Moving
Sunday, August 10, 2008
This blog has been moved to Wordpress.
posted by GMH @ 17:58,
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Saccharine
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Disgustingly happy!
Labels: balloons, dbsk, music, pop culture, south korea
posted by GMH @ 01:19,
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McFeely
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Mr. Rogers' full name is Fred McFeely Rogers.
Really.
I still love him though, and here are some more reasons why.
Edit: My radar completely missed that yesterday was Marcel Duchamp's birthday! He's another one on my growing List Of Dead Artists/Designers That I Would Give Almost Anything To Stalk (see also: Gropius, Walter; Mackintosh, Charles Rennie).
Labels: art, birthday, marcel duchamp, mr. rogers
posted by GMH @ 19:58,
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I Want To Hyakuretsukyaku Them In the Face
Listen.
And weep.
Part of me finds it odd that the movie will be only about Chun Li and not a more important character like Ryu, but then I remember that Hot Girl = Money, and the fact that heterosexual American men usually get the queasies when presented with half-naked men grunting and groping at each other onscreen, unless American football is involved.
Movies based on video games have a pretty colossal history of sucking (enter: Street Fighter 1994, Mortal Kombat, et al.) and this is easily no exception. But let's suppose for a moment that it won't be a maelstrom of Fail just because it's based on a video game, and turn our attention instead to the movie's individual players.
Wait, someone from American Pie is in this? And someone from the Black Eyed Peas? Wait, and it's directed by the same guy responsible for both Doom and Romeo Must Die?!
Dear lord, someone call Oscar.
Oddly enough, Kristen Kreuk was chosen to play Chun Li, although earlier there had been rumours of a casting that was even worse.
I know three things about Kristin Kreuk:
01 She "acted" in Smallville.
02 She is really beautiful.
03 She is half-Dutch, half-Chinese.
Chun Li is Chinese. Chinese girls do not look Caucasian (the photo is apparently from the Street Fighter movie). It's just a fact.
I don't mean to insinuate that hapas can't identify as Asians because of how "Asian" they may or may not look. Since Kreuk has never made any effort to identify herself as an Asian or half-Asian rather than a Caucasian, let's just assume that superficially she fits the role of Caucasian female, and prefers it that way, in which case her casting is a bit silly since, as aforementioned, Chun Li is Chinese.
Now that's not to say of course that sticking a random Asian girl into that role is right either, because honestly how many Asians - Japanese and otherwise - were completely unfazed by Zhang Ziyi's role in Memoirs Of A Geisha, or Lucy Liu's in Kill Bill? Unfortunately for people casting movies there are, as a general rule, much more noticeable differences between Asians of different ethnicities compared to Caucasians of different European-based backgrounds, not to mention the still-existing hostilities between the various Asian countries, making it easier/more worthwhile (for some) to call out ethnicity differences and perceived cultural snubs.
With the casting of Memoirs Of A Geisha, among others, one can possibly see a bit of the subconscious idea that Asians are all the "same," that no one will notice a difference anyway. And then there are people who castigate people like myself and insist that we're reading too much into it and really need to untwist our knickers because it's not that big a deal.
No matter how "civilised" society pretends to be, there is still Orientalism. That post remains for another day, when I'm feeling a bit more empassioned.
Conclusions:
01 I am not going to see this movie.
02 I suddenly crave rice.
03 I need Street Fighter for PSP.
Labels: film, hollywood, pop culture, street fighter, video games
posted by GMH @ 17:29,
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Silly Rabbit
Monday, July 28, 2008
Happy birthday today to Beatrix Potter, an amazing watercolourist and author of one of the most influential book series of my childhood. Her cake will have 142 candles this year.
Beatrix Potter is the reason why I know what a tam o'shanter is, and why for the past ten years I've felt guilty about the rabbit fur stole hidden in the back of the closet.
Labels: art, beatrix potter, birthday, peter rabbit
posted by GMH @ 03:05,
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