Gluttony

Sometimes I find myself pondering my relation to the 7 deadly sins. I readily admit guilt in all the sins of incontinence, so I'll one day be residing in one of (or perhaps all of) the upper four circles of Dante's Inferno. And that's actually not so bad. I'm averse to sins of violence and malice, so I don't think I'll be forced into real estate below the river Styx. You see, In Hell, that's like living on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. The uppermost layers are much more pleasant. I'll have interesting neighbors with whom I can commiserate; we get to watch the pennant race in the Vestibule of the Futile; and we can poke fun at the bloody fools across the river. It's kind of like my current situation: "Yeah, it sucks being in the U.S. right now...but at least I don't live in a red state!"

Last night I ate dinner with my Thai friends and this morning I suffered the after effects of Gluttony. Puki cooked and as always, it was delicious. As always, the copious amounts of chili melted my internal organs and forced humors to the surface...tears squirted from my eyes and my skin flushed beet red. The Gewürztraminer wine I bought specifically to counter the spice didn't help at all. So be it. I finished off the nuclear feast with a slab of delicious taro-flavored cake leftover from Niki's birthday and, after I drove home, an entire bar of Valrhona chocolate. Speaking of godfodder (the scientific name of the cacao tree, so dubbed by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus, is Theobroma Cacao -- which translates from the Greek to "food of the gods"), right now I'm finishing off a bar of GUARANDA varietal from Ecuador (71% cacao). It's got a "perfumed aroma with fruity, acid notes and floral tones of acacia honey, with milky and exotic wood nuances". Yes, I'm a chocolate fiend. One more reason to find me guilty of gluttony.

New Buzz

I've spent most of my online time in the past week and half updating my photoblog at Buzznet. New stuff includes: more galleries; many new photos have been added to the London, Thailand, Portugal, Prague, Cambodia, Paris, Amsterdam, and Holga galleries; older photos from those and other galleries re-uploaded at a higher resolution; different gallery themes and header images. I'm not yet finished with the revamp but my tax preparation procrastination is getting sad. I've got to get crackin' on that business.

I also started work back at Morgan Creek this week, on this movie. I may be there for a month or so. I'm not passionate about it, but it'll help propel me into the future, and my next retirement. I seem to swing from one retirement to the next, like Tarzan on a vine. Last Sunday I went back to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Science Center. I think I liked the first round of bodies better -- there seemed to be more interesting poses and body types. But this time there was a hands-on section where I got to pick up a real brain and a liver. The brain was smaller and heavier than I'd imagined.

This week has also been interesting on the female front. There haven't been any developments to speak of, but lots of internal ruminations. I won't go into it now, but there are some issues I need to work through.

Okay, before I start work on my taxes I'm going to power through some more scans for Buzznet. Don't make me do all this work in vain! To borrow a phrase from my friend Caleb, who runs TheLaptopTraveler.com, I'll like you better if you visit Xopher.buzznet.com.

Birthday weekend

Friday I went to the Lakers' game: these guys suck. A night at the Staples Center is always fun, though, and my friend Jon almost put the smackdown on an incredibly annoying Pistons' fan sitting next to us. Saturday was my birthday: I went to Kokekokko for dinner with a new friend. They'd run out of hearts, gizzards, skin, and liver so we only got to eat the boring parts.

Sunday morning I got to attend an Asian Film Foundation screening of Stephen Chow's new film, Gong Fu (International English title: Kung Fu Hustle). The U.S. poster art is ridiculous and the trailer isn't all that seductive either, but ignore them both and go see this movie when it's released nation-wide in late April. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard in a movie theater, and the kung fu was top-notch. For me, this movie cements Chow's reputation as the worthy successor to Jackie Chan. Stephen Chow has been starring in mo lei tau ("slapstick" or "makes no sense") comedies in Hong Kong since the early eighties and began directing his own successful films about a decade after that: the top four boxoffice earners in Hong Kong in 1992 were all Chow vehicles. He is arguably Hong Kong's biggest star and Asia's highest paid actor. Never heard of him? I'm not surprised. His only U.S. release was Shaolin Soccer (a.k.a. Siu lam juk kau), (2001). Here's where this blog gets nasty.

Disney-owned Miramax acquired the U.S. distribution rights to both this film and Zhang Yimou's Hero (Ying xiong) in 2002 and proceeded to sit on both films for two years. There were rumors that the Weinstein brothers delayed Hero's release because they didn't want it to compete in the Oscars with some of their own productions, such as Gangs of New York and Chicago, but they also believed the films were "too Chinese" to achieve any commercial success in the West. They tinkered with both pictures extensively: dubbing English dialogue, cutting scenes, adding western soundtracks, and holding multiple audience test screenings. Finally, Quentin Tarantino himself convinced Miramax that Hero (which by this time had broken box-office records across Asia) was actually a good film and should be released intact. Miramax still wanted a hook, so they asked Tarantino if they could attach his name to it. It was subsequently released here as "Quentin Tarantino presents Hero" even though he had nothing to do with it, and it was still cut down to 1 hour 38 minutes. Shaolin Soccer didn't fare nearly as well -- it only got a limited release as a poorly dubbed print, and was edited from 112 minutes to 80 minutes. Even so, it received positive reviews: an outstanding and extremely rare average rating of 100% on RottenTomatoes.com.

Alienated by Miramax, Stephen Chow has taken his latest offering to Sony Pictures Classics for American distribution, but that's no guarantee of non-intervention. We'll have to wait until April to find out how Sony treats Kung Fu Hustle. Until then, go rent the uncut Shaolin Soccer or any other Chow film and enjoy the mo lei tau!



After the movie/moderated discussion, Jon, Kama and I drove to Venice. We had tea and cakes in the garden at Jin Patisserie, another westside gem.