The Wiz Live! Wrap Up: Brand New Day
I had so much fun watching NBC’s airing The Wiz: Live! on network television. Having grown up with the original, I was curious to see how the new version would stand up. And now I’m going to slip into gush mode because you guys. YOU GUYS. IT WAS AWESOME. We sooooo needed this, especially in this time where most news about blacks are seeded with shootings, protests, micro-aggressions, and fear. The Wiz: Live! was a welcome — and very much needed — celebration of black culture in all its forms.
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Update Our Hard NOC Life Podcast Feed on iTunes
If you’re already a subscriber to the audio version of Hard N.O.C. Life, first THANK YOU! We know not everyone has the time or bandwidth to watch us on YouTube, so we started a podcast you can find and subscribe to on iTunes. Recently, we switched up our podcast feed to Soundcloud, so if you’ve subscribed to the original podcast, you’ll need to update your feed by going here.
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Guess We Don’t Need to See Batman v Superman Now
Since when did Jimmy Kimmel Live become the go-to place for movie studios to drop their most anticipated trailers? It made sense before to have all-Marvel or all-Star Wars editions — Disney owns ABC, after all — but using Kimmel to reveal Warner/DC’s formal entry into the cinematic superhero wars was a surprise. Like, why not use The CW’s two-part Flarrow crossover1 to show off their big guns? Corporate synergy, remember? Still, like a proper nerd, I tuned in to Kimmel to see the latest tease for what will be the biggest movie of March 2016.
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NOC Recaps Arrow: Hubris, Not Hope
As we know, Team Flarrow is trying to protect the Hawks from Vandal Savage, who wants to murder them because of destiny or habit or something. So everyone’s all teamed up, Kendra’s unlocked her hawking powers, and Oliver’s spotted his baby mama!
I’ve been so cautious this season, guys. Good things were happening. Oliver was LEARNING LESSONS. TEAM FLARROW WAS AWESOME. Despite some plot/exposition bumps, the team up in this half of the crossover was fun. There were things I wished for: Less Carter. ANY Snowlicity aside from their one nerd moment. Less white ancient Egypt (I’ll get on some of that later). But the Barry/Oliver moments were great — they’re wonderful foils for each other. As was anything with Cisco. Can he be my friend? Also he should be in every show. But just like we were burned last season with the Ra’s al Ghul arc, this Kid arc (I’ll come up with a better name for it another time) is only going to lead to terrible things. Unhappy fans. Annoyed fans.
NOC Recaps The Flash: It’s Getting Hawk in Here
Other title options: Ready to Hawk and Roll, Hawked and Loaded, Hawk of Ages, We Will Hawk You, Too Hawk Hawk Damn, and Drop It like It’s Hawk1.
Before we begin… does Hawkgirl “claim” to be white? Uh oh, this is hawkward… but it wouldn’t be too surprising. (See Sandra Hawke, Sin, and Ra’s Al Ghul). I personally went through Kendra Saunders’ twitter history to read her tweets and reactions and responses to identifying as white. I urge others to do the same and form an opinion after seeing both sides.
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NOC Recaps Arrow: Brothers Gonna Work It Out
We’re not going to do this recap like past ones. Mainly because the last episode of Arrow, “Brotherhood,” aired two weeks ago. Also, because I’m not Connie, whose recap game is much stronger than mine, there probably won’t be any Hamilton references either. Instead, we’re just going to touch on the main points as we prep for the second half of the Flarrow crossover tonight.
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Why an Asian American Iron Fist Matters
by MC Nedelsky in collaboration with MCU Exchange
Pop culture writers, whatever their chosen topic, write because they are passionate about the subject. First and foremost we’re fans, and we want to share our passion. But, like any writer, we also hope our words have an impact — that they will cause a reader to reflect, or think differently about something, or change their mind.
Keith Chow’s article on why we need an Asian American Iron Fist had that effect on me. Like many Marvel fans, I was very excited to see Iron Fist come to the screen. And like probably the majority of comics fans, I assumed the character would be a rich white guy. After all, that’s what he is the comics, right?
NOC Recaps Supergirl: Anger Management
After a couple of weeks of out-of-order continuity, we finally got back on track with “Red Faced,” the latest episode of Supergirl. In addition to the live action debut of Red Tornado — and despite the internet’s jokes when the look was revealed earlier, the Red Tornado actually looked pretty good in action. Still wish they kept his blue cape, though — the episode probably delivered the strongest storyline of the season so far.
NOC Recaps The Flash: Grodd + PTZD
It’s the return of Grodd! But we’re mainly dealing with the aftermath of Zoom. Not all of the destruction was physical; Barry’s spine has basically healed but the shame of losing has not yet scarred over. Well, hopefully he “gets back on his feet” soon because superhero legends need him! Let’s just think of Grodd as the big bad boss of this video game level.
I almost didn’t change the title “Gorilla Warfare,” the original was just too good.
How to Fall in Love with Your Writing
It’s 5:45 a.m. on Monday, November. 30, at the time of writing this article. For the past few hours I’ve been in writer mode which can best be described as Puppet Angel, hence the pic.
For most people it’s the start of a new week and the final day in the month. But for an intrepid lot, today is essentially Judgment Day.
The final hours of National Novel Writing Month are upon us. NaNoWriMo is perhaps the writing equivalent of Battle Royale/Hunger Games/Mortal Kombat/Thunderdome. Each year, many enter, but only a handful survive.
NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: Who Run the World? Girls!
