Are You Planning To Step On Us?

What is it about watching a team come together that is so satisfying? It’s been done again and again in heist movies, secret agent movies, sports movies, Pokémon movies, and it never gets old. (Well, maybe the last one does.) The Avengers is Marvel Studios’ latest production of visual overstimulation, and I think Joss Whedon does a good job of giving the characters a balanced amount of screen time while keeping the film from toppling under the weight of superhero clichés.

As you should already know, Thor‘s jilted adopted brother Loki is leading an evil alien army to conquer Earth. The aliens, of course, are ugly creatures only one step above Power Rangers villains, and we get very little hint of their motive except that Earth is probably a more pleasant place to live than the dank, light-less planet from which they appear to come. I’m not saying that I wanted a half hour of heartfelt alien backstory, and fighting aliens is at least better than casting the Russians, Persians or Chinese as the enemy, but it almost seemed like another installment of the Transformers series.

“Just be your sexy self.”

Like most superhero movies, Avengers very briefly deals with some deeper moral issues. We’re asked if humans will kneel just because they’re ordered to do so by a guy with a stick that shoots energy balls (mostly yes, sometimes no), whether one should have guilt over the privilege of power (I could see Thor’s sparkling blue eyes trying and failing to come to a conclusion), what makes some people better than others (outside of having awesome superpowers, obviously), and most importantly, whether we as humans should respect or challenge our own limitations (in light of superpowered extraterrestrial forces). However, very few people watch this film to explore the relationship between freedom and power (myself included), so I won’t go any further with that.

I was afraid that Scarlet Johansson‘s Black Widow would be a mere pity character for those sorely feeling the lack of a main female character (I mean, what was the point of her being in Iron Man 2?). Thankfully, Johansson makes a pretty great action star. I wasn’t won over by her red bob, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a Black Widow feature film to get to the bottom of her Russian roots.

How do archers not run out of arrows during battle, like seriously?

Speaking of the male-dominated cast, I found it kind of weird to watch certain male characters greet one another by pounding each other’s faces in. People say that there would be less wars if women ran the world, and this film certainly wasn’t an argument against that. Watching this kind of violent reactionary power play is about as productive as watching a circle jerk, if you’ll excuse the crude metaphor — only when everybody has expended all his energy can they settle down to talk and maybe try to get along.

On the more superficial side, I’d like to first point out the obvious, which is that Chris Evans has a flawless body — so perfect I could cry — and I fell in love with him even more after reading last year’s GQ piece about him. Chris Hemsworth is as devastatingly attractive as always, and the way he pulls off that long, silky blonde hair is still mind-boggling. I don’t find Tom Hiddleston to be my type, but he does have huge blue eyes that I could drown in when they’re not dementedly crazed, which they are for most of the film. I didn’t understand Loki’s seemingly random costume changes (why not stay in his more powerful form permanently?), though maybe it would help if I read the comic books (not going to happen). Newcomer Cobie Smulders, playing one of Nick Fury‘s head lackeys, has simply amazing facial bone structure. Just wow. People who watch HIMYM are no doubt familiar with her already, but I hope she gets more time on the big screen! Additionally, I found it quite interesting that the majority of S.H.I.E.L.D’s employees — that is, all the nerds in charge of communications and intelligence — are youthful, attractive and wear skin-tight bodysuits to highlight their youthful attractiveness. I tried to imagine what it would look like if any actual workplace had that as a work uniform, and it’s a terrible and hilarious vision.

Mmmmm….more please!!!!!

I watched Avengers in 3D because I forgot to tell my friend who booked the tickets that I detest 3D (the only times it has been worth it were Avatar and Tangled), but the effect enhanced the experience instead of distracting from it, though I maintain that watching it in 2D would be just as fine and less headache-inducing afterward. Also, I think the theater we went to had some sort of special seats (there was an ad about it before the movie played, but I couldn’t really understand it) that kind of rumbled during certain explosive scenes (it wasn’t just the bass rumbling, I swear), which was neat. Overall, this was a solid blockbuster movie, and I only hope that it doesn’t go the way of Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean in iteration after iteration until we start to pity ourselves for not being able to stop watching its crappy sequels.

