Auden

Happy birthdays silvrwoman! You are hilarious!

GOOD RIDDANCE. Haha. I love that you're "working through" your fear of zombies. I like The Walking Dead too, even though I also find it depressing. I do like Zack Snyder's remake of DotD though. Paul F. Tompkins just saw BvS: DoJ. His hot take on Snyder is, "I like the themes of Zak Snyder movies. Themes like 'I hate buildings!' and 'I wish I could kick a building to death!'"

I don't usually go for those movies either because I find them depressing. But for some reason I go through bouts when I want to watch zombie movies all the time. I love World War Z. It has the very optimistic theme of people working together for the greater good. I'm looking forward to watch the UK zombie movie The Girl with All the Gifts. The movie is adapted from M.R. Carey's novel, which is itself an expansion of his short story Iphigenia in Aulis (the title provides a clue to the plot of the story). Brooklyn!

Yes. You.

Ooh, yes. Me too! I love Park Chan-wook's Stoker. I'm excited to see his adaptation of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. I really hope The Handmaiden will make it to Austin. However, the last few Asian movies to make it here were all Japanese animated films. The Chief Asia Film Critic of Variety likes the movie but she has some reservations, "Before long, however, the director of such extreme revenge thrillers as 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance' and 'Oldboy' slides back into his own febrile cinematic universe of eroticized torture and misogyny, rather submerging Waters’ theme of female rebellion and liberation." Side note. I'm so glad when a publication lets a person (a woman! from Hong Kong!) knowledgeable about Asian cultures review Asian movies. That way we get useful insights like, "The only defect, one that sometimes risks taking viewers out of the story, is the ensemble’s evident struggle to deliver sophisticated old-world Japanese dialogue, which somewhat hampers their spontaneity of expression," instead of crude, and almost always wrong, observations on the role Zen or Confucianism played in an Asian movie.

Ha. I had no idea Michael Keaton was noted for his comedic abilities. When I saw him on 30 Rock I thought, who knew Michael Keaton could do comedy! I love Constantine. Everyone is good in it, even Gavin Rossdale. Tilda Swinton's androgynous angel Gabriel blew me away. The special effects are great as well. I'm glad to see that the director, Francis Lawrence, went on to helm a few of the Hunger Games movies. Constantine is on Netflix for those who are interested.

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/bernie-sanders-parallel-parks-at-the-dnc-w-james-adomian-jen-bartels/ Bernie Sanders is on the latest episode of Hard Nation! He's very funny. Adomian is on that episode as well.

Actually "Les Intouchables" reminded me of a point I'd forgotten to make. In the States we get untraslated European movies all the time, and they certainly have their own sensibilities. Asia also have straightforward movies about love, friendship, family etc. There's definitely a bias as to the kind of Asian movies that are being shown in the West.

That's a good point, Smigg. I can see that certain genres do travel better. I'm sure Asian audiences will understand "The Office". Many Asians understand English and many Asian countries have English TV stations. Some countries even translate English shows into the countries' languages. Not to mention, there are Netflix and torrents. I'll keep "Les Intouchables" in mind. Omar Sy made a big impression on me in "Jurassic World".

There's a big difference between a dominant culture telling a story of an underrepresented culture and an underrepresented culture telling a story of a dominant culture. For example, Shakespeare's plays are often adapted in the Asian entertainment industries. Off the top of my head, Hamlet was remade into the Chinese historical drama The Banquet, and Yukio Ninagawa's celebrated production of Titus Andronicus (it was performed at the Royal Shakespeare theatre) has samurais in them. When they do that, they are saying look at us, we understand you, we are as cultured as you are. In fact, I remember The Banquet being criticized by the Chinese for pandering to the West. I'm actually fine with Hollywood remaking movies like Ghost in the Shell and Shall We Dance with non-Asian actors. I shudder to think of the end result were they to do a faithful remake. Using GitS as an example, a non-Japanese actress might be cast, might be a Chinese actress, and she would look just like all the other Asian actresses in Hollywood, as if there is only one type of Asian faces. My main concern is that only a few Asian stories are being told in the West. Mostly stories about fighting. It's as if Western audiences aren't interested in Asian people unless they are fighting and drawing blood. Reminds me a little of the gladiators in Rome. I can't think of any Asian modern romance, comedy and drama being championed by Hollywood.

No. Sometimes the models don't wear a shirt. Wow, we almost didn't have Pratt's Starlord. But yeah I agree on the focus on people's bodies.

Many times when an action movie come out I would see the stars on men's fitness magazines covers. I would also see behind-the-scenes of the male actors working out. I think we don't hear negative opinions about the male actors' bodies is because they changed them. (Affleck in particular is huge when compared to before.) I can't imagine the criticisms if those actors are not swole. I'm still going to watch Wonder Woman. Gal Gadot might not be my Wonder Woman, but she's still Wonder Woman. To paraphrase Danielle Schneider, I want a big-budget superheroine movie to succeed. I know, me neither. I saw this article in the A.V. Club and thought about your co-worker.

I don't feel like I'm tearing apart Diana. My objection is against the casting of Gal Gadot and the depiction of Wonder Woman. There have been so many interpretations of Wonder Woman. Throughout the years she got more and more muscular, her costume got covered up more, her features got less soft. It's fine that women in action movies are pretty and skinny, the problem is when they are all pretty and skinny. I thought hey, Wonder Woman is iconic so maybe DC will go against the Hollywood grain and cast a muscular woman, a woman whose features are strong and fierce in such a way that she would get the covers of Bust, Ms. and Diva magazine but she would not get contracts with fashion and comestics company, and she would wear something more functional and less sexy. I'm disappointed I didn't get the Wonder Woman I want. ETA: I shouldn't have used the phrase blandly pretty to describe a woman's looks, it's judgmental.

