[Weekly Update] Audience live reaction

I was going out to watch some fireworks. But then the weather turned bad with a chance of hail.

Guess I'm staying home and watch Games Done Quick.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Postponing Jackie Chan:
Unfortunately I have to slightly postpone The Protector video, as the HK version is difficult to find locally and expensive to import intentionally. However, I'll be traveling to Asia late autumn, so maybe I can just grab a copy there.

Cross-gender Casting:
Our next video will be about women who acted in male roles. This includes a lot of Huangmei Opera films, which autocorrect insists should be Hangman Opera. But the true purpose of the video is for me to gush about Brigitte Lin. Because no man is gay enough, no woman is straight enough. It's Brigitte Lin.

Chinese Geography Part 1:
The second video for July will be the beginning of a new series, which may come in 2 or 3 parts. In this series, I'll be introducing different Chinese cities using movies as our eyes. Currently, I've settled with foggy cyberpunk Chongqing, old grey brick alleys in Beijing, surreal mountains from Guangxi Guilin, vintage village of ethnic minorities in Yunnan, and colonial aesthetic Shanghai. I also want to add some western China representation, like the Gobi desert seen in Crouching Dragon. Unfortunately, Geography in China is a touchy subject, so I do have to navigate very delicately.

Traveling to Asia:
Since I'll be traveling to Asia soon-ish, I'll have to build a backlog of videos ahead of time. For these, I'll be doing reviews for single films. It's been a while since we've done one of these, and I have some fun picks. We'll be watching the first Sailor Moon feature movie, and talk about how it changed female representation in the anime industry. We'll talk about Kwaidan, the single most beautiful horror movie from Japan. We'll talk about The Raids, and how it impacted modern action flicks in the West. And we'll be revisiting India for another "classic": Gunda... If I can find a copy of it that doesn't have the Goldmine watermark.

MEDIA TALK

It's surprisingly difficult to find things to yap about. Let's revisit an old topic then.

I'm rather excited about The Naked Gun reboot, as I think the casting is genius, and the ad campaign has been pretty funny so far. I hope the film does well, because I'd love to experience it in a theater filled with laughter.

Something very different between filmgoers in China and in Canada is that the Chinese audience is much more receptive and reactive. I remember watching Spider-Verse 2 in China, and when Tom Hardy shows up for a cameo, some guy yelled "That's Venom" excitedly. For me, it's kinda annoying. But it seems most people don't mind at all. In a theater where every seat is filled, the atmosphere is just different. When there is laughter, everyone laughs together, and it feels good.

In Canada, however, most people know to hold back their reactions. This theoretically provides a good viewing experience, but the experience becomes kinda... sterile. It feels no different than me watching a film at home by myself. Every viewer is in their own little bubble. It was how I felt when watching The Life of Chuck, a fantastic movie that should incite a lot of oohs and ahhs. I was with about 30 other people in a small room, but it basically feels like I'm alone.

But that was the exception. Most of the time, theaters in Montreal are actually quite empty. Watching Elio in the UltraAVX atrium with over a hundred seats, and I think there were only dozens of us. Similarly, watching Friendship and there was about 10 people. There aren't enough people for the reactions to feel communal. When a guy laughs at the joke from Friendship, it feels like a single dude being disruptive, rather than a natural laugh track that enhances the experience.

And it makes me wonder: Have we overstressed the importance of manner in theaters? Does the problem stem not from manners, but from the lack of crowd-sizes? Or maybe films today just aren't very good at motivating the emotion of the crowds? That's something Chinese and Indian films are quite good at.

At the very least, I wish people would laugh together. It's Naked Gun, let's just let it out. I know I'm depressed and have trouble laughing out loud, but we can't all be on Prozac, right?

Anyway, that's the update for this week! Script for the next video is nearly done and should be uploaded soon. Hope you are having a great summer, and please stay safe when there's a hailstorm in your weather forecast.