toastykitten

I haven't watched these yet, but some fun, free distractions:

Social Justice Jihadi - from comedian Sammy Obeid, full special on YouTube



Warner Bros released 31 free old movies on YouTube - Playlist here. On my to-watch list - Mr. Nice Guy with Jackie Chan, Chaos Theory with Ryan Reynolds, The Adventures of Pluto Nash with Eddie Murphy, Michael Collins.

Taskmaster's New Year's Treat, full episode

 this trailer for the Rose of Versailles anime:






No idea what's going on but I love the art. 

This company called Strike Gently has some amazing blankets: Cat Warrior, Be Gay, Do Crime, T Rex Cat are among my favorites.  

Accented Cinema has completed their Cinematic Themes and Visuals of Ancient China with Part 4, all the way up to the "Century of Humiliation":


My fave foul-mouthed chef Cadence Gao makes some Uyghur type dumplings and makes some points about colonialism. Or something; I dunno:

Duuuuude. Ok, I don't know if Parasite totally lived up to the hype, but that was really good. Also, watching it also made the Vulture's review of it even funnier, especially if you know about Bong Joon Ho's propensity to like, just make shit up, whenever Americans are being stupid to him. 

Consider the first shot of Parasite (the title itself is a metaphor): what looks to be an empty birdcage draped with socks in front of a window that’s partially below street level. In this apartment, all dreams of flight have been extinguished (the socks reinforce the connection to the dirt), while the low vantage signals exclusion — a mocking one when the residents, the miserably destitute Kim family, have their view blocked by a drunken yuppie pissing against a wall.

LOLOLOLOL. I mean, the name of the thing escapes me, but it's literally just their laundry hanging to dry? A lot of middle-class Asians have them, and we just have them because we are too cheap to dry everything in the dryer, not just because we're poor. 

Anyway, some things I found with better commentary than I can give (spoilers for everything):

Cultural Details You Missed in 'Parasite'

Subtitles Can't Capture the Full Class Critique in 'Parasite'

The Forgotten Neoliberal Man of 'Parasite'

Music: 



OMG the full Lip Sync Battle episode!



Movies, adding to my list, these are all going to make me cry:

No to Cats. What was that? Meh on Hustlers. Star-filled cast aside, it just looks really cliched. Meh to Jay and Silent Bob reboot. Whenever I see Kevin Smith now all I think about is that profile of him where he cheerfully admits to having no skills and no talent and only directs episodes of TV shows to have something to do.  

Yes to Terminator: Dark Fate because they're pretending that all the Terminators after T2 didn't exist, and also Linda Hamilton is back. 


Yes to His Dark Materials! Everything about it looks so good.


Yes to Mulan, even though Im ambivalent about how obviously it's being tailored to get past the Chinese government censorship body. I am also half and half on the pastiche of various things - Tang dynasty makeup + tulou Hakka house, etc, but on the other hand, as Jeannette Ng says, "Let a thousand Mulans bloom". 

Aladdin is played by a Middle Eastern dude!

Kind of wish I had those growing up.

Anyway, To All The Boys I Loved Before is so adorable and so sweet. It's perfect escapism.

Blockers is funny and both the trailer and the name is stupid. Sooo many good things:

• Teenagers, boys and girls, who are in control of their sexuality, who come to terms with their sexuality and figure it out on their own.
• Boys who are respectful of their partners' wishes, whether they say no, or yes, or they change their mind.
• Boys who know how to go down on their partners. (This may set up some unrealistic expectations for teenage girls, but I'll take it.)
• Parents who are open with their kids about sex and choices.
• Non-romantic female/male friendships!
• An interracial family with interracial children where the minority parent speaks perfect English and basically seems like she grew up and was born here, which she probably did.
• The kids are sooo funny, and honestly they may be more talented than the older, more experienced actors.
• This is more of a warning: there's a butt-chugging scene.

I have to say, though, watching this as the parent of someone who's going to be a teenager in a few years, (even though I enjoyed it) was fucking weird, and also terrifying.

It's really hard to talk about The Handmaiden without spoilers, but I'll try. It's based off of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, which was set in Victorian England's criminal underground. There's plot twists galore, some of it a little too off for me to buy it, and the second half kind of falters. But it was a pretty engaging book overall from what I remember of it. I actually think I like the movie a lot better, even though it's now set in Korea around the turn of the century, and there's a bunch of stuff that passes me by like the Korean/Japanese identity/hatred issues. It's also way weirder than the book. The actresses who play the protagonists are awesome, the scenery is stunning, and it's very unsentimental. It's currently free on Amazon Prime if you have it.


The Last Tycoon is available on Hulu, and it's in Mandarin. (The trailer is in Cantonese.) So...this is what I think happened. Wong Jing, the director, watched Inglorious Basterds. And he thought, this is great, but it needs something more. Like...a triad boss with a heart of gold and a tragic, doomed love story. Like LoveHKFilms asks, are you really a mobster if you eschew drugs, gambling, and prostitution in your business operations? Features Chow Yun Fat and Sammo Hung, being way better actors than this movie actually is. It's also soooo sappy, and each battle set piece is so epically drawn out.