[Weekly Update] January 24th, 2021

End of the month already!?

ABOUT THE CHANNEL

• Hope you like our video on Jackie Chan! It was one of the bigger project on this channel, but I had a lot of fun making it.
•  For this video, I watched about 20 Jackie Chan movies and took note during all the fight scenes. It's rather amazing how consistent most Jackie Chan movies are. Predictably, the worst one are the Hollywood ones, with the Tuxedo being the most mentally draining. That movie starts with a goat pissing into a river. It doesn't even care it sucks.
• While the most enjoyable ones is, of course, Drunken Master 2. It remains my favourite Chinese language film to this day. It has both style and substance. It's a good story with good fights. It was so good, our elementary school trip went to the cinema to watch it twice.
• Eventually, there'll be videos about other Kung Fu stars like Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and the lesser known ones, like Gordon Liu. But collecting those films is a pretty big project by itself, so please be patient.
• For this month's Patreon bonus video... I'm thinking of doing John Wick. Not sure if I'll talk about the entire series or just the first film. I guess we'll see.
• And finally, I have a couple of ideas I want to do this April Fool's, and I want you to decide which one you find the funniest. I'll set up a poll eventually.

ABOUT MEDIA

• Out of sheer boredom (and desire to procrastinate), I watched both Hot Shots movie... And I did not enjoy them.
• No, I don't dislike them. But they aren't as funny as I have hoped, especially for a rather critically acclaimed comedy series.
• And the thing is, I don't know why I didn't enjoy them.
• They are your parody movies, the first one parodies Top Gun, and the second one parodies Rambo 2. The plots for both movies follow semi-closely to their inspirations, but with tons of absurd jokes thrown in, not too dissimilar to how Scary Movie parodies Scream.
• In theory, I should enjoy this series, because I enjoy Airplane a lot. And they operate on a similar way: Absurd gags with cartoon logic played straight.
• Both movies have a charismatic lead. Charlie Sheen is a pretty funny man even with a straight face. Heck, he's one of the best part in the travesty that is Machete Kills. But for some reason, I just don't find his character interest, or his delivery funny in this movie... And I don't know why.
• By the way, Charlie Sheen wears a Superman suit in the first film, and dude, he looks really good in it.
• Both Airplane and Hot Shots follows similar absurd humour: Airplane has a blow-up doll pilot, and Hot Shot has aircraft carrier parking meter. Airplane has "Don't call me surely" and Hot Shots 2 has "Stuck between Iraq and a hard place". They all gave me chuckles. But for reasons beyond me, Airplane just feels more iconic.
• I originally thought it was because Hot Shots keeps running its joke to the ground. The famous belly scene went on and on. And so does the car sex scene in Hot Shots 2. But then again, Airplane has plenty of jokes that lasted too long, like the "calm down" scene. Yet that one is still funny, but hot shot gets boring.
• So, yeah, I have no idea why I didn't like Hot Shots, even though I should. Audience reception is such a finicky thing. You just can't predict how people will response to your work. Part of film criticism is to find out why you feel the way you do. But in this case... I'm stumped.
• Have you watch Hot Shots and what do you think about it? Let me know!

And that concludes January, Hope the year has been treating you well!

I'll see you with our bonus video, coming in a few days.