Weekend Reads: Chungking Express, Arcade Fire, Khruangbin, Tech Giants, Disney+, Hygiene

Recommended weekend reading material for August 8, 2020.

Every week, I compile a list of interesting, thought-provoking, and enjoyable articles. I hope they provide you with some good weekend reading material.

Kelsey Ford meditates on Wong Kar-Wai’s Chungking Express and its vision of love, romance, and relationships.

Wong Kar-Wai’s lush and bright Chungking Express is built as a diptych: two stories featuring lovelorn cops wandering the streets of Hong Kong. The movie’s atmosphere and story are like one intense infatuation. The colors are bright and fast. Every object is happy or sad or filled with portent. The songs play over and over again, each time becoming more and more steeped in the emotional turmoil of the characters hitting repeat on the boombox.

Related: Read my review of Chungking Express.

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Thanks to roles in movies like Blade Runner, Big Trouble in Little China, Mulan, and Kung Fu Panda, there’s a good chance that James Hong is the most prolific actor of all time.

As of July 2020, Hong has 469 TV credits, 149 feature films, 32 short films and 22 video games to his IMDB page. That makes for a total of 672 credits, and a breathtaking legacy that will live on in Hollywood history.

In addition to his many acting credits, Hong has spent much of his career trying to improve Asian representation in Hollywood.

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Arcade Fire’s landmark third album The Suburbs turns 10 this year, and Jordan Bassett argues that it’s the perfect album for our present day.

The record found the Montreal six-piece gazing into the rearview mirror, mourning their collective loss of innocence, resenting adulthood as they longed for the simplicity of adolescence. And yet that key lyric, from the glittery “We Used To Wait,” was about a decade ahead of its time. Back in 2010, when The Suburbs was first released, social media was yet to infest attention spans and warp reality in the way that it does now. Instant gratification culture was a way off. How could an album be nostalgic and forward-thinking all at once?

Related: My favorite song from The Suburbs is “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” Back in 2010, I wrote a meditation on the song’s themes for Christ and Pop Culture.

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Many thanks to Robert Rackley for bringing this awesome concert video featuring Khruangbin to my attention. Khruangbin’s performance begins at approximately the 2:41:00 mark, and if you’re looking for some fiery, funky instrumental music to liven up your day, then it simply doesn’t get much better than this. (Be sure to listen for their Warren G, Spandau Ballet, Chris Isaak, and Dick Dale covers.)

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What happens when you try to remove tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Google from your life?

Critics of the big tech companies are often told, “If you don’t like the company, don’t use its products.” My takeaway from the experiment was that it’s not possible to do that. It’s not just the products and services branded with the big tech giant’s name. It’s that these companies control a thicket of more obscure products and services that are hard to untangle from tools we rely on for everything we do, from work to getting from point A to point B.

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For Hannah Giorgis, the most popular titles on Netflix represent a cultural wasteland of sorts.

If HBO’s Game of Thrones was the last great piece of TV monoculture, then the pandemic has popularized a series of forgettable productions that each offers a fleeting, miniature facsimile of communal attention. Absent the usual summer blockbusters, and with few prestige shows rolling out new episodes, the landscape of American entertainment is barren enough for C- shows and movies to rack up the viewership of B+ productions, if not the associated enthusiasm.

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Sure, everyone goes to Disney+ to watch Star Wars and Marvel movies — and Hamilton. But what about lesser-known movies like Sammy, the Way-Out Seal and The Ugly Dachshund?

These films were of a particular strain of live-action Disney: comedies made during the ’60s and ’70s, during the era of civil rights, counterculture and sexual revolution, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the death of Walt Disney himself. But you’d never have any sense of such tumult watching them.

FWIW, I’m still waiting for Disney+ to add Condorman and The B.R.A.T. Patrol.

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Speaking of Disney+, the long-delayed live action remake of Mulan will now premiere on Disney+ on September 4th instead of in theaters. It’ll cost $30 and remain available to viewers for as long as they remain Disney+ subscribers. The move is more evidence that the pandemic is shaking up the movie industry in a big way.

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Catecinem isn’t the most prolific movie blog, but if you’re looking for thoughtful movie and pop culture commentary from a Christian perspective, then you should definitely add it to your reading list. Case in point, the latest entry reviews films ranging from Ad Astra and A Hidden Life to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

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Aside from hand-washing, James Hamblin hasn’t used soap in five years. And no, he doesn’t stink.

Hamblin’s new regime got him thinking about modern notions of cleanliness, what is natural and how these two issues are, frankly, all over the shop. Stigmatism of body odour began as an advertising strategy that helped quadruple the sales of Lifebuoy soap in the 20s. A century later, we still live in fear of anyone detecting the slightest hint of BO on us. We are more perfumed, moisturised and exfoliated than ever.

I’m a little worried about what might happen if my kids ever find this article.

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