a blog about a lot of things

Project Gutenberg The thing about Hong Kong crime movies that are filled with action is that I have a hard time being objective about them. Like many people who are in their thirties now (and even older), I grew up watching a steady diet of Hong Kong cinema. For much of my childhood I was convinced Hong Kong was one of the most dangerous places in the world (mostly the fault of Johnnie To and John Woo’s films). I have never tired of the Hong Kong gangster film, much as I have never tired of the Western. And the fairly recent resurgence of quality crime movies coming out of Hong Kong has been something I didn’t even realized I missed until the revival and so I’m even inclined to let a few bad movies slide. However, Project Gutenberg isn’t one of the movies that needs to get a bye since it’s a thoroughly enjoyable two hour ride into the world of counterfeit money creation. With a cast frontline of Chow Yun Fat and Aaron Kwok, the film already comes with classic actors of ...

Have a Nice Day (Hao Ji Le) Some of the best movies are the ones that feel familiar while telling new stories. Goodfellas is thoroughly distinct from any other mafia film but by including familiar themes about “made men”, it allows us to approach the film from a feeling of familiarity. Revionist Westerns also set new interpretations of stories within a familiar setting. And, of course, it’s even possible to take a fairly similar story and place it within an entirely new landscape (such as Avatar). Have a Nice Day is one of those films that seem as though you’ve seen it before and also, remains like nothing you’ve ever seen before. With a storyline that seems to have been heavily influenced by Tarantino ( Reservoir Dogs, in particular) and an animated style that brings to mind Waltz with Bashir, this is a movie that certainly springs out of familiar territory. But influences are only tangential, and the final product is wholly original. It’s a film set in a bleak ind...

Irrational Market: The problem with valuing the Neymar transfer Note: I am aware that the transfer fee of £200 million was set by Barcelona as a release clause and so was not determined on the market at the time by PSG. I am also aware that the value of the release clause was set in a large part as a fee thought too high to really pay and to prohibit a move before the end of Neymar’s contract and not solely as Barcelona’s idea of the worth of Neymar. However, this article will assume largely that the estimation of £200 million as the value of Neymar’s release clause was chosen as a value of worth and not with a prohibitive element. At the time of writing, Brazilian footballer Neymar is the most expensive footballer in the world following his transfer from FC Barcelona to Paris Saint Germain for €222 million (£200 million). This fee breaks the previous record of €105 million (£89.2 million) paid for Paul Pogba by Manchester United in 2016 and as this new record is more th...

Pricing Football Transfers: The market is flawed Football transfers have been increasing the maximum asking price possible for a footballer since the beginning of the professional era in the early part of the last century. It is not expected that transfer prices would decrease since due to inflation the price of few things have decreased from the last century to now. However, football players exist in a market that has become increasingly flush with money due to revenues from television and the cost of a football player now is far in excess of what would be expected under inflation. Football transfer fees are difficult to estimate in terms of being a good deal because there is little that is sure. Football and form is fragile and a good player in the past is not guaranteed to be so in the future. Furthermore, young players frequently fall short of expectations. A football transfer has to capture the current worth of the player, the worth of the potential of the player (w...

Black Butterfly, a remake of the 2008 French film, seems to draw heavily on other films about writers in thriller and horror situations. Most obvious are the comparisons to Misery and The Shining, down to the shared names of the lead characters in those films and in this one. Overall the movie has much to recommend it, in theory, but little to distinguish it. The basic concept is fairly similar to Misery, in that a once-popular writer is held hostage (though not by a fan in this case). The hostage taker this time is the drifter, Jack (played by Johnathan Rhys Meyers) who saves the writer Paul (played by Antonio Banderas) from being beaten up in a diner. He is later picked up on the side of the road by Paul. After reading Paul’s latest work, Jack and Paul come to an “agreement” where Jack helps Paul out of his writer’s block. The film attempts to make points about storytelling and the craftwork for creating believable works. Unfortunately, most of the dialogue about storyte...

Sleepless: A Review *Spoilers* Sleepless is by no means an original film. This is not entirely a problem when watching an action movie since entertainment value supersedes originality, but with a vast number of action films being produced, having an original storyline would add points to a film of this genre. A remake of the French film Sleepless Night , this adds to the feeling that the viewer has seen it all before. The ability to know what is happening before it happens is not ideal when the movie needs to really capture the audience’s attention by building tension. However, this is not a bad film. While it does possess a number of clichés and the entire crooked cop storyline can feel a bit rewarmed, this is a solidly entertaining film. The problem is that for fans of action films, they’ll have seen better done versions of every set piece. The chase scenes have all been done before as have the gunfights in parking garages and fistfights in kitchens. Not every f...

Marvel Netflix Series: The Villains Filled with spoilers below Over the past few months I’ve watched Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil in that order, so I’ve watched them all out of order. While this means I wasn’t really able to appreciate the interlocked nature of the series and really spot cross-series links when they showed up (a lot of the time) it did allow me to take each of the series from a stand-alone point (as much as that is possible when Marvel movies and television series have been around since forever and I’ve been reading comics pretty much my whole life). The series are all more distinct than they are similar but one of the uniting threads is the quality of the villains they face. In Luke Cage this means Cottonmouth (played by Mahershala Ali, who seems ever present and excellent these days) and Mariah to a lesser extent although the character of Diamondback doesn’t match up to those two and seems like a late and not as well thought out entry (for eve...