And What Kind Of Freedom Is That?

For Valentine’s Day, a couple of friends and I decided to go watch The Lady, a movie based on the life of Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Burmese democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis [AKA Professor Lupin]. It wasn’t my first choice, honestly; while I didn’t doubt that it would be good, I figured a low-key film like that could be equally enjoyed on my laptop without paying for the $11US ticket. In the end, it turned out to be a highly appropriate choice for the holiday. If it were still out in US theaters, I would urge you to skip The Vow or Beauty and the Beast 3D or [heaven forbid] This Means War — if you want a story about the depths of true love, watch The Lady instead.

Some of you might not know who she is. I admit that despite having watched the documentary Burma VJ last year in my capstone class and having read about the country once in an Amy Tan novel, I still get Burma mixed up with Tibet sometimes. I mean, these small, oppressed Asian countries — who can keep track of them, right? Wrong. Irresponsible, even. Some of you [and by you I mean me] might only know her as the woman who was kept under house arrest for years, which sounds like the most boring way to lead a revolution if you ask me. Yawn. [/sarcasm] Some of you might even know that Burma is also sometimes referred to as Myanmar, and its naming appears to be quite confused though I like to think of the latter as its slave name. Anyway, my point is that most people in America [I can only speak for us, but the range is probably more like everywhere] know nothing about the country or its present-day politics, so do yourself a favor and get educated. It’s as easy as watching a movie [or two: Burma VJ could be considered a solid chronological epilogue to The Lady and the whole thing is on Youtube!!].

The film follows Suu Kyi and her husband Michael from the beginning of her inadvertent political career to more recent times. It had two major themes: her love for her country and her love for her husband [& children]. I found the movie riveting because I was only expecting the first one. But the movie showed a great deal of Michael’s side as well, which I felt was effective and relevant in drawing a more comprehensive portrait of Suu Kyi’s internal turmoil. Out of the total of the past 21 years she has spent in Burma, 15 of which were spent in strict house arrest [15 entire years in one house 24/7!!!], she and her husband could only meet a handful of times. The Burmese government only sometimes granted him a visa to enter Burma, and everybody knew that if Suu Kyi were to ever set foot outside of the country, they would never let her back in. Everything she had fought for, had sacrificed for, would be laid to waste. They didn’t have Skype. Internet. Cell phones. Only snail mail and the enduring hope that one day, all their suffering would come to fruition.

As someone currently dealing with the struggles of being in a long-distance relationship, I feel particularly sensitive to stories about long-distance love. And theirs is incredibly inspiring. [I would advise you to watch the movie and not read all the details on Wikipedia beforehand for the full effect of seeing whether they end up together. DUN DUN DUN.] The differences, of course, are vast. For one, I’m in Hong Kong because I chose to be. I could very well have stayed in the States if I wanted to, though of course it would still be long distance to some extent because there’s no way I’m going back to live in Columbia LOL. One could argue that, yes, Suu Kyi did have the choice to return to England; in fact, the Burmese government would have been more than happy to accommodate that request. But it was a choice she could not make. [The dialogue from that situation is the source of the title of this post.] She couldn’t simply go home and leave her country in tatters. She couldn’t give up and relinquish all the years she had already spent as the face of a revolution. She couldn’t do it even to watch her two sons grow up, to accept her Nobel Peace Prize, or to be there for Michael as he battled cancer. She and Michael both knew that she was doing something far greater than their desire to be together, and she couldn’t just leave. So she chose to stay.

