Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: EEAAO

This, that, and the other thing

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I had a Bagua lesson today, and I was telling my teacher how much I loved Everything Everywhere All At Once. She loved it, too, and she said the martial arts were solid. We laughed about the butt plug scene, but I can’t get over how great it was. Not just how it was exectuted, but the idea of it in the first place.

We also talked about how great Jamie Lee Curtis is and how she is gloriously her age. In an industry that focuses on youth (especially in women), it’s activism to just exist in an obviously older woman’s body. Plus, she allowed herself to look frumpy and dowdy in EEAAO, which most older female actors would not have done, either.

Michelle Yeoh also looks frazzled and worn-out in the movie, but not quite her age. Her daughter is supposed to be a college dropout, which would make her fifty or so as a mother. She is 61 now. So she wasn’t that far off from the age of ther character. She didn’t look that old in the movie, though. Let’s see. She ran away from her family fairly young. Probably twenty-two or three. Came to America and got married. Had a kid. Probably by age twenty-four or five? And if Joy dropped out of college, maybe at age nineteen? So Evelyn is mid-forties or so. At any rate, she looks frazzled in the movie. She is not a glam woman–at least not in our universe.

It’s funny how they had to soft-lens the cameras when they were shooting the younger Evelyn and Waymond, but not by much. Asian people look younger than they are until seventy or so and then everything falls apart. But by then, it doesn’t matter. This was decades ago, too, so we might be able to push that back to eighty or more.

Bagua gets my blood pumping. If I’m going to be honest, I want to punch someone in the face while doing Bagua. When I first started walking the circle, my teacher told me to imagine that there was an opponent in the middle of the circle. I was a self-proclaimed pacifist at the time so that made me uneasy. Then, one day, I had a flash of, “If it’s you or me, it’s going to be you”–meaning that they were going to die, not me.


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EEAAO is, indeed, everything

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Up to this point, I have been talking about the contents of the movie and the themes therein. For this post, I want to do something a bit different. I want to get a bit meta.

The Daniels basically throw everything they want in their project and then winnow it down a bit afterwards. They can do this because they are independent and don’t really have to answer to anyone. They did have a production company (A24), but it seemed like they were mostly hands off.

I see this in games all the time. The Triple A games are impressive from a visual point of view (except on PC for reasons I will not get into here. The ports for PC have been such a hot mess in the past few years). You can tell that millions and millions of of dollars have been put in the game. That doesn’t make the game itself that good, but it does tell you something.

It’s the same with big budget popcorn movies. You can tell that money was poured into them so the production value is pretty decent. That doesn’t mean the movie is good, but that’s not the point.

It also means that the content is probably pretty safe. So many big budget movies seem as if they were QA to death before they ever saw the light of day. Basically, directing by committee. There is always the audience is mind and how the scene would play in Peoria.

It’s one reason I don’t like movies, to be honest. They often feel as if they are made for the masses and more about not offending anyone than speaking to the vision of the director. Or, in the case of movies like Knives Out, it’s an auteur who is too up his own ass and is not able to be reined in.

In the case of the Daniels, they truly believe in everyone having a voice. Which comes with its own issues, obviously, but at least they don’t fall into the auteur mentality. In addition, they’re fearless in their ideas.


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The end of the year as we know it

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We are rolling along to the end of 2023. This was my second bonus year, which means the end of my terrible twos. I’m going to be three, which means it’s time to pull myself up by my bootstraps. No more lolling around for me!

I have an idea floating in my brain about pop culture. See, I don’t really like much of pop culture. It’s trash, let’s be honest. I don’t think that’s controversial to say. It’s been that way for all of time, so we might as well just be truthful. I remember watching Knives Out right after it came out because I love Hercule Poirot. The novels (though they are problematic now) are some of my favorites and David Suchet is sublime.

Side Note: Can we stop with Poirot portrayals now? Please? I have not even watched the Branagh ones because I hated the trailers. I thought they were too slick and missed the whole point of the character. I really hate the overacting Branagh does as Poirot.

The only new Poirot I would countenance would be one who was actually playedh by a Belgian actor and was from his days on the Belgian Police Force. In other words, save for one story, completely new material. I would be all up for that. But, again, only if it’s an actual Belgian and not a Brit pretending to be a Belgian.

Seriously. Suchet is the end-all, be-all for that portrayal, and we can shut that shit down now. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Anyway.

I really wanted to like Knives Out. I went into it hoping in my heart of hearts that I would like it. I wanted it to be like Poirot. I knew it wasn’t going to be from the trailer, but I still hoped. I hated it within five minutes, and I knew that I was in for a grim time. I also knew who the killer was from the first time I saw them, and even though the movie tried its best to have twists and turns, I was right. And it was for the most mundane and boring reason in the world.

