News Satire Roundup: July 25th

Sunday, July 25

·        Recap of the Week – Olympics, Delta variant COVID surges

o   After John’s announcement that the show is on track to return to their regular studio in September, we got another surprise: the white void speaks! And it’s voiced by H. Jon Benjamin!

o   Great response to Boris Johnson’s incidence on going through with England’s Freedom Day,” lifting all COVID restrictions as cases are surging again – “It’s so disingenuous to frame the decision as either ‘lifting COVID restrictions now’ or ‘never doing it.’”

o   Sigh… of course there was a guy, hospitalized with COVID, complaining about vaccination between an “agenda being shoved down our throats.” That incidence agenda? “To get us vaccinated.” – “Yeah, actually, you nailed it in one. Public health officials’ agenda is to get you vaccinated. You know what COVID’s agenda is? To fucking kill you!”

·        And Now This – News euphemisms for sex

o   In which lots of newscasters talked about the cardboard beds at the Olympics and alluded to the rumors that they were built to discourage sex – plenty of “you know what I mean?” and references to “certain extracurricular activities.”

·        Main Story – Housing discrimination

o   The opening example of the Bruces, a Black family who had their valuable Manhattan Beach property stripped from them decades ago, was American racism in a nutshell – when the KKK burning a cross on their property didn’t run them out of town, the city turned to the law and used eminent domain to seize the land.

o   I loved John’s response to a woman from Manhattan Beach insisting that that “isn’t who [they] are” anymore – “Manhattan Beach’s population is only 0.5% Black. So, even if you are not that community now, you don’t look unlike it.”

o   Excellent layout of the racial wealth gap, highlighting how it’s so much worse than people think it is – for every $100 of wealth possessed by the average white family, the average Black family has $13.

o   Much of that comes down to access to home ownership – we looked at the multiples times in the 20^th century that the federal government acted to make mortgages easier to obtain but specifically barred Black people from these benefits, through things like racial covenants and redlining.

o   John hit the nail on the head at the discomfort of a clip featuring a reporter and a local historian trying to discuss what their town’s history of racial covenants means for them today – If two white people are trying to figure out if something is racist, nine times out of ten, it probably is.”

o   We also got into various unofficial methods of housing discrimination, such as the practice of block-busting (buying up homes in nice neighborhoods by convincing white homeowners that Black people are starting to move in) and steering (realtors directing white vs. Black clients to different areas based purely on their race.)

o   Because home ownership is such an enormous contributor to generational wealth, John pointed out that it’s not simply a matter of outlawing discriminatory practices – “Even if you had a magic wand and could erase every piece of housing discrimination going forward, you still wouldn’t undo the damage that’s been done.”

o   The solution? Reparations – For all that detractors like to complain that “no one who perpetuated or was affected by slavery is alive today,” housing discrimination is “quantifiable harm that was done in our lifetimes to people who are still alive.”

o   I really appreciated John’s parting observation – “This is a wound that we are actively trying not to heal, and it is hurting real people everyday.”

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New Shang-Chi poster! With any luck, we’ll have a steady stream of content to ride all the way to the release. The poster is pretty busy, as seems typical for MCU stuff, but I like Wenwu looming at the top of it with the Ten Rings on his arms framing Shang-Chi. 1) I just like the look of it. 2) Tony Leung Chiu-wai looks so cool/menacing! And 3) it reinforces the idea that the film itself/Marvel as a whole understands just what a big deal Leung is going to be here. As soon as I found out Leung had been cast as a Marvel villain (well, after I got through my initial round of nerdish flailing,) my biggest thought was, “Less Malekith, more Killmonger.” The MCU has had some awesome baddies as well as some really lackluster ones, and the latter camp has wasted some really talented actors in the process. Leung deserves the best, just in general, and especially in his Hollywood debut. And all the promotional materials so far point to Wenwu being incredibly prominent – as a villain, as Shang-Chi’s dad, as a mystery, as a badass, and beyond. I really hope the film does something special with him. All the footage we’ve seen attests that Leung is gonna tear it up in the action scenes (those Rings! Bestill my geek heart!), and the heavy emphasis on him in the promos hopefully means he’ll get to do the same within the narrative.

Infernal Affairs II (2003)

When I first watched Infernal Affairs all those years ago, I didn’t realize it was actually a trilogy. I didn’t learn that until later, and I’m now watching the latter two films for the first time. The second installment in the series is a prequel, and my review of it won’t be a Little TLC(w) post, since Tony Leung Chiu-wai isn’t actually in it. Instead, Yan and Ming are played by their flashback actors from the beginning of the first movie: Shawn Yue as Yan and Edison Chen as Ming. However, I know that Leung is back in the third movie, and I wanted to watch this one beforehand to get the whole picture.

Ten years before the events of Infernal Affairs, a young triad recruit named Ming is tapped to join the police academy, serving as the gang’s mole in the force. At the same time, a young police cadet named Yan is given the opportunity to go deep undercover among the triads. As the two moles establish themselves, Superintendent Wong works to keep the city safe amid a changeover in gang leadership.