The movie elicited quite a few tears. It invited them, really; there’s no shame in crying over genuine human atrocities. Indeed, at a few points throughout the film, I wondered what drove the leaders of the Burmese military government to do what they did [last plug: Burma VJ deals primarily with the "Saffron Revolution," named so because it was largely led by the country's many saffron-robed monks, who were beaten, murdered and arrested with all the other protesting citizens. Killing monks!! That is damn low]. I mean, how much evil must they have inside to be impervious to the suffering that they forcefully brought upon their own people? Why is it so hard to let go of power? Is it really that irresistible? What…what fuels these people, and where does their enjoyment lie?

Anyway, I could probably keep writing about this topic [must be the INFJ in me], but I have to go to sleep, so I’ll leave with a few superfluous observations.

1. Suu Kyi & Michael’s older son looked like Drake.
2. Their younger son looked like my friend Jack.
3. Speaking of their kids, it was hard to believe that two teenage boys could be so sensitive and well-behaved. I mean, sure, they bickered with each other, but every time they were reunited with their parents, they ran in for hugs and snuggles. The 13-ish-year-old continuously called his parents “mommy” and “daddy” without any sense of teenage rebellion — um, someone please tell me how to raise kids like that?!?
4. This movie makes me want to wear flowers in my hair forever & ever.
5. The Lady is beautifully produced story of true love. I urge you to give it a try if only to educate yourself on international issues.

Social Media Barrage

On Friday, Al Jazeera posted a video newsclip about “South Korea’s Pop Wave.” I saw it tweeted from their Twitter account, which I follow, and clicked because it piqued my interest. Hmm, I thought. K-pop is ostensibly gaining exposure in America, and now Al Jazeera is reporting on it? Interesting. I got distracted by other things on Twitter before having a chance to get back to the video, but when I did, I realized that I didn’t feel like watching it anymore. As a [waning] K-pop fan, I don’t need some out-of-touch reporter telling me what to think of the industry. [Apparently I'm still afflicted with sentiments of a teenager at times.]

However, good old AJ just wouldn’t let it rest. Over the past few days, I have seen this story tweeted countless times from the one account — I’ve been following them for some time now, and I guess it just dawned on me that their approach to social media is to highlight stories over and over again like a desperate child with Tourette syndrome trying to be noticed, though it’s especially bad with this story. I mean, sometimes they even tweet the same story twice in a row for no apparent reason. What’s the point? What’s the strategy here? Who manages this account, a horde of robot monkeys?

Was it because the death count rose to more than “dozens”?

Al Jazeera tweets a lot, which not only oversaturates followers’ feeds but also trains followers to ignore the majority of them. I had never paid that much attention before because none of their articles quite caught my eye like the unexpected phrase “K-pop.” And you know what, maybe they’re onto something, for the more controversial of their K-pop tweets [AKA the ones that mention corruption or a "dark side"] get plenty of retweets. In any case, I decided to document Al Jazeera’s gauche behavior as a cautionary tale. I even replied to one of their tweets with a hesitant cease-and-desist, which did absolutely nothing. [Their account never replies to followers anyway.] If you would like to argue in their favor, I’d like to hear it!

These are in chronological order, from the first innocuous tweet to the most recent one, which I believe isn’t the last of them…

This first one links to a shorter video on a different page

The answer is yes.

Regarding the question above, LOL I seriously doubt it.

At this point, I got pretty tired of seeing the same link over and over again.

There’s no stopping them!

More than 100 retweets for tweets about sex!

Is It Stealing If It’s Already Stolen?

You literally only have those 2 options.

Yes. The answer in most cases is yes. Yet, Amanda Seyfried‘s character felt convicted enough about that question to have the gall to ask it at two different points during the movie. Unless you’re a superhero with a catchphrase, that’s not acceptable. Then again, she and Justin Timberlake‘s character pretty much thought of themselves as Robin-Hood-esque vigilantes, so I don’t doubt that she would’ve uttered that line more than twice if given the chance.

