Disqus - Latest Comments for Vina

Re: Georgetown Student Sandra Fluke Responds To Being Called ‘Slut,’ ‘Prostitute’ By Limbaugh

Vina — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:50:42 -0000

All I know, is that the price of my hormonal birth control would more than quadruple if it weren't covered by my health plan. I could eat the cost, but many low income women would essentially be denied access because it would become too expensive. Do you think that's fair?

Re: http://criterioncast.tumblr.com/post/12168331913

Vina — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 22:03:52 -0000

Stop teasing me. Seriously, at this point I'll take a low-res pan-and-scan just to be able to *see* this frickin' movie.

Re: Best Movies of 2010

Vina — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 03:16:58 -0000

Easy A doesn't bash Christians. It pokes fun at the celibacy culture a bit, and the main villain is clearly just using Christianity to power trip and be a mean girl. And I don't think MrWednesdayNight actually saw the movie, because like someone else pointed out, Olive doesn't actually have sex with anyone. She gets a bad reputation by accident and decides to use it to help her friends.

Re: A-Listers Are Aging, With No Heirs Apparent

Vina — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:49:22 -0000

Two of the biggest names right now, Depp and Downey Jr, didn't hit their current level of mass commercial appeal until their forties. Sure, they worked steadily before, but they weren't A-listers. I think the old model of stardom is dead - it takes far more time and effort and talent to get to the top these days, and it's a briefer tenure. But there are plenty of talented young and not-so-young actors waiting to fill the vacuum when the current crop goes.

Re: The /Filmcast: After Dark - Ep. 107 - Racebending Postmortem

Vina — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 15:14:27 -0000

In that case you'd rewrite the character to be a black character, like Nick Fury, not pretend that he's actually Caucasian or ambiguous.

Re: The /Filmcast: After Dark - Ep. 107 - Racebending Postmortem

Vina — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 04:19:03 -0000

There's limits to how far people can go to "pass" for another ethnicity or nationality. A South Asian actor like Aasif Mandvi is never going to look right as the Chinese Admiral Zhao. Caucasians aren't Eskimos. It's just not going to work.

Re: It Came From Beyond Midnight: Creature (Part 1)

Vina — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:40:34 -0000

How do you talk about Klaus Kinski without bringing up Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Fitzcarraldo?

Re: Final Fantasy X – Part 2

Vina — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 22:09:45 -0000

Points for having the guts to commit your singing to video - but don't quit your day job.

Re: Guy Adams: Bending the rules on ethnic casting

Vina — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:11:18 -0000

Caucasians should not be representing Asian, Native American, and Middle Eastern cultures onscreen. And they certainly shouldn't be pushing ethnic actors out of the roles that were originally conceived for them.

Re: Guy Adams: Bending the rules on ethnic casting

Vina — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:01:53 -0000

That's mischaracterizing the show's intentions. The Airbender world may be fantasy, but the cultures are clearly representative of real world cultures - Tibetan, Chinese, Inuit, Japanese, Korean, etc. They practically transplant parts of ancient Asia directly into the show, from the pagodas to the chopsticks and everything in between. All the writing we see is in perfectly readable Classical Chinese. Several characters come from a tribe in the polar regions that spear-fish with kayaks and live in igloos. It's been well established that the creators were very careful about the cultural elements they borrowed, often hiring experts and consultants.

So it follows that the characters are meant to represent Asian and Inuit people. Why would they have been so worried about the authenticity otherwise?

Re: KICKASSIA: Part 4

Vina — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:27:29 -0000

Sweet, merciful HAM... You playing yourself in these is just hysterical, with the floppyness and the blank looks.

Re: Zelda Scott: Original Gangsta T-Shirts Now Available!

Vina — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:30:28 -0000

Gee, that's not a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Re: M. Night Shyamalan Address Race Controversy for THE LAST AIRBENDER

Vina — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:39:41 -0000

For the LAST TIME. "Avatar: The Last Airbender" was not an anime. It was a Nickelodeon-produced cartoon that was explicitly designed to showcase Asian and Inuit and other Pacific Rim cultures. And its main characters were pretty obvious based on Tibetan monks, Inuit tribespeople, and East Asian martial artists. It's a great show and I recommend it to anybody, young or old.

The movie is another story. How Mr. Shyamalan thinks it's diverse to make this with all-Caucasian heroes, I have no idea. I love how he neglects to mention that the original actor cast as Zuko was also Caucasian, meaning pretty much the entire cast, including the villains, would have been completely whitewashed. Seriously, those pale "Twilight" kids trying to pass themselves off as Inuits is just going to look ridiculous.

