{"id":67,"date":"2015-09-16T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/16\/42movies-day-6-chinese-feud\/"},"modified":"2015-09-16T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T16:00:00","slug":"42movies-day-6-chinese-feud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/16\/42movies-day-6-chinese-feud\/","title":{"rendered":"#42Movies, Day 6: Chinese Feud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(All right, you got me. This entire blog series is, in fact, just an excuse for me to make up terrible puns. Deal with it.)<\/p>\n<p>Today we&#8217;re talking about:<\/p>\n<p><b>Rush Hour (1998)<\/b><br \/>and<br \/><b>The One (2001)<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s get it on after the trailers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JMiFsFQcFLE?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/JMiFsFQcFLE\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/JMiFsFQcFLE<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2VwRKLp1Gk0?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/2VwRKLp1Gk0\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/2VwRKLp1Gk0<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Yes, these are both American movies which feature Asian performers. I suppose I feel an affinity for them because my life has followed a similar trajectory: I was born in Taiwan, and many of my early life experiences there shaped who I am today, but I grew up in the United States, and this is where I&#8217;ll succeed or fail.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, there are <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Drunken_Master_II\">many<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metacritic.com\/movie\/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon\">excellent<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0373074\/combined\">kung fu<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chocolate_(2008_film)\">movies<\/a> made in other countries, but it&#8217;s interesting to look at how the stars of these two films were imported and repackaged for American audiences.<\/p>\n<p>Jackie Chan and Jet Li in many ways represent two opposite ends of the martial arts movie spectrum: Jackie became famous for always doing his own stunts (and sometimes suffering grievous injuries in the process), and Jet was well-known for his <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/WireFu\">wire fu<\/a> special effects. Jackie tends to go for comedy, and Jet usually plays the badass fighter character. But they both act as ambassadors for Eastern martial arts, which are a huge part of many Asian cultures but have no traditional counterpart in the West. (Wrestling? Boxing? Let&#8217;s be serious here, folks.)<\/p>\n<p>Fun fact: John Rogers, now known for showrunning TV&#8217;s <i>Leverage<\/i> and <i>The Librarians<\/i>, also created the animated series <i>The Jackie Chan Adventures<\/i> back in the day. And if you think a cartoon about Jackie Chan is an odd idea, perhaps you&#8217;re misinterpreting his brand. It&#8217;s not about the &#8220;real&#8221; death-defying stunts; it&#8217;s about a very specific, precisely choreographed style of <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/113439313\">action comedy<\/a>. Rogers later wrote a draft of <i>Rush Hour 2<\/i>&#8230; but I digress.<\/p>\n<p>The original <i>Rush Hour<\/i> also features Chris Tucker&#8217;s second-best career performance to date. His best work was, of course, as <a href=\"http:\/\/fyeahcontroversialcharacters.tumblr.com\/post\/104606543519\/character-ruby-rhod-fandom-the-fifth-element\">Ruby Rhod<\/a> in <i>The Fifth Element<\/i>. FIGHT ME.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of science fiction, I know <i>The One<\/i> is completely ridiculous, but I love how it&#8217;s totally okay with being a gonzo spec-fic riff on <i>Highlander<\/i>. And come on, you gotta give it up for a movie that has <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Film\/TheOne\">its own TV Tropes page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Directed by James Wong, who co-wrote the script with Glen Morgan&mdash;they&#8217;re the same team who co-created the TV series <i>Space: Above and Beyond<\/i> and shared writing credits on 15 episodes of <i>The X-Files<\/i>, including &#8220;Squeeze&#8221; and &#8220;Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man&#8221;&mdash;<i>The One<\/i> is kind of the bright, brazen, balls-to-the-walls antithesis to the often dark and brooding TV shows they worked on.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, if you&#8217;re watching it on DVD, make sure you check out the special features. The pictures of all the different <a href=\"http:\/\/i.somethingawful.com\/sasbi\/2007\/01\/elpintogrande\/26-victim117.jpg\">alternate-universe<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/i.somethingawful.com\/sasbi\/2007\/01\/elpintogrande\/26-victim118.jpg\">Jet Lis<\/a> are a friggin&#8217; hoot.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"Curtis\" title=\"Curtis\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(All right, you got me. This entire blog series is, in fact, just an excuse for me to make up terrible puns. Deal with it.) Today we&#8217;re talking about: Rush Hour (1998)andThe One (2001) Let&#8217;s get it on after the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[46,13,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-42movies21days","category-movies","category-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}