The third episode of Into the Badlands — “White Stork Spreads Wings” — will be the last one to follow The Walking Dead since last night was the mid-season finale for everyone’s favorite zombie show. How Badlands will fare without its massive lead-in will be a question to be answered next week. If this episode is any indication, viewers should be coming back in full force even without a zombie pre-show.
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A Hard N.O.C. Life For Us
Our fearless leader Keith Chow doesn’t know I’m doing this and hopefully he won’t kill me too badly. I’ve been meaning to share this story because I know Keith’s too humble to do it himself. And since a certain someone celebrated a birthday last week, this seemed only appropriate.
Thankful for the Captain America: Civil War Trailer
Last night on a special all-Marvel edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live (corporate synergy, yay!), stars Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. were on to hype next summer’s Captain America: Civil War. Unsurprisingly, Disney and Marvel Studios used the opportunity to unveil the hotly anticipated first trailer, and predictably, the internet lost its shit. But in a good way!
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Help Dante Basco and Beau Sia Kickstart FailSafe
There is only one week left in the Kickstarter for Failsafe, a new independent video game by Game Over Studios. Co-created by poet Beau Sia and featuring voices by Ashly Burch and Dante Basco. To help get the word out about the campaign, Beau and Dante stopped by Hard N.O.C. Life to talk about the game and the new world of storytelling their exploring with Failsafe.
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NOC Recaps Supergirl: Lord Have Mercy
The fifth episode of Supergirl on CBS finally aired last night, and now we know how the continuity glitches from last week’s episode would be resolved. In case you didn’t know, the episode “How Does She Do It” was scheduled to air last week, but was postponed after terrorists attacked several sites in Paris and Beirut. Instead, they aired the Thanksgiving episode that introduced Livewire, but also picked up a couple story threads that weren’t woven until last night. So was the delay worth it?
NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: #WheresWidow
For obvious reasons, we’ve been riding the Into the Badlands train from jump, and now that it’s here — and a huge hit — we couldn’t wait to add the show to the Recap rotation. We’ve been holding on to this one for a while too, since we got an early look at episode two a few months ago. As much as I dug the pilot, I always thought the second episode was where the series was going to take off with audiences. And if nerd twitter was any indication Sunday night, everyone else agreed.
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Fear Leads — Anticipating Star Wars: The Force Awakens
by Brandon Thomas | Originally posted at The Fiction House
There’s only one thing about Star Wars: The Force Awakens that scares me…
It’s not the question of whether or not it’s going to be any good, because I know it will be. It’s not the possibility that the movie will birth an everlasting big screen dynasty, because it’s too early in the game to speculate on that. It’s not the intentional absence of Luke Skywalker from everything, because I think it’s admirable to preserve such a fundamental question for the actual movie. It’s not even minor spoilers, though I am taking some protective measures, and have sworn off any further clips, now that I have my Finn focused TV spot to watch over and over again.
No, what I’m afraid about more than anything else, is the true revelation of Finn’s overall role within this new trilogy.
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Remember the Time When Ancient Egypt was White?
Because Hollywood never learns its lesson, Summer 2016 is going to bring yet another whitewashed movie about Ancient Egypt. Late last week Lionsgate shocked the world and unveiled character posters for God of Egypt, a movie that, until now, literally no one had heard about. Then yesterday, they dropped an even more ridiculous trailer.
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NOC Recaps The Flash: Desperate Measures
The Flash has reached near terminal velocity in my eyes with this episode featuring The Flash family at it’s craziest and the welcoming of Linda Park to the team. We all knew Linda had to get into the Secret Speedster Society at some point, considering she is the future Mrs. Wally West, but I did not expect it to be so freaking fun.
Linda Park is… a ball of light.
NOC Recaps Supergirl: Electric Boogaloo
After the horrific attacks in Paris and Beirut over the weekend, CBS decided to postpone the already scheduled episode of Supergirl — which apparently centered around a terrorist attack in National City — and instead aired the Thanksgiving episode that was slated for next week. This shuffle in the schedule could have led to some continuity gaps, but apart from a weirdly resurrected Jimmy/Lucy relationship, it didn’t feel too out of place. So what did we think of the latest incarnation of Livewire’s origins?
The Daniel Wu Diet
by Lynn Chen | Originally posted at The Actor’s Diet
Oh, how I love when my fellow actors post photos of food, especially when they’re on set. The yumminess below is from Daniel Wu’s Instagram feed, most of them captured in New Orleans while he was filming Into the Badlands, a martial arts TV show very loosely based on the classic Chinese tale, “Journey to the West.”
SPX’s Black Art Matters Panel is Online
Back in September, we tried to get you all hyped for the 21st annual Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD. One of the main reasons for that excitement was the (controversially named) “Black Art Matters” panel moderated by legendary cartoonist Keith Knight and featuring artists C. Spike Trotman, Whit Taylor, Ron Wimberly, and Darryl Ayo.
If you missed out on SPX this year, you can still see the panel in its entirety after the jump since the show organizers have just posted it online.
NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: The Time is Now
Originally posted at Angry Asian Man
As we near the end of 2015, one thing is for sure: it’s a great time to be an Asian American television consumer. For the first time in history, you’ll need two hands to count the number of major television programs to feature Asian American leads! On ABC alone, you have shows like Fresh of the Boat, Dr. Ken, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Quantico.
This Sunday night, the biggest network of them all — AMC — throws its hat into the ring with Into the Badlands, a dystopian martial arts drama starring Daniel Wu. And I can safely say the show is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
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