Tag: Junko Goda

Origins2 Comments

Origins of The N.O.C.: Year One

The Nerds of Color

Believe it or not, today marks the one year anniversary of the official launch of this blog. (While we reposted Bao’s article that inspired the website on August 1, we didn’t officially kick off the site until this post on the 12th.)

A year later, we’ve grown exponentially across our various social media platforms thanks to all of you loyal readers, followers, subscribers, and likers. To mark the occasion, we’re going to look back at the secret origins of all of the NOCs who contributed this past year. Fortunately, our roster continues to grow, so you can keep track of future origin stories by following this tag.

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Guest Post, Movies, Roundtable2 Comments

Summer Blockbuster Showdown: Transformers Age of Extinction

Guest N.O.C.

Originally posted at You Offend Me You Offend My Family

Select Offenders will be reviewing this summer’s crop of Hollywood tentpole films with a scientifically tested set of criteria that was vetted, nurtured, dissected, and regurgitated through the pop-culture gadflies who have nothing better to do than annoy other productive people in the YOMYOMF office. So, we channeled their nitpicks of the incessant reboots, remakes and rehashes that are part and parcel with Hollywood summer movies into this ongoing summer blog series called the Summer Blockbuster Showdown. You can read previous roundtable reviews, which are all archived here. 

In this edition, we tackle Michael Mr. Stage Fright Bay’s latest masturbatory opus, Transformers: Age of Extinction! BTW, this roundtable review is chock full of spoilers. You’ve been warned!

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Movies, Star Wars2 Comments

Star Wars the Musical Parody Short Debuts

Nels

In late 2013, I heard that director Jeffrey Gee Chin (Lil Tokyo Reporter) and composer George Shaw (TableTop, Keye Luke, Hang Loose) were making a Star Wars musical fan film set in style to Disney musicals.

After many months of production, the short film Star Wars the Musical (Disney Parody) has now been released on YouTube and is sure to garner many views. In fact, our very own Junko was a production assistant for the film too!

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Roundtable, Sci Fi, Television4 Comments

NOCs of the Roundtable: R.I.P. Almost Human

Keith Chow

So the inevitable finally happened. After a season of steadily declining ratings and even more weeks of speculation. Fox finally pulled the plug on the J.J. Abrams-produced sci-fi series Almost Human. The show, which starred Karl Urban and Michael Ealy, was a popular one — around NOC HQ, at least — and will definitely be missed.

To bid the show a fond farewell, the Nerds once again took to the Roundtable to pay their respects.

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Marvel, Movies, Roundtable1 Comment

NOCs of the Roundtable: Kicking Off Cap Week

Keith Chow

If you hadn’t heard, a little indie movie called Captain America: The Winter Soldier opened over the weekend, and to no one’s surprise, its $96 million opening shattered box office records left and right. We at The Nerds of Color have been eagerly anticipating the release of The Winter Soldier for months now. Back when the first teaser hit, I was already claiming it as the best movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And now that it’s at a multiplex near you, we’re going to be celebrating, analyzing, critiquing this game changer of a movie all week.

We’re going to start it off by assembling our own team of top secret agents Nerds around the Roundtable and share our first impressions of the Captain America sequel. Caution: there will be spoilers. Read on at your own risk (but seriously, you should go see this already!)

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Anime, Movies1 Comment

Miyazaki Memory Lane: Horusu, Prince of the Sun

Junko

Every person has that storybook or movie (or cartoon) that they would watch over and over again until it would be worn out. For me, that’s 1968’s Horusu, Prince of the Sun a.k.a. Taiyō no Ōji: Horusu no Daibōken1. What’s this have to do with Miyazaki, you ask? While Horusu was Isao Takahata’s feature debut, Miyazaki was the key animator, storyboarder, and scene designer.

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Anime, Movies6 Comments

This Week, We’re Celebrating the Work of Hayao Miyazaki

Keith Chow

Hayao Miyazaki’s most recent film The Wind Rises was finally released in the U.S. over the weekend. Earning an estimated $306,000 from 21 theaters, Miyazaki’s final Oscar-nominated film has prompted the Nerds to reminisce about some of their favorite Studio Ghibli movies.

So all week, we’ll be hearing from many of the Nerds as they share memories about the movies that affected them the most.

In the meantime, you can get started by checking out some of our past Miyazaki coverage from recent months.

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Manga, Movies12 Comments

The Five Major Fails of Spike Lee’s Oldboy

Junko

It’s been a little over a day since I saw both versions of Oldboy — one by Spike Lee and one by Park Chan-wook — back to back. The more I reflect on the Spike Lee version, the worse and worse it gets in my head. So I’ll just barf out the major wrongs about this sad re-make and be done with it.

This write-up will be chock full of spoilers which will save you a lot of time and money. I’m also assuming that my readers have seen the original, Korean version of Oldboy. And if you’re keeping track at home, both versions (American and Korean) are based on the Japanese manga of the same name by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi.

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Anime, Movies, Sci Fi1 Comment

Akira After 25 Years: Then and Now

Junko

I distinctly remember watching Akira when I was about 10 years old. First off, Akira was NOT appropriate for a 10-year old kid, but I was hanging out with slightly older kids who wanted to watch it.

Even at that age, I already loved sci-fi, so I remembered liking the movie. Here are my 10-year old impressions of the movie that have stuck with me for the last 25 years:

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Anime, Movies1 Comment

Kaze Tachinu (aka The Wind Rises): Miyazaki’s Supposed Last Hurrah

Junko

The Los Angeles movie screening scene has been in quite a frenzy as movies are trying to qualify for the Oscar rat-race. This meant that Kaze Tachinu (風立ちぬ) was going to be on the big screen. Just as a disclaimer, I’m Japanese/English bilingual, so I did ignore all the English subtitles and can’t say much about the English content.

Kaze Tachinu, known as The Wind Rises in the States, is an ode to the generation who grew up with Miyazaki since the 1970s. It’s not filled with magic and intrigue, but brings forth Miyazaki’s never ending love for airplanes (you see cameo appearances of past planes including Gina’s private plane from Porco Rosso), the experience of flying, and the human spirit.

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Roundtable, Television1 Comment

NOCs of the Roundtable: Head Over Heels for Sleepy Hollow

Keith Chow

Before the season started, we did an episode of “Hard N.O.C. Life” in which we talked about the shows we were excited for. Sleepy Hollow made the cut, but we speculated that the show would probably be terrible. That said, we were all intrigued by the premise. Several episodes in, and it’s become one of the buzziest shows on television. It’s also one of the most diverse, with article after article pointing to its importance as a bellwether for diversifying TV’s primetime landscape.

Shows what we know for shitting on it back in August. Well, not all of us did. Jason sang the show’s praises as soon as the pilot premiered.

To look back at the first half of Sleepy Hollow‘s debut season, some of the Nerds assembled around the Roundtable once again. Here’s what they think of the show:

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