Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
The most stirring segment of 1911 Revolution is not when Jackie Chan’s eight-fingered general Huang Xing uses martial arts to beat down a bunch of colonized Manchu stooges. It’s when Sun Yat-sen played by Winston Chao, the Ang Lee-associated actor who has been cast as the character a couple of times before, delivers brunch-stopping speeches to European banker pigs that want to cut up the Middle Kingdom according to their own economic interests. Actually, they’re both pretty cool moments. The friendship and mostly parallel paths of the revolutionary army’s commander-in-chief and the Founding Father of Republican China is involving. And when their paths finally intersect, it’s a pretty cool moment. The problem is that there are far too many interchangeable battle scenes that chop up and clog up the two hours of epicness. No matter how large-scale and sweepingly shot they are, the montages become numbing without proper build-up or variations. There are other flaws, too, including much-too-lengthy historical explanations (which are impossible to read even on a bigger TV) and more annotated explanations than pop-up videos on MTV. Yet Jackie Chan’s 100th movie is not a total waste of two hours. While 1911 Revolution isn’t the most effective co-directing job of his career, Jackie Chan acts his ass off. After the first 10 or 20 minutes, you’ll no longer expect him to break character and start climbing walls and busting heads. The movie deserves your eyes for that alone. The ensemble is solid as a whole. Chao should be cast as president if they ever make a Chinese West Wing and Sun Chun is effectively off-the-rails as the unpredictable general who plays both sides. Joan Chen is powerfully understated as the Empress Dowager, although Li Bingbing’s role seems truncated. Yes, the cast delivers some admittedly schlocky moments but isn’t that what happens in fictionalized history? This is new Chinese cinema meant to stir up the increasingly comfortable Chinese, not a Hong Kong actioner for the fanboys (although the English dialog recalls the latter). You may not laugh, cry, or even learn much from this bloated piece of agitpop, but you will actually be moved by the actors at times and perhaps even be inspired by them. See for yourself on a big screen somewhere across America starting on Friday, October 7.
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The news flashed on Tweetdeck while I keyed away on my 2006 black 13″ MacBook and my iPhone 3GS pumping out Explosions in the Sky, that the visionary who helped bring out my life’s greatest purchases, Steve Jobs died. I can’t begin to understand the complexity of what that really means for myself and others in the long run. Perhaps it means nothing and life will just continue, but there’s a legacy of what he’s worked on, and how it propelled and continues to propel a generation or two to dream. I’ve never met him. The closest I ever got was having some editorial about Giant Robot on the Apple site years back. I administered a Q and A with a Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa at the Apple store in SF. I visited Genius Bars in multiple cities. I was never even near him, yet his death affects myself and I’ve sure many of us personally. My life with Apple started off like many of us. It was an Apple II+ in perhaps in 1981. I was 12. I think I was in sixth grade. My family saw a future for me that included computers. I thought it would be cool more than anything. I didn’t know what it was capable of or what it could mean, later. I was just a kid with a great new toy that kicked my Atari 2600′s ass. People would walk by and see the computer through the window and point at it. It was a spectacle and a symbol of a changing time. The Mac came out after a few more iterations of the Apple IIs and it changed my life. Then as the next iteration of Apple product debuted, it changed my life again. Then again and again. It never ends. It’s not like that with other products and tools. I’ve lived through two cars and am driving only my third, but it’s safe to say the make and model has yet to change my life. A Model T from 1900 vs a car in 2011, it’s nearly the same. Apple computers aren’t like that. Each model opens a new door of possibilities. I’ll admit I’ve strayed. I tried a PC, a Blackberry, and a Handspring Visor. Eventually each of them led back to an Apple product. It was one and done each time. I’ve gone so far as to hoard Apples. I once had 3 of the first colorful iMacs and three following. Then there were multiple beige towers with numbers like 7200, 8500, and so forth, three different G4s including the Cube. From yard sales I have two early Mac laptops that were $3 each. Four iPods, four iPhones, an iPad, and a Mac Clone. With all this, I worked on Giant Robot and many side projects for the last 17 years. It’s a lot, but really, that’s all. There’s perhaps another few hundred million folks out there who do things with Apples too. Then there’s a bunch who just...
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It’s not that exciting, but prison is prison. For you fans of caged life, here’s a tale of what it’s like in a Chinese prison. Yes, “IT” happens there too. Just know that if you overstay your visa and elude police, life in the clink will happen. (ilookchina – prison)
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Not the 90s band that you all love, but we’re talking about opinion swayers or spinners in China. When there’s a negative opinion on something that the government cares about, there are paid “spin doctors” who write something on the contrary, and then another, and hopefully another. 10,000 writers are supposedly employed, barely. They’re paid .50 a post to write something to help bend a public opinion. The net is huge in China, perhaps 50 Chinese cents per post all day can translate into some heavy yuan! Not really though, since 50 Chinese cents is 7 US cents. (bbcuk – spin doctors)
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We can almost give this a “ho hum” since it was definitely coming. Much to the chagrin of many, Japanese whaling continues for the purpose of “research.” There’s no excuse. The food ends up on menus and school lunches and the activists will definitely be back at it. They actually make a difference, but they shouldn’t ever have them on a TV show. (Guardian UK – Whaling)
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