chun style of kung fu and who eventually took on a young student who would come to be known in the U.S. as Bruce Lee. I encourage one and all (those who might need a nudge anyway) to see this gorgeous film by the brilliant filmmaker 王家衛 Wong Kar Wai. For those of you who are not interested in kung fu, don’t think of this as a kung fu film. It transcends genre expectations, to my mind. The “fight” scenes are gracefully integrated into the overall story; there are no pointless macho fist fights just for the sake of them. It is about history, emigration, exile, loss, legacy, sacrifice, love, dignity, and one man’s path to becoming a true teacher. If you’ve seen the director’s intensely atmospheric, emotional, and color-saturated In the Mood for Love, you won’t be disappointed with this film. More (?) monochromatic, but more grave, it is drenched in operatic, kinesthetics and exquisite close-ups/slow-downs of physical structures reverberating and shattering with the force of bodies being tossed like (glamorous, graceful) ragdolls, I was quite happy with the cinematography and editing. It unfolds almost like a silent film or like a set of paintings. The formal composition supports the themes but it’s not stiff or overly stylized.

Nope, doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There are three women who are named but they do not talk to each other. But/and, the injustice of the limitations of womanhood (at least in the traditional and dynastic kung fu world) is brought to the fore through Zhang Ziyi’s character, the daughter and sole heir to the Gong “64 Hands” style of kung fu. There are some troubling aspects to her character and to the way that women are portrayed (to go into them would require some spoilers), but mostly they’re portrayed with dignity, even the women employees of the brothel that serves as an important setting. This film is not concerned with tawdry thrills or with exploiting its characters, even its minor ones. It was pro-Chinese, pro-kung fu, and pro-Ip Man.

Age note: Zhang is 34 and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai is 51.

Zhang Ziyi’s character, Gong Er, is an Athena archetype–a “father’s daughter” and I felt her performance was the most mature I’ve seen from her. Perhaps because she FINALLY looks like she might be a bit older than 19. In fact, she is finally 34, and in one scene in which she is particularly vulnerable, you can (surely on purpose) see her freckles instead of her usual porcelain-mask-type look. It’s not her fault that she looks like a doll with her exquisite, petite features and her adorable attached earlobes!

 

 

 

North Koreans take over the White House

in Olympus Has Fallen. Wow, terrible movie. In which the Wife-and-Mother DIES in the first, oh, 10 or 12 minutes. Good thing we got her out of the way. Then we can proceed to the completely unrealistic scenario of North Koreans taking over the White House. With the help of Dylan McDermott, a colluder.

Importantly, the main North Korean woman maintains her smokey/evil eyeshadow/liner the entire time she’s alive.

“Chinkrifice” in Oblivion

I am not the only person who has noticed that Tom Cruise has played another character named Jack in Oblivion. It’s the perfect name for an American macho, as in “Yahweh is gracious enough to let me kick ass all over this city/town/foreign marketplace/seedy Chinatown/village/country/globe/planet/galaxy…” “English form of Iohannes, the Latin form of the Greek name Ιωαννης (Ioannes), itself derived from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן (Yochanan) meaning “YAHWEH is gracious”. This name owes its popularity to two New Testament characters, both highly revered saints. The first is John the Baptist, a Jewish ascetic who was considered the forerunner of Jesus Christ. The second is the apostle John, who is also traditionally regarded as the author of the fourth Gospel and Revelation.” http://www.behindthename.com/name/john

But to my point: a small vessel has crash landed. Jack Harper must investigate, though he is told not to by his robotic English girlfriend/comms partner. But Jack will not be held back. There are a handful of hypersleep pods with sleeping crew members. Olga Kurylenko / “Julia Rusakova” is in one of them. The camera rests its eye for a moment on a hypersleep pod. We see an Asian man asleep inside.

Age note: Olga is 33, Tom is 51.

Anyway, you know what happens. Chinkrifice. The Asian man’s pod is the first to be blasted by the drone–he doesn’t even have a fighting chance, lying there like Asian male sleeping beauty. He is merely there, like most Asian men in most bad movies, and even some better ones, to make the point that Julia COULD HAVE been blasted, but luckily for her she is almost 20 years younger than Jack and he is able to save her ALONE. Not any of the other people who are not secretly his wife.

And yes, Morgan Freeman plays the leader of the underground. And yes, he sacrifices himself and dies at the end. While Jack dies, too, he doesn’t really, since he is one of many clones (all of whom apparently share the real Jack’s pre-alien-wipe memories) and another clone eventually finds Julia and they live happily ever after. With their Jack-Julia baby.

The end.

 

 

Asian Men Spotted: Benedict Wong and Kenneth Choi

Benedict Wong, from Manchester, England, plays Ravel, a pilot, in Prometheus and Mr. Choy, a refined gangster, in Redemption. In my opinion, he is pretty dashing, even though he didn’t get to use his British English in either film. 

Kenneth Choi, from a suburb of Chicago, plays Jim Morita in Captain America. His character is effectively an anti-stereotype lesson in the film. When the titular hero goes behind enemy lines to rescue fellow American soldiers from Schmidt, he sees Choi/Morita and says, “We’re taking everyone?” and Choi/Morita says, “I’m from Fresno, Ace.” Apparently he has been on famous shows on TV, Sons Of Anarchy, Glee, 24, but I don’t watch TV…

from NEW YORK MAG.–Apparently, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl is dead, but I’ll believe when I see it (in previews, because I don’t watch movies with MPDG…except THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, which was an accident…

http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/manic-pixie-dream-girl-has-died.html?mid=twitter_thecutblog