[Weekly Update] June 27, 2021

It's rainstorm season in Montreal. Not sure how you feel about this weather, but for me, thunder and rain calms me down a lot.

I have been a bit overworked lately, so it's nice to be able to relax my mind a bit.

ABOUT THE CHANNEL

• Hope you enjoy our video on Nezha Reborn. I think I like the movie more than your average viewer, but I tried my best to be objective. I haven't seen anyway regret spending time on this movie, yet. So I can confidently recommend this movie to all of you.
• For our next video, I have Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman on the docket. However, depending on sponsorship schedules, things may be shifted around.
• This will be the first time we actually talk about Taiwanese cinema. About time, too. Taiwanese new wave and indie cinema are colourful and often quite high quality, well deserving of our appreciation. The reason it took me so long is that I'm not entirely familiar with Taiwan's cinematic culture.
• In fact, this will mark my journey to explore other unfamiliar film industries. Stay tuned for more info on that!

ABOUT MEDIA

• Yang's journey through comedy continues. This week, I watched Detective Chinatown, but only the first one.
• In case you don't know, Detective Chinatown is a 2015 Chinese whodunit comedy, mostly known for having no right to be this good. Yes, from the cast, the the title, to the hook, to even the poster, everything screams a lame cash grab. But it turns out to be a very competently made, somewhat stylish, and at times suspenseful comedy.
• With China's cinema production centre shifted from Hong Kong to Shanghai and Beijing, the style of humor also shifted North. Now, this involves a lot of generalizations, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.
• Most of our viewers are probably familiar with Stephen Chow's non-sense humor. That's what Southern Chinese are familiar with. It's actually surprisingly similar to British humor, mostly stuff by Monty Python. The absurdity of it, contrasted with the serious subject these jokes are exploring, makes me giggle every time.
• One iconic example would be Stephen Chow singing a pop song in an ancient Chinese period piece.
• Northern Chinese humor, however, is less straight face. I find a lot of gags from Mainland Mandarin language comedy to be very grounded. It's the ambiguity, the possibility of this actually happening in real life that makes a joke funny.
• One of the funniest joke in Detective Chinatown is when the protagonist, now a wanted man, tries to divert the police's attention. He shows up in the police station with disguise, but the no one recognizes him. So he loses his disguises piece by piece, yet still, no one recognizes him. It's funny, yet it is believable.
• Henry Cavil showed up in Time Square, stood right under the Man of Steel poster once, and no one recognizes him. Yes, this sort of things do happen.
• I recognize this joke as funny, and it hits all of the timing. But I can't bring myself to laugh. It didn't even catch my attention that much. It's that classic case of me understanding the humor, without being humoured.
• Yet at the same time, my friends who enjoyed this movie would find Monty Python to be the same: They know it's supposed to be funny. They see the joke. They understand it. But they just aren't being humoured.
• I guess this is why people say humor is hard to translate.

Anyway, this is the update I have you for today. It's a bit of a shorter update, but I'll make it up to you next week when I finish the trilogy.

If you are curious about Detective Chinatown, give it a watch! It's a popcorn and beer kinda movie. It even has one amazingly funny and intense homage to Oldboy. Yes, Oldboy.

Do you have any similar experience with a movie? Where you understand the jokes, but just aren't being humoured?