Re: M. Night Shyamalan Address Race Controversy for THE LAST AIRBENDER

Vina — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:30:52 -0000

Well it *is* racist when the characters were all minorities to start out with in the cartoon, and all the movies casting calls for the hero roles only wanted Caucasians. Sure, there are minorities in this movie, but they only can only be villains and extras. Apparently we're not good enough to be the heroes in stories ABOUT OUR OWN CULTURES!

Re: The /Filmcast: After Dark - Ep. 87 - Directors on Twitter, and Racebending (GUESTS: Dan Eckman and DC Pierson from Derrick Comedy)

Vina — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:19:00 -0000

I think it certainly would have made a difference for Asian-American actors. Jet Li and Jackie Chan are getting older, and the next generation has to come from somewhere. And it would be nice if we didn't keep having to importing Asian actors from overseas when there are plenty of the home-grown kind in Hollywood already.

Re: Party Mania Commentary

Vina — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:35:01 -0000

I'd have loved to hear more about your transformation into a Valley Girl. Scarlett is some kind of a miracle worker!

Re: The /Filmcast: After Dark - Ep. 87 - Directors on Twitter, and Racebending (GUESTS: Dan Eckman and DC Pierson from Derrick Comedy)

Vina — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:22:17 -0000

Uncle Iroh was Mako's last role. He died during Season Two.

Re: The /Filmcast: After Dark - Ep. 87 - Directors on Twitter, and Racebending (GUESTS: Dan Eckman and DC Pierson from Derrick Comedy)

Vina — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:45:48 -0000

If it was one or two things you would have a point, but in the Avatar world it's every single cultural indicator all at once, from the pagodas to the chopsticks and everything in between. We're looking at four kingdoms deliberately patterned after Asian and Native American cultures. The lifestyle, mythology, architecture, clothing, language, behaviors, martial arts, and *ethnicities* of the characters were all based on real world Asian/Indigenous counterparts. The show's Bible confirms this - they absolutely are supposed to be Asian analogues. If you watched the show did you notice that every single written word is in perfectly readable Chinese?

This might be a fantasy world, but 90% of it is taken directly from the heritage and culture of real people. Real people. And the creators took the time and effort to get things right, hired experts for the martial arts and calligraphy and even had a cultural consultant involved to make sure they wouldn't step on any toes. Best of all, they completely avoided all the stereotypes for the characters - no slanty eyes, no funny accents. And now suddenly all the care and respect has gone out the window. How do you take a show that was originally conceived to celebrate Asian/Pacific cultures and deny its characters were Asians and Inuits and Indigenous peoples?

I love the show as much as anyone else, but I can’t support a movie that goes contrary to everything the original stood for. I hope you’ll read this and understand that the issues in the controversy are very serious. There are a lot of people that this kind of blatant whitewashing hurts, especially the minority kids who will no longer have these heroes – that were originally designed to look like them – to cheer for onscreen anymore. And that is a big deal. Can you think of the last time we had a fantasy movie like this starring a minority kid?

Re: Black Hole of Board Games: Party Mania

Vina — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:12:40 -0000

Oh please. We only say him from the waist up and he didn't go for any of the fun stuff.

Re: Black Hole of Board Games: Party Mania

Vina — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:08:38 -0000

I'm pretty sure you were doing Molly Ringwald and I think Linkara may have been going for Winona Ryder. As for Benzaie... hard to tell with the beard.

You people are insane and I love you all. :)

Re: Captain America 2 – Death Too Soon

Vina — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:56:23 -0000

Why, Christopher Lee? Why? I thought he hit the bottom of the barrel with Return from Witch Mountain, but no!

Re: Earth, Wind and Fire: Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender Superbowl Spot

Vina — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:30:54 -0000

90% percent of the Avatar world is taken *directly* from real-world Pacific Rim/Asian cultures. My heritage is not a damn fantasy!

Re: Earth, Wind and Fire: Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender Superbowl Spot

Vina — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:33:39 -0000

I don't care how pretty it is. It's not enough to make up for the racebending.

Re: M. Night Shyamalan Talks The Last Airbender

Vina — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:22:33 -0000

Aang looks white to you. But he's not. Pretty much everything about him is based on the Tibetan monks. Come on, how many Caucasian kids do you know named *Aang*?

Re: M. Night Shyamalan Talks The Last Airbender

Vina — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:17:25 -0000

Nobody expected everyone to be Chinese. But why aren't any of the hero characters East-Asian or Native Americans? Why aren't Dev Patel (Zuko) and Gabrielle Seychelles (Yue) playing Sokka and Katara instead of those pale Caucasian kids they got?