I haven't consumed any of the Wonder Woman products. Anything I know about her is through osmosis. That Steve sounds like a drip. It does sound like the filmmakers are using the past to comment on the present. It also sounds like the comments are going to be really basic and obvious stuff, and maybe even misguided, as the slavery line shows (I don't think it's edited.). Girl can fight. In one of my favorite movies, Sicario, Emily Blunt had a very raw fight scene and she's completely believable as an FBI agent who had trained extensively in fighting techniques. I would love to see her in more action movies. Ahahaha. I'm just curious to see if my hunches about Suicide Squad will be correct. After watching many nuns and monks in wuxia movies fight with fly-whisks, vajras, khakkharas etc., I'm very comfortable with the unritualistic use of ritualistic weapons. What I find truly disconcerting about the phurba in The Shadow is the knife crawling around like a spider and screeching.

I'm underwhelmed by the Wonder Woman trailer. Here we have another skinny, blandly pretty woman wearing skimpy bodycon costume who doesn't have the physicality to make her fight scenes believable (unlike Scarlett Johansson and Emily Blunt). And it looks like there's going to be some lovey-dovey stuff in the movie, which, if DC can cut out every child of Bruce Wayne from the franchise, why can't we leave out the romantic element in the first major superheroine movie. And I hate the "Well where I'm from, that's called slavery,” line. If being a paid secretary to a man is slavery, what do the people in Theymscira call kidnapping men, women and children from a continent, making them work without compensation, brutalizing, and killing them. Even the poster is problematic (I'll let The Headless Women of Hollywood blog tell you why.) But what do I know. I love a Tibetan goddess who's dark blue and who ended a corrupt dynasty by killing her own son, the crown prince. Who then drank his blood using his skull as a cup, ate his flesh, and used his flayed skin as a saddle. Here is my favorite heroine poster. Emily Blunt in the criminally underappreciated Edge of Tomorrow. Her hair is messy, and tied up, like a soldier's, not cascading down her shoulders. Her face is dirty from battle. Her uniform is a heavy unisex mech suit. Her pose is a traditional warrior's pose, she's not thrusting her chest out and arching her back. Oliver Sava of the A.V. Club recently wrote a great article titled "Betty & Veronica, Wonder Woman, and the pitfalls of cheesecake art" about sexualized images in comics. As long as I'm expressing unpopular opinions, I think Suicide Squad is going to bomb. Also, the amount of big graphics make navigating the forum difficult. I got frustrated with the posts after posts of huge graphics and decided not to shrink my image of Palden Lhamo. I've gone back and reduced its size. It would be nice if we could: 1. Limit the height of the graphics to 300 pixels (personally I try not to let my images exceed 250 pixels in height) and the width to 750 pixels. 2. Place multiple images side by side rather than one after another. 3. Use thumbnails if your image hosting site offers that function. 4. Try not to quote images and videos.

Go you, Ellen! Dropping knowledge!

The cat periodic table Tervis tumbler is cute.

And also read about the Tibetan goddess Palden Lhamo, who is METAL.

Since talon-like nails are the universal symbol of evil, we need not look outside of Western civilization for the inspiration behind Ying Ko's gnarly nails. In the unlikely event that the filmakers had carried out a modicum amount of research and wanted to demonstrate wealth through fingernails, I doubt they would have been able to resist giving Ying Ko the nail guards worn by upperclass women in the Qing dynasty. I have never met a Chinese man with long fingernails. After a cursory search, it is clear that Chinese men cultivating long fingernails is frowned upon by other Chinese people and the practice is limited to certain demographics. Kind of like dipping, Ed Hardy shirts, above-ground pools, horoscopes, open-carry etc. The trailers for Doctor Strange and Iron Fist sadden me. More than 20 years have passed since The Shadow and underrepresented cultures are still used as window dressing. Thankfully, audience are smarter now, and more open-minded. There are people like Mathey, who knows that what these movies depict are "Tibet", "China" and "Asia", exoticized places that have little basis in reality. There are also people like Elektra Boogaloo who questions what she reads and performs her own research even if the topic is somber. Remember the image of Chinese opium dens with their air of debauchery that The Shadow used in the beginning? It was actually the British who introduced large-scale opium trade into China in the 18th century. The British bought lots of stuff from China, but China did not want to buy anything from the British. In order to remedy this imbalance, Britain wanted to sell opium to China. China didn't want it. They knew opium is addictive and had banned the substance. The British (later joined by the French) fought two wars against China to make China legalize it. The wars and the opium trade devastated China. This is why a few East Asian countries have such severe drug laws (e.g. drug traffickers in China gets the death penalty, even if the drug is marijuana). And why relationship between China and the West is rather touchy. I urge people to read about the Opium Wars.

Happy Birthday, Ellen! Hope you'll have a great day!

An experienced improviser.

Sean caught Hayes! Unsurprisingly Tom isn't happy about it.

OMG. By now the Howl ads are practically James Bond scenes. We have a supervillian, an imposter, torture, and a Bond girl (Paul F. Tompkins).

I interrupt this thread to bring you the news that a sequel to Blair Witch Project is going to be released in September! http://www.avclub.com/article/comic-con-screening-reveals-adam-wingards-woods-ac-240013 OMGOMGOMG. The trailer made my stomach feel hollowed out, and I watched it on my iPad with the volume turned way down.

Hey Cam, thanks for entertaining my nosy questions. It hasn't occurred to me before, that if you have more than one person you might as well just buy the movie. You sound like a great dad!