Kung Fu Panda, Kung Fu Hustle, and The Matrix. Together, they contain the sum of all wisdom.
PROMPT: Movies or TV Series
Reply
Tag Archives: movies
BOOKS: “Funny Stuff” ed. by Laura LaPlaca and Ryan Lintelman
Funny Stuff: How Comedy Shaped American History by Laura LaPlacaMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Rutgers University Press
Release Date: May 12, 2026
As the subtitle suggests, this book explores the nexus between American History and comedy across many, varied media (i.e. writing, theater, standup, improv, radio, television, movies, etc.) It’s an interesting book, but I don’t know that it has the right title. Considering the title, a reader might expect a fuller coverage of American History, drawing on whatever humorous outlets existed at the time (e.g. op-eds and satirical articles.) This book is more of a history of comedic content in the US with a substantial discussion of how comedy addressed / participated in changing views on sex, race, and sexuality and with occasional mention of how comedy was involved in other social issues, such as changing views on free speech and expression. You’re not going to learn how comedic writers addressed Smoot-Hawley or the Sinking of the Maine. (i.e. The book leads with comedic content and leans the discussion toward societal influence [rarely toward policy influence.] It does not lead with historical events and draw on appropriate comedic content.)
The book covers a lot of the same ground as Kliph Nesteroff’s The Comedians, though with quite different emphases. Nesteroff focuses on the gritty underside of comedy and the oft unseen dark side of comedians, while this book focuses on comedy as a factor in changing views on race and sex [as well as on the changing technological outlets for comedy.] Funny Stuff does spend a little more time on pre-20th century America than does Nesteroff, but not much more. Both books are heavily weighted toward the late 20th century to present. To be fair, there is much more volume of comedic output in this period. (That said, there were artists I expected coverage of, e.g. Josh Billings, that weren’t included. That’s where the book seems more like a history of comedy and its varied outlets.)
If you’re interested in the development of comedy in America, and its influence on social issues — most extensively attitudes towards race — I’d recommend this book.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Movies
No particular order: Kung Fu Hustle, Caddyshack, Matrix, Inception, John Wick 4, Airplane, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, Hero, and Drunken Master II.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
DAILY PHOTO: International Cinema, Seoul
PROMPT: Rewatch
No TV series. Though there might be episodes of “Seinfeld” that I’ve seen that many times (but others I may have never seen at all.)
Re: Movies: “Kung Fu Hustle,” “The Matrix” (the first one,) and “Kung Fu Panda” (the first one.) Nothing else comes to mind, but there probably are some. (Back from the days when cable ran the same content over and over.)
Five times is a lot of times to watch the same thing. If it’s really good, it will be too mentally / emotionally draining to watch repeatedly. And if it’s too bad, it will be tedious to do so. It needs to be in the sweet spot of light, but incredibly entertaining.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK REVIEW: “Becoming Ghost” by Cathy Linh Che
Becoming Ghost: Poetry by Cathy Linh CheMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – Simon & Schuster
This collection is built around the surreal emotionality of the author’s parents having both lived through the war in Vietnam and also having served as extras in the film, Apocalypse Now. [For those unfamiliar, Apocalypse Now was a Francis Ford Copp0la film based loosely (and partially) on Joseph Conrad’s novel,Heart of Darkness. The film follows a military officer sent upriver to assassinate a rogue Special Operations colonel during the Vietnam War, and shows the war from various perspectives as the would-be assassin travels through the country to complete his mission.]
At times, the poems read like a poem-shaped biography, but that’s not all there is to the book. There are points that imagery and language are used to shoot beyond a mere telling of events, in order to create emotional resonance with the core strangeness of living through a traumatic event only to portray a background individual (someone like one’s own past self) in a fictional retelling of events based on those through which one lived.
The poetic forms vary somewhat, though all within the modern, free verse style. Most notably, the author uses the golden shovel approach of Terrence Hayes extensively.
This collection grabbed me both with its clever language and its thought-provoking central premise. I’d highly recommend it for readers of poetry.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Leisure Time
That’s trickier than it seems. I quite enjoy reading and many forms of bodily movement activities (e.g. swimming, yoga, taiji, qigong, exercise, etc.,) but I’d count them more as personal development activities than leisure activities. (Even something as seemingly non-purposeful as juggling.) I sometimes watch TV / movies, but I don’t know that I’d say I enjoy that so much as find it an opportunity to zone out.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Rewatched
Movies: The Matrix (1999), Kung Fu Hustle (2004), and – possibly – The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010). [Really, I could watch any Christopher Nolan film more than once (and probably need to in order to fully get them.)]
TV Series: None. I can’t think of a series that I’ve watched more than once — except maybe in reruns as a kid, watching episodes out of sequence and on a hit or miss basis.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOKS: Mad World by Slavoj Žižek
Mad World: War, Movies, Sex by Slavoj ŽižekMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Release Date: November 27, 2023 (Jan 11, 2024 in some markets)
I can see why Slavoj Žižek is one of the most successful popular philosophical authors out there today. For one thing, he deals in provocative topics straight from the headlines: politics, pop culture, war, and sex. Furthermore, like the authors of such books as Freakonomics, he picks cases that are fascinating, if inconsequential / frivolous (e.g. in the case of this book, the question of a proposed massive Ukrainian orgy to be carried out in response to a Russian nuclear strike.) For another thing, while philosophy tends to be nigh unreadable owing to the philosopher’s need to be defensively precise (which, in turn, leads to overuse of complex jargon and tedious qualifiers,) Žižek is quite readable owing to an ability to make clear and confident statements.
Of course, there is a downside to this confident clarity. Many a reader will find too many gratuitous statements for his or her taste. Žižek is often willing to say “clearly, x means y” about things for which there is no consensus, whatsoever. An example seen more than once in this book is in discussing what Žižek believes to be the unambiguous meaning of symbolism in artistic works. Of course, there is a name for the fallacy of believing one knows what an author or artist meant to convey, i.e. the intentional fallacy.
That said, the author provides many intriguing ways of thinking about the absurdity of the modern world. For example, to (deceased) former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s tripartite epistemological nomenclature (i.e. known-knowns, known-unknowns, and unknown-unknowns) Žižek asks us to consider a seemingly impossible fourth sector, unknown-knowns (i.e. we don’t know the question, but we have an “answer.”) Žižek’s self-described “pessimistic realism” appeals to the reader’s sense of martyrdom even as it frustrates, by-and-large telling us that the modern world is screwed and there’s little chance of saving it.
If you’re interested in popular philosophy, this book is worth giving a read. However, if you are used to scholarly philosophy, you may find it a bit sloppy and trivial.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Movies
In the order in which they popped into my head: 1.) Caddyshack (1980); 2.) The Matrix (1999); 3.) Hidden Fortress (1958); 4.) Alien (1979); 5.) Casablanca (1942); 6.) Seven (1995); 7.) Kung Fu Hustle (2004); 8.) The Dark Knight (2008); 9.) Inception (2010); 10.) Unforgiven (1992)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 