The Farewell

I finally got to see The Farewell yesterday, and it was lovely. Unlike Crazy Rich Asians, this film portrayed a middle class Chinese family, and the wedding was set in a typical banquet hall, with the usual feast, photos, toasts, karaoke, drinking games, etc. One branch of the family had moved to America, another branch to Japan, and the bride was Japanese, so it was a truly international family. Most of the dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese, with some English when Billi is speaking with other English speakers. The poor Japanese bride is unable to understand the family talking around her but she does get a translator to speak for her at the wedding reception. Nai Nai thinks she's dumb, and I often in my real life feel dumb when the rest of my family is speaking Vietnamese and I don't understand.

Awkwafina did great with both the humor and the emotional drama. The other actors were wonderful too, as the family grew increasingly tense and anxious around Nai Nai, and they discussed the differences in East and West views of what burdens a family must bear. Nai Nai's sister tells Billi that Nai Nai lied to her husband when he was dying too, so why should she be angry with them for lying about her lung cancer? In fact, the movie begins with Nai Nai calling Billi from a hospital and she lies to her granddaughter that she's visiting a relative at their house. There are after all numerous white lies we tell our loved ones every day, with good intentions.

I'm hopeful that more Asian American movies will get made now, and this won't just be a passing fad that's forgotten like Joy Luck Club years ago. Crazy Rich Asians was a luxurious, over-the-top fantasy, but there should be room for all kinds of Asian stories now.

Politics

I'm happy to hear that Wendy Davis is running for Congress, even if it's not Fort Worth anymore. I didn't like her being on the sidelines so long after her failed campaign for governor.

Meanwhile, the UK has chosen a new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Is he going to make Brexit even worse? I can't keep up with it anymore.

There was an article about Al Franken, stirring up all his apologists again, saying the scandal was drummed up by Republicans and we fell for the trick. That was ONE of his accusers. There were many others. I hate everybody minimizing his groping and harassment as just humor and misunderstandings. Yes, it's not rape, but it's still creepy behavior done without consent. What, do they want Franken to run again? Fuck no! Don't take him back. You wouldn't take back Louis C.K., would you? Don't you have any moral principles, or is it just partisanship for you? Make them fucking go away and be quiet. I'm sick of guys thinking they can just wait it out and re-emerge like nothing happened. Fuck them! It's bad enough we can't get rid of the rapist in the White House or the Supreme Court, but to have so-called progressive men get off scot free as well is beyond shitty. Egomaniacs and false allies who were only pretending to be on our side, only when it suited them. Fuck off! And I wish their apologists would shut up and move on to something actually helpful.

Phase 4

So at ComicCon, Marvel announced their upcoming movies, and I wasn't really interested in the new Chinese superhero movie because I don't read comics and don't know that character. But then I read that they cast Simu Liu from Kim's Convenience, and I'm quite happy for him. Plus Awkafina is in it and there's a new Mandarin character included. (Ben Kingsley had played an actor pretending to be the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, only to have the real villain be a white guy.) For them to finally cast a Chinese actor as Mandarin, instead of all those fake-outs before, is long overdue.

Plus they're rebooting Blade with Mahershala Ali. I never saw the original vampire movies, but have heard they were good precursor of a black superhero prior to Black Panther. Is Phase 4 finally going to be really diverse in both actors and directors? They've been so slow to get to this level of inclusion. I hope they don't squander it.

I'm still not going to watch every Marvel movie because Scarlet Johansson has burned too many bridges for me to support Black Widow anymore. Plus I'm so damn sick of Spiderman and hate the weird thing with the adults making the teenager responsible for Iron Man's legacy, etc. Stop putting crazy pressure on a kid!

Movies

Awkwafina's new movie The Farewell has not come to my area yet. (Well I started looking last week and there was a one-night showing listed at an Alamo theatre in Dallas, but now it's gone from there. Was it just a preview for local movie critics, or what?) I did see a poster for it at a Grapevine theater, but no date, and the Angelika theater has a coming soon listing for July 26th, so I guess that's when it's coming back to Dallas. I really want to see it, but it's so far to drive. I want to wait until it comes closer, but I hope I don't miss it due to a short release window. I must be misremembering, because I thought I previously heard that this movie would come out on Netflix. Did I confuse it with something else?

As for other movies, I don't want to see Toy Story 4, because Pixar has to stop going back to this well; they need to leave endings alone and move on already. Other studios keep having revivals of franchises that are decades old too. I'm kind of curious about the new Lion King because I did love Favreau's Jungle Book. But then I remember how stupid and illogical it is for prey animals to bow down to their predators in Lion King, and how unfair it is for the hyenas to be depicted as greedy villains who devastate the lands. It's like how the Western ranchers demonized wolves as pests to be exterminated, leaving a giant hole in the ecosystem for years. In real life nature, there's no good or bad animals; it's just life and survival. I wonder if it will be worse to see this imaginary human-made political kingdom grafted onto CGI photorealistic animals like it's pretending to be a nature documentary instead of a fantasy. I've been ambivalent about the original film for years, and this remake probably isn't going to update the parts I didn't like before. I did watch the recent Aladdin and enjoyed most of it except some slow parts and prolonged dancing scenes.

In this unending summer heat, an escape to an cool movie theater is very refreshing, but I wish the selection of movies were better. When is the new Miss Fisher movie going to arrive, or at least announce a release date?

There's always TV I guess, and PBS has a new kids show Molly of Denali about a girl in Alaska, and her friends and family. There was a good episode called "Grandpa's Drum" which mentioned how Molly's grandfather was sent away to the old Indian boarding schools where they tried to make kids be white and destroy their ties to their family and Native culture. Such a dark time, with lasting effects.

Disney Princesses

Finally we have the first trailer for the live-action remake of Mulan. Looks great so far, and I liked seeing Rosalind Chao as the mother. I'm a little confused by the scenes of Mulan fighting with long hair, though. She's not going to chop it off to disguise herself? Well, it does look like the soldiers are wearing some kind of headgear while in the army, but that still doesn't explain the scenes when she's letting her long hair flow free. Is she going to be revealed as female and allowed to stay and fight? Is she going to be like Joan of Arc? Not sure how the witch villain figures into this yet. We'll see I guess.

I don't miss Mushu the dragon. I HATED the stupid comic relief sidekick characters in Mulan, Aladdin (yes that means I hated the Genie), and other Disney films of the time. I found them belittling and demeaning to the main story. I don't really remember the songs in Mulan, either, so I don't really care if it's musical at all. It could be like the CGI Jungle Book, where they did just a couple of songs, but mainly the story was serious and dramatic. Really want this Mulan to be good. I wonder if we'll get new Disney dolls next year. Anything's better than the current Hasbro-made princess dolls with the fucked up tiny shoulders. Whereas Mattel's Barbie had a waist problem, Hasbro has its own issues with distorting human bodies.

Anyway, there was also an announcement about a black actress to play Ariel in the new Little Mermaid, followed by a racist backlash. So stupid! And trying to argue that she was Danish? She lives in the fucking water; she's not a land dweller, of any human country! And since Disney totally changed the story and ending from Hans Christian Anderson, there's no fucking need to use that source material for determining the character's race. (It's like saying Disney should go back to the Ice Queen roots instead of the new story they made in Frozen.) A mermaid is a magical being like a unicorn or fairy or even the sea witch Ursula. Anything is possible for a magical being, and there can also be different versions of the same being, such as the difference between European dragons and Chinese dragons. If the setting is the Caribbean, why can't Ariel be black? Tired of the pointless outrage.