toastykitten

We rented Sinners last night. Damn, that was so good. I've seen people call it "overstuffed" but it is done in the best way. I love how the first hour is basically a slow burn. I might have more to say about it, but I wanted to focus a bit on the Chinese characters, because not only are they Chinese straddling two different worlds, but they are more specifically from TOISAN/HOISAN (my people!). At the end credits, I noted that Ryan Coogler not only hired a Chinese cultural consultant, he also got an Irish cultural consultant and a historical gambling one.

He specifically hired Dolly Li, who made this documentary for AJ+ about Chinese food in America, and in this section, specifically about the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta, who are most likely to have come from the Toisan area:



In the one-shot intro of the Chinese characters, one goes from one grocery store they own to the other one, and one store served the black community, and the other one served the white people, taking the inspiration from the store-owners in the documentary.

Also noting that Ryan Coogler is from Oakland, where a significant portion of the Chinese population is also from Toisan.

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Was surprisingly good. Like just much more enjoyable than the past few years of Marvel movies. It's also actually about something! Depression and grief, which seems to be a common theme among a lot of recent media. Florence Pugh really carries the movie, actually.

is really fun and entertaining and has a lot of practical stunts. Anyway, it's on streaming on Peacock right now. Highly recommended!

YouTube has a bunch of Chinese/HK movies for free with ads?

Recently watched:

Reign of Assassins - Starring Michelle Yeoh as a former assassin trying to live a normal life when her past catches up to her and she needs to protect her commoner husband. It is a John Woo production so this is appropriately off-the-wall in terms of plot and fight scenes. 

Detective Dee & the Mystery of the Phantom Flame - A Tsui Hark production starring Andy Lau as Detective Dee; story is like Sherlock Holmes set in the Tang dynasty as the first, formidable Empress Wu Tzetian ascends the throne. This are apparently other Detective Dee movies, all of them of varying quality. 

Mixed feelings overall about Tigertail. I really love the actors. It was beautiful and gorgeous, and it made me cry in places. But...the dialogue just did not ring true to me at all and I don't feel like we got any depth with any of the other non-protagonist characters. It's too bad. New Bloom has a pretty good critical review, that also delves into the language/dialect issues that kind of went over my head as I don't speak Mandarin or Taiwanese.

This was hella (I'm back in NorCal, back to saying hella now) entertaining:

I really appreciate the Fast&Furious franchise's commitment to being completely stupid and over the top. I love how the trailer opens with both Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel wearing the white tank tops.



Three Women of Chuck's Donuts (NYer) by Anthony Veasna So

Why is Vietnamese Food in America Frozen in the 1970s? by SF Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho. I have to admit I laughed when I saw this article, because my family's food is basically frozen from when my parents immigrated here. Nobody makes the stuff my mom makes anymore. It's too old-fashioned. 

The Real Reason Why Fans Hate The Last Season of Game of Thrones - It's not just bad storytelling—it’s because the storytelling style changed from sociological to psychological.- Interesting food for thought. I actually haven't been watching the show that much, and have been getting spoiled for everything from my ranting husband (by choice, I don't really care anymore). I also never finished the books - I think I may have gotten through three or four of them, and may have thrown the book when I got to a chapter that opened up with Tyrion pissing off the side of a boat or something.

I am having a hard time getting worked up about Google having all of my receipts, and sorting them usefully, if I have purchased them through an app for which I used a Google account. I have always assumed that this was the way Google worked. There's plenty to criticize Google about, but I don't really think this is one of them.

Ok, the His Dark Materials trailer actually looks pretty good? 



Exactly as it says.

Holy shit that was Michael Bay levels of dumb direction with Michael Scott levels of dialog wrapped up in some smarmy sexist cheese whip.

What a waste of Donnie Yen.

After the hype: Black Panther's Legacy: It's interesting, reading this, to see how much the criticisms of Black Panther mirror many of the same concerns about Crazy Rich Asians, especially among the non-diasporic crowd. Especially in the character of Killmonger - that his character wasn't fully fleshed out enough - because for me, and I think, many Americans, we can already "read" into a lot of things that wouldn't necessarily be known to others not in America, about Oakland, the police, the CIA, etc.