Tag: Guest Post

Movies, Reviews1 Comment

NOC Review: ‘Jungle Cruise’ is a Big Screen Must-See E-Ticket Ride

Sabina Graves

As a kid of the ’90s who loved going to Disneyland, never missed The Rock laying the Smackdown Thursday nights on WWE, and who was majorly obsessed with action adventures like The Mummy, this movie may have been made for me. Disney’s Jungle Cruise is a return to form for big movies with lots of heart, laughter, and a mighty dose of action-adventure that needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

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DC Comics, Television2 Comments

Disappointment For Người Tôi In HBO’s ‘Watchmen’

Guest N.O.C.

by Adam Chau

Since the finale of HBO’s Watchmen, I’ve been trying to reconcile my initial and absolute love for the show along with the eventual (and building) disappointment that I felt by the final episode for the Vietnamese characters and lịch sử brought into the show — but also keeping in mind that at its heart it’s a story about a Black Female Protagonist, the impetus for PTSD the Tulsa Race Riots, aka Massacre (which people still don’t know about), and the trauma and rising of a Black American lineage — không gia đình Việt Nam.

In that way it’s not a straight line from one thought to one conclusion — it’s the questions and the feelings they’ve brought up, their validity in a fictional world clearly designed to take on racism by POC, where there is inclusivity, but where I also can’t help but feel some of the underlying tones are still a recycle of already recycled stories, fictional and beleaguered, where Vietnamese and Asian Americans are still not fully embraced.

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Guest Post, Movies

‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ is All About Family and Growing Up

Guest N.O.C.

By Esther Kim

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil reunites Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and Aurora (Elle Fanning) as they face their biggest challenge: growing up.

Sure, there are the fey people wanting to come from behind the shadows and a potential battle between them and humans, especially with an evil queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeiffer) pulling the strings from behind the throne. But the main story is really the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora.

“I feel the huge part of the success from the first film is that it had a strong emotional core,” said director Joachim Rønning during the global press conference in Beverly Hills. “I think that was the most important to me to continue telling that story. The story about Maleficent and Aurora. That’s what I can relate with as a parent, myself.”

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News, Television2 Comments

Opinion: The Gillis-SNL problem

Laura Sirikul

By Brian Chu

We were so close. So close to having a genuinely positive and momentous news story about Saturday Night Live hiring its first cast member of Chinese descent in its 45-year history. And then, Shane Gillis ruined it. Ruined it with his reminder that no matter how much we like to think America has progressed in addressing diversity, the undercurrent of racism is never far behind.

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Guest Post, Movies, Television5 Comments

Whitewashing is White Supremacy: Why Asian American Representation Matters

Guest N.O.C.

by Kimberly Ta | Originally published at Project Ava

With the latest release from Netflix, it turns out that Asian Americans will continue to get the shaft in 2017.

In March, Netflix released their trailer for the American adaptation of Death Note, a wildly popular manga series, which debuted on the world’s leading Internet television network on August 25. Death Note is a Japanese manga series written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. As of 2015, the series has over 30 million copies in circulation worldwide and has won international awards as well as numerous award nominations domestically in Japan. It is regarded as one of the top 10 manga series of all time. It also happens to be one of my favorites, so this fight on racist bullshit has just became personal.

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Guest Post, Movies11 Comments

TIFF Review: The Birth of a Nation

Guest N.O.C.

by Joelle Monique

In watching The Birth of a Nation I was a little destroyed. There’s so much to unpack. Nat Turner is a legendary figure in the Black community — a former slave who removed his own shackles. It’s a story I’ve wanted to see on screen for a long time. The reviews out of Sundance were huge. Then, news of Nate Parker rape charges and acquittal broke. I debated a long time about whether or not to cover the story when I came to TIFF. Eventually, I decided that a film this prominent and this culturally invested couldn’t be ignored. I have mixed feelings about what I saw. I’m going to take it slow.

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DC Comics, Guest Post, Television7 Comments

Supergirl: An L.A. Story for Today

AJ Joven

by AJ Joven

It must have happened when I noticed Kara running in front of a slightly obscured monument that could only have been at Pershing Square. The flat sky scrapers, palm trees, and the technicolor brightness of the world all felt so familiar. An alien, misunderstood and hiding in plain sight, here in DC’s analog of Los Angeles is what makes Supergirl such a watershed moment: it takes this specific angle of the City and wears it unabashedly. As I’ve been playing catch up on the series (sorry… as a Filipino, I’m generally late to everything), I’ve found lots to like about the confident voice in Supergirl. Often steeped in questions of identity, Supergirl’s writers send up the concepts of being a professional woman, a millennial, and, most personal to me, an immigrant with swagger and intent. Seeing National City be so clearly depicted as Los Angeles (seriously, that flat top sky line is unique, y’all) and all of the auxiliary connotations involved in that is not, to my mind a mistake. It is, however, a first.

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Anime, Guest Post, Movies26 Comments

Some Thoughts on Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell

Guest N.O.C.

by Jon Tsuei

[Ed. note: This essay first appeared as a series of tweets on Jon’s twitter account and is being re-presented with his permission.]

I’ve been seeing a lot of defenses for the ScarJo casting that seem to lack a nuanced understanding of a Ghost In The Shell as a story.

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Guest Post, Television30 Comments

Three Reasons Why #Richonne is a Black History Month Gift

Monique

Originally posted at COLOR

Hip hop hooray, Richonne (Rick and Michonne) is now officially canon in The Walking Dead! And, as luck would have it, such a development has happened in one of the most hallowed of months, Black History Month.

This didn’t go unnoticed by many on Twitter:

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DC Comics, Guest Post, Television8 Comments

Martian Manhunter Needs His Own Show

Monique

How come it seems like there’s no love for the Martian Manhunter out in these streets? The Martian Manhunter, aka J’onn J’onzz, is one of the core members of the Justice League, yet J’onn seems to be severely underrated. I’m not completely sure why, since J’onn is probably one of the most compelling DC superheroes in the pantheon. But to me, it would seem that DC Comics isn’t paying attention to a goldmine of an opportunity.

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Guest Post, Marvel, Streaming, Television85 Comments

Black Mask, Yellow Peril: Anti-Asianism in Netflix’s Otherwise Brilliant ‘Daredevil’

Guest N.O.C.

by Takeo Rivera

So let’s get one thing out of the way: it’s probably safe to say that Marvel and Netflix’s Daredevil is the finest piece of television ever made in the superhero genre. With its stellar cast and consistently tight writing and direction, the show can easily go toe-to-toe with any other major serialized TV drama in this golden age of Mad Mens and Breaking Bads, elevating superherodom to an unequivocal status of high art in much the way Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica elevated the space opera. And, as a cherry on top, Daredevil happens to be one of the most progressive shows of the genre; in particular, Matt Murdock battles not some alien Super-Wario intent on blowing up the planet with an ancient glowing Rubik’s cube, but a scion of urban “redevelopment” — read gentrification — in Wilson Fisk, and spends an unhealthy time fighting white collar crime and community displacement by punching the crap out of it.

But Daredevil also has one massive problem: Asians. That is, Asians are the problem, and Daredevil’s problem is that Asians are a problem.

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