Tag: Into the Badlands

Martial Arts, Recaps5 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: Friends All Scattered to the Winds

Keith Chow

After more than a year off the air, AMC’s dystopian martial arts epic Into the Badlands has finally returned! And with it, so have these NOC Recaps. Speaking of which, I’m going to try to title each recap with a line from Hamilton because 1.) seriously, have you met me?; and 2.) the Badlands writers have basically challenged me as much. So, appropriately enough, the Season Two premiere is named after a lyric from “Yorktown.”

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Martial Arts, Television6 Comments

Fans Sound Off on Into the Badlands Couple Sunny and Veil

Monique

Originally posted at Just Add Color

Into the Badlands is coming into its second season March 19, and even though we’re psyched about the level of action and and suspense, we’re also focused on the family aspect of the show, which is worrying about how Sunny’s going to get back to his family, Veil and their newborn baby.

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Marvel, Television9 Comments

Five Showrunners Who Could Have Gotten Iron Fist Right

Keith Chow

Three years ago, when I initially wrote about casting an Asian American in the lead role on Iron Fist, I had no idea the NOC would become ground zero for the #AAIronFist movement. I just never thought an Asian American Danny Rand was that radical a notion! Now that we’re on the eve of the show’s debut on Netflix — in addition to its star’s recent twitter tantrum — years-old arguments are starting to resurface on twitter and elsewhere. Coupled with early reviews savaging the series, I figured now was as good a time as any to resurrect one more Iron Fist thinkpiece before (hopefully) never having to talk about this goddamn show ever again.

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Hard N.O.C. Life, Podcasts3 Comments

BuzzFeed’s Susan Cheng on the State of AAPI Pop Culture

The Nerds of Color

It’s been nearly a year since we were hit with the double whammy of Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johannson. Now with Iron Fist and Ghost in the Shell just around the corner, we’re joined by BuzzFeed News’ entertainment reporter Susan Cheng to let us know where Asian Americans currently stand in the greater pop cultural landscape.

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Martial Arts, Television8 Comments

Venturing Into the Badlands

Dennis R. Upkins

One of my favorite television series in the last year is Into the Badlands. The noirish dystopian Wuxia drama is the perfect blend of action, mystery and mysticism that keeps my eyes glued to the flatscreen.

As is the case with all things PoC excellence, Into the Badlands has caught its share of hate from racist white fandom. I’m not talking about legit criticisms but nitpicking and feeble excuses that are never made for legions of lesser white shows.

Needless to say I’m not having it.

When the shade is thrown, I’m honor bound to make the haters day a “Sunny” one.

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Martial Arts, Television3 Comments

The Imperator and The Widow

Eric S.B.

Last year was the year of the most iconic feminist leading lady in action/sci-fi, arguably the most in cinematic history: the one and only Imperator Furiosa played be Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road. Thanks to a fellow NOC, I have finally finished the way too short first season of Into The Badlands. Following Furiosa and a long history of leading women in Hong Kong action cinema with better acting chops and doing more roundhouse damage than their male co-stars (Michelle Yeoh will be back soon as Yu Shu Lien people!), Into the Badlands also introduced us to strong heroines whose stories I hope to better understand in more detail in a second season. More than Wu’s Sunny, more than the avatars, even more than my man Cung Le, it was Emily Beecham’s show-stopping performance as The Widow that locked me in.

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Television6 Comments

My Top 15 Television Series of 2015

Dennis R. Upkins

They say there’s nothing  good on television. Clearly, more than a few shows were trying to disprove that saying. 2015 kept me busy in terms of reviewing shows but more than a few proved to be well worth it.

As is the standard, for a series to be reviewed (much less nominated), it must meet the guidelines of my Media Litmus Test.

