Archive for January, 2011

A Cowboy or a Kato?

Friday, January 21st, 2011

Hmm, maybe both, actually. So I’ve actually been to Spain and England and back since my last post – which frankly, I think just makes me look crazy efficient – and while my Fusion CD from Indievox continues to download, I thought I’d review Cowboy Jay’s big break into Hollywood cinema, The Green Hornet.

First things first: as you may know, I am not a fan of Cowboy Jay. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m an ex-fan – I still love and play his first five albums. I’m perpetually amazed at what he’s been trying to pass off as “original” music since then (with very few exceptions), and his occasionally grotesquely sexist or falsely humble comments in interviews simply turn my stomach. I continue to call the man “Cowboy Jay” (and not just “Jay,” “Jay Chou” or “Oh Overrated One”) because I don’t think he should be allowed to live this down quite so quickly. Now recognizing all this, here’s what I want to say about his role as Kato opposite Seth Rogan’s Green Hornet:

Jay was the best thing about that movie.

In some respects, this is a case of damning it with faint praise: it was not, after all, that great of a film. That said, it was probably better than the worst of the rumors: it had a few really good lines, and featured some cool fight scenes. There were also some fun innovations in presentation, like the “Kato vision” where everything slows down so Kato can mentally choreograph his fight, or the splitting screen as the gangsters get the word out about the hit on the Hornet.

Another thing I really liked was the fact that it made no attempt at the angsty inner turmoil that seems to have taken over other superhero films. I might be the only person on the planet to think this, but I despised The Dark Knight for taking everything fun about the superhero concept and making a movie that depressed me to very depths of my soul. I’ve seen Vietnam War films that were more cheerful. There is, it turns out, such a thing as too dark. So for me, the Seth Rogen/Michel Gondry take on the Green Hornet that skirts alongside camp without crossing over (well, usually) was sort of refreshing.

[Spoiler alert: from here on, I'm talking more specifically about the movie, including the ending. Read at your own risk!]

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Posted in Cowboy Jay | 12 Comments »

Let’s go in order of importance

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

(Okay, first I’m going to admit something embarrassing – I’ve been doing a lot of traveling for the last month, mostly with my new computer, and I couldn’t log into my blog because I forgot the password. How sad is that? It is, needless to say, recovered now.)

So, first and foremost: Yes, Virginia, there is a Fusion Band – and they have finally returned with their second album, Adult World (成人世界). I’m not really sure what happened there – there have been a few posts on their blog heavy with innuendo about how much has happened this year and nobody is right or wrong, which naturally led many to fear that the long-rumored second album would never come to be. (And where was Jonathan Lee? Out touring with the Superband, perhaps, or maybe leaving it to the companies to duke it out.)

As of January 4, this was the top message on their douban page: “As to this album, I trust our loyal fans are understand clearly our recording process and experiences, and the waiting that followed, high tides and low tides, no matter what, it didn’t die in utero. It’s just that a physical album may never appear. We don’t need to say more about the experiences of these last two years, you’ll understand when you hear the songs on the album, people who understand will all understand. This time Fusion also won’t be doing all kinds of live performances, everybody is engaged in their own business. The spirit of a band is there, I believe that everyone will be able to glean their spirit and strength from the album! Support Shanghai rock bands, getting support for so many years really hasn’t been easy, let’s all unite!”

Unsurprisingly, many commenters are reading this as saying that the band has broken up, and that maybe this is the end. If so, that’s a terrible pity, but we’ll have to follow instructions and try to understand where they’re at from the lyrics of their new album. It’s on Indievox, and since there’s no physical album expected for the time being, download it there.

And then there were four. A-fu has now joined A-gong in the ROC military, so that leaves four members of sodagreen to continue to carry the torch. If you (or I) thought that constantly losing members to military service would slow them down at all, recent reports suggest otherwise. The band has made no fewer than 15 trips to the mainland in the last two months, to the point where all the remaining members of the bad (except for Xinyi) fell sick. That’s right, the only woman is also the strongest. There’s some great feminist message there, I think. Or maybe not. Anyway, they are keeping the name alive, but I can’t be the only one asking the obvious question here: when will Xiao Wei and Jiakai get called up? And whatever happened to everyone serving together?

And speaking of four… Mayday was Monster-free at a recent round of promotions. They appear to have had a pretty run-of-the-mill few weeks here, with the standard New Year’s Eve performances (which they keep doing, though more often than not Ashin gets accused of being out of key, something I’ve come to see as linked to the fact that he always sounds out of key for the first two or three songs live, so just doing three songs total doesn’t give him time to get with the program), promotions for the Kaohsiung Lantern Festival next month (they’ve been spokesmen for ages), and talk about scheduling the band for year-end banquets (year end in this context being the end of the Chinese New Year). Pretty standard stuff.

Posted in Fusion Band, Mayday, Sodagreen | 7 Comments »