February 2012
5 posts
1 tag
January 2012
7 posts
Porn aesthetics
I don’t have the time or patience right now to search through nasty porn images for this argument, but someone needs to write an essay about how porn aesthetics has infiltrated all media from Entertainment Tonight’s lighting to HD TV aesthetics to Megan Fox to commercials about shoes and yogurt. It’s horrifying.
December 2011
9 posts
Watchpublicnoticedesign:
The Dogs of Pompeii
My small design experiment →
Watch
Dashing Through the Weed and Blow: A Very Harold &...
The third installment of the Harold & Kumar franchise is a playfully rude and inappropriate jaunt through Christmas traditions, high times, and race relations — as such, it will be sure to satisfy diehard fans. The performances are terrific, but ultimately, the film is an escapist and superficial attempt to confront clichéd masculine anxieties about aging and fatherhood. Nevertheless,...
I’m back from Europe and still super jet-lagged.
I don’t have much to say right now. I just learned of some horrible news about one of my female cousins in China who was violently assaulted and left for dead. I’m so angry, but really I can think of to say is that it’s become clearer and clearer to me all the time why there is a need for public feminism.
Feminism has...
November 2011
4 posts
Exhausted!
I recently escorted a Fifth Generation cinematographer for a two-day trip up to San Francisco. He drank beer in the backseat, burped sans apology, and lectured me about the importance of understanding ancient Chinese literature. It was fun. And also stressful. My boyfriend and I joked about not waking up our middle-aged Chinese son who had just fallen asleep in the backseat.
He also talked...
October 2011
8 posts
My review of "Buddha Mountain"
Buddha Mountain embraces the rise of the millennial Chinese urban slacker. A departure from her highly-controversial and censored Lost in Beijing, Buddha Mountain illustrates director Li Yu’s growing complicity with the PRC’s strict censorship code, and yet Li proves that complicity does not equal artistic compromise. Unlike Richard Linklater’s apathetic suburbanites, this film’s unlikely...
Back from the San Diego Asian Film Festival!
The above is from the best of the four films I caught at the San Diego Asian Film Festival this past weekend. It’s a Korean film by Hong Sangsoo called The Day He Arrives and it evoked Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarrettes (as my boyfriend pointed out) and a more experimental Groundhog’s Day (as my friend and festival programmer pointed out). This film shows that there is...
Ha! I used Hong Kong pop sensation Angelababy to lure you in so that I can tell you that:
I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING GRANT PROPOSALS. I HATE WRITING...
This cat has gotten the best of me!
Well, it’s 4:10 AM and this one cat that I’m fostering has kept me up all night trying to escape from the kitchen. Despite all my work and makeshift contraptions to keep the kitchen door closed, this cat has successfully managed to MacGyver itself out every time. And now my cat and he are battling it out in the living room.
Is it wrong to say that I simultaneously really hate and admire this...
I want to be a Taiwanese gangster boy
I just want to let you all know that 1980’s Taiwanese gangster boy style is soon going to be all the rage. Mullets. Tight polyester disco shirts paired tight cargo pangs. Topped off with the most casual of black flipflops.
I just came back from a screening of Monga (Doze Niu, 2010) and the vague familiar sense of jealousy that I get about really good bromances returns [female...
September 2011
11 posts
The Astrological Seduction of Gone with the Wind
Last night I finally saw the four-hour American epic Gone with the Wind — yet another ideologically conservative film that manages to move and entertain you despite (and in spite of) your personal politics. As proven by other films/tv shows like The Help and Forrest Gump and Mad Men, nostalgia and sentiment for a highly-revised past seems to hold great appeal (especially when rooted in...
Angelina Jolie
I had an interesting conversation with my friends once about the populist demonization of Angelina Jolie after the whole Brad Pitt leaving Jen Aniston thing. It seemed like Middle America was very much Team Jen, because poor thing, she’s so nice (you know how I feel about nice) and Brad left her for the hypersexual Angelina.
What’s interesting though is that, if you judge them by...
The affective economy of acting nice
Let me start by admitting that I’m pretty pissed off right now. I’m mad at my roommate because she owes me $111, she’s given my apartment the equivalent of house STD’s (fleas) via her chihuahua and won’t do much to remedy the situation, she smokes inside whenever she thinks I’m not around, she eats my food, and doesn’t ever clean — and yet, she still...
August 2011
13 posts
WatchDear Banksy,
Institutionalized street art is a contradiction in terms.
Love,
M
