Tag: Shawn Smith

Martial Arts, Movies, Roundtable12 Comments

NOCs of the Roundtable: Best Fight Scenes Ever

The Nerds of Color

As our friend Angry Asian Man broke the nerdtastic news this week that some fine fighters from The Raid would be joining the cast of Star Wars, it seemed as good a time as any to convene a roundtable of some of us martial arts film enthusiasts here at the NOC to talk about our favorite martial arts fight scenes.

Before we shared our favorite scenes with one another, we guessed there would be significant overlap, especially concerning the great Bruce Lee. Sure enough, each of us had picked at least one Bruce Lee scene on our individual lists. To avoid repetition, we decided not to double up, so as you can see some folks wrote about legendary Bruce scenes and the rest of us wrote about alternates — but please trust, we keep Bruce at the front of our fighting hearts.

Who’s not on the list, though? Uma Thurman. Just… no.

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DC Comics, Roundtable, Television

NOCs of the Roundtable: All the Flarrow Feels

The Nerds of Color

Wow. It’s been two days since the epic crossover between The Fastest Man Alive and the Emerald Archer blew up the internet and we are still thinking about it! Even though Christelle and Connie dropped 5,000 words combined on both episodes, we still have more to say. So we reconvened the Roundtable and brought in some of the other Nerds to talk through their Flarrow Feels.

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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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Conventions, Hard N.O.C. Life

Stay Classy, San Diego Comic-Con

The Nerds of Color

Another year, and another San Diego Comic-Con has come and gone. In the wake of the annual ritual of nerds gathering in Southern California, the Hard N.O.C. Life crew convene to discuss the biggest announcements that emerged from the convention!

Joining Keith on the panel are Comics and Cosplay host Ian (@ComixNCosplay), ODU criminology prof Shawn, and nerdcore extraordinaire — and Comic-Con attendee — Random aka Mega Ran (@MegaRan).

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Sci Fi, Television5 Comments

A Short Obituary for Almost Human

Robert S.

Last week, the other NOCs convened a Roundtable to hash out their feelings about the cancellation of Almost Human. I did not join in because I wanted some time to sit with my thoughts about the show and contemplate what Fox was attempting to do this television season.

Best as I can figure, Fox was clearly fishing in somewhat uncharted waters. On one hand, sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Dads showed the network’s commitment to a tried-and-true comedy formula peripheral to the nerd media diaspora. In the case of the former, it worked like a charm. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, having won the Golden Globe for best comedy in its rookie season, will likely be a staple in Fox’s weeknight lineup for several seasons. I expect the latter — Dads — will end up on the chopping block soon enough (despite rumors it might survive to a  second season).

As for Almost Human, I feel like it and another oft-discussed show on our beloved forum — Sleepy Hollow — represented much riskier forays in new TV content.

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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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Martial Arts, Movies15 Comments

NOCs of the Roundtable: Favorite Asian Bad Guys

Keith Chow

This week on Hard N.O.C. Life, I’ll be interviewing our buddies Stephen and Patrick from the National Film Society. They just premiered their Kickstarted webseries Awesome Asian Bad Guys to packed houses last week during CAAMFest in San Francisco, and I was lucky enough to have them on to talk about the series. In addition to the NFS guys, I’ll also be speaking with Yuji Okumoto, aka Chozen from The Karate Kid II.

All this talk about Awesome Asian Bad Guys got me thinking about which iconic Asian villains are most beloved by the NOCs. So we assembled around the old roundtable and shared our own Awesome Asian Bad Guys.

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DC Comics, Hard N.O.C. Life, Television5 Comments

Capes and Quivers: Superheroes on TV

The Nerds of Color

Keith (@the_real_chow) brings on Rodrigo (@rscspokenword) and ODU prof ‘Shawn to talk about superhero televisions shows, specifically the upcoming Iron Fist on Netflix and The CW’s Arrow.

As a special guest, we have Arrow costume concept illustrator Andy Poon to talk about designing the superhero look of the Arrow-verse.

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Movies, Sci Fi, Television5 Comments

The Almost Human-ity of RoboCop: Pondering the Future of Law Enforcement

Robert S.

In a few short weeks — February 12, to be exact — MGM, Columbia Pictures, and Strike Entertainment will be releasing the reboot of RoboCop in theaters. While I’m by no means completely juiced into the tapestry of sci-fi movie fandom, I feel as though the film’s preliminary buzz at this point is best described as lukewarm. Still, I’ve found my own curiosity growing increasingly as the release date nears given some personal observations gleaned from many subsequent viewings of the original 1987 film. How much will the 2014 version model the 1987 edition? Could it actually, dare I say, meet or surpass the original in cult following? So far, the immediate changes between the 2014 and the 1987 versions appear largely cosmetic (i.e., new guns, sleek motorcycle vs. clunky police cruiser, new armor with not-so-subtle Iron Man/techno Snake-Eyes stylings).

But, I wonder if RoboCop 2014 will tap into the underlying theme that I’ve found paramount among ingredients that made the original 1987 feature so iconic.

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Martial Arts, Movies3 Comments

Thoughts on Remaking Jet Li’s Shaolin Temple in 3D

The Nerds of Color

Over the weekend, Deadline reported that Justin Lin, the director single-handedly responsible for sending the Fast & the Furious franchise into the stratosphere (and who also helmed the indie movie that launched the careers of a thousand Asian Americans over a decade ago) has been tapped to do a 3D remake of the film that similarly launched Jet Li’s career, The Shaolin Temple.

According to Deadline, the plan is to bring in an “A-list Hollywood” writer for the script and work with a budget over $100 million. Pretty ambitious for a Mandarin-language kung fu flick, but it seems the target audience is in Mainland China as much as it is the rest of the world.

“The aim is to make an unprecedented Chinese-based tentpole with story, style and scope that will resonate with global audiences as well,” [Perfect Storm Entertainment CEO Troy Craig] Poon says.

It’s no secret that we love martial arts films here at The Nerds of Color. But I couldn’t think of two Nerds who love the genre more than Raymond and Shawn S. So I asked them what they thought of Justin Lin bringing his talents to The Shaolin Temple.

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Hard N.O.C. Life, Movies, Television1 Comment

2013: The Year in Review

The Nerds of Color

As we barrel toward the end of the year, we figured it was a good time to go on hiatus and take stock of Hard NOC Life before returning on the other side of the new year with a better experience for the viewers. If you have any suggestions on how to improve the show, please feel free to let us know in the comments!

For our special year-end wrap up, Keith (@the_real_chow) has asked a roster of panel all-stars to come back one more time to the topics of the day. Joining the show are Raymond Chow,  Julie Kang (@JulieKang), N’Jaila Rhee (@BlasianBytch), Shawn Smith, and Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria (@rscspokenword). As always, Hard N.O.C. Life is directed by the indomitable Nelson Wong (@aarisings).

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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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