[Weekly Update] Reason not to go to the cinema.

Remember to cast your vote on the pinned post to decide what horror topics we'll cover this summer!

CHANNEL UPDATE

Ne Zha Video:
Hope you enjoyed our last video on the story of Nezha! It's nice to finish a video so highly requested by viewers. Hopefully the video lives up to your expectation

As the video is almost 18 minutes long, a lot of smaller tidbits of the story has to be edited out. I didn't even mention the practice of Nezha worship across Chinese culture, and how it morphed into a uniquely Taiwanese practice known as "Techno Nezha".

I was going to introduce Nezha's characteristic in more of a detail, too. One common question is why Nezha looks like a girl. Nezha has been depicted like this for centuries. And people have forgotten why we depict him that way. The most commonly agreed upon reason is that China simply had a different concept of gender. Prepubescent children are often depicted (and sometimes treated) as gender neutral. This is seen in other children characters such as Red Boy in Journey to the West.

I was also going to explain Nezha's armory. He is probably the single most heavily armed deity in all of Chinese pantheon. Most other gods only has one or two weapons, but Nezha has a spear, a golden ring, a veil, a bell, a gold brick (not sure why), a lasso, 4 different swords, a bow and arrow, and more. A lot of illustration depicts him wielding all of these weapons by commanding three heads and six arms. Don't quote me on this, but I think this concept may have been directly influenced by Hinduism, where gods often have multiple faces and limps, with each hand holding a different sacred object.

Oh, and "Three Head Six Arms" is a Chinese idiom for being extremely capable.

Next Video:
Our next video will be about crappy Chinese movies. The movie I landed on all came out last year:

• A Legend: Jackie Chan relives his younger years via deepfake. This is a film with a story from the 90s, the aesthetic sensibility of the 2000s, the CGI of the 2010s, and the ambition of the 2040s. It's a dull and cringey movie, which seems like a regular occurrence for Jackie Chan these days.

• The Journey of Flower: A decade after the successful TV series, this crappy movie looks like it was made a decade ago, and only just now crawled out of someone's junk drawer. It's another harsh reminder that Chinese TV is doing better than Chinese cinema. Whenever someone tell me to cover good Chinese movies, I have to tell them "The good movies you are thinking of are all TV shows".

• Bureau 749: based on an online pulp novel heavily inspired by Men In Black, this movie, featuring a young Chinese idol, is the epitome of chunii. It's angsty, edgy, trying way to hard to be cool, like giving Shadow the Hedgehog a gun kinda cool. The protagonist is given a pair of wings, a weebo's idea of badass. Except the wings are like, a foot long each. Oh god just thinking about it makes me wanna dig a hole in the ground and jump in.

If you want to watch these movies, I think A Legend is on YouTube for rent, The Journey of Flower is on YouTube illegally with multi-subs. And Bureau 749 is quarantined to only on iQiYi. Watch at your own risk!

MEDIA TALK

So, recently, the CEO of Netflix claims the streaming service is saving Hollywood, because people clearly prefer watching movie at home over going to the cinema. It's a statement I can only agree with a lot of asterisks attached. Because, at least to me, I don't choose streaming over cinema. I have no choice in the matter.

It's something I want to conduct a survey on: Why do you watch films at home instead of in the cinema? And here are the reasons I don't go to the cinema often.

I can't afford cinema: Disposable income has disappeared for most people in the past few years here in North America. Cost of living far outpaced our income growth. Every penny we spend have to be carefully considered. Spending 20 dollars for a movie date that lasts two hours is simply not cost effective. This is my primary reason. I want to go to the theaters, I just can't afford to go often.

Lack of social occasions: With work taking over our lives, we have less leisure time, and thus less opportunities to socialize. We have less friends. In this loneliness epidemic, every interaction is virtual. We simply don't have a lot of chances to go watch movies with friends. What am I supposed to do? Watch a movie alone like a snobby film critic?

Lack of event cinema: Despite the lacklustre poster and trailer, Sinners prove that people will still visit theaters when they find a movie worth experiencing. Going to the cinema is like going to a festival, it's the experience that matters, not simply the content on screen. And yet, after the death of the superhero genre, event films only come once a year. Hollywood, of course, has no reason to keep movie theatres alive, so they have no reason to create event cinema. And so, every IP is milked dry and no longer attractive. Directors and actors become disposable instead of celebrated.

Transit: For me, going to watch a movie means I have to take a 20 minute long train or bus ride, plus an additional 15 minute of walk. I can also get there with 10 minutes of driving, plus another 20 minutes of finding a parking space. The train costs me around 12 dollars. The parking costs me around 12 dollars. We are looping back to the first option, but indeed, I just can't afford cinema.

Anyway, that is the update for this week. What are your reason for not wanting to go to the cinema? A lot of people seemed to be fed up with rowdy audience members. Luckily, I have yet to encounter that, probably because the theatre is empty most of the time.

In any case, I'll see you in our next update. And if you haven't, check out our bonus video, and let me know your thoughts!