Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Ryan Sheely to overthink listener feedback. Topics include our troops in Iraq, scary movies, your ICBM address, proving and proving our knowledge, Will Smith, pulling punches in Faust stories, the further meaning of vampires, and how much TV can be good.
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Download Episode 69 (MP3)
As we approach this holiest of America’s fireworks-oriented days off from work, I’d like to talk a bit about how much I love my country.
My parents used to take me to the 4th of July parade in our New Jersey town. I thought I loved my country then.
At the fireworks later that night, everyone would talk about the “grand finale” — when was the “grand finale?” I thought I loved my country then.
But when I was 15 years old, again on the 4th of July, I truly learned to love my country.
Because on that day, at the Warner Quad in Ridgewood, NJ, in the company of a friend with the patriotic and appropriate last name of Hancock, I first saw Independence Day.
Here are the top 10 things I learned that day that I would never forget.
Word comes today (via Defamer) that the coming remake of The Karate Kid set to star Will Smith’s son Jaden will be less a remake and more–um–a fucking travesty.
It seems that due to the financial participation of the China Film Group, the film’s location will be moved from the San Fernando Valley to China, where a Chinese mentor will instruct young Jaden in the ways of a martial art other than karate. Will Smith is at pains to explain that this is in fact a good thing:
“Fortunately, karate is originally a Chinese art form, so that’s the area we’re playing around in.” (Ed. Note: Though karate was developed in Japan, it is based upon Kenpō, a Chinese fighting style.)
I’m not sure I’m willing to grant that adverb… “Fortunately” implies that we should somehow be glad that the source material needed slightly less lube before violation (or, rather, “playing around”). As if she deserves it for dressing in such a skimpy gi.
We’ve had some spirited debate on the site this week about the racial implications of a character like Mr. Miyagi who, for better or worse, became a kind of pop-culture mascot for American perception of its rising Asian population. Kidding aside, I can’t help but think that taking such a monumental change (can they even call it The Karate Kid anymore?) so lightly conceals the insidious racism that minimizes real differences in customs, history, and culture among Asian peoples because, after all, they all have slanty eyes.
In other words: “Those martial arts all look the same to me.”