[Weekly Update] May 10, 2021

Just booked my schedule for Covid vaccine. I can't wait to be back in the real world and start making short films/creator projects again. Hopefully things are getting better where you are right now. Stay safe!

ABOUT THE CHANNEL

• No major changes this week. Although writing our next video makes me realize just how difficult it is to make a video both educational and funny. Humor is not my strong suit.
• Progress is slow on the editing front as well. While it's not a long video, but it contains so many obscure movies, Just scrolling through the footage is time consuming.
• I never imagined I'll have to scroll through mountains of naked woman just to find a shot of a Bruce Lee impersonator. Yet here we are.
• Video should be out this Thursday.

ABOUT MEDIA

• If you don't know, I usually post a one post opinion about new movies on Twitter (and Facebook page). They aren't exactly reviews, but just a brief reaction.
• My recent reactions to Wonder Woman 1984 and Mortal Kombat were... very different to most people, to say the least. And that prompted me to re-examine my own taste in film.
• Everyone has their own unique taste in movies, of course. Mine is inevitably affected by my education background, primarily the film school experience.
• The myth of "film school makes you enjoy movie less" is a myth, but not without some truth in it. It does make me impulsively want to analyze a movie. I'd see a movie and instinctively began thinking how the lights are set up; which way the camera is moving; is the movement justified.
• I still remember watching the RoboCop remake, and my first criticism of the film is "it uses handheld cam in intimate moments, and then proceed to use a glide cam on a dramatic entry." Now that I say it out loud as I type, I only just now realize how freaking weird that must have sounded to a casual/mainstream audience... the heck are you talking about?
• But my childhood and teenage experience with film also heavily affects my film preference: My childhood is, of course, filled with Hong Kong movies. Most of them are slapstick comedies with little to no plot.
• Even a lot of Jackie Chan movies don't have strong plots. They have cool actions and sometimes loveable characters, but the plot is usually thin. So I came to accept that.
• In my teenage year, I was a big fan of film reviewers/riffers. I love Mystery Science Theatre 3000. My dry sense of humor is probably formed from Joel Hodgson.
• But I also love a lot of content creators like Brandon Tenold, GoodBad Flicks, Film Brain, James Rolfe, among other Channel Awesome former creators. I can't tell you how many times I have binged James Rolfe's Monster Maddness series. Their love for the crappy and cult movies are infectious. And opened my eyes to a new world, where movies like Deathstalker is both bad and awesome.
• And this finally goes back to my film school experience: Bad movies are the only movies I can enjoy without impulsive analyzation. Unless they are so bad that I started wondering why they are bad.
• It's from this perspective that I find Wonder Woman 1984 and Mortal Kombat fun. They are movies I don't need to analyze. They are movies where the flaws don't matter to me. They fall right into the sweet spot where they aren't bad enough for me to dislike, but aren't good enough for me to take seriously.
• And frequently, I failed to remember that, not everyone shares this experience. Not everyone is a fan of Predator 2. Not everyone enjoys Lethal Weapon 4.

But that's my story on how I become a cult movie fan. What is your story? If you are here, I assume you are a big fan of Chinese/Asian cinema. How did you get into that?

In any case, I'll see you later this week for a new video!