It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted anything because I have been prepping my new podcast. #smileSays is now available on the following podcast platforms:
Subscribe now so you won’t miss a thing. I was originally going to host the podcast here, but decided to let Anchor host and syndicate it in the hope of generating revenue through donations or integrated advertising. There was more that went into the decision than that, but I’ll digress for now. I’m going to see if I can embed the episodes on the site as well. The player featuring the latest episode should load here:
If it doesn’t load, or you want to listen to an older episode, you can check out individual episodes in the meantime by checking the sidebar on a desktop or scrolling further down on mobile. I’ll get it to work eventually.
That’s probably the subject of the email a bunch of wrestlers got this week. After being deemed an essential business, WWE resumed live television broadcasts in an empty arena, then fired a bunch of their roster in the interest of budget cuts. Hopefully they’ll be able to find work elsewhere; AEW has been running their own empty arena shows the last few weeks, and Impact Wrestling joins them on Tuesday with what would have been their Rebellion pay per view. I’m kinda bummed about the Impact one, because I had ringside seats for that.
No. I will not do your podcast. No. I will not do an interview for your website. No. I am not interested in doing your autograph signing in eight months. For the first time, in a long time… I control the narrative now. #FreeEC3pic.twitter.com/VibQjmXbta
Most of you know that I’m not really a film critic, but my friend who is asked my thoughts on Made In Hong Kong about a month ago, and I’m just getting around to posting them now. This isn’t really a review, just my opinion. I suppose that is a review, huh? Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it:
I wasn’t sure I had seen the film based on the trailer. The cast looked familiar enough and I had seen plenty of movies back then. Even though the trailer mentions that this if the first time Made In Hong Kong was released in the US, there were plenty of movies shown in Chinatown (not to metion bootleg VHS tapes and DVDs) that never had official American releases. I don’t even know the titles of many of the ones I saw back then. It also mentions that this is the firstindependent HK film, but I’m sure Tsui Hark would take issue with that.
Turns out, I had not seen the film before. The 4K restoration I saw looked like the movie was shot yesterday. It looked better than it would have had I seen it back in the 1990s, because in those days the 35mm prints were beat up by the time I saw them. It was actually a little disconcerting to me at first, but not everyone is going to have that issue. While it isn’t for everyone, I enjoyed the movie. Given the plot, it could have gone the extreme melodrama route like similiar gangster youth films of the era. The director chose instead to keep things grounded, focusing on the characters, their relationships to each other and the greater societies they inhabit, occasionally injecting some social commentary. I wouldn’t call Made In Hong Kong a bleak movie, but it does have that streak of fatalism prevelant in HK cinema leading up to the Handover and uncertainty about the future. It’s worth a watch, but not if you’re in need of cheering up.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on the Police Academy documentary. Got an email update yesterday from the team:
We finally got Steve Guttenberg on board and his 3-hour interview was amazing, but really reshaped the narrative of the doc. We tried to insert him in where he was needed but in the end, we felt we needed to start the edit from scratch. We strongly believe that this was the right decision and now the doc is shaping into something very special. We will have a more detailed update soon!
The Quad Cinema is showing Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde as part of their Hammer Films retrospective, giving me another excuse to recycle some old material, a clip that was recycling old material to begin with. Back in 2006, I produced a video podcast (before the format had really been established or anyone knew what it was) called Potluck: Substance Over Style. The person I was supposed to interview backed out last minute, so I had to come up with an episode on the fly. I pulled out some old videotape of my mom, a couple of other old tapes and some digitized public domain film and put this together. By the way, my mother has never even seen Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, believe it or not.
Been a while since I posted anything new, and it’ll be a while longer. If you’ve been here before you might have noticed that I’ve updated the design of the site and I’m now going through it and fixing broken links and whatnot. Just to post something (sort of) fresh, I’m recycling a comment I made on a Police Academypost at The AV Club six years ago. I know, you’re thinking, “A comment?!? Seems like a pretty half assed thing to repurpose!” It’s not; the comment is about 1300 words of objectively deep insight. I was intending to write a thesis further expanding on the those ideas, but never did.
If you’ve been reading smile’s Wrestling Magazine at Flipboard, thanks for checking it out! I started the magazine because there’s already a lot of coverage of wrestling online but I wanted to focus on some of the things that mainstream media doesn’t: the indie wrestlers touring all over doing house shows, the many women who are overlooked or marginalized and the actual lives of wrestlers as people instead of the larger than life cartoons the general public seems to perceive them as.
me & Mom at Impact Wrestling
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything because I’ve been busy (I explain in more detail here). On the TiVo, I have a couple of weeks worth of WWE & TNA shows, a few weeks of New Japan & PWS & a Lucha Underground to catch up on besides the YouTube stuff I subscribe to. Since I haven’t watched the shows, I haven’t been reading wrestling news because I want to avoid spoilers. I haven’t even kept up with local shows lately. I’ll be getting back to it, but in the meantime I want to thank you all for your patience and support! Keep reading and let me know your thoughts.
The title says it all, doesn’t it? In this video, I explain and demonstrate how to get around MoviePass‘ Countdown Clock and why it works. This doesn’t violate MoviePass Terms Of Service, either; I explain that towards the end, but once they get hip to this, I’m sure MoviePass will make some changes. Most ironic is that while MoviePass may not be too thrilled about this video, it’s the smoothest MoviePass transaction I’ve ever recorded. Seriously, I wonder how many MoviePass users have ever checked in and got their ticket that fast.
I can’t front, I’m feeling pretty Damian Sandow-ish right now, but this is so face palmingly simple that I’d honestly be amazed if I was the first one to come up with it. You’re welcome.
smile 
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