Posts tagged with "social commentary"

Love Them Or Leave Them

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with Hong Kong films. I’m glad that OMNI 2 has become an eth­ni­cal­ly diverse chan­nel, but every time a Hong Kong movie comes on, I’m not sure whether or not I should make some pop­corn or put an axe through the TV.

I love the movies because they remind me of every sin­gle thing about Hong Kong that has so poignant­ly affect­ed me (and I feel smart when I get the jokes).

I hate the movies because 90% of them end up being crap like Love Undercover 2: Love Mission. It’s all a reminder of the sad state of affairs that Hong Kong pop­u­lar cul­ture is in right now.

How A Collectors Edition Can Be Worse

So I went to HMV to buy the lat­est Dream Theater album, and I see this Scarface pack­age. Turns out that it’s the full screen anniver­sary edi­tion pack­age that includes extra doc­u­men­taries, eight lob­by cards, DefJam’s “Origins of a Hip-Hop Classic”, and oth­er assort­ed mate­r­i­al. The only prob­lem with the box set is the ENTIRE FUCKING BOXSET ITSELF.

The box says that one of the bonus­es of the anniver­sary edi­tion is that it includes the orig­i­nal 1932 Scarface that “inspired” the 1983 ver­sion. However, in an inter­view with Oliver Stone about his writ­ing of the script, he actu­al­ly states that he even though he’ll prob­a­bly lose respect as a direc­tor for say­ing such a thing, he did­n’t like the orig­i­nal.

Aside from this, there’s a DefJam doc­u­men­tary about how Scarface has influ­enced and inspired so many hip-hop artists. Yet what DePalma and Bregman were going for was a movie with an anti-crime mes­sage, made rather obvi­ous by the EVENTUAL DEATH OF SCARFACE. The mes­sage was mis­un­der­stood when the movie was first released, when they had to go to court over the rat­ing, and the mes­sage is still being mis­un­der­stood, as shown through the lyrics of rap musi­cians. After the pro­duc­ers of Scarface brought psy­chol­o­gy reports as evi­dence that the movie was­n’t glo­ri­fy­ing crime, the idiot cen­sors had to shut up and give it a sim­ple R rat­ing. And now there are tons of rap­pers using all these Scarface quotes sam­ples in their songs (Big Pun — Leatherface, DJ Clue — Cops and Robbers, etc.), TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT, and box mar­kets this as a fea­ture.

And what else comes with the box set? A mon­ey clip that’s prob­a­bly as cheap as George Costanza, with Tony’s ini­tials engraved on them. My god, how cool would some­one look if they’re at a pok­er game with their friends and they pull out a mon­ey clip that does­n’t even have their own fuck­ing ini­tials on it. I’m sure every­one would look up to some­one try­ing to imi­tate a greedy, con­fused, drug-addict­ed, friend-mur­der­ing, coke-head who even­tu­al­ly goes bat­shit insane and kills him­self. Maybe some peo­ple just iden­ti­fy with Tony Montana, a peas­ant who fails to learn any class on his way to the top and self-pro­fessed gut­ter trash.

This box set should nev­er have been released. The orig­i­nal DVD was fine. I can under­stand peo­ple try­ing to make more mon­ey out of things, but not stay­ing true to the what the direc­tor and pro­duc­ers were try­ing to do is just too sleazy.

The Problem With Freshman Classes

I feel old.

I’m forced to sit in class for hours, lis­ten­ing to the pal­try con­ver­sa­tions of the peo­ple around me. I under­stand that not every­one talks about some­thing intel­lec­tu­al every sec­ond of the day, but most of these con­ver­sa­tions are beyond stu­pid. What I hate most are the peo­ple who ask the prof ques­tions, and then say, “That does­n’t make any sense”. Yes, it does make sense. You just don’t under­stand, you fuck­ing idiot. Why are so many peo­ple so mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal as to assume that they’re smart and able to com­pre­hend any­thing?

Why I Shouldn't Receive Gifts

I always open Christmas gifts, espe­cial­ly from fam­i­ly or fam­i­ly friends, with a lit­tle trep­i­da­tion. It’s more of an oblig­a­tion than any­thing else for many peo­ple to give me some­thing, and I’m of the firm belief that if some­one isn’t going to like or have use for a gift, one should­n’t give any­thing at all. There’s no point to giv­ing some­one a stu­pid present, and it just ends up being worse than if one gets noth­ing. There are a few excep­tion to this rule, being the thought or effort put into the gift, although there is gen­er­al­ly none of either if some­one does­n’t like the present any­way. Sometimes it just ends up being the fact that the best inten­tions are used, but a gift isn’t need­ed to fig­ure this out.

Of course, I’ve been known as the hard­est bas­tard to shop for any­way, since I usu­al­ly buy what­ev­er I want. As soon as an idea is in my head for some­thing I’d like, I’ll research it for a few days and then go out and buy it. It ends up being very rare that I want to get some­thing I don’t have, main­ly due to the fact that my inter­ests are fair­ly sim­ple and afford­able.

The Stereotypes Are True

Coming back here has made me real­ize how insane the dri­vers are in Hong Kong. It takes as much guts to walk down the street as it does to dri­ve, back there. The peo­ple with cars are amaz­ing at maneu­vers, and there’s a lot of forc­ing into lines since peo­ple will gen­er­al­ly not let some­one in (although it’s much, much worse in China). I think I under­stand the basis behind the entire bad Chinese dri­ver stereo­type; since the cost of own­ing a car is very high (gas prices are three times as expen­sive than they are here, park­ing is pricey and not even a guar­an­teed spot), peo­ple nev­er learn how to dri­ve until they leave Hong Kong. However, at this point, they’re too old to real­ly become good at dri­ving, and fol­low the more aggres­sive rules of the road they grew up with.