Author: Chris Compendio

Iron Fist Didn’t Have to Be Asian, But I Sure Did Want Him to Be

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While I am the son of Filipino immigrants, growing up in a mostly white suburban area created a distance between myself and my racial identity. I wasn’t in touch with my roots, and for the longest time, my own perspective of identity politics was quite limited – a result of both apathy and even ignorance to the state of things.

But leaving that bubble helped to open up my mind and look at my identity from a different viewpoint. But what has driven me even more to embrace my Asian-American label is looking at the lack of representation of Asians in the media – I am motivated to not only promote this issue, but to help fill that void as an artist. With the recent release of Marvel and Netflix’s Iron Fist generating discussions on this topic, I’d like to share how my personal experiences have led me to where I am now.

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The Movies of 2016: Hidden Figures

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This is a film that makes its mission very obvious from its title. When we think of the great accomplishments we’ve made in human history, often there are individuals – and groups – whose contributions go unnoticed. In the case of Katherine Goble Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monaé), these women faced both sexism and racism while working at NASA, as astronaut John Glenn (Glenn Powell) prepares his historic space flight.

“Hidden Figures” is an important film for a multitude of reasons – not only are stories about women of color rare in mainstream Hollywood, but women and women of color face a number hurdles when going into STEM that men do not have to. This movie is also a reminder of what racism looks like – we often see racism as loud and overt, but implicit racism can be just as ugly and damaging. “Hidden Figures” is a real crowd-pleaser, one that doesn’t need CGI spectacle or witty one-liners, but is instead carried by strong performances and powerful truths.

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In its Switch Presentation, Nintendo sends mixed messages

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I was amongst the many in the internet who endlessly speculated on what Nintendo’s mysterious NX could be. I ate up every report, every rumor, and every leak (legitimate or not) that was thrown at me, or the good people at /r/NintendoNX, now migrated to /r/NintendoSwitch. Finally, on October 20th, 2016, the loud, obnoxious, and sometimes unreasonable cries of NX theorists and fanatics were answered.

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A Look Back at “Man of Steel,” a Movie that Failed Its Premise

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How do we ultimately judge movies? We generally judge them by their individual merits, from the acting, directing, cinematography, and other element. But in some cases we may find ourselves comparing a movie to other films. Neither is particularly right or wrong, and I would guess that people do some combination of both.

In regards to my method of judging movies, I look at two things:

  1. What was the filmmakers’ conceptual or artistic intention of the film? What is the premise? What is the reason this film is being made?
  2. Was the premise taken to its full potential? Was it executed correctly? Was this the best possible film it could have been?

It’s this mindset that leads me to love something like the silly “Fast & Furious” movies with their well-direction action and choreography, simple premise, and relatable theme of family, and despise something like “The Amazing Spider-Man” reboot series, with their lack of any compelling premise (some nonsense mystery about Peter Parker’s parents) and horrific writing and structure.

On the eve of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s” release and the discussion regarding its negative reviews, I thought that it may be a good idea to look back at its predecessor “Man of Steel,” a film I felt had a great premise, but a poor execution.

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Did “Deadpool” Push the Envelope?

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Well, it’s here. After years of anticipation and obstacles to the production of this film, “Deadpool” has arrived on the silver screen. After over a week, this film has already broken a number of box office records, particularly those for rated “R” films. Critics hail it as original, and fans praise it for being true to the character.

So why did I just like it and not love it?

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