In the movie In Time, we’re dropped in the middle of this post-industrialized society where people have one year to live after turning 25, and they use their time as currency, dropping dead when the clock on their arm reaches zero. Apparently this is an attempt to fight overpopulation, though I guess I missed that part of the exposition. There are so many questions I had about this society: How could the beauty/anti-aging and pharmaceutical companies let this happen?? Who runs the government, and how the hell did they implement this universal biological clock? Have hospitals become obsolete because people [ostensibly] tend to die of being robbed of time as opposed to ailments from which they can be resuscitated? Did minorities get eradicated early on in this anti-population process? We’re thrown in with little context, but with movies like this, we’re just supposed to accept what we’re told to be reality. Just like when you’re playing Pokémon, it’s better not to ask questions.

For full disclosure, the reason I wanted to watch this movie because one of my favorite actors, Matt Bomer, is in it. Yes, he dies rather early on in the film [it's not a spoiler if it happened in the trailer!], but seeing him on the big screen was like a dream come true. I almost fainted with glee. His character philosophizes about life and death before “timing himself out ” [ie. suicide], which opens Timberlake’s eyes to the injustice around him.

In fact, there’s quite a bit of philosophizing in this movie. It comes out at an opportune time because the similarities to the Occupy Wall Street movement are easy to draw. The In Time society is separated into “time zones,” and only those rich with time are allowed out of the ghetto and into New Greenwich, which is one of those words [like Newfoundland] that should just be pronounced the way it’s spelled. Naturally, all the poor people in the ghetto rob each other and are themselves robbed by the powerful few, who control the markets and get to live forever. [They are the 1%!!!] It’s not hard to see the undertaking of a political message, but the film takes itself so seriously that the audience occasionally laughed when we weren’t supposed to. Oops.

Also, immortality seems like a throwback to villains of my childhood. Maybe it’s because I don’t watch cartoons anymore, but does anybody really want to live forever anymore?

[SPOILER]

At some point during In Time, the movie jumps on the crazy train and derails itself. For example, Timberlake and Seyfried concoct the brilliant plan to rob a bank that magically leaves its vault open and uses no guards. They do this successfully multiple times. In fact, the only times they get caught are when they’re in the street and not brazenly stealing from a vault. They make a sexy Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque couple, but there’s very little substance to their relationship, so it ends up being cringe-inducing. [I wanted to die during the strip poker scene.]

And who else expected “fighting” to mean “intense arm-wrestling”??

[END SPOILER]

Some brief character comments:

Justin Timberlake: Is he just a good citizen for the hell of it? Why does he feel obligated to rescue Henry Hamilton? Why don’t we get to learn more about his father? The character development is lacking.
Best quote: “No one should be immortal if even one person has to die.”

Watching. Waiting. Watching.

Amanda Seyfried:  She spends most of the movie in 5 inch heels, an impressive feat considering the sheer amount of sprinting she has to do. Kudos! Her character is introduced to us as a super creeper who just stares at Timberlake wordlessly from a distance for quite some time. It reminded me of Olivia Wilde‘s character from Tron. She’s reckless without much reason, and the way she falls for Timberlake after being held for ransom by him is nothing short of desperate.
Worst quote: “You talk like someone who comes from the ghetto. Sometimes I envy them.” Spoken like a truly out-of-touch 1%!

Cillian Murphy: His wardrobe, according to LC, comes straight out of The Matrix. I have to agree. I guess it’s always a challenge to dress these futuristic societies, eh? Somehow, I don’t expect knee-length leather jackets to come back in style at any point in the future, but I guess I could be wrong.

Vincent Kartheiser: As Amanda Seyfried’s father, he served his role as the insecure time tycoon very well. Maybe it’s because the villains get better material to work with, but his acting was the best, in my opinion.

Alex Pettyfer: I can’t believe he’s actually younger than me. Are minutemen like gangsters? Where do they get so much power? Do they work for the rich?

In the end, I’m glad that we don’t have to live like this — literally living day to day, with death looming as palpably as the green neon numbers on our arms. Writer/director Andrew Niccol is behind classics such as the Truman Show and Gattaca, but In Time isn’t his strongest work. He highlights a very real problem, but his solution is a bit too extreme and simplistic.