So without further adieu, the following are my Top 15 Television Series of 2015:

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Martial Arts, Recaps, Television2 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: Bloody Barons

Keith Chow

After last week’s episode ramped up the stakes for our heroes, we headed into the first season finale with a lot of questions that needed answers. Who poisoned Jade? Will Quinn take advantage of M.K.’s gifts? Will Sunny turn on his young apprentice to secure passage on the River King’s ship? Did the Widow survive her duel with Sunny? Will Veil blame Sunny for the death of her parents? Will the show come back for a second season? And why are there only six episodes for the season?

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Martial Arts, Recaps, Television2 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: The Butterfly Effect

Keith Chow

Continuing our recap catch up, the penultimate episode of Into the Badlands was clearly the most interesting of the season. And that’s too bad because after this weekend’s season finale, we don’t know if AMC will be bringing the show back for a second one. We hope so since all the pieces are finally in place for an epic showdown between good, evil, and everything in between.

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Martial Arts, Recaps, Television2 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: Warriors vs. Clippers

Keith Chow

Last night’s Into the Badlands — clunkily titled “Two Tigers Subdue Dragons” and not to be confused with this — was tasked with propelling us into the end of the season. In addition to a promised Baron v Baron showdown, the episode was the first to effectively use an episode-ending cliffhanger to guarantee viewers will tune in for the final two entries of its debut season. But did it deliver?

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Martial Arts, Recaps, Television

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: Who Run the World? Girls!

Keith Chow

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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Martial Arts, Recaps, Television2 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: #WheresWidow

Keith Chow

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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Guest Post, Martial Arts, Television

The Daniel Wu Diet

Guest N.O.C.

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.”

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Martial Arts, Television7 Comments

NOC Recaps Into the Badlands: The Time is Now

Keith Chow

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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Martial Arts, Television1 Comment

Follow the N.O.C. to Win Into the Badlands Swag

Keith Chow

We’ve been gearing up all week for the debut of Into the Badlands this Sunday night after an all-new episode of The Walking Dead. Yesterday, we re-posted Timothy Tau’s Hyphen interview with star Daniel Wu. I also had a chance to briefly talk with the Hong Kong movie icon about martial arts and stereotypes, but more importantly, we’re teaming up with AMC to giveaway some really cool Into the Badlands goodies.

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Guest Post, Interview, Martial Arts, Television3 Comments

Daniel Wu Goes Into the Badlands

Guest N.O.C.

by Timothy Tau | Originally posted on Hyphen

Daniel Wu is a Chinese American actor/director/writer/producer that has already had quite an impressive career overseas in Hong Kong, appearing in over 60 films there — many of them box-office hits —  and also winning awards for his directing, producing and performance work (such as the “Best New Director Award” at the Hong Kong Film Awards for his directorial debut The Heavenly Kings in 2006, which he also wrote, produced and starred in, and a Golden Horse Award for “Best Supporting Actor” in Jackie Chan’s New Police Story in 2004. He will also be starring in Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie in 2016.

Wu breaks into American TV airwaves on Sunday, November 15th (at 10/9c) with the debut of AMC’s Into The Badlands, which has been receiving buzz as a hotly-anticipated new martial arts drama/action television show featuring not just one but two Asian American leads — Aramis Knight, a young actor of Pakistani and East Indian descent, also plays supporting character M.K. alongside Wu’s main protagonist Sunny. In this interview, readers will appreciate Wu’s illuminating answers, in-depth insight no doubt informed by seasoned experience and hard-won achievements on both sides of the Pacific.

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Conventions, Television12 Comments

Is AMC Finally Embracing Diversity This Fall?

Keith Chow

It’s hard to believe it’s already been a week since Comic-Con started, but here we are in that post-Con daze, and I’m still recovering. While I might need some more time before getting back into regularly scheduled posting, I didn’t want to leave before I comment on a couple of the trailers that came out of SDCC. No, not this one or that one. Instead, I want to focus on the early looks that came out of the AMC presentations and how the network is kicking off the post-Don Draper era by seemingly embracing diversity in the casts of its newest shows.

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