Labor Day

Well I'm happy that Shang-Chi broke box office records this weekend. It means a lot for Asian representation in this country to have another Gold Open. I know the Delta variant is still out there, but I'm vaccinated, and the movie theatres should be enforcing mask mandates anyway. Eventually the FDA should approve booster shots, though I hope they approve vaccines for kids first, so they can be safe too. (I did read somewhere that, now that Pfizer's vaccine is approved, doctors can individually give vaccines to young kids for "off-label" use, but I don't know if that's true.)

I enjoyed Shang-Chi, though I didn't get some of the references to Wong and his cage fight partner, as I've not seen Dr Strange. I also was very annoyed that nobody spoke the name of Death Dealer in the movie, so I had no idea who the fuck he was; I had to google him afterward based on the fact that he was masked. The faceless animal Morris freaked me out a little, and I was surprised that he was based on a Chinese mythological creature called a hundun. I did like the return of Trevor Slattery as a call back to Iron Man 3. The women characters got to shine as well, and the villain Wenwu thoroughly debunked the racist old caricature of the Mandarin; there was no trace of his comics Fu Manchu origins. He was a complicated villain with sympathetic moments who still had to be defeated, sort of like Killmonger. The protector dragon was very beautiful and it flew in spirals sort of like the dragons in Raya and the Last Dragon.

Meanwhile, there's a new Native American show called Reservation Dogs, about a gang of teens trying to get out of Oklahoma through crime. It has an Indigenous cast and crew, like Peacock's Rutherford Falls. Unfortunately, I don't have FX or Hulu, so I can't watch it myself. It's fairly acclaimed, though, so I'll have to see if it comes out on DVD later.

The drama about the new Jeopardy host was such a roller coaster. Sony finally fired Mike Richards after initially letting him keep his executive producer role. I don't know why they even hired him in the first place given his track record of discrimination at The Price is Right. I'm starting to not care who the permanent host is going to be, because the brand is so tainted by this scandal.