March 6, 2016

March 6, 2016

11:18 am on the 14th, talking about the 5th

I'll keep the class section of this post relatively minimal, but of special note was the second class with a lesson titled "A Victim of Crime". I had a couple of new students (Sherry and Katarina) and we warmed up by splitting into different groups and planning how to commit one of three crimes. There was stealing a purse, stealing a phone, and stealing something from a car... except the stealing from a car group misunderstood and instead came up with a fairly elaborate plan to steal A car. It involved impersonating a police officer, so I congratulated them for the sheer number of crimes they were in the process of committing.

As part of the lesson plan I asked if anyone had been the victim of a crime before, there was a slight murmer, and then I thought "oh no, someone here has been sexually assaulted and I've just ripped open a wound and this is going to be terrible"

But it turns out people have just had their phones stolen... not robbed, maybe they had their pockets picked. Which also means these phones could have fallen out of their pockets on their own. Not particularly traumatizing.

Yeah, I'll skip the rest of my classes, they were fairly straightforward.

After work I went to see "The Mermaid" with Steve and Ailsa. We managed to miss the first minute or so- this theatre doesn't mess around with its starting time- arriving in time to see a fake mermaid exhibit gag where a middle aged man in full mermaid regalia- hair, lipstick, sea shell bra- emerges from a bathtub.

The actual story is about a mer-person plan to kill a wealthy businessman who has been putting sonar devices into the ocean for the sake of driving off dolphins from an island so that the island will no longer be some kind of protected natural preserve and he can build on it. The problem the mer-people have with this is that, besides the obvious evilness of it, the sonar devices are so powerful that they are causing the mer-people to become diseased, and they have now been reduced to living on this secluded, have submerged derelict ship off the island I already mentioned.

The plan they hatch? To send their beauty- the titular mermaid, with a cut fin that allows her to waddle (and skateboard!) on land- to seduce the businessman, bring him back to their home, where they can murder him. The first we see of the mermaid is when she crashes a party the businessman is holding- the businessman is surrounded by beautiful women, and in comes this more than slightly off woman with her smeared makeup and manic expression saying how she loves the businessman so much and to please call her.

Not surprisingly, she is escorted off the premises, though the businessman does take her number for the sake of placating her.

The mermaid returns home and everyone crowds around their lone cell phone waiting for the call. I kept hearing Robert Downey Jr. in my head saying "not a great plan".

Well, the businessman gets burned by his evil sort-of girlfriend, so he calls the mermaid girl to prove a point about him not being trash... it doesn't really make sense. He says he's coming to pick the girl up, but as the mer-people get ready for the bludgeoning and poisoning and whatnot, it turns out the businessman just sent some security guys to pick the woman up. Again, not a great plan.

So the mermaid heads out and their's a wonderfully slapsticky segment where the mermaid is trying to murder the businessman with some poisonous sea-urchins while he's unaware of the whole thing- she ends up getting a couple of urchins stuck to her face (well-timed door opening, a classic), she's frothing at the mouth, barely getting the antidote in time (alcohol) and makes a final leap at the businessman, only to get clocked by his practice golf swing.

Going by this one example, it would appear Chinese movies aren't afraid to make their female leads look ridiculous for the sake of some comedy- I think that's fantastic. I saw an article a while back questioning why The Little Mermaid's (appropriately enough) sidekick Flounder was a boy, when there was a dearth of women characters in that movie, besides the quick flash of Ariel's sisters who I believe where horrible and Ursula, who of course was also horrible. I think the answer is that we're afraid to show anything that could be construed as physical violence against women (discounting Quentin Tarantino, and I'm mostly speaking about comedies). Have you ever heard of the trope where a woman is stopped cold by a shoulder grab? Or the trope "Beauty is never tarnished"? Check them out on tvtropes.org (I'm not actually sure what search terms you'd use for that first one). In short, I've never seen "Bridget Bunny" fall off a cliff.

Ooh, but now that I'm thinking about it, I bet Babs Bunny (no relation) from Tiny Toons fell off her fair share of cliffs. But that show was an amazing exception to the rule.

Hmm, besides the violence aspect, there's also that desire to shoe-horn women into the roles of either Madonna or Whore, I supose catering to a male desire to see these two and only these two? I mention this one second because it didn't occur to me first- I'm not so limited that I only want these two types of woman characters in my stories. Why, yes, I do get defensive on this topic, why do you ask?

