Apologies

I feel like I must apologize for my harsh criticisms of Street Fighter and Dragonball, that's not the purpose that I started watching these films. Actually, I think the real reason I wanted to watch these films was for laughs, but in respect to my "Bad Movie Series," that I've been doing, the movies are precisely that, bad movies, the logic behind that being I might learn what not to do.

So I feel I must apologize because I spent the previous posts ranting about how bad the movies were and not discussing the educational experience that I've had from both, so here's what I learned.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

1.) Develop Relationships -- There were scenes where a character died and I just didn't care because, even though the character was significant to the main character, I didn't know them and I didn't care about them.

2.) Montages show us progress but not struggle -- The montage that I have particularly in mind is when Chun Li is learning and finally mastering this technique, but since I didn't see a huge struggle in the first place or, for that matter, a lack of dedication/determination to get this technique done in the first place, I only see a series of images telling me she's got it and that it seemed easy. Nothing should be gained easily by the main character.

3.) Establish why the main character is uniquely important -- There is a specific scene when Chun Li is told by her master that "only you can save your father" but nothing else is elaborated in terms if that. Does she posses something that no one else does? An ability, a connection with a charm, etc... that would allow her to do what no one else can?

4.) Similarly to #3, don't make a character seem special and then negate it -- As mentioned before, her master tells her "only you can save your father," and then, ==Spoiler Alert== her father dies, so guess what? Not even she could save her father, which takes away any sort of unique labeling that she may have been given by that one line.

5.) Spend more time on the character's situation and how they got there -- When Chun Li moves to Thailand she lives on the streets and begs for food. How did she get to that situation? Did she choose to live like that? I would think so since just moments ago she lived a rather wealthy life in Hong Kong.

6.) Get good actors -- While Kristen Kreuk wasn't bad, everyone else was. Enough said on that. Also, it was very clear in fight scenes that Kristen Kreuk is not an extremely athletic person. Her Chinese also sucks... which takes me to my next point.

7.) When you have people speaking in languages they don't know, get a language coach for them. -- This holds especially true for when people speak a tonal language like Chinese.

That's all for that. I'll do Dragonball another time. I don't think I have enough energy for it right now.

Dragonball Evolution AKA Bad Movie Series Pt. 2

I think calling Dragonball Evolution a bad movie would be unfair and horribly inaccurate. In fact, I feel as though Dragonball Evolution should be nominated for best comedy of the year. In fact, no other movie thus far has had me laughing harder.

Naturally, this is what I would like to say, and indeed it was truly hilarious and had me laughing throughout the entire movie, but then I wouldn't be able to go on my rant about just how bad it is.

I think we all knew that Dragonball Evolution was going to be mindlessly stupid, consisting of no plot, millions of cliches and horrific writing, but I don't think any of us expected it to be directed so poorly that it managed to turn a good actor bad. Well, I guess that just falls under bad direction.

Well, now we know why Hong Kong's king of ridiculous slapstick comedy, Stephen Chow produced and guided the production of this film.

At least Chi Chi was hot.

I also think the last 15 to 20 minutes of Matrix Revolutions was a better Dragonball than this.

NYAFF HK Film Focus

Additionally, I recently stumbled upon this and I am very sad and disappointed that I missed it/came upon it late. However, I did see IP Man (pronounced Yip Mun) and it's really good so I'd recommend it to anyone.

A return to New York and a return to the basics

Monday night I packed up my things and made the move from my home in New Jersey back to NYU to stay in Weinstein for a month while I look after high school kids, which I've done for the past 3 years.

The students arrive on Sunday, and it looks like we have some "V.I.P.'s" this year in the film program, which should make it... if nothing else, interesting. Aside from this, this past week a few interesting things occurred, although not too many.

Tuesday I was coming back from PBS and was around Washington Square South when a student I had passed by dropped her ID and kept on walking without noticing. Seeing this I went to pick it up and give it to her, so to get her attention I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. Upon turning around, the first words out of her mouth were "Oh my God," but not in a good way. It sounded more like a homeless man just went up to her with his pants down and asked her if she wanted to join him in his box for a few minutes.

Then, of course, she processes the words that were coming out of my mouth ("You dropped this,") and says "Oh my God," but this time in a good "oh what a cute baby you have there," kind of way and says thank you and we go our separate ways. I wonder though, do I give off a creepy aura or am I extremely hard on the eyes? Because I feel like that initial "Oh my God," was quite unnecessary.


