[Weekly Update] Sep 19, 2022

Every time I type in the date, the 3 different formats have a war in my head.

CHANNEL UPDATE

Our next video is already complete, and is currently waiting to go live. It's a smaller video of my reminiscing the past 4 years, and also provide a list of films I have watched that I recommend. Looking forward to chill with you in the comment section.

Watching Jackie Chan's recent movies are not good for my health. So many of them have such good potentials, yet almost all of them wasted them. It reminded me why I made that video lambasting Chinese blockbusters.

I still can't get over the fact that Police Story 2013 opens with the main character pointing a gun to his own head, and then flashback to when he wakes up from sleep. That's two film school cliches cramped into one. Impressive.

While I'm making This Jackie Chan video, I also started planning a "making of" video, explaining my process of making video essays. Not sure if anything will come of it, yet. It's honestly not the most interesting thing in the world. Tentatively planned to be the 100th video on the channel.

If you haven't seen our community taps, I'm currently taking steps to address our very poorly made Traditional Chinese captions. I'll cycle through a few different caption converters in the near future, to see how many errors I get. If you can read Traditional Chinese, let me know in the next few videos!

For this month's Patreon bonus video, how about Die Hard?

Finally, I'll be posting the poll I promised last week, soon. I promise.

MEDIA TALK

Let's talk about something actually close to this channel: Movies that I can't talk about:

There are a few movies that I always wanted to cover, but have no idea how to approach them. The biggest one is, without a doubt, Riki-Oh (and it's sequels). It's over the top guts and gores effect is pretty much the entire reason to watch this movie, and I can't show any of them on YouTube.

At one point, I wanted to film my original footage to work as funny censorship, like cutting open a cooked turkey and pull out a sausage link, as a replacement for that famous scene. But by that point I'd just be making a comedy video.

That said, the movie is also a surprisingly interesting look at the potential harm of a for-profit, privatized prison system. So many I can talk about that instead.

There are also the films that includes sensitive topics. Miss Bala, a Mexican drama, involves a woman being kidnapped and trafficked by a drug cartel. It's one of the best example of writing a realistic and strong woman without giving her superhuman capabilities. Because of its plot about human trafficking, sexual assault is part of the discussion. It's something that I don't feel right for ignoring of hiding, but the moment I bring it up, the video will be demonetized. Added with its feminist theme, it's very easy for the channel to be targeted by haters.

For a similar reason, our video on Silenced was almost abandoned. But the film is too important. Today, that video remains demonetized.

And there there are videos that I still intent to make, but will have to figure out a way to circumnavigate. The biggest one being the Rise of Nigerian New Cinema. During my research, I looked into a topic that I really want to discuss but unsure how to approach.

You see, while Nigerian video films were on the rise, a lot of Christian missionaries from the west utilizes this medium to make Christian propaganda movies, instead. It's a fascinating topic that will also get this channel very cancelled.

But it's so much fun to see how Christian films work outside of the US. Many of us have heard of all the Pureflix stuff. While in North America, these films are more or less preaching to the choirs only, in Nigeria, they are actively denouncing local religion and trying to convert people. The dynamic is very different.

Anyway, so that's three video ideas that I have been brewing but not sure how to make into a video. Is there any video ideas that you want to see but might be too spicy for YouTube?

In any case, video will be out in a few days! See you then!