We’ll start with the obvious. Without Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau, Yan and Ming aren’t nearly as electric to watch. Yue and Chen are both fine in their roles, but they have massive shoes to fill and can’t match the intensity of the performances in the original (shades of Alden Ehrenreich being tasked with living up to the charisma of young Harrison Ford for Solo.) As such, maybe it’s smart that Infernal Affairs II is more of an ensemble piece than the original, less focused on the suspenseful, danger-filled lives of the two moles and more about the entire landscape. We see upper-level triad bosses jockey for position after a hit on their leader, blowing up rivalries between each other. We see members of the police force clashing over how best to combat gang activity, and of course, we see the interplay between the two camps. Yan and Ming are just two parts of that larger puzzle.

For me, all this makes it less gripping than Infernal Affairs, and the prequel comes away feeling a little more generic. However, it’s probably better off casting a wider net instead of just trying to replicate the feel and format of the original, since I don’t think it would’ve been able to get there. This allows different aspects of the film to rise to the surface. I’m really interested in the portrayals of Wong and Sam earlier in their careers, as well as in their relationship with each other. The first film lets you feel the weight of the many years they’ve been on opposite sides of the game, and this movie reveals some interesting stuff about their past. Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang both do a nice job of showing us who these characters were back then while offering a throughline to who they are in the first movie. There are also some strong new characters/performances, including Carina Lau (Mimi from Days of Being Wild) as Sam’s wife Mary and Francis Ng as Hau, an emerging triad boss. On the other hand, certain twists/reveals, in my opinion, do little to enhance what we know from Infernal Affairs, and I could’ve done without them.

Warnings

Violence, drinking/smoking/drug use, sexual references, language, and thematic elements.

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Even though we’re not doing A Little TLC(w) today, we’ve still got some Tony Leung Chiu-wai content to enjoy in the form of new Shang-Chi stuff! In the last couple of days, Marvel has released a new promo and a short featurette for the film. The promo contains a handful of new snippets among footage we’ve already seen, and the Ten Rings continue to look so damn cool in action. Every single shot of Leung as Wenwu fighting gets me so hyped – pushing 60 and he’s still such a badass! Another thing I appreciate about the promo is that it actually gives us a little more of Shang-Chi himself. I’ve felt kind of bad about being so excited about Leung to the exclusion of nearly everything else about the movie, but it looks like it’ll be a really solid film all around. Meanwhile, the featurette, which includes brief talking heads from Kevin Feige, Simu Liu, Awkwafina, and Destin Daniel Cretton in between footage, includes more new shots. The biggest takeaway? The fight scenes in this movie are gonna be incredible. There are also some new shots of Wenwu and what sounds like a different reading of a line heard in one of the earlier trailers, which I like. As much as I enjoy the trailers giving me so much Tony Leung Chiu-wai voiceover, there are definitely lines that feel like they’re delivered in “voiceover mode”: slow, deliberate, and serious in a way that wouldn’t necessarily flow within an actual scene. Getting a little taste of Leung’s dialogue in the context of a scene further cements my feeling that we have nothing to worry about with his English-language debut. He’s gonna kill it!

The Book of Rannells: Black Monday: Season 3, Episode 9 – “Two!” (2021)

 

The penultimate episode of the season is completely bonkers but a lot of fun. It vibes on the cast chemistry by upping the wildness ante all over the place. Finale next week, and I can’t wait!

Mo has assembled the usual suspects for his bachelor party, but due to recent grim events, he’s the only one in the mood to celebrate. So instead, the gang puts their heads together to figure out how to catch the killer who’s after Blair (and possibly the rest of them.) There’s scheming, a drinking game, and a creepy cabin in the woods. What more do you need?

I’ve said this before, but it’s impressive how much the quality of this show automatically goes up when all the main players are in the same room, and it was already really solid when they were in more separate plots at the start of the season. Their comedic chemistry together just crackles – I could watch these lowlifes busk master plans and insult each other for hours. This episode features a finely-coordinated “Shut the fuck up, Keith!” and Mo gleefully delivering the line, “Prejudice wins again, get the fuck outta here!” I also love the group weighing the pros and cons of a “non-sexual honeypot.”

The slant of the main plot and the isolated setting gives the show a good excuse to lean into horror tropes – Mo, Dawn, and Keith transparently pretending to one another that they aren’t scared is a hoot. And said horror tropes in turn give the characters a good excuse to break out their best Home Alone defense tactics, which are used to entertaining effect.

Elsewhere, we’re treated to some big callbacks and a surprising turn of events. These sequences, awesomely, are anchored by none other than Aaron Stanford (Cole from 12 Monkeys, my beloved Birkhoff from Nikita) as a creepy/passionate blowjob-giving doctor. You could’ve asked me to predict plotlines for this show for a hundred years, and I wouldn’t have come close to imagining Aaron Stanford speaking directly into the camera in a soft focus with a lovesick stare. So random, so weird – I love it.

Even though it feels like Blair doesn’t have as much to do here compared to some of my favorites this season, Andrew Rannells is still in rare form. He vacillates well between depressed, disgusted, terrified, and amused, and his reaction-shot game is on point. I love every moment of him side-eyeing someone or struggling to keep up with an evolving situation when he doesn’t know the background. Also, he gives a great explainer on the sex act “ski-poling,” and I love the relish with which he exclaims, “You fuckers are crafty!” Just wonderfully funny in everything he does.