On an entirely different note, since I feel as though this blog should talk about film or creative stuff that I'm working on or helping on or what have you, as opposed to my daily random life, I feel as though I need to post something film related here, which is hard because I haven't done much film related as of late. Despite that, I started to think about some questions about stories and story structure. It seems like, and it just might be because I'm too close to the material, that whenever I look at the projects I do I feel like something is missing. I started to wonder, "What makes a good story?" Here are some of the things I've come up with:

1.) A clear protagonist.
2.) A goal the protagonist needs or wants to achieve.
3.) An obstacle preventing the protagonist from achieving their want or need.
4.) Achieving or failing to achieve their want or need.
5.) A clear world and rules of said world that our characters live in.

So basically I've listed the main points that have been drilled into me in film school and STILL I feel like the projects I've done so far are missing something (aside from my personal take on whatever, because its not that) so I think I need to take some time and figure out just what a good story is so that I can try my hand at making one. I guess I'll try to post my findings if I come across any.

Drawings Pt. 2

Here are some more drawings, mostly from commuting in, although one is obviously of Washington Square Park so that's not from commuting in. Still working on my drafting skills, they've gotten a lot worse since this past fall but a lot better since... two months ago?

Bad Movies

So I've decided to continue my post film school film school education by watching a series of bad movies. Yes, that was read right, bad movies. Everyone talks about the classics: The Godfather, On The Waterfront, Citizen Cane, etc... and yes, while those movies are important to see (guess which one(s) I haven't seen) watching the occasional bad movie is important too because knowing what not to do is as important of not more important than knowing what to do. So far, as mentioned before I saw "Street Fighter The Legend of Chun Li," the next one will be "Dragonball Evolution" then maybe the two transformers. I think I'll need to intersperse viewing of these films with some good ones so my brain doesn't explode.

On another note I think I've decided to try to do some animation projects I planned out doing throughout my years at NYU that I never got to but more on that as they actually happen... hopefully.

Ramblings

So I just watched Street Fighter the Legend of Chun Li, you know, for laughs, and wow is it hilariously bad, which is good because I watched it with the intention of viewing something hilariously bad because I didn't feel like thinking and just wanted to have a little fun. Besides, its not like I paid to see it.


On another, completely different note, on Tuesday I was at my internship and it started raining, seemingly out of nowhere. My response to this is, and well, the past month or so of almost constant rain was: "What's up with this weather?" The response I get to my question is "What are you? Jerry Seinfeld?"

Now, this isn't the first time this parallel has been drawn, the former having been made by none other than Nicholas Feitel some months back. I believe his comment being somewhere along the lines of "Matt, just because you live in New York doesn't mean you have to be like Seinfeld. You're Jew-ing it up almost worst than me,". Of course he gets away with this comment for the mere fact that he is actually Jewish.

Naturally, of course, as I sit here and begin to plan my long rant about how unjust it is that the term "What's with" or "what's up with" is relegated to a 55 year-old Hungarian-Jewish- Brooklynite comedian and how I should be able to complain about things without being compared to said sitcom character/comedian whom I never really watched or cared about, I realize that this course of action can only backfire because it, in and of itself, is feeding the parallel, so I guess I'm just stuck.


Additionally, today I actually managed to go to Nick's writing group. It was fun and productive in that it has succeeded in encouraging me to work on my script more; I know I definitely want to finish my script because I want to, 1, get it made and 2, go and start writing and developing other ideas that have been floating around this head of mine.

However, at this meeting I learned that two people whom were in charge of looking for additional crew members for this shoot I wanted to be involved with were desperately seeking crew members. Upon hearing this Nick, who was already involved with the shoot, approached these two people and suggested me. Their response was somewhere along the lines of "oh yea, Matt Chao... we'll call him if we run out of PA's." (This was a professional shoot and they were looking for PA's)

I don't know how to react to that information. Provided, it is Nick telling the story so facts are bound to be exaggerated, but, I mean, I expect this kind of reaction/treatment from one of the two people there, but not really from both. I also wonder why their reactions are like that. Have I wronged them somehow? I only really worked on set with one of them and I'd like to believe that we had a fun time together the two times we worked together. Am I doing something wrong that there would be a cause for hesitance when it comes to having me on set? Mike Sweeny told me he got more or less the same response from one of them when he approached them, the "I'll call you," which, of course, meant that he never got a call, and these are supposed to be people we are at least friendly with. Is there a reason for the trepidation?

I think that my reaction to this should be and remain the reaction I expressed at the cafe where we hold our weekly writing sessions: "Oh well, fuck 'em,".


Additionally, I finally got to see and hang out with my good high school friend Yong Choi, whom I haven't seen in two years and has recently graduated from UVA for Architecture. However, this story, if deemed worth telling, may be better suited for the Xanga.