There was nothing original about the movie, and I hated the hyper-cuts. I hated the characters, and I only loved Jamie Lee Curtis chewing up the scenery. I thought it was a terrible movie, and that was when I gave up on movies. I had tried for so long to like them, but I just did not.


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Joy is my everything

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Yesterday, I had my first post on Everything Everywhere All At Once–which I finally saw on Christmas night. In the last post, I mentioned that I did not like movies in general. Plus, Amazon makes it so fucking hard to rent a movie that I pushed it off for months.

But. I made a commitment to Ian to watch it by Christmas Day. And true to my nature, I waited until that night before watching it.

I was skeptical, but hopeful. Within ten minutes, I was sobbing. You see, I went in knowing very little about the movie And, yes, there will be spoilers throughout this review. Continue at your own risk.

I knew there was universe jumping and that Michelle Yeoh was the lead. That was all I knew, and I was prepared for it to be heart-pounding and thrilling. It was that, sure. It was also funny as hell in places (and, yes, we will talk about THAT scene–probably in another post), but what I did not expect was to be sobbing ten minutes into the movie.

Not just little tears, either, but ugly sobbing. It was when Joy was getting into the car to leave with Becky (in a huff), and Evelyn calls out for her to wait. Joy stops. And I can tell by the set of her shoulders that she is bracing herself. She is hoping for something positive, but she knows in her heart that it’s most likely going to be critical.

“You need to eat better,” Evelyn snaps. “You’re getting fat.”

Joy’s shoulders sag. And I burst into tears as Joy gets into the car and drives away. Because I could see the resignation and the pain in her face. I could feel the hurt and anger she was feeling. I knew what she was experiencing, and it was devastating.

I get the feeling that the Daniels put in this as a way to say that Evelyn could not talk about her feelings and that this was her way of showing love. It’s cultural, I can hear them say. I know that. I am from that culture. I visited Taiwan when I was ten or so, and no one had any problems telling me how fat I was (my relatives).

Here’s the thing. I would not say it’s a way of showing love. It’s just not a taboo.  But. Here’s the added twist. If you’re a girl/woman/AFAB, then it’s definitely a negative. You should be able to be blown away by a slight breeze otherwise you will never get a husband.

So, the fact that a mother is saying it to her daughter (who isn’t fat, by the way. Not that it matters, but she just isn’t) makes it even crueler. Women are often the ones who ensure that the sexist beliefs of a society are passed on to their daughters.

(Restrains self with much diffuclty from giving a diatribe and internalized sexism and when doing it out of love is arguably worse than doing it out of hate.)


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EEAAO is my everything

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I hate movies. I have accepted this as true. I had a substitute teacher when I was in grad school who was stunned when I said this to her. I didn’t realize it was a controversial statement. She sputtered how it was like saying you didn’t like sandwiches. She said it as if that was ridiculous, but I thought, well of course some people would not like sandwiches. If you don’t like meat and veg between two pieces of bread slathered with condiments, then you’re not going to like sandwiches. I like them fine, but they are very much a take-it-or-leave it food item for me. Mostly because I have so many food restrictions. There are some decent gluten-free breads, but no really great ones. So I’m going to eat rice more often than not.

The last movie I saw was Knives Out. I hated it. I know I am in the minority with that opinion, but I really was shocked at how much I hated it. I went into it hopeful, but that hope was dashed to pieces in the first five minutes.

The only thing I  liked about the movie was Jamie Lee Curtis chewing up the scenery. Gleefully by the handfuls. She was a woman done wrong by her husband (Don Johnson, who was also fantastic), and she was Not Having It. I loved how much she  emoted all over the place. I also loved that she was a woman in her sixties and she looked it. I just adore her for so many reasons. And she stole the show in Knives Out.

Once I finished that movie, I was done with movies in general. I had tried so hard to like them, and I just didn’t. My brother said it was because movies could not be like real life nor get as deep into people’s psyches and usually have to take shortcuts.

I just Googled and it’s apparently common for some autistic people to not like movies. that’s one of my goals for the new year–finding out if I’m autistic.

After Knives Out, I just accepted I didn’t like movies, and I didn’t watch any.

Then along came Everything Everywhere All At Once, starring the absolutely luminous Michelle Yeoh. And the badass Jamie Lee Curtis. Looking frumpy and grumpy, and I loved her for it. Jamie Lee Curtis, I mean. I know I’m harping on this point, but she looks gloriously her age. In a world filled with Botox and facelifts, tummy tucks and Spanx, it’s an act of defiance to just…be.


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