That's what was so great about the movie "Neighbors"- both the husband and wife got into the pettiness, the wife wasn't ultimately above joining in. And, yes, as much as I didn't like Bridesmaids, and as much as a room full of people suddenly having violent diarrhea isn't my kind of humour- I do still appreciate that they were willing to make that kind of joke with women.

Okay, that's enough of my offensive views (who hurt you, Isaac?) back to The Mermaid: no surprises, the businessman and the mermaid somehow fall in love despite the whole sonar thing/self described shallow person. The businessman walks her back to her house and he gets taken by the mer-people. They explain they're killing him because of the sonar stuff, and the businessman points out that if they kill him that still won't turn off the sonar devices ("Not a great plan")- a mer-guy approaches the businessman with a bludgeon then stops at the last minute to say to their leader how the business guy has a point. That moment was actually pretty funny to me- I don't think anyone else in the theatre laughed at this.

The mermaid gets the business dude free and he swims away... which should have been the worst way possible to try and escape from mer-people, but I guess the sonar devices are so precise that the mer-people can't leave the ship at all, but also has no effect on the human swimming through the waters... I didn't care for this particular bit of staging.

Business guy goes to the police to tell them he was kidnapped by mermaids which goes about as well as you'd expect- a legitimately hilarious scene, after the business guy leaves the room he hears uproarious laughter, he re-enters to give the police a piece of his mind, but the second he enters the officers are perfectly composed and doing work. The business man leaves, hears laughter, turns around to see, again, the composed officers doing work, but maybe in different parts of the office doing different things. It was great, highly ridiculous, very much my cup of tea.

Anyways, business guy goes to turn off the sonar devices while telling everyone about mermaids- his evil girlfriend believes him, she's been working with a german scientist with a mad on for studying mermaid corpses. Evil girlfriend and German scientist take seal-killing team six (sea what I did there?) to murder the mer-people so they can be dissected and whatnot. Oh no! Business guy has to get to the ship to warn the mer-people, but the traffic is imPOSSIBLE!!

Oh no, this traffic! *trombone noises*

And cut to the ship where mermaids are getting gunned down or torn into with hooks, the mermaid main character gets bruised, bloodied and during a chase through the ocean gets her fin mutilated by a rocket attack, blowing her onto shore where she can barely move, much less escape. There, uh, was a lot of blood in the water.

What kind of movie IS this? Tonally speaking, this scene had no business in this movie.

The businessman arrives to save the day in a jetpack (to answer my earlier question, I guess this is a Chinese movie... the poster for the film "The Man from Macau III" also has people wearing jetpacks. I guess jetpacks are in this year?) before getting shot through with crossbow bolts- the first one hit his butt, which is obviously hilarious (no it's not) before he gets shot twice in the back, the bolts sticking out of either side of his chest, blood coming out of his mouth. Again, what kind of tone is this?!?

The police arrive, the businessman throws the mermaid back into the water (the movie ignores her mutilated fin I guess) and we cut to a few years later where the businessman has given away all his money to environmental causes and started a marine biologist scholarship, the winner of which this year shows up to ask about mermaids- the businessman sagely tells him not to believe everything he sees (the kid has a picture of the mermaid from when she was blown onto land), and introduces his wife, who is totally a normal human woman. The kid leaves.

Psyche, it's the mermaid. The movie ends with the business guy and the mermaid checking out the beauty of the ocean, while the guy is wearing an air bubble helmet, which is a power that was in no way previously established in this film. Also, the cgi for this ending was atrocious, and that's coming from me, I'm often very forgiving of cgi, so take that for whatever it's worth.

When asked what I thought about this movie, what else could I say? "It was very interesting."

Also interesting? The bathroom at the movie theatre is super nice and has soap- big score!

We went to a "Mr. Pizza" which I'm told is very expensive. Considering I bought myself a 102 yuan hawaiian pizza, I'd have to say I agree. But at least it was the size of a large pizza- yes, I pigged out- and was very good, though it had an odd sweetness about it in the crust.

They have an open window into the kitchen/bakery where we can see dudes flipping and twirling pizza dough. I explained how you don't usually see that sort of thing in North America.

Somehow we got on the topic of first impressions and Ailsa said that she thinks of Dany as "pure" and "brotherly". I gave her the tip that she'd better not tell Dany that, those are some pretty negative things to tell a guy. I got "boring", "serious", and "mature". Yikes.

Still better off than Dany. - 12:58 pm